diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-8.txt | 12855 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 248195 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 888997 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/17357-h.htm | 13095 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/cover01.gif | bin | 0 -> 60852 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/fullcover.gif | bin | 0 -> 205921 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/illus01.png | bin | 0 -> 68989 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/illus02.png | bin | 0 -> 68788 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/illus03.png | bin | 0 -> 71608 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/illus04.png | bin | 0 -> 64304 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/illus05.png | bin | 0 -> 64249 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357-h/images/spine01.gif | bin | 0 -> 23475 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357.txt | 12855 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17357.zip | bin | 0 -> 248142 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
17 files changed, 38821 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17357-8.txt b/17357-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f993b77 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12855 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quickening + +Author: Francis Lynde + +Illustrator: E. M. Ashe + +Release Date: December 19, 2005 [EBook #17357] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUICKENING *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Ereaut, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + +Illustration: Tom was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man. + + + + + +THE QUICKENING + + +By + +FRANCIS LYNDE +Author of +The Grafters, +The Master of Appleby, +etc., etc. + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS +BY E.M. ASHE + +INDIANAPOLIS +THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY +PUBLISHERS + +Copyright 1906 +Francis Lynde + +March + +PRESS OF +BRAUNWORTH & CO. +BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS +BROOKLYN, N.Y. + +To My Mother + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I Bethesda 1 + + II The Cedars of Lebanon 11 + + III Of the Fathers Upon the Children 21 + + IV The Newer Exodus 25 + + V The Dabneys of Deer Trace 32 + + VI Blue Blood and Red 44 + + VII The Prayer of the Righteous 57 + + VIII The Backslider 65 + + IX The Race to the Swift 75 + + X The Shadow of the Rock 90 + + XI The Trumpet-Call 99 + + XII The Iron in the Forge Fire 107 + + XIII A Sister of Charity 116 + + XIV On Jordan's Bank 124 + + XV Noël 140 + + XVI The Bubble, Reputation 145 + + XVII Absalom, My Son! 160 + + XVIII The Awakening 172 + + XIX Issachar 188 + + XX Dry Wells 201 + + XXI Gilgal 216 + + XXII Love 226 + + XXIII Tarred Ropes 242 + + XXIV The Under-Depths 255 + + XXV The Plow in the Furrow 265 + + XXVI As With a Mantle 279 + + XXVII Swept and Garnished 294 + + XXVIII The Burden of Habakkuk 306 + + XXIX As Brutes That Perish 319 + + XXX Through a Glass Darkly 331 + + XXXI The Net of the Fowler 338 + + XXXII Whoso Diggeth a Pit 347 + + XXXIII The Wine-Press of Wrath 357 + + XXXIV The Smoke of the Furnace 366 + + XXXV A Soul in Shackles 378 + + XXXVI Free Among the Dead 387 + + XXXVII Whose Yesterdays Look Backward 399 + + +THE QUICKENING + + +I + +BETHESDA + + +The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts, +of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the +field--to use Brother Crafts' own word--was white to the harvest. + +Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the +valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past +by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from +the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening +the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble. + +Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time +twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike, +had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling +of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily +in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood +knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds--the +present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region +round-about. + +"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?" +asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands. + +"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o' +grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's +a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n--honest and +even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for +soap-kittles. But hot 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit, +and ye cayn't change _him_." + +"That's about right," said a third. "It looks to me like Caleb done sot +his stakes where he's goin' to run the furrow. If livin' a dozen years +and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to +toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin' +to do it." + +"Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the +only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly +put down by the tall mountaineer. + +"Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass! I allow the' ain't no dyed-in-the-wool +hawss-trader like you goin' to stand up and say anything ag'inst Marthy +Gordon while I'm a-listenin'. I'm recollectin' right now the time when +she sot up day and night for more'n a week with my Malviny--and me +a-smashin' the whisky jug acrost the wagon tire to he'p God to forgit +how no-'count and triflin' I'd been." + +Thomas Jefferson had opened the church-house doors and windows and was +out among the unhitched teams looking for Scrap Pendry, who had been one +of a score to go forward for prayers the night before. So it happened +that he overheard the flat-chested mountaineer's tribute to his mother. +It warmed him generously; but there was a boyish scowl for Japheth +Pettigrass. What had the horse-trader been saying to make it needful for +Bill Layne to speak up as his mother's defender? Thomas Jefferson +recorded a black mark against Pettigrass's name, and went on to search +for Scrap. + +"What you hiding for?" he demanded, when the newly-made convert was +discovered skulking in the dusky shadows of the pines beyond the +farthest outlying wagon. + +"I ain't hidin'," was the half-defiant answer. + +"You're a liar," said Thomas Jefferson coolly, ducking skilfully to +escape the consequences. + +But there were no consequences. Young Pendry's heavy face flushed a dull +red,--that could be seen even in the growing dusk,--but he made no move +retaliatory. Thomas Jefferson walked slowly around him, wary as a wild +creature of the wood, and to the full as curious. Then he stuck out his +hand awkwardly. + +"I only meant it 'over the left,' Scrap, hope to die," he said. "I +allowed I'd just like to know for sure if what you done last night made +any difference." + +Scrap was silent, glibness of tongue not being among the gifts of the +East Tennessee landward bred. But he grasped the out-thrust hand +heartily and crushed it forgivingly. + +"Come on out where the folks are," urged Thomas Jefferson. "Sim Cantrell +and the other fellows are allowin' you're afeard." + +"I ain't afeard," denied the convert. + +"No; but you're sort o' 'shamed, and that's about the same thing, I +reckon. Come on out; I'll go 'long with you." + +Then spake the new-born love in the heart of the big, rough, country +boy. "I cayn't onderstand how you can hold out, Tom-Jeff. I've come +thoo', praise the Lord! but I jest natchelly _got_ to have stars for my +crown. You say you'll go 'long with me, Tom-Jeff: say it ag'in, and mean +it." + +Again the doubtful-curious look came into Thomas Jefferson's gray eyes, +and he would not commit himself. Nevertheless, one point was safely +established, and it was a point gained: the miraculous thing called +conversion was beyond question real in Scrap's case. He turned to lead +the way between the wagons. The lamps were lighted in the church and the +people were filling the benches, while the choir gathered around the +tuneless little cottage organ to practise the hymns. + +"I--I'm studyin' about it some, Scrap," he confessed, half angry with +himself that the admission sent the blood to his cheeks. "Let's go in." + +It was admitted on all sides that Brother Crafts was a powerful +preacher. Other men had wrestled mightily in Zoar, but none to such +heart-shaking purpose. When he expatiated on the ineffable glories of +Heaven and the joys of the redeemed, which was not too often, the +reflection of the celestial effulgences could be seen rippling like +sunshine on the sea of faces spreading away from the shore of the pulpit +steps. When he spoke of hell and its terrors, which was frequently and +with thrilling descriptive, even so hardened a scoffer as Japheth +Pettigrass was wont to declare that you could hear the crackling of the +flames and the cries of the doomed. + +The opening exercises were over--the Bible reading, the long, +impassioned prayer, the hymn singing--and the preacher stood up in a +hush that could be felt, and stepped forward to the small desk which +served for a pulpit. + +He was a tall man, thin and erect, with a sallow, beardless face +unrelieved by any line of mobility, but redeemed and almost glorified by +the deep-set, eager, burning eyes. He had a way of bending to his +audience when he spoke, with one long arm crooked behind him and the +other extended to mark the sentences with a pointing finger, as if to +remove the final trace of impersonality; to break down the last of the +barriers of reserve which might be thrown up by the impenitent heart. + +The hush remained unbroken till he announced his text in a voice that +rang like an alarm-bell pealed in the dead of night. There are voices +and voices, but only now and then one which is pitched in the key of the +spheral harmonies. When the Reverend Silas hurled out the Baptist's +words, _Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!_ the responsive +thrill from the packed benches was like the sympathetic vibration of +harp-strings answering a trumpet blast. + +The thin, large-jointed hand went up for silence, as if there could be a +silence more profound than that which already hung on his word. Then he +began slowly, and in phrase so simple that the youngest child could not +fail to follow him, to draw the picture of that Judean morning scene on +the banks of the Jordan, of the wild, unkempt, skin-clad forerunner, +thundering forth his message to a sin--cursed world. On what deaf ears +had it fallen among the multitude gathered on Jordan's bank! On what +deaf ears would it fall in Zoar church this night! + +He classed them rapidly, and with a prescient insight into the mazes of +human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open +to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes--mint, anise and cummin--and +prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the +youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly +pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and +we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for +bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing +the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the +aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual +senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear +and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and +long-suffering God they had so long rejected. + +Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting of +The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day were +depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of an +inexorable judge. + +"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the +devil and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the +crowded church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your +end, impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a +fearful eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything +but the salvation of your soul, your sins, and the awful doom which is +awaiting you! Think of it, you who are throwing your lives away in the +pleasures of this world; you who have broken God's commands; you who +have stolen when you thought no eye was on you; you who have so often +committed murder in your hating hearts! Think not that you will be +suffered to escape! Every servant of the most high God who has ever +declared His message to you will be there to denounce you: I, Silas +Crafts, will meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ to bear my witness +against you!" + +A man, red-faced and with the devil of the cup of trembling peering from +under his shaggy eyebrows, rose unsteadily from his seat on the bench +nearest the door. + +"'Sh! he's fotched Tike Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but +the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the +door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle in +his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl +of a wild beast at bay. + +"No, by jacks, ye won't witness ag'inst me, Silas Crafts; ye'll be +dead!" + +The crack of the rifle went with the words, and at the flash of the +piece the man sprang backward through the doorway and was gone. Happily, +he had been too drunk or too tremulous to shoot straight. The preacher +was unhurt, and he was quick to quell the rising tumult and to turn the +incident to good account. + +"There went the arrow of conviction quivering to the heart of a +murderer!" he cried, dominating the commotion with his marvelous voice. +"Come back here, Japheth Pettigrass; and you, William Layne: God +Almighty will deal with that poor sinner in His own way. For him, for +every impenitent soul here to-night, the hour has struck. 'Now is the +accepted time; now is the day of salvation.' While we are singing, _Just +as I am, without one plea_, let the doors of divine mercy stand opened +wide, and let every hard heart be softened. Come, ye disconsolate; come +forward to the mercy-seat as we sing." + +The old, soul-moving, revival hymn was lifted in a triumphant burst of +sound, and Thomas Jefferson's heart began to pound like a trip-hammer. +Was this his call--his one last chance to enter the ark of safety? Just +there was the pinch. A saying of Japheth Pettigrass's, overheard in +Hargis's store on the first day of the meetings, flicked into his mind +and stuck there: "Hit's scare, first, last, and all the time, with +Brother Silas. He knows mighty well that a good bunch o' hickories, +that'll bring the blood every cut, beats a sugar kittle out o' sight +when it comes to fillin' the anxious seat." Was it really his call? Or +was he only scared? + +The twelve-year-old brain grappled hardily with the problem which has +thrown many an older wrestler. This he knew: that while he had been +listening with outward ears to the restless champing and stamping of the +horses among the pines, but with his inmost soul to the burning words of +his uncle, the preacher, a great fear had laid hold of him--a fear +mightier than desire or shame, or love or hatred, or any spring of +action known to him. It was lifting him to his feet; it was edging him +past the others on the bench and out into the aisle with the mourners +who were crowding the space in front of the pulpit platform. At the turn +he heard his mother's low-murmured, "I thank Thee, O God!" and saw the +grim, set smile on his father's face. Then he fell on his knees on the +rough-hewn floor, with the tall mountaineer called William Layne on his +right, and on his left a young girl from the choir who was sobbing +softly in her handkerchief. + + * * * * * + +June being the queen of the months in the valleys of Tennessee, the +revival converts of Little Zoar had the pick and choice of all the +Sundays of the year for the day of their baptizing. + +The font was of great nature's own providing, as was the mighty temple +housing it,--a clear pool in the creek, with the green-walled aisles in +the June forest leading down to it, and the blue arch of the flawless +June sky for a dome resplendent. + +All Paradise was there to see and hear and bear witness, as a matter of +course; and there were not wanting farm-wagon loads from the great +valley and from the Pine Knob highlands. Major Dabney was among the +onlookers, sitting his clean-limbed Hambletonian, and twisting his huge +white mustaches until they stood out like strange and fierce-looking +horns. Also, in the outer ranks of skepticism, Major Dabney's foreman +and horse-trader, Japheth Pettigrass, found a place. On the opposite +bank of the stream were the few negroes owning Major Dabney now as +"Majah Boss," as some of them,--most of them, in fact--had once owned +him as "Mawstuh Majah"; and mingling freely with them were the laborers, +white and black, from the Gordon iron-furnace. + +Thomas Jefferson brought up memories from that solemn rite administered +so simply and yet so impressively under the June sky, with the +many-pointing forest spires to lift the soul to heights ecstatic. One +was the singing of the choir, minimized and made celestially sweet by +the lack of bounding walls and roof. Another was the sight of his +father's face, with the grim smile gone, and the steadfast eyes gravely +tolerant as he--Thomas Jefferson--was going down into the water. A +third--and this might easily become the most lasting of all--was the +memory of how his mother clasped him in her arms as he came up out of +the water, all wet and dripping as he was, and sobbed over him as if her +heart would break. + + + + +II + +THE CEDARS OF LEBANON + + +Thomas Jefferson's twelfth summer fell in the year 1886; a year +memorable in the annals of the Lebanon iron and coal region as the first +of an epoch, and as the year of the great flood. But the herald of +change had not yet blown his trumpet in Paradise Valley; and the world +of russet and green and limestone white, spreading itself before the +eyes of the boy sitting with his hands locked over his knees on the top +step of the porch fronting the Gordon homestead, was the same world +which, with due seasonal variations, had been his world from the +beginning. + +Centering in the broad, low, split-shingled house at his back, it +widened in front to the old-fashioned flower garden, to the dooryard +with its thick turf of uncut Bermuda grass, to the white pike splotched +by the shadows of the two great poplars standing like sentinels on +either side of the gate, to the wooded hills across the creek. + +It was a hot July afternoon, a full month after the revival, and Thomas +Jefferson was at that perilous pass where Satan is said to lurk for the +purpose of providing employment for the idle. He was wondering if the +shade of the hill oaks would be worth the trouble it would take to +reach it, when his mother came to the open window of the living-room: a +small, fair, well-preserved woman, this mother of the boy of twelve, +with light brown hair graying a little at the temples, and eyes +remindful of vigils, of fervent beseeching, of mighty wrestlings against +principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. + +"You, Thomas Jefferson," she said gently, but speaking as one having +authority, "you'd better be studying your Sunday lesson than sitting +there doing nothing." + +"Yes'm," said the boy, but he made no move other than to hug his knees a +little closer. He wished his mother would stop calling him "Thomas +Jefferson." To be sure, it was his name, or at least two-thirds of it; +but he liked the "Buddy" of his father, or the "Tom-Jeff" of other +people a vast deal better. + +Further, the thought of studying Sunday lessons begot rebellion. At +times, as during those soul-stirring revival weeks, now seemingly +receding into a far-away past, he had moments of yearning to be wholly +sanctified. But the miracle of transformation which he had confidently +expected as the result of his "coming through" was still unwrought. When +John Bates or Simeon Cantrell undertook to bully him, as aforetime, +there was the same intoxicating experience of all the visible world +going blood-red before his eyes--the same sinful desire to slay them, +one or both. And as for Sunday lessons on a day when all outdoors was +beckoning-- + +He stole a glance at the open window of the living-room. His mother had +gone about her housework, and he could hear her singing softly, as +befitted the still, warm day: + + "O for a heart to praise my God!" + +and it nettled him curiously. All hymns were beginning to have that +effect, and this one in particular always renewed the conflict between +the yearning for sanctity and a desire to do something desperately +wicked; the only middle course lay in flight. Hence, the battle being +fairly on, he stole another glance at the window, sprang afoot, and ran +silently around the house and through the peach orchard to clamber over +the low stone wall which was the only barrier on that side between the +wilderness and the sown. + +Once under the trees on the mountain side, the pious prompting knocked +less clamorously at the door of his heart; and with its abatement the +temptation to say or do the desperate thing became less insistent, also. +It was always that way. When he was by himself in the forest, with no +particularly gnawing hunger for righteousness, the devil let him alone. +The thick wood was the true whisk to brush away all the naggings and +perplexities that swarmed, like house-flies in the cleared lands. Nance +Jane, the cow that did not know enough to come home at milking-time, +knew that. In the hot weather, when the blood-sucking horse-flies and +sweat-bees were worst, she would crash through the thickest underbrush +and so be swept clean of her tormentors. + +Emulating Nance Jane, Thomas Jefferson stormed through the nearest +sassafras thicket and emerged regenerate. What next? High up on the +mountain side, lifted far above Sunday lessons and soul conflicts and +perplexing questions that hung answerless in a person's mind, was a +place where the cedars smelled sweet and the west wind from the "other +mountain" plashed cool in your face what time a sun-smitten Paradise +Valley was like an oven. It would be three good hours before he would +have to go after Nance Jane; and the Sunday lesson--but he had already +forgotten about the Sunday lesson. + +Three-quarters of the first hour were gone, and he was warm and thirsty +when he topped the last of the densely-wooded lower slopes and came out +on a high, rock-strewn terrace thinly set with mountain cedars. Here his +feet were on familiar ground, and a little farther on, poised on the +very edge of the terrace and overtopping the tallest trees of the lower +slopes, was the great, square sandstone boulder which was his present +Mecca. + +On its outward face the big rock, gray, lichened and weather-worn, was a +miniature cliff as high as the second story of a house; and at this +cliff's foot was a dripping spring with a deep, crystalline pool for its +basin. There was a time when Thomas Jefferson used to lie flat on his +stomach and quench his thirst with his face thrust into the pool. But +that was when he had got no farther than the Book of Joshua in his +daily-chapter reading of the Bible. Now he was past Judges, so he knelt +and drank from his hands, like the men of Gideon's chosen three hundred. + +His thirst assuaged, he ascended the slope of the terrace to a height +whence the flat top of the cubical boulder could be reached by the help +of a low-branching tree. The summit of the great rock was one of the +sacred places in the temple of the solitudes; and when the earth became +too thickly peopled for comfort, he would come hither to lie on the very +brink of the cliff overhanging the spring, heels in air, and hands for a +chin-rest, looking down on a removed world mapping itself in softened +outlines near and far. + +Men spoke of Paradise as "the valley," though it was rather a sheltered +cove with Mount Lebanon for its background and a semicircular range of +oak-grown hills for its other rampart. Splitting it endwise ran the +white streak of the pike, macadamized from the hill quarry which, a full +quarter of a century before the Civil War, had furnished the stone for +the Dabney manor-house; and paralleling the road unevenly lay a ribbon +of silver, known to less poetic souls than Thomas Jefferson's as Turkey +Creek, but loved best by him under its almost forgotten Indian name of +Chiawassee. + +Beyond the valley and its inclosing hills rose the "other mountain," +blue in the sunlight and royal purple in the shadows--the Cumberland: +source and birthplace of the cooling west wind that was whispering +softly to the cedars on high Lebanon. Thomas Jefferson called the +loftiest of the purple distances Pisgah, picturing it as the mountain +from which Moses had looked over into the Promised Land. Sometime he +would go and climb it and feast his eyes on the sight of the Canaan +beyond; yea, he might even go down and possess the good land, if so the +Lord should not hold him back as He had held Moses. + +That was a high thought, quite in keeping with the sense of overlordship +bred of the upper stillnesses. To company with it, the home valley +straightway began to idealize itself from the uplifted point of view on +the mount of vision. The Paradise fields were delicately-outlined +squares of vivid green or golden yellow, or the warm red brown of the +upturned earth in the fallow places. The old negro quarters on the +Dabney grounds, many years gone to the ruin of disuse, were vine-grown +and invisible save as a spot of summer verdure; and the manor-house +itself, gray, grim and forbidding to a small boy scurrying past it in +the deepening twilight, was now no more than a great square roof with +the cheerful sunlight playing on it. + +Farther down the valley, near the place where the white pike twisted +itself between two of the rampart hills to escape into the great valley +of the Tennessee, the split-shingled roof under which Thomas Jefferson +had eaten and slept since the earliest beginning of memories became also +a part of the high-mountain harmony; and the ragged, red iron-ore beds +on the slope above the furnace were softened into a blur of joyous +color. + +The iron-furnace, with its alternating smoke puff and dull red flare, +struck the one jarring note in a symphony blown otherwise on great +nature's organ-pipes; but to Thomas Jefferson the furnace was as much a +part of the immutable scheme as the hills or the forests or the creek +which furnished the motive power for its air-blast. More, it stood for +him as the summary of the world's industry, as the white pike was the +world's great highway, and Major Dabney its chief citizen. + +He was knocking his bare heels together and thinking idly of Major +Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the +tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was +interrupted by a sudden splash. + +By shifting a little to the right he could see the spring. A girl of +about his own age, barefooted, and with only her tangled mat of dark +hair for a head covering, was filling her bucket in the pool. He broke a +dry twig from the nearest cedar and dropped it on her. + +"You better quit that, Tom-Jeff Gordon. I taken sight o' you up there," +said the girl, ignoring him otherwise. + +"That's my spring, Nan Bryerson," he warned her dictatorially. + +The girl looked up and scoffed. Hers was a face made for scoffing: oval +and finely lined, with a laughing mouth and dark eyes that had both the +fear and the fierceness of wild things in them. + +"Shucks! it ain't your spring any more'n it's mine!" she retorted. +"Hit's on Maje' Dabney's land." + +"Well, don't you muddy it none," said Thomas Jefferson, with threatening +emphasis. + +For answer to this she put one brown foot deep into the pool and +wriggled her toes in the sandy bottom. Things began to turn red for +Thomas Jefferson, and a high, buzzing note, like the tocsin of the bees, +sang in his ears. + +"Take your foot out o' that spring! Don't you mad me, Nan Bryerson!" he +cried. + +She laughed up at him and flung him a taunt. "You don't darst to get +mad, Tommy-Jeffy; _you've got religion_." + +It is a terrible thing to be angry in shackles. There are similes--pent +volcanoes, overcharged boilers and the like--but they are all +inadequate. Thomas Jefferson searched for missiles more deadly than dry +twigs, found none, and fell headlong--not from the rock, but from grace. +"_Damn!_" he screamed; and then, in an access of terrified remorse: "Oh, +hell, hell, hell!" + +The girl laughed mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in +deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave +her a cramp. + +"Now you've done it," she remarked. "The devil'll shore get ye for +sayin' that word, Tom-Jeff." + +There was no reply, and she stepped back to see what had become of him. +He was prone, writhing in agony. She knew the way to the top of the +rock, and was presently crouching beside him. + +"Don't take on like that!" she pleaded. "Times I cayn't he'p bein' mean: +looks like I was made thataway. Get up and slap me, if you want to. I +won't slap back." + +But Thomas Jefferson only ground his face deeper into the thick mat of +cedar needles and begged to be let alone. + +"Go away; I don't want you to talk to me!" he groaned. "You're always +making me sin!" + +"That's because you're Adam and I'm Eve, ain't it? Wasn't you tellin' me +in revival time that Eve made all the 'ruction 'twixt the man and God? I +reckon she was right sorry; don't you?" + +Thomas Jefferson sat up. + +"You're awfully wicked, Nan," he said definitively. + +"'Cause I don't believe all that about the woman and the snake and the +apple and the man?" + +"You'll go to hell when you die, and then I guess you'll believe," said +Thomas Jefferson, still more definitively. + +She took a red apple from the pocket of her ragged frock and gave it to +him. + +"What's that for?" he asked suspiciously. + +"You eat it; it's the kind you like--off 'm the tree right back of Jim +Stone's barn lot," she answered. + +"You stole it, Nan Bryerson!" + +"Well, what if I did? You didn't." + +He bit into it, and she held him in talk till it was eaten to the core. + +"Have you heard tell anything more about the new railroad?" she asked. + +Thomas Jefferson shook his head. "I heard Squire Bates and Major Dabney +naming it one day last week." + +"Well, it's shore comin'--right thoo' Paradise. I heard tell how it was +goin' to cut the old Maje's grass patch plumb in two, and run right +smack thoo' you-uns' peach orchard." + +"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson. "What do you reckon my father'd be doing +all that time? He'd show 'em!" + +A far-away cry, long-drawn and penetrating, rose on the still air of the +lower slope and was blown on the breeze to the summit of the great rock. + +"That's maw, hollerin' for me to get back home with that bucket o' +water," said the girl; and, as she was descending the tree ladder: "You +didn't s'picion why I give you that apple, did you, Tommy-Jeffy?" + +"'Cause you didn't want it yourself, I reckon," said the second Adam. + +"No; it was 'cause you said I was goin' to hell and I wanted comp'ny. +That apple was stole and you knowed it!" + +Thomas Jefferson flung the core far out over the tree-tops and shut his +eyes till he could see without seeing red. Then he rose to the serenest +height he had yet attained and said: "I forgive you, you wicked, wicked +girl!" + +Her laugh was a screaming taunt. + +"But you've et the apple!" she cried; "and if you wasn't scared of goin' +to hell, you'd cuss me again--you know you would! Lemme tell you, +Tom-Jeff, if the preacher had dipped me in the creek like he did you, +I'd be a mighty sight holier than what you are. I cert'nly would." + +And now anger came to its own again. + +"You don't know what you're talking about, Nan Bryerson! You're nothing +but a--a miserable little heathen; my mother said you was!" he cried out +after her. + +But a back-flung grimace was all the answer he had. + + + + +III + +OF THE FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN + + +Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, Caleb the elder, was an old man before +his son, Caleb the younger, went to the wars, and he figured in the +recollections of those who remembered him as a grim, white-haired +octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace which he +had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes. The eyes +lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the sympathetic +or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; never sleeping, they +said--though that could hardly be--until that last day of all when they +fixed themselves on the wall and followed nothing more in this world. + +Caleb, the son, was well past his first youth when the Civil War broke +out; yet youthful ardor was not wanting, nor patriotism, as he defined +it, to make him the first of the Paradise folk to write his name on the +muster-roll of the South. And it was his good fortune, rather than any +lack of battle hazards, that brought him through the four fighting years +to the Appomattox end of that last running fight on the Petersburg and +Lynchburg road in which, with his own hands, he had helped to destroy +the guns of his battery. + +Being alive and not dead on the memorable April Sunday when his +commander-in-chief signed the articles of capitulation in Wilmer +McLean's parlor in Appomattox town, this soldier Gordon was one among +the haggard thousands who shared the enemy's rations to bridge over the +hunger gap; and it was the sane, equable Gordon blood that enabled him +to eat his portion of the bread of defeat manfully and without +bitterness. + +Later it was the steadfast Gordon courage that helped him to mount the +crippled battery horse which had been his own contribution to the lost +cause; to mount and ride painfully to the distant Southern valley, +facing the weary journey, and the uncertain future in a land despoiled, +as only a brave man might. + +His homing was to the old furnace and the still older house at the foot +of Lebanon. The tale of the years succeeding may be briefed in a bare +sentence or two. It was said of him that he reached Paradise and the old +homestead late one evening, and that the next day he was making ready +for a run of iron in the antiquated blast-furnace. This may be only +neighborhood tradition, but it depicts the man: sturdy, tenacious, +dogged; a man to knot up the thread of life broken by untoward events, +following it thereafter much as if nothing had happened. + +Such men are your true conservatives. When his son was born, nine years +after the great struggle had passed into history, Caleb, the soldier, +was still using charcoal for fuel and blowing his cupola fire with the +wooden air-pump whose staves had been hooped together by the hands of +his father, and whose motive power was a huge overshot wheel swinging +rhythmically below the stone dam in the creek. + +The primitive air-blast being still in commission, it may itself say +that the South, in spite of the war upheaval and the far more seismic +convulsion of the reconstruction period, was still the Old South when +Caleb married Martha Crafts. + +It was as much a love match as middle-age marriages are wont to be, and +following it there was Paradise gossip to assert that Caleb's wife +brought gracious womanly reforms to the cheerless bachelor house at the +furnace. Be this as it may, she certainly brought one innovation--an +atmosphere of wholesome, if somewhat austere, piety hitherto unbreathed +by the master or any of his dusky vassals. + +Such moderate prosperity as the steadily pulsating iron-furnace could +bring was Martha Gordon's portion from the beginning. Yet there was a +fly in her pot of precious ointment; an obstacle to her complete +happiness which Caleb Gordon never understood, nor could be made to +understand. Like other zealous members of her communion, she took the +Bible in its entirety for her creed, striving, as frail humanity may, to +live up to it. But among the many admonitions which, for her, were no +less than divine commands, was one which she had wilfully disregarded: +_Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers._ + +Caleb respected her religion; stood a little in awe of it, if the truth +were known, and was careful to put no straw of hindrance in the thorny +upward way. But there are times when neutrality bites deeper than open +antagonism. In the slippery middle ground of tolerance there is no +foothold for one who would push or pull another into the kingdom of +Heaven. + +Under such conditions Thomas Jefferson was sure to be the child of many +prayers on the mother's part; and perhaps of some naturally prideful +hopes on Caleb's. When a man touches forty before his firstborn is put +into his arms, he is likely to take the event seriously. Martha Gordon +would have named her son after the great apostle of her faith, but Caleb +asserted himself here and would have a manlier name-father for the boy. +So Thomas Jefferson was named, not for an apostle, nor yet for the +statesman--save by way of an intermediary. For Caleb's "Thomas +Jefferson" was the stout old schoolmaster-warrior, Stonewall Jackson; +the soldier iron-master's general while he lived, and his deified hero +ever afterward. + +When the mother was able to sit up in bed she wrote a letter to her +brother Silas, the South Tredegar preacher. On the margin of the paper +she tried the name, writing it "Reverend Thomas Jefferson Gordon." It +was a rather appalling mouthful, not nearly so euphonious as the name of +the apostle would have been. But she comforted herself with the thought +that the boy would probably curtail it when he should come to a +realizing sense of ownership; and "Reverend" would fit any of the +curtailments. + +So now we see to what high calling Thomas Jefferson's mother purposed +devoting him while yet he was a helpless monad in pinning-blankets; to +what end she had striven with many prayers and groanings that could not +be uttered, from year to year of his childhood. + +Does it account in some measure for the self-conscious young Pharisee +kneeling on the top of the high rock under the cedars, and crying out on +the girl scoffer that she was no better than she should be? + + + + +IV + +THE NEWER EXODUS + + +One would always remember the first day of a new creation; the day when +God said, _Let there be light_. + +It has been said that nothing comes suddenly; that the unexpected is +merely the overlooked. For weeks Thomas Jefferson had been scenting the +unwonted in the air of sleepy Paradise. Once he had stumbled on the +engineers at work in the "dark woods" across the creek, spying out a +line for the new railroad. Another day he had come home late from a +fishing excursion to the upper pools to find his father shut in the +sitting-room with three strangers resplendent in town clothes, and the +talk--what he could hear of it from his post of observation on the porch +step--was of iron and coal, of a "New South," whatever that might be, +and of wonderful changes portending, which his father was exhorted to +help bring about. + +But these were only the gentle heavings and crackings of the ground +premonitory of the real earthquake. That came on a day of days when, as +a reward of merit for having faultlessly recited the eighty-third Psalm +from memory, he was permitted to go to town with his father. Behold him, +then, dangling his feet--uncomfortable because they were stockinged and +shod--from the high buggy seat while the laziest of horses ambled +between the shafts up the white pike and around and over the hunched +shoulder of Mount Lebanon. This in the cool of the morning of the day of +revelations. + +In spite of the premonitory tremblings, the true earthquake found Thomas +Jefferson totally unprepared. He had been to town often enough to have a +clear memory picture of South Tredegar--the prehistoric South Tredegar. +There was a single street, hub-deep in mud in the rains, beginning +vaguely at the steamboat landing, and ending rather more definitely in +the open square surrounding the venerable court-house of pale brick and +stucco-pillared porticoes. There were the shops--only Thomas Jefferson +and all his kind called them "stores"--one-storied, these, the wooden +ones with lying false fronts to hide the mean little gables; the brick +ones honester in face, but sadly chipped and crumbling and dingy with +age and the weather. + +Also, there were houses, some of them built of the pale red brick, with +pillared porticoes running to the second story; hip-roofed, with a +square balustered observatory on top; rather grand looking and +impressive till you came near enough to see that the bricks were +shaling, and the portico floors rotting, and the plaster falling from +the pillars to show the grinning lath-and-frame skeletons behind. + +Also, on the banks of the river, there was the antiquated iron-furnace +which, long before the war, had given the town its pretentious name. And +lastly, there was the Calhoun House, dreariest and most inhospitable inn +of its kind; and across the muddy street from it the great echoing +train-shed, ridiculously out of proportion to every other building in +the town, the tavern not excepted, and to the ramshackle, once-a-day +train that wheezed and rattled and clanked into and out of it. + +Thomas Jefferson had seen it all, time and again; and this he +remembered, that each time the dead, weather-worn, miry or dusty +dullness of it had crept into his soul, sending him back to the +freshness of the Paradise fields and forests at eventide with grateful +gladness in his heart. + +But now all this was to be forgotten, or to be remembered only as a +dream. On the day of revelations the earlier picture was effaced, +blacked out, obliterated; and it came to the boy with a pang that he +should never be able to recall it again in its entirety. For the genius +of modern progress is contemptuous of old landmarks and impatient of +delays. And swift as its race is elsewhere, it is only in that part of +the South which has become "industrial" that it came as a thunderclap, +with all the intermediate and accelerative steps taken at a bound. Men +spoke of it as "the boom." It was not that. It was merely that the +spirit of modernity had discovered a hitherto overlooked corner of the +field, and made haste to occupy it. + +So in South Tredegar, besprent now before the wondering eyes of a Thomas +Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black +roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the +pike after a sweeping summer storm. The shops, with their false fronts +and shabby lean-to awnings, were gone, or going, and in their room +majestic vastnesses in brick and cut stone were rising, by their own +might, as it would seem, out of disorderly mountains of building +material. + +Street-cars, propelled as yet by the patient mule, tinkled their bells +incessantly. Smart vehicles of many kinds strange to Paradise eyes +rattled recklessly in and out among the street obstructions. Bustling +throngs were in possession of the sidewalks; of the awe-inspiring +restaurant, where they gave you lemonade in a glass bowl and some people +washed their fingers in it; of the rotunda of the Marlboro, the mammoth +hotel which had grown up on the site of the old Calhoun +House,--distressing crowds and multitudes of people everywhere. + +Thomas Jefferson, awe-struck and gaping, found himself foot-loose for a +time in the Marlboro rotunda while his father talked with a man who +wanted to bargain for the entire output of the Paradise furnace by the +year. The commercial transaction touched him lightly; but the moving +groups, the imported bell-boys, the tesselated floors, frescoed ceiling +and plush-covered furniture--these bit deeply. Could this be South +Tredegar, the place that had hitherto figured chiefly to him as +"court-day" town and the residence of his preacher uncle? It seemed +hugely incredible. + +After the conference with the iron buyer they crossed the street to the +railway station; and again Thomas Jefferson was foot-loose while his +father was closeted with some one in the manager's office. + +An express train, with hissing air-brakes, Solomon-magnificent sleeping +cars, and a locomotive large enough to swallow whole the small affair +that used to bring the once-a-day train from Atlanta, had just backed +in, and the boy took its royal measure with eager and curious eyes, +walking slowly up one side of it and down the other. + +At the rear of the string of Pullmans was a private car, with a deep +observation platform, much polished brass railing, and sundry other +luxurious appointments, apparent even to the eye of unsophistication. +Thomas Jefferson spelled the name in the medallion, "Psyche,"--spelled +it without trying to pronounce it--and then turned his attention to the +people who were descending the rubber-carpeted steps and grouping +themselves under the direction of a tall man who reminded Thomas +Jefferson of his Uncle Silas with an indescribable something left out of +the face. + +"As I was about to say, General, this station building is one of the +relics. You mustn't judge South Tredegar--our new South Tredegar--by +this. Eh?--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Vanadam? Oh, the hotel? It is just +across the street, and a very good house; remarkably good, indeed, all +things considered. In fact, we're quite proud of the Marlboro." + +One of the younger women smiled. + +"How enthusiastic you are, Mr. Parley. I thought we had outgrown all +that--we moderns." + +"But, my dear Miss Elleroy, if you could know what we have to be +enthusiastic about down here! Why, these mountains we've been passing +through for the last six hours are simply so many vast treasure-houses; +coal at the top, iron at the bottom, and enough of both to keep the +world's industries going for ages! There's millions in them!" + +Thomas Jefferson overheard without understanding, but his eyes served a +better purpose. Away back in the line of the Scottish Gordons there +must have been an ancestor with the seer's gift of insight, and some +drop or two of his blood had come down to this sober-faced country boy +searching the faces of the excursionists for his cue of fellowship or +antipathy. + +For the sweet-voiced young woman called Miss Elleroy there was love at +first sight. For a severe, be-silked Mrs. Vanadam there was awe. For the +portly General with mutton-chop whiskers, overlooking eyes and the air +of a dictator, there was awe, also, not unmingled with envy. For the +tall man in the frock-coat, whose face reminded him of his Uncle Silas, +there had been shrinking antagonism at the first glance--which keen +first impression was presently dulled and all but effaced by the +enthusiasm, the suave tongue, and the benignant manner. Which proves +that insight, like the film of a recording camera, should have the dark +shutter snapped on it if the picture is to be preserved. + +Thomas Jefferson made way when the party, marshaled by the enthusiast, +prepared for its descent on the Marlboro. Afterward, the royalties +having departed and a good-natured porter giving him leave, he was at +liberty to examine the wheeled palace at near-hand, and even to climb +into the vestibule for a peep inside. + +Therewith, castles in the air began to rear themselves, tower on wall. +Here was the very sky-reaching summit of all things desirable: to have +one's own brass-bound hotel on wheels; to come and go at will; to give +curt orders to a respectful and uniformed porter, as the awe-inspiring +gentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers had done. + +Time was when Thomas Jefferson's ideals ran quite otherwise: to a lodge +in some vast wilderness, like the rock-strewn slopes of high Lebanon; to +the company of the birds and trees, of the wide heavens and the shy wild +creatures of the forest. But it is only the fool or the weakling who may +not reconsider. + +Notwithstanding, when the day of revelations was come to an end, and the +ambling horse was inching the ancient buggy up the homeward road, the +boy found himself turning his back on the wonderful new world with +something of the same blessed sense of relief as that which he had +experienced in former home-goings from South Tredegar, the commonplace. + +At the highest point on the hunched shoulder of the mountain Thomas +Jefferson twisted himself in the buggy seat for a final backward look +into the valley of new marvels. The summer day was graying to its +twilight, and a light haze was stealing out of the wooded ravines and +across from the river. From the tall chimneys of a rolling-mill a dense +column of smoke was ascending, and at the psychological moment the slag +flare from an iron-furnace changed the overhanging cloud into a fiery +ægis. + +Having no symbolism save that of Holy Writ, Thomas Jefferson's mind +seized instantly on the figure, building far better than it knew. It was +a new Exodus, with its pillar of cloud by day and its pillar of fire by +night. And its Moses--though this, we may suppose, was beyond a boy's +imaging--was the frenzied, ruthless spirit of commercialism, named +otherwise, by the multitude, Modern Progress. + + + + +V + +THE DABNEYS OF DEER TRACE + + +If you have never had the pleasure of meeting a Southern gentleman of +the patriarchal school, I despair of bringing you well acquainted with +Major Caspar Dabney until you have summered and wintered him. But the +Dabneys of Deer Trace--this was the old name of the estate, and it +obtains to this day among the Paradise Valley folk--figure so largely in +Thomas Jefferson's boyhood and youth as to be well-nigh elemental in +these retrospective glimpses. + +To know the Major even a little, you should not refer him to any of the +accepted types, like Colonel Carter, of Cartersville, or that other +colonel who has made Kentucky famous; this though I am compelled to +write it down that Major Caspar wore the soft felt hat and the +full-skirted Prince Albert coat, without which no reputable Southern +gentleman ever appears in the pages of fiction. But if you will ignore +these concessions to the conventional, and picture a man of heroic +proportions, straight as an arrow in spite of his sixty-eight years, +full-faced, well-preserved, with a massive jaw, keen eyes that have lost +none of their lightnings, and huge white mustaches curling upward +militantly at the ends you will have the Major's outward presentment. + +Notwithstanding, this gives no adequate hint of the contradictory inner +man. By turns the most lovingly kind and the most violent, the most +generously magnanimous and the most vindictive of the unreconstructed +minority, Caspar Dabney was rarely to be taken for granted, even by +those who knew him best. Of course, Ardea adored him; but Ardea was his +grandchild, and she was wont to protest that she never could see the +contradictions, for the reason that she was herself a Dabney. + +It was about the time when Thomas Jefferson was beginning to reconsider +his ideals, with a leaning toward brass-bound palaces on wheels and +dictatorial authority over uniformed lackeys and other of his fellow +creatures, that fate dealt the Major its final stab and prepared to pour +wine and oil into the wound--though of the balm-pouring, none could +guess at the moment of wounding. It was not in Caspar Dabney to be +patient under a blow, and for a time his ragings threatened to shake +even Mammy Juliet's loyalty--than which nothing more convincing can be +said. + +"'Fo' Gawd, Mistuh Scipio," she would say, when the master had sworn +volcanically at her for the fifth time in the course of one forenoon, +"I'se jus' erbout wo'ed out! I done been knowin' Mawstuh Caspah ebber +sence I was Ol' Mistis's tiah-'ooman--dat's what she call me in de +plantashum days--an' I ain't nev' seen him so fractious ez he been sence +dat letter come tellin' him come get dat po' li'l gal-child o' Mawstuh +Louis's. Seems lak he jus' gwine r'ar round twel he hu't somebody!" + +Scipio, the Major's body-servant, had grown gray in the Dabney service, +and he was well used to the master's storm periods. + +"Doan' you trouble yo'se'f none erbout dat, Mis' Juliet. Mawstuh Majah +tekkin' hit mighty hawd 'cause Mawstuh Louis done daid. But bimeby you +gwine see him climm on his hawss an' ride up yondeh to whah de big +steamboats comes in an' fotch dat li'l gal-child home; an' den: +uck--uh-h! look out, niggahs! dar ain't gwine be nuttin' on de top side +dishyer yearth good ernough for li'l Missy. You watch what I done tol' +you erbout dat, now!" + +Scipio's prophecy, or as much of it as related to the bringing of the +orphaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor, wrought itself out speedily, as a +matter of course, though there was a vow to be broken by the necessary +journey to the North. At the close of the war, Captain Louis, the +Major's only son, had become, like many another hot-hearted young +Confederate, a self-expatriated exile. On the eve of his departure for +France he had married the Virginia maiden who had nursed him alive after +Chancellorsville. Major Caspar had given the bride away,--the war had +spared no kinsman of hers to stand in this breach,--and when the +God-speeds were said, had himself turned back to the weed-grown fields +of Deer Trace Manor, embittered and hostile, swearing never to set foot +outside of his home acres again while the Union should stand. + +For more than twenty years he kept this vow almost literally. A few of +the older negroes, a mere handful of the six score slaves of the old +patriarchal days, cast in their lot with their former master, and with +these the Major made shift thriftily, farming a little, stockraising a +little, and, unlike most of the war-broken plantation owners, clinging +tenaciously to every rood of land covered by the original Dabney +title-deeds. + +In this cenobitic interval, if you wanted a Dabney colt or a Dabney cow, +you went, or sent, to Deer Trace Manor on your own initiative, and you, +or your deputy, never met the Major: your business was transacted with +lean, lantern-jawed Japheth Pettigrass, the Major's stock-and-farm +foreman. And although the Dabney stock was pedigreed, you kept your wits +about you; else Pettigrass got much the better of you in the trade, like +the shrewd, calculating Alabama Yankee that he was. + +Ardea was born in Paris in the twelfth year of the exile; and the +Virginian mother, pining always for the home land, died in the fifteenth +year. Afterward, Captain Louis fought a long-drawn, losing battle, +figuring bravely in his infrequent letters to his father as a rising +miniature painter; figuring otherwise to the students of the Latin +Quarter as "_ce pauvre Monsieur D'Aubigné_;" leading his little girl +back and forth between his lodgings and the studio where he painted +pictures that nobody would buy, and eking out a miserable existence by +giving lessons in English when he was happy enough to find a pupil. + +The brave letters imposed on the Major, as they were meant to do; and +Ardea, the loyal, happening on one of them in her first Deer Trace +summer, read it through with childish sobs and never thereafter opened +her lips on the story of those distressful Paris days. Later she +understood her father's motive better: how he would not be a charge on +an old man rich in nothing but ruin; and the memory of the pinched +childhood became a thing sacred. + +How the Major, a second Rip Van Winkle, found his way to New York, and +to the pier of the incoming French Line steamer, must always remain a +mystery. But he was there, with the fierce old eyes quenched and +swimming and the passionate Dabney lips trembling strangely under the +great mustaches, when the black-frocked little waif from the Old World +ran down the landing stage and into his arms. Small wonder that they +clung to each other, these two at the further extremes of three +generations; or that the child opened a door in the heart of the fierce +old partizan which was locked and doubly barred against all others. + +As may be imagined, the Major got away from Yankeeland with his charge +as soon as a train could be made to serve; and he was grim and +forbidding to all and sundry until the Cumberland Mountains had +displaced the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge on the western horizon. +Indeed, the grimness,--to all save Ardea,--persisted quite to and +through the transformed and transforming city at the eastern foot of +Lebanon. Major Caspar was not in tune with the bravura of modern +progress, and if he had been, his hatred of Northern importations of +whatever nature would have made and kept him hostile. + +But when the ancient carriage, with Scipio and Ardea's one small steamer +trunk on the box, had topped the shrugged shoulder of Lebanon, and that +view which we have seen from the summit of Thomas Jefferson's high rock +among the cedars opened out before the eyes of the wondering child, the +Major grew eloquent. + +"Look youh fill, my deah child; thah it lies--God's country, and youh's +and mine; the fines', the most inspiring, the most beautiful land the +sun eveh shone on! And whilst you are givin' praise to youh Makeh for +creatin' such a Gyarden of Eden, don't forget to thank him on youh +bended knees for not putting anything oveh yondeh in ouh home lot to +tempt these house-buildin', money-makin', schemin' Yankees that are +swarming again oveh the land like anotheh plague of Egyptian locus'es." + +"These--Yankees?" queried Ardea. In his later years the exiled Captain +Louis had remembered only that he was an American, and his child knew no +North nor South. + +The Major did not explain. Not that there were any compunctions of +conscience concerning the planting of the seed of sectionalism in this +virgin soil, quite the contrary. He abstained because he made sure that +time, and the Dabney blood, would do it better. + +So he talked to the small one of safely prehistoric things, showing her +the high mountain battle-field where John Sevier had broken the power of +the savage Chickamaugas, and, as the carriage rolled down toward the +head of Paradise, the tract of land where the first Dabney had sent his +ax-men to blaze the trees for his lordly boundaries. + +It was all new and very strange to a child whose only outlook on life +had been urban and banal. She had never seen a mountain, and nothing +more nearly approaching a forest than the parked groves of the Bois de +Boulogne. Would it be permitted that she should sometimes walk in the +woods of the first Dabney, she asked, with the quaint French twisting +of the phrases that she was never able fully to overcome. + +It would certainly be permitted; more, the Major would make her a deed +to as many of the forest acres as she would care to include in her +promenade. By which we see that the second part of Unc' Scipio's +prophecy was finding its fulfilment in the beginning. + +How the French-born child fitted into the haphazard household at Deer +Trace Manor, with what struggles she came through the inevitable attack +of homesickness, and how Mammy Juliet and every one else petted and +indulged her, are matters which need not be dwelt on. But we shall +gladly believe that she was too sensible, even at the early and tender +age of ten, to be easily spoiled. + +Many foolish things have been said and written about the wax-like +quality of a child's mind; how each new impression effaces the old, and +how character in permanence is not to be looked for until the bones have +stopped growing. Yet who has not known criminals at twelve, and saints +and angels, and wise men and women--in fine, the entire gamut of +humanity--in short frocks or knee-breeches? + +Ardea, child of adversity and the Paris ateliers, brought one lasting +memory up out of those early Deer Trace Manor years: she was always +immeasurably older than such infants as Mammy Juliet and Uncle Scipio. +And this also she remembered: that when these and all the others, +including her grandfather and Japheth Pettigrass, were busily leveling +all the barriers of restraint for her, she had built some of her own and +set herself the task of living within them. + +I am sure she began to realize, almost at the first, that she must rise +superior to the Dabney weakness, which, as exemplified by the Major, was +ungoverned, and perhaps ungovernable, temper. At all events, she never +forgot a summer day soon after her arrival when she first saw her +grandfather transformed into a frenzied madman. + +He was sitting on the wide portico, smoking his long-stemmed pipe and +directing Japheth Pettigrass, who was training the great crimson-rambler +rose that ran well up to the eaves. Ardea, herself, was on the lawn, +playing with her grandfather's latest gift, a huge, solemn-eyed Great +Dane, so she did not see the man who had dismounted at the gate and +walked up the driveway until he was handing his card to her grandfather. + +When she did see him, she looked twice at him; not because he was trigly +clad in brown duck and tightly-buttoned service leggings, but because he +wore his beard trimmed to a point, after the manner of the students in +the Latin Quarter, and so was reminiscent of things freshly forsaken. + +She had succeeded in making the Great Dane carry her on his back quite +all the way around the circular coleus bed when the explosion took +place. There was a startling thunderclap of fierce words from the +portico, and she slipped from the dog's back and stared wide-eyed. Her +grandfather was on his feet, towering above the visitor as if he were +about to fall on and crush him. + +"Bring youh damned Yankee railroad through my fields and pastchuhs, suh? +Foul the pure, God-given ai-ah of this peaceful Gyarden of Eden with +youh dust-flingin', smoke-pot locomotives? Not a rod, suh! not a foot +or an inch oveh the Dabney lands! Do I make it plain to you, suh?" + +"But Major Dabney--one moment; this is purely a matter of business; +there is nothing personal about it. Our company is able and willing to +pay liberally for its right of way; and you must remember that the +coming of the railroad will treble and quadruple your land values. I am +only asking you to consider the matter in a business way, and to name +your own price." + +Thus the smooth-spoken young locating engineer in brown duck, serving as +plowman for his company. But there be tough old roots in some soils, +roots stout enough to snap the colter of the commercializing plow,--as, +for example, in Paradise Valley, owned, in broken areas, principally by +an unreconciled Major Dabney. + +"Not anotheh word, or by Heaven, suh, you'll make me lose my tempah! You +add insult to injury, suh, when you offeh me youh contemptible Yankee +gold. When I desiah to sell my birthright for youh beggahly mess of +pottage, I'll send a black boy in town to infawm you, suh!" + +It is conceivable that the locating engineer of the Great Southwestern +Railway Company was younger than he looked; or, at all events, that his +experience hitherto had not brought him in contact with fire-eating +gentlemen of the old school. Else he would hardly have said what he did. + +"Of course, it is optional with you, Major Dabney, whether you sell us +our right of way peaceably or compel us to acquire it by condemnation +proceedings in the courts. As for the rest--is it possible that you +don't know the war is over?" + +With a roar like that of a maddened lion the Major bowed himself, +caught his man in a mighty wrestler's grip and flung him broadcast into +the coleus bed. The words that went with the fierce attack made Ardea +crouch and shiver and take refuge behind the great dog. Japheth +Pettigrass jumped down from his step-ladder and went to help the +engineer out of the flower bed. The Major had sworn himself to a stand, +but the fine old face was a terrifying mask of passion. + +"The old firebrand!" the engineer was muttering under his breath when +Pettigrass reached him; but the foreman cut him short. + +"You got mighty little sense, looks like, to me. Stove up any?" + +"Nothing to hurt, I guess." + +"Well, your hawss is waitin' for ye down yonder at the gate, and I don't +b'lieve the Major is allowin' to ask ye to stay to supper." + +The railroad man scowled and recovered his dignity, or some portion of +it. + +"You're a hospitable lot," he said, moving off toward the driveway. "You +can tell the old maniac he'll hear from us later." + +Pettigrass stooped with his back to the portico and patted the dog. + +"Don't you look so shuck up, little one," he whispered reassuringly to +Ardea. "There ain't nothin' goin' to happen, worse than has happened, I +reckon." But Ardea was mute. + +When the engineer had mounted and ridden away down the pike, the foreman +straightened himself and faced about. The Major had dropped into his big +arm-chair and was trying to relight his pipe. But his hands shook and +the match went out. + +Pettigrass moved nearer and spoke so that the child should not hear. "If +you run me off the place the nex' minute, I'm goin' to tell you you ort +to be tolerably 'shamed of yourse'f, Maje' Dabney. That po' little gal +is scared out of a year's growin', right now." + +"I know, Japheth; I know. I'm a damned old heathen! For, insultin' as he +was, the man was for the time bein' my guest, suh--my guest!" + +"I'm talkin' about the little one--not that railroader. So far as I +know, he earned what he got. I allowed they'd make some sort of a swap +with you, so I didn't say anything when they was layin' out their lines +thoo' the hawss-lot and across the lower corn-field this mornin'--easy, +now; no more r'arin' and t'arin' with that thar little gal not a-knowin' +which side o' the earth's goin' to cave in next!" + +The Major dropped his pipe, laid fast hold of the arms of his chair, and +breathed hard. + +"Laid out _theyuh_ lines--across _my_ prope'ty? Japheth, faveh me by +riding down to the furnace and askin' Caleb Gordon if he will do me the +honor to come up heah--this evenin', if he can. I--I--it's twenty yeahs +and mo' since I've troubled the law cou'ts of ouh po', Yankee-ridden +country with any affai-ah of mine; and now--well, I don't know--I don't +know," with a despondent shake of the leonine head. + +After Pettigrass had gone on his errand the Major rose and went +unsteadily into the house. Then, and not till then, Ardea got up on her +knees and put her arms around the neck of the Great Dane. + +"O, Hector!" she whispered; "me, I am Dabney, too! Once the gamins +killed a poor little cat of mine; and I forgot God--the good God--and +said wicked things; and I could have torn them into little, little +pieces! But we--we shall be very good and patient after this, won't we, +Hector--you and me--no, you and _I_? What is it when you lick my face +that way? Does it mean that you understand?" + + + + +VI + +BLUE BLOOD AND RED + + +In a world full of puzzling questions for Thomas Jefferson, one of the +chief clustering points of the persistent "whys" was Major Dabney's +attitude, as a Man of Sin, and as the natural overlord of Paradise +Valley. + +That the Major was a Man of Sin there could be no manner of doubt. +During the revival he had been frequently and pointedly prayed for by +that name, and the groans from the Amen corner were conclusively +damning. Just what the distinction was between a Man of Sin and a +sinner--spelled with a small "s"--was something which Thomas Jefferson +could never quite determine; but the desire to find out made him spy on +Major Dabney at odd moments when the spying could be done safely and +with a clear field for retreat in the event of the Major's catching him +at it. + +Thus far the spying had been barren of results--of that kind which do +not have to be undone and made over to fit in with other things. Once, +Thomas Jefferson had been picking blackberries behind the wall of his +father's infield when the Major and Squire Bates had met on the pike. +There was some talk of the new railroad; and when the Squire allowed +that it was certain to come through Paradise, the Major had taken the +name of God in vain in a way that suggested the fiery blast roaring +from the furnace lip after the iron was out. + +This was one of the results. But on reflection, Thomas Jefferson decided +that this could not be The Sin. Profane swearing--that was what the +Sunday-school lesson-leaf called it--was doubtless a mortal sin in a +believer; was not he, Thomas Jefferson, finding the heavens as brass and +the earth a place of fear and trembling because of that word to Nan +Bryerson? But in other people--well, he had heard his father swear once, +when one of the negroes at the furnace had opened the sand at the end of +the sow and let the stream of molten iron run out into the creek. + +The charge of profanity being tried and found wanting in the Major's +case, there remained that of violence. One day, Tike Bryerson--Nan's +father and the man who had tried to kill his Uncle Silas in the revival +meeting--was beating his horses because they would not take the water at +the lower ford. Tike had been stilling more pine-top whisky, and had +been to town with some jugs hidden under the cornstalks in his +wagon-bed. When he did that, he always came back with his eyes red like +a squirrel's, and everybody gave him all the road. + +But this time the Major had happened along, and when Tike would not stop +beating the horses for a shouted cursing-out from the bank, the Major +had spurred his Hambletonian into the creek and knocked Tike winding. +More than that, he had made him lead his team out of the ford and go +back to the bridge crossing. + +Being himself committed to the theory of turning the other cheek, Thomas +Jefferson could not question the acute sinfulness of all this; yet it +did not sufficiently account for the Major as a Man of Sin. Had not +Peter, stirred, no doubt, by some such generous rage as the Major's, +snatched out his sword and smitten off a man's ear? + +In the other field, that of overlordship, the subtleties were still more +elusive. That the negroes, many of whom were the sons and daughters of +the Major's former slaves, should pass the old-time "Mawstuh" on the +pike with uncovered heads and respectful heel-scrapings, was a matter of +course. Thomas Jefferson was white, free, and Southern born. But why his +own father and mother should betray something of the same deference was +not so readily apparent. + +On rare occasions the Major, riding to or from the cross-roads +post-office in Hargis's store, would rein in his horse at the Gordon +gate and ask for a drink of water from the Gordon well. At such times +Thomas Jefferson remarked that his mother always hastened to serve the +Major with her own hands; this notwithstanding her own and Uncle Silas's +oft-repeated asseveration touching the Major's unenviable preëminence as +a Man of Sin. Also, he remarked that the Major's manner at such moments +was a thing to dazzle the eye, like the reflection of the summer sun on +the surface of burnished metal. But beneath the polished exterior, the +groping perceptions of the boy would touch a thing repellent; a thing to +stir a slow current of resentment in his blood. + +It was Thomas Jefferson's first collision with the law of caste; a law +Draconian in the Old South. Before the war, when Deer Trace Manor had +been a seigniory with its six score black thralls, there had been no +visiting between the great house on the inner knoll and the overgrown +log homestead at the iron furnace. Quarrel there was none, nor any +shadow of enmity; but the Dabneys were lords of the soil, and the +Gordons were craftsmen. + +Even in war the distinction was maintained. The Dabneys, father and son, +were officers, having their commissions at the enrolment; while Caleb +Gordon, whose name headed the list of the Paradise volunteers, began and +ended a private in the ranks. + +In the years of heart-hardenings which followed, a breach was opened, +narrow at first, and never very deep, but wide enough to serve. Caleb +Gordon had accepted defeat openly and honestly, and for this the +unreconstructed Major had never fully forgiven him. It was an added +proof that there was no redeeming drop of the _sang azure_ in the Gordon +veins--and Major Caspar was as scrupulously polite to Caleb Gordon's +wife as he would have been, and was, to the helpmate of Tike Bryerson, +mountaineer and distiller of illicit whisky. + +Thomas Jefferson was vaguely indignant when Pettigrass came to ask his +father to go forthwith to the manor-house. In the mouth of the foreman +the invitation took on something of the flavor of a command. Besides, +since the Major's return from New York, Thomas Jefferson had a grudge +against him of a purely private and personal nature. + +None the less, he was eager for news when his father came back, and +though he got it only from overhearing the answer to his mother's +question, it was satisfyingly thrilling. + +"It's mighty near as we talked, Martha. The Major lumps the railroad in +with all the other improvements, calls 'em Yankee, and h'ists his +battle-flag. The engineer, that smart young fellow with the peaked +whiskers and the eye-glasses, went to see him this evenin' about the +right of way down the valley, and got himself slung off the porch of the +great house into a posy bed." + +"There is going to be trouble, Caleb; now you mark my words. You mustn't +mix up in it." + +"I don't allow to, if I can he'p it. The railroad's goin' to be a mighty +good thing for us if I can get Mr. Downing to put in a side-track for +the furnace." + +Following this there were other conferences, the Major unbending +sufficiently to come and sit on the Gordon porch in the cool of the +evening. The iron-master, as one still in touch with the moving world, +gave good advice. Failing to buy, the railroad company might possibly +seek to bully a right of way through the valley. But in that case, there +would certainly be redress in the courts for the property owners. In the +meantime, nothing would be gained by making the contest a personal fight +on individuals. + +So counseled Caleb Gordon, sure, always, of his own standing-ground in +any conflict. But from the last of the conferences the Major had ridden +home through the fields; and Thomas Jefferson, with an alert eye for +windstraws of conduct, had seen him dismount now and then to pull up and +fling away the locating stakes driven by the railroad engineers. + +In such a contention, in an age wholly given over to progress, there +could be, one would say, no possible doubt of the outcome. + +Giving the Major a second and a third chance to refuse to grant an +easement, the railroad company pushed its grading and track-laying +around the mountain and up to the stone wall marking the Dabney +boundary, quietly accumulated the necessary material, and on a summer +Sunday morning--Sunday by preference because no restraining writ could +be served for at least twenty-four hours--a construction train, black +with laborers, whisked around the nose of the mountain and dropped +gently down the grade to the temporary end of track. + +It was Thomas Jefferson who gave the alarm. Little Zoar, unable to +support a settled pastor, was closed for the summer, but Martha Gordon +kept the fire spiritual alight by teaching her son at home. One of the +boy's Sunday privileges, earned by a faultless recitation of a +prescribed number of Bible verses, was forest freedom for the remainder +of the forenoon. It was while he was in the midst of the Beatitudes that +he heard the low rumble of the coming train, and it was only by +resolutely ignoring the sense of hearing that he was enabled to get +through, letter-perfect. + +"'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you,'" he +chanted monotonously, with roving eyes bent on finding his cap with the +loss of the fewest possible seconds--"'and shall say all manner of evil +against you falsely, for my sake,'--and that's all." And he was off like +a shot. + +"Mind, now, Thomas Jefferson; you are not to go near that railroad!" his +mother called to him as he raced down the path to the gate. + +Oh, no; he would not go near the railroad! He would only run up the pike +and cut across through the Dabney pasture to see if the train were +really there. + +It was there, as he could tell by the noise of hissing steam when the +cross-cut was reached. But the parked wooding of the pasture still +screened it. How near could he go without being "near" in the +transgressing sense of the word? There was only one way of finding +out--to keep on going until his conscience pricked sharply enough to +stop him. It was a great convenience, Thomas Jefferson's conscience. As +long as it kept quiet he could be reasonably sure there was no sin in +sight. Yet he had to confess that it was not always above playing mean +tricks; as that of sleeping like a log till after the fact, and then +rising up to stab him till the blood ran. + +He was half-way across the pasture when the crash of a falling tree +stopped him in mid-rush. And in the vista opened by the felled tree he +saw a sight to make him turn and race homeward faster than he had come. +The invaders, hundreds strong, had torn down the boundary wall and the +earth for the advancing embankment was flying from uncounted shovels. + +Caleb Gordon was at work in the blacksmith shop, Sunday-repairing while +the furnace was cool, when Thomas Jefferson came flying with his news. +The iron-master dropped his hammer and cast aside the leather apron. + +"You hear that, Buck?" he said, frowning across the anvil at his helper, +a white man and the foreman of the pouring floor. + +The helper nodded, being a man of as few words as the master. + +"Well, I reckon we-all hain't got any call to stand by and see them +highflyers ride it roughshod over Major Dabney thataway," said Gordon +briefly. "Go down to the shanties and hustle out the day shift. Get +Turk and Hardaway and every white man you can lay hands on, and all the +guns you can find. And send one o' the black boys up the hill to tell +the Major. Like as not, he ain't up yet." + +Helgerson hastened away to obey his orders, and Caleb Gordon went out to +the foundry scrap yard. In the heap of broken metal lay an old cast-iron +field-piece, a relic of the battle which had one day raged hotly on the +hillside across the creek. A hundred times the iron-master had been on +the point of breaking it up for re-melting, and as often the old +artilleryman in him had stayed his hand. + +Now it was quickly hoisted in the crane shackle,--Thomas Jefferson +sweating manfully at the crab crank,--clamped on the axle of a pair of +wagon wheels, cleaned, swabbed, loaded with quarry blasting powder and +pieces of broken iron to serve for grape, and trundled out on the pike +at the heels of the ore team. + +By this time Helgerson had come up with the furnace men, a motley crew +in all stages of Sunday-morning dishevelment, and armed only as a mob +may arm itself at a moment's notice. Caleb, the veteran, looked the +squad over with a slow smile gathering the wrinkles at the corners of +his eyes. + +"You boys'll have to make up in f'erceness what-all you're lacking in +soldier-looks," he observed mildly. Then he gave the word of command to +Helgerson. "Take the gun and put out for the major's hawss-lot. I'll be +along as soon as I can saddle the mare." + +Thomas Jefferson went with his father to the stable and helped silently +with the saddling. Afterward he held the mare, gentling her in +suppressed excitement while his father went into the house for his +rifle. + +Martha Gordon met her husband at the door. She had seen the volunteer +gun crew filing past on the pike. + +"What is it, Caleb?" she asked anxiously. + +He made no attempt to deceive her. + +"The railroaders are allowin' to take what the Major wouldn't sell +'em--the right of way through his land down the valley. Buddy brought +the word." + +"Well?" she said, love and fear hardening her heart. "The railroad would +be a good thing for us--for the furnace. You know you said it would." + +He shook his head slowly. + +"I reckon we mustn't look at it thataway, Martha. I'm going to stand by +my neighbor, like I'd expect him to stand by me. Let me get my gun; the +boys'll be there ahead o' me, and they won't know what to do." + +"Caleb! There will be bloodshed; and you remember what the Word says: +'whoso sheddeth man's blood....' And on the Lord's Day, too!" + +"I know. But ain't it somewhere in the same Good Book that it says +there's a time for peace and a time to make war? And then that there +passage about lovin' your neighbor. Don't hender me, little woman. There +ain't goin' to be no blood shed--onless them bushwhackers are a mighty +sight f'ercer for it than what I think they are." + +She let him go without further protest, not because he had convinced +her, but because she had long since come to know this man, who, making +her lightest wish his law in most things, could be as inflexible as the +chilled iron of the pouring floor at the call of loyalty to his own +standard of right and wrong. But when he passed down the path to the +gate she knelt on the door-stone and covered her face with her hands. + +Gordon gathered the slack of the reins on the neck of the mare and put a +leg over the saddle. + +"That'll do, Buddy," he said. "Run along in to your mammy, now." + +But Thomas Jefferson caught again at the bridle and held on, choking. + +"O pappy!--take me with you! I--I'll die if you don't take me with you!" + +Who can tell what Caleb Gordon saw in his son's eyes when he bent to +loosen the grip of the small brown hand on the rein? Was it some +sympathetic reincarnation of his own militant soul striving to break its +bonds? Without a word he bent lower and swung the boy up to a seat +behind him. "Hold on tight, Buddy," he cautioned. "I'll have to run the +mare some to catch up with the boys." + +And the mother? She was still kneeling on the door-stone, but the burden +of her prayer was not now for Caleb Gordon. "O Lord, have mercy on my +boy! Thou knowest how, because of my disobedience, he has the fierce +fighting blood and the stubborn unbelief of all the Gordons to contend +with: save him alive and make him a man of peace and a man of faith, I +beseech Thee, and let not the unbelief of the father or the +unfaithfulness of the mother be visited on the son!" + +When the one-piece battery dashed at a clumsy gallop through the open +gate of the Dabney pasture and swung with a sharp turn into the vista of +felled trees, Thomas Jefferson beheld a thing to set his heritage of +soldier blood dancing through his veins. Standing fair in the midst of +the ax-and-shovel havoc and clearing a wide circle to right and left +with the sweep of his old service cavalry saber, was the Major, +coatless, hatless, cursing the invaders with mighty and corrosive +soldier oaths, and crying them to come on, the unnumbered host of them +against one man. + +Opposed to him the men of the construction force, generaled by the young +engineer in brown duck and buttoned leggings, were deploying cautiously +to surround him. Gordon spoke to his mare; and when he drew rein and +wheeled to shout to the gun crew, Thomas Jefferson heard the engineer's +low-toned order to the shovelers: "Be careful and don't hurt him, boys. +He's the old maniac who threw me off the veranda of his house. Two of +you take him behind, and--" + +The break came on the uprush of the unanticipated reinforcements. With +the battle readiness of a disciplined soldier, Caleb Gordon whipped from +the saddle and ran to help the gun crew slue the makeshift field-piece +into position. + +"Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "fall back on your front line and give +the artillery a chanst at 'em. I reckon a dose o' broken pot-iron'll +carry fu'ther than that saber o' yourn. Buddy, hunt me a punk match, +quick, will ye?" + +[Illustration: "Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "give the artillery a +chanst"] + +Thomas Jefferson ran to the nearest rotting log, but one of the negroes +was before him with a blazing pitch-pine splint. There was a respectful +recoil in the opposing ranks which presently became a somewhat panicky +surge to the rear. The shovelers, more than half of whom were negroes, +had not come out to be blown from a cannon's mouth by a grim-faced +veteran who was so palpably at home with the tools of his trade. + +"That's right: keep right on goin'!" yelled the iron-master, waving his +blazing slow-match dangerously near to the priming. "Keep it up, 'r by +the Lord that made ye--" + +There was no need to specify the alternative. For now the panic had +spread by its own contagion, and the invaders were fighting among +themselves for place on the flat-cars. And while yet the rear guard was +swarming upon the engine, hanging by toe-and hand-holds where it could, +the train was backed rapidly out of range. + +Caleb Gordon kept his pine splint alight until the echoes of the +engine's exhaust came faintly from the overhanging cliffs of the +mountain. + +"They've gone back to town, and I reckon the fire's plum' out for +to-day, Major," he drawled. "Buck and a few o' the boys 'll stay by the +gun, against their rallyin' later on, and you might as well go home to +your breakfast. Didn't bring your hawss, did ye? Take the mare, and +welcome. Buddy and me'll walk." + +But the Major would not mount, and so the two men walked together as far +as the manor-house gates, with Thomas Jefferson a pace in the rear, +leading the mare. + +It was no matter of wonder to him that his father and the Major marched +in solemn silence to the gate of parting. But the wonder came +tumultuously when the Major wheeled abruptly at the moment of +leave-taking and wrung his father's hand. + +"By God, suh, you are a right true-hearted gentleman, and my very good +friend, _Mistuh_ Gordon!" he said, with the manner of one who has been +carefully weighing the words beforehand. "If you had been given youh +just dues, suh, you'd have come home from F'ginia wearin' youh +shouldeh-straps." And then, with a little throat-clearing pause to come +between: "Damn it, suh; an own brotheh couldn't have done'mo'! I--I've +been misjudgin' you, Caleb, all these yeahs, and now I'm proud to shake +you by the hand and call you my friend. Yes, suh, I am that!" + +It was, in a manner not to be understood by the Northern alien, the +accolade of knighthood, and Caleb Gordon's toil-rounded shoulders +straightened visibly when he returned the hearty hand-grasp. And as for +Thomas Jefferson: in his heart gratified pride flapped its wings and +crowed lustily; and for the moment he was almost willing to bury that +private grudge he was holding against Major Dabney--almost, but not +quite. + + + + +VII + +THE PRAYER OF THE RIGHTEOUS + + +Having come thus far with Thomas Jefferson on the road to whatever goal +he will reach, it is high time we were looking a little more closely +into this matter of his grudge against Major Dabney. + +Primarily, it based itself upon the dominant quality in a masterful +character; namely, a desire to possess the earth and its fullness +without partnership encumbrances. + +From a time back of which memory refused to run, the woods and the +fields of Paradise Valley, the rampart hills and the backgrounding +mountain side, had belonged to Thomas Jefferson by the right of +discovery. The Bates boys and the Cantrells lived over in the great +valley of the Tennessee, and when they planned a fishing excursion up +Turkey Creek, they recognized Thomas Jefferson's suzerainty by +announcing that they were coming over to _his_ house. In like manner, +the Pendrys and the Lumpkins and the Hardwicks were scattered at +farm-width intervals down the pike, and the rampart hills marked the +boundary of their domain on that side. + +Now from possession which is recognized unquestioningly by one's +compeers to fancied possession in fee simple is but a step; and from +that to the putting up of "No Trespass" signs the interval can be read +only on a micrometer scale. Wherefore, Thomas Jefferson had developed a +huge disgust on hearing that Major Dabney was going to upset the natural +order of things by bringing his granddaughter to Deer Trace Manor. If +Ardea--the very name of her had a heathenish sound in his +Scripturally-trained ear--had been a boy, the matter would have +simplified itself. Thomas Jefferson had a sincere respect for his own +prowess, and a boy might have been mauled into subjection. But a girl! + +His lip curled stiffly at the thought of a girl, a town girl and +therefore a thing without legs, or at best with legs only half useful +and totally unfit for running or climbing trees, dividing the +sovereignty of the fields and the forest, the swimming-hole and the +perch pools in the creek, with him! She would do it, or try to do it. A +girl would not have any more sense than to come prying around into all +the quiet places to say, "This is my grandfather's land. What are _you_ +doing here?" + +At such thoughts as these a queer prickling sensation like a hot shiver +would run over him from neck to heel, and his eyes would gloom sullenly. +There would be another word to put with that; a word of his own +choosing. No matter if her grandfather, the terrifying Major, did own +the fields and the wood and the stream: God was greater than Major +Dabney, and had he not often heard his mother say on her knees that the +fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous availeth much? If it should +avail even a little, there would be no catastrophe, no disputed +sovereignty of the woods, the fields and the creek. + +It was in the middle of a sultry afternoon in the hotter half of +August, two weeks or such a matter after the Great Southwestern Railway +had given up the fight for Paradise Valley to run its line around the +encompassing hills, that Thomas Jefferson was cast alive into the pit of +burnings. + +He made sure he should always remember his latest glimpse of the +pleasant, homely earth. He was sitting idly on the porch step, letting +his gaze go adrift over the nearer green-clad hills to the purple deeps +of the western mountain, already steeped in shadow. The pike was +deserted, and the shrill hum of the house-flies played an insistent tune +in which the low-pitched boom of a bumblebee tumbling awkwardly among +the clover heads served for an intermittent bass. + +Suddenly into the hot silence came the quick _cloppity-clop_ of +galloping hoofs. Thomas Jefferson's heart was tender on that side of it +which was turned toward the dumb creatures, and his thought was +instantly pitiful and indignant. Who would be cruel enough to gallop a +horse in such weltering weather? + +The unspoken query had its answer when Major Dabney's fleet saddle +stallion thundered up to the gate in a white nimbus of dust, and the +Major flung himself from the saddle and called loudly for Mistress +Gordon. Thomas Jefferson sprang up hastily to forward the cry, fear +clutching at his heart; but the Major was before him in the wide passage +opening upon the porch. + +"My deah Mistress Gordon! We are in a world of trouble at the +manor-house! Little Ardea, my grand-daughteh, was taken sick last night, +and to-day she's out of huh head--think of it, _out of huh head!_ I'm +riding hotfoot for Doctah Williams, but Lord of Heaven! it'll be nigh +sundown befo' I can hope to get back with him. Could you, my deah madam, +faveh us--" + +Thomas Jefferson heard no more; would stay to hear no more. The forest, +always his refuge in time of trial, reached a long finger of scattering +oaks down to the opposite side of the creek, and thither he fled, cold +to the marrow of his bones, though the sun-heated stone coping of the +dam on which he crossed the stream went near to blistering his bare feet +as he ran. + +From the crotch of one of the oaks--his watch-tower in other periods of +stress--he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the +pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and +went in a smother of white dust, wheeling in front of the home gate and +pausing only long enough to take up his mother hastening to the rescue. + +After that he was alone with the hideous tumult of his thoughts. The +girl would die. He was as sure of it as if the heavens and the earth had +instantly become articulate to shout the terrible sentence. God had +taken him at his word! There would be no intruder to tell him that the +woods and the creek belonged to her grandfather. She would be dead; +slain by the breath of his mouth. And for all the years and years and +ages to come, he would be roasting and grilling in that place prepared +for the devil and his angels--and for murderers! + +In the acutest misery of it a trembling fit seized him and the oak +seemed to rock and sway as if to be rid of him. When the fit passed he +slid to the ground and flung himself face downward under the spreading +branches. The grass was cool to his face, but there was no moisture in +it, and he thought of Dives praying that Lazarus might come and put a +drop of water on his tongue. + +Then the torment took a new and more terrible form. Though he had never +been inside of the gray stone manor-house, his imagination transported +him thither; to the house and to a darkened room on the upper floor with +a bed in it, and in the bed a girl whose face he could not see. + +The girl was dying: the doctor had told his mother and the Major, and +they were all waiting. Thomas Jefferson had never seen any one die, only +a dog that Tike Bryerson had shot on one of his drunken home-goings. But +death was death, to a dog or to a girl; and vivid imagination supplied +the appalling details. Over and over again in pitiless minuteness the +heartbreaking scene was repeated: the little twitchings of the +bed-clothing, the tossing of the girl's arms in the last desperate +struggle for breath, his mother's low sobs, and the haggard face of the +old Major. + +Thomas Jefferson dug his fingers and toes into the grass and bit a +mouthful of it to stifle the cry wrung from him by the torturing +poignancy of it. Was there no way of escape? + +He turned over and sat up to try to think it out. Yes, there was a +way--the way which would be taken by the boy in the Sunday-school books. +He would say he was sorry, and would have his sins washed away, and +there would be rejoicing in Heaven over the one sinner who had repented. +Of course, the girl would die, just the same, and all the misery his sin +had caused would remain unchanged. But _he_ would escape. + +For one unworthy moment Thomas Jefferson was fiercely tempted. Then the +dogged Gordon blood reasserted itself. He had done the dreadful thing: +he had asked God to take this girl out of his way, and now he would +accept what he had coveted and would not try to sneak out of paying. It +comforted him a little to think that, after all, there must eventually +be some sort of end to the torment, away on in the eternities to come. +When he had suffered all he could suffer, not even God could make him +suffer any more. + +When he finally recrossed the creek on the dam head it was supper-time, +and his mother had returned. The misery had now settled into dumb +despair, both more and less agonizing than the acute remorse of the +afternoon. What he needed to know was told in his mother's answer to his +father's inquiry: "Yes; she is a very sick child. I'm going up again +after supper to stay as long as I'm needed. It's a judgment on the +Major; he has been setting the creature above the Creator." + +Thomas Jefferson knew well enough that the judgment was his, and not the +Major's; but he let his supper choke him in silence. Afterward, when his +mother had gone back to the house of anxiety and he was alone with his +father, there were some vague promptings toward confession and a cry for +human sympathy. What sealed his lips was the conviction that his father +would comfort him without understanding, just as his mother would +understand and condemn him. Early in the evening his father went back to +the furnace and his chance was lost. + +For four heart-searching days Thomas Jefferson lived and endured, +because living and enduring were the two unalterable conditions of the +brimstone pit to which he had consigned himself. During these days his +mother came and went, and prayed oftener than usual--not for the girl's +life, as Thomas Jefferson noticed with deep stirrings of bitterness, but +that the dispensation of Providence might inure to the lasting and +eternal benefit of an impenitent and idolatrous Major Dabney. + +Throughout these four days the sickening August heat remained unbroken; +but on the fifth the thunderheads began to gather and a fresh breeze +swept down from the slopes of the distant Cumberland; a wind smelling +sweetly of rain and full of cooling promise. + +On this fifth day, Thomas Jefferson, lying in wait at the gate of the +manor-house grounds, waylaid Doctor Williams coming out, and asked the +question which had hitherto had its doleful answer without the necessity +of asking. If the doctor had struck him with the buggy whip the shock +would not have been more real than that consequent on the snapping of +mental tension strings and the surging, strangling uprush of the tidal +wave of relief. + +"Little Ardea?" said the doctor. "Oh, she'll do well enough now, I hope. +The fever is broken and she's asleep." + +Thomas Jefferson shut the gate mechanically when the doctor had driven +out; but when there was nothing more to hold him, he scrambled over the +stone wall on the opposite side of the pike and ran for the hills like +one demented. + +The girl would live! Hell had yawned and cast him up once more on the +pleasant, homely earth; and now the gentle rain of penitence, which +could never water the dry places for a soul in torment, drenched him +like the real rain which was falling to slake the thirst of the parched +fields and the brittle-leaved, rustling forest. + +For a long time he lay on his face on the first bit of tree-sheltered +grass he had come to, caring nothing for the storm which was driving all +the wild creatures of the wood to cover. God had not been so pitiless, +after all. There was yet a balm in Gilead. + +And for the future? O just Heavens! how straitly and circumspectly he +would walk all the days of his life! Never again should Satan, going +about like a roaring lion, take him unawares. He would even learn to +love the girl, as one should love an enemy; and when she should come and +tell him that all the sacred places were hers by her grandfather's +right, he would smile reproachfully, like the boy being led forth to the +stake in the _Book of Martyrs_, and say-- + +But the time was not yet fully come for self-pityings; and when Thomas +Jefferson went home after the shower, not even the soggy chill of his +wet clothes could depress the spirit which had made good its footing on +the high mount of humility. + + + + +VIII + +THE BACKSLIDER + + +It was late in September before the dreaded invasion of the sacred +places, foreboded by Thomas Jefferson's prophetic soul, became one of +the things to be looked back on; and the interval had sufficed for +another change of heart, or, more correctly, for a descent to the valley +of things as they are from the top of that high mountain of spiritual +humility. + +Thomas Jefferson did not analyze the reactionary process. But the +milestones along the backward way were familiar. + +In a little while he found that he was once more able to say his prayers +at bedtime with the old glibness, and with the comfortable feeling that +he had done his whole duty if he remained on his knees for sixty full +ticks of the heirloom grandfather clock. It was an accomplishment on +which he prided himself, this knack of saying his prayers and counting +the clock ticks at the same time. Stub Helgerson, whose mother was a +Lutheran and said her prayers out of a book, could not do it. Thomas +Jefferson had asked him. + +A little farther along he came to the still more familiar milestone of +the doubtful questionings. Did God really trouble Himself about the +millions of things people asked Him to do? It seemed highly incredible, +not to say impossible, in the very nature of it. And if He did, would He +make one person sick for the sake of making another person sorry? These +questions were answerless, like so many of the others; but after the +perplexity had been pushed aside, the doubt remained. + +Coming down by such successive steps from the mount of penitent +thanksgivings, it was but a short time before he found himself back on +the old camping-ground of sullen resentment. + +When the girl got well enough to go about, she would find him out and +warn him off; or perhaps she might do even worse, and tag him. In either +case he should hate her, and there was a sort of ferocious joy in the +thought that she would doubtless be a long time getting well, and would +probably not be able to find him if he kept far enough out of her way. + +Acting on this wise conclusion, he carefully avoided the manor-house and +its neighborhood, making a wide circuit when he went fishing in the +upper pools. And once, when his father had sent him with a message to +the Major, he did violence to his own sense of exact obedience by +transferring the word at the house gate to Mammy Juliet's grandson, +Pete. + +But when one's evil star is in the ascendent, precautions are like the +vain strugglings of the fly in the web. The day of reckoning may be +postponed, but it will by no means be effaced from the calendar. One +purple and russet afternoon, when all the silent forest world was +steeped in the deep peace of early autumn, Thomas Jefferson was fishing +luxuriously in the most distant of the upper pools. There were three fat +perch gill-strung on a forked withe under the overhanging bank, and a +fourth was rising to the bait, when the peaceful stillness was rudely +rent by a crashing in the undergrowth, and a great dog, of a breed +hitherto unknown to Paradise, bounded into the little glade to stand +glaring at the fisherman, his teeth bared and his back hairs bristling. + +Now Thomas Jefferson in his thirteenth year was as well able to defend +himself as any clawed and toothed creature of the wood, and fear, the +fear of anything he could face and grapple with, was a thing unknown. +Propping his fishing pole so that no chance of a nibble might be lost in +the impending struggle, he got on his knees and picked out the exact +spot in the dog's neck where he would drive the bait knife home when +hostilities actual should begin. + +"Oh, please! Don't you hurt my dog!" said a rather weak little voice out +of the rearward void. + +But, gray eyes human, holding brown canine in an unwinking gaze: "You +come round here and call him off o' me." + +"He is not wishing to hurt you, or anybody," said the voice. "Down, +Hector!" + +The Great Dane passed from suspicious rigidity and threatening lip +twitchings to mighty and frivolous gambolings, and Thomas Jefferson got +up to give him room. A girl--_the_ girl, as some inner sense instantly +assured him--was trying to make the dog behave. So he had a chance to +look her over before the battle for sovereignty should begin. + +There was a little shock of disdainful surprise to go with the first +glance. Somehow he had been expecting something very different; +something on the order of the Queen of Sheba--done small, of course--as +that personage was pictured in the family Bible; a girl, proud and +scornful, and possibly wearing a silk dress and satin shoes. + +Instead, she was only a pale, tired baby in a brier-torn frock; a girl +whose bones showed brazenly at every angle, and whose only claim to a +second glance lay in her thick mop of reddish-brown hair and in a pair +of great, slate-blue eyes two sizes too large for the thin face. A +double conclusion came and sat in Thomas Jefferson's mind: she was +rather to be contemptuously pitied than feared; and as for looks--well, +she was not to be thought of in the same day with black-eyed Nan +Bryerson. + +When the dog was reduced to quietude, the small one repaid Thomas +Jefferson's stare with a level gaze out of the over-sized eyes. + +"Was it that you were afraid of Hector?" she asked. + +"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson, and the scorn was partly for her queer way +of speaking and partly for the foolishness of the question. "Huh! I +reckon you don't know who I am. I'd have killed your dog if he'd jumped +on me, maybe." + +"Me? I do know who you are. You are Thomas Gordon. Your mother took care +of me and prayed for me when I was sick. Hector is a--an extremely good +dog. He would not jump at you." + +"It's mighty lucky for him he didn't," bragged Thomas Jefferson, with a +very creditable imitation of his father's grim frown. Then he sat down +on the bank of the stream and busied himself with his fishing-tackle as +if he considered the incident closed. + +"What is it that you are trying to do?" asked Ardea, when the silence +had extended to the third worm impaled on the hook and promptly +abstracted therefrom by a wily sucker lying at the bottom of the pool. + +"I was fishin' some before you and your dog came along and scared all +the perch away," he said sourly. Then, turning suddenly on her: "Why +don't you go ahead and say it? Is it 'cause you're afeard to?" + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"I know what you're going to say; you are going to tell me this is your +grandfather's land and run me off. But I ain't aimin' to go till I'm +good and ready." + +She looked down on him without malice. + +"You are such a funny boy," she remarked, and there was something in her +way of saying it that made Thomas Jefferson feel little and infantile +and inferior, though he was sure there must be an immense age difference +in his favor. + +"Why?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I don't know; just because you are. If you knew French I could +explain it better that way." + +"I don't know anybody by that name, and I don't care," said Thomas +Jefferson doggedly; and went back to his fishing. + +Followed another interval of silence, in which two more worms were fed +to the insatiable sucker at the bottom of the pool. Then came the +volcanic outburst. + +"I think you are mean, mean!" she sobbed, with an angry stamp of her +foot. "I--I want to go ho-ome!" + +"Well, I reckon there ain't anybody holdin' you," said Thomas Jefferson +brutally. He was intent on fixing the sixth worm on the hook in such +fashion as permanently to discourage the bait thief, and was coming to +his own in the matter of self-possession with grateful facility. It was +going to be notably easy to bully her--another point of difference +between her and Nan Bryerson. + +"I know there isn't anybody holding me, but--but I can't find the way." + +That any one could be lost within an easy mile of the manor-house was +ridiculously incredible to Thomas Jefferson. Yet there was no telling, +in the case of a girl. + +"You want me to show you the way?" he asked, putting all the +ungraciousness he could muster into the query. + +"You might tell me, I should think! I've walked and walked!" + +"I reckon I'd better take you; you might get lost again," he said, with +gloomy sarcasm. Then he consumed all the time he could for the +methodical disposal of his fishing-tackle. It would be good for her to +learn that she must wait on his motions. + +She waited patiently, sitting on the ground with one arm around the neck +of the Great Dane; and when Thomas Jefferson stole a glance at her to +see how she was taking it, she looked so tired and thin and woebegone +that he almost let the better part of him get the upper hand. That made +him surlier than ever when he finally recovered his string of fish from +the stream and said: "Well, come on, if you're comin'." + +He told himself, hypocritically, that it was only to show her what +hardships she would have to face if she should try to tag him, that he +dragged her such a weary round over the hills and through the worst +brier patches and across and across the creek, doubling and circling +until the easy mile was spun out into three uncommonly difficult ones. +But at bottom the motive was purely wicked. In all the range of sentient +creatures there is none so innately and barbarously cruel as the human +boy-child; and this was the first time Thomas Jefferson had ever had a +helplessly pliable subject. + +The better she kept up, the more determined he became to break her down; +but at the very last, when she stumbled and fell in an old leaf bed and +cried for sheer weariness, he relented enough to say: "I reckon you'll +know better than to go projectin' round in the woods the next time. Come +on--we're 'most there, now." + +But Ardea's troubles were not yet at an end. She stopped crying and got +up to follow him blindly over more hills and through other brier +tangles; and when they finally emerged in the cleared lands, they were +still on the wrong side of the creek. + +"It's only about up to your chin; reckon you can wade it?" asked Thomas +Jefferson, in a sudden access of heart-hardening. But it softened him a +little to see her gather her torn frock and stumble down to the water's +edge without a word, and he added: "Hold on; maybe we can find a log, +somewhere." + +There was a foot log just around the next bend above, as he very well +knew, and thither he led the way. The dog made the crossing first, and +stood wagging his tail encouragingly on the bank of safety. Then Thomas +Jefferson passed his trembling victim out on the log. + +"You go first," he directed; "so 't I can catch you if you slip." + +For the first time she humbled herself to beg a boon. + +"Oh, you please go first, so I won't have to look down at the water!" + +"No; I'm coming behind--then I can catch you if you get dizzy and go to +fall," he said stubbornly. + +"Will you walk right up close, so I can know you are there?" + +Thomas Jefferson's smile was cruelly misleading, as were his words. "All +you'll have to do will be to reach your hand back and grab me," he +assured her; and thereupon she began to inch her way out over the +swirling pool. + +When he saw that she could by no possibility turn to look back, Thomas +Jefferson deliberately sat down on the bank to watch her. There had +never been anything in his life so tigerishly delightful as this game of +playing on the feelings and fears of the girl whose coming had spoiled +the solitudes. + +For the first few feet Ardea went steadily forward, keeping her eyes +fixed on the Great Dane sitting motionless at the farther end of the +bridge of peril. Then, suddenly the dog grew impatient and began to leap +and bark like a foolish puppy. It was too much for Ardea to have her +eye-anchor thus transformed into a dizzying whirlwind of gray monsters. +She reached backward for the reassuring hand: it was not there, and the +next instant the hungry pool rose up to engulf her. + +In all his years Thomas Jefferson had never had such a stab as that +which an instantly awakened conscience gave him when she slipped and +fell. Now he was her murderer, beyond any hope of future mercies. For a +moment the horror of it held him vise-like. Then the sight of the Great +Dane plunging to the rescue freed him. + +"Good dog!" he screamed, diving headlong from his own side of the pool; +and between them Ardea was dragged ashore, a limp little heap of +saturation, conscious, but with her teeth chattering and great, dark +circles around the big blue eyes. + +Thomas Jefferson's first word was masculinely selfish. + +"I'm awful sorry!" he stammered. "If you can't make out to forgive me, +I'm going to have a miser'ble time of it after I get home. God will whip +me worse for this than He did for the other." + +It was here, again, that she gave him the feeling that she was older +than he. + +"It will serve you quite right. Now you'd better get me home as quick as +ever you can. I expect I'll be sick again, after this." + +He held his peace and walked her as fast as he could across the fields +and out on the pike. But at the Dabney gates he paused. It was not in +human courage to face the Major under existing conditions. + +"I reckon you'll go and tell your gran'paw on me," he said hopelessly. + +She turned on him with anger ablaze. + +"Why should I not tell him? And I never want to see you or hear of you +again, you cruel, hateful boy!" + +Thomas Jefferson hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the +driveway, leaning heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached +the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded in +the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of +tyranny the lees are apt to be like the little book the Revelator +ate--sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the belly. + +That evening at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear +dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put +by his father. + +"Yes; the Major sent for me again this afternoon. That child is back in +bed again with a high fever. It seems she was out playing with that +great dog of hers and fell into the creek. I wanted to tell the Major he +is just tempting Providence, the way he makes over her and indulges her, +but I didn't dare to." + +And again Thomas Jefferson knew that he was the one who had tempted +Providence. + + + + +IX + +THE RACE TO THE SWIFT + + +From the grave and thoughtful vantage-ground of thirteen, Thomas +Jefferson could look back on the second illness of Ardea Dabney as the +closing incident of his childhood. + +The industrial changes which were then beginning, not only for the city +beyond the mountain, but for all the region round about, had rushed +swiftly on Paradise; and the old listless life of the unhasting period +soon receded quickly into a far-away past, rememberable only when one +made an effort to recall it. + +First had come the completion of the Great Southwestern. Diverted by the +untiring opposition of Major Dabney from its chosen path through the +valley, it skirted the westward hills, passing within a few hundred +yards of the Gordon furnace. Since business knows no animosities, the +part which Caleb Gordon and his gun crew had played in the right-of-way +conflict was ignored. The way-station at the creek crossing was named +Gordonia, and it was the railway traffic manager himself who suggested +to the iron-master the taking of a partner with capital, the opening of +the vein of coking coal on Mount Lebanon, the installation of +coking-ovens, and the modernizing and enlarging of the furnace and +foundry plant--hints all pointing to increased traffic for the road. + +With the coming of Mr. Duxbury Farley to Paradise, Thomas Jefferson +lost, not only the simple life, but the desire to live it. This Mr. +Farley, whom we have seen and heard, momentarily, on the station +platform in South Tredegar, the expanded, hailed from Cleveland, Ohio; +was, as he was fond of saying pompously, a citizen of no mean city. His +business in the reawakening South was that of an intermediary between +cause and effect; the cause being the capital of confiding investors in +the North, and the effect the dissipation of the same in various and +sundry development schemes in the new iron field. + +To Paradise, in the course of his goings to and fro, came this purger of +other men's purses, and he saw the fortuitous grouping of the +possibilities at a glance: abundant iron of good quality; an accessible +vein of coal, second only to Pocahontas for coking; land cheap, water +free, and a persuadable subject in straightforward, simple-hearted Caleb +Gordon. + +Farley had no capital, but he had that which counts for more in the +promoter's field; namely, the ability to reap where others had sown. His +plan, outlined to Caleb in a sweeping cavalry-dash of enthusiasm, was +simplicity itself. Caleb should contribute the raw material--land, water +and the ore quarry--and it should also be his part to secure a lease of +the coal land from Major Dabney. In the meantime he, Farley, would +undertake to float the enterprise in the North, forming a company and +selling stock to provide the development capital. + +The iron-master demurred a little at first. There were difficulties, +and he pointed them out. + +"I don't know, Colonel Farley. It appears like I'm givin' all I've got +for a handout at the kitchen door of the big company. Then, again, +there's the Major. He's pizon against all these improvements. You don't +know the Major." + +"On the contrary, my dear Mr. Gordon, it is because I do know him, or +know of him, that I am turning him over to you. You are the one person +in the world to obtain that coal lease. I confess I couldn't touch the +Major with a ten-foot pole, any more than you could go North and get the +cash. But you are his neighbor, and he likes you. What you recommend, +he'll do." Thus the enthusiast. + +"Well, I don't know," said Caleb doubtfully; "I reckon I can try. He +can't any more 'n fire me, like he did the Southwestern right-o'-way +man. But then, about t'other part of it: I've got a little charcoal +furnace here that don't amount to much, maybe, but it's all mine, and +I'm the boss. When this other thing goes through, the men who are +putting up the money will own it and me. I'll be just about as much +account as the tag on a shoe-string." + +This part of the conference was held on the slab-floored porch of the +oak-shingled house, with Thomas Jefferson as a negligible listener. +Since he was listening with both eyes and ears, he saw something in Mr. +Duxbury Farley's face that carried him swiftly back to the South +Tredegar railway station and to that first antipathetic impression. But +again the suave tongue quickly turned the page. + +"Don't let that trouble you for a moment, Mr. Gordon," was the +reassuring rejoinder. "I shall see that your apportionment of stock in +the company is as large as the flotation scheme will stand; and as I, +too, shall be a minority stock-holder, I shall share your risk. But +there will be no risk. If the Lord prospers us, we shall both come out +of this rich men, Mr. Gordon." + +The slow smile that Thomas Jefferson knew so well came and went like a +flitting shadow. + +"I reckon the Lord don't make n'r meddle much with these here little +child's playhouses of our'n," said Caleb; and then he gave his consent +to the promoter's plan. + +Singularly or not, as we choose to view it, the difficulties effaced +themselves at the first onset. Though tact was no part of Caleb Gordon's +equipment, his presentation of the matter to Major Dabney became so +nearly a personal asking--with Mr. Duxbury Farley and the Northern +capitalists distantly backgrounding--that the Major granted the lease of +the coal lands on purely personal grounds; would, indeed, have waived +the matter of consideration entirely, if Caleb had not insisted. Had not +the iron-master been raised to the high degree of fellowship by the hand +that signed the lease? + +On his part, Mr. Duxbury Farley was equally successful. A company was +formed, the charter was obtained, and the golden stream began to flow +into the treasury; into it and out again in the raceway channels of +development. Thomas Jefferson stood aghast when an army of workmen swept +down on Paradise and began to change the very face of nature. But that +was only the beginning. + +For a time Chiawassee Coal and Iron figured buoyantly in the market +quotations, and delegations of stock-holders, both present and +prospective, were personally conducted to the scene of activities by +enthusiastic Vice-President Farley. But when these had served their +purpose a thing happened. One fine morning it was whispered on 'Change +that Chiawassee iron would not Bessemer, and that Chiawassee coke had +been rejected by the Southern Association of Iron Smelters. + +Followed a crash which was never very clearly understood by the +simple-hearted soldier iron-master, though it was merely a repetition of +a lesson well conned by the earlier investors in Southern coal and iron +fields. Caleb's craft was the making of iron; not the financing of +top-heavy corporations. So, when he was told that the company had +failed, and that he and Farley had been appointed receivers, he took it +as a financial matter, of course, somewhat beyond his ken, and went +about his daily task of supervision with a mind as undisturbed as it +would have been distraught had he known something of the subterranean +mechanism by which the failure and the receivership had been brought to +pass. + +Why Mr. Duxbury Farley spared the iron-master in the freezing-out +process was an unsolved riddle to many. But there were reasons. For one, +there was the lease of the coal lands, renewable year by year--this was +Caleb's own honest provision inserted in the contract for the Major's +protection--and renewable only by the Major's friend. Further, a +practical man at the practical end of an industry is a sheer necessity; +and by contriving to have honest Caleb associated with himself in the +receivership, a fine color of uprightness was imparted to the promoter's +far-reaching plan of aggrandizement. + +So, later, when the reorganization was effected; when the troublesome, +dividend-hungry stock-holders of the original company were eliminated by +due process of law, Caleb's name appeared on the Farley slate with the +title of general manager of the new company--for the same good and +sufficient reasons. + +It was during the fervid six months of Chiawassee Coal and Iron +development that Thomas Jefferson had passed from the old life to the +new--from childhood to boyhood. + +Simultaneously, there were the coal-mines opening under the cliffs of +Mount Lebanon, the long, double row of coking-ovens building on the flat +below the furnace, and the furnace itself taking on undreamed-of +magnitudes under the hands of the army of workmen. Thomas Jefferson did +his best to keep the pace, being driven by a new and eager thirst for +knowledge mechanical, and by a gripping desire to be present at all the +assemblings of all the complicated parts of the threefold machine. And +when he found it impossible to be in three places at one and the same +moment, it distressed him to tears. + +Of the home life during that strenuous interval there was little more +than the eating and sleeping for one whose time for the absorbent +process was all too limited. Also, the perplexing questions reaching +down into the under-soul of things were silent. Also, again--mark of a +change so radical that none but a Thomas Jefferson may read and +understand--an awe-inspiring Major Dabney had ceased to be the first +citizen of the world, that pinnacle being now occupied by a tall, +sallow, smooth-faced gentleman, persuasive of speech and superhuman in +accomplishment, who was the life and soul of the activities, and whom +his father and mother always addressed respectfully as "Colonel" Farley. + +One day, in the very heat of the battle, this commanding personage, at +whose word the entire world of Paradise was in travail, had deigned to +speak directly to him--Thomas Jefferson. It was at the mine on the +mountain. The workmen were bolting into place the final trestle of the +inclined railway which was to convey the coal in descending carloads to +the bins at the coke-ovens, and Thomas Jefferson was absorbing the +details as a dry sponge soaks water. + +"Making sure that they do it just right, are you, my boy?" said the +great man, patting him approvingly on the shoulder. "That's good. I like +to see a boy anxious to get to the bottom of things. Going to be an +iron-master, like your father, are you?" + +"N-no," stammered the boy. "I wisht I was!" + +"Well, what's to prevent? We are going to have the completest plant in +the country right here, and it will be a fine chance for your father's +son; the finest in the world." + +"'Tain't goin' to do me any good," said Thomas Jefferson dejectedly. "I +got to be a preacher." + +Mr. Duxbury Farley looked down at him curiously. He was a religious +person himself, coming to be known as a pillar in St. Michael's Church +at South Tredegar, a liberal contributor, and a prime mover in a plan to +tear down the old building and to erect a new one more in keeping with +the times and South Tredegar's prosperity. Yet he was careful to draw +the line between religion as a means of grace and business as a means of +making money. + +"That is your mother's wish, I suppose: and it's a worthy one; very +worthy. Yet, unless you have a special vocation--but there; your mother +doubtless knows best. I am only anxious to see your father's son succeed +in whatever he undertakes." + +After that, Thomas Jefferson secretly made Success his god, and was +alertly ready to fetch and carry for the high priest in its temple, only +the opportunities were infrequent. + +For, wide as the Paradise field seemed to be growing from Thomas +Jefferson's point of view, it was altogether too narrow for Duxbury +Farley. The principal offices of Chiawassee Coal and Iron were in South +Tredegar, and there the first vice-president was building a hewn-stone +mansion, and had become a charter member of the city's first club; was +domiciled in due form, and was already beginning to soften his final +"r's," and to speak of himself as a Southerner--by adoption. + +So sped the winter and the spring succeeding Thomas Jefferson's +thirteenth birthday, and for the first time in his life he saw the +opening buds of the ironwood and the tender, fresh greens of the herald +poplars, and smelled the sweet, keen fragrance of awakening nature, +without being moved thereby. + +Ardea he saw only now and then, as old Scipio drove her back and forth +between the manor-house and the railway station, morning and evening. He +had heard that she was going to school in the city, and as yet there +were no stirrings of adolescence in him to make him wish to know more. + +As for Nan Bryerson, he saw her not at all. For one thing, he climbed no +more to the spring-sheltering altar rock among the cedars; and for +another, among all the wild creatures of the mountain, your moonshiner +is the shyest, being an anachronism in a world of progress. One bit of +news, however, floated in on the gossip at Little Zoar. It related that +Nan's mother was dead, and that the body had lain two days unburied +while Tike was drowning his sorrow in a sea of his own "pine-top." + +In the new life, as in the old, summer followed quickly on the heels of +spring, and when the hepaticas and the violets were gone, and the laurel +and the rhododendron were decking the cliffs of Lebanon in their summer +robes of pink and white and magenta, another door was opened for Thomas +Jefferson. + +Vaguely it had been understood in the Gordon household that Mr. Duxbury +Parley was a widower with two children: a boy, some two years older than +Thomas Jefferson, at school in New England, and a girl younger, name and +place of sojourn unknown. The boy was coming South for the long +vacation, and the affairs of Chiawassee Coal and Iron--already reaching +out subterraneously toward the future receivership--would call the first +vice-president North for the better portion of July. Would Mrs. Martha +take pity on a motherless lad, whose health was none of the best, and +open her home to Vincent? + +Mrs. Martha would and did; not ungrudgingly on the vice-president's +account, but with many misgivings on Thomas Jefferson's. She was finding +the surcharged industrial atmosphere of the new era inimical at every +point to the development of the spiritual passion she had striven to +arouse in her son; to paving the way for the realizing of that ideal +which had first taken form when she had written "Reverend Thomas +Jefferson Gordon" on the margin of the letter to her brother Silas. + +As it fell out, the worst happened that could happen, considering the +apparent harmlessness of the exciting cause. Vincent Farley proved to be +an anemic stripling, cold, reserved, with no surface indications of +moral depravity, and with at least a veneer of good breeding. But in +Thomas Jefferson's heart he planted the seed of discontent with his +surroundings, with the homely old house on the pike, unchanged as yet by +the rising tide of prosperity, and more than all, with the prospect of +becoming a chosen vessel. + +It was of no use to hark back to the revival and the heart-quaking +experiences of a year agone. Thomas Jefferson tried, but all that seemed +to belong to another world and another life. What he craved now was to +be like this envied and enviable son of good fortune, who wore his +Sunday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly +and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and +traveled Ardea. + +Later in the summer the envy died down and Thomas Jefferson developed a +pronounced case of hero-worship, something to the disgust of the +colder-hearted, older boy. It did not last very long, nor did it leave +any permanent scars; but before Thomas Jefferson was fully convalescent +the subtle flattery of his adulation warmed the subject of it into +something like companionship, and there were bragging stories of +boarding-school life and of the world at large to add fresh fuel to the +fire of discontent. + +Though Thomas Jefferson did not know it, his deliverance on that side +was nigh. It had been decided in the family council of two--with a +preacher-uncle for a casting-vote third--that he was to be sent away to +school, Chiawassee Coal and Iron promising handsomely to warrant the +expense; and the decision hung only on the choice of courses to be +pursued. + +Caleb had marked the growing hunger for technical knowledge in the boy, +and had secretly gloried in it. Here, at least, was a strong stream of +his own craftsman's blood flowing in the veins of his son. + +"It'd be a thousand pities to spoil a good iron man and engineer to make +a poor preacher, Martha," he objected; this for the twentieth time, and +when the approach of autumn was forcing the conclusion. + +"I know, Caleb; but you don't understand," was the invariable rejoinder. +"You know that side of him, because it's your side. But he is my son, +too; and--and Caleb, the Lord has called him!" + +Gordon's smile was lenient, tolerant, as it always was in such +discussions. + +"Not out loud, I reckon, little woman; leastwise, Buddy don't act as if +he'd heard it. As I've said, there's plenty of time. He's only a little +shaver yet. Let him try the school in the city for a year 'r so, goin' +and comin' on the railroads, nights and mornin's, like the Major's +gran'daughter. After that, we might see." + +But now Martha Gordon was fighting the last great battle in the war of +spiritual repression which had been going on ever since the day when +that text, _Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers_, had +been turned into a whip of scorpions to chasten her, and she fought as +those who will not be denied the victory. Caleb yielded finally, but +with some such hand-washing as Pilate did when he gave way to the +pressure from without. + +"I aim to do what's for the best, Martha, but I own I hain't got your +courage. You've been shovin' that boy up the steps o' the pulpit ever +since he let on like he could understand what you was sayin' to him, and +maybe it's all right. I've never been over on your side o' that fence, +and I don't know how things look over there. But if it was my doin's, +I'd be prayin' mighty hard to whatever God I believed in not to let me +make a hypocrite out'n o' Buddy. I would _so_." + +Thomas Jefferson was told what was in store for him only a short time +before his outsetting for the sectarian home school in a neighboring +state, which was the joint selection of his mother and Uncle Silas. He +took it with outward calm, as he would have taken anything from a prize +to a whipping. But there was dumb rebellion within when his mother read +him the letter he was to carry to the principal--a letter written by +Brother Crafts to one of like precious faith, commending the lamb of the +flock, and definitely committing that lamb as a chosen vessel. It was +unfair, he cried inwardly, in a hot upflash of antagonism. He might +choose to be a preacher; he had always meant to be one, for his mother's +sake. But to be pushed and driven-- + +He took his last afternoon for a ramble in the fields and woods beyond +the manor-house, in that part of the valley as yet unfurrowed by the +industrial plow. It was not the old love of the solitudes that called +him; it was rather a sore-hearted desire to go apart and give place to +all the hard thoughts that were bubbling and boiling within. + +A long circuit over the boundary hills brought him at length to the +little glade with the pool in its center where he had been fishing for +perch on that day when Ardea and the great dog had come to make him +back-slide. He wondered if she had ever forgiven him. Most likely she +had not. She never seemed to think him greatly worth while when they +happened to meet. + +He was sitting on the overhanging bank, just where he had sat that other +day, when suddenly history repeated itself. There was a rustling in the +bushes; the Great Dane bounded out, though not as before to stand +menacing; and when he turned his head she was there near him. + +"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said coolly; and then she called to the dog +and made as if she would go away. But Thomas Jefferson's heart was full, +and full hearts are soft. + +"You needn't run," he hazarded. "I reckon I ain't going to bite you. I +don't feel much like biting anybody to-day." + +"You did bite me once, though," she said airily. + +"And you've never forgiven me for it," he asserted, in deepest +self-pity. + +"Oh, yes, I have; the Dabneys always forgive--but they never forget. And +me, I am a Dabney." + +"That's just as bad. You wouldn't be so awful mean to me if you knew. +I--I'm going away." + +She came a little nearer at that and sat down beside him on the yellow +grass with an arm around the dog's neck. + +"Does it hurt?" she asked. "Because, if it does, I'm sorry; and I'll +promise to forget." + +"It does hurt some," he confessed. "Because, you see, I'm going to be a +preacher." + +"You?" she said, with the frank and unsympathetic surprise of childhood. +Then politeness came to the rescue and she added: "I'm sorry for that, +too, if you are wanting me to be. Only I should think it would be fine +to wear a long black robe and a pretty white surplice, and to learn to +sing the prayers beautifully, and all that." + +Thomas Jefferson was honestly horrified, and he looked it. + +"I'd like to know what in the world you're talking about," he said. + +"About your being a minister, of course. Only in France, they call them +priests of the church." + +The boy's lips went together in a fine straight line. Not for nothing +did the blood of many generations of Protestants flow in his veins. +"Priest" was a Popish word. + +"The Pope of Rome is antichrist!" he declared authoritatively. + +She seemed only politely interested. + +"Is he? I didn't know." Then, with a tactfulness worthy of graver years, +she drew away from the dangerous topic. "When are you going?" + +"To-morrow." + +"Is it far?" + +"Yes; it's an awful long ways." + +"Never mind; you'll be coming back after a while, and then we'll be +friends--if you want to." + +Surely Thomas Jefferson's heart was as wax before the fire that day. + +"I'm mighty glad," he said. Then he got up. "Will you let me show you +the way home again?--the short, easy way, this time?" + +She hesitated a moment, and then stood up and gave him her hand. + +"I'm not afraid of you now; _we_ don't hate him any more, do we, +Hector?" + +And so they went together through the yellowing aisles of the September +wood and across the fields to the manor-house gates. + + + + +X + +THE SHADOW OF THE ROCK + + +Tom Gordon--Thomas Jefferson now only in his mother's letters--was +fifteen past, and his voice was in the transition stage which made him +blushingly self-conscious when he ran up the window-shade in the Pullman +to watch for the earliest morning outlining of old Lebanon on the +southern horizon. + +There had been no home-going for him at the close of his first year in +the sectarian school. The principal had reported him somewhat backward +in his studies for his age,--which was true enough,--and had intimated +that a summer spent with the preceptor who had the vacation charge of +the school buildings would be invaluable to a boy of such excellent +natural parts. So Tom had gone into semi-solitary confinement for three +months with a man who thought in the dead languages and spoke in terms +of ancient history, studying with sullen resentment in his heart, and +charging his imprisonment to his preacher-uncle, who was, indeed, +chiefly responsible. + +He had mourned that loss of liberty all through his second year, and was +conscious the while that it would prove the parent of a still greater +loss. It is the exile's anchorage in a shifting world to think of the +home haven as unchanged and unchanging; as a place where by and by the +thread of life as it was may be knotted up with that of life as it shall +be. But Tom remembered that he had left Paradise in the midst of +convulsive upheavals, and was correspondingly fearful. + +The sickening sense of unfamiliarity seized him when the train stopped +for breakfast in the city which had once been the village of the single +muddy street. The genius of progress had transformed it so completely +that there was nothing but the huge, backgrounding mass of Lebanon, +visible from the windows of the station breakfast-room, to identify the +grave of the old and the birthplace of the new. + +The boy laid desperate eye-holds on the comforting solidity of the +background, and would not loose them when the train sped away southward +again through mile-long yards with their boundaries picked out by +black-vomiting factory chimneys. The mountain, at least, was unchanged, +and there might be hope for the country beyond. + +But the homesickness returned with renewed qualms when the train had +doubled the nose of Lebanon and threaded its way among the hills to the +Paradise portal. Gordonia, of the single side-track, had grown into a +small iron town, with the Chiawassee plant flanking a good half-mile of +the railway; with a cindery street or two, and a scummy wave of +operatives' cottages and laborers' shacks spreading up the hillsides +which were stripped bare of their trees and undergrowth. + +Tom's eyes filled, and he was wondering faintly if the desolating tide +of progress had topped the hills to pour over into the home valley +beyond, when his father accosted him. There was a little shock at the +sight of the grizzled hair and beard turned so much grayer; but the +welcoming was like a grateful draft of cool water in a parched +wilderness. + +"Well, now then! How are ye, Buddy, boy? Great land o' Canaan! but +you've shot up and thickened out mightily in two years, son." + +Tom was painfully conscious of his size. Also of the fact that he was +clumsily in his own way, particularly as to hands and feet. The +sectarian school dwelt lightly on athletics and such purely mundane +trivialities as physical fitness and the harmonious education of the +growing body and limbs. + +"Yes; I'm so big it makes me right tired," he said gravely, and his +voice cracked provokingly in the middle of it. Then he asked about his +mother. + +"She's tolerable--only tolerable, Buddy. She allows she don't have +enough to keep her doin' in the new--" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly +and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all +have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet a hen worth fifty +dollars ye've gone and lost it." + +But Tom had not; and when the luggage was found there was another +innovation to buffet him. The old buggy with its high seat had vanished, +and in its room there was a modern surrey with a negro driver. Tom +looked askance at the new equipage. + +"Can't we make out to walk, pappy?" he asked, dropping unconsciously +into the child-time phrase. + +"Oh, yes; I reckon we could. You're not too young, and I'm not so +terr'ble old. But--get in, Buddy, get in; there'll be trampin' enough +for ye, all summer long." + +The limestone pike was the same, and the creek was still rushing +noisily over the stones in its bed, as Tom remarked gratefully. But the +heaviest of the buffets came when the barrier hills were passed and the +surrey horses made no motion to turn in at the gate of the old +oak-shingled house beyond the iron-works. + +"Hold on!" said Tom. "Doesn't the driver know where we live?" + +The old-time, gentle smile wrinkled about the iron-master's eyes. + +"That's the sup'rintendent's office and lab'ratory now, son. It was +getting to be tolerable noisy down here for your mammy, so nigh to the +plant. And we allowed to s'prise you. We've been buildin' us a new house +up on the knoll just this side o' Major Dabney's." + +It was the cruelest of the changes--the one hardest to bear; and it +drove the boy back into the dumb reticence which was a part of his +birthright. Had they left him nothing by which to remember the old +days--days which were already beginning to take on the glamour of +unutterable happiness past? + +Nevertheless, he could not help looking curiously for the new home--the +old being irretrievably sacked and ruined; but there were more shocks to +come between. One of Mr. Duxbury Farley's side issues had been a real +estate boom for Paradise Valley proper. South Tredegar being prosperous, +the time had seemed propitious for the engrafting of the country-house +idea. By some means, marvelous to those who knew Major Dabney's +tenacious land-grip, the promoter had bought in the wooded hillsides +facing the mountain, cut them into ten-acre residence plots, run a +graveled drive on the western side of the creek to front them, and +presto! the thing was done. + +Tom saw well-kept lawns, park-like groves and pretentious country villas +where he had once trailed Nance Jane through the "dark woods," and his +father told him the names and circumstance of the owners as they drove +up the pike. There was Rockwood, the summer home of the Stanleys, and +The Dell, owned, and inhabited at intervals, by Mr. Young-Dickson, of +the South Tredegar potteries. Farther along there was Fairmount, whose +owner was a wealthy cotton-seed buyer; Rook Hill, which Tom remembered +as the ancient roosting ground of the migratory winter crows; and +Farnsworth Park, ruralizing the name of its builder. On the most +commanding of the hillsides was a pile of rough-cut Tennessee marble +with turrets and many gables, rejoicing in the classic name of Warwick +Lodge. This, Tom was told, was the country home of Mr. Farley himself, +and the house alone had cost a fortune. + +At the turn in the pike where you lost sight finally of the iron-works, +there was a new church, a miniature in native stone of good old Stephen +Hawker's church of Morwenstow. Tom gasped at the sight of it, and +scowled when he saw the gilded cross on the tower. + +"Catholic!" he said. "And right here in our valley!" + +"No," said the father; "it's 'Piscopalian. Colonel Farley is one o' the +vestries, or whatever you call 'em, of St. Michael's yonder in town. I +reckon he wanted to get his own kind o' people round him out here, so he +built this church, and they run it as a sort of side-show to the big +church. Your mammy always looks the other way when we come by." + +Tom looked the other way, too, watching anxiously for the first sight +of the new home. They reached it in good time, by a graveled driveway +leading up from the white pike between rows of forest trees; and there +was a second negro waiting to take the team, when they alighted at the +veranda steps. + +The new house was a two-storied brick, ornate and palpably assertive, +with no suggestion of the homely country comfort of the old. Yet, when +his mother had wept over him in the wide hall, and there was time to go +about, taking it all in like a cat exploring a strange garret, it was +not so bad. + +Or rather, let us say, there were compensations. The love of luxury is +only dormant in the heart of the hardiest barbarian; and the polished +floors and soft-piled rugs, the bath-room with its great china dish, and +the carpeted stair with the old grandfather clock ticking bravely on the +landing, presently began to thrum the tuneful chord of pride. Perhaps +Ardea Dabney would not laugh and say, "What a funny, _funny_ old place!" +as she had once said when the Major had brought her to the log-walled +homestead on the lower pike. + +Still, there were incongruities--hopeless janglings of things married by +increasing prosperity, but never meant to be bedfellows in the +harmonious course of nature. One was the unblushing effrontery of the +new brick pairing itself brazenly with the venerable gray stone +manor-house on the adjoining knoll--impudence perceivable even to a +hobbledehoy fresh from the school desk and the dormitory. Another was +the total lack of sympathy between the housing and the housed. + +This last was painfully evident in all the waking hours of the +household. Tom observed that his father escaped early in the morning, +and lived and moved and had his being in the industries at the lower end +of the valley, as of old. But his mother's occupation was quite gone. +And the summer evenings, sat out decorously on the ornate veranda, were +full of constraint and awkward silences, having no part nor lot with +those evenings of the older time on the slab-floored porch of the old +homestead on the pike. + +But there were compensations again, even for Martha Gordon, and Tom +discovered one of them on the first Wednesday evening after his arrival. +The new home was within easy walking distance of Little Zoar, and he +went with his mother to the prayer-meeting. + +The upper end of the pike was unchanged, and the little, weather-beaten +church stood in its groving of pines, the same yesterday, to-day and for +ever. Better still, the congregation, the small Wednesday-night +gathering at least, held the familiar faces of the country folk. The +minister was a young missionary, zealously earnest, and lacking as yet +the quality of hardness and doctrinal precision which had been the boy's +daily bread and meat at the sectarian school. What wonder, then, that +when the call for testimony was made, the old pounding and +heart-hammering set in, and duty, _duty_, duty, wrote itself in +flaming letters on the dingy walls? + +Tom set his teeth and swallowed hard, and let a dozen of the others rise +and speak and sit again. He could feel the beating of his mother's +heart, and he knew she was praying silently for him, praying that he +would not deny his Master. For her sake, then ... but not yet; there was +still time enough--after the next hymn--after the next testimony--when +the minister should give another invitation. He was chained to the bench +and could not rise; his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth and his +lips were like dry leaves. The silences grew longer; all, or nearly all, +had spoken. He was stifling. + +"_Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess +also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me +before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven._" +It was the solemn voice of the young minister, and Tom staggered to his +feet with the lamps whirling in giddy circles. + +"I feel to say that the Lord is precious to my soul to-night. Pray for +me, that I may ever be found faithful." + +He struggled through the words of the familiar form gaspingly and sat +down. A burst of triumphant song arose, + + "O happy day, that fixed my choice + On Thee, my Saviour and my God!" + +and the ecstatic aftermath came. Truly, it was better to be a doorkeeper +in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. What bliss +was there to be compared with this heart-melting, soul-lifting blessing +for duty done? + +It went with him a good part of the way home, and Martha Gordon +respected his silence, knowing well what heights and depths were +engulfing the young spirit. + +But afterward--alas and alas! that there should always be an +"afterward"! When Tom had kissed his mother good night and was alone in +his upper room, the reaction set in. What had he done? Were the words +the outpouring of a full heart? Did they really mean anything to him, +or to those who heard them? He grasped despairingly at the fast-fading +glories of the vision, dropping on his knees at the bedside. "O God, let +me see Thee and touch Thee, and be sure, _sure_!" he prayed, over and +over again; and so finally sleep found him still on his knees with his +face buried in the bed-clothes. + + + + +XI + +THE TRUMPET-CALL + + +For the first few vacation days Tom rose with the sun and lived with the +industries, marking all the later expansive strides and sorrowing keenly +that he had not been present to see them taken in detail. + +But this was a passing phase. When the mechanical hunger was sated; when +he had started and stopped every engine in the big plant, had handled +the levers of the great steam-hoist that shot the coal-cars from the +mine to the coke-yard bins, and had prevailed on the engineer of the +dinkey engine to let him haul out and dump a pot of slag, he had a sharp +relapse into the primitive, and went roaming afield in search of his +lost boyhood. + +It was not to be found in any of the valley haunts, these having been +transformed by the country-house colony. The old water-wheel below the +dam hung motionless, being supplanted by the huge, modern, +blowing-engines; and the black wash from the coal-mines had driven the +perch from the pools and spoiled the swimming-holes in the creek. In the +farther forests of the rampart hills the chopper's ax had been busy; and +the blackberry patches in all the open spaces were sacked daily by +chattering swarms of the work-people's children, white and black. + +On the third morning Tom turned his steps despairingly toward the +slopes of the mountain. He was at a pass when he would have given worlds +to find one of the sacred places undesecrated. And there remained now +only the high altar under the cedars of Lebanon to be visited. + +It comforted him not a little to find that he had the old-time, burning +thirst when he came within earshot of the dripping spring under the +great rock. But when he would have knelt to drink from his palms like +Gideon's men, there was no pool in the rocky basin. A barrel had been +sunk in the sand-filled crevice, and a greedy pipe-line sucked up the +water as fast as it trickled from the rock, to pass it on to one of the +thirsty mechanisms in the iron plant a thousand feet below. + +In its way this was the final straw, and Tom sat down beside the +utilized spring with a lump in his throat. Afterward, he slaked his +thirst as he could at the trickle from the rock's lip, and then set his +face toward the higher steeps. Major Dabney,--not yet fully in tune with +his new neighbors of the country-house colony,--and his granddaughter +were spending the summer at Crestcliffe Inn, the new hotel on top of the +mountain, and Tom felt that Ardea would understand if he could find and +tell her. There are times when one must find a sympathetic ear, or be +rent and torn by the pent-up things within. + +In one sense the sympathy quest was a devitalizing failure. When he +reached the summit of the mountain, hot and tired and dusty, the mere +sight of the great hotel, with its thronged verandas and its +overpowering air of grandeur and exclusiveness, quenched all desires +save that which prompted a hasty retreat. The sectarian school paid as +little attention to the social as to the athletic side of its youth; and +Tom Gordon at fifteen past was as helpless conventionally as if he had +never set foot outside of Paradise. + +But at the retractive moment he ran plump into the Major, stalking +grandly along the tile-paved walk and smoking a war-time cheroot of +preposterous length. The despot of Paradise, despot now only by courtesy +of the triumphant genius of modernity, put on his eye-glasses and stared +Thomas into respectful rigidity. + +"Why, bless my soul!--if it isn't Captain Gordon's boy! Well, well, you +young limb! If you didn't faveh youh good fatheh in eve'y line and +lineament of youh face, I should neveh have known you--you've grown so. +Shake hands, suh!" + +Tom did it awkwardly. It is a gift to be able to shake hands easily; a +gift withheld from most girls and all boys up to the soulful age. But +there was worse to follow. Ardea was somewhere on the peopled verandas, +and the Major, more terrible in his hospitality than he had ever +appeared in the old-time rage-fits, dragged his hapless victim up and +down and around and about in search of her. "Not say 'Howdy' to Ardea? +Why, you young cub, where are youh mannehs, suh?" Thus the Major, when +the victim would have broken away. + +It was a fiery trial for Tom--a way-picking among red-hot plowshares of +embarrassment. How the well-bred folk smiled, and the grand ladies drew +their immaculate skirts aside to make passing-room for his dusty feet! +How one of them wondered, quite audibly, where in the world Major Dabney +had unearthed that young native! Tom was conscious of every fleck of +dust on his clothes and shoes; of the skilless knot in his necktie; of +the school-desk droop in his shoulders; of the utter superfluousness of +his big hands. + +And when, at the long last, Ardea was discovered sitting beside a +gorgeously-attired Queen of Sheba, who also smiled and examined him +minutely through a pair of eye-glasses fastened on the end of a +gold-mounted stick, the place of torment, wherever and whatever it might +be, held no deeper pit for him. What he had climbed the mountain to find +was a little girl in a school frock, who had sat on the yellowing grass +with one arm around the neck of a great dog, looking fearlessly up at +him and telling him she was sorry he was going away. What he had found +was a very statuesque little lady, clad in fluffy summer white, with the +other Ardea's slate-blue eyes and soft voice, to be sure, but with no +other reminder of the lost avatar. + +From first to last, from the moment she made room for him, dusty clothes +and all, on the settee between herself and the Queen of Sheba, Tom was +conscious of but one clearly-defined thought--an overmastering desire to +get away--to be free at any cost. But the way of escape would not +disclose itself, so he sat in stammering misery, answering Ardea's +questions about the sectarian school in bluntest monosyllables, and +hearing with his other ear a terrible Major tell the Queen of Sheba all +about the railroad invasion, and how he--Tom Gordon--had run to find a +punk match to fire a cannon in the Dabney cause. + +All of which was bad enough, but the torture rack had still another turn +left in its screw. After he had sat for awkward hours, as it seemed, +though minutes would have measured it, there was a stir on the veranda +and he became vaguely conscious of an impending catastrophe. + +"Grandpa is telling you you must stay to luncheon with us," prompted +Ardea. "Will you take me in?" + +The Major had already given his arm to the Queen of Sheba, and there was +no help for the helpless. Tom crooked his arm as stiffly as possible and +said "May I?"--which was an inspiration--and they got to the great +dining-room with no worse mishap than a collision at the door brought +about by his stepping on the train of one of the grand ladies. + +But at luncheon his troubles began afresh; or rather, a new and more +agonizing set of them took the field. The fourth seat at the small table +was occupied by the lady with the stick eye-glasses, and Tom was made +aware that she was a Dabney cousin once removed. Thereupon, what little +dexterity was left in him fled away, and the table-trial, under the +smiling eyes of a Miss Euphrasia, became a chapter of horrors. + +From absently picking and choosing among the forks, and trying to drink +his bouillon out of the cup in which it was served, to upsetting his +glass of iced tea, he stumbled on in a dream of awkwardness; and when, +to cover the tea mishap, Ardea, emulating the lady hostess who broke one +of her priceless tea-cups at a similar crisis, promptly overturned her +own glass, he was unreasonable enough to be angry. + +Taking it all in all, anger was coming to be the one constant quantity +in the procession of varying emotions. By what right did this hollow, +insincere, mocking world, of whose very existence he had been in utter +ignorance, make him a butt for its well-bred sneers? Its fashions and +fripperies and meaningless forms were not beyond learning; and, by +Heaven! he would learn them, too, and put them all to shame. They should +see! + +And Ardea: was she laughing at him, too, in the depths of her big, +beautiful eyes? No, that was too much; he would never believe that. But +she was insincere, like the rest of them. It was acting a lie for her to +make-believe clumsiness just to keep the others from laughing at him. +She must stand with her kind. + +From that station to the top of the high, bare crag of righteous +condemnation was but a short stage in the wrathful journey; and while he +was choking over the meal of strange dishes the zealous under-thought +was reaching out into the future. + +Some day, when his tongue should be loosed, he would stand before this +mocking, smiling, heathenish world with the open Bible in his hand; then +it should be taught what it needed to know--that while it was saying it +was rich, and increased with goods, and had need of nothing, it was +wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. + +So it came about that it was the convert of Little Zoar, and not the +self-pitying youth searching for his lost boyhood, who escaped finally +from the entanglements of Major Dabney's hospitality. + +On the way down the cliff path the fire burned and the revival zeal was +kindled anew. There had been times, in the last year, especially, when +he had thought coldly of the disciple's calling and was minded to break +away and be a skilled craftsman, like his father. Now he was aghast to +think that he had ever been so near the brink of apostasy. With the +river of the Water of Life springing crystal clear at his feet, should +he turn away and drink from the bitter pools in the wilderness of this +world? With prophetic eye he saw himself as another Boanerges, lifting, +with all the inspiring eloquence of the son of thunder, the Baptist's +soul-shaking cry, _Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand_! + +The thought thrilled him, and the fierce glow of enthusiasm became an +intoxicating ecstasy. The tinkling drip of falling water broke into the +noonday silence of the forest like the low-voiced call of a sacred bell. +For the first time since leaving the mountain top he took note of his +surroundings. He was standing beside the great, cubical boulder under +the cedars--the high altar in nature's mountain tabernacle. + +Ah, Martha Gordon, mother of many prayers, look now, if you can, but not +too closely or too long! Is it merely the boy you have molded and +fashioned, or is it the convinced and consecrated evangelist of the +future, who falls on his knees beside the great rock, with head bent and +fingers tightly interlocked, groping desperately for words in which to +rededicate himself to the God of your fathers? + +Thomas Jefferson had the deep peace of the fully committed when he rose +from his knees and went to drink at the spouting rock lip. It was +decided now, this thing he had been holding half-heartedly in abeyance. +There would be no more dallying with temptation, no more rebellion, no +more irreverent stumblings in the dark valley of doubtful questions. +More especially, he would be vigilant to guard against those +backslidings that came so swiftly on the heels of each spiritual +quickening. His heart was fixed, so irrevocably, so surely, that he +could almost wish that Satan would try him there and then. But the enemy +of souls was nowhere to be seen in the leafy arches of the wood, and Tom +bent again to take a second draft at the spouting rock lip. + + + + +XII + +THE IRON IN THE FORGE FIRE + + +He was bending over the sunken barrel. A shadow, not his own, blurred +the water mirror. He looked up quickly. + +"Nan!" he cried. + +She was standing on the opposite side of the barrel basin, looking down +on him with good-natured mockery in the dark eyes. + +"I 'lowed maybe you wouldn't have such a back load of religion after +you'd been off to the school a spell," she said pointedly. And then: +"Does it always make you right dry an' thirsty to say your prayers, +Tommy-Jeffy?" + +Tom sat back on his heels and regarded her thoughtfully. His first +impulse was out of the natural heart, rageful, wounded vanity spurring +it on. It was like her heathenish impertinence to look on at such a +time, and then to taunt him about it afterward. + +But slowly as he looked a curious change came over him. She was the same +Nan Bryerson, bareheaded, barelegged, with the same tousled mat of dark +hair, and the same childish indifference to a whole frock. And yet she +was not the same. The subtle difference, whatever it was, made him get +up and offer to shake hands with her,--and he thought it was the +newly-made vows constraining him, and took credit therefor. + +"You can revile me as much as you like now, Nan," he said, with prideful +humility. "You can't make me mad any more, like you used to." + +"Why can't I?" she demanded. + +"Because I'm older now, and--and better, I hope. I shall never forget +that you have a precious soul to save." + +Her response to this was a scoffing laugh, shrill and challenging. Yet +he could not help thinking that it made her look prettier than before. + +"You can laugh as much as you want to; but I mean it," he insisted. +"And, besides, Nan,--of all the things that I've been wanting to come +back to, you're the only one that isn't changed." And again he thought +it was righteous guile that was making him kind to her. + +In a twinkling the mocking hardness went out of her eyes and she leaned +across the barrel mouth and touched his hand. + +"D'you reckon you shorely mean that, Tom Gordon?" she said; and the lips +which lent themselves so easily to scorn were tremulous. She was just +his age, and womanhood was only a step across the threshold for her. + +"Of course, I do. Let me carry your bucket for you." + +She had hung the little wooden piggin under the drip of the spring and +it was full and running over. But when he had lifted it out for her, she +rinsed and emptied it. + +"I just set it there to cool some," she explained. "I'm goin' up to +Sunday Rock afte' huckleberries. Come and go 'long with me, Tom." + +He assented with a willingness as eager as it was unaccountable. If she +had asked him to do a much less reasonable thing, he was not sure that +he could have refused. + +And as they went together through the wood, spicy with the June +fragrances, questions like those of the boyhood time thronged on him, +and he welcomed them as a return of at least one of the vanished +thrills--and was grateful to her. + +Why had he never before noticed that she was so much prettier than any +other girl he had ever seen? What was there in the touch of her hand to +make him feel like the iron in the forge fire--warm and glowing and +putty-soft and yielding? Other girls were not that way. Only a half-hour +since, Ardea Dabney had put her hand in his when she had said good-by, +and that feeling was the kind you have when you have climbed through +breathless summer woods to a high mountain top and the cool breeze blows +through your hair and makes you quietly glad and lifted-up and +satisfied. + +These were questions to be buried deep in the secret places, and yet he +had a curious eagerness to talk to Nan about them; to find out if she +could understand. But he could not get near to any serious or +confidential side of her. Her mood was playful, hilarious, daring. Once +she ran squirrel-like out on the bole of a great tree leaning to its +fall over the cliff, hung her piggin on a broken limb, and told him he +must go after it. Next it was a squeeze through some "fat-man's-misery" +crevice in the water-worn sandstone, with a cry to him to come on if he +were not a girl-boy. And when they were fairly under the overhanging +cliff face of Sunday Rock, she darted away, laughing back at him over +her shoulder, and daring him to follow her along a dizzy shelf half-way +up the crag; a narrow ledge, perilous for a mountain goat. + +This, as he remembered later, was the turning-point in her mood. In +imagination he saw her try it and fail; saw her lithe, shapely beauty +lying broken and mangled at the cliff's foot; and in three bounds he had +her fast locked in his restraining arms. She strove with him at first, +like a wrestling boy, laughing and taunting him with being afraid for +himself. Then-- + +Tom Gordon, clean-hearted as yet, did not know precisely what happened. +Suddenly she stopped struggling and lay panting in his arms, and quite +as suddenly he released her. + +"Nan!" he said, in a swiftly submerging wave of tenderness, "I didn't go +to hurt you!" + +She sank down on a stone at his feet and covered her face with her +hands. But she was up again and turning from him with eyes downcast +before he could comfort her. + +"I ain't hurt none," she said gravely. And then: "I reckon we'd better +be gettin' them berries. It looks like it might shower some; and paw'll +kill me if I ain't home time to get his supper." + +Here was an end of the playtime, and Tom helped industriously with the +berry-picking, wondering the while why she kept her face turned from +him, and why his brain was in such a turmoil, and why his hands shook so +if they happened to touch hers in reaching for the piggin. + +But this new mood of hers was more unapproachable than the other; and it +was not until the piggin was filled and they had begun to retrace their +steps together through the fragrant wood, that she let him see her eyes +again, and told him soberly of her troubles: how she was fifteen and +could neither read nor write; how the workmen's children in Gordonia +hooted at her and called her a mountain cracker when she went down to +buy meal or to fill the molasses jug; and, lastly, how, since her mother +had died, her father had worked little and drunk much, till at times +there was nothing to eat save the potatoes she raised in the little +patch back of the cabin, and the berries she picked on the mountain +side. + +"I hain't never told anybody afore, and you mustn't tell, Tom. But times +I'm scared paw 'll up and kill me when--when he ain't feelin' just +right. He's some good to me when he ain't red-eyed; but that ain't very +often, nowadays." + +Tom's heart swelled within him; and this time it was not the heart of +the Pharisee. There is no lure known to the man part of the race that is +half so potent as the tale of a woman in trouble. + +"Does--does he beat you, Nan?" he asked; and there was wrathful horror +in his voice. + +For answer she bent her head and parted the thick black locks over a +long scar. + +"That's where he give me one with the skillet, a year come Christmas. +And this,"--opening her frock to show him a black-and-blue bruise on her +breast,--"is what I got only day afore yisterday." + +Tom was burning with indignant compassion, and bursting because he could +think of no adequate way of expressing it. In all his fifteen years no +one had ever leaned on him before, and the sense of protectorship over +this abused one budded and bloomed like a juggler's rose. + +"I wish I could take you home with me, Nan," he said simply. + +There was age-old wisdom in the dark eyes when they were lifted to his. + +"No, you don't," she said firmly. "Your mammy would call me a little +heathen, same as she used to; and I reckon that's what I am--I hain't +had no chanst to be anything else. And you're goin' to be a preacher, +Tom." + +Why did it rouse a dull anger in his heart to be thus reminded of his +own scarce-cooled pledge made on his knees under the shadowing cedars? +He could not tell; but the fact remained. + +"You hear me, Nan; I'm going to take care of you when I'm able. No +matter what happens, I'm going to take care of you," was what he said; +and a low rumbling of thunder and a spattering of rain on the leaves +punctuated the promise. + +She looked away and was silent. Then, when the rain began to come +faster: "Let's run, Tom. I don't mind gettin' wet; but you mustn't." + +They reached the great rock sheltering the barrel-spring before the +shower broke in earnest, and Tom led the way to the right. Half-way up +its southern face the big boulder held a water-worn cavity, round, and +deeply hollowed, and carpeted with cedar needles. Tom climbed in first +and gave her a hand from the mouth of the little cavern. When she was up +and in, there was room in the nest-like hollow, but none to spare. And +on the instant the summer shower shut down upon the mountain side and +closed the cave mouth as with a thick curtain. + +There was no speech in that little interval of cloud-lowering and +cloud-lifting. The boy tried for it, would have taken up the confidences +where the storm-coming had broken them off; but it was blankly +impossible. All the curious thrills foregone seemed to culminate now in +a single burning desire: to have it rain for ever, that he might nestle +there in the hollow of the great rock with Nan so close to him that he +could feel the warmth of her body and the quick beating of her heart +against his arm. + +Yet the sleeping conscience did not stir. The moment of recognition was +withheld even when the cloud curtain began to lift and he could see the +long lashes drooped over the dark eyes, and the flush in the brown cheek +matching his own. + +"Nan!" he whispered, catching his breath; "you're--you're the--" + +She slipped away from him before he could find the word, and a moment +later she was calling to him from below that the rain was over and she +must hurry. + +He walked beside her to the door of the miserable log shack under the +second cliff, still strangely shaken, but striving manfully to be +himself again. The needed fillip came when the mountaineer staggered to +the threshold to swear thickly at his daughter. In times past, Tom would +quickly have put distance between himself and Tike Bryerson in the +squirrel-eyed stage of intoxication. But now his promise to Nan was +behind him, and the Gordon blood was to the fore. + +"It was my fault that Nan stayed so long," he said bravely; and he was +immensely relieved when Bryerson, making quite sure of his identity, +became effusively hospitable. + +"Cap'n Gordon's boy--'f cou'se; didn't make out to know ye, 't firs'. +Come awn in the house an' sit a spell; come in, I say!" + +Again, for Nan's sake, Tom could do no less. It was the final plunge. +The boy was come of abstinent stock, which was possibly the reason why +the smell of the raw corn liquor with which the cabin reeked gripped him +so fiercely. Be that as it may, he could make but a feeble resistance +when the tipsy mountaineer pressed him to drink; and the slight barrier +went down altogether when he saw the appealing look in Nan's eyes. +Straightway he divined that there would be consequences for her when he +was gone if the maudlin devil should be aroused in her father. + +So he put the tin cup to his lips and coughed and strangled over a +single swallow of the fiery, nauseating stuff; did this for the girl's +sake, and then rose and fled away down the mountain with his heart +ablaze and a fearful clamor as of the judgment trumpet sounding in his +ears. + +For now the sleeping conscience was broad awake and plying its merciless +dagger; now, indeed, he knew very well what he had done--what he had +been doing since that fatal moment at the barrel-spring when he had +fallen under the spell of Nan Bryerson's beauty; nay, back of that--how +the up-bubbling of zeal had been nothing more than wounded vanity; the +smoke of a vengeful fire of anger lighted by a desire to strike back at +those who had laughed at him. + +The next morning he came hollow-eyed to his breakfast, and when the +chance offered, besought his father to give him one of the many boy's +jobs in the iron plant during the summer vacation--asked and obtained. + +And neither the hotel on the mountain top nor the hovel cabin under the +second cliff saw him more the long summer through. + + + + +XIII + +A SISTER OF CHARITY + + +It was just before the Christmas holidays, in his fourth year of the +sectarian school, that Tom Gordon was expelled. + +Writing to the Reverend Silas at the moment of Tom's dismissal, the +principal could voice only his regret and disappointment. It was a most +singular case. During his first and second years Thomas had set a high +mark and had attained to it. On the spiritual side he had been somewhat +non-committal, to be sure, but to offset this, he had been deeply +interested in the preparatory theological studies, or at least he had +appeared to be. + +But on his return from his first summer spent at home there was a marked +change in him, due, so thought Doctor Tollivar, to his association with +the rougher class of workmen in the iron mills. It was as if he had +suddenly grown older and harder, and the discipline of the school, +admirable as the Reverend Silas knew it to be, was not severe enough to +reform him. + +"It grieves me more than I can tell you, my dear brother, to be obliged +to confess that we can do nothing more for him here," was the concluding +paragraph of the principal's letter, "and to add that his continued +presence with us is a menace to the morals of the school. When I say +that the offense for which he is expelled is by no means the first, and +that it is the double one of gambling and keeping intoxicating liquors +in his room, you will understand that the good repute of Beersheba was +at stake, and there was no other course open to us." + +It was as well, perhaps, for what remained of Tom's peace of mind that +he knew nothing of this letter at the time of its writing. The long day +had been sufficiently soul-harrowing and humiliating. Since the morning +exercises, when he had been publicly degraded by having his sentence +read out to the entire school, he had spent the time in his room, +watched, if not guarded, by some one of the assistants. And now he was +to be shipped off on the night train like a criminal, with no chance for +a word of leave-taking, however much he might desire it. + +He was tramping up and down with his hands in his pockets, the Gordon +scowl making him look like a young thunder-cloud, when one of the +preceptors came to drive with him to the railroad station. It was the +final indignity, and he resented it bitterly. + +"I can make out to find my way down to the train without troubling you, +Mr. Martin," he burst out in boyish anger. + +"Doubtless," said the preceptor, quite unmoved. "But we are still +responsible for you. Doctor Tollivar wishes me to see you safely aboard +your train, and I shall certainly do so. Take the side stairway down, if +you please." + +The principal's buggy was waiting at the gate, and the preceptor drove. +Tom sat back under the hood with his overcoat across his knees. The +evening was freezing cold, with an edged wind, and the drive to the +station was a hilly mile. If it had been ten miles he would not have +moved or opened his lips. + +As it chanced, there were no other passengers for the train, which was a +through south-bound express. Tom was meaning to sit up all night and +think; and the most comfortless seat in the smoking-car would answer. +There would be the meeting with his father and mother in the morning, +and he thought he should not dare to let sleep come between. He had a +firm grip of himself now, and it must not be relaxed until that meeting +was over. + +But the preceptor had already stepped to the ticket window. "That +sleeping-car reservation for Thomas Gordon--have you secured it?" he +asked of the agent; and Tom heard the reply: "Lower ten in car number +two." That disposed of the seat in the smoker and the bit of penance, +and he was unreasonable enough to be resentful for favors. + +Hence, when the train came to a stand beside the platform, he went +straight to the Pullman, ignoring his keeper. But the preceptor followed +him to the car step, held out his hand coldly, and said: "I'm sorry for +you, Gordon. Good-by." + +Tom drew himself up stiffly, overlooking the extended hand. + +"'Good-by'--that is 'God be with you,' isn't it, Mr. Martin? I reckon +you don't mean that. Good night." And this is the way Thomas Jefferson +turned his back on three and a half years of Beersheba, with hot tears +in his eyes and an angry word on his lips. + +The Pintsch lights were burning brightly in the Pullman, and these--and +the tears--blinded him. Some of the sections in the middle of the car +were made down for the night, and while he was stumbling in the wake of +the porter over the shoes and the hand-bags left in the aisle, the train +started. + +"Lower ten, sah," said the black boy, and went about his business in the +linen locker. But Tom stood balancing himself with the swaying of the +car and staring helplessly at the occupant of lower twelve, a young girl +in a gray traveling coat and hat, sitting with her face to the window. + +"Why, you--somebody!" she exclaimed, turning to surprise him in the act +of glowering down on her. "Do you know, I thought there might be just +one chance in a thousand that you'd go home for Christmas, so I made the +porter tell me when we were coming to Beersheba. Why don't you sit +down?" + +Tom edged into the opposite seat and shook hands with her, all in +miserable, comfortless silence. Then he blurted out: + +"If I'd had any idea you were on this train, I'd have walked." + +Ardea laughed, and for all his misery he could not help remarking how +much sweeter the low voice was growing, and how much clearer the blue of +her eyes was under the forced light of the gas-globes. He had seen her +only two or three times since that blush-kindling noon at Crestcliffe +Inn. Their Paradise goings and comings had not coincided very evenly. + +"You are just the same rude boy, aren't you?" she said leniently. "Are +there no girls in Beersheba to teach you how to be nice?" + +"I didn't mean it that way," he hastened to say. "I'm always saying the +wrong thing to you. But if you only knew, you wouldn't speak to me; much +less let me sit here and talk to you." + +"If I only knew what? Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge +for myself," she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the +memory whip to make him feel again that she was immeasurably his senior. + +"I'm expelled," he said bluntly. + +"Oh!" For a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out +of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady +drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When +it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand +again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and the slate-blue +eyes confirmed it. + +Tom hung his head, just as he had in the trying interview with Doctor +Tollivar. But he told her a great deal more than he had told the +principal. + +"It was this way: three of the boys came to my room to play +cards--because their rooms were watched. I didn't want to play--oh, I'm +none too good;"--this in answer to something in her eyes that made him +eager to tell her the exact truth--"I've done it lots of times. But that +night I'd been thinking--well, I just didn't want to, that's all. Then +they said I was afraid, and of course, that settled it." + +"Of course," she agreed loyally. + +"Wait; I want you to know it all," he went on doggedly. "When +Martin--he's the Greek and Latin, you know--slipped up on us, there was +a bottle of whisky on the table. He took down our names, and then he +pointed at the bottle, and said, 'Which one of you does that belong +to?' Nobody said anything, and after it began to get sort of--well, kind +of monotonous, I picked up the bottle and offered him a drink, and put +it in my pocket. That settled _me_." + +"But it wasn't yours," she averred. + +His smile was a rather ferocious grin. "Wasn't it? Well, I took it, +anyway; and I've got it yet. Now see here: that's my berth over there +and I'm going over to it. You needn't let on like you know me any more." + +"Fiddle!" she said, making a face at him. "You say that like a little +boy trying, oh, so hard, to be a man. I'll believe you are just as bad +as bad can be, if you want me to; but you mustn't be rude to me. We +don't play cards or drink things at Carroll College, but some of us have +brothers, and--well, we can't help knowing." + +Tom was soberly silent for the space of half a hundred rail-lengths. +Then he said: "I wish I'd had a sister; maybe it would have been +different." + +She shook her head. + +"No, indeed, it wouldn't. You're going to be just what you are going to +be, and a dozen sisters wouldn't make any difference." + +"One like you would make a lot of difference." It made him blush and +have a slight return of the largeness of hands; but he said it. + +She laughed. "That's nice. You couldn't begin to say anything like that +the day you came up to Crestcliffe Inn. But I mean what I say. Sisters +wouldn't help you to be good, unless you really wanted to be good +yourself. They're just comfortable persons to have around when you are +taking your whipping for being naughty." + +"Well, that's a good deal, isn't it?" + +Again she made the adorable little face at him. "Do you want me to be +your sister for a little while--till you get out of this scrape? Is that +what you are trying to say?" + +He took heart of grace, for the first time in three bad days. "Say, +Ardea; I'm hunting for sympathy; just as I used to a long time ago. But +you mustn't mix up with me. I'm not worth it." + +"Oh, I suppose not; no boy is. But tell me; what are you going to do +when you get back to Paradise?" + +"Why--I don't know; I haven't thought that far ahead; go to work in the +iron plant and be a mucker all the rest of my life, I reckon." + +"How silly! You are nearly eighteen, now, aren't you?--and about six +feet tall?" + +"Both," he said briefly. + +"And all the way along you've been meaning to be a minister?" + +He gritted his teeth. "That's all over, now; I reckon it's been over for +a long time." + +"That is more serious. Does your mother know?" + +He shook his head. + +"She mustn't, Tom; it will just break her heart." + +"As if I didn't know!" he said bitterly. "But, Ardea, I haven't been +quite square with you. The way I told it about the cards and the whisky +you might think--" + +"I know what you are going to say. But it needn't make any all-the-time +difference, need it? You've been backsliding--isn't that what you call +it?--but now you are sorry, and--" + +"No; that's the worst of it. I'm not sorry, the way I ought to be. +Besides, after what I've been these last two years--but you can't +understand; it would just be mockery--mocking God. I told you I wasn't +worth your while." + +She smiled gravely. "You are such a boy, Tom. Don't you know that all +through life you'll have two kinds of friends: those who will stand by +you because they won't believe anything bad about you, and those who +will take you for just what you are and still stand by you?" + +He scowled thoughtfully at her. "Say, Ardea; I'd just like to know how +old you are, anyhow! You say things every once in a while that make me +feel as if I were a little kid in knee-breeches." + +She laughed in his face. "That is the rudest thing you've said yet! But +I don't mind telling you--since I'm to be your sister. I'll be seventeen +a little while after you're eighteen." + +"Haven't you ever been foolish, like other girls?" he asked. + +She laughed again, more heartily than ever. "They say I'm the silliest +tomboy in our house, at Carroll. But I have my lucid intervals, I +suppose, like other people, and this is one of them. I am going to stand +by you to-morrow morning, when you have to tell your father and +mother--that is, if you want me to." + +His gratitude was too large for speech, but he tried to look it. Then +the porter came to make her section down, and he had to say good night +and vanish. + + + + +XIV + +ON JORDAN'S BANK + + +Ardea saw cause for increasing satisfaction in Thomas Jefferson the next +morning, when they sat together in section nine to give the porter a +chance to rehabilitate ten and twelve. + +He had grown so much surer of himself in the two years, and his manners +were gratefully improved. Also, she was constrained to admit--frank +glances of the slate-blue eyes appraising him--that he was developing +hopefully in the matter of good looks. The dust-colored hair of boyhood +had become a sort of viking yellow, and the gray eyes, so they should +not be overcast by trouble shadows, were honest and fearless. + +Then, too, the Gordon jaw was beginning to assert itself--square in the +angle and broad at the point of the chin, with a deep cleft to mark its +center. Ardea thought it would not be well, later on, for those who +should find that jaw and chin opposing them. There would certainly be +stubborn and aggressive resistance--and none too much mercy when the +fight should end. + +The improved manners were pleasantly apparent when the train reached +South Tredegar. There were twenty minutes for breakfast, and Tom +bestirred himself manfully, and as if the awkward day at Crestcliffe Inn +had never been; helping Ardea with her coat, steering her masterfully +through the crowd, choosing the fortunate seats at the most convenient +table, and commanding the readiest service in spite of the hurry and +bustle. + +Ardea marked it all with a little thrill of vicarious triumph, which was +straightway followed by a little pang personal. What had wrought the +change in him? Was it merely the natural chivalry of the coming man +breaking through the crust of boyish indifference to the social +conventions? Or was it one of the effects of the late plunge into +rebellious wickedness? + +She hoped it was the chivalry, but she had a vague fear that it was the +wickedness. There was a young woman among the seniors in Carroll College +who was old in a certain brilliant hardness of mind--a young woman with +a cynical outlook on life, and who was not always regardful of her +seed-sowing in fresher hearts. Ardea remembered a saying of hers, flung +out one evening in the college parlors when the talk of her group had +turned on the goodness of good boys: "Why can't you be sincere with +yourselves? Not one of you has any use for the truly good boy until +after he has learned how to respect you by being a bad boy. You haven't +been saying it in so many words, perhaps, but that is the crude fact." +Was this the secret of Tom's new acceptability? Ardea hoped it was +not--and feared lest it might be. + +When they were once more in the train, and the mile-long labyrinth of +the factory chimneys had been threaded and left behind, Thomas Jefferson +gave proof of another and still more gratifying change. + +"Say, Ardea," he began, "you said last night that you'd stand by me in +what I've got to face this morning. That's all right; and I reckon I'll +never live long enough to even it up with you. But, of course, you know +I'm not going to let you do it." + +"Why not?" she asked. + +"Because I'm not mean enough, or coward enough. After a while, if you +get a chance to sort of make it easier for mother--" + +"I'll do that, if I can," she promised quickly. "But I hope you are not +going to break her heart, Tom." + +"You can be mighty sure I'm not; if anything I can do now will help it. +But--but, say, Ardea, I can't go back and begin all over again. I should +be the meanest, low-down thing in all this world--and that's a +hypocrite." + +"Oh!" said Ardea, catching her breath. Her religion was very much a +matter of fact to her, and the thought of Tom--Martha Gordon's +son--stumbling in the plain path of belief was dismaying. "Why would you +have to be a hypocrite? Do you mean that you are not sure you ought to +be a minister?" + +"I mean that I don't know any more what I believe and what I don't +believe. I feel as if I'd just like to let myself alone on that side for +a while, and make everybody else let me alone. It seems--but you don't +know; a girl can't know." + +She smiled up at him, and the smile effaced some of the trouble furrows +between his eyes. + +"Last night you were telling me that I seemed ages older than you; what +is it that I can't know?" + +"Stumpings like mine,--a man's stumpings," he said, with a touch of the +old self-assurance. "You've swallowed your religion whole; it's the best +thing for a girl to do, I reckon. But I've got to have whys and +wherefores; I've always had to have them. And there are no wherefores in +religion; just none whatever." + +She was plainly shocked. "O Tom!" she urged; "think of your mother!" + +"Thinking of her isn't going to change the value of pi any," he rejoined +soberly. "I suppose I've thought of her, and of what she wants me to be, +ever since the first day I went to Beersheba. The first two years I +tried, honestly tried. But it's no use. It appears like we've got so far +away from taw that we can't even see what-all we're aiming at. I've been +grinding theology till I'm fairly sick of the word, and I've learned +just one thing, Ardea, and that is that you can't prove a single theorem +in it." + +"But there are some things that don't appear to need any proof; one +seems to have been born knowing them. Don't you feel that way?" + +He shook his head slowly. + +"I used to think I did; but now I'm afraid I don't. I can't remember the +time when I wasn't asking why. Don't they teach you to ask why at +Carroll?" + +"Not in matters of--of conscience." + +"Well, they don't at Beersheba, when you come right down to it. And when +you do ask, they put you off with a text out of the Bible that, just as +like as not, doesn't come within a row of apple-trees of hitting the +mark. I remember one time I said something about the 'why' to Doctor +Tollivar. He sniffled--he _does_ sniffle, Ardea--and said: 'Mr. Gordon, +I recommend that you read what Paul says to the Romans, fourteen and +twenty-three: "He that doubteth is damned." And you will note the verb +in the original--_is damned_, present tense.' Do you happen to remember +the verse?" + +Ardea confessed ignorance, and he went on, with a lip-curl of contempt. + +"Well, the whole chapter is about being careful for the weak brother. +The Romans used to eat the flesh of the animals offered in the +sacrifices to the gods, and some of the Christian Romans didn't seem to +be strong enough or sensible enough to eat it as just plain, every-day +meat. They tangled it up with the idol worship. So Paul, or whoever it +was that wrote the chapter, said: 'He that doubteth is damned if he eat, +because he eateth not of faith,' that is, the Christian faith, I +suppose, which would teach him that the meat wasn't any the worse for +having been offered to a block of wood or stone called a god. Now, +honestly, Ardea, what would you think of a teacher who would +deliberately cut a verse in two in the middle and make his half of it +mean something else, just to put a fellow down?" + +"It doesn't seem quite honest," she could not help admitting. + +"Honest! It's low-down trickery. And they all do it. Last year when I +was going up to Beersheba I happened to sit in the same seat with a +Catholic priest. We got to talking, I don't remember just how, and I +said something about doubting the Pope's infallibility. Out pops the +same old text: 'My son, hear the words of the holy Apostle, Saint +Paul--" He that doubteth is damned!"' He was old enough to be my father, +but I couldn't help slapping the other half of the verse at him, and +saying that we'd most luckily escape because there wasn't any +dinner-stop for our train." + +The flippant tone of all this disheartened Thomas Jefferson's listener, +and a silence succeeded which lasted until the train had stormed around +the nose of Lebanon and the whistle was blowing for Gordonia. Then Tom +said: "I didn't mean to hurt you; but now you see why I can't go back +and begin all over again." And she nodded assent. + +There was no one at the station to meet the disgraced one, news of the +disaster at Beersheba being as yet only on the way. Thomas Jefferson was +rather glad of it; especially glad that there was no one from +Woodlawn--this was the name of the new home--to recognize him and ask +discomforting questions. But Ardea was expected, and the Dabney +carriage, with old Scipio on the box, was drawn up beside the platform. + +Tom put Ardea into the carriage and was giving her hand luggage to +Scipio when she called to him. + +"Isn't there any one here to meet you, Tom?" + +"They don't know I'm coming," he explained. Whereupon she quickly made +room for him, holding the door open. But he hung back. + +"I reckon I'd better ride on the box with Unc' Scipio," he suggested. + +"I am sure I don't know why you should," she objected. + +He told her straight; or at least gave her his own view of it. + +"By to-morrow morning everybody in Gordonia and Paradise Valley will +know that I'm home in disgrace. It won't hurt Unc' Scipio any if I'm +seen riding with him." + +It was the first time that he had been given to see the Dabney +imperiousness shining star-like in Miss Ardea's slate-blue eyes. + +"I wish you to get your hand-bag and ride in here with me," she said, +with the air of one whose wish was law. But when he was sitting opposite +and the carriage door was shut, she smiled companionably across at him +and added: "You foolish boy!" + +"It wasn't foolish," he maintained doggedly. "I know what I ought to +do--and I'm not doing it. Everybody around here knows both of us, and--" + +"Hush!" she commanded. "I refuse to hear another word. I said you were a +foolish boy, and it will be inexcusably impolite in you to prove that +you are not." + +Tom was glad enough to be silent; and it came to him, after a little, +that she was giving him a chance to pull himself together to meet the +ordeal that was before him. In all the misery of the moment--the misery +which belongs to those who ride to the block, the gallows or other +mortal finalities--he marveled that she could be a girl and still be so +thoughtful and far-seeing; and once again it made him feel young and +inadequate and awkwardly her inferior. + +At the Woodlawn gates she pulled the old-fashioned, check-strap signal, +and Scipio reined in his horses. + +"Are you quite sure you don't want me to go in with you?" she asked, +while Tom was fumbling the door-latch. + +He nodded and said: "There'll be trouble enough to go around among as +many as can crowd in, all right. But I can't let you." + +"Still, you won't say you don't want me?" + +"No; lying isn't one of the things I was expelled for. When I stand up +to my mother to tell her what I've got to tell her, I'd be glad if there +was a little fise-dog sniffling around to back me up. But I'm not going +to call in the neighbors--you, least of all." + +"You are disappointing me right along--and I'm rather glad," she said. +And then, almost wistfully: "You are going to be good, aren't you, Tom?" + +His look was so sober that it was well-nigh sullen. "I'm going to say +what I've got to say, and then hold my tongue if I have to bite it," he +answered. "Good-by; and--and a Merry Christmas, and--thank you." + +He shut the carriage door and gave Scipio the word to go on; and +afterward stood at the gate looking after the great lumbering ark on +wheels until it turned in at the Deer Trace driveway and was lost in the +winding avenue of thick-set evergreens. Then he let himself in at the +home gate, walking leaden-footed toward the ornate house at the top of +the knoll and wishing the distance were ten times as great. + +When he reached the house there was an ominous air of quiet about it, +and a horse and buggy, with a black boy holding the reins, stood before +the door. Tom's heart came into his mouth. The turnout was Doctor +Williams's. + +"Who's sick?" he asked of the boy who was holding the doctor's horse, +and his tongue was thick with a nameless fear. + +The black boy did not know; and Tom crept up the steps and let himself +in as one enters a house of mourning, breaking down completely when he +saw his father sitting bowed on the hall seat. + +"You, Buddy?--I'm mighty glad," said the man; and when he held out his +arms the boy flung himself on his knees beside the seat and buried his +face in the cushions. + +"Is she--is she going to die?" he asked; when the dreadful words could +be found and spoken. + +"We're hoping for the best, Buddy, son. It's some sort of a stroke, the +doctor says; it took her yesterday morning, and she hasn't been herself +since. Did somebody telegraph to you?" + +Tom rocked his head on the cushion. How could he add to the blackness of +darkness by telling his miserable story of disgrace? Yet it had to be +done, and surely no hapless penitent in the confessional ever emptied +his soul with more heartfelt contrition or more bitter remorse. + +Caleb Gordon listened, with what inward condemnings one could only guess +from his silence. It was terrible! If his father would strike him, curse +him, drive him out of the house, it would be easier to bear than the +stifling silence. But when the words came finally they were as balm +poured into an angry wound. + +"There, there, Buddy; don't take on so. You're might' nigh a man, now, +and the sun's still risin' and settin' just the same as it did before +you tripped up and fell down. And it'll go on risin' and settin', too, +long after you and me and all of us have quit goin' to bed and gettin' +up by it. If it wasn't for your poor mammy--" + +"That's it--that's just it," groaned Tom. "It would kill her, even if +she was well." + +"Nev' mind; you're here now, and I reckon that's the main thing. If she +gets up again, of course she'll have to know; but we won't cross that +bridge till we come to it. And Buddy, son, whatever happens, your old +pappy ain't goin' to believe that you'll be the first Gordon to die in +the gutter. You've got better blood in you than what that calls for." + +Tom felt the lightening of his burden to some extent; but beyond was the +alternative of suffering, or causing suffering. He had never realized +until now how much he loved his mother; how large a place she had filled +in his life, and what a vast void there would be when she was gone. He +was yet too young and too self-centered to know that this is the +mother-cross: to live for love and to be crowned and enthroned oftenest +in memory. + +For days,--days which brought back the boyhood agony of the time when he +had believed himself to be Ardea's murderer,--he went softly about the +house, sharing, with his father and his uncle, the watch in the +sick-room; doing what little there was to be done in dumb hopelessness, +and beating at times on the brazen gates of Heaven in sheer despair. +There was no answer to his prayers; in his inmost soul he knew there +would not be; but even in this the eternal query assailed him. Was it +for lack of faith that no whisper of reply came from the unseen world +beyond the veil? Or was it only because there was no ear to hear, no +voice to answer? He could not tell. He made sure he was doomed to live +and die, buffeting with these submerging waves of doubt--doubt of +himself on one hand, and of God on the other. + +In that time of sore trial, his Uncle Silas's forbearance wiped out many +a score of boyish resentment. There was no word of reproach, still less +the harsh arraignment and condemnation to which he began to look forward +on the day when Doctor Tollivar had announced his purpose of writing +the facts to his brother in the faith. But Tom remarked that in the +daily morning and evening prayers his uncle spoke of him as a soul in +peril, and he wondered that this pointed reference, which once would +have stirred the pool of bitterness to its bottom, now left him unmoved +and immovable. Later, he knew it was because there was now no pool of +bitterness to be stirred; the spiritual well-springs had failed and +there was no water in them--either for healing or for penitential +cleansing. + +The fifth day after his home-coming was Christmas Eve. Late in the +afternoon, when the doctor had made his second visit and had gone away, +leaving no word of encouragement for the watchers, Tom left the house +and took the path that led up through the young orchard to the foot of +Lebanon. + +He was deep within the winter-stripped forest on the mountain side, +plunging upward through the beds of dry leaves in the little hollows, +when he met Ardea. She was coming down with her arms full of holly, and +for the moment he forgot his troubles in the keen pleasure of looking at +her. It had not occurred to him sooner to think of her as other than the +girl of his boyhood days, grown somewhat, as he himself had grown. But +now he saw that she was very beautiful. + +None the less, his greeting was a brotherly reproof. + +"I'd like to know what you're thinking of, tramping around on the +mountain alone," he said, frowning at her. + +"I have been thinking of you, most of the time, and wishing you could be +with me," she answered, so artlessly as to mollify him instantly. + +[Illustration: "I have been wishing you could be with me."] + +"I ought to row you like smoke, but when you say things like that, I +can't. Don't you know you oughtn't to go projecting around in the woods +all alone?" + +"I have always done it, haven't I? And Hector was with me till a few +minutes ago, when he took it into his foolish old head to run after a +rabbit. Is your mother any better this afternoon?" + +"Sit down," he commanded abruptly. "I want to talk to you." + +She hung the bunch of holly on the twigged limb of a small oak and sat +down on a moss-covered rock. Tom sprawled at her feet in the dry leaves, +and for a little while he was silent. + +"You haven't told me yet how your mother is," she reminded him. + +"She is just the same; lying there so still that you have to look close +to see whether she is breathing. The doctor says that if there isn't a +change pretty soon, she'll die." + +"O Tom!" + +He looked up at her with the old boyish frown pulling his eyebrows +together. + +"She's been good to God all her life; what do you reckon He's letting +her die this way for?" + +It was a terrible question, made more terrible by the savage hardihood +that lay behind it. Ardea could not reason with him; and she felt +intuitively that at this crisis only reason would appeal to him. Yet she +could not turn him away empty-handed in his hour of need. + +"How can we tell?" she said, and there were tears in her voice. "We only +know that He does everything for the best." + +"Yes; that is what they tell us. But how are we going to _know_?" he +demanded. + +The girl's faith was as simple and confiding as it was defenseless under +any fire of argument. + +"I suppose we can't know, in your sense of the word. But we can +believe." + +"_I_ can't," said Tom fiercely. "I can pretend to; I reckon I've been +pretending to all my life; but now I've got to a place where I can't +feel anything that I can't touch, nor hear anything that doesn't make a +noise, nor see anything that everybody else can't see. From what you've +said at different times, you seem to be able to do all these things. Do +you really believe?" + +"I hope I do," she answered, and her voice was low and very earnest. But +she would be altogether honest. "Perhaps you wouldn't call it 'belief +unto righteousness,' as your Uncle Silas would say. I've never thought +much about such things--in the way he says we ought to think about them. +They seem to me to be true, like the--well, like the stars and the +universe. You don't think about the universe all the time; but you know +it is there, and that you are a little, tiny fraction of it, yourself." + +But these were abstractions, and Tom's need was terribly concrete. + +"I suppose you mean you haven't been converted, and all that; never mind +about that. What I want to know is, did you ever ask God for anything +and get it?" + +"Why, yes; I ask Him for things every day, and get them. Don't you?" + +"No, not now. But are you sure the things you ask for are not things +that you'd get anyway?" he persisted. + +She was growing a little restive under the fire of relentless +questions. There are modesties in religion as in morals,--inner shrines +to be defended at any and all costs. In the Crafts part of Thomas +Jefferson's veins ran the blood of those who had fought with the sword +in one hand and the Bible in the other, stabling their horses overnight +in the enemy's churches. Ardea rose and began to untangle the great +bunch of holly. + +"I think we had better be going," she said, ignoring his clenching +question. "Cousin Euphrasia gets nervous about me, sometimes, as you +made believe you were." + +He did not look around, or make any move toward getting up. But there +was a new note of hardness in his voice when he said: "I thought you'd +have to dodge, just like all the others, if I could only make out to +throw straight enough. 'Way down deep inside of you, you don't believe +God worries Himself much about what happens to us little dry leaves in +His big woods." + +"Oh, but I do!--that is, I believe He cares. The things you spoke of are +things I might easily be deprived of; and I choose to believe that He +gives and continues them." + +He was quiet for a full minute, sitting with his knees drawn up to his +chin and his hands tightly clasped over them. When he looked up at her +his face was the face of one tormented. + +"I wish you'd ask Him to let my mother live!" he said brokenly. "I've +tried and tried, and the words just die in my mouth." + +There is a Mother of Sorrows in every womanly heart, to whom the appeal +of the stricken is never made in vain. Ardea saw only a boy-brother +crying out in his pain, and she dropped on her knees and put her arms +around his neck and wept over him in a pure transport of sisterly +sympathy. + +"Indeed and indeed I will help, Tom! And you mustn't let it drive you +out into the dark. You poor boy! I know just how it hurts, and I'm so +sorry for you!" + +He freed himself gently from the comforting arms, got up rather +unsteadily, and lifted her to her feet. Then the manly bigness of him +sent the hot blood to her cheeks and she was ashamed. + +"O Tom!" she faltered; "what must you think of me!" + +He turned to gather up the scattered holly. + +"I think God made you--and that was one time when His hand didn't +tremble," he said gravely. + +They had picked their way down the leaf-slippery mountain side and he +was giving her the bunch of holly at the Dabney orchard gate before he +spoke again. But at the moment of leave-taking he said: + +"How did you know what I needed more than anything else in all the +world, Ardea?" + +She blushed painfully and the blue eyes were downcast. + +"You must never speak of that again. I didn't stop to think. It's a +Dabney failing, I'm afraid--to do things first and consider them +afterward. It was as if we were little again, and you had fallen down +and hurt yourself." + +"I know," he acquiesced, with the same manly gentleness that had made +her ashamed. "I won't speak of it any more--and I'll never forget it the +longest day I live. Good-by." + +And he went the back way to his own orchard gate, plunging through the +leaf beds with his head down and his hands in his pockets, struggling as +he could to stem the swift current which was whirling him out beyond all +the old landmarks. For now he was made to know that boyhood was gone, +and youth was going, and for one intoxicating moment he had looked over +the mountain top into the Promised Land of manhood. + + + + +XV + +NOËL + + +The night was far spent and the Christmas dawn was graying in the +remotest east when Tom, sleeping in his clothes on a lounge before the +fire in the lower hall, roused himself and went noiselessly up stairs to +beg his father to go and lie down for a little while. + +There was a trained nurse from South Tredegar in charge of the +sick-room; but from the beginning the three--husband, brother and +son--had kept watch at the bedside of the stricken one. There was little +to be done; nothing, in fact; and the nurse would have spared them the +nights. Yet no one of the three would surrender his privilege. + +His father relieved, Tom mended the fire in the grate; and when he found +the nurse dozing in her chair, he woke her and persuaded her to go and +rest in the adjoining room, promising to call her instantly if she were +needed. + +Left alone with his mother, he tiptoed to the bedside and stood for many +minutes looking with sorrow-blurred eyes at the still, rigid face on the +pillow. It was terribly like death; so like, that more than once he laid +his hand softly on the bed-covering to make sure that she still +breathed. When he could bear it no longer, he crossed the room to the +western window, drawing the draperies and standing between them to stare +miserably out into the calm, starlit void. While he looked, a meteor +burned its way across the inverted bowl of the heavens, and its passing +kindled the embers of the inextinguishable fire. + +_And, lo, the star ... came and stood over where the young child was._ +The curtains of the void were parted by invisible hands, and down the +long vista of the centuries he saw the familiar scene of the Nativity, +dwelt on so often and so faithfully in his childhood training that it +seemed almost like a part of the material scheme of the universe: the +Babe in the manger; the shepherds watching their flocks; the heavenly +host singing the triumphant anthem of the ages, _Glory to God in the +highest, and on earth, peace_; the star of Bethlehem shining serenely +above a world lying in darkness and in the shadow of death. + +Was it all true? or was it only a beautiful myth? If it were true, where +was the proof? Not in history, for this, the most wonderful and +miraculous thing in all the story of mankind, stands unrecorded save by +the pens of those who were themselves under the spell of it. In +subsequent marvels and wonder-workings?--he shook his head mournfully. +If any such there had been, those impartial witnesses who must have +known and should have spoken were silent, and now all the earth was +silent: storms rose in their fury and were calmed for no man's _Peace, +be still_; earthquakes engulfed pagan and Christian believer alike; all +nature was cruel, relentless, mechanical. + +Was there nothing then to reach down the ages from that Christmas +morning so long ago to make the beautiful first-century myth a +latter-day reality? Tom cast about him hopelessly. There was the +Church--one and indivisible, if the myth were true. The slow Gordon +smile gathered at the corners of his eyes. He remembered a thing his +mother had said to him long ago, when, in a moment of boyish confidence, +he had told her of the climb to Crestcliffe Inn and its purpose. +"Ardea's a dear girl, as the children of this world go, Thomas; she's +been right loving and kind to me since we've come to be such close +neighbors. But"--with a note of solemn warning in her voice--"you must +never forget that she's an Episcopalian, a lost soul, dead in forms and +ceremonies and trespasses and sins." So his mother scoffed at Ardea's +faith; and Ardea--no, she did not scoff, her contempt was too generous +for that; but it was there, just the same. And the Methodists +fellowshiped neither, and the Baptists excluded the Methodists, and the +Catholics retorted to the Protestant charge of apostasy with the +centuries-old cry of "heretics all"! Which of the scores of divisions +and subdivisions was the one true indivisible body of Christ? Tom shook +his head again. There was no hope of proof in the churches. + +And the world? He was only now verging on manhood, and he had seen +little of the world. But that little was frankly indifferent to the +things which, if they were worthy of belief, should shake an unsaved +world to its very foundations. Its people bought and sold, built houses +and laid up stores of the things that perish, grasped, overreached, did +what they listed. But for that matter, even those who professed to be +followers of the Christ, who asserted most loudly their belief in the +unproved things, fought and struggled and sinned in common with the +worldlings, as far as Tom could see. + +He turned from the window and from the vision, and went to stand with +his back to the flickering blaze in the grate. It was going to leave a +huge rift in his life when this thing, with all its rootings and +anchorings in childhood and boyhood, was torn out and cast aside. The +mere thought of it was appalling. What would there be to fill the void? + +As if the question had evoked them, alluring shapes began to rise out of +the depths. Ambition, though he knew it not by name, was the first that +beckoned. The craftsman's blood stirred to its reawakening: to know how, +and to do things; to compel the iron and steel and the stubborn forces +of nature. This would be worthwhile; but better still, he would learn to +be a leader of men. The magic vista opened again, but this time it +stretched away into the future, and he saw himself keeping step with the +ever-advancing march of progress--nay, even setting the pace in his own +corner of the vast field. His father was content to follow; he would +learn the trick of it and lead. The Farleys were said to be rich and +steadily growing richer--not out of Chiawassee Iron, to be sure, but in +others of their multifarious out-reachings; very good,--he would be +rich, too. What a Duxbury Farley could do, he would do; on a larger +scale and with a stubborner patience. He-- + +It was a mere turning of the head that sent the air-castles tumbling and +left him choking in the dust of their dissolution. Something, he fancied +it was a noise or some slight movement, made him look quickly toward the +bed; and at sight of the still, white face among the pillows, boyish +love--God Himself has made no stronger passion--swept doubt, distrust, +rebellion, worldly ambition, all, into the abyss of renunciation. He +went softly, groping because the quick tears blinded him, to kneel at +the bedside. She was his mother; for one thing she had lived and striven +and prayed; living or dying she must not, she should not, be +disappointed. And if his service must be of the lip and not of the +heart, she should never suspect, never, never! + +And so it came about that he knelt in the graying dawn of the Christmas +morning, with his soul in thick darkness, lifting the prayer that in +some form has shaped itself in all the ages on lips of trembling: "O +God, if there be a God, have mercy on my soul, if I have a soul!" + + + + +XVI + +THE BUBBLE, REPUTATION + + +It was not until late in the afternoon of Christmas Day that Ardea was +able to slip away from her guests long enough to run over to apprise +herself of the condition of things at the Gordon house. + +Tom opened the door for her, and he made her come to the fire before he +would answer her questions. Even then he sat glowering at the cheerful +blaze as if he had forgotten her presence; and she was womanly enough, +or amiable enough, to let him take his own time. When he began, it was +seemingly at a great distance from matters present and pressing. + +"Say, Ardea; do you believe in miracles?" he asked abruptly. + +It was a large question to be answered offhand, but she broke the back +of it with a simple, "Yes." + +"How do you account for them? Did God make His laws so they could be +taken apart and put together again when some little human ant loses its +way on a grass stalk or drops its grain of sugar?" + +"I don't know," she confessed frankly. "I am not sure that I ever tried +to account for them; I suppose I have swallowed them whole, as you say I +have swallowed my religion." + +"Well, you believe in them, anyway," he said, "and that makes it easier +to hit what I'm aiming at. Do you reckon they stopped short in the +Apostles' time?" + +"I don't know that, either," she admitted. + +"You ought to know it, if you're consistent," he said, bluntly dogmatic. +"Any answer to any prayer would be a miracle." + +"Would it? I never happened to think of it that way." + +"It certainly would. You chop a tree in two and it falls; that's cause +and effect. If you ask God to make it stand up after it's cut in two, +and it does stand, that's a miracle." + +"You are the queerest boy," she commented. "I ran over here just for a +minute to ask how your mother is, and you won't tell me." + +"I'm coming to that," he rejoined gravely. "But I wanted to get this +other thing straightened out first. Now tell me this: did you pray for +my mother last night, like you said you would?" + +Once again he was offending the guardian of the inner shrines, and her +heightened color was not all the reflection of the ruddy firelight. + +"You can be so barbarously personal when you try, Tom," she protested. +And then she added: "But I did." + +"Well, the miracle was wrought. Early this morning mother came to +herself and asked for something to eat. Doctor Williams has been here, +and now he tells us all the things he wouldn't tell us before. It was +some little clot in one of the veins or arteries of the brain, and nine +times out of ten there is no hope." + +"O Tom!--and she will get well again?" + +"She has more chances to-day of getting well than she had last night of +dying--so the doctor says. But it's a miracle, just the same." + +"I'm so glad! And now I really must go home." And she got up. + +"No, sit down; I'm not through with you yet. I want to know what you +think about promises." + +She smiled and pushed her chair back from the soft-coal blaze in the +fireplace. + +"Don't you know you are a perfect 'old man of the sea,' Tom?" + +"That's all right; but tell me: is a bad promise better broken or kept?" + +"I am sure I couldn't say without knowing the circumstances. Tell me all +about it," and she resigned herself to listen. + +"It was at daybreak this morning. I was alone with mother, looking at +her lying there so still and helpless--dead, all but the little flicker +of breath that seemed just about ready to go out. It came over me all of +a sudden that I couldn't disappoint her, living or dead; that I'd have +to go on and be what she has always wanted me to be. And I promised +her." + +"But she couldn't hear you?" + +"No; it was before she came to herself. Nobody heard me but God; and I +reckon He wasn't paying much attention to anything I said." + +"Why do you say that?" + +"Because--well, because it wasn't the kind of a promise that makes the +angels glad. I said I'd go on and do it, if I had to be a hypocrite all +the rest of my life." + +"O Tom! would you have to be?" + +"That's the way it looks to me now. I told you the other day that I +didn't know what I believed and what I didn't believe. But I do know +some of the _don'ts_. For instance: if there is a hell--and I'm not +anyways convinced that there is--I don't believe--but what's the use of +cataloguing it? They'd ask me a string of questions when I was ordained, +and I'd have to lie like Ananias." + +She rose and met his gloomy eyes fairly. + +"Tom Gordon, if you should do that, you would be the wickedest thing +alive--the basest thing that ever breathed!" + +"That's about the way it strikes me," he said coolly. "So you see it +comes down to a case of big wicked or little wicked; it's been that way +all along. Did you know that one time I asked God to kill you?" + +She looked horrified, as was her undoubted right. + +"Why, of all things!" she gasped. + +"It's so. I took a notion that I'd be mad because your grandfather +brought you here to Paradise. And when you took sick--well, I reckon +there isn't any hell deeper or hotter than the one I frizzled in for +about four days that summer." + +It was too deep in the past to be tragic, and she laughed. + +"I used to think then that you were the worst, as well as the queerest, +boy I had ever seen." + +"And now you know it," he said. Then: "What's your rush? I'm not trying +to get rid of you now." + +"I positively must go back. We have company, and I ran away without +saying a word." + +"Anybody I know?" inquired Tom. + +"Three somebodies whom you know, or ought to know, very well: Mr. +Duxbury Farley, Mr. Vincent Farley, Miss Eva Farley." + +His eyes darkened suddenly. + +"I'd like to know how under the sun they managed to get on your +grandfather's good side!" he grumbled. + +Ardea Dabney's expressive face mirrored dawning displeasure. + +"Why do you say that?" she retorted. "Eva was my classmate for years at +Miss De Valle's." + +He made a boyish face of disapproval, saying bluntly: "I don't care if +she was. You shouldn't make friends of them. They are not fit for you to +wipe your shoes on." + +For the second time since his home-coming, Tom saw the Dabney +imperiousness flash out; saw and felt it. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Gordon! Less than an hour ago, +we were speaking of you, and of what happened at Beersheba. Mr. Farley +and his son both stood up for you." + +"And you took the other side, I reckon," he broke out, quite +unreasonably. It had not as yet come to blows between him and his +father's business associates, but it made him immeasurably dissatisfied +to find them on social terms at Deer Trace Manor. + +"Perhaps I did, and perhaps I did not," she answered, matching his +tartness. + +"Well, you can tell them both that I'm much obliged to them for +nothing," he said, rising and going to the door with her. "They would be +mighty glad to see it patched up again and me back in the Beersheba +school." + +"Of course they would; so would all of your friends." + +"But they are not my friends. They have fooled my father, and they'll +fool your grandfather, if he doesn't watch out. But they can't fool me." + +He had opened the outer door for her, and she drew herself up till she +could face him squarely, slate-blue eyes flashing scornfully into sullen +gray. + +"That is the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to +say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson +Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva +Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for her +leave-taking, she turned her back on him and went swiftly across the two +lawns to the great gray house on the opposite knoll. + +For the first fortnight of his mother's convalescence Tom slept badly, +and his days were as the days of the accused whose sentence has been +suspended; jail days, these, with chains to clank when he thought of the +promise made in the gray Christmas dawn; with whips to flog him when the +respite grew shorter and the time drew near when his continued stay at +home must be explained to his mother. + +Ardea had gone back to Carroll the Saturday before New Year's, and there +was no one to talk to. But for that matter, he had cut himself out of +her confidence by his assault on the Farleys. Every morning for a week +after the Christmas-day clash, Scipio came over with the compliments of +"Mawsteh Majah," Miss Euphrasia, and Miss Dabney, and kindly inquiries +touching the progress of the invalid. But after New Year's, Tom remarked +that there were only the Major and Miss Euphrasia to send compliments, +and despair set in. For out of his boyhood he had brought up +undiminished the longing for sympathy, or rather for a burden-bearer on +whom he might unload his troubles, and Ardea had begun to promise well. + +It was on a crisp morning in the second week of January when the +prolonged agony of suspense drove him to the mountain. His mother was +sitting up, and was rapidly recovering her strength. His father had gone +back to his work in the iron plant, and his uncle was preparing to +return to his charge in South Tredegar. With Uncle Silas and the nurse +both gone, Tom knew that the evil hour must come speedily; and it was +with some half-cowardly hope that his uncle would break the ice for him +that he ran away on the crisp morning of happenings. + +With no particular destination in view, it was only natural that his +feet should find the familiar path leading up to the great boulder under +the cedars. He had not visited the rock of the spring since the summer +day when he and Nan Bryerson had taken refuge from the shower in the +hollow heart of it, nor had he seen Nan since their parting at the door +of her father's cabin under the cliff. Rumor in Gordonia had it that +Tike Bryerson had been hunted out by the revenue officers; and, for +reasons which he would have found it difficult to declare in words, Tom +had been shy about making inquiries. + +For this cause an apparition could scarcely have startled him more than +did the sight of Nan filling her bucket at the trickling barrel-spring +under the cliff face of the great rock. He came on her suddenly at the +end of the long climb up the wooded slopes, at a moment +when--semi-tropical growth having had two full seasons in which to +change the natural aspect of things--he was half-bewildered with the +unwonted look of the place. But there was no doubt about it; it was Nan +in the flesh, a little fuller in the figure, something less childish in +the face, but with all the fascinating, wild-creature beauty of the +child-time promise to dazzle the eye and breed riot in the brain of the +boy-man. + +When she stood up with a little cry of pleased surprise, the dark eyes +lighting quick joy-fires, and the welcoming blush mounting swiftly to +neck and cheek, Tom thought she was the most alluring thing he had ever +looked on. Yet the bottom stone in the wall of recrudescent admiration +was the certainty that he had found a sympathetic ear. + +"Did you know I was coming? Were you waiting for me, Nan?" he bubbled, +gazing into the great black eyes as eagerly as a freed dog plunges into +the first pool that offers. + +"How could I be knowin' to it?" she asked, taking him seriously, or +appearing to. "I nev' knowed school let out this time o' year." + +"It's let out for me, Nan," he said meaningly. "I came home--for +good--nearly three weeks ago. My mother has been sick. Didn't you hear +of it?" + +She shook her head gravely. + +"I hain't been as far as Paradise sence paw and me moved back from Pine +Knob, two months ago. I don't hear nothin' any more." + +In times long past, Tom, valley-born and of superior clay, used to be +scornful of the mountain dialect. Now, on Nan's lips, it charmed him. +It was blessedly reminiscent of the care-free days of yore. + +"Say, Nan; I hope you haven't got to hurry home," he interposed, when +she stooped to lift the overflowing bucket. "I want to talk to you--to +tell you something." + +She looked up quickly, and there were scrolls unreadable in the black +eyes. + +"Air you a man now, Tom-Jeff, or on'y a boy like you used to be?" she +asked. + +Tom squared his broad shoulders and laughed. + +"I'm big enough to be in my own way a good deal of the time. I believe I +could muddy Sim Cantrell's back for him now, at arm-holts." + +But there was still a question in the black eyes. + +"Where's your preacher's coat, Tom-Jeff? I was allowin' you'd be wearin' +it nex' time we met up." + +"I reckon there isn't going to be any preacher's coat for me, Nan; +that's one of the things I want to talk to you about. Let's go over +yonder and sit down in the sun." + +The place he chose for her was a flat stone half embedded in the +up-climbing slope beyond the great boulder. She sat facing the path and +the spring, listening, while Tom, stretched luxuriously on a bed of dry +leaves at her feet, told her what had befallen; how he had been turned +out of Beersheba, and what for; how, all the former things having passed +away, he was torn and distracted in the struggle to find a footing in +the new order. + +In the midst of it he had a feeling that she was only dimly +apprehending; that some of his keenest pains--most of them, perhaps--did +not appeal to her. But there was comfort in her bodily presence, in the +listening ear. It was a shifting of the burden in some sort, and there +be times when the humblest pack animal may lighten a king's load. + +His fears touching her understanding, or her lack of it, were confirmed +when he had reached a stopping-place. + +"They-all up yonder in that school where you was at hain't got much +sense, it looks like to me," was her comment. "You're a man growed now, +Tom-Jeff, and if you want to play cards or drink whisky, what-all +business is it o' their'n?" + +He smiled at her elemental point of view; laughed outright when the +significance of it struck him fairly. But it betokened allegiance of a +kind to gladden the heart of the masculine tyrant, and he rolled the +declaration of fealty as a sweet morsel under his tongue. + +"You stand by your friends, right or wrong, don't you, girl?" he said, +in sheerest self-gratulation. "That's what I like in you. You asked me a +little while back if I was a man or a boy; I believe you could make a +man of me, Nan, if you'd try." + +He was looking up into her face as he said it and the change that came +over her lighted a strange fire in his blood. The black eyes kindled it, +and the red lips, half parted, blew it into a blaze. His face flushed +and he broke the eye-hold and looked down. In their primal state, when +Nature mothered the race, the man was less daring than the woman. + +"If you'd said that two year ago," she began, in a half-whisper that +melted the marrow in his bones. "But you was on'y a boy then; and now I +reckon it's too late." + +"You mean that you don't care for me any more, Nan? I know better than +that. You'd back me if I had come up here to tell you that I'd killed +somebody. Wouldn't you, now?" + +He waited overlong for his answer. There were sounds in the air: a +metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled +with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over +the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three +men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the +first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind +Tom, trembling, shaking with terror. + +"Hide me, Tom-Jeff! Oh, for God's sake, hide me, quick!" she panted. +"Lookee there!" + +He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which +drained the barrel-spring. They were too far away to be recognizable to +him, and since they were stopping momently to examine the pipe, there +was good hope of an escape unseen. + +Tom waited breathless for the propitious instant when the tapping of the +pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When +it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of +the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, and rolled swiftly +after her. + +Before she could rise he had picked her up and was dragging her to the +climbing point under the lip of the boulder cave. + +"Up with you!" he commanded, making a step of his hand. "Give me your +foot and then climb to my shoulder--quick!" But she drew back. + +"Oh, I can't!" she gasped. "I--I'm too skeered!" + +Tom's brows went together in the Gordon frown. Bone-meltings and +blood-firings apart, he was neither a fool nor a dastard, and he was +older now than on that day when the storm had driven them to take refuge +in the heart of the great rock. And since he had decided that the cavern +was only big enough for one, he had meant to put Nan up, going himself +to meet the intruders to make sure that they should not discover her. +But her trembling fit--a new and curious thing in the girl who used to +make his flesh creep with her reckless daring--spoiled the plan. + +"Can't you climb up?" he demanded. + +She shook her head despairingly, and he lost no time in trying to +persuade her. Jumping to catch the lip of the cavern's mouth, he +ascended cat-like, and a moment later he had drawn her up after him. + +"I'd like to know what got the matter with you all at once," he said +severely, when they were crowded together in the narrow rock cell; and +then, without waiting for her answer: "You stay here while I drop down +and keep those fellows away from this side of things." + +But it was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an +indistinct murmur of voices testified. The girl had another trembling +fit when she heard them, and Tom's wonder was fast lapsing into contempt +or something like it. + +"Oh-h-h!" she shuddered. "Do you reckon they saw us, Tom-Jeff?" + +"I shouldn't wonder," he whispered back unfeelingly. "We could see them +plain enough." + +"He'll kill me, for shore, Tom-Jeff! O God!" + +Tom's lip curled. The wolf does not mate with the jackal. Not all her +beauty could atone for such spiritless cringing. Love would have pitied +her, but passion is not moved by qualities opposite to those which have +evoked it. + +"Then you know them--or one of them, at least," he said. "Who is he?" + +She would not tell; and since the murmur of voices was still plainly +audible, she begged in dumb-show for silence. Whereupon Tom shut his +mouth and did not open it again until the sound of the voices had died +away and the fainter tappings of the hammers on the pipe-line advertised +the retreat of the inspection party. + +"They're gone now," he said shortly. "Let's get out of here before we +stifle." + +But a second time ill chance intervened. Tom had a leg over the brink +and was looking for a soft leaf bed to drop into, when the baying of a +hound broke on the restored quiet of the mountain side. "Oh, dang it +all!" said Tom heartily, and drew back into hiding. + +The girl's ague fit of fear had passed, and she seemed less concerned +about the equivocal situation than a girl should be; at least, this is +the way Tom's thought was shaping itself. He tried to imagine Ardea in +Nan's place, but the thing was baldly unimaginable. A daughter of the +Dabneys would never run and cower and beg to be hidden at the possible +cost of her good name. And Nan's word did not help matters. + +"What makes you so cross to me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked, when he drew back +with the impatient exclamation. "I hain't done nothin' to make you let +on like you hate me, have I?" + +"I don't hate you," said Tom, frowning. "If I did, I shouldn't care." +Just then the hound burst out of the laurel thicket on the brow of the +lower slope, running with its nose to the ground, and he added: "That's +Japhe Pettigrass's dog; I hope to goodness he isn't anywhere behind it." + +But the horse-trader was behind the dog; so close behind that he came +out on the continuation of the pipe-line path while the hound was still +nosing among the leaves where Tom had lain sunning himself and telling +his tale of woe. + +"Good dog--seek him! What is it, old boy?" Pettigrass came up, patted +the hound, and sat down on the flat stone to look on curiously while the +dog coursed back and forth among the dead leaves. "Find him, Cæsar; find +him, boy!" encouraged Japheth; and finally the hound pointed a sensitive +nose toward the rift in the side of the great boulder and yelped +conclusively. + +"D'ye reckon he climm up thar', Cæsar?" Pettigrass unfolded his long +legs and stood up on the flat stone to attain an eye-level with the +interior of the little cavern. Tom crushed Nan into the farthest cranny, +and flattened himself lizard-like against the nearer side wall. The +horse-trader looked long and hard, and they could hear him still talking +to the dog. + +"You're an old fool, Cæsar--that's about what you are--and Solomon +allowed thar' wasn't no fool like an old one. But you needn't to swaller +that whole, old boy; I've knowed some young ones in my time--sometimes +gals, sometimes boys, sometimes _both_. But thar' ain't no 'possum up +yonder, Cæsar; you've flew the track this time, for certain. Come on, +old dog; let's be gettin' down the mountain." + +The baying dog and the whistling man were still within hearing when Tom +swung Nan lightly to the ground and dropped beside her. No word was +spoken until she had emptied and refilled her bucket at the spring, then +Tom said, with the bickering tang still on his tongue: + +"Say, Nan, I want to know who it is that's going to kill you if he +happens to find you talking to me." + +She shook her head despondently. "I cayn't nev' tell you that, +Tom-Jeff." + +"I'd like to know why you can't." + +"Because he'd shore kill me then." + +"Then I'll find out some other way." + +"What differ' does it make to you?" she asked; and again the dark eyes +searched him till he was fain to look away from her. + +"I reckon it doesn't make any difference, if you don't want it to. But +one time you were willing enough to tell me your troubles, and--" + +"And I'll nev' do it nare 'nother time; never, _never_. And let me tell +you somethin' else, Tom-Jeff Gordon: if you know what's good for you, +don't you nev' come anigh me again. One time we usen to be a boy and a +girl together; you're nothin' but a boy yet, but I--oh, God, +Tom-Jeff--I'm a woman!" + +And with that saying she snatched her bucket and was gone before he +could find a word wherewith to match it. + + + + +XVII + +ABSALOM, MY SON! + + +Three days after the episode at the barrel-spring, Tom went afield +again, this time to gather plunging courage for the confession to his +mother--a thing which, after so many postponements, could be put off no +longer. + +It was more instinct than purpose that led him to avoid the mountain. +Thinking only of the crying need for solitude, he crossed the pike and +the creek and rambled aimlessly for an hour or more over that farther +hill ground beyond the country-house colony where he had once tried to +break the Dabney spirit in a weary, bedraggled little girl with +colorless lips and saucer-like eyes. + +When he recrossed the stream, at a point some distance above the +boy-time perch pools, the serving foot-log chanced to be that used by +the Little Zoar folk coming from beyond the boundary hills. Following +the windings of the path he presently came out in the rear of the +weather-beaten, wooden-shuttered church standing, blind-eyed and silent, +in week-day desertion in the midst of its groving of pines. + +The spot was rife with memories, and Tom passed around the building to +the front, treading softly as on hallowed ground. Whatever the future +might hold for him, there would always be heart-stirring recollections +to cluster about this frail old building sheltered by the whispering +pines. + +How many times he had sat on the steps in the door-opening days of +boyhood, looking out across the dusty pike and up to the opposing steeps +of Lebanon lifting the eastward horizon half-way to the zenith! +Leg-weariness, and a sudden desire to live over again thus much of the +past turning him aside, he went to sit on the highest of the three +steps, with the brooding silence for company and the uplifted landscape +to revamp the boyhood memories. + +The sun had set for Paradise Valley, but his parting rays were still +volleying in level lines against the great gray cliffs at the top of +Lebanon, silvering the bare sandstone, blackening the cedars and pines +by contrast, and making a fine-lined tracery, blue on gray, of the twigs +and leafless branches of the deciduous trees. Off to the left a touch of +sepia on the sky-line marked the chimneys of Crestcliffe Inn, and +farther around, and happily almost hidden by the shouldering of the +hills, a grayer cloud hung over the industries at Gordonia. + +Nearer at hand were the wooded slopes of the Dabney lands--lordly +forests culled and cared for through three generations of land-lovers +until now their groves of oaks and hickories, tulip-trees and sweet-and +black-gums were like those the pioneers looked on when the land was +young. + +Thomas Jefferson had the appreciative eye and heart of one born with a +deep and abiding love of the beautiful in nature, and for a time the +sunset ravishment possessed him utterly. But the blurring of the +fine-lined traceries and the fading of the silver and the gray into +twilight purple broke the spell. The postponed resolve was the thing +present and pressing. His mother was as nearly recovered as she was ever +likely to be, and his uncle would be returning to South Tredegar in the +morning. The evil tale must be told while there was yet one to whom his +mother could turn for help and sympathy in her hour of bitter +disappointment. + +He was rising from his seat on the church step when he heard sounds like +muffled groans. Recovering quickly from the first boyish startle of fear +oozing like a cool breeze blowing up the back of his neck, he saw that +the church door was ajar. By cautiously adding another inch to the +aperture he could see the interior of the building, its outlines taking +shape when his eyes had become accustomed to darkness relieved only by +the small fan-light over the door. Some one was in the church: a man, +kneeling, with clasped hands uplifted, in the open space fronting the +rude pulpit. Tom recognized the voice and withdrew quickly. It was his +Uncle Silas, praying fervently for a lost sheep of the house of Israel. + +In former times, with grim rebellion gripping him as it gripped him now, +Tom would have run away. But there was a prompting stronger than +rebellion: a sudden melting of the heart that made him remember the +loving-kindnesses, and not any of the austerities, of the man who was +praying for him, and he sat down on the lowest step to wait. + +The twilight was glooming to dusk when Silas Crafts came out of the +church and locked the door behind him. If he were surprised to find Tom +waiting for him, he made no sign. Neither was there any word of +greeting passed between them when he gathered his coat tails and sat +down on the higher step, self-restraint being a heritage which had come +down undiminished from the Covenanter ancestors of both. A little +grayer, a little thinner, but with the deep-set eyes still glowing with +the fires of utter convincement and the marvelous voice still +unimpaired, Silas Crafts would have refused to believe that the passing +years had changed him; yet now there was kinsman love to temper solemn +austerity when he spoke to the lost sheep--as there might not have been +in the sterner years. + +"The way of the transgressor is hard, grievously hard, Thomas. I think +you are already finding it so, are you not?" + +Tom shook his head slowly. + +"That doesn't mean what it used to, to me, Uncle Silas; nothing means +the same any more. It's just as if somebody had hit that part of me with +a club; it's all numb and dead. I'm sure of only one thing now: that is, +that I'm not going to be a hypocrite after this, if I can help it." + +The man put his hand on the boy's knee. + +"Have you been that all along, Thomas?" + +"I reckon so,"--monotonously. "At first it was partly scare, and partly +because I knew what mother wanted. But ever since I've been big enough +to think, I've been asking why, and, as you would say, doubting." + +Silas Crafts was silent for a moment. Then he said: + +"You have come to the years of discretion, Thomas, and you have chosen +death rather than life. If you go on as you have begun, you will bring +the gray hairs of your father and mother in sorrow to the grave. +Leaving your own soul's salvation out of the question, can you go on and +drag an upright, honorable name in the dust and mire of degradation?" + +"No," said Tom definitely. "And what's more, I don't mean to. I don't +know what Doctor Tollivar wrote you about me, and it doesn't make any +difference now. That's over and done with. You haven't been seeing me +every day for these three weeks without knowing that I'm ashamed of it." + +"Ashamed of the consequences, you mean, Thomas. You are not repentant." + +"Yes, I am, Uncle Silas; though maybe not in your way. I don't allow to +make a fool of myself again." + +The preacher's comment was a groan. + +"Tom, my boy, if any one had told me a year ago that a short twelvemonth +would make you, not only an apostate to the faith, but a shameless liar +as well--" + +Tom started as if he had been struck with a whip. + +"Hold on, Uncle Silas," he broke in hardily. "That's mighty near a +fighting word, even between blood kin. When have you ever caught me in a +lie?" + +"Now!" thundered the accusing voice; "this moment! You have been giving +me to understand that your sinful rebellion at Beersheba was the worst +that could be charged against you. Answer me: isn't that what you want +me to believe?" + +"I don't care whether you believe it or not. It's so." + +"It is not so. Here, at your own home, when your mother had just been +spared to you by the mercies of the God whose commandments you set at +naught, you have been wallowing in sin--in crime!" + +Tom locked his clasped fingers fast around his knees and would not open +the flood-gates of passion. + +"If I can sit here and take that from you, it's because it isn't so," he +replied soberly. + +Silas Crafts rose, stern and pitiless. + +"Wretched boy! Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted. Where were +you on Wednesday morning?" + +Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and +his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of +conscious guilt. + +"I was at home most of the time; between ten o'clock and noon I was on +the mountain." + +"Alone?" + +"No; not all of the time." + +"You say well. There were three of you: a hardened, degraded boy, a +woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you." + +The flood-gates of passion would hold no longer. + +"It's a lie!" he denied hotly. "I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at +the spring under the big rock, and--" + +"Well, go on," said the inexorable voice. + +Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness. He saw how +incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation +it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him. So he took +refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened +guilt. + +"I don't have to defend myself!" he burst out. "If you can believe I'm +that low-down, you're welcome to!" Then, abruptly: "I reckon we'd better +be going on home; they'll be waiting dinner for us at the house." + +He got on his feet with that, but the accuser was still confronting +him, with the dark eyes glowing and a monitory finger pointed to detain +him. + +"Not yet, Thomas Gordon; there is a duty laid on me. I had hoped and +prayed that I might find you repentant; you are not repentant." + +"No," said Tom, and he confirmed it with an oath in sheer bravado. + +"Peace, miserable boy! God is not mocked. Your father has a letter from +Doctor Tollivar; the doors of Beersheba are open to you again. I had +hoped--" The pause was not for effect. It was merely that the man and +the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge. "It +breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it. You have put it out of your +power to say with the Psalmist, 'I will wash mine hands in innocency: so +will I compass thine altar, O Lord.' You must give up all thoughts of +going back to Beersheba." + +"Don't trouble yourself," said Tom, with more bravado. "I wouldn't go +back there if it was the only place on earth." Then suddenly: "Who was +it that told on me, Uncle Silas?" + +"Never mind about that. It was one who could have no object in +misstating the fact--which you have not denied. Let us go home." + +The mile walk down the pike, lying white and ghostly under the +starlight, was paced in silence, man and boy striding side by side and +each busy with his own thoughts. As they were passing the Deer Trace +gates a loose-jointed figure loomed black against the palings, and the +voice of Japheth Pettigrass said: + +"Why, howdy, Brother Silas! Thought ye'd gone back to South Tredegar. +When are ye comin' out to Little Zoar ag'in to give us another o' them +old-fashioned, spiritual times o' refreshin' from the presence of the +Lord?" + +Silas Crafts turned short on the scoffer. + +"Why do you ask that, Japheth Pettigrass? The Lord will deal with you, +one day." + +"Yes, I reckon so; that's what makes me say what I does. There's a heap +o' sinners left round here, yit, Brother Silas. There's the Major, for +one, and I know you're always countin' me in for another. I dunno but +you might snatch me as a brand from the burnin', if you could make out +to try it one more lap around the you'se. I been thinkin' right +p'intedly about--" + +But the preacher had cut in with a curt "Good night," and was gone, with +his broad-shouldered nephew at his heels; and the horse-trader went on, +with the stars for his audience. + +"Look at that, now, will ye? Old Brother Silas is gettin' right smart +tetchy with the passin' of the years; he is, so. But he's a powerful +preacher. If anybody ever gits me for a star in their crown, it's +Brother Silas ag'inst the field, even money up." + +Pettigrass turned and was groping for the gate latch when a hand fell on +his shoulder, and a clutch that was more than half a blow twirled him +about to face the roadway. He was doubling his fists for defense when he +saw who his assailant was. + +"Why, Tom-Jeff! what's ailin' ye?" he began; but Tom broke in with +gaspings of rage. + +"Japhe Pettigrass, what did you think you saw last Wednesday forenoon up +yonder at Big Rock Spring on the mountain? Tell it straight, this time, +or by the God you don't believe in, I'll dig the truth out of you with +my bare hands!" + +"Sho, now, Tom-Jeff; don't you git so servigrous over nothin'. I didn't +see nothin' but a couple o' young fly-aways playin' 'possum in a hole in +the big rock. And I'll leave it to you if I didn't call Cæsar off and go +my ways, jes' like I'd like to be done by." + +"Yes," snarled Tom, dog-mad and furious in this second submergence of +the wave of wrath. "Yes; and then you came straight down here and told +my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front, +clutching a stone snatched up from the metaling of the pike as he ran. +"If I should break your face in with this, Japhe Pettigrass, it wouldn't +be any more than you've earned!" + +"By gravy! _I_ tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff? You show me the man +'at says I done any such low-down thing as that, and I'll frazzle a +fifty-dollar hawsswhip out on his ornery hide--I will, so. Say, boy; you +don't certain'y believe that o' me, do ye?" + +"I don't want to believe it of you, Japhe," quavered Tom, as near to +tears as the pride of his eighteen years would sanction. "But somebody +saw and told, and made it a heap worse than it was." He leaned over the +top of the wall and put his face in the crook of his elbow, being +nothing better than a hurt child, for all his bigness. + +"Well, now; I wouldn't let a little thing like that gravel me, if I was +you, Tom-Jeff," said Pettigrass, turned comforter. "Nan's a mighty +pretty gal, and you ort to be willin' to stand a little devilin' on her +account--more especially as you've--" + +Tom put up his arm as if to ward a blow. + +"Don't you say it, Japhe, or I'll go mad again," he broke out. + +"I ain't sayin' nothin'. But who do you reckon it was told on you? Was +there anybody else in the big woods that mornin'?" + +"Yes; there were three men testing the pipe-line. We both saw them, and +Nan was scared stiff at sight of one of them; that's why I put her up in +that hole." + +"Who was the man?" + +"I don't know. I didn't recognize any of them--they were too far off +when I saw them. And afterward, Nan wouldn't tell me." + +"Did any of 'em see you and Nan?" + +"I thought not. Nan was sitting on the flat rock where you stood and +looked into the cave, and when she began to whimper, I flung her over +into the leaves and ran with her to the hole." + +"H'm," said Japheth. "When you find out who that feller is that Nan's +skeered of, you can lay your hand on the man that told Brother Silas on +you. But I wouldn't trouble about it none, if I was you. You've got a +long ways the best of him, whoever he is, and--" + +But Tom had turned to go home, feeling his way by the wall because the +angry tears were still blinding him, and the horse-trader fell back into +his star-gazing. + +"Law, law," he mused; "'the horrible pit an' the miry clay.' What a +sufferin' pity it is we pore sinners cayn't dance a little now and ag'in +'thout havin' to walk right up and pay the fiddler! Tom-Jeff, there, +now, he's a-thinkin' the price is toler'ble high; and I don't know but +it is--I don't know but what it is." + +The dinner at Woodlawn that night was a stiff and comfortless meal, as +it had come to be with the taking on of four-tined forks and the other +conventions for which an oak-paneled dining-room in an ornate brick +mansion sets the pace. Caleb Gordon was fathoms deep in the mechanical +problems of the day's work, as was his wont. Silas Crafts was abstracted +and silent. Tom's food choked him, as it had need under the sharp stress +of things; and the convalescent housemother remained at table only long +enough to pour the coffee. + +Tom excused himself a few minutes later, and followed his mother to her +room, climbing the stair to her door, leaden-footed and with his heart +ready to burst. + +"Is that you, Thomas?" said the gentle voice within, answering his tap +on the panel. "Come in, son; come in and sit by my fire. It's right +chilly to-night." + +Thomas Jefferson entered and placed his chair so that she could not see +him without turning, and for many minutes the silence was unbroken. Then +he began, as begin he must, sometime and in some way. + +"Mammy," he said, feeling unconsciously for the childish phrase, "Mammy, +has Uncle Silas been telling you anything about me?" + +She gave a little nod of assent. + +"Something, Thomas, but not a great deal. You have had some trouble with +Doctor Tollivar?" + +"Yes." + +"I have known that for some little time. Your uncle might have told me +more, but I wouldn't let him. There has never been anything between us +to break confidence, Tom. I knew you would tell me yourself, when the +time came." + +"I have come to tell you to-night, mammy. You must hear it all, from +beginning to end. It goes back a long way--back to the time when you +used to let me kneel with my head in your lap to say my prayers; when +you used to think I was good...." + +The fire had died down to a few glowing masses of coke on the grate bars +when he had finished the story of his wanderings in the valley of dry +bones. Through it all, Martha Gordon had sat silent and rigid, her thin +hands lying clasped in her lap, and her low willow rocking-chair barely +moving at the touch of her foot on the fender. + +But when it was over; when Tom, his voice breaking in spite of his +efforts to control it, told her that he could walk in the way she had +chosen for him only at the price a conscious hypocrite must pay, she +reached up quickly and took him in her arms and wept over him as those +who sorrow without hope, crying again and again, _"O my son Absalom, my +son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, +my son!"_ + + + + +XVIII + +THE AWAKENING + + +Once in a lifetime for every youngling climbing the facile or difficult +slope of the years there comes a day of realization, of a sudden +extension of vision, of Rubicon-crossing from the hither shore of joyous +and irresponsible adolescence to that further one of conscious +grapplings with the adult fact. + +For Thomas Jefferson, grinding tenaciously in the Boston technical +school, whither he had gone late in the winter of Beersheban discontent, +the stream-crossing fell in the spring of the panic year 1893, what time +he was twenty-one, a quarter-back on his college eleven, fit, hardy, +studious and athletic; a pace-setter for his fellows and the pride of +the faculty, but still little more than an overgrown, care-free boy in +his outlook on life. Glimpses there had been over into the Promised Land +of manhood, but the brimming cup of college work and play quaffed in +health-giving heartiness is the elixir of youth. The speculative habit +of the boy slept in the college undergraduate. The days were full, each +of the things of itself, and if Tom looked forward to the workaday +future,--as he did by times,--the boyish impatience to be at it was +gone. Chiawassee Consolidated was moderately prosperous; the home +letters were mere chronicles of sleepy Paradise. The skies were clear, +and the present was acutely present. Tom studied hard and played hard; +ate like an ogre and slept like a log. And when he finally awoke to find +himself stumbling bewildered on the bank of the epoch-marking Rubicon, +he was over and across before he could realize how so narrow a stream +should fill so vast a chasm. + +The call of the ferryman--to keep the figure whole--was a letter from +his father, a letter longer than the commonplace chronicles, and +painfully written with the mechanic hand on both sides of a company +letter-head. Caleb Gordon wrote chiefly of business. Mutterings of the +storm of financial depression were already in the air. Iron, more +sensitive than the stock-market, was the barometer, and its readings in +the Southern field were growing portentous. Within the month several of +the smaller furnaces had gone out of blast, and Chiawassee Consolidated, +though still presenting a fair exterior, was, Caleb feared, rotten at +heart. What would Tom advise? + +Tom found this letter in his mail-box one evening after a strenuous day +in the laboratory; and that night he sat up with the corpse of his later +boyhood, though he was far enough from putting it that way. His father +was in trouble, and the letter was a call for help. It seemed vastly +incredible. Thomas Jefferson's ideal of steady courage, of invincible +human puissance, was formed on the model of the stout-hearted old +soldier who had fought under Stonewall Jackson. What a trumpet blast of +alarm must have sounded to make such a man turn to a raw recruit for +help! + +Suddenly Tom began to realize that he was no longer a raw recruit, a +boy to ride care-free while men were afoot and fighting. It astounded +him that the realization had been so slow in arriving. It was as if he +had been led blindfolded to the firing line, there to have the bandage +plucked from his eyes by an unseen hand. Tumultuously it rushed on him +that he was weaponed as the men of his father's generation could not be; +that his hand could be steady and his heart fearless under threatenings +that might well shake the courage of the old man who had borne only the +burden and the heat of the day of smaller things. + +He sat long with his elbows on the study table and his chin resting on +his hands. The room was small but the walls gave before the steady gaze +of the gray eyes, and Tom saw afar; down a vistaed highway wherein a +strong man walked, leading a boy by the hand. Swiftly, with a click like +that of the mechanism in a kinetoscope, the scene changed. The highway +was the same, but now the man's steps had grown cautious and uncertain +and he was groping for the shoulder of the boy, as for a leaning-staff. + +Tom broke the eye-hold on the vision and sprang up to pace the narrow +limits of the study. + +"It's up to me," he mused, "and I'd like to know what I've been thinking +of all this time. Why, pappy's old! he was forty before I was born. And +I've been up here taking it easy and having all sorts of a good time, +while he's been playing Sindbad to Duxbury Farley's Old Man of the Sea. +Coming, pappy!" he shouted; and forthwith flung himself down at the +table to write a letter that was to put new life into a weary old man +who was fighting against odds in the far-away Southland. + +The lone soldier was to take heart of grace, remembering that he had a +son; remembering also that the son was now a man grown, stout of arm, +steady of head, and otherwise fighting-fit. If the storm should come, +the watchword must be to hold on all, keeping steerage-way on the +Chiawassee Consolidated craft at all hazards. The June examinations were +not far off, and these disposed of, the man-son would be ready to lay +hold. Meanwhile, let Caleb Gordon, in his capacity of principal minor +stock-holder, insist on a full and exact statement of the company's +affairs, and--here the new manhood asserted itself boldly--let that +statement, or a copy of it, come to Boston by the first mail. + +To this letter there was a grateful reply in which Tom read with a smile +his father's half-bewildered attempt to get over to the new point of +view. It began, "Dear Buddy," and ended, "Your affectionate pappy," but +there was man-to-man matter between the salutation and the signature. +The inquiry into the affairs of Chiawassee Consolidated had revealed +little or nothing more than the general manager already knew. The +president had turned the inquiring stock-holder over to Dyckman, the +bookkeeper, with instructions to give Mr. Gordon the fullest possible +information, and: + +"Dyckman slid out of it, smooth and easy-like," Caleb's letter went on. +"He allowed he was _mighty_ busy, right about then. Wouldn't I just make +myself at home and examine the books for myself? I reckon that was about +what Farley wanted him to do. I'm no book expert, and I couldn't make +head or tail out of Dyckman's spider tracks. Looks to me like all the +books are good for is to keep people from finding where the company is +at. What little I found out, young Norman told me. He says we're in a +hole, and the first wagon-load of dirt that comes along will bury us out +of sight." + +Tom, driven now with the closing work of the college year, yet took time +to write another heartening letter to the hard-pressed old soldier. It +had been his good fortune to win the Clarkson prize for crucible tests, +and to have gained thereby a speaking acquaintance with the +multimillionaire iron king who had founded it. Mr. Clarkson did not +believe that the financial storm would grow to panic size. As for +himself, Tom thought the hazard was less in the times than in the +Farleys. Father Caleb was to keep his finger on the pulse of the main +office, wiring Boston at the first sign of its weakening. + +The junior metallurgical was in the thick of the June examinations when +the catastrophe befell. The brief story of it came to Tom in the first +dictated letter he had ever received from his father, and the tremulous +shakiness of the signature pointed eloquently to the reason. Chiawassee +Consolidated was out of blast--"temporarily suspended," in the pleasant +euphemism of the elder Farley; the force, clerical and manual, was +discharged, with only Dyckman left in the deserted South Tredegar +offices to answer questions; and the three Farleys, with Major Dabney, +Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, were to spend the summer in Europe. + +Caleb wrote in some bitterness of spirit. Though the Gordon holdings in +the company, increased from time to time as the iron-master had +prospered, amounted to a little more than a third of the capital stock, +everything had been done secretly. The general manager's own notice of +the shut-down had come in the posted "Notice to Employees." When the +Farleys should leave, he would be utterly helpless; on their return they +could repudiate everything he might do in their absence. Meantime, ruin +was imminent. The affairs of the company were in the utmost confusion; +the treasury was empty, and there were no apparent assets apart from the +idle plant. Creditors were pressing; the discharged workmen, led by the +white coal-miners, were on the verge of riot; and Major Dabney's +royalties on the coal lands were many months in arrears. + +Tom rose promptly to the occasion, and in all the stress of things found +space to wonder how it chanced that he knew instinctively what to do and +how to go about it. Before his information was an hour old a rush +telegram had gone to his father, asking from what port and by what +steamer the Farleys would sail; asking also that certain documents be +sent to a given New York address by first mail. + +This done, he laid the exigencies frankly before the examiners in the +technical school, praying for such lenity as might be extended under the +circumstances. Since all things are possible for an honor-man, beloved +of those whose mission it is to grind the human weapon to its edge, the +difficulties in this field vanished. Mr. Gordon could go on with the +examinations until his presence was needed elsewhere; and after the +stressful moment was passed he could return and finish. + +Tom, the boy, could not have gone on. It would have been blankly +impossible. But Tom, the man, was a new creature. While waiting for the +reply to his telegram, he plunged doggedly back into the scholastic +whirlpool, kicked, struggled, strangled, got his head above water, and +found, vastly to his own amazement, that the thing was actually +compassable in spite of the mighty distractions. + +The return telegram from Gordonia was a day late. Knowing diplomacy only +by name, Caleb Gordon had gone directly to Dyckman for information +regarding the Farleys' movements. Dyckman was polite to the general +manager, but unhappily he knew nothing of Mr. Farley's plans. Caleb +tried elsewhere, and the little mystery thickened. At his club, Mr. +Farley had spoken of taking a Cunarder from Boston; to a friend in the +South Tredegar Manufacturers' Association he had confided his intention +of sailing from Philadelphia. But at the railway ticket office he had +engaged Pullman reservations for six persons to New York. + +This last was conclusive, as far as it went; and Japheth Pettigrass +supplied the missing item. The Dabneys and the Farleys made one party, +and Japheth knew the steamer and the sailing date. + +"Party will sail by White Star Line Baltic, New York, to-morrow. New +York address, Fifth Avenue Hotel. Papers to you care 271 Broadway by +mail yesterday," was the message which was signed for by the doorkeeper +at the mines and metallurgy examination room in Boston, late in the +forenoon of the second day; and Tom looked at the clock. Nothing would +be gained by taking a train which would land him in New York late in the +evening; so he plunged again into the examination pool and thought no +more of Chiawassee Consolidated until his paper on qualitative analysis +had been neatly folded, docketed and handed to the examiner. + +The hands of his watch were pointing to eight o'clock the following +morning when Tom made his way through the throng in the Grand Central +station and found a cab. The sailing hour of the _Baltic_ was ten, and +he picked his cabman accordingly. + +"I shall want you for a couple of hours, and it's double fare if you +don't miss. 271 Broadway, first," was his fillip for the driver; and he +was speedily rattling away to the down-town address. + +The taking of the cab was his first mistake, and he discovered it before +he had gone very far. Time was precious, and the horse, pushed to the +police limit, was too slow. Tom signaled his Irishman. + +"Get me over to the Elevated, and then go to Madison Square and wait for +me," he ordered; and by this change of conveyance he obtained his mail +and won back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel by late breakfast time. + +From that on, luck was with him. The Farleys, father and son, were in +the lobby of the hotel, waiting for the others to come down to the café +breakfast. Tom saw them, confronted them, and went at things very +concisely. + +"I have come all the way from Boston to ask for a few minutes of your +time, Mr. Farley," he said to the president. "Will you give it to me +now?" + +"Surely!" was the genial reply, and the promoter signed to his son and +drew apart with the importunate one. "Well, go on, my boy; what can I do +for you at this last American moment?--some message from your good +father?" + +"No," said Tom shortly; "it's from me, individually. You know in what +shape you have left things at home; they've got to be stood on their +feet before you go aboard the _Baltic_." + +"What's this--what's this? Why, my dear young man! what can you possibly +mean?"--this in buttered tones of the gentlest expostulation. + +"I mean just about what I say. You have smashed Chiawassee Consolidated, +and now you are going off to leave my father to hold the bag. Or rather +I should say, you are taking the bag with you." + +The president was visibly moved. + +"Why, Thomas--you must be losing your mind! You've--you've been studying +too hard; that's it--the term work up there in Boston has been too much +for you." + +"Cut it out, Mr. Farley," said Tom savagely, all the Gordon fighting +blood singing in his veins. "You've got a thing to do, and it is going +to be done before you leave America. Will you talk straight business, or +not?" + +The president adjusted his eye-glasses, and gave this brand-new Gordon a +calm over-look. + +"And if I decline to discuss business matters with a rude school-boy?" +he intimated mildly. + +"Then it will be rather the worse for you," was the defiant rejoinder. +"Acting for my father and the minority stock-holders, I shall try to +have you and your son held in America, pending an expert examination of +the company's affairs." + +It was a long shot, with a thousand chances of missing. If there was +anything criminal in the Farley administration, the evidences were +doubtless well buried. But Tom was looking deep into the shifty blue +eyes of his antagonist when he fired, and he saw that he had not wholly +missed. None the less, the president attempted to carry it off lightly. + +"What do you think of this, Vincent?" he said, turning to his son. "Here +is Tom Gordon--our Tom--talking wildly about investigations and arrests, +and I don't know what all. Shall we give him his breakfast and send him +back to school?" + +Tom cut in quickly before Vincent could make a reply. + +"If you're sparring to gain time, it's no use, Mr. Farley. I mean what I +say, and I'm dead in earnest." Then he tried another long shot: "I tell +you right now we've had this thing cocked and primed ever since we found +out what you and Vincent meant to do. You must turn over the control of +Chiawassee Consolidated, legally and formally, to my father before you +go aboard the _Baltic_, or--_you don't go aboard_!" + +"Let me understand," said the treasurer, cutting in. "Are you accusing +us of crime?" + +"You will find out what the accusation is, later on," said Tom, taking +yet another cartridge from the long-range box. "What I want now is a +plain, straightforward yes or no, if either of you is capable of saying +it." + +The president took his son aside. + +"Do you suppose Dyckman has been talking too much?" he asked hurriedly. + +Vincent shook his head. + +"You can't tell ... it looks a little rocky. Of course, we had a right +to do as we pleased with our own, but we don't want to have an +unfriendly construction put on things." + +"But they can't do anything!" protested the president. "Why, I'd be +perfectly willing to turn over my private papers, if they were asked +for!" + +"Yes, of course. But there would be misconstruction. There is that +contract with the combination, for example; we had a right to manipulate +things so we'd have to close down, and it might not transpire that we +made money by doing it. But, on the other hand, it might leak out, and +there'd be no end of a row. Then there is another thing: there is +somebody behind this who is bigger than the old soldier or this young +foot-ball tough. It's too nicely timed." + +"But, heavens and earth! you wouldn't turn the property over to Gordon, +would you?" + +The younger man's smile was a mere contortion of the lips. "It's a +sucked orange," he said. "Let the old man have it. He may work a miracle +of some sort and pull out alive. I should call it a snap, and take him +up too quick. If he wins out, so much the better for all concerned. If +he doesn't, why, we left the property entirely in his hands, and he +smashed it. Don't you see the beauty of it?" + +The president wheeled short on Tom. + +"What you may think you are extorting, my dear boy, you are going to get +through sheer good-will and a desire to give your father every chance in +the world," he said blandly. "We discussed the plan of electing him +vice-president, with power to act, before we left home, but there seemed +to be some objections. We are willing to give him full control--and this +altogether apart from any foolish threats you have seen fit to make. +Bring your legal counsel to Room 327 after breakfast and we will go +through the formalities. Are you satisfied?" + +"I shall be a lot better satisfied after the fact," said Tom bluntly; +and he turned away to avoid meeting Major Dabney and the ladies, who +were coming from the elevator to join the two early risers. He had seen +next to nothing of Ardea during the three Boston years, and would +willingly have seen more. But the new manhood was warning him that time +was short, and that he must not mix business with sentiment. So Ardea +saw nothing but his back, which, curiously enough, she failed to +recognize. + +Picking up his cab at the curb, Tom had himself driven quickly to the +office of the corporation lawyer whose name he had obtained from Mr. +Clarkson the day before, and with whom he had made a wire appointment +before leaving Boston. The attorney was waiting for him, and Tom stated +the case succinctly, adding a brief of the interview which had just +taken place at the hotel. + +"You say they agreed to your proposal?" observed the lawyer. "Did Mr. +Farley indicate the method?" + +"No." + +"Have you a copy of the by-laws of your company?" + +Tom produced the packet of papers received that morning from his father, +and handed the required pamphlet to Mr. Croswell. + +"H'm--ha! the usual form. A stock-holders' meeting, with a resolution, +would be the simplest way out of it; but that can't be held without the +published call. You say your father is a stock-holder?" + +"He has four hundred and three of the original one thousand shares. I +hold his proxy." + +The attorney smiled shrewdly. + +"You are a very remarkable young man. You seem to have come prepared at +all points. I assume that you are acting under your father's +instructions?" + +"Why, with his approval, of course," Tom amended. "But it is my own +initiative, under the advice of a good friend of mine in Boston, thus +far. Oh, I know what I'm about," he added, in answer to the latent +question in the lawyer's eyes. + +"You seem to," was the laconic reply. "Now let us see exactly what it is +that you want Mr. Farley to concede." + +"I want him to turn over the entire control of the company's business, +operative and financial, to my father." + +The lawyer smiled again. + +"That is a pretty big asking. Have you any reason to suppose that Mr. +Farley will accede to any such demand?" + +"Yes; I have very good reasons, but I reckon we needn't go into them +here and now. The time is too short; their liner sails at ten." + +The attorney tilted his chair and became reflective. + +"The simple way out of it is to have Mr. Farley constitute your father, +or yourself, his proxy to vote his stock at a certain specified meeting +of the stock-holders, which can be called later. Of course, with a +majority vote of the stock, you can rearrange matters to suit +yourselves, subject only to Mr. Farley's disarrangement when he resumes +control of his holdings. How would that serve?" + +"You're the doctor," said Tom bruskly. "Any way to get him out and get +my father in." + +"It's the simplest way, as I say. But if the property is worth anything +at all, I should think Mr. Farley would fight you to a finish before he +would consent." + +"You fix up the papers, Mr. Croswell, and I'll see to it that he +consents. Make the proxy run in my father's name." + +The attorney went into another room and dictated to his stenographer. +While he was absent, Tom sat, watch in hand, counting the minutes. It +was his first pitched battle with the Farleys, and victory promised. But +with industrial panic in the air the victory threatened to be of the +Cadmean sort, and a scowl of anxiety gathered between his eyes. + +"Never mind," he gritted, with an out-thrust of the square jaw; "it's +the Gordon fighting chance; and pappy says that's all we've ever +asked--it's all I'm going to ask, anyway. But I wish Ardea wasn't going +over with that crowd!" + +The conference in Room 327, Fifth Avenue Hotel, held while the carriages +were waiting to take the steamer party to the pier, was brief and +businesslike. Something to Tom's surprise, Major Dabney was present; and +a little later he learned, with a shock of resentment, that the Major +was also a minority stock-holder in the moribund Chiawassee +Consolidated. The master of Deer Trace was as gracious to Caleb Gordon's +son as only a Dabney knew how to be. + +"Nothing could give me greateh pleasure, my deah boy, than this plan of +having youh fatheh in command at Gordonia," he beamed, shaking Tom's +hand effusively. "I hope you'll have us all made millionaihs when we get +back home again; I do, for a fact, suh." + +Tom smiled and shook his head. + +"It looks pretty black, just now, Major. I'm afraid we're in for rough +weather." + +"Oh, no; not that, son; a meah passing cloud." And then, with the big +Dabney laugh: "You youngstehs oughtn't to leave it for us old fellows to +keep up the stock of optimism, suh. A word in youh ear, young man: if +these heah damned Yankee rascals would quit thei-uh monkeying right heah +in Wall Street, the country would take on a new lease of life, suh; it +would for a fact," and he said it loudly enough to be heard in the +corridor. + +During this bit of side play the attorney was laboring with the two +Farleys, and Tom, watching narrowly, saw that there was a hitch of some +kind. + +"What is it?" he demanded, turning shortly on the trio at the table. + +The lawyer explained. Mr. Farley thought the plan proposed was entirely +too far-reaching in its effects, or possible effects. He was willing to +delegate his authority as president of the company to Caleb Gordon in +writing. Would not that answer all the requirements? + +Tom asked his attorney with his eyes if it would answer, and read the +negative reply very clearly. So he shook his head. + +"No," he said, turning his back on the Major and lowering his voice. "We +must have your proxy, Mr. Farley." + +"And if I don't choose to accede to your demands?" + +"I don't think we need to go over that ground again," said Tom coolly. +"If you don't sign that paper, you'll miss your steamer." + +The president glanced toward the open door, as if he half expected to +see an officer waiting for him. Then he said, "Oh, well; it's as broad +as it is long," and signed. + +The leave-takings were brief, and somewhat constrained, save those of +the genial Major. Tom pleaded business, further business, with his +attorney, when the Major would have had him wait to tell the ladies +good-by; hence he saw no more of the tourists after the conference broke +up. + +Not to lose time, Tom took a noon train back to Boston, first wiring his +father to try and keep things in _statu quo_ at Gordonia for another +week at all hazards. Winning back to the technical school, he plunged +once more into the examination whirlpool, doing his best to forget +Chiawassee Consolidated and its mortal sickness for the time being, and +succeeding so well that he passed with colors flying. + +But the school task done, he turned down the old leaf, pasting it firmly +in place. Telegraphing his father to meet him, on the morning of the +third day following, at the station in South Tredegar, he allowed +himself a few hours for a run up the North Shore and a conference with +the Michigan iron king; after which he turned his face southward and was +soon speeding to the battle-field through a land by this time shaking to +its industrial foundations in the throes of the panic earthquake. + + + + +XIX + +ISSACHAR + + +In accordance with Tom's telegram, Caleb Gordon met his son at the +station in South Tredegar, and they went together to breakfast in one of +the dining-rooms of the Marlboro. Tom's heart burned within him when he +saw how the late stress of things had aged his father, and for the first +time in his life he opened a vengeance account: if the Farleys ever came +back there should be reckoning for more than the looting of Chiawassee +Consolidated. But this was only the primitive under-thought. Uppermost +at the moment was the joy of the young soldier arrived, fit and +vigorous, on his maiden battle-field. + +"You don't know how good it seems to get back home again, pappy," he +said, over the bacon and eggs. "I've been grinding pretty hard this +year, and now it's over, I feel as if I could whip my weight in +wildcats, as Japheth used to say. By the way, how is Japheth?" + +Caleb Gordon smiled in spite of the corroding industrial anxieties. + +"Japheth's going to surprise you some, I reckon, son; he's gone and got +religion." + +Tom put down his knife and fork. + +"Why, the old sinner!" he laughed. "How did that happen?" + +"Oh, just about the way it always does," said Caleb slowly. "The spirit +moved your Uncle Silas to come out to Little Zoar and hold a protracted +meetin', and Japhe joined the mourners and was gathered into the fold." + +"Pshaw!" said Tom, in good-natured incredulity. "Why, the very meat and +marrow of his existence is his horse-trading; and who could swap horses +and tell the truth at the same time?" + +"I don't know," was the doubtful reply. "But Brother Japheth allows +that's about what he aims to do. It's sort o' curious the way it works +out, too. About a week after the baptizin', Jim Bledsoe came down from +Pine Knob with a horse to swap. 'Long about sundown he met up with +Japhe, and struck him for a trade on a piebald that the Major wouldn't +let run in the same lot with the Deer Trace stock. They had it up one +side and down the other; Brother Japhe tryin' to tell Bledsoe that his +piebald was about the no-accountest horse in the valley, and Jim takin' +it all by contraries and gettin' more and more p'intedly anxious to +trade." + +"Well?" said Tom, enjoying his return to nature like any creature freed +of the urban cage. + +"They came to the trade, after a tolerable spell of it," Caleb went on, +"and the last thing I heard Japhe say was, 'now you recollect, Brother +Bledsoe, I done told you that there piebald's no account on the face of +the earth--a-lovin' of my neighbor like I promise' Brother Silas I +would.'" + +Tom laughed again. There was the smell of the good red soil in the +little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But +the under-thought laid hold on Japheth and his change of heart. + +"Japhe was about the last man in Paradise, always excepting Major +Dabney," he said half-musingly. "Haven't you often wondered what sort of +a maggot it is that gets into the human brain to give it the +superstitious twist?" + +Caleb's gentle frown was the upcast of paternal bewilderment, partly +prideful, partly disconcerting. He was not yet fully acquainted with +this young giant with the frank face, the sober gray eyes, and the +conscious grasp of himself. More than once since their meeting at the +steps of the Pullman car he had felt obliged to reassure himself by +saying, "This is Tom; this is my son." There were so many and such +marked changes: the quick, curt speech, caught in the Northland; the +nervous, sure-footed stride, and the athletic swing of the shoulders; +the easy manner and confident air, not of college-boy conceit, but of +the assurance of young manhood; and, lastly, this blunt right-about-face +in matters of religion. Caleb was not quite sure that this latter change +was entirely welcome. + +"Whereabouts did ye learn to call it superstition, son? Not at your +mammy's knee, leastwise," he said, in sober deprecation. + +Tom shook his head. "No; and not altogether at yours. But I guess I've +worked around to your point of view, after so long a time." + +"It's your mammy's faith, all the same, Buddy," said the father gravely. +"Let's not belittle it any more'n we can help." + +"I don't belittle it," was the quick response. "In some of its phases it +is grand--magnificent. We can't always be prying into the cause; the +effect is what counts. And there is no denying that the fairy tale +which we call Christianity has built some of the most godlike heroes the +world has ever seen." + +"You're right sure now that it is a fairy story, son?" said the old man, +a little wistfully. + +"There is no doubt about that," was the decisive rejoinder. "There is +room for credulity only in ignorance. Any thinking person who is brought +face to face with the materialistic facts--" + +Caleb held up a toil-hardened hand. + +"Hold on, Buddy; you'll have to pick a place where the water deepens +sort o' gradually for the old man or you'll have him flounderin'. I +reckon I been sittin' up on the bank all my life, waitin' for somebody +to come along and pole the bottom for me in that pool." + +"No," said Tom definitively. "There isn't any bank to that pool. You're +in it, or you are out of it; one or the other. That was the notion I +took with me to Boston. I thought I'd get well up above the eternal +wrangle and look down on it--wouldn't believe, wouldn't disbelieve. It +can't be done. Jesus, Himself, said, if they've reported Him straight, +'He that is not with me is against me.'" + +"Well," said the father, still deprecating, "that's some farther along +than I've ever been able to get--not sayin' that I wouldn't be willin' +to go." And then: "You don't allow to argue with your mammy about these +things, do you, Tom?" + +Tom's rejoinder was gravely considerate. + +"It is a sealed book between us, now, pappy. She knows--and knows it +can't be helped. If I wasn't her son, I hope I should still be the last +person in the world to try to shake her faith--or any one's, for that +matter. I have merely turned my own back--because I had to." + +The old man put down his coffee-cup and the look in his eyes was +half-appealing. + +"What was it turned you, son?--nothing I've ever said or done, I hope?" + +Tom shook his big blond head slowly. + +"No, not directly; though I suppose a man does go back to his father for +a measuring-stick. But indirectly you, and the other Gordons, are +responsible for the best there is in me--and that's the questioning +part. Given the doubt, I hunted till I found the man who could resolve +or confirm it." + +"Who was he?" inquired Caleb, willing to hear more particularly. + +"His name is Bauer--the man I've been rooming with. He is a German +biologist who was to have been educated for the Lutheran ministry. His +people made the capital mistake of sending him to Freiburg for a couple +of years as a preliminary, and, when they found out what the German +university had done for him, they sent him to Boston, under the +impression that the Puritan American city might correct some of his +materialism." + +Caleb smiled. "That ain't just the way we think of Boston over here," he +remarked. + +"No; and, of course, Bauer didn't change his point of view. We used to +have it up hill and down. I had Scripture--mother and the Beershebans +had taught me that--and Bauer had immense reading, flinty Dutch common +sense, and a huge lack of the reverence for the so-called sacred +subjects which seems to be ingrained in every race but the Teutonic. I +fought hard, both for mother's sake and because it was the first time I +had ever met a man with his sword out on the other side." + +"Well?" said Caleb. + +"He downed me, horse, foot and artillery; made me realize as I never had +before what an absolute begging of the premises the entire Christian +argument is." + +"But how?" persisted the iron-master. + +"Held me up at the muzzle of the cold facts. For example: do you happen +to know that the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence go back only to +the fourth century, and are doubtless copies of copies of copies?" + +The father had pushed back his chair and was trying to fold his napkin +in the original creases. + +"No; there's a heap o' things I don't know, son, but I'm willin' to +learn. One o' these days, if we ever get out o' this business tangle +alive, we'll sit down quiet together and you'll do for me what this +Dutchman has done for you. For, in spite of what you say, I've been +sittin' on the fence all these years, and I reckon you're the one to +help me down." + +Tom smiled first at the thought of it and then grew suddenly sober. It +is one thing to be serenely critical for oneself, and quite another to +set the pace for a disciple. And when that disciple chances to be one's +father? + +"I don't know about that, pappy," he said, rather dubiously. "I'd like +to have you meet some of the people on my side of the road first. Maybe +you wouldn't like the company." + +But Caleb would not have it so. "If they're good enough for you, son, +they're good enough for me," he said. "Not but what there's some mighty +good folks trampin' along on the other side, too." + +"Yes, and some mighty bad ones," said Tom, thinking of the promoter +vestryman of St. Michael's and his Bible-class-teaching son. "We are +going right now to investigate the financiering methods of a pair of +them. Is Dyckman still on duty? Or are the offices closed?" + +"Dyckman's there," was the answer; and they left the breakfast-room +together to go around the block and have themselves lifted to the fifth +floor of the Coosa Building, where half a dozen gilt-lettered glass +doors advertised the administrative headquarters of Chiawassee +Consolidated. + +If Caleb Gordon had been mildly bewildered by the outward and instantly +visible changes in his college-bred son, he was quite lost in wondering +admiration when the young man had climbed fairly into the business +saddle and gathered his grip on the reins. Notwithstanding the fact of +his stock-holding, Caleb the iron-master had always stood a little in +awe of the general office grandeurs; of chief priest Dyckman in +particular. But Tom seemed to recognize no distinctions of class, age, +or previous condition of overlordship. Dyckman was found busily lounging +in the absent president's easy-chair, smoking a good cigar and reading +the morning papers. At the outset he was inclined to be genially +supercilious, thus: + +"Ah, good morning, Mr. Gordon! Hello, Tom! Back from college, are you? +The books and papers? They are over in the vaults of the Iron City +National--by Mr. Farley's orders. I suppose he thought they'd be safer +there in case of fire. Won't you sit down and have a fresh cigar?" + +What Tom said, or the precise wording of it, Caleb could never remember. +But the staccato sentence or two had the effect of instantly +electrifying Mr. Dyckman. Certainly; whatever Mr. Thomas desired should +be done. He--Dyckman--had had no notice of the change in the plans of +the company, and Mr. Farley's instructions-- + +Tom cut the oath of fealty short and stated his desires succinctly. The +bookkeeper was to reassemble his office force immediately, taking +particular care to reinstate Norman, the correspondence man. That done, +he was to prepare full and complete exhibits of the company's condition: +assets, liabilities, contracts, in short, the results in statement form +of a thorough and searching house-cleaning in the accounting and +administrative departments. + +"I am going to put you on your good behavior, Dyckman," said the new +tyrant in conclusion, driving the words home with a shrewd sword-thrust +of the gray eyes. "At first I thought I'd bring an expert accountant +down here from New York and put him on your books; but I'm going to +spare you that--on one condition. Those exhibits must be made absolutely +without fear or favor; they must contain the exact truth and all of it. +If you tinker them, you'll not be able to run fast enough nor far enough +to get away from me. Do I make it plain?" + +"Very plain, indeed, Mr. Tom; the office boy would catch your meaning, I +think." + +"All right, then; gather up your force and pitch in. I haven't time to +watch you, and I don't mean to take it. But I shall know it when you +begin to flicker." + +When the two early morning disturbers of Mr. Dyckman's peace were once +more in the street and on the way to the station to take the train for +Gordonia and the seat of war, Caleb found speech. + +"Son," he said gravely, "do you know that you've made a mighty bitter +enemy in the last fifteen minutes? Dyckman is Farley's confidential man, +and when he gets his knife ground good and sharp he's goin' to cut you +with it, once for himself and once for his boss." + +Tom's laugh was an easing of strains. + +"It does me a heap of good to know that I can crack the whip where you'd +be putting on the brakes, pappy; it does, for a fact. But you needn't +worry about Dyckman. He won't quarrel with his bread and butter. I don't +care anything about his personal loyalty so long as he does his work." + +Again Caleb had to withdraw a little and look his stalwart young captain +over and say: "It is Tom; it's just Buddy, grown up and come to be a +man." But it was hard to realize. + +"I reckon you've got it all figured out--what-all we're goin' to do, +Tom," he said, when they were seated in the car of the accommodation +train. + +"Yes, I think I have; at least, I have the beginning struck out. We are +going to call a stock-holders' meeting, vote you into the presidency, +take the bull squarely by the horns and blow in the Chiawassee furnace +again--dig coal, roast coke and make iron." + +"But, son! at the present price of iron, we can't make any money; +couldn't clear a dollar a car if the buyers would push their cars right +into our yard. And there ain't any buyers." + +Tom was looking out of the window at the procession of smokeless factory +chimneys. The blight had already fallen on the South Tredegar +industries. + +"It's going to be a battle to the strong, to the fellow who can wait, +and work while he waits," he said, half to himself. Then, more +particularly to his father's protest: "I know, we are in pretty bad +shape. When we get those exhibits we shall find that the Farleys have +picked the bones, leaving them for us to bury decently out of sight. +Then, when the funeral is over, they'll come back and charge it all to +the Gordon mismanagement. It's a cinch, isn't it?" + +The old iron-master was silent for the train-speed's measuring of a long +mile. Then he said slowly: + +"I don't aim to go back on you, Buddy; not a foot 'r an inch. But it +does seem to me like you put your finger in the fire when you hilt up +Duxbury Farley for that proxy paper in New York. If we go under--and the +good Lord only knows how we can he'p it--they'll come out of it with +clean clothes, and we'll have to take all the mud-slingin', just as you +say." + +Tom's smile would have stamped him as the son of the grim old +ex-artilleryman in any court of inquiry. + +"Did your old general ever go into battle with the idea that he was +bound to be licked, pappy?" he asked. + +"Who? Stonewall Jackson? Well, I reckon not, son." + +"Neither shall we," said Tom laconically. "We are going in to win. We +are in bad shape, I admit, but we are better off than a lot of these +furnaces that are shutting down. We have our own ore beds, and our own +coking plant. Our coal costs us seventy-five cents less than Pocahontas, +our water is free, and we can hold the property as long as we can stand +the sheriff off. My notion is to make iron and hold it; stack it in the +yards, mortgage it for what we can get, and make more iron. Some day the +country will get iron hungry; then we'll have it to sell when the other +fellows will have to make it first and sell it afterward. Have I got it +straight?" + +Caleb nodded. + +"Yes; I don't know but what you have. What's puzzlin' me right now, son, +is _where_ you got it." + +Tom's laugh was a tonic for sore nerves. + +"I'd like to know what you've been spending your good money on me for if +it wasn't to give me a chance to get it. Do you think I've been playing +foot-ball all the time?" + +"No; but--well, Tom, the last I knew of you, you was just a little +shaver, spattin' around barefooted in the dust o' the Paradise pike, and +I can't seem to climb up to where you're at now." + +Tom laughed again. + +"You'll come to it, after while. I reckon I haven't much more sense, in +some ways, than the little shaver had; but I've been trying my level +best to learn my trade. There is only one thing about this tangle that +is worrying me: that's the labor end of it." + +"We can get all the labor we want," said Caleb. + +"Yes; but didn't you write me that the men were on strike?" + +"I said the white miners were likely to make trouble if they got hungry +enough." + +"Was there any pay in arrears when you shut down?" + +"No. Farley wanted to scale the men, but I fought him out o' that." + +"Good! Then what are they kicking about?" + +"Oh, because they're out of a job. There are always a lot of keen noses +in a crowd the size of ours, and they've smelled out some o' the Farley +doin's. Of course, they don't believe in the cry of hard times; laborin' +men are always the last to believe that." + +The train was tracking thunderously around the nose of Lebanon, and Tom +was looking out of the window again, this time for the first glimpse of +the Gordonia chimney-stacks and the bounding hills of the home valley. + +"That is where you will have to put your shoulder into the collar with +me, pappy," he said. "Most of the older men know me as a boy who has +grown up among them. When I spring my proposition, they'll howl, if only +for that reason." + +But now Caleb was shaking his gray head more dubiously than ever. + +"You won't get any help from the men, Buddy, more 'n what you pay for. +You know the whites--Welshmen, Cornishmen, and a good sprinklin' o' +'huckleberries.' And the blacks don't count, one way or the other." + +The engineer of the accommodation had whistled for Gordonia, and Tom was +gathering his dunnage. + +"Our scramble is going to depend very largely on the outcome of the +meeting which I'm going to ask you to call for say, two o'clock this +afternoon on the floor of the foundry building," he said. "Will you stay +in town and get the men together, while I go home and see mother and +shape up my talk?" + +Caleb Gordon acquiesced, glad of a chance to have somewhat to do. And +so, in the very beginning of things, it was the son and not the father +who took the helm of the tempest-driven ship. + + + + +XX + +DRY WELLS + + +As early as one o'clock in the afternoon, the elder Helgerson, acting as +day watchman at the iron-works, had opened the great yard gates, and the +men began to gather by twos and threes and in little caucusing knots on +the sand floor of the huge, iron-roofed foundry building. Some of the +more heedful set to work making seats of the wooden flask frames and +bottom boards; and in the pouring space fronting one of the cupolas they +built a rough-and-ready platform out of the same materials. + +As the numbers increased the men fell into groups, dividing first on the +color-line, and then by trades, with the white miners in the majority +and doing most of the talking. + +"What's all this buzzin' round about young Tom?" queried one of the men +in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was, +'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n +knee-high to a hop-toad!" + +"Well, you bet your life he's a heap higher'n that now," said another, +who had chanced to be at the station when the Gordons, father and son, +left the train together. "He's a half a head taller than the old man, +an' built like one o' Maje' Dabney's thoroughbreds. But I reckon he +ain't nothin' but a school-boy, for all o' that." + +"Gar-r-r!" spat a third. "We've had one kid too many in this outfit, all +along. I'll bet, if the truth was knowed, th't that young Farley'd skin +a louse for the hide and tallow." + +"Yes," chimed in a fourth, a "huckleberry" miner from the Bald Mountain +district, "and I reckon whar thar's sich a hell of a smoke, thar's a +right smart heap o' fire, ef it could on'y be onkivered." + +But all of this was in a manner beside the mark, and there were many to +inquire what the Gordons were going to do. Ludlow, check weigher in +Number Two entry, and the head of the local union, took it on himself to +reply. + +"B'gosh! I don't b'lieve the old man knows, himself. He fit around and +fit around, talkin' to me, and never said nothin' more'n that there was +goin' to be a meetin' here at two o'clock, and Tom--his son Tom--was +goin' to speak to it." + +"All right; we're a-waitin' on son Tom right now," said a grizzled old +coal-digger on the outer edge of the group. "And ef he's got anything to +say, he cayn't say hit none too sudden. My ol' woman told me this +mornin' she was a-hittin' the bottom o' the meal bar'l, kerchuck! ever' +time she was dippin' into hit. Hit's erbout time there was somepin +doin', ez I allow." + +"Saw it off!" warned Ludlow. "Here they come, both of 'em." + +Tom and his father had entered the building from the cupola side, and +Tom mounted the flask-built platform while the men were scattering to +find seats. He made a goodly figure of young manhood, standing at ease +on the pile of frames until quiet should prevail, and the glances flung +up from the throng of workmen were friendly rather than critical. When +the time came, he began to speak quietly, but with a certain masterful +quality in his voice that unmistakably constrained attention. + +"I suppose you have all been told why the works are shut down--why you +are out of a job in the middle of summer; and I understand you are not +fully satisfied with the reason that was given--hard times. You have +been saying among yourselves that if the president and the treasurer +could go off on a holiday trip to Europe, the situation couldn't be so +very desperate. Isn't that so?" + +"That's so; you've hit it in the head first crack out o' the box," was +the swift reply from a score of the men. + +"Good; then we'll settle that point before we go any further. I want to +tell you men that the hard times are here, sure enough. We are all +hoping that they won't last very long; but the fact remains that the +wheels have stopped. Let me tell you: I've just come down from the +North, and the streets of the cities up there are full of idle men. All +the way down here I didn't see a single iron-furnace in blast, and those +of you who have been over to South Tredegar know what the conditions are +there. Mr. Farley has gone to Europe because he believes there is +nothing to be done here, and the facts are on his side. For anybody with +money enough to live on, this is a mighty good time to take a vacation." + +There was a murmur of protest, voicing itself generally in a denial of +the possibility for men who wrought with their hands and ate in the +sweat of their brows. + +"I know that," was Tom's rejoinder. "Some of us can't afford to take a +lay-off; I can't, for one. And that's why we are here this afternoon. +Chiawassee can blow in again and stay in blast if we've all got nerve +enough to hang on. If we start up and go on making pig, it'll be on a +dead market and we'll have to sell it at a loss or stack it in the +yards. We can't do the first, and I needn't tell you that it is going to +take a mighty long purse to do the stacking. It will be all outgo and no +income. If--" + +"Spit it out," called Ludlow, from the forefront of the miners' +division. "I reckon we all know what's comin'." + +Gordon thrust out his square jaw and gave them the fact bluntly. + +"It's a case of half a loaf or no bread. If Chiawassee blows in again, +it will be on borrowed money. If you men will take half-pay in cash and +half in promises, the promised half to be paid when we can sell the +stacked pig, we go on. If not, we don't. Talk it over among yourselves +and let us have your decision." + +There was hot caucusing and a fair imitation of pandemonium on the +foundry floor following this bomb-hurling, and Tom sat down on the edge +of the platform to give the men time. Caleb Gordon sat within arm's +reach, nursing his knee, diligently saying nothing. It was Tom, +undoubtedly, but a Tom who had become a citizen of another world, a +newer world than the one the ex-artilleryman knew and lived in. +He--Caleb--had freely predicted a riot as the result of the half-pay +proposal; yet Tom had applied the match and there was no explosion. The +buzzing, arguing groups were not riotous--only fiercely questioning. + +It was Ludlow, hammering clamorously for silence on the shell of the big +crane ladle, who acted as spokesman when the uproar was quelled. + +"You're all right, Tom Gordon--you and your daddy. But you've hit us +plum' 'twixt dinner and supper. If you two was the company--" + +Tom stood up and interrupted. + +"We are the company. While Mr. Farley is away we're the bosses; what we +say, goes." + +"All right," Ludlow went on. "That's a little better. But we've got a +kick or two comin'. Is this half-pay goin' to be in orders on the +company's store?" + +"I said cash," said Tom briefly. + +"Good enough. But I s'pose we'd have to spend it at the company's store, +jest the same, 'r get fired." + +"No!"--emphatically. "I'm not even sure that we should reopen the store. +We shall not reopen it unless you men want it. If you do want it, we'll +make it strictly coöperative, dividing the profits with every employee +according to his purchases." + +"Well, by gol, that's white, anyway," commented one of the coke burners. +"Be a mighty col' day in July when old man Farley'd talk as straight as +that." + +"Ag'in," said Ludlow, "what's this half-pay to be figured on--the +reg'lar scale?" + +"Of course." + +"And what security do we have that t'other half 'll be paid, some time?" + +"My father's word, and mine." + +"And if old man Farley says no?" + +"Mr. Farley is out of it for the present, and he has nothing to say +about it. You are making this deal with Gordon and Gordon." + +"Well, now, that's a heap more like it." Ludlow turned to the miners. +"What d'ye say, boys? Fish or cut bait? Hands up!" + +There was a good showing of hands among the white miners and the coke +burners, but the negro foundry men did not vote. Patty, the mulatto +foreman who was Helgerson's second, explained the reason. + +"You ain't said nuttin' 'bout de foundry, Boss Tom. W-w-w-w-we-all boys +been wukkin' short ti-ti-time, and m-m-m-makin' pig ain't gwine give +we-all n-n-nuttin' ter do." Patty had a painful impediment in his +speech, and the strain of the public occasion doubled it. + +"We are going to run the foundry, too, Patty, and on full time. There +will be work for all of you on the terms I have named." + +Caleb Gordon closed his eyes and put his face in his hands. For weeks +before the shut-down the foundry had been run on short time, because +there was no market for its miscellaneous output. Surely Tom must be +losing his mind! + +But the negro foundry men were taking his word for it, as the miners +had. "Pup-pup-put up yo' hands, boys!" said Patty, and again the ayes +had it. + +Tom looked vastly relieved. + +"Well, that was a short horse soon curried," he said bruskly. "The power +goes on to-morrow morning, and we'll blow in as soon as the furnaces are +relined. Ludlow, you come to the office at five o'clock and I'll list +the shifts with you. Patty, you report to Mr. Helgerson, and you and the +pattern-maker show up at half-past five. I want to talk over some new +work with you. Anybody else got anything to say? If not, we'll adjourn." + +Caleb followed his son out and across the yard to the old log homestead +which still served as the superintendent's office and laboratory. When +the door was shut, he dropped heavily into a chair. + +"Son," he said brokenly, "you're--you're crazy--plum' crazy. Don't you +know you can't do the first one o' these things you've been promisin'?" + +Tom was already busy at the desk, emptying the pigeonholes one after +another and rapidly scanning their contents. + +"If I believed that, I'd be taking to the high grass and the tall +timber. But don't you worry, pappy; we're going to do them--all of +them." + +"But, Buddy, you can't sell a pound of foundry product! We may be able +to make pig cheaper than some others, but when it comes to the foundry +floor, South Tredegar can choke us off in less'n a week." + +"Wait," said Tom, still rummaging. "There is one thing we can make--and +sell." + +"I'd like tolerable well to know what it is," was the hopeless +rejoinder. + +"You ought to know, better than any one else. It's cast-iron +pipe--water-pipe. Where are the plans of that invention of yours that +Farley wouldn't let you install?" + +Caleb found the blue-prints, and his hands were trembling. The +invention, a pit machine process for molding and casting water-and +gas-pipe at a cost that would put all other makers of the commodity out +of the field, had been wrought out and perfected in Tom's second Boston +year. It was Caleb's one ewe lamb, and he had nursed it by hand through +a long preparatory period. + +Tom took the blue-prints and spread them on the desk, absorbing the +details as his father leaned over him and pointed them out. He saw +clearly that the invention would revolutionize pipe-making. The accepted +method was to cast each piece separately in a floor flask made in two +parts, rammed by hand, once for the drag and again for the cope, with +reversings, crane-handlings and all the manipulations necessary for the +molding of any heavy casting. But the new process substituted machinery. +A cistern-like pit; a circular table pivoted over it, with a hundred or +more iron flasks suspended upright from its edges; a huge crane carrying +a mechanical ram, these were the main points of the machine which, with +a single small gang of men, would do the work of an entire foundry +floor. + +"It's great!" said Tom enthusiastically. "I got your idea pretty well +from your letters, but you've improved on it since then. I wonder Farley +didn't snap at it." + +"He was willin' to," said Caleb grimly. "Only he wanted me to transfer +the patents to the company; in other words, to make him a present of the +controlling interest. I bucked at that, and we come near havin' a +fall-out. If there was any market for pipe now--" + +"There is a market," said Tom hopefully. "I got a pointer on that before +I left Boston. Did I tell you I had a little talk with Mr. Clarkson the +day I came away?" + +"No." + +"Well, I did. I told him the conditions and asked his advice. Among +other things, I spoke of this pipe pit of yours, and he said at once, +'There is your chance. Cast-iron water-pipe is like bread, or sugar, or +butcher's meat--it's a necessity, in good times or bad. If that machine +is practicable, you can make pipe for less than half the present labor +cost.' Then we talked ways and means. Money is tighter than a shut +fist--up East as well as everywhere else. But men with money to invest +will still bet on a sure thing. Mr. Clarkson advised me to try our own +banks first. Failing with them, he authorized me to call on him. Now you +know where I'm digging my sand." + +The old iron-master sat back in his chair with his hands locked over one +knee, once more taking the measure of this new creation calling itself +Tom Gordon and purporting to be his son. + +"Say, Buddy," he said at length, "are there many more like you out +yonder in the big road?--young fellows that can walk right out o' school +and tell their daddies how to run things?" + +Tom's laugh was boyishly hearty. + +"Plenty of 'em, pappy; lots of 'em! The old world is moving right along; +it would be a pity if it didn't, don't you think? But about this pipe +business: I want you to make over these patents to me." + +"They're yours now, Tom; everything I've got will be yours in a little +while," said the father; but his voice betrayed the depth of that +thrust. Was the new Tom beginning so soon to grasp and reach out +avariciously for the fruit of the old tree? + +"You ought to know I don't mean it that way," said Tom, frowning a +little. "But here is the way it sizes up. There is money in this +pipe-making; some money now, and big money later on. Farley has refused +to go into it unless you make it a company proposition; as president and +a controlling stock-holder you can't very well go into it now without +making it in some sort a company proposition. But you can transfer the +patents to me, and I can contract with Chiawassee Consolidated to make +pipe for me." + +Caleb Gordon's frown matched that of his son. + +"That would certainly be givin' Colonel Duxbury a dose of his own +medicine; but I don't like it, Tom. It looks as if we were taking +advantage of him." + +"No. I'd make the proposition to him, personally, if he were here, and +the boss; and he'd be a fool if he didn't jump at it," said Tom +earnestly. "But there is more to it than that. If we make a go of this, +and don't protect ourselves, the two Farleys will come back and put the +whole thing in their pockets. I won't go into it on any such terms. When +they do come back, I'm going to have money to fight them with, and this +is our one little ghost of a chance. Ring up Judge Bates and get him to +come over here and make a legal transfer of these patents to me." + +The thing was done, though not without some misgivings on Caleb's part. +Honesty and fair dealing, even with a known enemy, had been the rule of +his life; and while he could not put his finger on the equivocal thing +in Tom's plan, he was vaguely troubled. Analyzed after the fact, the +trouble was vicarious, and for Tom. It defined itself more clearly when +they went together to South Tredegar to have an attorney draw up the +agreement under which Tom's pipe venture was to be conducted. Tom, as +the owner of the patents, was fair with the Chiawassee Consolidated, but +he was not liberal; indeed, he would have been quite illiberal if the +attorney had not warned him that an agreement, to be defensible, must be +equitable as well as legal. + +At this stage in the journey Tom could not have accounted for himself in +the ethical field. Something, a thing intangible, had gone out of him. +He could not tell what it was; but he missed it. The kindly Gordon +nature was intact, or he hoped it was, but the neighbor-love, which was +his father's rule of life, seemed not to have come down to him in its +largeness. Ruth for the Farleys was not to be expected of him, he +argued; but behind this was a vaster ruthlessness, arming him to win the +industrial battle, making him a hard man as he had suddenly become a +strong one. + +And the experiences of the summer were all hardening. He plunged +headlong into the world of business, into a panic-time competition which +was in grim reality a fight for life, and there seemed to be little to +choose between trampling or being trampled. By early autumn the iron +industries of the country were gasping, and the stacks of pig in the +Chiawassee yards, kept down a little during the summer by a few meager +orders, grew and spread until they covered acres. As long as money could +be had, the iron was bonded as fast as it was made, and the proceeds +were turned into wages to make more. But when money was no longer +obtainable from this source, the pipe venture was the only hope. + +With the entire foundry force at the Chiawassee making pipe, Tom had +gone early into the market with his low-priced product. But the +commercial side of the struggle was fire-new to him, and he found +himself matched against men who knew buying and selling as he knew +smelting and casting. They routed him, easily at first, with increasing +difficulty as he learned the new trade, but always with certainty. It +was Norman, the correspondence man, transformed now into a sales agent, +who gave him his first hint of the inwardnesses. + +"We're too straight, Mr. Gordon; that's at the bottom of it," he said to +Tom, over a grill-room luncheon at the Marlboro one day. "It takes money +to make money." + +Tom's eyebrows went up and his ears were open. The battle had grown +desperate. + +"Our prices are right," he said. "Isn't that enough?" + +"No," said Norman, looking down. Like all the others, he stood a little +in awe of the young boss. + +"Why?" + +"Four times out of five we have to sell to a municipal committee, and +the other time we have to monkey with the purchasing agent of a +corporation. In either case it takes money--other money besides the +difference in price." + +Tom wagged his head in a slow affirmative. "It's rotten!" he said. + +Norman smiled. + +"It's our privilege to cuss it out; but it's a condition." + +Tom was in town that day for the purpose of taking a train to +Louisville, where he was to meet the officials of an Indiana city +forced, despite the hard times, to relay many miles of worn-out +water-mains. He made a pencil computation on the back of an envelope. +The contract was a large one, and his bid, which he was confident was +lower than any competitor could make, would still stand a cut and leave +a margin of profit. Before he took the train he went to the bank, and, +when he reached the Kentucky metropolis, his first care was to assure +the "wheel-horse" member of the municipal purchasing board that he was +ready to talk business on a modern business basis. + +Notwithstanding, he lost the contract. Other people were growing +desperate, too, it appeared, and his bribe was not great enough. One +member of the committee stood by him and gave him the facts. A check had +been passed, and it was a bigger check than Tom could draw without +trenching on the balance left in the Iron City National to meet the +month's pay-roll at Gordonia. + +"You sent a boy to mill," said the loyal one. "And now it's all over, I +don't mind telling you that you sent him to the wrong mill, at that. +Bullinger's a hog." + +"I'd like to do him up," said Tom vindictively. + +"Well, that might be done, too. But it would cost you something." + +Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance. But on the way +home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile. He could meet one more +pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come. This one +contract would have saved the day, and it was lost. + +The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him +down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station +to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald +to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time, +the big plant was silent and deserted. + +Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the +Woodlawn porch. + +"You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung +himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this +morning." + +"What was in the papers?" + +"About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the +business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm +brewin' when we missed the pay-day yesterday." + +Tom started as if he had been stung. + +"Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to +Louisville!" + +"Yes, I know you did. When Dyckman didn't come out with the pay-rolls +yesterday evening I telephoned him. He said Vint Farley, as treasurer of +the company, had made a draft on him and taken it all." + +Tom sprang out of his chair and the bitter oaths upbubbled and choked +him. But he stifled them long enough to say: "And the men?" + +"The miners went out at ten o'clock this morning. The blacks would have +stood by us, but Ludlow's men drove 'em out--made 'em quit. We're done, +Buddy." + +Tom dashed his hat on the floor, and the Gordon rage, slow to fire and +fierce to scorch and burn when once it was aflame, made for the moment a +yelling, cursing maniac of him. In the midst of it he turned, and the +tempest of imprecation spent itself in a gasp of dismay. His mother was +standing in the doorway, thin, frail, with the sorrow in her eyes that +had been there since the long night of chastenings three years agone. + +As he looked he saw the growing pallor in her face, the growing +speechless horror in her gaze. Then she put out her hands as one groping +in darkness and fell before he could reach her. + +It was her stalwart son who carried Martha Gordon to her room and laid +her gently on the bed, with the husband to follow helplessly behind. +Also, it was Tom, tender and loving now as a woman, who sat upon the +edge of the bed, chafing the bloodless hands and striving as he could to +revive her. + +"I'm afeard you've killed her for sure, this time, son!" groaned the +man. + +But Tom saw the pale lips move and bent low to catch their whisperings. +What he heard was only the echo of the despairing cry of the broken +heart: "_Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son_!" + + + + +XXI + +GILGAL + + +In these days of slowing wheels and silenced anvils South Tredegar had +its own troubles, and when some one telephoned the editor of the +_Morning Tribune_ that Chiawassee Consolidated had succumbed at last, he +did not deem it worth while to inquire whether the strike at Gordonia +was the cause or the consequence of the sudden shut-down. + +But a day or two later, when rumors of threatened violence began to +trickle in over the telephone wires, a _Tribune_ man called, in passing, +at the general offices in the Coosa Building, and was promptly put to +sleep by the astute Dyckman, who, for reasons of his own, was quite +willing to conceal the true state of affairs. Yes, there was a +suspension of active operations at Gordonia, and he believed there had +been some hot-headed talk among the miners. But there would be no +trouble. Mr. Farley was at present in London negotiating for English +capital. When he should return, the capital stock of the company would +be increased, and the plant would probably be removed to South Tredegar +and enlarged. + +All of which was duly jotted down to be passed into the _Tribune's_ +archives; and the following morning Tom, doing guard duty with his +father, the two Helgersons and a squad of the yard men at the threatened +plant, read a pointless editorial in which misstatement of fact and +sympathy for the absent and struggling Farleys were equally and +impartially blended. + +"Look at that!" he growled wrathfully, handing the paper across the +office desk to Caleb. "One of these fine days I'm going to land that +fellow Dyckman in the penitentiary." + +The iron-master put on his spectacles and plodded slowly and +conscientiously through the editorial, turning the paper, at length, to +glance over the headings on the telegraphic page. In the middle of it he +looked up suddenly to say: + +"Son, what was the name o' that Indiany town with the big water-pipe +contract?" + +Tom gave it in a word, and Caleb passed the paper back, with his thumb +on one of the press despatches. + +"Read that," he said. + +Tom read, and the wrathful scowl evoked by the foolish editorial gave +place to a flitting smile of triumph. There was trouble in the Indiana +city over the awarding of the pipe contract. In some way unknown to the +press reporter, it had leaked out that a much lower bid than the one +accepted had been ignored by the purchasing committee. A municipal +election was pending, and the people were up in arms. Rumors of a +wholesale indictment of the suspected officials were rife, and the city +offices were in a state of siege. + +Tom put the paper down and smote on the desk. + +"Damn them!" he said; "I thought perhaps I could give them a run for +their money." + +"You?" said Caleb, removing his glasses. "How's that?" + +The new recruit in the army of business chicane nodded his head. + +"It was a shot in the dark, and I didn't want to brag beforehand," he +explained. "I wrestled it out Saturday night when I was tramping the +hills after Doc Williams had brought mother around. One member of the +purchasing committee was ready to dodge; he gave me a pointer before I +left Louisville. I didn't see anything in it then but revenge; but +afterward I saw how we might spend some money to a possible advantage." + +Caleb's eyes had grown narrow. + +"I reckon I'm sort o' dull, Buddy; what-all did you do?" + +"Wired the disgruntled one that there was a letter and a check in the +mail for him, to be followed by another and a bigger if his pole proved +long enough to reach the persimmons." + +The old iron-master left his chair and began to walk the floor, six +steps and a turn. After a little he said: + +"Tom, is that business?" + +"It is the modern definition of it." + +"What's goin' to happen up yonder in Indiany?" + +"If I knew, I'd be a good bit easier in my mind. What I'm hoping is that +the rumpus will be big enough to make 'em turn the contract our way." + +Caleb stopped short. + +"My God!" he ejaculated. "Where's your heart, Buddy? Would you take the +chance of sendin' these fellows to jail for the sake of gettin' that +contract?" + +"Cheerfully," said Tom. "They're rascals; I could have bought them if +I'd had money enough; and the other fellow did buy them." + +The old man resumed his monotonous tramp up and down the room. The +hardness in Tom's voice unnerved him. After another interval of silence +he spoke again. + +"I wish you hadn't done it, son. It's a dirty job, any way you look at +it." + +Tom shrugged. + +"Norman says it's a condition, not a theory; and he is right. We are +living under a new order of things, and if we want to stay alive, we've +got to conform to it. It gagged me at first: I reckon there are some +traces of the Christian tradition left. But, pappy, I'm going to win. +That is what I'm here for." + +Caleb Gordon shook his head as one who deprecates helplessly, but he sat +down again and asked Tom what the programme was to be. + +"There is nothing for us to do but to sit tight and wait. If we get a +telegram from Indiana before these idiots of ours lose their heads and +go to rioting and burning, we shall still have a fighting chance. If +not, we're smashed." + +"You mustn't be too hard on the men, Buddy. They've been mighty +patient." + +The scowl deepened between the level gray eyes. + +"If I could do what I'd like to, I'd fire the last man of them. It makes +me savage to have them turn up and knock us on the head after we've been +sweating blood to pull through. Have you seen Ludlow?" + +"Yes; I saw him last night. He's right ugly; swore he wouldn't raise a +hand even if the boys took kerosene and dynamite to us." + +"Well, if they do, he'll be the first man to pay for it," said Tom; and +he left the office and the house to make the round of the guarded gates. + +Ludlow was as good as his word. On the night following the day of +suspense an attempt was made to wreck the inclined railway running from +the mines on Lebanon to the coke yard. It was happily frustrated; but +when Tom and his handful of guards got back to the foot of the hill they +found a fire started in a pile of wooden flasks heaped against the end +of the foundry building. + +The fire was easily extinguishable by a willing hand or two, but Tom +tried an experiment. Steam had been kept up in a single battery of +boilers against emergencies, and he directed Helgerson to throw open the +great gates while he ran to the boiler room and sent the fire call of +the huge siren whistle shrieking out on the night. + +The experiment was only meagerly successful. Less than a score of the +strikers answered the call, but these worked with a will, and the fire +was quickly put out. + +Tom was under the arc-light at the gates when the volunteers straggled +out. He had a word for each man,--a word of appreciation and a plea for +suspended judgment. Most of the men shook their heads despondently, but +a few of them promised to stand on the side of law and order. Tom took +the names of the few, and went back to his guard duty with the burden a +little lightened. But the succeeding night there were more attempts at +violence, three of them so determined as to leave no doubt that the +crisis was at hand. This was Tom's discouraged admission when his father +came to relieve him in the morning. + +"We're about at the end of the rope," he said wearily, when Caleb had +closed the door of the log-house yard office behind him. "The two +Helgersons are played out, and neither of us can stand this strain for +another twenty-four hours. I'm just about dead on my feet for sleep, and +I know you are." + +The old ex-artilleryman stifled a yawn, and admitted the fact. + +"I'm gettin' right old and no-account, son; there's no denyin' that. And +you can't make out to shoulder it all, stout as you are. But what-all +can we do different?" + +"I know what I'm going to do. I had a 'phone wire from Bradley, the +sheriff, last night after you went home. He funked like a boy; said he +couldn't raise a posse in South Tredegar that would serve against +striking workmen. Then I wired the governor, and his answer came an hour +ago. We can have the soldiers if we make a formal demand for them." + +"But, Tom, son; you wouldn't do that!" protested Caleb tremulously. +Then, getting up to walk the floor as was his wont under sharp stress: +"Let's try to hold out a little spell longer, Buddy. It'll be like fire +to tow; there'll be men killed--men that I've known ever since they were +boys: men killed, and women made widders. Tom, I've seen enough of war +to last me." + +"I know," said Tom. None the less, he found a telegraph blank and began +to write the message. There had been shots fired in the night, in a +sally on the inclined railway, and one of them had scored his arm. If +the rioters needed the strong hand to curb them, they should have it. + +"Think of what it'll mean for this town that we've built up, son. We'll +have to stay here--'er leastwise, I will, and there'll be blood on the +streets for me to see as long as I walk 'em." + +"I know," Tom reiterated, in the same monotonous tone. But his pen did +not pause. + +"Then there's your mammy," Caleb pleaded, and now the pen stopped. + +"Mother must not know." + +"How can we he'p her knowin', Buddy? I tell you, son, the very stones o' +Paradise'll rise up to testify against us, now, and at the last great +day, maybe." + +The frown deepened between the young man's eyes. + +"The old, old phantom!" he said, half to himself. "Will it never be +laid, even for those who know it to be a myth?" And then to his father: +"It's no use, pappy. I tell you we've got to take this thing by the +neck. See here; that's how near they came to settling me last night," +and he showed the perforated coat-sleeve. + +Caleb Gordon was silenced. He resumed his restless pacing while Tom +signed the call for help, read it over methodically, and placed it +between dampened sheets in the letter-press. He had pushed the electric +button which summoned Stub Helgerson, when the door opened silently and +Jeff Ludlow's boy thrust face and hand through the aperture. + +"Well; what is it?" demanded Tom, more sharply than he meant to. The +strain was beginning to tell on his nerves. + +"Hit's a letter for you-all from Mr. Stamford at the dee-po," said the +boy. "He allowed maybe you-all'd gimme a nickel for bringin' hit." + +The coin was found and passed, and the small boy was whooping and +yelling for Helgerson to come and let him through the gates when Tom +tore the envelope across and read the telegram. It was from the Indiana +city, and it was signed by the chairman of the Board of Public Works. + +"Proposals for water-pipe have been reopened, and your bid is accepted. +Wire how soon you can begin to ship eighteen-inch mains," was what it +said. Tom handed it to his father and stepped quickly to the telephone. +There was a little delay in getting the ear of the president of the Iron +City National at South Tredegar, and the bounding, pulsing blood of +impatience made it seem interminable. + +"Is that you, Mr. Henniker? This is Gordon at the Chiawassee plant, +Gordonia. We have secured that Indiana contract I was telling you about, +and I'll be in to see you on the ten o'clock train. Will you save five +minutes for me? Thank you. Good-by." + +Tom hung the ear-piece on its hook and turned to face his father. + +"Have you surrounded it?" he laughed, with a little quaver of excitement +in his voice, which he had been careful to master in the announcement to +the bank president. "We live, pappy; we live and win! Get word to the +men to come up here at three o'clock for their pay. Tell them we blow in +again to-morrow, and they can all come back to work and no questions +asked. Can you stay on your feet long enough to do all that?" + +Caleb was nodding gravely; yet bewilderment was still in the saddle. + +"But the money for the pay-rolls, son--this is only an order to go to +work," he said, fingering the telegram doubtfully. + +Tom laughed joyously. + +"If I can't make Mr. Henniker believe that he can afford to carry us a +while longer on the strength of that bit of yellow paper, I'll rob his +bank. You get the men together by three o'clock, and I'll be here with +the money. If I'm not, it will be because somebody has sandbagged me +between the bank and the train." + +Caleb was still wrestling with the incredible thing, but light was +breaking in on him slowly. + +"Hold on, son," he said, and the old-time smile was wrinkling at the +corners of his eyes; "how much did you allow to make out o' this job? I +disremember what you said when you talked about it before." + +Tom checked off the items on his fingers. + +"Enough to put us through the winter; enough to stand us on our feet +independent of Duxbury Farley and his son; enough to let us pay Major +Dabney the back royalties on the coal. More than this, it's going to use +up iron--hundreds of tons of it. We'll buy out of our own yards, and the +men shall have the back-pay dividends." + +The general manager had taken his burned-out corn-cob pipe from his +pocket and was looking at it speculatively. + +"Well, now, if that's the case, I reckon I can go down to Hargis's and +buy me a new pipe, Buddy; and I--I'll be switched if I don't do it right +now." + +And in such gladsome easing of the strain were the wheels of Chiawassee +Consolidated oiled to their new whirlings on the road to fortune. If +Caleb Gordon remembered how the miracle had been wrought, he said no +word to clench his disapproval; and as for Tom--ah, well; it was not the +first time in the history of the race that the end has served to justify +the means--to make them clean and white and spotless, if need were. + + + + +XXII + +LOVE + + +If Tom Gordon could have known how slightly the Dabney's European plans +coincided with those of the Farleys, he might have had fewer +heartburnings in those intervals when the harassing struggle for +industrial existence gave him time to think of Ardea. + +As a strict matter of fact, the voyage across, and some little +guide-book touring of England, were the sum total of coincidence. On +leaving London the Farleys set out on the grand tour which was to land +them in Naples for the winter, while the Dabneys went directly to Paris +and to a modest pension in the Rue Cambon to spend the European holiday +in a manner better befitting the purse of a country gentleman. + +So it befell that by the time Miss Eva Farley was rhapsodizing over the +Rhine castles in twenty-page letters, boring Ardea a little, if the +truth must be told, the Dabneys had settled down to their quiet life in +the French capital. Ardea was anxious to do something with her music +under a Parisian master--and was doing it. The Major found melancholy +pleasure in reviewing at large the city of his son's long exile; and +Miss Euphrasia came and went with one or the other of her cousins, as +the exigencies of chaperonage or companionship constrained her. + +In such moderate pleasuring the French summer began for the Major and +his charges; so it continued, and so it ended; and late in September +they began to talk about going home. + +"We really mean it this time," wrote Ardea in a letter to Martha Gordon. +"I confess we are all a little homesick for America, and Paradise, and +dear old Deer Trace Manor. The Farleys are settled for the remainder of +the year or longer in a fine old palazzo on the Bay of Naples, and we +have a very pressing invitation to go and help them inhabit it. But thus +far we have not been tempted beyond our strength. Major Grandpa is +talking more and more pointedly about the Morgan mares, and is growing a +habit of comparison-drawing in which America profits at the expense of +Europe; so I suppose by the time you are reading this we shall have made +our sailing arrangements. Nevertheless, the Naples invitation is dying +hard. Eva seems to have set her heart on having us for the winter." + +Ardea's figure of speech was no figure. The palazzo-sharing invitation +did die hard; and when Miss Farley's letters failed, Mr. Vincent Farley +made a journey to Paris for the express purpose of persuading the +Dabneys to reconsider. Miss Euphrasia was neutral. The Major was +homesick for a sight of his native Southland, but for Ardea's sake he +generously concealed the symptoms--or thought he did. So the decision +was finally left to Ardea. + +She said no, and adhered to it, partly because she knew her grandfather +was pining for Paradise, and partly on her own account. Ardea at twenty +was a young woman who might have made King Solomon pause with suspended +pen when he was writing that saying about his inability to find one +woman among a thousand. She was not beautiful beyond compare, as the +Southern young woman is so likely to be under the pencil of her loyal +limners. She had the Dabney nose, which was not quite classical, and the +Courtenay mouth, well-lined and expressive, rather than too suggestive, +of feminine softness. But her eyes were beautiful, and her luxuriant +masses of copper-gold hair fitted her shapely head like a glorious +aureole; also, she had that indefinable adorableness called charm, and +the sweet, direct, childlike frankness of speech which is its +characteristic. + +This was the external Ardea, known of men, and of those women who were +large-minded enough not to envy her. But the inner Ardea was a being +apart--high-seated, alone, self-sufficient in the sense that it saw too +clearly to be hoodwinked, infinitely reasonable, with vision unclouded +either by passion or the conventions. This inner Ardea knew Vincent +Farley better than he knew himself: the small mind, the mask of outward +correctness, the coldness of heart, the utter lack of the heroic +soul-strength which, even in a brutal man, may sometimes draw and +conquer and merge within itself the woman-soul that, yielding, still +yields open-eyed and undeceived. + +He was the most moderate of lovers, as such a man must needs be, but his +anxiety to second the wishes of his father and sister was not to be +misunderstood by the clear-eyed inner Ardea, whose intuition served her +as a sixth sense. She knew that sometime he would ask her to marry him; +and in that region where her answer should lie she found only a vast +indecision. He was not her ideal, but the all-seeing inner self told +her that she would never find the ideal. There comes to every woman, +sooner or later, the conviction that if she would marry she must take +men as they are, weighing the good against the evil, choosing as she may +the man whose vices may be condoned or whose virtues are great enough to +overshadow them. Ardea knew that Vincent Farley was not great in either +field; but the little virtues were not to be despised. If he were not, +in the best sense of the word, well-bred, he had at least been well +nurtured, well schooled in the conventions. Ardea sighed. It was in her +to be something more than the conventional wife, yet she saw no reason +to believe that she would ever be called on to be anything else. By +which it will be apparent that the sacred flame of love had not yet been +kindled in her maiden heart. + +As for Vincent Farley, the real man, Ardea's appraisal of him was not +greatly at fault. He was tall, like his father, but there the +resemblance paused. The promoter's shifty blue eyes were always at the +point of lighting up with enthusiasm; the son's, of precisely the same +hue, were cold and calmly calculating. The human polyhedron has as many +facets as a curiously-cut gem, and Vincent Farley's gift lay in the +ability always to present the same side to the same person. His attitude +toward Ardea had always been a pose; but it was a pose maintained so +faithfully that it had become one of the facets of the polyhedron. Such +men do not love, as a woman defines love; they merely have the mating +instinct. And even lust finds a cold hearth in such hearts, though on +occasion it will rake the embers together and make shift to blow them +into some brief, fierce flame. At times, Farley's thought of Ardea was +libertine; but oftener she figured as the woman who would grace the home +of affluence, giving it charm and tone. Also, he had an affection for +the Dabney manorial acres, and especially for that portion of them +overlying the coal measures. + +The pose-facet was at the precisely effective angle when he came to +Paris as his sister's messenger and pictured, with what warmth there was +in him, the delights in the prospect of a Neapolitan winter. But Ardea, +shrinking from a six months' guesting with any one, said no, and told +her grandfather she was ready to go home. + +The start was from Havre, and Vincent, with time on his hands, was her +companion on the railway journey, her _courrier du place_ in the +embarkation, and her faithful shadow up to the instant when the warning +cry for the shore-goers rang through the ship. It was scarcely a moment +for sentimental passages, and under the most favoring conditions, +Vincent Farley was something less than sentimental. Yet he found time to +declare himself in conventional fashion, modestly asking only for the +right to hope. + +Ardea was not ready to give an answer, even to the tentative question; +yet she did it--was, in a manner, surprised into doing it. For the young +woman who has not loved, it is easy to doubt the existence of the +seventh Heaven, or at least to reckon without its possibilities. At the +very crucial moment the clear-sighted inner self was assuring her that +this cold-eyed young man, who walked in the paths of righteousness +because he found them easier and pleasanter than the way of the +transgressor, was at best only a mildly exciting apotheosis of the +negative virtues. But the negative virtues, failing to score +brilliantly, nevertheless have the advantage of continuous innings. +Ardea was turned twenty in the year of the European holiday, and she +had--or believed she had--her heritage of the Dabney impetuosity well in +hand. Vincent's self-restraint was admirable, and his gentle deference, +conventional as it was, rose almost to the height of sentiment. So she +gave him his answer; gave him her hand at parting, and stood dutifully +fluttering her handkerchief for him while the liner drew out of its slip +and pointed its prow toward the headlands. + +With rough weather on the homeward passage, she had space and +opportunity to consider the consequences. Being the only good sailor in +the trio, she had her own self-communings for company during the greater +part of the six days, and the incident sentimental took on an aspect of +finality which was rather dismaying. It was quite in vain that she +sought comfort in the reflection that she was committed to nothing +conclusive. Vincent Farley had not taken that view of it. True, he had +asked for nothing more than a favorable attitude on her part; but she +thought he would be less than a man if he had not seen his final answer +foreshadowed in her acquiescence. + +The finality admitted, a query arose. Was Vincent Farley the man who, +giving her his best, could call out the best there was in her? It +annoyed her to admit the query, or rather the doubt which fathered it; +it distressed her when the doubt appeared to grow with the lengthening +leagues of distance. + +Now vacillation was not a Dabney failing; and the aftermath of these +storm-tossed musings made for Vincent Farley's cause. Romance also, in +the eternal feminine, is a constant quantity, and if it be denied the +Romeo-and-Juliet form of expression, will find another. Vincent Farley, +as man or as lover, presented obstacles to any idealizing process, but +Ardea set herself resolutely to overcome them. Distance and time have +other potentialities besides the obliterative: they may breed halos. +When the French liner reached its New York slip, Ardea was remembering +only the studied kindnesses, the conventional refinements, the +correctnesses which, if they did seem artificial at times, were so many +guarantees of self-respect: when the Great Southwestern train had roared +around the cliffs of Lebanon with the returning exiles, and the +locomotive whistle was sounding for Gordonia, some other of the negative +virtues had become definitely positive, and the halo was beginning to be +distinctly visible. + +How Tom Gordon had informed himself of the precise day and train of +their home-coming, Ardea did not think to inquire. But he was on the +platform when the train drew in, and was the first to welcome them. + +She was quick to see and appreciate the changes wrought in him, by time, +by the Boston sojourn, by the summer's struggle with adverse men and +things--though of this last she knew nothing as yet. It seemed scarcely +credible that the big, handsome young fellow who was shaking hands with +her grandfather, helping Miss Euphrasia with her multifarious +belongings, and making himself generally useful and hospitable, could be +a later reincarnation of the abashed school-boy who had sweated through +the trying luncheon at Crestcliffe Inn. + +"Not a word for me, Tom?" she said, when the last of Cousin Euphrasia's +treasures had been rescued from the impatient train porter and added to +the heap on the platform. + +"All the words are for you--or they shall be presently," he laughed. +"Just let me get your luggage out of pawn and started Deer-Traceward, +and I'll talk you to a finish." + +She stood by and looked on while he did it. Surely, he had grown and +matured in the three broadening years! There was conscious manhood, +effectiveness, in every movement; in the very bigness of him. She had a +little attack of patriotism, saying to herself that they did not fashion +such young men in the Old World--could not, perhaps. + +Mammy Juliet's grandson, Pete, was down with the family carriage, and he +took his orders from Tom touching the bestowal of the luggage as he +would have taken them from Major Dabney. Ardea marked this, too, and +being Southern bred, wrote the Gordon name still a little higher on the +scroll of esteem. Pete's respectful obedience was, in its way, a patent +of nobility. The negro house-servant, to the manner born, draws the line +sharply between gentle and simple and is swift to resent interlopings. + +When Pete had done his office with the European gatherings of the party +the ancient carriage looked like a van, and there was scant room inside +for three passengers. + +"That means us for old Longfellow and the buggy," said Tom to Ardea. +"Do you mind? Longfellow is fearfully and wonderfully slow, same as +ever, but he's reasonably sure." + +"Any way," said Ardea; so he put her into the buggy and they drew in +behind the carriage. Before they were half-way to the iron-works they +had the pike to themselves, and Tom was not urging the leisurely horse. + +"My land! but it's good for tired eyes to have another sight of you!" he +declared, applying the remedy till she laughed and blushed a little. +Then: "It has been a full month of Sundays. Do you realize that?" + +"Since we saw each other? It has been much longer than that, hasn't it?" + +"Not so very much. I saw you in New York the day you sailed." + +"You did! Where was I?" + +"You had just come down in the elevator at the hotel with your +grandfather and Miss Euphrasia." + +"And you wouldn't stop to speak to us? I think that was simply +barbarous!" + +"Wasn't it?" he laughed. "But the time was horribly unpropitious." + +"Why?" + +He looked at her quizzically. + +"I'm wondering whether I'd better lie out of it; say I knew you were on +your way to breakfast, and that I hoped to have a later opportunity, and +all that. Shall I do it?" + +She did not reply at once. The undeceived inner self was telling her +that here lay the parting of the ways; that on her answer would be built +the structure, formal or confidential, of their future intercourse. +Loyalty to the halo demanded self-restraint; but every other fiber of +her was reaching out for a reëstablishment of the old boy-and-girl +openness of heart and mind. Her hesitation was only momentary. + +"You are just as rude and Gothic as you used to be, aren't you, Tom? +Don't you know, I'm childishly glad of it; I was afraid you might be +changed in that way, too,--and I don't want to find anything changed. +You needn't be polite at the expense of truth--not with me." + +He looked at her with love in his eyes. + +"This time, you mean--or all the time." + +"All the time, if you like." + +"I do like; there has got to be some one person in this world to whom I +can talk straight, Ardea." + +She laughed a little laugh of half-constraint. + +"You speak as if there had been a vacancy." + +"There has been--for just about three years. I remember you told me once +that I'd find two kinds of friends: those who would refuse to believe +anything bad of me, and those who would size me up and still stick to +me. You are the only one of that second lot I have discovered thus far." + +"We are getting miles away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel," she reminded +him. + +"No; we are just now approaching it from the proper direction. I had my +war paint on that morning, and I wasn't fit to talk to you." + +"Business?" she queried. + +"Yes. Didn't the Major tell you about it?" + +"Not a word. I hope you didn't quarrel with him, too?" + +He marked the adverb of addition and wondered if Vincent Farley had +been less reticent than Major Dabney. + +"No; I didn't quarrel with your grandfather." + +"But you did quarrel with Mr. Farley?--or was it with Vincent?" + +He smiled and shook his head. + +"We can't do it, Ardea--go back to the old way, you know. You see +there's a stump in the road, the very first thing." + +"I shan't admit it," she said half-defiantly. "I am going to make you +like the Farleys." + +He shook his head again. "You'll have to make a Christian of me first, +and teach me how to love my enemies." + +"Don't you do that now?" + +"No; not unless you are my enemy; I love you." + +She looked up at him appealingly. + +"Don't make fun of such things, Tom. Love is sacred." + +"I was never further from making fun of things in my life. I mean it +with every drop of blood in me. You said you didn't want to find me +changed; I'm not changed in that, at least." + +"You ridiculous boy!" she said; but that was only a stop-gap, and +Longfellow added another by coming to a stand opposite a vast +obstruction of building material half damming the white road. "What are +you doing here--building more additions?" she asked. + +"No," said Tom. "It is a new plant--a pipe foundry." + +"Don't tell me we are going to have more neighbors in Paradise," she +said in mock concern. + +"I'll tell you something that may shock you worse than that: the owner +of this new plant has camped down right next door to Deer Trace." + +"How dreadful! You don't mean that!" + +"Oh, but I do. He's a young man, of poor but honest parentage, with a +large eye for the main chance. I shouldn't be surprised if he took every +opportunity to make love to you." + +"How absurd you can be, Tom! Who is he?" + +"He is Mr. Caleb Gordon's son. I think you think you know him, but you +don't; nobody does." + +"Really, Tom? Have you gone into business for yourself? I thought you +had another year at Boston." + +"I have another year coming to me, but I don't know when I shall get it. +And I am in business for myself; though perhaps I should be modest and +call it a firm--Gordon and Gordon." + +"What does the firm do?" + +"A number of things; among others, it buys the entire iron output of the +Chiawassee Consolidated, just at present." + +"Dear me!" she said; "how fine and large that sounds! If I should say +anything like that you would tell me that Brag was a good dog, but--" + +He grinned ecstatically. It was so like old times--the good old +times--to be bandying good-tempered abuse with her. + +"I do brag a lot, don't I? But have you ever noticed that I 'most always +have something to brag about? This time, for instance. I built this new +firm, and it is all that has kept Chiawassee from going into the +sheriff's hands any time during the past six months." + +Longfellow had picked his way judiciously around the obstructions and +through the gap in the boundary hills, and was jogging in a vertical +trot up the valley pike made clean and hard and stony-white by the +sweeping and hammering of the autumn rains. The mingled clamor of the +industries was left behind, but the throbbing pulsations of the big +blowing-engines hung in the air like the sighings of an imprisoned +giant. They were passing the miniature copy of Morwenstow Church when +Ardea spoke again. + +"You have been home all summer?" she asked. + +"At home and on the road, trying to hypnotize somebody into buying +something--anything--made out of cast-iron. Ah, girl! it's been a bitter +fight!" + +She was instantly sympathetic; more, there was a little thrill of +vicarious triumph to go with the sympathy. She was sure he had won, or +was winning, the battle. + +"We read something about the hard times in the American papers," she +said. "You don't know how far away anything like that seems when there +is an ocean between. And I was hoping all the time that our homeland +down here was escaping." + +"Escaping? You came through South Tredegar a little while ago; it is +dead--too dead to bury. You hear the sob of those blowing-engines?--you +will travel two hundred miles in the iron belt before you will hear it +again. When I came home in June we were smashed, like all the other +furnaces in the South--only worse." + +"How worse, Tom?" + +He forgot the tacit truce for the moment. + +"Duxbury Farley and his son had deliberately wrecked the company." + +She laid a restraining hand on his arm. + +"Let us understand each other," she said gently. "You must not say such +things of Mr. Farley and--and his son to me. If you do, I can't listen." + +"You don't believe what I say?" + +"I believe you have convinced yourself. But you are vindictive; you know +you are. And I mean to be fair and just." + +He let the plodding horse measure a full half-mile before he turned and +looked at her with anger and despair glooming in his eyes. + +"Tell me one thing, Ardea, and maybe it will shut my mouth. What is +Vincent Parley to you--anything more than Eva's brother?" + +Another young woman might have claimed her undoubted right to evade such +a pointed question. But Ardea saw safety only in instant frankness. + +"He has asked me to be his wife, Tom." + +"And you have consented?" + +"I wonder if I have," she said half-musingly. + +"Don't you _know_?" he demanded. And then, "Ardea, I'd rather see you +dead and in your coffin!" + +"Just why--apart from your prejudice?" + +"It's Beauty and the Beast over again. You don't know Vint Farley." + +"Don't I? My opportunities have been very much better than yours," she +retorted. + +"That may be, but I say you don't know him. He is a whited sepulcher." + +"But you can not particularize," she insisted. "And the evidence is all +the other way." + +Tom was silent. During the summer of strugglings he had gone pretty +deeply into the history of Chiawassee Consolidated, and there was +commercial sharp practice in plenty, with some nice balancings on the +edge of criminality. Once, indeed, the balance had been quite lost, but +it was Dyckman who had been thrust into the breach, or who had been +induced to enter it by falsifying his books. Yet these were mere +business matters, without standing in the present court. + +"The evidence isn't all one-sided," he asserted. "If you were a man, I +could convince you in two minutes that both of the Farleys are rascals +and hypocrites." + +"Yet they are your father's business associates," she reminded him. + +He saw the hopelessness of any argument on that side, and was silent +again, this time until they had passed the Deer Trace gates and he had +cut the buggy before the great Greek-pillared portico of the +manor-house. When he had helped her out, she thanked him and gave him +her hand quite in the old way; and he held it while he asked a single +blunt question. + +"Tell me one thing more, Ardea: do you love Vincent Farley?" + +Her swift blush answered him, and he did not wait for her word. + +"That settles it; you needn't say it in so many words. Isn't it a hell +of a world, Ardea? I love you--love you as this man never will, never +could. And with half his chance, I could have made you love me. I--" + +"Don't, Tom! please don't," she begged, trying to free her hand. + +"I must, for this once; then we'll quit and go back to the former +things. You said a while ago that I was vindictive; I'll show you that +I am not. When the time comes for me to put my foot on Vint Farley's +neck, I'm going to spare him for your sake. Then you'll know what it +means to have a man's love. Good-by; I'm coming over for a few minutes +this evening if you'll let me." + + + + +XXIII + +TARRED ROPES + + +"Now jest you listen at me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't goin' to make out to +find no better hawss 'n that this side o' the Blue Grass. Sound as a +dollar in lung _and_ leg, highstepper--my Land! jest look at the way he +holds his head--rides like a baby's cradle; why, that hawss is a perfect +gentleman, Tom-Jeff." + +Since her return from Europe Miss Ardea Dabney had taken to horseback +riding, a five-mile canter before breakfast in the fine brisk air of the +autumn mornings; and Tom had discovered that he needed a saddle animal. +Wherefore Brother Japheth was parading a handsome bay up and down before +the door of the small office building of the new foundry, descanting +glowingly on its merits, while Tom lounged on the step and pretended to +make difficulties. + +"You think he's a pretty good horse, do you, Japhe--worth the money?" he +queried, with the air of one who is about to surrender, not to the fact, +but to the presentation of it. + +"If you cayn't stable him this winter and then get your money back on +him in ary hawss market this side o' the Ohio River, I'll eat hawss for +the rest o' my bawn days. Now that's fair, ain't it?" + +"It's more than fair; it's generous. But let me ask you: is this +protracted-meeting talk you're giving me, or just plain, every-day horse +lies?" + +Brother Japheth halted the parade and there was aggrieved +reproachfulness in every line of his long, lantern-jawed face. + +"Now lookee here; I didn't 'low to find _you_ a-sittin' in the seat of +the scornful, Tom-Jeff; I shore didn't. Ain't the good cause precious to +your soul no mo' sence you to'd loose f'om your mammy's apron-string?" + +Tom's shrewd overlooking of the horse-trader spoke eloquently of the +spiritual landmarks past and left behind. + +"I don't know about you, Japhe. A fair half of the time you have me +cornered; and the other half I'm wondering if you are just ordinary, +canting hypocrite, like the majority of 'the brethren.'" + +"Now see here, Tom-Jeff, you know a heap better'n that! First and +fo'most, the majority ain't the majority, not by three sights and a +horn-blow. Hit don't take more'n one good, perseverin' hypocrite in the +chu'ch to spile the name o' chu'ch-member as fur as ye can holler it. +You been on a railroad train and seen the con-duc-tor havin' a furss +with the feller 'at pays for one seat and tries to hog four, and you've +set back and said, 'My gosh! what a lot o' swine the human race is when +hit gits away f'om home!' And right at that ve'y minute, mebbe, ther' +was forty-five 'r fifty other people in that cyar goin' erlong, mindin' +their own business, and not hoggin' any more 'n they paid for." + +Tom smiled. "And you think that's the way it is in the church, do you?" + +"I don't think nare' thing about hit; I know sufferin' well that's the +how of it. Lord forgive me! didn't I let one scribe-an'-Pharisee keep me +out o' the Isra'l o' God for nigh on to twenty year?" + +"Who was it?" asked Tom, tranquilly curious. + +"That ther' Jim Bledsoe, Brother Bill Layne's brother-in-law. He kep' +Brother Bill out, too, for a right smart spell." + +Tom was turning the memory pages half-absently. + +"Let me see," he said. "Didn't I hear something about your whaling the +everlasting daylights out of Bledsoe sometime last winter?" + +Japheth hung his head after the manner of one who has spoiled a good +argument by overstating it. + +"That ther's jest like me," he said disgustedly. "I nev' do know enough +to quit when I git thoo. Ain't it somewher's in the Bible 'at it says +some folks is bawn troublesome, and some goes round huntin' for trouble, +and some has trouble jammed up ag'inst 'em?" + +"You can't prove it by me," Tom laughed. "I believe Shakespeare said +something like that about greatness." + +"Well, nev' mind; whoa, Saladin, boy, we'll git round to you ag'in, +bime-by. As I was sayin', this here furss with Jim Bledsoe jest +natchelly couldn't be holped, nohow. Hit was thisaway: 'long late in the +fall I swapped Jim a piebald that was jest erbout the no-accountest +hawss 'at ever had a bit in his mouth. I done told Jim all his meanness; +but Jim, he 'lowed I was lyin' and made the trade anyhow. Inside of a +week he was back here, callin' me names. I turned him first one cheek +and then t'other, like the Good Book says, till they was jest plum' wo' +out; and then I says, says I: 'Lookee here, Jim, you've done smack' me +on both sides o' the jaw, and that ther's your priv'lege--me bein' a +chu'ch-member in good and reg'lar standin', and no low-down, +in-fergotten, turkey-trodden hypocrite like you. But right here the +torections erbout what I'm bounden to do sort o' peter out. I got as +many cheeks to turn as any of 'em, but that ain't sayin' that the +stock's immortil' With that he ups and allows a heap mo' things about my +morils; and me havin' turned both cheeks till my neck ached, and not +havin' any mo' _toe_ turn, what-all could I do--what-all would you 'a' +done, Tom-Jeff?" + +"Don't ask me. I'm one of the hair-hung and breeze-shaken majority. I +should most probably have punched his head." + +"Well, that's jest what I did. I says, says I, 'Jim, whom the Lord +loveth He chasteneth, and jest at this time present, I'm the +instru_ment_.' And when the dust got settled down, Jim he druv' home +with that ther' piebald, allowin' he wasn't such an all-fired bad hawss +after all. But lookee here, Tom-Jeff, this ain't sellin' you the finest +saddle-hawss in the valley. What do ye say about Saladin?" + +"Oh, I don't know," said Tom. "I don't love horses very much. You know +what the Bible says: _A horse is a vain thing for safety_. Is this bay +going to make me lose my temper and knock his pinhead brains out the +first time I put a leg over him?" + +"No-o-o, suh! Why, he's as kind and gentle and lovin as a woman. You +jest natchelly _couldn't_ whup this here bay, Tom-Jeff!" + +"All right, Japhe; I was only deviling you a little. Take him up to the +Woodlawn stables and tell William Henry Harrison to give him the box +stall. I'll try him to-morrow morning, if the weather is good." + +Brother Japheth's business was concluded, and the architect who was +building the latest extension to the pipe-pit floor was heading across +the yard to consult the young boss. Pettigrass paused with his foot in +the stirrup to say, "Old Tike Bryerson's on the rampage ag'in; folks up +at the valley head say he's a-lookin' for you, Tom-Jeff." + +"For me?" said Tom; then he laughed easily. "I don't owe him anything, +and I'm not very hard to find. What's the matter?" + +He thought it a little singular at the time that Japheth gave him a +curious look and mounted and rode away without answering his question. +But the building activities were clamoring for time and attention, and +his father was waiting to consult him about a run of iron that was not +quite up to the pipe-making test requirements. So he forgot Japheth's +half-accusing glance at parting, and the implied warning that had +preceded it, until an incident at the day's end reminded him of both. + +The incident turned on the fact of his walking home. Ordinarily he +struck work when the furnace whistle blew, riding home with his father +behind old Longfellow; but on this particular evening Kinderling, the +architect, missed his South Tredegar train, and Tom spent an extra hour +with him, discussing further and future possibilities of expansion. +Kinderling got away on a later train, and Tom closed his office and took +the long mile up the pike afoot in the dusk of the autumn evening, +thinking pointedly of many things mechanical and industrial, and never +by any chance forereaching to the epoch-marking event that was awaiting +him at the Woodlawn gate. + +His hand was upon the latch of the ornamental side wicket opening on the +home foot-path when a woman, crouching in the shadow of the great-gate +pillar, rose suddenly and stood before him. He did not recognize her at +first; it was nearly dark, and her head was snooded in a shawl. Then she +spoke, and he saw that it was Nancy Bryerson--a Nan sadly and terribly +changed, but with much of the wild-creature beauty of face and form +still remaining. + +"You done forgot me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked; and then, at his start of +recognition: "I allow I have changed some." + +"Surely I haven't forgotten you, Nan. But you took me by surprise; and I +can't see in the dark any better than most people. What are you doing +down here in the valley so late in the evening?" He tried to say it +superiorly, paternally, as an older man might have said it--and was not +altogether successful. The mere sight of her set his blood aswing in the +old throbbing ebb and flow, though, if he had known it, it was pity now +rather than passion that gave the impetus. + +"You allow it ain't fittin' for me to be out alone after night?" she +said, with a hard little laugh. "I reckon it ain't goin' to hurt me +none; anyways, I had to come. Paw's been red-eyed for a week, and he's +huntin' for you, Tom-Jeff." + +Then Tom recalled Japheth's word of the morning. + +"Hunting for me? Well, I'm not very hard to find," he said, +unconsciously repeating the answer he had made to the horse-trader's +warning. + +"Couldn't you make out to go off somewheres for a little spell?" she +asked half-pleadingly. + +"Run away, you mean? Hardly; I'm too busy just at present. Besides, I +haven't any quarrel with your father. What's he making trouble about +now?" + +She put her face in her hands, and though she was silent, he could see +that sobs were shaking her. Being neither more nor less than a man, her +tears made him foolish. He put his arm around her and was trying to find +the comforting word, when the heavens fell. + +How Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, going the round-about way from one house +to the other to avoid the dew-wet grass of the lawns, came fairly within +arm's-reach before he saw or heard them, remained a thing inexplicable. +But when he looked up they were there, Miss Euphrasia straightening +herself aloof in virtuous disapproval, and Ardea looking as if some one +had suddenly shown her the head of Medusa. + +Tom separated himself from Nan in hot-hearted confusion and stood as a +culprit taken in the act. Nan hid her face again and turned away. It was +Miss Dabney the younger who found words to break the smarting silence. + +"Don't mind us, Mr. Gordon," she said icily. "We were going to Woodlawn +to see if your father and mother could come over after dinner." + +Tom smote himself alive and made haste to open the foot-path gate for +them. There was nothing more said, or to be said; but when they were +gone and he was once more alone with Nan, he was fighting desperately +with a very manlike desire to smash something; to relieve the wrathful +pressure by hurting somebody. Let it be written down to his credit +that he did not wreak his vengeance on the defenseless. Thomas +Jefferson, the boy, would not have hesitated. + +[Illustration: Tom made haste to open the foot-path gate for them.] + +"You were going to tell me about your father," he said, striving to hold +the interruption as if it had not been, and yet tingling in every nerve +to be free. "Did you come all the way down the mountain to warn me?" + +She nodded, adding: "But that didn't make no differ'; I had to come +anyway. He run me out, paw did." + +"Heavens!" ejaculated Tom, prickling now with a new sensation. "And you +haven't any place to stay?" + +She shook her head. + +"No. I was allowin' maybe your paw'd let me sleep where you-uns keep the +hawsses--jest for a little spell till I could make out what-all I'm +goin' to do." + +He was too rageful to be quite clear-sighted. Yet he conceived that he +had a duty laid on him. Once in the foolish, infatuated long-ago he had +told her he would take care of her; he remembered it; doubtless she was +remembering it, too. But her suggestion was not to be considered for a +moment. + +"I can't let you go to the stables," he objected. "The horse-boys sleep +there. But I'll put a roof over you, some way. Wait here a minute till I +come back." + +His thought was to go to his mother and ask her help; but half-way to +the house his courage failed him. Since the breach in spiritual +confidence he had been better able to see the lovable side of his +mother's faith; but he could not be blind to that quality of hardness in +it which, even in such chastened souls as Martha Gordon's, finds +expression in woman's inhumanity to woman. Besides, Ardea and her cousin +were still in the way. + +He swung on his heel undecided. On the hillside back of the new foundry +there was a one-roomed cabin built on the Gordon land years before by a +hermit watchman of the Chiawassee plant. It was vacant, and Tom +remembered that the few bits of furniture had not been removed when the +old watchman died. Would the miserable shack do for a temporary refuge +for the outcast? He concluded it would have to do; and, making a wide +circuit of the house, he went around to the stables to harness +Longfellow to the buggy. Luckily, the negroes were all in the detached +kitchen, eating their supper, so he was able to go and come undetected. + +When he drove down to the gate he found Nan waiting where he had left +her; but now she had a bundle in her arms. As he got out to swing the +driveway grille, the house door opened; a flood of light from the hall +lamp banded the lawn, and there were voices and footsteps on the +veranda. He flung a nervous glance over his shoulder; Ardea and her +cousin were returning down the foot-path. Wherefore he made haste, +meaning not to be caught again, if he could help it. But the fates were +against him. Longfellow, snatched ruthlessly from his half-emptied oat +box, made equine protest, yawing and veering and earning himself a +savage cut of the whip before he consented to place the buggy at the +stone mounting-step. + +"Quick!" said Tom, flinging the reins on the dashboard. "Chuck your +bundle under the seat and climb in!" + +But Nan was provokingly slow, and when she tried to get in with the +bundle still in her arms, the buggy hood was in the way. Tom had to help +her, was in the act of lifting her to the step, when the wicket latch, +clicked and Ardea and Miss Euphrasia came out. They passed on without +comment, but Tom could feel the electric shock of righteous scorn +through the back of his head. That was why he drove half-way to the +lower end of the pike before he turned on Nan to say: + +"What's in that bundle you're so careful of? Why don't you put it under +the seat?" + +She looked around at him, and dark as it was, he saw that the great +black eyes were shining with a strange light--strange to him. + +"I reckon you wouldn't want me to do that, Tom-Jeff," she answered +simply. "Hit's my baby--my little Tom." + +He was struck dumb. It often happens that in the fiercest storm of +gossip the one most nearly concerned goes his way without so much as +suspecting that the sun is hidden. But Tom had not been exposed to the +violence of the storm. Nan's shame was old, and the gossip tongues had +wagged themselves weary two years before, when the child was born. So +Tom was quite free to think only of his companion. A great anger rose +and swelled in his heart. What scoundrel had taken advantage of an +ignorance so profound as to be the blood sister of innocence? He would +have given much to know; and yet the true delicacy of a manly soul made +him hold his peace. + +Thus it befell that they drove in silence to the deserted cabin on the +hillside; and Tom went down to the foundry office and brought a lamp for +light. The cabin was a mere shelter; but when he would have made +excuses, Nan stopped him. + +"Hit's as good as I been usen to, as you know mighty well, Tom-Jeff. I +on'y wisht--" + +He was on his knees at the hearth, kindling a fire, and he looked up to +see why she did not finish. She was sitting on the edge of the old +watchman's rude bed, bowed low over the sleeping child, and again sobs +were shaking her like an ague fit. There was something heartrending in +this silent, wordless anguish; but there was nothing to be said, and Tom +went on making the fire. After a little she sat up and continued +monotonously: + +"_He_ was liken to me thataway, too; the Man 'at I heard your Uncle +Silas tellin' about one night when I sot on the doorstep at Little +Zoar--He hadn't no place to lay His'n head; not so much as the red foxes +'r the birds ... and I hain't." + +The blaze was racing up the chimney now with a cheerful roar, and Tom +rose to his feet, every good emotion in him stirring to its awakening. + +"Such as it is, Nan, this place is yours, for as long as you want to +stay," he said soberly. And then: "You straighten things around here to +suit you, and I'll be back in a little while." + +He was gone less than half an hour, but in that short interval he +lighted another fire: a blaze of curiosity and comment to tingle the +ears and loosen the tongues of the circle of loungers in Hargis's store +in Gordonia. He ignored the stove-hugging contingent pointedly while he +was giving his curt orders to the storekeeper; and the contingent +avenged itself when he was out of hearing. + +"Te-he!" chuckled Simeon Cantrell the elder, pursing his lips around the +stem of his corn-cob pipe; "looks like Tom-Jeff was goin' to +house-keepin' right late in the evenin'." + +"By gol, I wonder what's doin'?" said another. "Reckon he's done tuk up +with Nan Bryerson, afte' all's been said an' done?" + +Bastrop Clegg, whose distinction was that of being the oldest loafer in +the circle, spat accurately into the drafthole of the stove, sat back +and tilted his hat over his eyes. + +"Well, boys, I reckon hit's erbout time, ain't hit?" he moralized. +"Leetle Tom must be a-goin' awn two year old; and I don't recommember ez +Tom 'r his pappy has ever done a livin' thing for Nan." + +Whereupon one member of the group got up and addressed himself to the +door. It was Japheth Pettigrass; and what he said was said to the +starlit night outside. + +"My Lord! that ther' boy _was_ lyin' to me, after all! I didn't believe +hit that night when he r'ared and took on so to me and 'lowed to chunk +me with a rock, and I don't want to believe hit now. But Lordy gracious! +hit do look mighty bad, with him a-buyin' all that outfit and loadin' +hit in his pappy's buggy; hit do, for shore!" + +A half-hour later, Brother Japheth, trudging back to Deer Trace on the +pike, saw the light in the long-deserted cabin back of the new foundry +plant; saw this and was overtaken at the Woodlawn gates by Thomas +Jefferson with Longfellow and the buggy. And he could not well help +observing that the buggy had been lightened of its burden of household +supplies. + +Tom turned the horse over to William Henry Harrison and went in to his +belated dinner somberly reflective. He was not sorry to find that his +mother and father had gone over to the manor-house. Solitude was +grateful at the moment; he was glad of the chance to try to think +himself uninterruptedly out of the snarl of misunderstanding in which +his impulsiveness had entangled him. + +The pointing of the thought was to see Ardea and have it out with her at +once. Reconsidered, it appeared the part of prudence to wait a little. +The muddiest pool will settle if time and freedom from ill-judged +disturbance be given it. But we, who have known Thomas Jefferson from +his beginnings, may be sure that it was the action-thought that +triumphed. _They also serve who only stand and wait_, was meaningless +comfort to him; and when he had finished his solitary dinner and had +changed his clothes, he strode across the double lawns and rang the +manor-house bell. + + + + +XXIV + +THE UNDER-DEPTHS + +The Deer Trace family and the two guests from Woodlawn were in the +music-room when Tom was admitted, with Ardea at the piano playing war +songs for the pleasuring of her grandfather and the ex-artilleryman. +Under cover of the music, Tom slipped into the circle of listeners and +went to sit beside his mother. There was a courteous hand-wave of +welcome from Major Dabney, but Miss Euphrasia seemed not to see him. He +saw and understood, and was obstinately impervious to the chilling east +wind in that quarter. It was with Ardea that he must make his peace, and +he settled himself to wait for his opportunity. + +It bade fair to be a long time coming. Ardea's repertoire was apparently +inexhaustible, and at the end of an added hour he began to suspect that +she knew what was in store for her and was willing to postpone the +afflictive moment. From the battle hymns of the Confederacy to the +militant revival melodies best loved by Martha Gordon the transition was +easy; and from these she drifted through a Beethoven sonata to Mozart, +and from Mozart to Chopin. + +Thomas Jefferson knew music as the barbarian knows it, which is to say +that it lighted strange fires in him; stirred and thrilled him in +certain heart or soul labyrinths locked against all other influences. As +Ardea's fingers sought the changing chords he felt vaguely that she was +speaking to him, now scorning, now rebuking, now pleading, but always in +a tongue that he only half comprehended. He stole a glance at his watch, +impatient to come to hand-grips with her and have it over. The suspense +could not last much longer. It was past ten; the Major was dozing +peacefully in his great arm-chair, and Miss Euphrasia yawned decorously +behind her hand. + +Ardea lingered lovingly on the closing harmonies of the nocturne, and +when the final chord was struck her hands lingered on the keys until the +sweet voices of the strings had sung themselves afar into the higher +sound heaven. Then she turned quickly and surprised her anesthetized +audience. + +"You poor things!" she laughed. "In another five minutes the last one of +you would have succumbed. Why didn't somebody stop me?" + +The iron-master said something about the heavy work of the day, and +helped his wife to her feet. The Major came awake with a start and +bestirred himself hospitably, and Miss Euphrasia rose to speed the +parting guests--or rather the two of them who had been invited. In the +drift down the wide hall Ardea fell behind with Tom, whom Cousin +Euphrasia continued to ignore. + +"I came to tell you," he said in a low tone, snatching his opportunity. +"I can't sleep until I have fought it out with you." + +"You don't deserve a hearing, even from your best friend," was her +discouraging reply; but when they were at the door she gave him a +formal reprieve. "I shall walk for a few minutes on the portico to rest +my nerves," she said. "If you want to come back--" + +He thanked her gravely, and went obediently when his mother called to +him from the steps. But on the Woodlawn veranda he excused himself to +smoke a cigar in the open; and when the door closed behind the two +in-going, he swiftly recrossed the lawns to pay the penalty. + +The front door of the manor-house was shut and the broad, pillared +portico was untenanted. He sat down in one of the rustic chairs and +searched absently in his pockets for a cigar. Before he could find it +the door opened and closed and Ardea stood before him. She had thrown a +wrap over her shoulders, and the light from the music-room windows +illuminated her. There was cool scorn in the slate-blue eyes, but in +Tom's thought she had never appeared more unutterably beautiful and +desirable--and unattainable. + +"I have come," she said, in a tone that cut him to the heart for its +very indifference. "What have you to say for yourself?" + +He rose quickly and offered her the chair; and when she would not take +it, he put his back to the wall and stood with her. + +"I'm afraid I haven't left myself much to say," he began penitently. "I +was born foolish, and it seems that I haven't outgrown it. But, really, +if you could know--" + +"Unhappily, I do know," she interrupted. "If I did not, I might listen +to you with better patience." + +"It did look pretty bad," he confessed. "And that's what I wanted to +say; it looked a great deal worse than it was, you know." + +"I _don't_ know," she retorted. + +"You are tangling me," he said, gaining something in self-possession +under the flick of the whip. "First you say you know, and then you say +you don't know. Which is which?" + +"If you are flippant I shall go in," she threatened. "There are things +that not even the most loyal friendship can condone." + +"That's the difference between friendship and love," he asserted. "I +believe I'd enjoy a little more real confidence and a little less of the +dutiful kind of loyalty." + +"You ask too much," she said, quite coolly. "Forgiveness implies +penitence and continued good behavior." + +"No, it doesn't, anything of the kind," he denied, matching her tone. +"That is the purely pagan point of view, and you are barred from taking +it. You are bound to consider the motive." + +"I am bound to believe what I see with my own eyes," she rejoined. +"Perhaps you can make it appear that seeing is not believing." + +"Of course I can't, if you take that attitude," he complained. And then +he said irritably: "You talk about friendship! You don't know the +meaning of the word!" + +"If I didn't, I should hardly be here at this moment," she suggested. +"You don't seem to apprehend to what degrading depths you have sunk." + +His sins in the business field rose before him accusingly and prompted +his reply. + +"Yes, I do; but that is another matter. We were speaking of what you +saw this evening. Will you let me try to explain?" + +"Yes, if you will tell the plain truth." + +"Lacking imagination, I can't do anything else. Nan has had a +falling-out with the old scamp of a moonshiner who calls himself her +father. She came to me for help, and broke down in the midst of telling +me about it. I can't stand a woman's crying any better than other men." + +The slate-blue eyes were transfixing him. + +"And that was all--absolutely all, Tom?" + +"I don't lie--to you," he said briefly. + +She gave him her hand with an impulsive return to the old comradeship. +"I believe you, Tom, in the face of all the--the unlikelinesses. But +please don't try me again. After what has happened--" she stopped in +deference to something in his eyes, half anger, half bewilderment, or a +most skilful simulation of both. + +"Go on," he said; "tell me what has happened. I seem to have missed +something." + +"No," she said, with sudden gravity. "I don't want to be your accuser or +your confessor; and if you should try to prevaricate, I should hate +you!" + +"There is nothing for me to confess to you, Ardea," he said soberly, +still holding the hand she had given him. "You have known the worst of +me, always and all along, I think." + +"Yes, I _have_ known," she replied, freeing the imprisoned hand and +turning from him. "And I have been sorry, sorry; not less for you than +for poor Nancy Bryerson. You know now what I thought--what I _had_ to +think--when I saw you with her this evening." + +It was slowly beating its way into his brain. Little things, atoms of +suggestion, were separating themselves from the mass of things +disregarded to cluster thickly on this nucleus of revealment: the old +story of his companying with Nan on the mountain; his uncle's and +Japheth's accusation at the time; and now the old moonshiner's enmity, +Japheth's meaning look and distrustful silence, Nan's appearance with a +child bearing his own name, the glances askance in Hargis's store when +he was buying the little stock of necessaries for the poor outcast. It +was all plain enough. For reasons best known to herself, Nan had not +revealed the name of her betrayer, and all Gordonia, and all Paradise, +believed him to be the man. Even Ardea ... + +She had moved aside out of the square of window light, and he followed +her. + +"Tell me," he said thickly; "you heard this: you have believed it. Have +I been misjudging you?" + +"Not more than I misjudged you, perhaps. But that is all over, now: I am +trusting you again, Tom. Only, as I said before, you mustn't try me too +hard." + +"Let me understand," he went on, still in the same strained tone. +"Knowing this, or believing it, you could still find a place in your +heart for me--you could still forgive me, Ardea?" + +"I could still be your friend; yes," she replied. "I believed--others +believed--that your punishment would be great enough; there are all the +coming years for you to be sorry in, Tom. But in the fullness of time I +meant to remind you of your duty. The time has come; you must play the +man's part now. What have you done with her?" + +"Wait a moment. I must know one other thing," he insisted. "You heard +this before you went to Europe?" + +"Long before." + +"And it didn't make any difference in the way you felt toward me?" + +"It did; it made the vastest difference." They were pacing slowly up and +down the portico, and she waited until they had made the turn at the +Woodlawn end before she went on. "I thought I knew you when we were boy +and girl together, and, girl-like, I suppose I had idealized you in some +ways. I thought I knew your wickednesses, and that they were not +weaknesses; so--so it was a miserable shock. But it was not for me to +judge you--only as you might rise or sink from that desperate starting +point. When I came home I was sure that you had risen; I have been sure +of it ever since until--until these few wretched hours to-night. They +are past, and now I'm going to be sure of it some more, Tom." + +It was his turn to be silent, and they had measured twice the length of +the pillared floor when at last he said: + +"What if I should tell you that you are mistaken--that all of them are +mistaken?" + +"Don't," she said softly. "That would only be smashing what is left of +the ideal. I think I couldn't bear that." + +"God in Heaven!" he said, under his breath. "And you've been calling +this friendship! Ardea, girl, it's _love_!" + +She shook her head slowly. + +"No," she rejoined gravely. "At one time I thought--I was afraid--that +it might be. But now I know it isn't." + +"How do you know it?" + +"Because love, as I think of it, is stronger than the traditions, +stronger than anything else in the world. And the traditions are still +with me. I admit the existence of the social pale, and as long as I live +within it I have a right to demand certain things of the man who marries +me." + +"And love doesn't demand anything," he said, putting the remainder of +the thought into words for her. "You are right. If I could clear myself +with a word, I should not say it." + +"Why?" + +"Because your--loyalty, let us call it, is too precious to be exchanged +for anything else you could give me in place of it--esteem, respect, and +all the other well-behaved and virtuous bestowals." + +"But the loyalty is based on the belief that you are trying to earn the +well-behaved approvals," she continued. + +"No, it isn't. It exists 'in spite of' everything, and not 'because of' +anything. The traditions may try to make you stand it on the other leg, +it's a way they have; but the fact remains." + +She shook her head in deprecation. + +"The 'traditions,' are about to send me into the house, and the +principal problem is yet untouched. What have you done with Nancy?" + +He told her briefly and exactly, adding nothing and omitting nothing; +and her word for it was "impossible." + +"Don't you understand?" she objected. "I may choose to believe that +this home making for poor Nan and her waif is merely a bit of tardy +justice on your part and honor you for it. But nobody else will take +that view of it. If you keep her in that little cabin of yours, Mountain +View Avenue will have a fit--and very properly." + +"I don't see why it should," he protested densely. + +"Don't you? That's because you are still so hopelessly primeval. People +won't give you credit for the good motive; they will quote that +Scripture about the dog and the sow. You must think of some other way." + +"Supposing I say I don't care a hang?" + +"Oh, but you do. You have your father and mother and--and me to +consider, however reckless you may be for yourself and Nancy. You +mustn't leave her where she is for a single day." + +"I can leave her there if I like. I've told her she may stay as long as +she wants to." + +They had paused in front of the great door, and Ardea's hand was on the +knob. + +"No," she said decisively, "you will have a perfect hornets' nest about +your ears. Every move you make will be watched and commented on. Don't +you see that you are playing the part of the headstrong, obstinate boy +again?" + +"Yet you think I ought to provide for Nan, in some way; how am I going +to do it unless I ignore the hornets?" + +"Now you are more reasonable," she said approvingly. "I shall ride +to-morrow morning, and if you should happen to overtake me, we might +think up something." + +The door was opening gently under the pressure of her hand, but he was +loath to go. + +"I wouldn't take five added years of life for what I've learned +to-night, Ardea;" he said passionately. And then: "Have you fully made +up your mind to marry Vincent Farley?" + +In the twinkling of an eye she was another woman--cold, unapproachable, +with pride kindling as if she had received a mortal affront. + +"Sometimes--and they are bad times for you, Mr. Gordon--I am tempted to +forget the boy-and-girl anchorings in the past. Have you no sense of the +fitness of things--no shame?" + +"Not very much of either, I guess," he said quite calmly. "Love hasn't +any shame; and it doesn't concern itself much about the fitness of +anything but its object." + +And then he bade her good night and went his way with a lilting song of +triumph in his heart which not even the chilling rebuff of the +leave-taking was sufficient to silence. + +"She loves me! She would still love me if she were ten times Vincent +Farley's wife!" he said, over and over to himself; the words were on his +lips when he fell asleep, and they were still ringing in his ears the +next morning at dawn-break when he rose and made ready to go to ride +with her. + + + + +XXV + +THE PLOW IN THE FURROW + + +One of Miss Ardea Dabney's illuminating graces was the ability to return +easily and amicably to the _status quo ante bellum_; to "kiss and be +friends," in the unfettered phrase of Margaret Catherwood, her chum and +room-mate at Carroll College. + +Wherefore, when Tom, mounted on Saladin, overtook her on the morning +next after the night of offenses, she greeted him quite as if nothing +had happened, challenging him gaily to a gallop with the valley head for +its goal, and refusing to be drawn into anything more serious than +joyous persiflage until they were returning at a walk down a +boulder-strewn wood road at the back of the Dabney horse pasture. Then, +and not till then, was the question of Nancy Bryerson's future suffered +to present itself. + +For Miss Dabney the question was settled before it came up for +discussion. In the Major's young manhood Deer Trace had maintained a +pack of foxhounds, and it was the Major's bride, a city-bred Charleston +belle, who first objected to the dooryard kennels and the clamor of the +dogs. Back of the horse pasture, and a hundred yards vertical above the +road Ardea and Tom were traversing, a pocket-like glen indented the +mountain side, and in this glen the kennels had been established, with +a substantial log cabin for the convenience of the dog-keeper. + +Dogs and dog-keeper had long since gone the way of most of the old-time +Southern manorial largenesses; but the cabin still stood solidly planted +in the midst of its overgrown garden patch, with a dense thicket of +mountain laurel backgrounding it, and a giant tulip-tree standing +sentinel over a gate hanging by one rusted hinge. + +This was what Tom saw when he had followed Ardea's lead up the steep bit +of path climbing from the road and the pasture wall, and it evoked +memories. Often in the boyhood days, when the Nazarite fit was on, he +had climbed to the deserted solitude of the glen to sit on the broad +door-stone of the dog-keeper's cabin as a hermit at large,--monarch for +the monastic moment of a kingdom as remote as that of John the Baptist +in the Wilderness of Sin. + +"I thought of it last night," said Ardea, nodding toward the cabin. "It +is just the place for Nancy, if she can not, or will not, go back to her +father. After breakfast, I shall send Dinah and a man up to set things +in order, and she can come as soon as she likes. She won't mind the +loneliness?" + +Tom shook his head. "I should think not; she has never been used to +anything else. I'll bring her and the youngster over in the buggy any +time you telephone." He had quite forgotten his lesson of the previous +evening. + +"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind," was the quick reply. "Japheth +will go after her when we are ready; and if you are prudently wise you +will have business in South Tredegar for the next few days." + +The blue-grass, seeded once in the dog-keeper's dooryard, had spread to +the farthest limits of the glen, and the autumn rains had given it a +spring-like start. Tom let Saladin crop a dozen mouthfuls unchecked +before he said: + +"That looks like dodging; and I don't like to dodge." + +"You will have to do many things you don't like before you say your _ave +atque vale_," she remarked. "But you shall be permitted to carry your +full share of the burden. I mean to let you give me some money, if you +can afford it, and I'll spend it for you." + +"Charity itself couldn't be kinder," he asseverated. "And, luckily, I +can afford it. But--" + +He was looking at her wistfully, and the old longing for sympathy, for +the sympathy which has been quite to the bottom of the well where truth +lies, was about to cry out against this riveting of the fetters of +misunderstanding and false accusation. + +"But you would rather spend it yourself?" she broke in, fancying she had +divined his thought. "That cannot be. The one condition on which I shall +consent to help is the completest isolation for Nan. You must promise me +you will not try to see her. I am hoping against hope that none of the +Mountain View Avenue people will find out what you did last night." + +"Oh, confound their gossiping tongues!" he railed; adding hastily: "Not +that I care so very much what they say, either." + +Ardea let her horse pick his way down to the wood road, and when they +were approaching the Deer Trace gate: "You haven't promised yet, Tom; +and you must, you know." + +"Not to see Nan? That's easy. I'll keep out of her way, if you can keep +her out of mine. All I care is to know that she is comfortably provided +for." + +This he said, thinking only of the boy-time obligation voluntarily +assumed; but it was quite inevitable that Ardea should mistake the +motive. + +"It is right and proper that you should care about that," she said +judicially. And a little farther along she added: "But I don't like your +attitude." + +"I don't like it myself," he rejoined heartily. "I never wanted so badly +to say things in all my life! But you've nailed the lid on and I can't." + +"They are better unsaid," she returned quickly. "Will you take that for +your cue in the future?" + +"Certainly; it is for you to command," he said lightly, swinging from +his saddle to open the pasture gate for her; and so the morning ride +came to its end. + +Since provincialism is by no means the exclusive distinction of the +landward bred, there was an immediate restirring of the gossip pool when +the story of Tom's befriending of Nancy Bryerson and her child got +abroad in Gordonia and among the country colonists. + +In the comment of the simpler-minded Gordonia folk, the iron-master's +son had finally "made it up" with Nancy, and here the note of approval +was not wholly lacking. There were good-hearted souls to say that boys +will be boys, and to express the hope that Tom would go on from this +beginning and make an honest woman of Nancy by marrying her. + +Quite naturally, the point of view of the country-house people was +different; more critical, if not less charitable. Though the social +acceptance of the Gordons, as an ancient family, as friends of the +Dabneys, and as land-holding neighbors was fairly complete, it still +lacked somewhat of the class kinship which breeds leniency and the +closed eye to the sins of its own household. But for Tom, personally, as +a distinct social improvement on honest Caleb, the welcome into the +charmed circle of Mountain View Avenue had been warm enough to make his +sudden apparent relapse into the primitive figure as an affront to the +colony. Hence, there were rods laid in pickle for the sinner, as when +Mrs. Vancourt Henniker gave the footman at Rook Hill a hint that for the +present the Misses Henniker were not at home to Mr. Thomas Gordon; and +if Tom had known it, there were other and similar chastenings lying in +wait for him behind more of the colonial doors. + +But Tom did not know it. He was in the crucial month of the panic year, +striving desperately to maintain the foothold given to him by the +pipe-casting invention, and he had little time for the amenities. So it +came about that he escaped for the moment; or, which was quite the same, +he did not know he was pursued. Another Northern city, with its full +complement of grafting officials, was in the market for some train-loads +of water-mains, and again Thomas Jefferson was fighting the old battle +of conscience against expediency, this time in the evil-smelling ditches +where the dead and wounded lie. + +"You are sure you went into it thoroughly, Norman?" he demanded of his +lieutenant, when the latter returned from a personal reconnaissance of +the field. "The break they are making at us seems almost too rank to be +taken at its face value." + +"Oh, yes; I dug it up from the bottom," said the henchman. "It's rotten +and riotous. The political machine runs the town, and the bosses own the +machine. So much to this one, so much to that, so much to half a dozen +others, and we get the contract. Otherwise, most emphatically _nit_." + +"That comes straight, does it?" + +"As straight as a shot out of a gun. They got together on it, eight of +the big bosses, called me in and told me flat-footed what we had to do," +said the salesman. "Oh, I tell you, those fellows are on to their job." + +"No chance to go behind the returns and stir up popular indignation, as +we did in Indiana?" suggested Tom. + +"No show on top of earth. The ring owns or controls two of the dailies, +and has the other two scared. Besides, they've just had their municipal +election." + +The Gordon-and-Gordon manager was absently jabbing holes in the desk +blotter with the paper-knife. + +"Well, we can do what we have to, I suppose," he said, after a hesitant +pause. "Say nothing to my father, but make your arrangements to take the +train for the North again to-night. I'll meet you in town at the +Marlboro at four o'clock." + +To prepare for the new exigency, Tom took the afternoon local for South +Tredegar. The lump sum required for the bribery was considerably in +excess of his balance in bank. Notwithstanding the stringency of the +times, he made sure he could borrow; but it was in some vague hope that +the moral chasm might be widened to impassibility, or decently bridged +for him, that he was moved to state the case in detail to President +Henniker of the Iron City National. Mr. Vancourt Henniker could dig +ditches, on occasion, making them too vast for the boldest borrower to +cross; but Tom's credit was gilt-edged, and in the present instance the +president chose rather to build bridges. + +"We have to shut our eyes to a good many disagreeable things in +business, Mr. Gordon," he said, genially didactic. "Our problem in this +day and generation is so to draw the line of distinction that these +necessary concessions to human frailty will not debauch us; may be made +without prejudice to that high sense of personal honor and integrity +which must be the corner-stone of any successful business career. This +state of affairs which you describe is deplorable--most deplorable; +but--well, we may think of such obstacles as we do of toll-gates on the +highway. The road is a public utility, and it should be free; but we pay +the toll, under protest, and pass on." + +Mr. Henniker was a large man, benign and full-favored, not to say +unctuous; and his manner in delivering an opinion was blandly +impressive, and convincing to many. Yet Tom was not convinced. + +"Of course, I came to ask for the loan, and not specially to justify +it," he said, in mild irony which was quite lost on the philosopher in +the president's chair. "I wasn't sure just how you would regard it if +you should know the object for which we are borrowing, and this high +sense of personal honor you speak of impelled me to be altogether frank +with you." + +"Quite right; you were quite right, Mr. Gordon," said the banker +urbanely. "You are young in business, but you have learned the first +lesson in the book of success--to be perfectly open and outspoken with +your banker. As I have said, the venality of these men with whom you are +dealing is most deplorable, but...." + +There was some further glozing over of the putrid fact, a good bit of +it, and Tom sat back in his chair and listened, outwardly respectful, +inwardly hot-hearted and contemptuous. Was this smooth-spoken, oracular +prince of the market-place a predetermined hypocrite, shaping his words +to fit the money-gathering end without regard to their demoralizing +effect? Or was he only a subconscious Pharisee, self-deceived and +complacent? Tom's thought ran lightning-like over the long list of the +Vancourt Hennikers: men of the business world successful to the Croesus +mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and +hospitals, gift-givers to their fellow men, irreproachable in private +life, and yet apparently stone blind on the side of the larger equities. +Could it be possible that such men deliberately admitted and accepted +the double standard in morals? It seemed fairly incredible, and yet +their lives appeared to proclaim it. + +When the president had finished his apology for those who bow the head +in the house of Rimmon, Tom rose to take his bit of approved paper +around to the cashier's window. The bridge was built, and he meant to +cross it; but he was honest enough, or blunt enough, to give his own +point of view in a crisp sentence or two. + +"I wish I could look at it in some such way as you do, Mr. Henniker, but +I can't," he objected. "To me it is just plain bribery; the corrupting +of officials who have sworn, among other things, to administer their +offices honestly. I'm immoral, or unmoral, enough to yield to the +apparent necessity, but it is quite without prejudice to a firm +conviction that I am no better than the men I am going to purchase." + +Having obtained the sinews of war, he kept the appointment with Norman, +and their joint discussion of the business situation made him too late +for the early dinner at Woodlawn. To complete the delay, the evening +train lost half an hour with a hot box at a point a mile short of +Gordonia. Two things came of these combined time-killings: a man in a +slouched hat and the brown jeans of the mountaineers, who had been +watching the Woodlawn gates since dusk from his hiding-place behind the +field wall across the pike, got up stiffly and went away; and Tom +reached home just in time to intercept Ardea on the steps of the +picturesque veranda. + +"Been visiting the little mother?" he asked, when she paused on the step +above him. + +"Yes--no; I ran over to tell you that we moved Nancy to-day." + +"Oh! Well, that's comfortable. She was willing?" + +"Y-es: almost, at first; and altogether willing when I told her that +I--that she--" There was an embarrassed moment and then the truth came +out. "Perhaps I should have asked you first: but she was quite satisfied +when I told her that she owed her changed condition to the person whose +duty it was to provide for her. You don't mind, do you?" + +The question was almost a beseechment; but Tom was thinking of something +else. + +"No, I don't mind," he said absently, and the under-thought dealt +savagely with Nan--with a woman who, for the sake of the loaves and the +fishes, and the shielding of the real offender, would suffer an innocent +man to go to the social gallows for lack of the word which would have +cleared him. He laughed rather bitterly and added, out of the heart of +the under-thought: "I'm glad I'm not naturally inclined to be +pessimistic." + +"What makes you say that?" + +"Because, after hearing"--he changed his mind suddenly, and transferred +the hard word from Nan to Mr. Vancourt Henniker--"after what I've been +hearing this afternoon I find myself more in the notion of weeping with +the angels than of laughing with the devils." + +"What has happened?" she asked, sympathetically alive to his need in one +breath, and keenly apprehensive for her own peace of mind in the next. + +"An exceedingly small thing, as the world's measurements go. I was in +town, and made a business call on Mr. Henniker. He's a member of your +church, isn't he?" + +"Of St. Michael's in the city," she corrected. "You know I claim +membership here at home in St. John's." + +"Well, it's all the same. He is what you would call a Christian man, I +take it?" + +"Why not?" she demanded. "What has he done to make you doubt it?" + +"Oh, nothing worth mentioning, perhaps. I needed some money to bribe a +lot of political grafters in a Pennsylvania city where I'm trying to +sell a bill of water-pipe. I went to Mr. Henniker to borrow it." + +"And, of course, he wouldn't let you have it for any such wretched +purpose!" she flamed out. + +"No, you are mistaken; it's just the other way around. I told him what +it was for, hoping rather vaguely, I think, that he'd sit on me and make +the crime impossible. But he didn't." + +"You don't mean that he lent you the money after you had told him what +you purposed doing with it?" It was too dark for him to see her face, +but there was something like a breath-catching of horror in her voice. + +"I'm sorry it shocks you, but he did. More than that, he took the +trouble to try to explain away my scruples; made it seem quite a +virtuous thing before he got through. You wouldn't believe it now, would +you?" + +"But, Tom! you didn't take the money?" + +"How could I refuse so good a man? Norman is on his way to Pennsylvania +at this present moment, with a letter of credit in his pocket big enough +to make the mouth of even a professional grafter water. At least, I hope +it is big enough." + +She was hurt, shocked, horrified, and he knew it and found pleasure of a +certain sort in the knowledge. When a man has done violence to his own +best impulses, the thing that comes nearest to the holy joy of penitence +is the unholy joy of making somebody else sorry for him. There were +unmistakable tears in her voice when she said: + +"Tom, why have you told me this--this unspeakable thing?" + +"Why--I guess it was because I wanted to ask you how you supposed the +Mr. Henniker kind of men square such things with their conscience; or +don't they have any conscience?" + +"That is _not_ the reason," she faltered. + +"You are right," he rejoined quickly. "It was diabolism pure and +unstrained. I had hurt myself, and I wanted to pass it along--to hurt +some one else. But it is too cold to keep you standing here. Won't you +come in again?" + +"No; I must go home." And she went down the broad steps. + +He drew her arm through his and walked with her, down one grassy slope +and up the other. At the manor-house steps he found at last sufficient +grace to say: "It was a currish thing to do; will you forgive me, +Ardea?" + +"I don't know," she said, in a tone that thrilled him curiously. "Such +things are hard to forgive. I don't mean your slapping me in the face +with it, that is nothing. But to know that you have gone so far aside +... that you have sunk your manhood and all the promise of it...." + +He nodded perfect intelligence. "I know; it's hell, Ardea. I've been +frizzling in it for the past six months, more or less; ever since I came +home with the one sole, single determination to climb out of the panic +ditch if I had to make steps of dead bodies or lost souls. I'm doing it, +and I'm paying the price. Sometimes I can find it in my heart to curse +the mistaken mother-love that gave me to eat of the fruit of the tree of +the knowledge of good and evil. I'm pagan in all else, but I can't sin +like a pagan. Why is it? Why can't I be a smug, peaceful, sound-sleeping +scoundrel like other men?" + +She was standing on the step above him, as she had stood on the other +side of the two dew-wet lawns. + +"I have a theory," she rejoined, "but you wouldn't accept it. You'll +never be able to do wrong without paying for it. Is it worth while to +try?" + +"Nothing is worth while--nothing at all. I don't mean that I'm going to +quit; I shall doubtless go on trampling and grinding the face of the +poor, and the rich, if they come in my way. But at the end of the ends I +shall curse God and die, as Job's wife wanted him to." + +She put her hands on his shoulders impulsively, and again the tears were +in her voice. + +"What can I say to help you, Tom? God knows I would do anything that a +true friend may do!" + +He freed himself of the touch of her hands, but very gently. + +"There might have been a thing; but you have made it impossible. No, +don't freeze me again--it's the last time. If I could have won your love +... but what is the use of trying to put it in words; you know--you have +always known. And now it is too late." + +For a single instant Vincent Farley's chance of marrying the Deer Trace +coal lands trembled in the balance. Ardea forgot him, forgot Nan, +thought of nothing but the passionate yearning that was drawing her like +gripping hands toward the man who had bared his inmost heart to her. +Again she leaned on him with a touch so light that he scarcely felt it, +and her lips brushed his forehead. + +"It is not too late for you to be a man, noble, upright, honorable. Let +the world find that for which it is looking, my friend--my brother: the +strong man armed who can stand where others faint and fall. Oh, I wish I +knew how to say the word that would make you the man you were meant to +be!" + +When it was said, she was gone and the sound of the closing door was in +his ears when he turned and went slowly down the driveway and out on the +white pike, lying like a snowy ribbon under the December stars. On the +highway he hung undecided for a moment; but an hour later, William +Layne, driving homeward from South Tredegar, overtook him plodding +slowly southward far beyond the head of Paradise; and it was nearing +midnight when he won back, pacing steadily past the Deer Trace and +Woodlawn gates and holding his way down the pike to Gordonia. + +The railway station was his goal; and when he had aroused the sleepy +night operator and gained admittance, he sat at the telegraph table to +write a message. It was to Norman, addressed to intercept the salesman +at the breakfast stop. + +"Cancel Pennsylvania date and come in at once to take managership of +plant," was the wording of it; and at the breakfast-table the following +morning Tom announced his intention of leaving the industrial plow in +the furrow while he should go to Boston to complete his course in the +technical school. + + + + +XXVI + +AS WITH A MANTLE + + +The month of March in the great, southward-reaching bight of the +Tennessee River is the pattern and form of fickleness climatic. Normally +it is the time of starting sap and swelling buds and steaming leaf beds +odorous of spring; the month when the migratory crows wing their flight +northward, and Nature, lightest of winter sleepers in the azurine +latitudes, stirs to her vernal awakening. None the less, in the +Tennessee March the orchardist, watching the high-blown clouds in skies +of the softest blue, is glad if the peach buds are slow in responding to +the touch of the wooing airs, or, chewing a black birch twig as he makes +the leisurely round of his line fence, warns his gardening neighbor that +it is too early to plant beans. True, the poplars may be showing a tinge +of green, and the buds of the hickory may have lighted their tiny candle +flames on the winter-bared boughs; but the "blackberry winter" is yet to +come, and there are rigorous possibilities still lingering in the +high-flying clouds and the sudden-shifting winds. + +It was on the fourth Sunday in the month that Ardea rose early and went +fasting to the communion service at St. John's-in-Paradise. Primarily, +St. John's was merely the religious factor in Mr. Duxbury Farley's +scheme of country-colony promotion, and for the greater part of the year +its silver-toned bell was silent and its appeal was mainly to the +artistic eye. But latterly St. Michael's, the mother church in South +Tredegar, had attained a new assistant rector whose zeal was not yet +dulled by apathetic unresponsiveness on the part of the to-be-helped. +Hence St. Michael's various missions flourished for the time, and once a +month, if not oftener, the bell of St. John's sent its note abroad on +the still morning air of Paradise. + +On this particular Sunday morning Ardea was early at the church, and she +was glad she had decided to wear her cloth gown. It had turned cooler in +the night and the azure March sky was hidden behind a gray cloud mass +which hung low on the slopes of the mountain. There was no fire in the +church heater; and the few worshipers--the Vancourt Henniker girls, the +two Misses Harrison, John Young-Dickson, of The Dell, dragged out at the +chilly hour by his new wife, and Mrs. Schuyler Farnsworth and her +daughter, all of the country-house colony beyond the creek--sat or +knelt, and shivered through the service in decorous discomfort. + +Miss Dabney was not looking quite as well as usual, as Miss Betsy +Harrison remarked to her sister, Miss Willie, in a church whisper. She +had grown thinner during the winter, and though the slate-blue eyes were +as clear and steadfast as before, there was a strained look in them like +that in the eyes of the spent runner. Mountain View Avenue, rurally +alert for something to talk about, decided it was trouble rather than +ill health. Miss Eva Farley corresponded with Jessica Farnsworth, and +there had been European hints of an understanding between Vincent and +Ardea. Coupling this with young Gordon's ostentatious devotion, Nan's +appearance, and Tom's sudden determination to go back to college, there +was the groundwork for a very pretty story which sufficiently accounted +for Miss Dabney's changed looks and for her growing reluctance to be +included in the country colony's social divagations. She was engaged to +one man and in love with another, who was clearly ineligible--this was +the Mountain View Avenue summing-up of the matter; and some condemned +and some pitied, and all were careful not to step within the barrier of +aloofness with which Miss Dabney had of late surrounded herself. + +On this Sunday morning of weather portents it chanced to be Ardea's turn +to entertain the young minister, or rather to give him his breakfast +after the service; and she waited for him in the vestibule after the +others had gone. The outer doors were open, and she could see the gray +cloud mass feathering on its under side and creeping lower on the slopes +of Lebanon in every stormy gust of the chill wind. + +"It was prudent to bring your overcoat this morning, Mr. Morelock," she +said, when her guest emerged from the vesting-room with his cassock in a +neat bundle under his arm. "If I'd had any idea it would turn cold so +fast, I should have had the carriage come for us." + +"Indeed, my dear Miss Dabney, if you could walk to church, I'm sure I +can walk home with you," was the ready response; nevertheless, the +rather fragile-looking young man shuddered a little in sympathy with the +rawness of the wind. He was from well-sheltered New England, and he had +not yet acquired the native Southron's indifference to weather +discomforts; would never acquire them this side of a consumptive's +grave, it was to be feared. + +"The attendance was pretty good for such a disagreeable morning, don't +you think?" Ardea ventured, trying to make talk as they breasted the +gusts together on the Deer Trace side of the pike. + +The young missioner shook his head rather despondently. "There are +English churchmen among the English and Welsh miners at Gordonia,--quite +a number of them," he rejoined. "Not one of them was present." + +It was the clear-sighted inner Ardea that smiled. There was little in +the stately service and luxurious appointments of the country colony's +church to attract the working-men, and much to repel them. She wondered +that Mr. Morelock, young as he was, did not understand this. + +"The mission of St. John's is hardly to the working people of Gordonia, +is it?" she said, more in exculpation than in criticism. + +"Oh, my dear young lady! the church knows no class distinctions!" +protested the zealous one warmly. "Her call is to rich and poor, gentle +and simple, young and old alike; and it is imperative. I must make a +round of visitation among these miners at the very first opportunity." + +Ardea bent low to the buffet of a stronger blast and fought for a moment +with her clinging skirts. When she had breath to say it, she said: "Will +you really do that? Then let me tell you how. Come out here some +week-day in your roughest clothes, and make your round among the men +while they are at work in the mine. They will listen to you then." + +"Bless me! what an idea!" he gasped. + +"It is not original with me," was the gentle reply. "You will remember +that the example was set a good many hundred years ago among the +fishermen of Galilee. And, after all, Mr. Morelock, it is the only way. +You can not reach down to a living soul on this earth--that is worth +saving." + +It had begun to rain in spiteful little dashes and squalls, and the +clergyman was turning up the collar of his overcoat and buttoning it +about his throat. Moreover, the wind had risen to half a gale, and +talking was difficult when it was not wholly impossible. But when they +reached the Deer Trace gates and the shelter of the driveway evergreens, +he had a defensive word ready. + +"I can't fully agree with you, you know, Miss Ardea," he said. "Of +course, we must not reach down in the Pharisaical sense. But neither +must we lower the dignity of the sacred calling." + +Her smile was neither disloyal nor cynical; it was merely pitying. She +was thinking in her heart of hearts how much this zealous young apostle +had yet to learn. + +"Do you call it undignified to be a man among men?" she asked; adding +quickly: "But I know you don't. And what other way is open to the true +brother-helper?" + +"There is the church and its ministrations," he began, but she broke in. + +"To get the drowning man ashore you have first to go down into the water +and lay hold of him, Mr. Morelock. That means personal contact, personal +association." + +The young man was clearly bewildered. His experience thus far had not +been enriched by many intimacies with clear-eyed young women who calmly +defined the larger humanities for him. + +"I'm afraid I don't quite understand your point of view," he demurred. + +"Don't you? I'm not sure that I can explain just what I mean. But it +seems to me that really to help any one, you must know that one; not +superficially, as people meet in ordinary ways, but intimately. And you +can't hope to do that if you hold aloof; if you--if you--pose as a +minister all the time." The word was not flattering, but she could lay +hold of no other. + +"Oh, I hope I don't do that!" he laughed. "But to creep around +underground in a sooty coal-mine, a laughing-stock to those who know how +to do it--er--professionally--" + +"The men have to do it as breadwinners, Mr. Morelock, and the most +ribald one of them wouldn't laugh at you. I wouldn't be afraid to +promise that you could fill St. John's, forbidding as its atmosphere is +to the average working-man, the very next Sunday after such a +visitation." + +Now this young zealot was a man of imagination, hidebound only in his +traditions. Also, he was not above taking ideas where he found them. + +"Really, Miss Dabney, I'm not sure but you have hold of the matter at +the practical end," he conceded. "I--I'd like to talk with you further +about it, when we have time. Do you suppose I could get permission to go +into the mines during working-hours?" + +"Certainly you could--for the mere asking. We can speak to Mr. Caleb +Gordon about it after breakfast, if you wish. My! doesn't that rain +sting! I'm glad we are at home." + +"Yes; and it is freezing as it falls. At home in New England we should +say it was too cold to rain." + +"It is never too cold or too anything to rain here," she said; and she +let him take her arm to help her up the slippery stone steps to the +stately portico. + +A moment later the hospitable door of the manor house yawned for them, +and the warmth of the Major's welcome, the light and glow of the +crackling wood fires, and the solid comfort of surrounding stone walls +soon banished the memory of the small struggle with the elements. + +"Oh, my deah suh! you are not going back to town this mo'ning!" +protested the warm-hearted Major Caspar, as the quartet was rising from +the breakfast-table an hour later. "Why, bless youh soul! I wouldn't +think of letting you go from undeh my roof in such weatheh as this! Tell +him it's his duty to stay, Ardea, my deah; persuade him that he'll neveh +have a betteh oppo'tunity to wrestle with the wickedest old sinner in +Paradise Valley." + +Young Mr. Morelock objected, zealously at first, but less strenuously +when Ardea drew the sash curtain and showed him the ice crust already an +inch thick, coating tree trunk and twig, grass blade and graveled +driveway. + +"I doubt very much if the horses could keep their footing; and it is +quite out of the question for you to walk to Gordonia," she decided. "We +have the long-distance, and you can explain matters to Doctor Channing." + +The young man called up St. Michael's rectory and explained first, and +smoked companionably with the Major in the library afterward. Further +along, there was a one-sided discussion polemical, it being meat and +drink to Major Caspar to ensnare a young theologian to his discomfiture +in the unaxiomatic field of religion. Ardea was in and out of the +library frequently while the discussion was in progress, but she had +little to say; indeed, there was scant room for a third when the Major +was once well warmed to his favorite relaxation. But Morelock remarked +as he might, in the few breathing-spaces allowed him by his host, that +Miss Dabney seemed restless and anxious about something, and that she +spent much of the time at the windows watching the steady growth of the +ice sheet. + +After luncheon they all gathered in the deep-recessed window of the +music-room which commanded a view of the groved pasture with its +background of mountain slope and precipice. The rain was still falling, +and the temperature remained at the freezing-point, but the wind had +gone down and the slow, measured swaying of the trees under the weight +of the thickening armor of ice was portentous of disaster, if the +weather conditions should continue unchanged. + +But as yet the storm was only in the magnificent stage. Far and near, +the outdoor world was a world of cold, white crystal, gleaming pure and +unsullied under the gray skies. Even the blackened tree trunks had their +shining panoply of silver; and from the eaves of the projecting window a +fringe of huge icicles was lengthening drop by drop. + +Miss Euphrasia thought of her roses, already in leaf, and refused to be +enthusiastic over the supernal beauty of the crystalline stage settings. +Major Caspar was anxious about the pasturing stock, and was relieved +when Japheth Pettigrass came in sight, leading a slipping, sliding +cavalcade of terrified horses to shelter in the great stables. The young +clergyman's thoughts were with the ill-housed poor of the South Tredegar +parish; and Ardea's--? + +Young Mr. Morelock put his private anxieties aside in deference to the +growing terror in the eyes of his young hostess. He had known her but a +short time, meeting her only as his St. John's-in-Paradise duties gave +him opportunity; but from the first she had stood to him as a type of +womanly serenity and fortitude. Yet now she was visibly terrified and +distressed, and the clergyman wondered. She had never before given him +the impression that she belonged to the storm-fearing group of women. + +"Can't we have a little music, Miss Ardea?" he asked, after a while, +hoping to suggest a comforting diversion. + +"You will have to excuse me," she said, in a low voice. "I--I think I am +not quite well." + +Cousin Euphrasia overheard the admission and recommended the quiet of up +stairs, drawn curtains and possets. But Ardea let the suggestion fall to +the ground, and a little while afterward Morelock surprised her at her +forenoon occupation of going from window to window, with the look of +distress rising to sharp agony when the overladen trees began to groan +and crack under the crushing ice burden. + +"What is it, Miss Dabney?" he said, out of the heart of sympathy, when +he came on her alone in the library. "Is there anything I can do?" + +"Yes," she rejoined quickly. "The moment the storm subsides even a +little, I must go out. My excuse will be a desire to see, a thirst for +fresh air--anything; and you must abet me if there is any opposition." + +"But I thought you were afraid of the storm," he interposed. + +"I? I should be out in it this minute if I thought grandfather wouldn't +be tempted to lock me in my room for proposing such a thing. And I +_must_ go before dark, whatever happens." + +The young man from New England was a gentleman born. He neither asked +questions nor raised objections. + +"Of course, you may command me utterly," he said warmly. "I'll help; and +I'll go with you, if you will let me." + +"That is what I want," she said frankly. "Will you propose it? I--I +can't explain, even to my cousin." + +"Certainly," he agreed; and a little later, when the temperature dropped +the necessary three degrees and the rain stopped, he calmly announced +his intention of taking Miss Ardea out to see the devastation which, by +this time, was beginning to be apparent on all sides. + +There was a protest, as a matter of course, quite shrill on the part of +Miss Euphrasia, but not absolutely prohibitory on the Major's. Morelock +saw to it that his charge was well wrapped; in her haste and agitation +Ardea would have overlooked the common precautions. They used the side +door for a sally-port, and were soon slipping and sliding almost +helplessly across the lawn. Walking was next to impossible, and the +crashes of falling branches and trees came like the detonations of +quick-firing guns. The minister locked arms with the determined young +woman at his side and picked the way for her as he could. + +"This is something awful for you," he said, when they had covered half +the distance to the nearest pasture wall. "Does the necessity warrant +it?" + +"It does," she rejoined; and they pressed on in awe-inspired silence to +the gate which opened on the pasture grove. + +The quarter of a mile intervening between the gate and that side of the +inclosure bounded by the lower slope of the mountain was truly a passage +perilous. A dozen times in the crossing Ardea fell, and so far from +being able to save her, Morelock could do no more than fall with her. +Once a great limb of a spreading oak split off with a clashing of ice +and came sweeping down to give them the narrowest of escapes; and after +that they kept the open where they might. + +At a rude rock stile over the limestone boundary wall at the mountain's +foot they paused to take breath. + +"Is there much more of it?" asked the escort, regretting for the first +time in his life, perhaps, that he had so studiously ignored the +athletic side of his seminary training. + +"The distance is nothing," she panted. "But we must take the path for a +little way up the mountain. No, don't tell me it can't be done; it +_must_ be done,"--this in answer to his dubious scanning of the glassy +ascent. + +Again his good breeding asserted itself. + +"Certainly it can be done, if you so desire." And he picked up a stone +and patiently hammered the ice from the steps of the stile so she could +cross in safety. + +It was no more than a three-hundred-yard dash up the slope to the +dog-keeper's cabin in the little glen, but it was a fight for inches. +Every stone, every hand-hold of bush or shrub or tuft of dried grass was +an icy treachery. Ardea knew the mountain and the path, and was less +helpless than she would otherwise have been; yet she was willing to +confess that she could never have done it alone. With all their care and +caution they were exhausted and breathless when they topped the +acclivity and Morelock saw the cabin in the pocket cove, with the great +tulip-tree in the dooryard bending and distorted and groaning like a +living thing in agony. + +"Isn't it terrible!" he said; but Ardea's glance had gone beyond the +tortured tree to the shuttered windows and smokeless chimney of the +cabin. + +"Oh, let us hurry!" she gasped; but at the gate of the tiny dooryard she +stopped in sudden embarrassment. "I can't take you into the house, Mr. +Morelock. Will you wait for me here--just a moment?" + +He said "Certainly," as he had been saying it from the first. But it was +quite without prejudice to a healthy and growing curiosity. The small +adventure was taking on an air of mystery which thickened momently, +demanding insistently a complete rearrangement of his preconceived +notions of Miss Ardea Dabney. + +She left him at once and made her way cautiously to the ice-encrusted +door-stone. What she saw, when she lifted the wooden latch and entered, +was what she had been praying she might not see. + +On the small hearth was a heap of white ashes, dead and cold, and the +tomb-like chill of the tightly-closed room was benumbing. Asleep in the +fireplace corner, his little knees drawn up to his chin and his face +streaked with the dried tears, was the three-year-old baby who bore Tom +Gordon's name. And on the bed in the recess at the back of the room, her +hands clenched and her passionate face a mask of long-continued agony, +lay the mother. + +Ardea was white to the lips and trembling when she retreated to the +door-stone and beckoned to her companion. + +"Can you find the way back to Deer Trace alone?" she faltered. "There is +trouble here, as I feared there might be--terrible trouble and +suffering. Say to my cousin that I must have Aunt Eliza, if she has to +crawl here on her hands and knees. Then telephone for Doctor Williams, +at Gordonia. He'll come if you tell him the message is from me. Oh, +please go, quickly!" + +[Illustration: "Oh, please go quickly!"] + +He was waiting only for her to finish. + +"Is it quite safe for you here?" he asked. + +"Quite; but I shall die of impatience if you don't hurry!" Then her good +blood made its protest heard. "Oh, please forgive me! I don't forget +that you are my guest, but--" + +"Not a word, Miss Dabney. Shall I come back here with the woman or the +doctor?" + +"No; I'll send for you if--if there is no hope. Otherwise you could do +nothing." + +He lifted his hat and was gone, and she turned and reëntered the house +of trouble, bravely facing that which had to be faced. + +An hour later, when Doctor Williams, with Mammy Juliet's Pete chopping +the way for him up the hazardous path, reached the end of his journey of +mercy, there was a bright fire crackling on the hearth, and Miss Dabney +was sitting before it, holding little Tom, who was still sleeping. Aunt +Eliza, a deft middle-aged negress who had succeeded Mammy Juliet as +housekeeper at Deer Trace, was bending over the bed, and the physician +went quickly to stand beside her, shaking his head dubiously. A moment +afterward he turned short on Ardea. + +"You must go home, my dear--at once--and take the child with you. Pete +is outside to help you, and my buggy is just at the foot of the path. I +can't have you here." + +"Can't I be of some use if I stay?" she pleaded. + +"No; you'd only hinder. You are much too sympathetic. Don't delay; the +minutes may count for lives," and the physician began to unbuckle the +straps of the canvas-covered case he had brought with him. + +Ardea wrapped the child hastily and gave him to Pete to carry, following +as quickly as she could down the path made possible by the coachman's +choppings. Happily, the doctor's horse was freshly shod, and the +quarter-mile to the manor-house was measured in safety. Ardea left +little Tom with Mammy Juliet at her cabin in the old quarters, and went +up to the great house to wait anxiously for news. It was drawing on to +the early dusk of the cloudy evening when she saw from the window of the +music-room the muffled figure of Pete opening the pasture gate for the +doctor to drive through. Instantly she flew to the door and out on the +steps. + +"Go in, child; go in," was the fatherly command. "I've got to stop to +take Morelock in. I promised to carry him to the station." + +"But Nancy?" she questioned anxiously. + +"She will live," said the doctor briefly. And then he added with a +frown: "But the child may not--which would doubtless be the best thing +possible for all concerned. I'm afraid the woman is incorrigible." Then +the professional part of him came to its own again: "You'll have to send +somebody up there to relieve Eliza. Care is all that is needed now, but +it mustn't be stinted." + +There were tears standing in the slate-blue eyes of the listener, but +Doctor Williams did not see them. If he had, he would not have +understood; neither would he have plumbed the depths of misery in that +whispered saying of Ardea's as she turned and fled to her room: "O Tom! +how could you! how could you!" + + + + +XXVII + +SWEPT AND GARNISHED + + +Thomas Jefferson Gordon, Bachelor of Science, and one of the six +prize-men in his class, was expected home on the first day of July; and +it was remarked as a coincidence by the curious that Deer Trace +manor-house was closed for the summer no more than a week before the +return of the Gordon black sheep. + +That Tom was a black sheep, a hopeless and incorrigible social +iconoclast, was no longer a matter of doubt in the minds of any. +Something may be forgiven a promising young man who has been unhappy +enough, or imprudent enough, to begin to make history for himself in the +irresponsible 'teens; but also the act of oblivion may be repealed. When +it became noised about that there were two children instead of one in +the old dog-keeper's cabin in the glen, Mountain View Avenue was justly +indignant, and even the lenient Gordonians scowled and shook their heads +at the mention of the young boss's name. All the world loves a lover, as +in just measure it despises a libertine; and there were fathers of +daughters among the miner and foundry folk of the town. + +On the lips of the transplanted urbanites of the hill houses comment was +less elemental, but no less condemnatory. It was no wonder the Dabneys +had closed their house and had gone to Crestcliffe Inn to save Ardea the +humiliation of having to meet Tom before she was safely married to +Vincent Farley. It was what any self-respecting young woman would wish +under like trying conditions. The country colony approved; likewise, it +commended Miss Dabney's foresight and prudence in causing the Bryerson +woman and her two children to disappear from the cabin in the glen; +though Mrs. Vancourt Henniker, in secret session over the tea-cups with +the elder Miss Harrison, voiced her surprise that Ardea could continue +to be charitable in that quarter. + +"It is quite beyond me," was the matron's thin-lipped phrasing of it. +"When one remembers that this wretched mountain girl has been Ardea's +understudy from the very beginning--faugh! it is simply disgusting! I +should think Ardea would never want to see or hear of her again." + +To such an atmosphere of potential social ostracism Tom returned after +the final scholastic triumph in Boston; and for the first few days he +escaped asphyxiation chiefly because the affairs of Gordon and Gordon +and the Chiawassee Consolidated gave him no time to test its quality. + +But after the first week he began to breathe it unmistakably. One +evening he called on the Farnsworths; the ladies were not at home to +him. The next night he saddled Saladin and rode over to Fairmont; the +Misses Harrison were also unable to see him, and the butler conveyed a +deftly-worded intimation pointing to future invisibilities on the part +of his mistresses. The evening being still young, Tom tried Rockwood +and the Dell, suspicion settling into conviction when the trim +maidservant at the Stanley villa went near to shutting the door in his +face. At the Dell he fared a little better. The Young-Dicksons were +going out for an after-dinner call on one of the neighbors, and Tom met +them at the gate as he was dismounting. There were regrets apparently +hearty; but in recasting the incident later, Tom remembered that it was +the husband who did the talking, and that Mrs. Young-Dickson stood in +the shadow of the gate tree, frigidly silent and with her face averted. + +"Once more, old boy, and then we'll quit," he said to Saladin at the +remounting, and the final rein-drawing was at the stone-pillared gates +of Rook Hill. Again the ladies were not at home, but Mr. Vancourt +Henniker came out and smoked a cigar with his customer on the piazza. +The talk was pointedly of business, and the banker was urbanely +gracious--and mildly inquisitive. Would there be a consolidation of the +allied iron industries of Gordonia when the Farleys should return? Mr. +Henniker thought it would be undeniably profitable to all concerned, and +offered his services as financiering promoter and intermediary. Would +Mr. Gordon come and talk it over with him--at the bank? + +Tom found his father smoking a bedtime pipe on the picturesque veranda +at Woodlawn when he reached home. Whistling for William Henry Harrison +to come and take his horse, he drew up one of the porch chairs and +filled and lighted his own pipe. For a time there was such silence as +stands for communion between men of one blood, and it was the father who +first broke it. + +"Been out callin', son?" he asked, marking the Tuxedo and the white +expanse of shirt front. + +"No, I reckon not," was the reply, punctuated by a short laugh. "The +Avenue seems to be depopulated." + +"So? I hadn't heard of anybody goin' away," said Caleb the literal. + +"Nor I," said Tom curtly; and the conversation paused until the +iron-master had deliberately refilled and lighted his corn-cob. + +"It's a-plenty onprofitable, Buddy, don't you reckon?" he ventured, +referring to the social diversion. + +There was a picric quality in Tom's tone when he replied: "The calling +act?--I have certainly found it so to-night." Then, more humanely: "But +as a means of relaxation it beats sitting here in the dark and stewing +over to-morrow's furnace run--which is what you've been doing." + +Caleb chuckled. "That's one time you missed the whole side o' the barn, +Buddy. I was settin' here wonderin' if a man ever did get over bein' +surprised at the way his children turn out." + +"Meaning me?" said Tom, knocking the ash from his pipe and feeling in +his pockets for a cigar. + +"Yes, meanin' you, son. You've somehow got away from me again in these +last six months 'r so." + +"I'm older, pappy; and I hope I'm bigger and broader. I was a good bit +of a kid a year ago; tough in some spots and fearfully and wonderfully +raw in others. Do you recollect how I climbed up on the fence the first +dash out of the box and read off the law to you about religion and such +things?" + +"I reckon so," said the iron-master. "And that's one o' the things--I +ain't heard you cuss out the hypocrites once since you got back. Have +you gone back on the Dutchman and his argyment?" + +"Bauer, you mean?--no; only on the nullifying part of it. Bauer's +no-religion doctrine is a doctrine of denial, and it's pure theory. What +we have to deal with in this world is the practical human fact, and a +good half of that is tangled up with some sort of religious belief or +sentiment. At least, that's the way I'm finding it." + +"It's the way it _is_," said Caleb sententiously. And after a pause: "I +allow it helps some, too; greases the wheels some if it don't do +anything more." + +"It does much more," was the quick reply. "When you find it in a woman +like Ardea Dabney, it raises her to the seventh power angelic. It is +only when you find it, or some ghastly imitation of it, in such people +as the Farleys...." He changed the subject abruptly. "You said the +Dabneys had gone up on the mountain for the summer, didn't you?" + +"Yes. I believe they're allowin' to come back in August, in time for the +weddin'." + +The younger man's wince was purely involuntary. He had been trying +latterly to train up to the degree of mental fitness which would enable +him to think calmly of Ardea as another man's wife. The effort commended +itself as a part of the new broadening process, but it was not entirely +successful. + +"You wrote me the Farleys would be back this month, didn't you?" he +asked. + +"The fifteenth," said Caleb; smoking reflectively through another long +pause before he added. "And then come the business fireworks. Have you +made up your mind what-all you're goin' to do, Buddy?" + +"Oh, yes," said Tom, as if this were merely a matter in passing. "We'll +consolidate the two plants and the coal-mine, if it's agreeable all +around." + +The iron-master took a fresh hitch in his chair. Truly, this was a +retransformed Tom; a creature totally and radically different from the +college junior who had sweltered through the industrial battle of the +previous summer, breathing out curses and threatenings. + +"Was you allowin' to let Colonel Duxbury climb into all three o' the +saddles?" he inquired, keeping his emotions out of his voice as he +could. + +"That will be for you and Major Dabney to decide," was the even-toned +response. "I would suggest a three-cornered alliance: a third to you, +another to Farley, and the remaining third to the Major. The pipe +foundry can't run without the furnace and, under present conditions, the +furnace is pretty largely dependent on the pipe foundry for its market; +and neither could run without the Major's coal." + +"Yes, that scheme might carry far enough to hit three of us. But +whereabouts do you figure out the fourth third for yourself, son?" + +"Oh, I'm not in it; or I'm not going to be after the Farleys come back. +I made up my mind to that six months ago," said Tom coolly. + +"Great Peter!" ejaculated Caleb, stirred for once out of his +slow-speaking, reticent habit. But he made amends by remaining silent +for five full minutes before he hazarded the query: "Got something else +on the string, Buddy?" + +"Yes, two or three things," was Tom's immediate and frank rejoinder. "I +can have a place as chemist with the steel people at Bethlehem; and Mr. +Clarkson is anxious to have me to go to the New Arizona iron country for +him." + +It was the brightest of midsummer nights, and a late moon was swinging +clear of the Lebanon sky-line, but the prospect of close-clipped lawn +and stately trees suddenly went dim before the eyes of the old +ex-artillery-man. + +"You're all I got in this world, son, and I reckon it makes me sort o' +narrow. I know in reason it must seem mighty little and pindlin' down +here to you, after what you've seen out in the big road, and I ain't +goin' to say a word. But if you can sort it round somehow in the mix-up +so I can get a few thousand dollars quittin' money out of it--jest +enough to keep your mammy and me from gettin' hongry what few years +we've got to eat, I'd be mighty proud." + +"Oh," said Tom, still unmoved, as it seemed, "we can do better than +that, if you want to pull out. But I made sure you'd rather stay in and +hold your job. I've a notion you'd find 'retiring' pretty hard work +after so many years spent in the furnace yard." + +"You're right about that, son; I sure would," agreed Caleb. Then he went +back to the main proposition. "What-all makes you restless, Buddy? Is it +because Chiawassee and the pipe-makin' ain't big enough for you?" + +Tom answered promptly and without apparent reserve. + +"The job's big enough, but I don't want to stay here and yoke up with +the Farleys; they'd ruin me in a year." + +"Get the better of you in the business--is that what you're aimin' to +say?" + +"Not exactly. I'm still brash enough to believe I could hold my own on +that score. But--oh, well; you know what we found out last summer about +their business methods. I can do business that way, too; as a matter of +fact, I did do a good bit more of it last year than you knew anything +about. But I'm out of it now, and I mean to stay out." + +A longer interval of silence followed, and at the end of it another +query. + +"Is that all that's the matter, Buddy?" + +"No--it isn't," hesitantly. "I'm seventeen other kinds of a fool, too, +pappy." + +"Reckon ye couldn't make out to onload the whole of it on to a pair o' +right old shoulders, could ye, son Tom?" was the gentle invitation. + +"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. I'm foolish about Ardea; been +that way ever since she used to wear frocks and I used to run barefoot. +I don't believe I could stand it to stay here and be her husband's +business partner." + +Caleb was shrouding himself in tobacco smoke and nodding complete +intelligence. + +"How did you ever come to let her get away from you, son?" he asked. + +"That's a large question--too big for me to answer, I'm afraid. I always +knew we were meant for each other, and I guess I took too much for +granted. Then Vint Farley came along, and I helped his case by pitching +into him every time she gave me a chance. Naturally, she leaned the +other way; and the European business settled it." + +Caleb drew a long breath. "Reckon it's everlastin'ly too late now, do +ye, Tom?" + +The young man's smile was wintry. + +"You said the wedding-day was set, didn't you?" + +"Why, yes; _toe_ be sure. Leastwise, your mammy talked like it was. But, +lawzee, son! the Gordon stock don't lie down in the harness. Ardee +thinks a heap o' you, and if you could jest've made out to keep from +gettin' so everlastin'ly tangled with that gal o' Tike--" he stopped +abruptly, but not quite soon enough, and the word was as the flick of a +whip on a wound already made raw by the abrasion of the closed doors. + +"So that miserable story has got around to you at last, has it?" said +Tom, in fine scorn. "I did hope they'd spare you and mother." + +"She's spared yet, so far as I know," said the father, with a backward +nod to indicate the antecedent of the pronoun. Following which, he said +what lay uppermost in his mind. "I been allowin' maybe you'd come back +this time with your head sot on lettin' that gal alone, son." + +Thomas Jefferson was on his feet and a hot anger wave was sweeping him +back over the years to other times when things used to turn red under +the rage blast. But he got some sort of grip on himself before the words +came. + +"You've believed all you've heard, have you?--condemned me before I +could say a word in my own defense? That's what they've all done." + +"I don't say that, son." Then, with a note of fatherly yearning in his +voice: "I'm waitin' to hear that word right now, Buddy--or as much of it +as ye can say honestly." + +"You'll never hear it from me--never in this world or another. Now tell +me who told you!" + +"Why, it's in mighty near ever'body's mouth, son!" said Caleb, in mild +surprise. "You certain'y didn't take any pains to cover it up." + +"Didn't take any pains? Why, in the name of God, should I?" Tom burst +out. After which he tramped heavily to the farther end of the veranda, +refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked furiously for a time, glooming +over at the darkened windows of Deer Trace and letting bitter anger and +disappointment work their will on him. And when he finally turned and +tramped back it was only to say an abrupt "Good night," and to pass into +the house and up to his room. + +He thought he was alone in the moon-lighted dusk of the upper chamber +when he closed the door and began to pace a rageful sentry-beat back and +forth between the windows. But all unknown to him one of the three fell +sisters, she of the implacable front and deep-set, burning eyes, had +entered with him to pace evenly as he paced, and to lay a maddening +finger on his soul. + +Without vowing a vow and confirming it with an oath, he had partly +turned a new life-leaf on the night of heavenly comfort when Ardea had +sent him forth to tramp the pike with her kiss of sisterly love still +caressing him. Beyond the needs of the moment, the recall of Norman and +the determination to turn his back on the world struggle for the time +being, he had not gone in that first fervor of the uplifting impulse. +But later on there had been other steps: a growing hunger for success +with self-respect kept whole; a dulling of the sharp edge of his hatred +for the Farleys; a meliorating of his fierce contempt for all the +hypocrites, conscious and subconscious. + +With the changing point of view had come a corresponding change in the +life. The men of his class had marked it, and there were helping hands +held out, as there always are when one struggles toward the forward +margin of any Slough of Despond. He had even gone to church at long +intervals, having there the good hap to fall under the influence of a +man whose faults were neither of ignorance nor of insincerity. + +In these surface-scratchings of the heart soil there had sprung up a +mixed growth in which the tares of self-righteousness began presently to +overtop the good grain of humility. One must not be too exacting. If the +world were not all good, neither was it all bad; at all events, it was +the part of wisdom to make the magnanimous best of it, and to be +thankful that the day-star of reason had at last arisen for one's self. +At the close of his college course he would go home prepared to deal +firmly but justly with the Farleys, prepared to show Ardea and the small +world of Paradise a pattern of business rectitude, of filial devotion, +of upright, honorable manhood. As Ardea had said, the example was +needed; it should be forthcoming. And perhaps, in the dim and distant +future, Ardea herself would look back to the night when her word and her +kiss had fashioned a man after her own heart, and be--not sorry (true +love was still stronger than prideful Phariseeism here), but a little +regretful, it might be, that her love could not have gone where it was +sent. + +And now.... With Alecto's maddening finger pressed on the soul-hurt, no +man is responsible. After the furious storm of upbubbling curses had +spent itself there was a little calm, not of surcease but of vacuity, +since even the cursing vocabulary has its limitations. Then a grouping +of words long forgotten arrayed itself before him, like the handwriting +on the wall of Belshazzer's banqueting hall. + +_When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry +places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return +into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it +empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself +seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and +dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first._ + +He put his hands before his face to shut out the sight of the words. +Farther on, he felt his way across the room to stand at the window where +he could look across to the gray, shadowy bulk of the manor-house, to +the house and to the window of the upper room which was Ardea's. + +"They've got me down," he whispered, as if the words might reach her +ear. "The devils have come back, Ardea, my love; but you can cast them +out again, if you will. Ah, girl, girl! Vincent Farley will never need +you as I need you this night!" + + + + +XXVIII + +THE BURDEN OF HABAKKUK + + +During the first half of the year 1894, with Norman too busy at the pipe +foundry to worry him, and the iron-master president too deeply engrossed +in matters mechanical, Mr. Henry Dyckman, still bookkeeper and cashier +for Chiawassee Consolidated, had fewer nightmares; and by the time he +had been a month in undisputed command at the general office he had +given over searching for a certain packet of papers which had +mysteriously disappeared from a secret compartment in his desk. + +Later, when the time for the return of the younger Gordon drew near, +there was encouraging news from Europe. Dyckman had not failed to keep +the mails warm with reports of the Gordon and Gordon success; with +urgings for the return of the exiled dynasty; and late in May he had +news of the home-coming intention. From that on there were alternating +chills and fever. If Colonel Duxbury should arrive and resume the reins +of management before Tom Gordon should reappear, all might yet be well. +If not,--the alternative impaired the bookkeeper's appetite, and there +were hot nights in June when he slept badly. + +When Tom's advent preceded the earliest date named by Mr. Farley by a +broad fortnight or more, the bookkeeper missed other of his meals, and +one night fear and a sharp premonition of close-pressing disaster laid +cold hands on him; and nine o'clock found him skulking in the great +train shed at the railway station, a ticket to Canada in his pocket, a +goodly sum of the company's money tightly buckled in a safety-belt next +to his skin--all things ready for flight save one, the courage requisite +to the final step-taking. + +The following morning the premonition became a certainty. In the +Gordonia mail there was a note from the younger Gordon, directing him to +come to the office of the pipe foundry, bringing the cash-book and +ledger for a year whose number was written out in letters of fire in the +bookkeeper's brain. He went, again lacking the courage either to refuse +or to disappear, and found Gordon waiting for him. There were no +preliminaries. + +"Good morning, Dyckman," said the tyrant, pushing aside the papers on +his desk. "You have brought the books? Sit down at that table and open +the ledger at the company's expense account for the year. I wish to make +a few comparisons," and he took a thick packet of papers from a +pigeonhole of the small iron safe behind his chair. + +Dyckman was unbuckling the shawl-strap in which he had carried the two +heavy books, but at the significant command he desisted, went swiftly to +the door opening into the stenographer's room, satisfied himself that +there were no listeners, and resumed his chair. + +"You have cut out some of the preface, Mr. Gordon; I'll cut out the +remainder," he said, moistening his dry lips. "You have the true record +of the expense account in that package. I'm down and out; what is it +you want?" + +The inexorable one at the desk did not keep him in suspense. + +"I want a written confession of just what you did, and what you did it +for," was the direct reply. "You'll find Miss Ackerman's type-writer in +the other room; I'll wait while you put it in type." + +The bookkeeper's lips were dryer than before, and his tongue was like a +stick in his mouth when he said: + +"You're not giving me a show, Mr. Gordon; the poor show a common +murderer would have in any court of law. You are asking me to convict +myself." + +Gordon held up the packet of papers. + +"Here is your conviction, Mr. Dyckman--the original leaves taken from +those books when you had them re-bound. I need your statement of the +facts for quite another purpose." + +"And if I refuse to make it? A cornered rat will fight for his life, Mr. +Gordon." + +"If you refuse I shall be reluctantly compelled to hand these papers +over to our attorneys--reluctantly, I say, because you can serve me +better just now out of jail than in it." + +Dyckman made a final attempt to gain fighting space. + +"It's an unfair advantage you're taking; at the worst, I am only an +accessory. My principals will be here in a few days, and--" + +"Precisely," was the cold rejoinder. "It is because your principals are +coming home, and because they are not yet here, that I want your +statement. Oblige me, if you please; my time is limited this morning." + +There was no help for it, or none apparent to the fear-stricken; and +for the twenty succeeding minutes the type-writer clicked monotonously +in the small ante-room. Dyckman could hear his persecutor pacing the +floor of the private office, and once he found himself looking about him +for a weapon. But at the end of the writing interval he was handing the +freshly-typed sheet to a man who was yet alive and unhurt. + +Gordon sat down at his desk to read it, and again the roving eyes of the +bookkeeper swept the interior of the larger room for the means to an +end; sought and found not. + +The eye-search was not fully concluded when Gordon pressed the electric +button which summoned the young man who kept the local books of the +Chiawassee plant across the way. While he waited he saw the conclusion +of the eye-search and smiled rather grimly. + +"You'll not find it, Dyckman," he said, divining the desperate purpose +of the other; adding, as an afterthought: "and if you should, you +wouldn't have the courage to use it. That is the fatal lack in your +makeup. It is what kept you from taking the train last night with the +money belt which you emptied this morning. You'll never make a +successful criminal; it takes a good deal more nerve than it does to be +an honest man." + +The bookkeeper was sliding lower in his chair. + +"I--I believe you are the devil in human shape," he muttered; and then +he made an addendum which was an unconscious slipping of the +under-thought into words: "It's no crime to kill a devil." + +Gordon smiled again. "None in the least,--only you want to make sure +you have a silver bullet in the gun when you try it." + +Hereupon the young man from the office across the pike came in, and +Gordon handed a pen to Dyckman. + +"I want you to witness Mr. Dyckman's signature to this paper, Dillard," +he said, folding the confession so that it could not be read by the +witness; and when the thing was done, the young man appended his +notarial attestation and went back to his duties. + +"Well?" said Dyckman, when they were once more alone together. + +"That's all," said Gordon curtly. "As long as you are discreet, you +needn't lose any sleep over this. If you don't mind hurrying a little, +you can make the ten-forty back to town." + +Dyckman restrapped his books and made a show of hastening. But before he +closed the office door behind him he had seen Gordon place the +type-written sheet, neatly folded, on top of the thick packet, snapping +an elastic band over the whole and returning it to its pigeonhole in the +small safe. + +Later in the day, Tom crossed the pike to the oak-shingled office of the +Chiawassee Consolidated. His father was deep in the new wage scale +submitted by the miners' union, but he sat up and pushed the papers away +when his son entered. + +"Have you seen this morning's _Tribune_?" asked Tom, taking the paper +from his pocket. + +"No; I don't make out to find much time for it before I get home o' +nights," said Caleb. "Anything doin'?" + +"Yes; they are having a hot time in Chicago and Pullman. The strike is +spreading all over the country on sympathy lines." + +"Reckon it'll get down to us in any way?" queried the iron-master. + +"You can't tell. I'd be a little easy with Ludlow and his outfit on that +wage scale, if I were you." + +"I don't like to be scared into doin' a thing." + +"No; but we don't want a row on our hands just now. Farley might make +capital out of it." + +Caleb nodded. Then he said: "Didn't I see Dyckman comin' out of your +shanty 'long about eleven o'clock?" + +"Yes; he came out to do me a little favor, and it went mighty near to +making him sweat blood. Shall you need me any more to-day?" + +"No, I reckon not. Goin' away?" + +"I'm going to town on the five-ten, and I may not be back till late." + +Tom's business in South Tredegar was unimportant. There was a word or +two to be said personally in the ear of Hanchett, the senior member of +the firm of attorneys intrusted with the legal concernments of Gordon +and Gordon, and afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro. But the +real object of the town trip disclosed itself when he took an electric +car for the foot of Lebanon on the line connecting with the inclined +railway running up the mountain to Crestcliffe Inn. He had not seen +Ardea since the midwinter night of soul-awakenings; and Alecto's finger +was still pressing on the wound inflicted by the closed doors of +Mountain View Avenue and his father's misdirected sympathy. + +He found Major Dabney smoking on the hotel veranda, and his welcome was +not scanted here, at least. There was a vacant chair beside the Major's +and the Major's pocket case of long cheroots was instantly forthcoming. +Would not the returned Bachelor of Science sit and smoke and tell an old +man what was going on in the young and lusty world beyond the +mountain-girt horizons? + +Tom did all three. His boyish awe for the old autocrat of Paradise had +mellowed into an affection that was almost filial, and there was plenty +to talk about: the final dash in the technical school; the outlook in +the broader world; the great strike which was filling all mouths; the +business prospects for Chiawassee Consolidated. + +The moment being auspicious, Tom sounded the master of the Deer Trace +coal lands on the reorganization scheme, and found nothing but +complaisance. Whatever rearrangement commended itself to Tom and his +father, and to Colonel Duxbury Farley, would be acceptable to the Major. + +"I reckon I can trust you, Tom, and my ve'y good friend, youh fatheh, to +watch out for Ardea's little fo'tune," was the way he put it. "I haven't +so ve'y much longeh to stay in Paradise," he went on, with a silent +little chuckle for the grim pun, "and what I've got goes to her, as a +matteh of cou'se." Then he added a word that set Tom to thinking hard. +"I had planned to give her a little suhprise on her wedding-day: suppose +you have the lawyehs make out that block of new stock to Mistress +Vincent Farley instead of to me?" + +Tom's hard thinking crystallized into a guarded query. + +"Of course, Major Dabney, if you say so. But wouldn't it be more +prudent to make it over in trust for her and her children before she +becomes Mrs. Farley?" + +The piercing Dabney eyes were on him, and the fierce white mustaches +took the militant angle. + +"Tell me, Tom, have you had _youh_ suspicions in that qua'teh, too? I'm +speaking in confidence to a family friend, suh." + +"It is just as well to be on the safe side," said Tom evasively. There +was enough of the uplift left to make him reluctant to strike his enemy +in the dark. + +"No, suh, that isn't what I mean. You've had youh suspicions aroused. +Tell me, suh, what they are." + +"Suppose you tell me yours, Major," smiled the younger man. + +Major Dabney became reflectively reminiscent. "I don't know, Tom, and +that's the plain fact. Looking back oveh ouh acquaintance, thah's +nothing in that young man for me to put a fingeh on; but, Tom, I tell +you in confidence, suh, I'd give five yeahs of my old life, if the good +Lord has that many mo' in His book for me, if the blood of the Dabneys +didn't have to be--uh--mingled with that of these heah damned Yankees. I +would, for a fact, suh!" + +Tom rose and flung away the stub of his third cheroot. + +"Then you'll let me place your third of the new stock in trust for her +and her children?" he said. "That will be best, on all accounts. By the +way, where shall I find Miss Ardea?" + +"She's about the place, somewhahs," was the reply; and Tom passed on to +the electric-lighted lobby to send his card in search of her. + +Chance saved him the trouble. Some one was playing in the music-room +and he recognized her touch and turned aside to stand under the looped +portières. She was alone, and again, as many times before, it came on +him with the sense of discovery that she was radiantly beautiful--that +for him she had no peer among women. + +It was the score of a Bach fugue that stood on the music-rack, and she +was oblivious to everything else until her fingers had found and struck +the final chords. Then she looked up and saw him. + +There was no greeting, no welcoming light in the slate-blue eyes; and +she did not seem to see when he came nearer and offered to shake hands. + +"I've been talking to your grandfather for an hour or more," he began, +"and I was just going to send my card after you. Haven't you a word of +welcome for me, Ardea?" + +Her eyes were holding him at arm's length. + +"Do you think you deserve a welcome from any self-respecting woman?" she +asked in low tones. + +His smile became a scowl--the anger scowl of the Gordons. + +"Why shouldn't I?" he demanded. "What have I done to make every woman I +meet look at me as if I were a leper?" + +She rose from the piano-stool and confronted him bravely. It was now or +never, if their future attitude each to the other was to be succinctly +defined. + +"You know very well what you have done," she said evenly. "If you had a +spark of manhood left in you, you would know what a dastardly thing you +are doing now in coming here to see me." + +"Well, I don't," he returned doggedly. "And another thing: I'm not to +be put off with hard words. I ask you again what has happened? Who has +been lying about me this time?" + +Three other guests of the hotel were entering the music-room and the +quarrel had to pause. Ardea had a nerve-shaking conviction that it would +never do to leave it in the air. He must be made to understand, once for +all, that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. She caught up the light wrap +she had been wearing earlier in the evening and turned to one of the +windows opening on the rear veranda. "Come with me," she whispered; and +he followed obediently. + +But there was no privacy to be had out of doors. There was a goodly +scattering of people in the veranda chairs enjoying the perfect night +and the white moonlight. Ardea stopped suddenly. + +"You were intending to walk down to the valley?" she asked. + +He nodded. + +"I will walk with you to the cliff edge." + +It was a short hundred yards, and there were many abroad in the graveled +walks: lovers in pairs, and groups of young people pensive or +chattering. So it was not until they stood on the very battlements of +the western cliff that they were measurably alone. + +"Has no one told you what happened last March--on the day of the ice +storm?" she asked coldly. + +"No." + +"Don't you know it without being told?" + +"Of course, I don't; why should I?" + +His angry impassiveness shook her resolution. It seemed incredible that +the most accomplished dissembler could rise to such supreme heights of +seeming. + +"I used to think I knew you," she said, faltering, "but I don't. Why +don't you despise hypocrisy and double-dealing as you used to?" + +"I do; more heartily than ever." + +"Yet, in spite of that, you have--oh, it is perfectly unspeakable!" + +"I am taking your word for it," he rejoined gloomily. "You are denying +me what the most wretched criminal is taught to believe is his right--to +know what he is accused of." + +"Have you forgotten that night last winter when you--when I saw you at +the gate with Nancy Bryerson?" + +"I'm not likely to forget it." + +She seized her courage and held it fast, putting maidenly shame to the +wall. + +"Tom, it is a terrible thing to say--and your punishment will be +terrible. _But you must marry Nancy!_" + +"And father another man's child?--not much!" he answered brutally. + +"And father your own children--two of them," she said, with bitter +emphasis. + +"Oh, that's it, is it?" he said, with a deeper scowl. "So there are two +of them, are there? That's why no woman in Mr. Farley's country colony +is at home to me any more, I suppose." And then, still more bitterly: +"Of course, you are all sure of this?--Nan has at last confessed that I +am the guilty man?" + +"You know she has not, Tom. Her loyalty is still as strong and true at +it is mistaken. But your duty remains." + +He was standing on the brink of the cliff, looking down on Paradise +Valley, spread like a silver-etched map far below in the moonlight. The +flare and sough of the furnace at the iron-works came and went with +regular intermittency; and just beyond the group of Chiawassee stacks a +tiny orange spot appeared and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp. He +was staring down at the curious spot when he said: + +"If I say that I have no duty toward Nan, you will believe it is a +lie--as you did once before. Have you ever reflected that it is possible +to trample on love until it dies--even such love as I bear you?" + +"It is a shame for you to speak of such things to me, Tom. Consider what +I have endured--what you have made me endure. People said I was standing +by you, condoning a sin that no right-minded young woman should condone. +I bore it because I thought, I believed, you were sorry. And at that +very time you were deceiving me--deceiving every one. You have dragged +me in the very dust of shame!" + +"There is no shame save what we make for ourselves," he retorted. "One +day, according to your creed, we shall stand naked before your God, and +before each other. In that day you will know what you have done to me +to-night. No, don't speak, please; let me finish. The last time we were +together you gave me a strong word, and--and you kissed me. For the sake +of that word and that kiss I went out into the world a different man. +For the little fragment of your love that you gave me then, I have lived +a different man from that day to this. Now you shall see what I shall be +without it." + +Before he had finished she had turned from him gasping, choking, +strangling in the grip of a mighty passion, new-born and yet not new. +With the suddenness of a revealing flash of lightning she understood; +knew that she loved him, that she had been loving him from childhood, +not because, but in spite of everything, as he had once defined love. It +was terrible, heartbreaking, soul-destroying. She called on shame for +help, but shame had fled. She was cold with a horrible fear lest he +should find out and she should be for ever lost in the bottomless pit of +humiliation. + +It was the sight of the little orange-colored spot glowing and growing +beyond the Chiawassee chimneys that saved her. + +"Look!" she cried. "Isn't that a fire down in the valley just across the +pike from the furnace? It _is_ a fire!" + +He made a field-glass of his hands and looked long and steadily. + +"You are quite right," he said coolly. "It's my foundry. Can you get +back to the hotel alone? If you can, I'll take the short cut down +through the woods. Good night, and--good-by." And before she could +reply, he had lowered himself over the cliff's edge and was crashing +through the underbrush on the slopes below. + + + + +XXIX + +AS BRUTES THAT PERISH + + +It was the office building of the pipe foundry that burned on the night +of July fifteenth, and the fire was incendiary. Suspicion, put on the +scent by the night-watchman's story, pointed to Tike Bryerson as the +criminal. The old moonshiner, in the bickering stage of intoxication, +had been seen hanging about the new plant during the day, and had made +vague threats in the hearing of various ears in Gordonia. + +Wherefore the small world of Paradise and its environs looked to see a +warrant sworn out for the mountaineer's arrest; and when nothing was +done, gossip reawakened to say that Tom Gordon did not dare to +prosecute; that Bryerson's crime was a bit of wild justice, so +recognized by the man whose duty it was to invoke the law. + +It was remarked, also, that neither of the Gordons had anything to say, +and that an air of mystery enveloped the little that they did. The small +wooden office building was a total loss, but the night shift at the +Chiawassee had saved most of the contents; everything of value except +the small iron safe which had stood behind the manager's desk in the +private office. The safe, as the onlookers observed, was taken from the +debris and conveyed, unopened, across the road to the Chiawassee +laboratory and yard office. Whether or not its keepings were destroyed +by the fire, was known only to the younger Gordon, who, as the foreman +of the Chiawassee night shift informed a _Tribune_ reporter, had broken +it open himself, deep in the small hours of the night following the +fire, and behind the locked door of the furnace laboratory. + +At another moment South Tredegar newspaperdom might have made something +of the little mystery. But there were more exciting topics to the fore. +The great strike, with Chicago and Pullman as its storm-centers, was +gripping the land in its frenzied fist, and the press despatches were +greedy of space. Hence, young Gordon was suffered to open his safe in +mysterious secrecy; to rebuild his burned office; and to let the +incendiary, sufficiently identified by the watchman, it was believed, go +scot-free. + +With the greater land-wide interest to divert it, even Paradise failed +to note the curious change that had come over the younger of the +Gordons, dating from the night of burnings. But the few who came in +contact with him in the business day saw and felt it. Miss Ackerman, the +pipe-works stenographer, quit when her week was up. It was nothing that +the young manager had said or done; but, as she confided to her sister, +more fortunately situated in town, it was like being caged with a living +threat. Even Norman, the trusted lieutenant, was cut out of his +employer's confidence; and for hours on end in the business day the card +"Not in" would be displayed on the glass-paneled door of the private +room in the rebuilt office. + +Not to make a mystery of it for ourselves, Tom had passed another +milestone in the descent to the valley of lost souls. Or rather, let us +say, he had taken a longer step backward toward the primitive. Daggered +_amour-propre_ is rarely a benign wound. Oftener than not it gangrenes, +and there is loss of sound tissue and the setting-up of strange and +malevolent growth. With the passing of the first healthful shock of +honest resentment, Tom became a man of one idea. Somewhere in the land +of the living dwelt a man who had robbed him, intentionally or +otherwise, indirectly, but none the less effectually, of the ennobling +love of the one woman; to find that man and to deal with him as Joab +dealt with Amasa became the one thing worth living for. + +The first step was taken in secrecy. One day a stranger, purporting to +be a walking delegate for the United Miners, but repudiated as such by +check-weigher Ludlow, took up his residence in Gordonia and began to +interest himself, quite unminer-like, in the various mechanical +appliances of the Chiawassee plant, and particularly in the different +sources of its water supply. + +Divested of his cloakings, this sham walking delegate was a Pinkerton +man, detailed grudgingly from the Chicago storm-center on Tom's +requisition. His task was to scrutinize Nancy Bryerson's past, and to +identify, if possible, one or more of the three men who, in January of +the year 1890, had inspected and repaired the pipe-line running from the +coke-yard tank up to the barrel-spring on high Lebanon. + +To the detective the exclusion card on Tom's door did not apply, and the +conferences between the hired and the hirer were frequent and prolonged. +If we shall overhear one of them--the final one, held on the day of the +Farleys' return to Paradise and Warwick Lodge--it will suffice. + +"It looks easy enough, as you say, Mr. Gordon," the human ferret is +explaining; "but in point of fact there's nothing to work on--less than +nothing. Three years ago you had no regular repair gang, and when a job +of that kind was to be done, any Tom, Dick or Harry picked up a helper +or two and did it. But I think you can bet on one thing: none of the +three men who made that inspection is at present in your employ." + +"In other words, you'd like to get back to your job at Pullman," snaps +Tom. + +"Oh, I ain't in any hurry! That job looks as if it would keep for a +while longer. But I don't like to take a man's good money for nothing; +and that's about what I'm doing here." + +Tom swings around to his desk and writes a check. + +"I suppose you have no further report to make on the woman?" + +"Nothing of any importance. I told you where she is living--in a little +cabin up on the mountain in a settlement called Pine Knob." + +"Yes; but I found that out for myself." + +"So you did. Well, she's living straight, as far as anybody knows; and +if you can believe what you hear, the only follower she ever had was a +young mountaineer named Kincaid. I looked him up; he's been gone from +these parts for something over three years. He is ranching in Indian +Territory, and only came back last week. You can check him off your +list." + +"He was never on, and I have no list," says the manhunter grittingly. +"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Beckham," passing the signed check to +the other, "I shall begin where you leave off, and end by finding my +man." + +"I hope you do, I'm sure," says the Pinkerton, moved by the liberal +figure of the check. "And if there's anything more the Agency can do--" + +In the afternoon of the same day, when the self-dismissed detective was +speeding northward toward Chicago and the car-burners, Tom saddled the +bay and rode long and hard over a bad mountain cart track to the hamlet +of Pine Knob. It was a measure of his abandonment that he was breaking +his promise to Ardea; and another of his reckless singleness of purpose +that he rode brazenly through the little settlement to Nan's door, +dismounted and entered as if he had right. + +The cabin was untenanted, but he found Nan sitting on the slab step of a +rude porch at the back, nursing her child. She greeted him without +rising, and her eyes were downcast. + +"I've come for justice, Nan," he said, without preface, seating himself +on the end of the step and flicking the dust from his leggings with his +riding-crop. "You know what they're saying about us--about you and me. I +want to know who to thank for it: what is the man's name?" + +She did not reply at once, and when she lifted the dark eyes to his they +were full of suffering, like those of an animal under the lash. + +"I nev' said hit was you," she averred, after a time. + +"No; but you might as well. Everybody believes it, and you haven't +denied it. Who is the man?" + +"I cayn't tell," she said simply. + +"You mean you won't tell." + +"No, I cayn't; I'm livin' on his money, Tom-Jeff." + +"No, you are not. What makes you say that?" + +"She told me I was." + +"Who? Miss Dabney?" + +Her nod was affirmative, and he went on: "Tell me just what she said; +word for word, if you can remember." + +The answer came brokenly. + +"I was ashamed--you don't believe hit, but hit's so. I allowed it was +_her_ money. When I made out like I'd run off, she said, 'No; it's his +money 'at's bein' spent for you, and you have a right to it.'" + +Tom was silent for a time; then he said the other necessary word. + +"She believes I am the man who wronged you, Nan. It was my money." + +The woman half rose and then sat down again, rocking the child in her +arms. + +"You're lyin' to me, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Hit's on'y a lie to make me tell!" +she panted. + +"No, it's the truth. I was sorry for you and helped you because--well, +because of the old times. But everybody has misunderstood, even Miss +Dabney." + +Silence again; the silence of the high mountain plateau and the +whispering pines. Then she asked softly: + +"Was you aimin' to marry her, Tom-Jeff?" + +His voice was somber. "I've never had the beginning of a chance; and +besides, she is promised to another man." + +The woman was breathing hard again. "I heerd about that, too--jest the +other day. I don't believe hit!" + +"It is true, just the same. But I didn't come out here to talk about +Miss Dabney. I want to know a name--the name of a man." + +She shook her head again and relapsed into unresponsiveness. + +"I cayn't tell; he'd shore kill me. He's always allowed he'd do hit if I +let on." + +"Tell me his name, and I'll kill him before he ever gets a chance at +you," was the savage rejoinder. + +"D'ye reckon you'd do that, Tom-Jeff--for me?" + +The light of the old allurement was glowing in the dark eyes when she +said it, but there was no answering thrill of passion in his blood. For +one moment, indeed, the bestial demon whispered that here was vengeance +of a sort, freely proffered; but the fiercer devil thrust this one +aside, and Tom found himself looking consciously and deliberately into +the abyss of crime. Once he might have said such a thing in the mere +exuberance of anger, meaning nothing more deadly than the retaliatory +buffet of passion. But now-- + +It was as if the curtain of the civilizing, the humanizing, ages had +been withdrawn a hand's-breadth to give him a clear outlook on +primordial chaos. Once across the mystic threshold, untrammeled by the +hamperings of tradition, unterrified by the threat of the mythical +future, the human atom becomes its own law, the arbiter of its own +momentary destiny. What it wills to do, it may do--if iron-shod chance, +blind and stumbling blindly, does not happen to trample on and efface +it. Who first took it on him to say, _Thou shalt not kill_? What were +any or all of the prohibitions but the frantic shrillings of some of the +atoms to the others? + +In the clear outlook Thomas Gordon saw himself as one whose foot was +already across the threshold. True, he had thus far broken with the +world of time-honored traditions only in part. But why should he scruple +to be wholly free? If the man whose deed of brutality or passion was +disturbing the chanceful equilibrium for two other human dust-grains +should be identified, why should he not be effaced? + +The child at Nan's breast stirred in its sleep and threw up its tiny +hands in the convulsive movement which is the human embryo's first +unconscious protest against the helplessness of which it is born +inheritor. Tom stood up, beating the air softly with the hunting-crop. + +"The man has spoiled your life, Nan; and, incidentally, he has muddied +the spring for me--robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in +the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall +blot him out--like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head +of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little +disorganized mass of black and yellow down and broken wing-filaments. + +The glow in the dark eyes of the woman had died down again, and her +voice was hard and lifeless when she said: + +"But not for me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't wantin' to kill him like my brother +would, if I had one." + +"No; not at all for you, Nan," he said half-absently. And then he +tramped away to the gate, and put a leg over Saladin, and rode down the +straggling street of the little settlement, again in the face and eyes +of all who cared to see. + +The bay had measured less than a mile of the homeward way when there +came a clatter of hoof-beats in the rear. Tom awoke out of the absent +fit, spoke to Saladin and rode the faster. Nevertheless, the pursuing +horseman overtook him, and a drawling voice said: + +"Hit's right smart wicked to shove the bay thataway down-hill, son." + +Tom pulled his horse down to a walk. He was in no mood for +companionship, but he knew Pettigrass would refuse to be shaken off. + +"Where have you been?" he asked sourly. + +"Me? I been over to McLemore's Valley, lookin' at some brood-mares that +old man Mac is tryin' to sell the Major." + +"Did you come through Pine Knob?" + +"Shore, I did. I was a-settin' on Brother Bill Layne's porch whilst you +was talkin' to Nan Bryerson. Seems sort o' pitiful you cayn't let that +pore gal alone, Tom-Jeff." + +"That's enough," said Tom hotly. "I've heard all I'm going to about that +thing, from friends or enemies." + +"I ain't no way shore about that," said the horse-trader easily. "I was +'lottin' to say a few things, m'self." + +Tom pulled the bay up short in the cart track. + +"There's the road," he said, pointing. "You can have the front half or +the back half--whichever you like." + +Japheth's answer was a good-natured laugh and a tacit refusal to take +either. + +"You cayn't rile me thataway, boy," he said. "I've knowed you a heap too +long. Git in the fu'ther rut and take your medicine like a man." + +Since there appeared to be no help for it, Tom set his horse in motion +again, and Japheth gave him a mile of silence in which to cool down. + +"Now you listen at me, son," the horse-trader began again, when he +judged the cooling process was sufficiently advanced. "I ain't goin' to +tell no tales out o' school this here one time. But you got to let Nan +alone, d'ye hear?" + +"Oh, shut up!" was the irritable rejoinder. "I'll go where I please, and +do what I please. You seem to forget that I'm not a boy any longer!" + +"Ya-as, I do; that's the toler'ble straight fact," drawled the other. +"But I ain't so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff." + +Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to +bend all means to the one end, the trivial as well as the potent. + +"Tell me something, Japhe," he said, changing front in the twinkling of +an eye. "Is Nan coming back to the dog-keeper's cabin when the family +leaves the hotel?" + +"'Tain't goin' to make any difference to you if she does," said +Pettigrass, wondering where he was to be hit next. + +"It may, if you'll do me a favor. You'll be where you can see and hear. +I want to know who visits her--besides Miss Ardea." + +Brother Japheth's smile was more severe than the sharpest reproach. + +"Still a-harpin' on that old string, are ye? Say, Tom-Jeff, I been +erbout the best friend you've had, barrin' your daddy, for a right smart +spell o' years. Don't you keep on tryin' to th'ow dust in my eyes." + +"Call it what you please; I don't care what you think or say. But when +you find a man hanging around Nan--" + +"They's one right now," said the horse-trader casually. + +Tom reined up as if he would ride back to Pine Knob forthwith. + +"Who is it?" he demanded. + +"Young fellow named Kincaid--jest back f'om out West, somewheres. +Brother Bill Layne let on to me like maybe he'd overlook what cayn't be +he'ped, and marry Nan anyhow. And that's another reason you got to keep +away." + +"Let up on that," said Tom, stiffening again. "If you had been where you +could have used your ears as you did your eyes back yonder at Pine Knob, +you'd know more than you seem to know now." + +There was silence between them from this on until the horses were +footing it cautiously down the bridle-path connecting the cart track +with the Paradise pike. Then Pettigrass said: + +"Allowin' ther' might be another man, Tom-Jeff, jest for the sake of +argyment, what-all was you aimin' to do if you found him?" + +It was drawing on to dusk, and the electric lights of Mountain View +Avenue and the colonial houses were twinkling starlike in the blue-gray +haze of the valley. They had reach the junction of the steep bridle-path +with the wood road which edged the Dabney horse pasture and led directly +to the Deer Trace paddocks, and when Japheth pulled his horse aside into +the short cut, Tom drew rein to answer. + +"It's nobody's business but mine, Japhe; but I'd just as soon tell you: +it runs in my head that he needs killing mighty badly, and I've thought +about it till I've come to the conclusion that I'm the appointed +instrument. You turn off here? Well, so long." + +Brother Japheth made the gesture of leave-taking with his riding-switch, +and sent his mount at an easy amble down the wood road, apostrophizing +great nature, as his habit was. "Lawzee! _how_ we pore sinners do tempt +the good Lord at every crook and elbow in the big road, _toe_ be shore! +Now ther's Tom-Jeff, braggin' how he'll be the one to kill the pappy o' +Nan's chillern: he's a-ridin' a mighty shore-footed hawss, but hit do +look like he'd be skeered the Lord might take him at his word and make +that hawss stumble. Hit do, for a fact!" + + + + +XXX + +THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY + + +On the night of the fire, Ardea had remained on the cliff's edge until +the blaze died down and disappeared, which was some little time, she +decided, before Tom could possibly have reached the foot of the +mountain. + +When there was nothing more to be seen she went back to the hotel and +called up the Young-Dicksons, whose cottage commanded a short-range view +of the Gordon plant. It was Mrs. Young-Dickson who answered the +telephone. Yes; the fire was one of the foundry buildings--the office, +she believed. Mr. Young-Dickson had gone over, and she would have him +call up when he should return, if Miss Dabney wished. + +Ardea said it did not matter, and having exhausted this small vein of +distraction she returned to the music-room and the Bach fugue, as one, +who has had a fall, rises and tries to go on as before, ignoring the +shock and the bruisings. But the shock had been too severe. Tom Gordon +had proved himself a wretch, beyond the power of speech to portray, +and--she loved him! Not all the majestic harmonies of the inspired +_Kapellmeister_ could drown that terrible discord. + +The next day it was worse. There was a goodly number of South Tredegar +people summering at the Inn, and hence no lack of companionship. But +the social distractions were powerless in the field where Bach and the +piano had failed, and after luncheon Ardea shut herself in her room, +desperately determined to try what solitude would do. + +That failed, too, more pathetically than the other expedients. It was to +no purpose that she went bravely into the torture chamber of opprobrium +and did penance for the sudden lapse into the elemental. It was the +passion of the base-born, she cried bitterly. He was unworthy, unworthy! +Why had he come? Why had she not refused to see him--to speak to him? + +Such agonizing questions flung themselves madly on the spear points of +fact and were slain. He had come; she had spoken. Never would she forget +the look in his eyes when he had said, "Good night, and--good-by;" nor +could she pass over the half-threat in the words that had gone before +the leave-taking. To what deeper depth despicable could he plunge, +having already sounded the deepest of them all--that of unfaith, of +infidelity alike to the woman he had wronged and to the woman he +professed to love? + +At dinner-time she sent word to her grandfather and her cousin that she +was not feeling well, which was a mild paraphrasing of the truth, and +had a piece of toast and a cup of tea sent to her room. The bare thought +of going down to the great dining-room and sitting through the hour-long +dinner was insupportable. She made sure every eye would see the shame in +her face. + +With the toast and tea the servant brought the evening paper, sent up by +a doting Major Caspar, thoughtful always for her comfort. A marked item +in the social gossip transfixed her as if it had been an arrow. The +Farleys had sailed from Southampton, and the house renovators were +already busy at Warwick Lodge. + +After that the toast proved too dry to be eaten and the tea took on the +taste of bitter herbs. Vincent Farley was returning, coming to claim the +fulfilment of her promise. She had never loved him; she knew it as she +had not known it before; and that was dreadful enough. But now there +were a thousand added pangs to go with the conviction. For in the +interval love had been found--found and lost in the same moment--and the +solid earth was still reeling at the shock. + +Ardea of the strong heart and the calm inner vision had always had a +feeling bordering on contempt for women of the hysterical type; yet now +she felt herself trembling and slipping on the brink of the pit she had +derided. + +The third day brought surcease of a certain sort. In the Gallic blood +there is ever a trace of fatalism; the shrug is its expression. It was +generations back to the D'Aubignés, yet now and then some remote +ancestor would reach up out of the shadowy past to lay a compelling +finger on the latest daughter of his race. Her word was passed, beyond +honorable recall. Somewhere and in some way she would find the courage +to tell Vincent that she did not love him as the wife should love the +husband; and if he should still exact the price, she would pay it. After +all, it would be a refuge, of a kind. + +Now it is human nature to assume finalities and to base conduct on the +assumption. Conversely, it is not in human nature to tighten one knot +without loosening another. Having firmly resolved to be unflinchingly +just to a Vincent Farley, one could afford to be humanely interested in +the struggles shoreward or seaward of a poor swimmer in the welter of +the tideway. She did not put it thus baldly, even in her secret thought. +But the thing did itself. + +The opportunities for marking the struggles of the poor swimmer were +limited; but where is the woman who can not find the way when desire +drives? Ardea had something more than a speaking acquaintance with Mr. +Frederic Norman who, as acting-manager of the foundry plant in Tom's +absence, had generously thrown one of the buildings open for a series of +Sunday services for the workmen, promoted by Miss Dabney and the +Reverend Francis Morelock. Since the warm nights had come, Norman had +taken a room at the Inn, climbing the mountain from the Paradise side in +time for dinner, and going down in the cool of the morning after an +early breakfast. + +Being first and last a man of business, he knew, or seemed to know, +nothing of the valley gossip, or of the social sentence passed on his +chief by the Mountain View Avenue court. When Ardea had assured herself +of this, she utilized Norman freely as a source of information. + +"You've known the boss a long time, haven't you, Miss Dabney?" asked the +manager, one evening when Ardea had made room for him in a quiet corner +of the veranda between the Major's chair and her own. + +"Mr. Gordon? Oh, yes; a very long time, indeed. We were children +together, you know." + +"Well, I'd like to ask you one thing," said Frederic, the unfettered. +"Did you ever get to know him well enough to guess what he'd do next? I +thought I'd been pretty close to him, but once in a while he runs me up +a tree so far that I get dizzy." + +"As for example?" prompted Miss Ardea, leaving the personal question in +the air. + +"I mean his way of breaking out in a new spot every now and then. Last +winter was one of the times, when he made up his mind between two +minutes to chuck the pipe-making and go back to college. And now he's +got another streak." + +Miss Dabney made the necessary show of interest. + +"What is it this time--too much business, or not enough?" + +Norman rose and went to the edge of the veranda to flick his cigar ash +into the flower border. When he came back he took a chair on that side +of Miss Dabney farthest from the Major, who was dozing peacefully in a +great flat-armed rocker. + +"I declare I don't know, Miss Dabney; he's got me guessing harder than +ever," he said, lowering his voice. "Since the night when the office +burned he's been miles beyond me. While the carpenters were knocking +together the shack we're in now, he put in the time wandering around the +plant and looking as if he had lost something and forgotten what it was. +Now that we've got into the new office, he shuts himself up for hours on +end; won't see anybody--won't talk--scamps his meals half the time, and +has actually got old Captain Caleb scared stiff." + +"How singular!" said Ardea; but in her heart there was a great pity. +"Do you suppose it was his loss in the fire?" she asked. + +The manager shook his head. + +"No; that was next to nothing, and we're doing a good business. It was +something else; something that happened about the same time. If I can't +find out what it is, I'll have to quit. He's freezing me out." + +Ardea was inconsistent enough to oppose the alternative. + +"No," she objected. "You mustn't do that, Mr. Norman. It is a friend's +part to stand by at such times, don't you think?" + +"Oh, I'm willing," was the generous reply. "Only I'm a little lonesome; +that's all." + +At another time Norman told her of the mysterious walking delegate, who +was admitted to the private office when an anxious and zealous business +manager was excluded. Later still, he made a half-confidence. Caleb, in +despair at the latest transformation in his son, had finally unfolded +his doubts and fears, business-wise, to the manager. The Farleys were +returning; a legal notice of a called meeting of the Chiawassee +Consolidated had been published; and it was evident that Colonel Duxbury +meant to take hold with his hands. And Tom seemed to have forgotten that +there was a battle to be fought. + +Norman's recounting of this to Miss Dabney was the merest unburdening of +an overloaded soul, and he was careful to garble it so that the +prospective daughter-in-law of Colonel Duxbury might not be hurt. But +Ardea read between the lines. Could it be possible that Tom's lifelong +enmity for the Farleys, father and son, had even a little justification +in fact? She put the thought away, resolutely setting herself the task +of disbelieving. Yet, in the conversation which followed, Mr. Frederic +Norman was very thoroughly cross-questioned without his suspecting it. +Ardea meant to cultivate the open mind, and she did not dream that it +was the newly-discovered love which was prompting her to master the +intricacies of the business affair. + +Two days later the Farleys came home, and since Vincent went promptly +into residence at Crestcliffe, the evenings with Norman were +interrupted. But they had served their purpose; and when Vincent began +to press for the naming of an early day in September for the wedding, +Ardea found it quite feasible to be calmly indefinite. You see, she had +still to tell him that it had become purely a matter of promise-keeping +with her--a task easy only for the heartless. + +It was in the third week in August, a full month, earlier than their +original plans contemplated, that the Dabneys returned to Paradise and +Deer Trace. Miss Euphrasia was led to believe that the Major had tired +of the hotel and the mountain; and the Major thought the suggestion came +first from Miss Euphrasia. + +But the real reason for the sudden return lay in a brief note signed +"Norman," and conveyed privately to Ardea's hands by a grimy-faced boy +from the foundry. + +"Mr. Tom was waylaid by two footpads at the Woodlawn gates Saturday +night and half killed," it read. "He is delirious and asks continually +for you. Could you come?" + + + + +XXXI + +THE NET OF THE FOWLER + + +Which of the Cynic Fathers was it who defined virtue as an attitude of +the mind toward externals? One may not always recall a pat quotation on +the spur of the moment, but it sounds like Demonax or another of the +later school, when the philosophy of cynicism had sunk to the level of a +sneer at poor human nature. + +To say that Mr. Duxbury Farley, returning to find Chiawassee +Consolidated in some sense at the mercy of the new pipe plant, regarded +himself as a benefactor whose confidence had been grossly abused, is +only to take him at his word. What, pray tell us, was Caleb Gordon in +the crude beginning of things?--a village blacksmith or little more, +dabbling childishly in the back-wash of the great wave of industry and +living poverty-stricken between four log walls. To whom did he owe the +brick mansion on the Woodlawn knoll, the comforts and luxuries of +civilized life, the higher education of his son? + +In Mr. Farley's Index Anathema, ingratitude ranked with crime. He had +trusted these Gordons, and in return they had despoiled him; crippled a +great and growing industry by segregating the profitable half of it; +cast doubt on the good name of its founder by reversing his business +methods. Chiawassee had been making iron by the hundreds of tons: where +were the profits? The query answered itself. They were in the credit +account of Gordon and Gordon, every dollar of which justly belonged to +the parent company. Was not the pipe-making invention perfected by a +Chiawassee stock-holder, who was also a Chiawassee employee, on +Chiawassee time, and with Chiawassee materials? Then why, in the name of +justice, was it not to be considered a legitimate Chiawassee asset? + +Mr. Duxbury Farley asked these questions pathetically and insistently; +at the Cupola Club, in the Manufacturers' Association, in season and out +of season, wherever there was a willing ear to hear or the smallest +current of public sentiment to be diverted into the channel so patiently +dug for it. Was his virtuous indignation merely the mental attitude of +all the Duxbury Farleys toward things external? That bubble is too huge +for this pen to prick; besides, its bursting might devastate a world. + +But if we may not probe too deeply into primal causes, we may still be +regardful of the effects. Mr. Farley's bid for public sympathy was not +without results. True, there were those who hinted that the veteran +promoter was only paving the way for a _coup de grâce_ which should +obliterate the Gordons, root and branch; but when the days and weeks +passed, and Mr. Farley had done nothing more revolutionary than to +reëlect himself president of Chiawassee Consolidated, and to resume, +with Dyckman as his lieutenant, the direction of its affairs, these +prophets of evil were discredited. + +It was observed also that Caleb remained general manager at Gordonia, +and still received the patronizing friendship of former times; and to +Tom the full width of the pike was given--a distance which he kept +scrupulously. But as for the younger Gordon, he knew it was the lull +before the storm, and he was watching the horizon for the signs of its +coming--when he was not searching for clues or brooding behind the +closed door of his private office with the devil of homicide for a +closet companion. + +During this reproachful period Vincent Farley gave himself unreservedly, +as it would seem, to the sentimental requirements, spending much time on +the mountain top and linking his days to Ardea's in a way to give her a +sinking of the heart at the thought that this was an earnest of all time +to come. + +Mountain View Avenue had understood that the wedding was to be in +September; but as late as the final week in August the cards were not +out, and Miss Euphrasia, the source and fountainhead of the Avenue's +information, could only say that she supposed the young people were +making up for the time lost by separation and absence, and were willing +to prolong the delights sentimental of an acknowledged engagement. + +But at the risk of cutting sentiment to the very bone, it must be +admitted that, after the first ardent attempt to commit Ardea to a +certain and early day, the delay was of Vincent's own making; and the +motive was basely commercial. Through Major Dabney, who was not proof +against Colonel Duxbury's blandishments at short range, however much he +might distrust them at a distance, Tom's plan of reorganization, with +the suggestion of the trusteeship for Ardea's third, had become known +to the Farleys. Thereupon ensued a conference of two held in Vincent's +room in the hotel, and sentence of extinction was passed on Tom and +Caleb. + +"The ungrateful cub!" was Colonel Duxbury's indignant comment. "To use +his influence over Major Dabney to sequestrate, absolutely sequestrate, +a full third of our property!" + +"Forewarned is forearmed," said the son coolly. "It's up to us to break +the slate." + +"We'll do it, never fear. Just give me a little more time in which to +win public sentiment over to our side, and don't press Ardea to name the +exact day until I give the word," was the promoter's parting injunction +to his son; and Vincent trimmed his sails accordingly, as we have seen. + +Planting the good seed, which was a little later to yield an abundant +harvest of public approbation sanctioning anything he might see fit to +do to the Gordons, was a congenial task to Mr. Farley; but in the midst +it was rather rudely interrupted by a belated unburdening on the part of +his first lieutenant in the South Tredegar offices. + +Dyckman held his peace as long as he dared; in point of fact he did not +speak until he saw his superiors rushing blindly into the pit digged for +their feet by the astute young tyrant of the pipe foundry. If they could +have fallen without carrying him with them, it is conceivable that the +bookkeeper might have remained dumb. But their immunity was doubly his, +and the end of it was a bad quarter of an hour for him, two of them, to +be precise: the first, in which he told the president and the treasurer +the story of the missing cash-book and ledger pages and the extorted +confession, and the other, during which he sat under a scathing fire of +abuse poured on him by the younger of his two listeners. After it was +over, he escaped to the welcome refuge of his own office while father +and son took counsel together against this new and unsuspected peril. + +"Anybody but an idiot like Dyckman would have found out long ago if +those papers were burned in Gordon's safe," snapped Vincent, when the +danger had been duly weighed and measured. + +The president shook his head mournfully. + +"Anybody but Dyckman would have burned them himself, you'd think. It was +criminally careless in him not to do so." + +"They are the key to the lock," summed up the younger man. "We've got to +have them." + +"Assuredly--if they are in existence." + +"You needn't try to squeeze comfort out of that. I tell you, they went +through the fire all right, and Tom has them." + +"I am afraid you are right, Vincent; afraid, also, that Dyckman so far +forgot himself as to set fire to Gordon's office in the hope of +retrieving his own neglect. But how are we to regain them?" Mr. Farley's +weapons were two, only: first persuasion, and when that failed, +corruption. + +Vincent's cold blue eyes were darkening. The little virtues interpose +but a slight barrier to a sharp attack of the large vices. + +"The fight has fallen into halves," he said briefly. "You go on with +your part as if nothing had happened, and I'll do mine. Has the old +iron-melter been taken in on it, do you think?" + +"No; I don't believe Caleb knows." + +"That's better. Are you going up the mountain to-night?" + +"Yes, I had thought of it. Eva wants me to take her." + +"All right; you go, and get Major Dabney to yourself for a quiet +half-hour. Tell him we are all ready to close the deal, and we're only +waiting on the Gordons. I'll be up to dinner, and if anybody asks for me +later, let it be understood that I have gone to my room to write +letters." + +This bomb-hurling of Dyckman's occurred on the Wednesday. That night, +between the hours of nine and eleven, the new steel safe in Tom Gordon's +private office was broken open and ransacked, though nothing was taken. +On Thursday afternoon, while Martha Gordon was over at Deer Trace +training the new growth on Ardea's roses, Tom's room at Woodlawn was +thoroughly and systematically pillaged: drawers were pulled out and +emptied on the floor, the closets were stripped of their contents, and +even the bed mattresses were ripped open and destroyed. + +Mrs. Martha was terrified, as so bold a daylight housebreaking gave her +a right to be; and Caleb was for sending to the county workhouse for the +bloodhounds. But Tom was apparently unmoved. + +"It won't happen again," he said; and it did not. But on the Saturday +evening, just before the late dinner-hour at Woodlawn, Japheth +Pettigrass, who had been trying to halter a shy filly running loose in +the field across the pike, saw a stirring little drama enacted at the +Woodlawn gates; saw it, and played some small part in it. + +It centered on Tom, who was late getting home. He never rode with his +father now if he could avoid it, and Japheth saw him swinging along up +the pike, with his head down and his hands in the pockets of his short +coat. The Woodlawn entrance was a walled semicircle giving back from the +roadway, with the carriage gates hinged to great stone pillars in the +center, and a light iron grille at the side for foot-passengers. Tom's +hand was on the latch of the little gate when two men darted from the +shadow of the nearest pillar and flung themselves on him. + +Japheth saw them first and gave a great yell of warning. Tom turned at +the cry, and so was not taken entirely unawares. But the two had beaten +him down and were busily searching him when Japheth dashed across the +pike, shouting as he ran. The footpads persisted until the horse-trader +came near enough to see that they were black men, or rather white men +with blackened faces and hands. Then they sprang up and vanished in the +gathering dusk. + +Tom was conscious when Pettigrass got him on his feet and hastily bound +a handkerchief over the ugly wound in his head. He was still conscious +when Japheth walked him slowly up the path to the house, and was sanely +concerned lest his mother should be frightened. + +But after they got him to bed he sank into an inert sleep out of which +he awoke the next morning wildly delirious. Ardea's name was oftenest on +his lips in his ravings, and while his strength remained, his calling +for her was monotonously insistent. He seemed to think she was at the +great house across the lawns, and it took the united efforts of Japheth +and Norman to hold him when he tried to get to the window to shout +across for her. + +Norman stood it until late Monday afternoon. Then, when Caleb had +relieved him at Tom's bedside, he drove down to Gordonia and wrote the +note to Miss Dabney, sending it up the mountain by one of the Helgerson +boys with strict injunctions to give it to Miss Ardea herself. + +The Dabneys came down from the mountain Tuesday morning, and Ardea was +so far from disregarding her summons that she stopped the carriage at +the Woodlawn gates and went directly to comfort Mrs. Martha and to offer +her services in the sick-room. Tom was in one of his stubbornest +paroxysms when she entered, but at the touch of her hand he became +quiet, and a little later fell into a deep sleep, the first since the +Saturday night of coma and stertorous breathings. + +That same afternoon Crestcliffe Inn lost another guest, and the +smoking-room at Warwick Lodge was lighted far into the night. Two men +talked in low tones behind the carefully-shaded windows, one of them, +the younger, lounging in the depths of an easy-chair, and the other +pacing the floor in deepest abstraction. + +"I only know what Ardea tells me," said the lounger, answering the final +question put by the floor pacer. "He's out of his head--and out of the +way, temporarily, at least. Now is your time to strike." + +Mr. Duxbury Farley nodded his head slowly. + +"It was providential for us, Vincent, this assault just at the critical +moment. I have struck. I had an interview with Caleb this evening and +made him an offer for the pipe plant. He is to give us his answer +to-morrow morning." + +Silence fell for a little time, and then the younger man in the wicker +chair smote his palms together. + +"Curse him!" he gritted vengefully, transferring his thought from Caleb +Gordon to Caleb Gordon's son. "I hope he'll die!" + +The elder man paused in his walk. "Why, Vincent, my son! What has come +over you? It is merely a matter of business, and we mustn't be +vindictive." + +"Business be damned!" snarled the younger man. "Can't you see? She has +promised to marry me--and she loves _him_. Are you going to bed? Well, +I'm not. I've got something else to do first." + +A few minutes later he let himself noiselessly out at the side door of +the Lodge, and turned down the avenue in the direction of Deer Trace. +But after crossing the bridge over the creek, he took a diagonal course +through the stubble-fields and bore to the right. And when he finally +reached and climbed the wall into the pike, it was at a point directly +opposite the forking of the rough wood road which led off to the Pine +Knob settlement. + +As he leaped over into the highway, a man carrying a squirrel gun +stepped from behind a tree. + +"I was allowin' you'd done forgot," said the man, yawning sleepily. + +"I never forget," was the short rejoinder. Then: "Come with me, and you +shall hear with your own ears, since you won't take my word for it. +Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it's your own affair." + + + + +XXXII + +WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT + + +If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week +morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight +of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it, +possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the +tired brain to grapple with first. + +For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream +somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness, +stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to +life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this +was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible +presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone +together. + +"Ardea!" he said tremulously. + +She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the +fever fires in his. + +"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother." + +"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his +head. "What happened to me?" + +"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Saturday evening as +you were coming home. One of them struck you." + +"Saturday? And this is--" + +"This is Wednesday." + +The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not +need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for +him, but for his mother. He remembered the Saturday evening quite +clearly now: Japheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant +just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his +assailants and guessed the identity of the other. + +"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It +was the least you could do, since your--" + +She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the +effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him. + +"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same +colorless tone. + +"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that. +But no matter; we have passed the Saturday and have come to the +Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?" + +"He has been with you almost constantly from the first. He was here less +than an hour ago." + +"Where is he now?" + +She hesitated. "There is urgency of some kind in your business affairs. +Your father spent the night in South Tredegar; and a little while ago he +telephoned for Mr. Norman--from the iron-works, I think." She had moved +away again, and her hand was on the door-knob. + +He raised himself on one elbow. + +"You are in a desperate hurry, aren't you?" he gritted; though the +teeth-grinding was from the pain it cost him to move. "Would you mind +handing me that desk telephone before you go?" + +She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to +reach to the bed. + +"If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you," she +suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone. + +His smile was a mere grimace of torture. + +"If you could stretch your good-will to--to my mother--that far," he +said. "Please call my office--number five-twenty-six G--and ask for Mr. +Norman." + +She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the +other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary. "This is +Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn. Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to +say--what did you want to say?" she asked, turning to him. + +"Just ask what's going on; if it's Norman you've got, he'll know," said +Tom, sinking back on the pillows. + +What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea's +color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and +thoughtful as she listened. When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to +the sick man, her tone was kinder. + +"There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace +office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father," she said. "The +stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you +may have, and--" + +She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that was creeping like a +curious mask over the face of the man in the bed. Through all the strain +of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for +him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger. But +there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven. + +"Tom!" she gasped, rising quickly to go to him. + +"Wait," he muttered; "let me pull myself together. The +papers--are--in--" + +He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured +out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and +gave it to him. It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the +pillow and raised his head. It was the nearness of her that revived him. + +"I--I'm weaker than a girl," he whispered. "Vince--I mean the thug, hit +me a lot harder than he needed to. What was I saying?--oh, yes; the +papers. Will you--will you go over there in the corner by the door and +look behind the mopboard? You will find a piece of it sawed so it will +come out. In the wall behind it there ought to be a package." + +She found it readily,--a thick packet securely tied with heavy twine and +a little charred at the corners. + +"That's it," he said weakly. "Now one more last favor; please send Aunt +'Phrony up as you go down. Tell her I want my clothes." + +Miss Dabney became the trained nurse again in the turning of a leaf. + +"You are not going to get up?" she said. + +"Yes, I must; I'm due this minute at that meeting down yonder." + +"Indeed, you shall do no such insane thing!" she cried. "What are you +thinking of!" + +"Listen!" he commanded. "My father has worked hard all his life, and +he's right old now, Ardea. If I should fail him--but I'm not going to. +Please send Aunt 'Phrony." + +"I'm going to call your mother," she said firmly. + +"If you do, you'll regret it the longest day you live." + +"Then let me take the papers down to Mr. Norman for you." + +He considered the alternative for a moment--only a moment. What an +exquisite revenge it would be to make her the messenger! But he found he +did not hate her so bitterly as he had been trying to since that +soul-torturing evening on the cliff's edge. + +"No, I can't quite do that," he objected; and again he besought her to +send the old negro housekeeper. + +She consented finally, and as she was leaving him, she said: + +"I hope your mother is still asleep. She was here with you all night, +and Mr. Norman and I made her go to bed at daybreak. If you must go, get +out of the house as quietly as you can, and I'll have Pete and the buggy +waiting for you at the gate." + +"God bless you!" said Tom fervently; and then he set his teeth hard and +did that which came next. + +The Dabney buggy was waiting for him when, after what seemed like a +pilgrimage of endless miles, he had crept down to the gate. But it was +Miss Dabney, and not Mammy Juliet's Pete, who was holding the reins. + +"I couldn't find Pete, and Japheth has gone to town," she explained. +"Can you get in by yourself?" + +He was holding on by the cut wheel, and the death-look was creeping +over his face again. + +"I can't let you," he panted; and she thought he was thinking of the +disgrace for her. + +"I am my own mistress," she said coldly. "If I choose to drive you when +you are too sick to hold the reins, it is my own affair." + +He shook his head impatiently. + +"I wasn't thinking of that; but you must first know just what you're +doing. My father stands to lose all he has got to--to the Farley's. +That's what the meeting is for. Do you understand?" + +She bit her lip and a far-away look came into her eyes. Then she turned +on him with a little frown of determination gathering between her +straight eyebrows--a frown that reminded him of the Major in his +militant moods. + +"I must take your word for it," she said, and the words seemed to cut +the air like edged things. "Tell me the truth: is your cause entirely +just? Your motive is not revenge?" + +"As God is my witness," he said solemnly. "It is my father's cause, and +none of mine; more than that, it is your grandfather's cause--and +yours." + +She pushed the buggy hood back with a quick arm sweep and gave him her +free hand. "Step carefully," she cautioned; and a minute later they were +speeding swiftly down the pike in a white dust cloud of their own +making. + + * * * * * + +There was a sharp crisis to the fore in the old log-house office at the +furnace. Caleb Gordon, haggard and tremulous, sat at one end of the +trestle-board which served as a table, with Norman at his elbow; and +flanking him on either side were the two Farleys, Dyckman, Trewhitt, +acting general counsel for the company in the Farley interest, and +Hanchett, representing the Gordons. + +Having arranged the preliminaries to his entire satisfaction, Colonel +Duxbury had struck true and hard. The pipe foundry might be taken into +the parent company at a certain nominal figure payable in a new issue of +Chiawassee Limited stock, or three several things were due to happen +simultaneously: the furnace would be shut down indefinitely "for +repairs," thus cutting off the iron supply and making a ruinous +forfeiture of pipe contracts inevitable; suit would be brought to +recover damages for the alleged mismanagement of Chiawassee Consolidated +during the absence of the majority stock-holders; and the validity of +the pipe-pit patents would be contested in the courts. This was the +ultimatum. + +The one-sided battle had been fought to a finish. Hanchett, hewing away +in the dark, had made every double and turn that keen legal acumen and a +sharp wit could suggest to gain time. But Mr. Farley was inexorable. The +business must be concluded at the present sitting; otherwise the papers +in the two suits, which were already prepared, would be filed before +noon. Hanchett took his principal into the laboratory for a private +word. + +"It's for you to decide, Mr. Gordon," he said. "If you want to follow +them into the court, we'll do the best we can. But as a friend I can't +advise you to take that course." + +"If we could only make out to find out what Tom's holdin' over 'em!" +groaned Caleb helplessly. + +"Yes; but we can't," said the lawyer. "And whatever it may be, they are +evidently not afraid of it." + +"We'll never see a dollar's dividend out o' the stock, Cap'n Hanchett. I +might as well give 'em the foundry free and clear." + +"That's the chance you take, of course. But on the other hand, they can +force you to the wall in a month and make you lose everything you have. +I've been over the books with Norman: if you can't fill your pipe +contracts, the forfeitures will ruin you. And you can't fill them unless +you can have Chiawassee iron, and at the present price." + +The old iron-master led the way back to the room of doom and took his +place at the end of the trestle-board table. + +"Give me the papers," he said gloomily; and the Farleys' attorney passed +them across, with his fountain-pen. + +There was a purring of wheels in the air and the staccato clatter of a +horse's hoofs on the hard metaling of the pike. Vincent Farley rose +quietly in his place and tiptoed to the door. He was in the act of +snapping the catch of the spring-latch, when the door flew inward and he +fell back with a smothered exclamation. Thereupon they all looked up, +Caleb, the tremulous, with the pen still suspended over the signatures +upon which the ink was still wet. + +Tom was standing in the doorway, deathly sick and clinging to the jamb +for support. In putting on his hat he had slipped the bandages, and the +wound was bleeding afresh. Dyckman yelped like a stricken dog, +overturning his chair as he leaped up and backed away into a corner. +Only Mr. Duxbury Farley and his attorney were wholly unmoved. The lawyer +had taken his fountain-pen from Caleb's shaking fingers and was +carefully recapping it; and Mr. Farley was pocketing the agreement, by +the terms of which the firm of Gordon and Gordon had ceased to exist. + +Tom lurched into the room and threw himself feebly on the promoter, and +Vincent made as if he would come between. But there was no need for +intervention. Duxbury Farley had only to step aside, and Tom fell +heavily, clutching the air as he went down. + +The dusty office which had once been his mother's sitting-room was +cleared of all save his father when Tom recovered consciousness and sat +up, with Caleb's arm to help. + +"There, now, Buddy; you ortn't to tried to get up and come down here," +said the father soothingly. But Tom's blood was on fire. + +"Tell me!" he raved: "have they got the foundry away from you?" + +Caleb nodded gravely. "But don't you mind none about that, son. What I'm +sweatin' about now is the fix you're in. My God! ain't Fred ever goin' +to get back with Doc Williams!" + +Tom struggled to his feet, tottering. + +"I don't need any doctor, pappy; you couldn't kill me with a bullet--not +till I've cut the heart out of these devils that have robbed you. Give +me the pistol from that drawer, and drive me down to the station before +their train comes. I'll do it, and by God, I'll do it now!" + +But when old Longfellow, jigging vertically between the buggy shafts, +picked his way out of the furnace yard, he was permitted to turn of his +own accord in the homeward direction; and an hour later the sick man was +back in bed, mingling horrible curses with his insistent calls for +Ardea. And this time Miss Dabney did not come. + + + + +XXXIII + +THE WINE-PRESS OF WRATH + + +There was more to that crazy outburst of Tom's about the cutting out of +hearts, and the like, than would appear on the surface of things, to you +who dwell in a land shadowed with wings, where law abides and a man sues +his neighbor for defamation of character, if he is called a liar, I +mean. + +In the land unshadowed, where Polaris makes a somewhat sharper angle +with the horizon, there is law, also, but much of it is unwritten. And +one of the unwritten statutes is that which maintains the inherent right +of a man to avenge his own quarrel with his own hand. + +So, when the younger Gordon was up and about again, and was able to keep +his seat soldierly on the back of the big bay, folk who knew the Gordon +blood and temper looked for trouble, not of the plaintiff-and-defendant +sort; and when it did not come, there were a few to lament the +degeneracy of the times, and to say that old Caleb, for example, would +never have so slept on his father's wrongs. + +But Tom was not degenerate, even in the sense of those who thought he +should have called out and shot the younger of the Farleys. It was in +him to kill or be killed, quite in the traditional way: that grim gift +is in the blood as the wine is in the grape--to stay unless you shall +water it to extinction with many base inbreedings. Nor was the spur +lacking. When the sweeping extent of the business _coup de grâce_ was +measured, Woodlawn was left, and there were a few thousands in bank; +these and the three hundred and fifty shares of the reorganization stock +which the Farleys might render worthless at will. + +Tom's heart burned within him, and the race thirst--for vengeance that +could be touched and seen and handled--parched his lips and swelled the +veins in his forehead. Vincent Farley had it all: the business, the good +repute, the love of the one woman. At such crises the wild beast in a +man, if any there be, rattles the bars of its cage, and--well, you will +see that the gnashing of teeth and that fierce talk of heart-cutting at +the quickening moment were not inartistic. + +Soberer second thought, less frenzied, was no less vengeful and +vindictive. Tom had lived four formative years in a climate where the +passions are colder--and more comprehensive. Also, he was of his own +generation--which slays its enemy peacefully and without messing in +bloody-angle details. + +Riding up the pike one sun-shot afternoon in the golden September, Tom +saw Ardea entering the open door of the Morwenstow church-copy, drew +rein, flung himself out of the saddle and followed her. She saw him and +stopped in the vestibule, quaking a little as she felt she must always +quake until the impassable chasm of wedlock with another should be +safely opened between them. + +"Just a moment," he said abruptly. "There was a time when I said I +would spare Vincent Farley and his kin for your sake. Do you remember +it?" + +She bowed her head without speaking. Her lips were dry. + +"That was a year ago," he went on roughly. "Things have changed since +then; I have changed. When my father is buried, I shall do my best to +fill the mourners' carriages with those who have killed him." + +"How is your father to-day?" she asked, not daring to trust speech +otherwise. + +"He is the same as he was yesterday and the day before; the same as he +will always be from this on--a broken man." + +"You will strike back?" She said it with infinite sadness in her voice +and an upcasting of eyes that were swimming. "I don't question your +right--but I pity you. The blow may be just--I don't know, but God +knows--yet it will fall hardest on you in the end, Tom." + +His smile was almost boyish in its frank anger. But there was a man's +sneer in his words. + +"Excuse me; I forgot for the moment that we are in a church. But I am +taking consequences, these days." + +She looked out from the cool, dark refuge of the vestibule when he +mounted and rode on, and her heart was full. It was madness, vindictive +madness and fell anger. But it was a generous wrath, large and manlike. +It was not to be a blow in the dark or in the back, as some men struck; +and he would not strike without first giving her warning. Ardea had been +cross-questioning Japheth about the assault at the Woodlawn gates--to +her own hurt. Japheth had evaded as he could, but she had guessed what +he was keeping back--the identity of the two footpads blackened to look +like negroes. It was a weary world, and life had lost much that had made +it worth living. + +After the incident of the church vestibule, Tom spent a week or more +roaming the forests of Lebanon in rough shooting clothes, with the +canvas hat pulled well over his eyes and a fowling-piece under his arm. + +People said harsher things then. With old Caleb failing visibly from day +to day, and his mother keeping her room for the greater part of the +time, it was a shame that a great strong young giant like Tom should go +loitering about on the mountain, deliberately shirking his duty. This +was the elder Miss Harrison's wording of the censure; and it was kinder +than Mrs. Henniker's, since it was the banker's wife who first asked, +with uplifted brows and the accent accusative, if the unspeakable +Bryerson woman were safely beyond tramping distance from Woodlawn. + +They were both mistaken. For all Tom thought of her, Nancy Bryerson was +as safe in her retreat at Pine Knob as were the squirrels he was +supposed to be hunting; and they came and frisked unharmed on the +branches of the tree under which he sat and munched his bit of bread and +meat when the sun was at the meridian. + +And he was not killing time. He was deep in an inventive trance, with +vengeance for the prize to be won, and for the means to the end, +iron-works and pipe plants and forgings--especially the forging of one +particular thunderbolt which should shatter the Farley fortunes beyond +repair. When this bolt was finally hammered into shape he came out of +the wood and out of the inventive trance, had an hour's interview with +Major Dabney, and took a train for New York. + +I am not sure, but I think it was at Bristol, Tennessee, that the +telegram from Norman, begging him to come back to South Tredegar at +speed, overtook him. This is a detail, important only as a marker of +time. For three days a gentleman with shrewd eyes and a hard-bitted jaw, +registering at the Marlboro as "A. Dracott, New York," had been shut up +with Mr. Duxbury Farley in the most private of the company's offices in +the Coosa Building, and on the fourth day Norman had made shift to find +out this gentleman's business. Whereupon the wire to Tom, already on his +way to New York, and the prayer for returning haste. + +Tom caught a slow train back, and was met at a station ten miles out of +town by his energetic ex-lieutenant. + +"Of course, I didn't dare do anything more than give him a hint," was +the conclusion of Norman's exciting report. "I didn't know but he might +give us away to Colonel Duxbury. So, without telling him much of +anything, I got him to agree to meet you at his rooms in the Marlboro +to-night after dinner. Then I was scared crazy for fear my wire to you +would miss." + +"You are a white man, Fred, and a friend to tie to," said Tom; which was +more than he had ever said to Norman by way of praise in the days of +master and man. Then, as the train was slowing into the South Tredegar +station: "If this thing wins out, you'll come in for something bigger +than you had with Gordon and Gordon; you can bet on that." + +It was ordained that Gordon should anticipate his appointment by +meeting his man at the dinner-table in the Marlboro café; and it was +accident or design, as you like to believe, that Dyckman should be +sitting two tables away, choking over his food and listening only by the +road of the eye, since he was unhappily out of ear range. When the two +had lighted their cigars and passed out to the elevator, the bookkeeper +rose hastily and made for the nearest telephone. This, at least, was not +accidental. + +The conference in Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight, with Dyckman +painfully shadowing the corridor and sweating like a furnace laborer, +though the night was more than autumn cool. The door was thick, the +transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded nothing but a square of +blank wall opposite in the electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. +Hence the bookkeeper could only guess what we may know. + +"You have let in a flood of light on Mr. Farley's proposition, Mr. +Gordon," said the representative of American Aqueduct, when the ground +had been thoroughly gone over. "I don't mind telling you now that he +made his first overtures to us on his arrival from Europe, giving us to +understand that he owned or controlled the pipe-making patents +absolutely." + +"At that time he controlled nothing, as I have explained," said Tom, +"not even his majority stock in Chiawassee Consolidated. Of course, he +resumed control as soon as he reached home, and his next move was to +have me quietly sandbagged while he froze my father out. But father did +not transfer the patents, for the simple reason that he couldn't. They +are my personal property, made over to me before the firm of Gordon and +Gordon came into existence." + +The pipe-trust promoter nodded. + +"You are the man we'll have to do business with, Mr. Gordon," he said +promptly. "Are you quite sure of your legal status in the case?" + +"I have good advice. Hanchett, Goodloe and Tryson, Richmond Building, +are my attorneys. They will put you in the way of finding out anything +you'd like to know." + +There was a pause while the New Yorker was making a memorandum of the +address. Then he went straight to the point. + +"As I have said, I'm here to do business. We don't need the plant. Will +you sell us your patents?" + +"Yes; on one condition." + +"And that is--?" + +"That you first put us out of business. You'll have to smash Chiawassee +Limited painstakingly and permanently before you can buy my holdings." + +The shrewd-eyed gentleman who had unified practically all of the pipe +foundries in the United States smiled a gentle negative. + +"That would be rather out of our line. If Mr Farley owned the patents, +and was disposed to fight us--as, indeed, he is not--we might try to +convince him. But we are not out for vengeance--another man's vengeance, +at that." + +"Very well, then; you won't get what you've come after. The patents go +with the plant. You can't have one without the other," said Tom, eyeing +his opponent through half-closed lids. + +"But we can buy the plant to-morrow, at a very reasonable figure. +Farley is anxious enough to come in out of the wet." + +"Excuse me, Mr. Dracott, but you can't buy the plant at any price." + +"Eh? Why can't we?" + +"Because the majority of the stock will vote to fight you to a +standstill." + +"But, my dear sir! Mr. Farley controls sixty-five per cent. of the +stock!" + +"That is where you were lied to one more time," said Tom with great +coolness. "The capital stock of Chiawassee Limited is divided into one +thousand shares, all distributed. My father holds three hundred and +fifty shares; Mr. Farley and his son together own four hundred and +fifty; and the remaining two hundred are held in trust for Miss Ardea +Dabney, to become her property in fee simple when she marries. Pending +her marriage, which is currently supposed to be near at hand, the voting +power of these two hundred shares resides in Miss Dabney's grandfather, +_and my father holds his proxy_." + +This was the thunderbolt Tom had been forging during those quiet days +spent on the mountain side; and there was another pause while one might +count ten. After which the man from New York spoke his mind freely. + +"Your row with these people must be pretty bitter, Mr. Gordon. Are you +willing to see your father and these Dabneys go by the board for the +sake of breaking the president and his son?" + +"I know what I am doing," was the quiet reply. "Neither my father nor +Miss Dabney will lose anything that is worth keeping." + +"Have you figured that out, too? The field is too small for you down +here, Mr. Gordon--much too small. You should come to New York." + +Tom rose and took his hat. + +"You will fight us?" he asked. + +The short-circuiter of corporations laughed. + +"We'll put you out of business, if you insist on it. Anything to oblige. +Better light a fresh cigar before you go." + +Tom helped himself from the box on the table. + +"You have it to do, Mr. Dracott. On the day you have hammered Chiawassee +Limited down to a dead proposition, you can have my pipe patents at the +figure named. If you will meet me at the office of Hanchett, Goodloe and +Tryson to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, we will put it in writing. Good +night." + + + + +XXXIV + +THE SMOKE OF THE FURNACE + + +Hoping always for the best, after the manner prescribed for optimistic +gentlemen who successfully exploit their fellows, Mr. Duxbury Farley did +not deem it necessary to confide fully in his son when the +representative of American Aqueduct broke off negotiations abruptly and +went back to New York. + +It is a sad state of affairs, reached by respectably villainous fathers +the world over, when the son demonstrates the mathematical law of +progression by becoming a villain without regard for the +respectabilities. Mr. Farley saw the growing outlaw in his son, was not +a little disturbed thereby, and was beginning to crouch when it menaced. + +Hence, when the comfortable arrangement with the pipe trust threatened +to miscarry, all he did was to urge Vincent to hasten the day when Miss +Dabney's stock could be utilized as a Farley asset. Pressed for +particular reasons, he turned it off lightly. A young man in the fever +of ante-nuptial expectancy was a mere pawn in the business game: let it +be over and done with, so that the nominal treasurer of Chiawassee +Limited could once more become the treasurer in fact. + +Whereupon Vincent, who rode badly at best, bought a new saddle-horse +and took his place at Miss Dabney's whip-hand in the early morning +rides, the place formerly filled by Tom Gordon,--which was not the part +of wisdom, one would say. Contrasts are pitiless things; and the wary +woman-hunter will break new paths rather than traverse those already +broken by his rival. + +Tom, meanwhile, had apparently relapsed into his former condition of +disinterest, and was once more spending his days on the mountain, +seemingly bent on effacing himself socially, as he had been effaced +business-wise by the Farley overturn. + +A week or more after the relapse, as he was crossing the road leading +over the mountain's shoulder, he came on the morning riders walking +their horses toward Paradise, and saw trouble in Miss Dabney's eyes, and +on Farley's impassive face a mask of sullen anger. + +When they were out of sight and hearing, Tom sat on a flat stone by the +roadside with his gun between his knees, thoughtfully speculative. Were +the high gods invoked in the midnight conference at the Marlboro +beginning to point the finger of fate at these two? He was malevolent +enough to hope so, and in the comfort of the hope, walked many miles +that day through the forests of crimson and gold showering with falling +leaves. + +Whatever their influence in the field of sentiment, undeniably in that +of fact the high gods were imposing Sisyphean labors on Mr. Duxbury +Farley. + +With the negotiations for the sale to the trust so abruptly terminated, +the promoter-president set instant and anxious inquiry afoot to +determine the cause. It was soon revealed; and when Mr. Farley found +that the pipe-pit patents had not been transferred with the Gordon +plant, and that Major Dabney had given Caleb Gordon a power of attorney +over Ardea's stock in the company, there were hard words said in the +town offices of Messrs. Trewhitt and Slocumb, Chiawassee attorneys, and +a torrent of persuasive ones poured into the Major's ear--the latter +pointing to the crying necessity for the revocation of the power of +attorney, summarily and at once. + +The Major proved singularly obstinate and non-committal. "Mistah Caleb +Gordon is my friend, suh, and I was mighty proud to do him this small +faveh. What his object is makes no manneh of diffe'ence to me, suh; no +manneh of diffe'ence, whateveh," was all an anxious promoter could get +out of the old autocrat of Deer Trace. But Mr. Farley did not desist; +neither did he fail to keep the telegraph wires to New York heated to +incandescence with his appeals for a renewal of the negotiations for +surrender. + +When the wired appeals brought forth nothing but evasive replies, Mr. +Farley began to look for trouble, and it came: first in a mysterious +closing of the market against Chiawassee pipe, and next in an alarming +advance of freight rates from Gordonia on the Great Southwestern. + +Colonel Duxbury doubled his field force and gave his travelers a free +hand on the price list. Persuasion and diplomacy having failed, a frenzy +like that of one who finds himself slipping into the sharp-staked +pitfall prepared for others seized on him. It was the madness of those +who have seen the clock hands stop and begin to turn steadily backward +on the dial of success. + +Ten days later the freight rates went up another notch, and there began +to be a painful dearth of cars in which to ship the few orders the +salesmen were still able to place. Mr. Farley shut his eyes to the +portents, put himself recklessly into Mr. Vancourt Henniker's hands as a +borrower, and posted a notice of a slashing cut in wages at the works. + +As a matter of course, the cut bred immediate and tumultuous trouble +with the miners, and in the midst of it the president made a flying trip +to New York; to the metropolis and to the offices of American Aqueduct +to make a final appeal in person. + +But the door was shut. Mr. Dracott was not to be seen, though his +assistant was very affable. No; American Aqueduct was not trying to +assimilate the smaller plants, or to crush out all competition, as the +public seemed to believe. With fifty million dollars invested it could +easily control a market for its own product, which was all the +share-holders demanded. Was Mr. Farley in the city for some little time? +and would he not dine with the assistant at the Waldorf-Astoria? + +Mr. Farley took a fast train, south-bound, instead, and on reaching +South Tredegar, wired his New York broker to test the market with a +small block of Chiawassee Limited. There were no takers at the upset +price; and the highest bid was less than half of the asking. Colonel +Duxbury was writing letters at the Cupola when the broker's telegram was +handed him, and he broke a rule which had held good for the better part +of a cautious, self-contained lifetime: he went to the buffet and took a +stiff drink of brandy--alone. The following morning the miners and all +the white men employed in the furnace and foundries and coke yards at +Gordonia went on strike. + +"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad," has a wide +application in the commercial world. Duxbury Farley had resources! a +comfortable fortune as country fortunes go, amassed by far-seeing +shrewdness, a calm contempt for the well-being of his business +associates, and most of all by a crowning gift in the ability to +recognize the psychological moment at which to let go. + +But under pressure of the combined disasters he lost his head, quarreled +with his colder-blooded son, and in spite of Vincent's angry protests, +began the suicidal process of turning his available assets into +ammunition for the fighting of a battle which could have but one +possible outcome. + +Strike-breakers were imported at fabulous expense. Armed guards under +pay swarmed at the valley foot, and around the company's property +elsewhere. By hook or crook the foundries were kept going, turning out +water-pipe for which there was no market, and which, owing to the +disturbances which were promptly made an excuse by the railway company, +could not be moved out of the Chiawassee yard. + +Later, when the striking workmen began to grow hungry, riot, arson and +bloodshed were nightly occurrences. A charging of coal, mined under the +greatest difficulties, was conveyed to the coke yards, only to be +destroyed--and half of the ovens with it--by dynamite cunningly +blackened and dropped into the chargings. For want of fuel, the furnace +went out of blast, but with the small store of coke remaining in the +foundry yards, the pipe pits were kept at work. By this time the +promoter-president was little better than a madman, fighting like a +berserker, and breeding a certain awed respect in the comment of those +who had hitherto held him only as a shrewd schemer. + +And Thomas Jefferson: how did this return to primordial chaos, brought +about in no uncertain sense by his own premeditated act, affect him? +Only a man quite lost to all promptings of the grace that saves and +softens could look unmoved on the burnings and riotings, the cruel +wastings and the bloodlettings, one would say. + +When he was not galloping Saladin afar in the country roads to the +landward side of Paradise, Tom Gordon was idling purposefully in the +Lebanon forests, with the fowling-piece under his arm and Japheth +Pettigrass's dog trotting soberly at heel, as care-free, to all +appearances, as a school-boy home for a holiday. + +The dog, a mongrel, liver-spotted cur with hound's ears, chose to be of +this companionship, and he was always waiting at the orchard gate when +Tom fared forth. For the unsympathetic analyst of dog motives there will +be sufficient reason in expectation, since Tom never failed to share his +noon-time snack of bread and meat with Cæsar. Yet Deer Trace set a good +table, and there were bones with meat on them to be had without +following a gunsman who never shot anything, miles on end on the +mountain side. + +Then there were children,--a brood of dusty-haired, barelegged shynesses +at a mountaineer's cabin in a cove far beyond the rock of the shadowing +cedars, where Tom sometimes stopped to beg a drink of water from the +cold spring under the dooryard oaks. They were not afraid of the +strong-limbed, duck-clad stranger, whose manner was the manner of the +town folk, but whose speech was the gentle drawl of the mountain +motherland. Once he had eaten with them in the single room of the +tumble-down cabin; and again he had made a grape-vine swing for the +boys, and had ridden the littlest girl on his shoulder up to the +steep-pitched corn patch where her father was plowing. We may bear this +in mind, since it has been said that there is hope still for the man of +whom children and dogs have no fear. + +In these forest-roaming weeks, business, or the carking thought of it, +seemed furthest from him; it is within belief that he heard the news of +the rapidly succeeding tragedies at Gordonia only through the +dinner-table monologues of his father, since his wanderings never by any +chance took him within eye-or ear-shot of them. + +Caleb's ailment based itself chiefly on broken habit and the lack of +something to do, and in a manner the trouble at Gordonia was a tonic. +What a man beloved of his kind, and loving it, could do toward damping +the fierce fires of passion and hatred and lawlessness alight at the +lower end of Paradise, he was doing daily, going where the armed guards +and the sheriff's deputies dared not go, and striving manfully to do his +duty as he saw it. + +Tom was always a silent listener at the dinner-table recountings of the +day's happenings; attentive, but only filially interested: willing to +encourage his father to talk, but never commenting. + +Why he was so indifferent, so little stirred by the tale of the +tragedies, was the most perplexing of the puzzles he presented, and was +always presenting, to Caleb, the simple-hearted. Thomas Jefferson, the +small boy who had threatened to die if he should not be permitted to be +in and of the struggle with the railway invaders, was completely and +hopelessly lost in this quiet-eyed, reticent young athlete who ate +heartily and slept soundly and went afield with his gun and the borrowed +dog while Rome was burning. So said Caleb in his musings; which proves +nothing more than that a father's sense of perspective may not be quite +perfect. + +But Tom's indifference was only apparent. In reality he was eagerly +absorbing his father's daily report of the progress of the game of +extinction--and triumphing hard-heartedly. + +It was on an evening a fortnight after the furnace had gone out of blast +for lack of fuel that Caleb filled his after-dinner pipe and followed +his son out on the veranda. The Indian summer was still at its best, and +since the first early frosts there had been a return of dry weather and +mild temperatures, with warm, soft nights when the blue haze seemed to +hold all objects in suspension. + +Tom had pushed out a chair for his father and was lighting his own pipe +when he suddenly became aware that the still air was once more thrumming +and murmuring to the familiar sob and sigh of the great furnace +blowing-engines. He started up quickly. + +"What's that?" he demanded. "Surely they haven't blown in again?" + +Caleb nodded assent. + +"I reckon so. Colonel Duxbury allowed to me this mornin' that he was +about out o' the woods--in spite of you, he said; as if you'd been the +one that was doin' him up." + +"But he can't be!" exclaimed Tom, so earnestly and definitely that the +mask fell away and the father was no longer deceived. + +"I'm only tellin' you what he allowed to me, son. I reckoned he was +about all in, quite a spell ago; but you can't tell nothing by what you +see--when it's Colonel Duxbury. He got two car-loads o' new men to-day, +the Lord on'y knows where from; and he's shippin' Pocahontas coke, and +gettin' it here, too." + +Tom sat glooming over it for a time, shrouding himself in tobacco smoke. +Then he said: + +"You feazed me a little at first; but I think I know now what has +happened." + +Caleb took time to let the remark sink in. It carried inferences. + +"Buddy, I been suspectin' for a good while back that you know more about +this sudden smash-up than you've let on. Do you?" + +"I know all about it," was the quiet rejoinder. + +"You do? What on top o' God's green earth--" + +Tom held up his hand for silence. A man had let himself in at the +roadway gate and was walking rapidly up the path to the house. It was +Norman; and after a few hurried words in private with Tom, he went as he +had come, declining Caleb's invitation to stay and smoke a pipe on the +veranda. + +When the gate latch clicked at Norman's outgoing, Tom had risen and was +knocking the ash from his pipe and buttoning his coat. + +"I was admitting that I knew," he said. "I can tell you more now than I +could a moment ago, because the time for which I have been waiting has +come. You remarked that you thought the Farleys were at the end of their +rope. They were not until to-day, but to-day they are. Every piece of +property they have, including Warwick Lodge, is mortgaged to the hilt, +and this afternoon Colonel Duxbury put his Chiawassee stock into +Henniker's hands as security for a final loan--so Norman tells me. +Perhaps it would interest you a trifle to know something about the +figure at which Henniker accepted it." + +"It would, for a fact, Buddy." + +"Well, he took it for less than the annual dividend that it earned the +year we ran the plant; and between us two, he's scared to death, at +that." + +"Heavens and earth! Why, Buddy, son! we're plum' ruined--and so's old +Major Dabney!" + +Tom had finished buttoning his coat and was settling his soft hat on his +head. + +"Don't you worry, pappy," he said, with a touch of the old boyish +assurance. "Our part, since Colonel Duxbury saw fit to freeze us out, is +to say nothing and saw wood. If the Major comes to you, you can tell him +that my word to him holds good: he can have par for Ardea's stock any +time he wants it, and he could have it just the same if Chiawassee were +wiped off of the map--as it's going to be." + +"But Tom; tell me--" + +"Not yet, pappy; be patient just a little while longer and you shall +know all there is to tell. I'm leaving you with a clear conscience to +say to any one who asks that you don't know." + +Caleb had struggled up out of his chair, and now he laid a hand on his +son's shoulder. + +"I ain't askin', Buddy," he said, with a tremulous quaver in his voice; +"I ain't askin' a livin' thing. I'm just a-hopin'--hopin' I'll wake up +bime-by and find it's on'y a bad dream." Then, with sudden and agonizing +emphasis: "My God, son! they been butcherin' one 'nother down yonder for +four long weeks!" + +"I can't help that!" was the savage response. "It's a battle to the +death, and the smoke of it has got into my blood. If I believed in God, +as I used to once, I'd be down on my knees to Him this minute, asking +Him to let me live long enough to see these two hypocritical +thieves,--thugs,--sandbaggers,--hit the bottom!" + +He turned away, walked to the north end of the veranda, where the flare +of the rekindled furnace was redly visible over the knolls, and +presently came back. + +"I said you should know after a little: you may as well know now. I +planned this thing; I set out to break them; and, as it happened, I +wasn't a moment too soon. In another week you and Major Dabney would +have had a chance to sell out for little or nothing, or lose it all. +Farley had it fixed to be swallowed by the trust, and this is how it was +to be done. Farley stipulated that the stock transaction should figure +as a forced sale at next to nothing, in which all the stock-holders +should participate, and that the remainder of the purchase price, which +would have been a fair figure for all the stock, should be paid to him +and his son individually as a bonus!" + +The old iron-master groaned. In spite of the hard teaching of all the +years, he would have clung to some poor shadow of belief in Duxbury +Farley if he could have done so. + +"That's all," Tom went on stridently: "all but the turning of the trick +that put them in the hole they were digging for you and the Major. Vint +Farley had no notion of letting Ardea bring her money into the family of +her own free will: he planned to rob her first and marry her afterward. +Now, by God, I'm going down to tell them both what they're up against! +Don't sit up for me." + +He had taken a dozen strides down the graveled path when he saw some one +coming hurriedly across the lawns from Deer Trace, and heard a +voice--the voice of the woman he loved--calling to him softly in the +stillness: + +"Tom! O Tom!" it said, "please wait--just one minute!" + +But there are lusts mightier, momentarily, than love, and the lust of +vengeance is one. He made as if he did not see or hear; and lest she +should overtake him, left the path to lose himself among the trees and +to vault the low boundary wall into the pike at a point safely out of +sight from the gate. + + + + +XXXV + +A SOUL IN SHACKLES + + +The blue autumn night haze had almost the consistency of a cloud when +Gordon leaped the wall and set his face toward the iron-works. Or rather +it was like the depths of a translucent sea in which the distant +electric lights of Mountain View Avenue shone as blurs of phosphorescent +life on one hand, and the great dark bulk of Lebanon loomed as the +massive foundations of a shadowy island on the other. + +Farther on, the recurring flare from the tall vent of the blast-furnace +lighted the haze depths weirdly, turning the mysterious sea bottom into +fathomless abysses of dull-red incandescence for the few seconds of its +duration--a slow lightning flash submerged and half extinguished. + +Gordon was passing the country colony's church when one of the +torch-like flares reddened on the night, and the glow picked out the +gilt cross at the top of the sham Norman tower. He flung up a hand +involuntarily, as if to put the emblem, and that for which it stood, out +of his life. At the same instant a whiff of the acrid smoke from the +distant furnace fires tingled in his nostrils, and he quickened his +pace. The hour for which all other hours had been waiting had struck. +Love had called, and religion had made its silent protest; but the +smell in his nostrils was the smoky breath of Mammon, the breath which +has maddened a world: he strode on doggedly, thinking only of his +triumph and how he should presently compass it. + +The two great poplar-trees, sentineling what had once been the gate of +the old Gordon homestead, had been spared through all the industrial +changes. When he would have opened the wicket to pass on to the +log-house offices, an armed man stepped from behind one of the trees +with an oath in his mouth and his gun-butt drawn up to strike. Before +the blow could fall, the furnace flare blazed aloft like a mighty torch, +and the man grounded his weapon. + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gordon; I--I took ye for somebody else," he +stammered; and Tom scanned his face sharply by the light of the burning +gases. + +"Whom?--for instance," he queried. + +"Why-e-yeh--I reckon it don't make any diff'rence--my tellin' you; you'd +ought to have it in for him, too. I was layin' for that houn'-dog 'at +walks on his hind legs and calls hisself Vint Farley." + +"Who are you?" Tom demanded. + +"Kincaid's my name, and I'm s'posed to be one o' the strike guards; +leastwise, that's what I hired out for a little spell ago. I couldn't +think of nare' a better way o' gettin' at the damned--" + +Gordon interrupted bruskly. "Cut out the curses and tell me what you owe +Vint Farley. If your debt is bigger than mine, you shall have the first +chance." + +The gas-flash came again. There was black wrath in the man's eyes. + +"You can tote it up for yourself, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Late yeste'day +evening when me and Nan Bryerson drove to town for your Uncle Silas to +marry us, she told me what I'd been mistrustin' for a month back--that +Vint Farley was the daddy o' her chillern. He's done might' nigh +ever'thing short o' killin' her to make her swear 'em on to you; and I +allowed I'd jest put off goin' back West till I'd fixed his lyin' face +so 'at no yuther woman'd ever look at it." + +Gordon staggered and leaned against the fence palings, the red rage of +murder boiling in his veins. Here, at last, was the key to all the +mysteries; the source of all the cruel gossip; the foundation of the +wall of separation that had been built up between his love and Ardea. +When he could trust himself to speak he asked a question. + +"Who knows this, besides yourself?" + +"Your Uncle Silas, for one: he allowed he wouldn't marry us less'n she +told him. I might' nigh b'lieve he had his suspicions, too. He let on +like it was Farley that told him on you, years ago, when you was a boy." + +"He did? Then Farley was one of the three men who saw us up yonder at +the barrel-spring?" + +"Yes; and I was another one of 'em. I was right hot at you that mornin'; +I shore was." + +"Well, who else knows about it?" + +"Brother Bill Layne, and Aunt M'randy, and Japhe Pettigrass. They-all +went in town to stan' up with me and Nan." + +Then Tom remembered the figure coming swiftly across the lawns and the +call of the voice he loved. Had Japheth told her, and was she hastening +to make such reparation as she could? No matter, it was too late now. +The fierce hatred of the wounded savage was astir in his heart and it +would not be denied or silenced. + +"Give me that gun, and you shall have your first chance," he conceded. +"I make but one condition: if you kill him, I'll kill you." + +Kincaid laughed and gave up his weapon. + +"I was only allowin' to sp'ile his face some, and a rock'll do for that. +You can have what's left o' him atter I get thoo--and it'll be enough to +kill, I reckon." + +At the moment of weapon-passing there came sounds audible above the sob +and sigh of the blowing-engines--a clatter of horses' hoofs and the +grinding of carriage wheels on the pike. Gordon signed quickly to +Kincaid and drew back carefully behind the bole of the opposite poplar. + +It was the Warwick Lodge surrey, and it stopped at the gate. Two men got +out and went up the path, and an instant later, Kincaid followed +stealthily. + +Gordon waited for the next gas-flare, and by the light of it he threw +the breech-block of the repeating rifle to make sure the cartridge was +in place. Then he, too, passed through the wicket and went to stand in +the shadow of the slab-floored porch, redolent of memories. He had +forgotten the lesser vengeance in the thirst for the greater,--that he +had come to fling their misfortunes into the faces of the father and the +son, and to tell them that the work was his. He heard only the voice of +the savage in his heart, and that was whispering "Kill! kill!" + + * * * * * + +It was close on midnight when the door giving on the porch opened and +two men stood on the threshold. The younger of the two was speaking. + +"It's quieter than usual to-night. That was a good move--getting Ludlow +and the two Helgersons jailed. I was in hopes we could snaffle old Caleb +with the others. He pretends to be peacemaking, but as long as he is +loose, these fools will hang to the idea that they're fighting his +battle against us." + +"It is already fought," said the older man dejectedly. "My luck has +gone. When Henniker puts us to the wall, we shall be beggars." + +The young man's rejoinder was an exclamation of contempt. + +"You've lost your nerve. What you need most is to go to bed and sleep. +Wait for me till I've made a round of the guards, and we'll go home. +Better ring up the surrey right now." + +He left the porch on the side nearest the furnace, and Gordon saw an +active figure glide from the shelter of a flask-shed and go in pursuit. +He followed at a distance. It was needful only that he should know where +to find Farley when Kincaid should have squared his account. + +The leisurely chase led the round of the great gates first, and thence +through the deserted and ruined coke yard to the foot of the huge slag +dump, cold now from the long shut-down. + +Tom looked to see Farley turn back from the toe of the dump. There were +no gates on that side of the yard, and consequently no guards. + +But the short cut to the office was up the slope of the dump and along +the railway track over which the drawings of molten slag were run out +to be spilled down the face of the declivity. There had been no +slag-drawing since the new "blow-in" earlier in the day; but while he +was watching to keep Farley in sight in the intervals between the +gas-flares, Gordon was conscious of the note of preparation behind him: +the slackening of the blast, the rattle and clank of the dinkey +locomotive pushing the dumping ladle into place under the furnace lip. + +Farley had taken two or three scrambling steps up the rough-seamed +declivity when the workmen tapped the furnace. There was a sputtering +roar and the air was filled with coruscating sparks. + +Then the stream of molten matter began to pour into the great ladle, a +huge eight-foot pot swung on tilting trunnions and mounted on a skeleton +flat-car; and for Gordon, standing at the corner of the ore shed with +his back to the slag drawers, the red glow picked out the man scrambling +up the miniature mountain of cooled scoria,--this man and another man +running swiftly to overtake him. + +He looked on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face +his adversary. Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in +Farley's right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the +roar from the furnace lip. Then the two men closed and rolled together +to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned his back. + +When he looked again the trampling note of the big blast-engines had +quickened to its normal beat, the blow-hole was plugged with its stopper +of damp clay, and a red twilight born of the reflection from the +surface of the great pot of seething slag had succeeded to the blinding +glare. Where there had been two men locked in struggle there was now +only one, and he was lying quietly with one leg doubled under him. +Gordon set his teeth on an angry oath of disappointment. Had Kincaid +broken his compact? + +The first long-drawn exhaust of the dinkey engine moving the slag kettle +out to its spilling place ripped the silence. Gordon heard--and he did +not hear: he was watching the prone figure at the dump's toe. When it +should rise, he meant to fire from where he stood under the eaves of the +ore-shed. The murder-thought contemplated nothing picturesque or +dramatic. It was merely the dry thirst for the blood of a mortal enemy, +as it is wont to be off the stage or out of the pages of the romancers. + +The puffing locomotive had pushed the slag-pot car half-way to the +track-end before Farley sat up as one dazed and seemed to be trying to +get on his feet. Twice and once again he essayed it, falling back each +time upon the bent and doubled leg. Then he looked up and saw the +slag-car coming; saw and cried out as men scream in the death agony. The +end rails of the dumping track were fairly above him. + +Gordon heard the yell of terror and witnessed the frenzied efforts of +the doomed man to rise and get out of the path of the impending torrent. +Whereupon the murder devil whispered in his ear again. Farley's foot was +caught in one of the many scars or seams in the lava bed. It was only +necessary to wait, to withhold the merciful bullet, to go away and leave +the wretched man to his fate. + +That fate was certain, lacking a miracle to avert it. There were no +workmen in that part of the yard; and the two men in charge of the slag +kettle were on the opposite side of the engine where the dumping +mechanism was connected. Farley was screaming again, but now the +safety-valve of the locomotive was blowing off steam with a din to drown +all. + +Gordon tossed the gun aside and turned away. It was better so. Possibly +at the climaxing instant he might have lacked the firmness to aim and +press the trigger. This was simpler, easier, more in keeping with +Vincent Farley's deserts; more satisfying to the thirst for vengeance. + +Was it? Like a bolt from the heavens, into the very midst of the +cold-blooded, murderous triumph, came a long-neglected form of words, +writing itself in flaming letters in his brain: _Thou shall do no +murder._ And after it another: _But I say unto you, love your enemies, +bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you._ + +He put his hands before his eyes, stumbled blindly and fell down, +groveling in the yellow sand of the ore floor, as that one of old whom +the possessing devils tore and rended. Hell and the furies!--was this to +be the end of it? Did the old, time-worn fables planted in the lush and +mellow soil of childhood wait only for the moment of superhuman trial to +assert themselves truth of the very truth? God in Heaven! must he be +flogged back into the ranks he had deserted when every drop of blood in +his veins was crying out for shame? + +Something gripped him and stood him on his feet, and before he realized +what he was doing he was running, gasping, tripping and falling +headlong, only to spring up and run again, with all thoughts trampled +out and beaten down by one: would he still be in time? + +There was something wrong with the dumping machinery of the slag-car, +and two men were working with it on the side away from the spilling +slope. Gordon had not breath wherewith to shout; moreover the +safety-valve was still screeching to gulf all human cries. Farley was +lying face down and motionless, with the twisted foot still held fast in +a wedge-shaped crack in the cooled slag. Tom bent and lifted him; +yelled, swore, tugged, strained, kicked fiercely at the imprisoned +shoe-heel. Still the vise-grip held, and the great kettle on the height +above was creaking and slowly careening under the winching of the engine +crew. If the molten torrent should plunge down the slope now, there +would be two human cinders instead of one. + +Suddenly the frenzy, so alien to the Gordon blood, spent itself, leaving +him cool and determined. Quite methodically he found his pocket-knife, +and he remembered afterward that he had been collected enough to choose +and open the sharper of the two blades. There was a quick, sure slash at +the shoe-lacing and the crippled foot was freed. With another yell, this +time of glad triumph, he snatched up his burden and backed away with it +in the tilting half-second when the deluge of slag, firing the very air +with shriveling heat, was pouring down the slope. + +Then he fell in a heap, with Farley under him, and fainted as a woman +might--when the thing was done. + + + + +XXXVI + +FREE AMONG THE DEAD + + +The skirmish-line rivulets of melted slag had crept to within a few feet +of the two at the toe of the dump when the men of the engine crew ran +with water to drench them. + +Tom recovered consciousness under the dashing of the water, and was one +of the bearers who carried Vincent Farley on a hastily improvised +stretcher to the surrey waiting at the office gate. + +Afterward, he went for Doctor Williams, deriding himself Homerically for +playing the second act in the drama of the Good Samaritan, but playing +it, none the less. And not to quit before he was quite through, he drove +with the physician to Warwick Lodge, and sat in the buggy till the other +Good Samaritan had performed his office. + +"Nothing very serious, is it, Doctor?" he asked, when the old physician +took the reins to drive his horse-holder home. + +"H'm; he'll be rather badly scarred, and there is a chance that he will +lose the sight of one eye," was the reply. Then: "It's none of my +quarrel, Tom, but you hammered him pretty cruelly--with a stone, too, I +should say." + +"Did I?" grinned Tom. He was willing to bear the blame until Kincaid +should have ample time to disappear. + +"Yes; and with all due allowance for your provocation, it was a good bit +beneath you, my boy." + +The younger man laughed grimly. "Wait till you know the full size of the +provocation, Doctor. I'm not half as bad as I might be. Another man +would have left him to burn--here and hereafter." + +The doctor said no more. It was not his province to make or meddle in +the quarrel between the Gordons and the Farleys. And Tom also was +silent, having many things to render him reflective. + +When he was put down at Woodlawn it was after one o'clock. Yet he sat +for an hour or more on the veranda, smoking many pipes and trying as he +could to prefigure the future in the light of the night's happenings. + +What an insufferable animal Farley was, to be sure!--with the love of a +woman like Ardea Dabney failing to keep him on the hither side of common +decency! Would Ardea break with him, now that she knew the truth? Tom +shook his head. Not she; she would stand by him all the more stoutly, if +not for love, then for pride's sake. That was the fine thing in her +loyalty. + +That thought led to another. When they were married, there would have to +be a beginning in a new field. Chiawassee was gone, and the Farley +fortune with it; and the new field would be a bald necessity. Tom +decided that not even Ardea's pride and fortitude could face the looks +askance of the Mountain View Avenue folk. + +He measured the country colonists justly. They might have forgiven the +moral lapse, though that was not the side they had turned toward him. +Yet he fancied that when the business failure should be super-added, the +Farley sins would become too multitudinous for the broadest mantle of +charity to cover. + +"Which brings on more talk," he mused, pulling thoughtfully at the pipe. +"They can't start in the new diggings without money. Anyway, Vincent's +no moneymaker; and if the look on a man's face counts for anything, old +Colonel Duxbury has made his last flight from the promoting perch. O +Lord!"--rising with a cavernous yawn and a mighty stretching of his arms +overhead,--"I reckon it's up to me to go on doing all the things I don't +want to do; that I didn't in the least mean to do. Somebody ought to +write a book and call it _Saints Inveterate_. It would have simplified +things a whole lot if I could have left him to be cremated after all." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Vancourt Henniker was not greatly surprised when Tom Gordon asked +for a private interview on the morning following the final closing down +of all the industries at Gordonia. + +Without being in Gordon's confidence, or in that of American Aqueduct, +the banker had been shrewdly putting two and two together and applying +the result as a healing plaster to the stock he had taken as security +for the final loan to Colonel Duxbury. + +"I thought, perhaps, you might wish to buy this stock, Mr. Gordon," he +said, when Tom had stated his business. "Of course, it can be arranged, +with Mr. Farley's consent to our anticipating the maturity of his notes. +But"--with a genial smile and a glance over his eye-glasses--"I'm not +sure that we care to part with it. Perhaps some of us would like to hold +it and bid it in." + +Tom's smile matched the genial expansiveness of the president's. + +"I reckon you don't want it, Mr. Henniker. You'll understand that it +isn't worth the paper it is printed on when I tell you that I have sold +my pipe-pit patents to American Aqueduct." + +"Heavens and earth! Then the plant doesn't carry the patents? You've +kept this mighty quiet, among you!" + +"Haven't we!" said Tom fatuously. "I know just how you feel--like a man +who has been looking over the edge of the bottomless pit without knowing +it. You'll let me have the stock for the face of the loan, won't you?" + +But the president was already pressing the button of the electric bell +that summoned the cashier. There was no time like the present when the +fate of a considerable bank asset hung on the notion of a smiling young +man whose mind might change in the winking of an eye. + +With the Farley stock in his pocket Tom took a room at the Marlboro and +spent the remainder of that day, and all the days of the fortnight +following, wrestling mightily with the lawyers in winding up the tangled +skein of Chiawassee affairs. Propped in his bed at Warwick Lodge, the +bed he had not left since the night of violence, Duxbury Farley signed +everything that was offered to him, and the obstacles to a settlement +were vanquished, one by one. + +When it was all over, Tom began to draw checks on the small fortune +realized from the sale of the patents. One was to Major Dabney, +redeeming his two hundred shares of Chiawassee Limited at par. Another +was to the order of Ardea Dabney, covering the Farley shares at a +valuation based on the prosperous period before the crash of '93. With +this check in his pocket he went home--for the first time in two weeks. + +It was well beyond the Woodlawn dinner-hour before he could muster up +the courage to cross the lawns to Deer Trace. No word had passed between +him and Ardea since the September afternoon when he had overtaken her at +the church door,--counting as nothing the effort she had made to speak +to him on the night of vengeance. + +How would she receive him? Not too coldly, he hoped. It was known that +Vincent's assailant in the furnace yard was a stranger; a man who had +taken service as a guard: also that Mr. Gordon--they gave him his +courtesy title now--had saved Vincent from a terrible death. Tom thought +the rescue should count for something with Ardea. + +It did. She was sitting at the piano in the otherwise deserted +music-room when he entered; and she broke a chord in the middle to give +him both of her hands, and to say, with eyes shining, as if the rescue +were a thing of yesterday: + +"O Tom! I _knew_ you had it in you! It was fine!" + +"Hold on," he said, a bit unsteadily. "There must be no more +misunderstandings. What happened that night three weeks ago, had to +happen; and five minutes before it happened I was wondering if I could +aim straight enough in the light from the slag-pot to hit him. And I +fully meant to do it." + +She shuddered. + +"I--I was afraid," she faltered. "I knew, you know--Japheth had told +me, in--in justice to you. That was why I ran across the lawn and called +to you." + +The sweet beauty of her laid hold on him and he felt his grip going. +Another word and he would be trespassing again. To keep from saying it +he crossed to the recessed window and sat down in the sleepy-hollow +chair which was the Major's peculiar possession in the music-room. + +After a little he said: "Play something, won't you?--something that will +make me a little less sorry that I didn't kill him." + +"The idea!" she said. But when he settled himself in the big easy-chair +as a listener, lying back with his eyes closed and his hands locked over +one knee, she turned to the piano and humored him. When the final chord +of the _Wanderlied_ had sung itself asleep, he sat up and nodded +approvingly. + +"I wonder if you appreciate your gift as you should?--to be able to make +a man over in the moral part of him with the tips of your fingers? The +devil is exorcised, for the moment, and I can tell you all about it now, +if you care to know." + +"Of course I care," she assented. + +"Well, to begin with, I'm no better than I have been; a little less +despicable than you've been thinking me, perhaps, but more wicked. I've +hated these two men ever since I was old enough to know how; and to get +square with them, I haven't scrupled to sink to their level. The smash +at Gordonia is my smash, I'm responsible for everything that has +happened." + +"I know it," she said. "Mr. Norman has told me." + +"Looking it all over, I don't see that there is much to choose between +me and the men I've been hunting down. They went after the things they +needed, without much compunction for other people; and so did I. On the +night of the--on the night when you called to me and I wouldn't answer, +I was going down to rub it in; to tell them they were in the hole and +that I had put them there. I met a man at the gate who told me what +Japheth told you. It made a devil of me, Ardea. I took the man's gun and +followed Vincent around the yard. I meant to kill him." + +She nodded complete intelligence. + +"The provocation was very great," she said evenly. "Why didn't you do +it, Tom?" + +"Now you've cornered me: I don't know why I didn't. I had only to walk +away and let him alone when the time came. The slag-spilling would have +settled him. But I couldn't do it." + +"Of course you couldn't," she agreed convincingly. "God wouldn't let +you." + +"He lets other men commit murder; one a day, or such a matter." + +"Not one of those who have named His name, Tom--as you have." + +He shook his head slowly. "I wish that appealed to me, as it ought. But +it doesn't. Where is the proof?" + +She rose from the piano seat and went to stand before him. + +"Can you ask that, soberly and in earnest, after the wonderful +experience you have had?" + +"I have asked it," he insisted stubbornly. "You mustn't take anything +for granted. Just at that moment I couldn't kill a man; but that is all +the difference. I've done what I meant to do, or most of it." + +She was holding him steadily with her eyes. "Are you glad, or sorry, +Tom?" + +He frowned up at her. + +"I don't know. Now that it's all over, the taste of it is like sawdust +in the mouth; I'll admit that much. I'm free; 'free among the dead, like +the slain that lie in the grave,' as David put it when he had sounded +all the depths. Is that being sorry?" + +"No--I don't know," she confessed. + +He was smiling now. + +"You think I ought to go back to first principles: get down on my knees +and agonize over it? Sometimes I wish I could be a boy long enough to do +just that thing, Ardea. But I can't. The mill won't grind with the water +that has passed." + +"But the stream isn't dry," she asserted, taking up his figure. "What +will you do now? That is the question: the only one that is ever worth +asking." + +He was frowning thoughtfully again, and the words came as an unconscious +voicing of vague under-depths. + +"They took to the woods, the waste places, the deserts--those men of old +who didn't understand. Some of them went blind and crazy and died there; +and some of them had their eyes opened and came back to make the world a +little better for their having lived in it. I'm minded to try it." + +She caught her breath in a little gasp which she was careful not to let +him see. + +"You are going away?" she asked. + +"Yes; out to the 'beyond' in northern Arizona. There is a new iron +field out there to be prospected, and Mr. Clarkson wants me to go and +report on it. And that brings us back to business. May I talk +business--cold money business--to you for a minute or two?" + +"If you like," she permitted. "Only I think the other kind of talk is +more profitable." + +"Wait till you hear what I have to say in dollars and cents. That ought +to interest you." + +"Why should it--particularly?" + +"Because you are going to marry a poor man, and--" + +She turned away from him quickly and stood facing the window. But he +went on with what he had to say. + +"That's all right; I can say it to your back, just as well. You know, I +suppose, that your--that the Farleys have lost out completely?" + +"Yes,"--to the window-pane. + +"Well, a curious thing has come to pass--quite a miraculous thing, in +fact. Chiawassee will pay the better part of its debts and--and redeem +its stock; or some of it, at least." He rose and stood beside her. +"Isn't it a thousand pities that Colonel Duxbury couldn't have held on +to his shares just a little longer?" + +"Yes; he is an old man and a broken one, now." There was a sob in her +voice, or he thought there was. But it was only the great heart of +compassion that missed no object of pity. + +"True; but the next best thing is to have the young woman who marries +into the family bring it back with her, don't you think? Here is a check +for what Mr. Farley's stock would have sold for before the troubles +began. It's made payable to you because--well, for obvious reasons; as I +have said, he lost out." + +She turned on him, and the blue eyes read him to his innermost depths. + +"You are still the headlong, impulsive boy, aren't you?" she said, not +altogether approvingly. "You are paying this out of your own money." + +"Well, what if I am?" + +"If you are, it is either a just restitution, or it is not. In either +case, I can not be your go-between." + +"Now look here," he argued; "you've got to be sensible about this. +There'll be four of you, and at least two incompetents; and you've got +to have money to live on. I made Colonel Duxbury lose it, and--" + +She stopped him with the imperious little gesture he knew so well. + +"Not another word, if you please. I can't do your errand in this, and I +wouldn't if I could." + +"You think I ought to be generous and give it to him, anyway, do you?" + +"I don't presume to say," was the cool rejoinder. "When you have come +fully to your right mind, you will know what to do, and how to go about +it." + +He crumpled the check, thrusting it into his pocket, and made two turns +about the room before he said: + +"I'll see them both hanged first!" + +"Very well; that is your own affair." + +He fell to walking again, and for a full minute the silence was broken +only by the murmur of men's voices in the library adjoining. The Major +had company, it seemed. + +"This is 'good-by,' Ardea; I'm going to-morrow. Can't we part friends?" +he said, when the silence had begun to rankle unbearably. + +"You've hurt me," she declared, turning again to the window. + +"You've hurt me, more than once," he retorted, raising his voice more +than he meant to; and she faced about quickly, holding up a warning +finger. + +"Mr. Henniker and Mr. Young-Dickson are in the library with grandpa. +They will hear you." + +"I don't care. I came here to-night with a heart full of what few good +things there are left in me, and you--you are so wrapped up in that +beggar that I didn't kill--" + +"Hush!" she commanded imperatively. "Grandfather has not heard: he knows +nothing, and he must nev--" + +The murmur of voices in the adjoining room had suddenly become a storm, +with the smooth tones of Mr. Henniker trying vainly to allay it. In the +thick of it the door of communication flew open and a white-haired, +fierce-mustached figure of wrath appeared on the threshold. For a moment +Tom's boyish awe of the old autocrat of Deer Trace came uppermost and he +was tempted to run away. But the wrath was not directed at him. Indeed, +the Major seemed not to see him. + +"What's all this I'm hearing now for the ve'y first time about these +heah low-down, schemin' scoundrels that want to mix thei-uh white-niggeh +blood with ouhs?" he roared at Ardea, quite beside himself with passion. +"Wasn't it enough that they should use my name and rob my good friend +Caleb? No, by heavens! That snivelin' young houn'-dog must pay his cou't +to you while he was keepin' his--" + +The Major's face had been growing redder, and he choked in sheer +poverty of speech. Moreover, Tom had come between; had taken Ardea in +his arms protectingly and was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man. + +"That's enough, Major," he said definitely. "You mustn't say things +you'll be sorry for after you cool down a bit. Miss Ardea is like the +king: she can do no wrong." + +There was a gasping pause, the sound of a big man breathing hard, +followed by the slamming of the door, and they were alone together +again, Ardea crying softly, with her face hidden on the shoulder of +shielding. + +"Oh, isn't it terrible?" she sobbed; and Tom held her the closer. + +"Never mind," he comforted. "He was crazy-mad, as he had a good right to +be. You know he will be heart-broken when he comes to himself. You are +his one ewe lamb, Ardea." + +"I know," she faltered; "but O Tom! it was so unnecessary; so wretchedly +unnecessary! It's--it's more than two whole months since--since Vincent +Farley broke the engagement, and--" + +He held her at arm's length to look at her, but she hid her face in her +hands. + +"Broke the engagement!" he exclaimed, almost roughly. "Why did he do +that?" + +She stood before him with her hands clasped and the clear-welled eyes +meeting his bravely. + +"Because I told him I could not marry him without first telling him that +I loved you, Tom; that I had been loving you always and in spite of +everything," she said. + +And what more she said I do not know. + + + + +XXXVII + +WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD + + +"Tom, isn't this the same foot-log you made me walk that day when you +were trying to convince me that you were the meanest boy that ever +breathed?" asked Ardea, gathering her skirts preparatory to the stream +crossing. + +"It is. But you didn't walk it, as you may remember: you fell off. Wait +a second and give me those azaleas. I'll go first and take your hand." + +Tom Gordon, lately home from a full half-year spent in the unfettered +solitudes of the Carriso iron fields, to be married first, and afterward +to start up--with Caleb for superintendent--the idle Chiawassee plant as +a test and experimental shop for American Aqueduct, was indemnifying +himself for the long exile. + +On this Saturday evening in the lovers' month of June he had walked +Ardea around and about through the fragrant summer wood of the upper +creek valley, retracing, in part, the footsteps of the boy whose fishing +had been spoiled and the little girl who was to be bullied into +submission; and so rambling they had come at length to the old +moss-grown foot-log which had been a newly-felled tree in the former +time. Tom went first across the rustic bridge, holding the hand of +ecstatic thrillings, and pausing in mid-passage that he might have +excuse for holding it the longer. Ah me! we were all young once; and +some of us are still young,--God grant,--in heart if not in years. + +It was during the mid-passage pause, and while she was looking down on +the swirling waters sometime of terrifying, that Miss Dabney said: + +"How deep is it, Tom? Would I really have drowned if you and Hector had +not pulled me out?" + +He laughed. + +"It's a thankless thing to spoil an idyl, isn't it? But that is the way +with all the little playtime heroics we leave behind in childhood. You +could have waded out." + +She made the adorable little grimace which was one of the survivals of +the yesterdays, and suffered him to lead her across. + +"And I have always believed that I owed my life to you--and Hector!" she +said reproachfully. + +"You owe me much more than that," he affirmed broadly, when they had sat +down to rest--they had often to do this, lest the way should prove +shorter than the happy afternoon--on the end of the bridge log. + +"Money?"--flippantly. + +"No; love. If it hadn't been for me, you might never have known what +love is." + +His saying it was only an upbubbling of love's audacity, but she chose +to take it seriously. She was gazing afar into the depths of the +fresh-green forest darkening softly to the sunset, with her hands +clasped around the tangle of late-blooming white azaleas in her lap. + +"It is a high gift," she said soberly; "the highest of all for a woman. +Once I thought I should live and die without knowing it, as many women +do. I wish I might give you something as great." + +"I am already overpaid," he asserted. "For a man there is nothing so +great, no influence so nearly omnipotent, as the love of a good woman. +It is the lever that moves the world--what little it does move--up the +hill to the high planes." + +"A lever?" she mused; "yes, perhaps. But levers are only links in the +chain binding cause to effect." + +His smile was lovingly tolerant. + +"Is that what your religion has brought you to, Ardea--a full-grown +belief in a Providence that takes cognizance of our little +ant-wanderings up and down the human runways?" + +"Yes, I think so," she said; but she said it without hesitancy or a +shadow of doubt. + +"I'm glad; glad you have attained," he rejoined quite unaffectedly. + +"It was hardly attainment, in my case," she qualified; and, after a +momentary pause, she added: "any more than it was in yours." + +"You think I, too, have attained?" he smiled. "I am not so sure of that. +Sometimes I think I am like my father, who is like Mahomet's coffin; +hanging somewhere between Heaven and earth, unable to climb to one or to +fall to the other. But I'm not as brash as I was a year or so ago; at +least, I'm not so cock-sure that I know it all. That evening in the +music-room at Deer Trace changed me--changed my point of view. You +haven't heard me rail once at the world, or at the hypocrites in it, +since I came home, have you?" + +"No." + +"Well, I don't feel like railing. I reckon the old world is good enough +to live in--to work in; and certainly there are men in it who are +better than I'm ever likely to be. I met one of them last winter out in +the Carriso cow country; a 'Protestant' priest, he called himself, of +your persuasion. He was the most hopeless bigot I've ever known, and by +long odds the nearest masculine approach to true, gritty saintliness. +There was nothing he wouldn't do, no hardship he wouldn't cheerfully +undergo, to brother a man who was down, and the wickedest devil in all +that God-forsaken country swore by him. Yet he would argue with me by +the hour, splitting hairs over Apostolic Succession, or something of +that sort." + +She smiled in her turn. "Did he regard you as a heretic?" she asked. + +"Oh, sure! though he admitted that I might escape at the last by virtue +of my 'invincible ignorance.' Then I would laugh at him, telling him he +was a lot better than his bigotry. But he got the best of me in other +ways. I owned the one buckboard in the northern half of Apache County, +and my broncos were harness-broken and fast. So, when there was a +shoot-up at the Arroyo dance-hall, or any other job of swift brothering +to be done, I had to drive Father Philip." + +She was musing again. "You used to write me that you were on the edge of +things out there: it was a mistake, Tom; you were in the very heart of +them." + +He shook his head. + +"No; the heart of them was back yonder in the music-room. There were +chaos and thick darkness to go before that day of days; and it was your +woman's love that changed the world for me." + +"No," she denied; "that was only an incident. When chaos and darkness +fled away, it was God who said, 'Let there be light.' The dawn had come +for you before our day of days, Tom." + +He stretched himself luxuriously on the sward at her feet. + +"You may put it that way if you please. But I shall go on revering you +as my torch-bearer," he asserted. + +"Tell me," she said quickly; "was it for my sake that you spared Vincent +Farley when all you had to do was to turn your back and go away?" + +He took time to consider, and his answer put love under the foot of +truth. + +"No, it wasn't. If you make me confess the bald fact, I was not thinking +of you at all, just at that one moment." + +"I know it," she rejoined. "And I am big enough to be glad. Neither was +it for my sake that you instructed your lawyers to return good for evil +by redeeming the Farleys' stock just before they left for Colorado, or +that you made restitution to the families of the men at Gordonia for +their losses during the strike." + +But again he was shaking his head dubiously. + +"I'm not so sure about that. It's in any man to play high when the good +opinion of the one woman is the stake. I'm a _poseur_, like all the +others." + +She smiled down on him and the slate-blue eyes were reading him to the +latest-indited heart-line. + +"You are posing now," she asseverated. "Don't I know?--don't I always +and always know?" And, after a reflective moment: "It is a great comfort +to be able to love the poses, and a still greater to be permitted to +discern the true man under them." + +"I am glad to believe that you don't see quite to the bottom of that +well, Ardea, girl," he said with sudden gravity. "I get only occasional +glimpses, myself, and they make me seasick. I don't believe any man +alive could endure it to look long into the inner abysses of himself." + +"'The heart knoweth his own bitterness,'" she quoted, speaking softly; +and then--O rarest of women!--she did not enlarge on it. Instead-- + +Silence while she was gathering the sweet-smelling tangle in her lap +into some more portable arrangement. And afterward, when they were +drifting slowly homeward in the lengthening shadows, a small asking. + +"Mr. Morelock is coming out to-morrow to hold service in St. John's, and +I shall go to play for him. Will you go with me, Tom?" + +He smiled out of the gold and sapphire depths of a lover's reverie. + +"One week from the day after the day after to-morrow--and it will be the +longest week-and-two-days of my life, dearest--your grandfather will +take you to church, and I shall bring you away. Won't that be enough?" + +She took him quite seriously. + +"I shall never be a Felicita Young-Dickson, and drag you," she promised. +"But, O Tom! I wish--" + +"I know," he said gently. "You are thinking of the days to come; when +the paths may diverge--yours and mine--ever so little; when there may be +children to choose between their mother's faith and their father's +indifference. But I am not indifferent. So far from it, I am only +anxious now to prove what I was once so bent on disproving." + +"You yourself are the strongest proof," she interposed. "You will see +it, some day." + +"Shall I? I hope so; and that is an honest hope. And really and truly, I +think I have come up a bit--out of the wilderness, you know. I am +willing to admit that this is the best of all possible worlds; and I +want to do my part in making it a little better because I have lived in +it. Also, I'd like to believe in something bigger and better than +protoplasm." + +Her smile was of the kind which stands half-way in the path to tears, +but she spoke bravely to the doubt in his reply. + +"You do believe, Tom, dear; you have never seen the moment when you did +not. It was the doubt that was unreal. When the supreme test came, it +was God's hand that restrained you; you know it now--you knew it at the +time. And afterward it was His grace that enabled you to do what was +just and right. Haven't you admitted all this to yourself?" + +They had crossed the white pike to the manor-house gates and were +turning aside from the driveway into the winding lawn path when he said: + +"To myself, and to one other." Then, very softly: "I sat at my mother's +knee last night, Ardea, and told her all there was to tell." + +Ardea's eyes were shining. "What did she say, Tom, dear--or is it more +than I should ask?" + +"There is nothing you may not ask. She said--it wasn't altogether true, +I'm afraid--but she put her arms around my neck and cried and said: _For +this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found._" + +She slipped her arm in his, and there was a little sob of pure joy at +the catching of her breath. The moon was just rising above the Lebanon +cliff-line, and the beauty of the glorious night-dawn possessed her +utterly. Ah, it was a good world and a generous, bringing rich gifts to +the steadfast! Instinctively she felt that Tom's little confession did +not require an answer; that he was battling his way to the heights which +must be taken alone. + +So they came in the sacred hush of the young night to a great tulip-tree +on the lawn, and where a curiously water-worn limestone boulder served +as a rustic seat wide enough for two whose hearts are one they sat down +together, still in the companionship that needs no speech. It was Tom +who first broke the silence. + +"I have been trying ever since that night last winter to feel my way +out," he said slowly. "But what is to come of it? I can't go back to the +boyhood yesterdays; in a way I have hopelessly outgrown them. Let us +admit that religion has become real again; but Ardea, girl, it isn't +Uncle Silas's religion, or--or my mother's, or even yours. And I don't +know any other." + +She laid a hand on one of his. + +"It is all right, dear; there is only the one religion in all +Christendom--perhaps in all the world, or in God's part of it. The +difference is in people." + +"But this thing that has been slowly happening to me--this thing I am +trying to call convincement: shall I wake up some day and find it gone, +with all the old doubts in the saddle again?" he asked it almost +wistfully. + +"Who can tell?" she said gently. "But it will make no difference; the +immutable fact will be there just the same, whether you are asleep or +waking. We can't always stand on the Mount of Certainty, any of us; and +to some, perhaps, it is never given. But when one saves his enemy's life +and forgives and forgets--O Tom, dear! don't you understand?" + +But now his eyes are love-blinded, and the white-gowned figure beside +him fills all horizons. + +"I can't see past you, Ardea. Nevertheless, I'm going to believe that I +feel the good old pike solid underfoot ... and they say that the House +Beautiful is somewhere at the mountain end of it. If you will hold my +hand, I believe I can make out to walk in it; blindfolded, if I have +to--and without thinking too much of the yesterdays." + +"Ah, the yesterdays!" she said tenderly. "They are precious, too; for +out of them, out of their hindrances no less than their helpings, comes +to-day. Kiss me, twice, Tom; and then I must go in and read to Major +Grandpa." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUICKENING *** + +***** This file should be named 17357-8.txt or 17357-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/3/5/17357/ + +Produced by Paul Ereaut, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/17357-8.zip b/17357-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..df558f2 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-8.zip diff --git a/17357-h.zip b/17357-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..939f5c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h.zip diff --git a/17357-h/17357-h.htm b/17357-h/17357-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4516a6f --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/17357-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,13095 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quickening + +Author: Francis Lynde + +Illustrator: E. M. Ashe + +Release Date: December 19, 2005 [EBook #17357] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUICKENING *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Ereaut, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +Character set for HTML: ISO-8859-1 + + +</pre> + + +<div class="center"> + <a id="fullcover" name="fullcover"></a> + <img src="images/fullcover.gif" + alt="Book cover and spine" + title="Book cover and spine" /> + </div> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/illus01.png" width="400" height="558" alt="Tom was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man. Page 398" title="Tom was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man. Page 398" /> +<span class="caption">Tom was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man.<br /> Page 398</span> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_QUICKENING" id="THE_QUICKENING"></a>THE QUICKENING</h2> + + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h3>FRANCIS LYNDE<br /><br /></h3> +<p class="center">Author of The Grafters,<br /> +The Master of Appleby, etc., etc.</p> + +<p class="center">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS +BY E.M. ASHE<br /><br /></p> + +<p class="center">INDIANAPOLIS +THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY +PUBLISHERS</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span> 1906 +<span class="smcap">Francis Lynde</span></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">March</span><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="center">PRESS OF +BRAUNWORTH & CO. +BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS +BROOKLYN, N.Y.<br /><br /></p> + +<p class="center">To My Mother +<br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> + +<tr><td align='right'>CHAPTER</td> +<td align='right'></td> +<td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>I</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Bethesda</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>II</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Cedars of Lebanon</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_11'>11</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>III</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Of the Fathers Upon the Children</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_21'>21</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>IV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Newer Exodus</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_25'>25</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>V</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Dabneys of Deer Trace</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_32'>32</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>VI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Blue Blood and Red</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>VII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Prayer of the Righteous</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_57'>57</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Backslider</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>IX</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Race to the Swift</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_75'>75</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>X</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Shadow of the Rock</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_90'>90</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Trumpet-Call</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_99'>99</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Iron in the Forge Fire</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_107'>107</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XIII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Sister of Charity</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_116'>116</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XIV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">On Jordan's Bank</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_124'>124</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Noël</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_140'>140</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XVI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Bubble, Reputation</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_145'>145</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XVII</td +><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Absalom, My Son!</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_160'>160</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XVIII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Awakening</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_172'>172</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XIX</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Issachar</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_188'>188</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XX</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Dry Wells</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_201'>201</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gilgal</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_216'>216</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Love</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_226'>226</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXIII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tarred Ropes</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_242'>242</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXIV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Under-Depths</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_255'>255</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Plow in the Furrow</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_265'>265</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXVI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">As With a Mantle</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_279'>279</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXVII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Swept and Garnished</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXVIII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Burden of Habakkuk</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_306'>306</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXIX</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">As Brutes That Perish</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_319'>319</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXX</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Through a Glass Darkly</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_331'>331</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Net of the Fowler</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_338'>338</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Whoso Diggeth a Pit</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_347'>347</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXIII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Wine-Press of Wrath</span> +</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_357'>357</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXIV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Smoke of the Furnace</span> +</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_366'>366</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXV</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Soul in Shackles</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_378'>378</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXVI</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Free Among the Dead</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_387'>387</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'>XXXVII</td> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Whose Yesterdays Look Backward</span></td> +<td align='right'><a href='#Page_399'>399</a></td></tr> +</table><br /><br /></div> + + +<h2>THE QUICKENING</h2> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<h3>BETHESDA</h3> + + +<p>The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts, +of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the +field—to use Brother Crafts' own word—was white to the harvest.</p> + +<p>Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the +valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past +by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from +the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening +the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble.</p> + +<p>Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time +twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike, +had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling +of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily +in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood +knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds—the +present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region +round-about.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> +<p>"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?" +asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands.</p> + +<p>"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o' +grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's +a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n—honest and +even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for +soap-kittles. But hot 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit, +and ye cayn't change <i>him</i>."</p> + +<p>"That's about right," said a third. "It looks to me like Caleb done sot +his stakes where he's goin' to run the furrow. If livin' a dozen years +and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to +toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin' +to do it."</p> + +<p>"Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the +only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly +put down by the tall mountaineer.</p> + +<p>"Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass! I allow the' ain't no dyed-in-the-wool +hawss-trader like you goin' to stand up and say anything ag'inst Marthy +Gordon while I'm a-listenin'. I'm recollectin' right now the time when +she sot up day and night for more'n a week with my Malviny—and me +a-smashin' the whisky jug acrost the wagon tire to he'p God to forgit +how no-'count and triflin' I'd been."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson had opened the church-house doors and windows and was +out among the unhitched teams looking for Scrap Pendry, who had been one +of a score to go forward for prayers the night before. So it happened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> +that he overheard the flat-chested mountaineer's tribute to his mother. +It warmed him generously; but there was a boyish scowl for Japheth +Pettigrass. What had the horse-trader been saying to make it needful for +Bill Layne to speak up as his mother's defender? Thomas Jefferson +recorded a black mark against Pettigrass's name, and went on to search +for Scrap.</p> + +<p>"What you hiding for?" he demanded, when the newly-made convert was +discovered skulking in the dusky shadows of the pines beyond the +farthest outlying wagon.</p> + +<p>"I ain't hidin'," was the half-defiant answer.</p> + +<p>"You're a liar," said Thomas Jefferson coolly, ducking skilfully to +escape the consequences.</p> + +<p>But there were no consequences. Young Pendry's heavy face flushed a dull +red,—that could be seen even in the growing dusk,—but he made no move +retaliatory. Thomas Jefferson walked slowly around him, wary as a wild +creature of the wood, and to the full as curious. Then he stuck out his +hand awkwardly.</p> + +<p>"I only meant it 'over the left,' Scrap, hope to die," he said. "I +allowed I'd just like to know for sure if what you done last night made +any difference."</p> + +<p>Scrap was silent, glibness of tongue not being among the gifts of the +East Tennessee landward bred. But he grasped the out-thrust hand +heartily and crushed it forgivingly.</p> + +<p>"Come on out where the folks are," urged Thomas Jefferson. "Sim Cantrell +and the other fellows are allowin' you're afeard."</p> + +<p>"I ain't afeard," denied the convert.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p> +<p>"No; but you're sort o' 'shamed, and that's about the same thing, I +reckon. Come on out; I'll go 'long with you."</p> + +<p>Then spake the new-born love in the heart of the big, rough, country +boy. "I cayn't onderstand how you can hold out, Tom-Jeff. I've come +thoo', praise the Lord! but I jest natchelly <i>got</i> to have stars for my +crown. You say you'll go 'long with me, Tom-Jeff: say it ag'in, and mean +it."</p> + +<p>Again the doubtful-curious look came into Thomas Jefferson's gray eyes, +and he would not commit himself. Nevertheless, one point was safely +established, and it was a point gained: the miraculous thing called +conversion was beyond question real in Scrap's case. He turned to lead +the way between the wagons. The lamps were lighted in the church and the +people were filling the benches, while the choir gathered around the +tuneless little cottage organ to practise the hymns.</p> + +<p>"I—I'm studyin' about it some, Scrap," he confessed, half angry with +himself that the admission sent the blood to his cheeks. "Let's go in."</p> + +<p>It was admitted on all sides that Brother Crafts was a powerful +preacher. Other men had wrestled mightily in Zoar, but none to such +heart-shaking purpose. When he expatiated on the ineffable glories of +Heaven and the joys of the redeemed, which was not too often, the +reflection of the celestial effulgences could be seen rippling like +sunshine on the sea of faces spreading away from the shore of the pulpit +steps. When he spoke of hell and its terrors, which was frequently and +with thrilling descriptive, even so hardened a scoffer as Japheth +Pettigrass was wont to declare that you could hear the crackling of the +flames and the cries of the doomed.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> +<p>The opening exercises were over—the Bible reading, the long, +impassioned prayer, the hymn singing—and the preacher stood up in a +hush that could be felt, and stepped forward to the small desk which +served for a pulpit.</p> + +<p>He was a tall man, thin and erect, with a sallow, beardless face +unrelieved by any line of mobility, but redeemed and almost glorified by +the deep-set, eager, burning eyes. He had a way of bending to his +audience when he spoke, with one long arm crooked behind him and the +other extended to mark the sentences with a pointing finger, as if to +remove the final trace of impersonality; to break down the last of the +barriers of reserve which might be thrown up by the impenitent heart.</p> + +<p>The hush remained unbroken till he announced his text in a voice that +rang like an alarm-bell pealed in the dead of night. There are voices +and voices, but only now and then one which is pitched in the key of the +spheral harmonies. When the Reverend Silas hurled out the Baptist's +words, <i>Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!</i> the responsive +thrill from the packed benches was like the sympathetic vibration of +harp-strings answering a trumpet blast.</p> + +<p>The thin, large-jointed hand went up for silence, as if there could be a +silence more profound than that which already hung on his word. Then he +began slowly, and in phrase so simple that the youngest child could not +fail to follow him, to draw the picture of that Judean morning scene on +the banks of the Jordan, of the wild, unkempt, skin-clad forerunner, +thundering forth his message to a sin—cursed world. On what deaf ears +had it fallen among the multitude gathered on Jordan's bank! On what +deaf ears would it fall in Zoar church this night!</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> +<p>He classed them rapidly, and with a prescient insight into the mazes of +human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open +to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes—mint, anise and cummin—and +prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the +youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly +pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and +we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for +bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing +the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the +aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual +senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear +and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and +long-suffering God they had so long rejected.</p> + +<p>Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting of +The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day were +depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of an +inexorable judge.</p> + +<p>"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the +devil and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the +crowded church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your +end, impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a +fearful eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything +but the salvation of your soul, your sins, and the awful doom which is +awaiting you! Think of it, you who are throwing your lives away in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +pleasures of this world; you who have broken God's commands; you who +have stolen when you thought no eye was on you; you who have so often +committed murder in your hating hearts! Think not that you will be +suffered to escape! Every servant of the most high God who has ever +declared His message to you will be there to denounce you: I, Silas +Crafts, will meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ to bear my witness +against you!"</p> + +<p>A man, red-faced and with the devil of the cup of trembling peering from +under his shaggy eyebrows, rose unsteadily from his seat on the bench +nearest the door.</p> + +<p>"'Sh! he's fotched Tike Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but +the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the +door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle in +his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl +of a wild beast at bay.</p> + +<p>"No, by jacks, ye won't witness ag'inst me, Silas Crafts; ye'll be +dead!"</p> + +<p>The crack of the rifle went with the words, and at the flash of the +piece the man sprang backward through the doorway and was gone. Happily, +he had been too drunk or too tremulous to shoot straight. The preacher +was unhurt, and he was quick to quell the rising tumult and to turn the +incident to good account.</p> + +<p>"There went the arrow of conviction quivering to the heart of a +murderer!" he cried, dominating the commotion with his marvelous voice. +"Come back here, Japheth Pettigrass; and you, William Layne: God +Almighty will deal with that poor sinner in His own way. For him, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> +every impenitent soul here to-night, the hour has struck. 'Now is the +accepted time; now is the day of salvation.' While we are singing, <i>Just +as I am, without one plea</i>, let the doors of divine mercy stand opened +wide, and let every hard heart be softened. Come, ye disconsolate; come +forward to the mercy-seat as we sing."</p> + +<p>The old, soul-moving, revival hymn was lifted in a triumphant burst of +sound, and Thomas Jefferson's heart began to pound like a trip-hammer. +Was this his call—his one last chance to enter the ark of safety? Just +there was the pinch. A saying of Japheth Pettigrass's, overheard in +Hargis's store on the first day of the meetings, flicked into his mind +and stuck there: "Hit's scare, first, last, and all the time, with +Brother Silas. He knows mighty well that a good bunch o' hickories, +that'll bring the blood every cut, beats a sugar kittle out o' sight +when it comes to fillin' the anxious seat." Was it really his call? Or +was he only scared?</p> + +<p>The twelve-year-old brain grappled hardily with the problem which has +thrown many an older wrestler. This he knew: that while he had been +listening with outward ears to the restless champing and stamping of the +horses among the pines, but with his inmost soul to the burning words of +his uncle, the preacher, a great fear had laid hold of him—a fear +mightier than desire or shame, or love or hatred, or any spring of +action known to him. It was lifting him to his feet; it was edging him +past the others on the bench and out into the aisle with the mourners +who were crowding the space in front of the pulpit platform. At the turn +he heard his mother's low-murmured, "I thank Thee, O God!" and saw the +grim, set smile on his father's face. Then he fell on his knees on the +rough-hewn floor, with the tall mountaineer called William Layne on his +right, and on his left a young girl from the choir who was sobbing +softly in her handkerchief.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>June being the queen of the months in the valleys of Tennessee, the +revival converts of Little Zoar had the pick and choice of all the +Sundays of the year for the day of their baptizing.</p> + +<p>The font was of great nature's own providing, as was the mighty temple +housing it,—a clear pool in the creek, with the green-walled aisles in +the June forest leading down to it, and the blue arch of the flawless +June sky for a dome resplendent.</p> + +<p>All Paradise was there to see and hear and bear witness, as a matter of +course; and there were not wanting farm-wagon loads from the great +valley and from the Pine Knob highlands. Major Dabney was among the +onlookers, sitting his clean-limbed Hambletonian, and twisting his huge +white mustaches until they stood out like strange and fierce-looking +horns. Also, in the outer ranks of skepticism, Major Dabney's foreman +and horse-trader, Japheth Pettigrass, found a place. On the opposite +bank of the stream were the few negroes owning Major Dabney now as +"Majah Boss," as some of them,—most of them, in fact—had once owned +him as "Mawstuh Majah"; and mingling freely with them were the laborers, +white and black, from the Gordon iron-furnace.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> +<p>Thomas Jefferson brought up memories from that solemn rite administered +so simply and yet so impressively under the June sky, with the +many-pointing forest spires to lift the soul to heights ecstatic. One +was the singing of the choir, minimized and made celestially sweet by +the lack of bounding walls and roof. Another was the sight of his +father's face, with the grim smile gone, and the steadfast eyes gravely +tolerant as he—Thomas Jefferson—was going down into the water. A +third—and this might easily become the most lasting of all—was the +memory of how his mother clasped him in her arms as he came up out of +the water, all wet and dripping as he was, and sobbed over him as if her +heart would break.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + +<h3>THE CEDARS OF LEBANON</h3> + + +<p>Thomas Jefferson's twelfth summer fell in the year 1886; a year +memorable in the annals of the Lebanon iron and coal region as the first +of an epoch, and as the year of the great flood. But the herald of +change had not yet blown his trumpet in Paradise Valley; and the world +of russet and green and limestone white, spreading itself before the +eyes of the boy sitting with his hands locked over his knees on the top +step of the porch fronting the Gordon homestead, was the same world +which, with due seasonal variations, had been his world from the +beginning.</p> + +<p>Centering in the broad, low, split-shingled house at his back, it +widened in front to the old-fashioned flower garden, to the dooryard +with its thick turf of uncut Bermuda grass, to the white pike splotched +by the shadows of the two great poplars standing like sentinels on +either side of the gate, to the wooded hills across the creek.</p> + +<p>It was a hot July afternoon, a full month after the revival, and Thomas +Jefferson was at that perilous pass where Satan is said to lurk for the +purpose of providing employment for the idle. He was wondering if the +shade of the hill oaks would be worth the trouble it would take to +reach it, when his mother came to the open window of the living-room: a +small, fair, well-preserved woman, this mother of the boy of twelve, +with light brown hair graying a little at the temples, and eyes +remindful of vigils, of fervent beseeching, of mighty wrestlings against +principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> +<p>"You, Thomas Jefferson," she said gently, but speaking as one having +authority, "you'd better be studying your Sunday lesson than sitting +there doing nothing."</p> + +<p>"Yes'm," said the boy, but he made no move other than to hug his knees a +little closer. He wished his mother would stop calling him "Thomas +Jefferson." To be sure, it was his name, or at least two-thirds of it; +but he liked the "Buddy" of his father, or the "Tom-Jeff" of other +people a vast deal better.</p> + +<p>Further, the thought of studying Sunday lessons begot rebellion. At +times, as during those soul-stirring revival weeks, now seemingly +receding into a far-away past, he had moments of yearning to be wholly +sanctified. But the miracle of transformation which he had confidently +expected as the result of his "coming through" was still unwrought. When +John Bates or Simeon Cantrell undertook to bully him, as aforetime, +there was the same intoxicating experience of all the visible world +going blood-red before his eyes—the same sinful desire to slay them, +one or both. And as for Sunday lessons on a day when all outdoors was +beckoning—</p> + +<p>He stole a glance at the open window of the living-room. His mother had +gone about her housework, and he could hear her singing softly, as +befitted the still, warm day:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"O for a heart to praise my God!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and it nettled him curiously. All hymns were beginning to have that +effect, and this one in particular always renewed the conflict between +the yearning for sanctity and a desire to do something desperately +wicked; the only middle course lay in flight. Hence, the battle being +fairly on, he stole another glance at the window, sprang afoot, and ran +silently around the house and through the peach orchard to clamber over +the low stone wall which was the only barrier on that side between the +wilderness and the sown.</p> + +<p>Once under the trees on the mountain side, the pious prompting knocked +less clamorously at the door of his heart; and with its abatement the +temptation to say or do the desperate thing became less insistent, also. +It was always that way. When he was by himself in the forest, with no +particularly gnawing hunger for righteousness, the devil let him alone. +The thick wood was the true whisk to brush away all the naggings and +perplexities that swarmed, like house-flies in the cleared lands. Nance +Jane, the cow that did not know enough to come home at milking-time, +knew that. In the hot weather, when the blood-sucking horse-flies and +sweat-bees were worst, she would crash through the thickest underbrush +and so be swept clean of her tormentors.</p> + +<p>Emulating Nance Jane, Thomas Jefferson stormed through the nearest +sassafras thicket and emerged regenerate. What next? High up on the +mountain side, lifted far above Sunday lessons and soul conflicts and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>perplexing questions that hung answerless in a person's mind, was a +place where the cedars smelled sweet and the west wind from the "other +mountain" plashed cool in your face what time a sun-smitten Paradise +Valley was like an oven. It would be three good hours before he would +have to go after Nance Jane; and the Sunday lesson—but he had already +forgotten about the Sunday lesson.</p> + +<p>Three-quarters of the first hour were gone, and he was warm and thirsty +when he topped the last of the densely-wooded lower slopes and came out +on a high, rock-strewn terrace thinly set with mountain cedars. Here his +feet were on familiar ground, and a little farther on, poised on the +very edge of the terrace and overtopping the tallest trees of the lower +slopes, was the great, square sandstone boulder which was his present +Mecca.</p> + +<p>On its outward face the big rock, gray, lichened and weather-worn, was a +miniature cliff as high as the second story of a house; and at this +cliff's foot was a dripping spring with a deep, crystalline pool for its +basin. There was a time when Thomas Jefferson used to lie flat on his +stomach and quench his thirst with his face thrust into the pool. But +that was when he had got no farther than the Book of Joshua in his +daily-chapter reading of the Bible. Now he was past Judges, so he knelt +and drank from his hands, like the men of Gideon's chosen three hundred.</p> + +<p>His thirst assuaged, he ascended the slope of the terrace to a height +whence the flat top of the cubical boulder could be reached by the help +of a low-branching tree. The summit of the great rock was one of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>sacred places in the temple of the solitudes; and when the earth became +too thickly peopled for comfort, he would come hither to lie on the very +brink of the cliff overhanging the spring, heels in air, and hands for a +chin-rest, looking down on a removed world mapping itself in softened +outlines near and far.</p> + +<p>Men spoke of Paradise as "the valley," though it was rather a sheltered +cove with Mount Lebanon for its background and a semicircular range of +oak-grown hills for its other rampart. Splitting it endwise ran the +white streak of the pike, macadamized from the hill quarry which, a full +quarter of a century before the Civil War, had furnished the stone for +the Dabney manor-house; and paralleling the road unevenly lay a ribbon +of silver, known to less poetic souls than Thomas Jefferson's as Turkey +Creek, but loved best by him under its almost forgotten Indian name of +Chiawassee.</p> + +<p>Beyond the valley and its inclosing hills rose the "other mountain," +blue in the sunlight and royal purple in the shadows—the Cumberland: +source and birthplace of the cooling west wind that was whispering +softly to the cedars on high Lebanon. Thomas Jefferson called the +loftiest of the purple distances Pisgah, picturing it as the mountain +from which Moses had looked over into the Promised Land. Sometime he +would go and climb it and feast his eyes on the sight of the Canaan +beyond; yea, he might even go down and possess the good land, if so the +Lord should not hold him back as He had held Moses.</p> + +<p>That was a high thought, quite in keeping with the sense of overlordship +bred of the upper stillnesses. To company with it, the home valley +straightway began to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>idealize itself from the uplifted point of view on +the mount of vision. The Paradise fields were delicately-outlined +squares of vivid green or golden yellow, or the warm red brown of the +upturned earth in the fallow places. The old negro quarters on the +Dabney grounds, many years gone to the ruin of disuse, were vine-grown +and invisible save as a spot of summer verdure; and the manor-house +itself, gray, grim and forbidding to a small boy scurrying past it in +the deepening twilight, was now no more than a great square roof with +the cheerful sunlight playing on it.</p> + +<p>Farther down the valley, near the place where the white pike twisted +itself between two of the rampart hills to escape into the great valley +of the Tennessee, the split-shingled roof under which Thomas Jefferson +had eaten and slept since the earliest beginning of memories became also +a part of the high-mountain harmony; and the ragged, red iron-ore beds +on the slope above the furnace were softened into a blur of joyous +color.</p> + +<p>The iron-furnace, with its alternating smoke puff and dull red flare, +struck the one jarring note in a symphony blown otherwise on great +nature's organ-pipes; but to Thomas Jefferson the furnace was as much a +part of the immutable scheme as the hills or the forests or the creek +which furnished the motive power for its air-blast. More, it stood for +him as the summary of the world's industry, as the white pike was the +world's great highway, and Major Dabney its chief citizen.</p> + +<p>He was knocking his bare heels together and thinking idly of Major +Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the +tinkling drip <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was +interrupted by a sudden splash.</p> + +<p>By shifting a little to the right he could see the spring. A girl of +about his own age, barefooted, and with only her tangled mat of dark +hair for a head covering, was filling her bucket in the pool. He broke a +dry twig from the nearest cedar and dropped it on her.</p> + +<p>"You better quit that, Tom-Jeff Gordon. I taken sight o' you up there," +said the girl, ignoring him otherwise.</p> + +<p>"That's my spring, Nan Bryerson," he warned her dictatorially.</p> + +<p>The girl looked up and scoffed. Hers was a face made for scoffing: oval +and finely lined, with a laughing mouth and dark eyes that had both the +fear and the fierceness of wild things in them.</p> + +<p>"Shucks! it ain't your spring any more'n it's mine!" she retorted. +"Hit's on Maje' Dabney's land."</p> + +<p>"Well, don't you muddy it none," said Thomas Jefferson, with threatening +emphasis.</p> + +<p>For answer to this she put one brown foot deep into the pool and +wriggled her toes in the sandy bottom. Things began to turn red for +Thomas Jefferson, and a high, buzzing note, like the tocsin of the bees, +sang in his ears.</p> + +<p>"Take your foot out o' that spring! Don't you mad me, Nan Bryerson!" he +cried.</p> + +<p>She laughed up at him and flung him a taunt. "You don't darst to get +mad, Tommy-Jeffy; <i>you've got religion</i>."</p> + +<p>It is a terrible thing to be angry in shackles. There are similes—pent +volcanoes, overcharged boilers and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>like—but they are all +inadequate. Thomas Jefferson searched for missiles more deadly than dry +twigs, found none, and fell headlong—not from the rock, but from grace. +"<i>Damn!</i>" he screamed; and then, in an access of terrified remorse: "Oh, +hell, hell, hell!"</p> + +<p>The girl laughed mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in +deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave +her a cramp.</p> + +<p>"Now you've done it," she remarked. "The devil'll shore get ye for +sayin' that word, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>There was no reply, and she stepped back to see what had become of him. +He was prone, writhing in agony. She knew the way to the top of the +rock, and was presently crouching beside him.</p> + +<p>"Don't take on like that!" she pleaded. "Times I cayn't he'p bein' mean: +looks like I was made thataway. Get up and slap me, if you want to. I +won't slap back."</p> + +<p>But Thomas Jefferson only ground his face deeper into the thick mat of +cedar needles and begged to be let alone.</p> + +<p>"Go away; I don't want you to talk to me!" he groaned. "You're always +making me sin!"</p> + +<p>"That's because you're Adam and I'm Eve, ain't it? Wasn't you tellin' me +in revival time that Eve made all the 'ruction 'twixt the man and God? I +reckon she was right sorry; don't you?"</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson sat up.</p> + +<p>"You're awfully wicked, Nan," he said definitively.</p> + +<p>"'Cause I don't believe all that about the woman and the snake and the +apple and the man?"</p> + +<p>"You'll go to hell when you die, and then I guess <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>you'll believe," said +Thomas Jefferson, still more definitively.</p> + +<p>She took a red apple from the pocket of her ragged frock and gave it to +him.</p> + +<p>"What's that for?" he asked suspiciously.</p> + +<p>"You eat it; it's the kind you like—off 'm the tree right back of Jim +Stone's barn lot," she answered.</p> + +<p>"You stole it, Nan Bryerson!"</p> + +<p>"Well, what if I did? You didn't."</p> + +<p>He bit into it, and she held him in talk till it was eaten to the core.</p> + +<p>"Have you heard tell anything more about the new railroad?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson shook his head. "I heard Squire Bates and Major Dabney +naming it one day last week."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's shore comin'—right thoo' Paradise. I heard tell how it was +goin' to cut the old Maje's grass patch plumb in two, and run right +smack thoo' you-uns' peach orchard."</p> + +<p>"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson. "What do you reckon my father'd be doing +all that time? He'd show 'em!"</p> + +<p>A far-away cry, long-drawn and penetrating, rose on the still air of the +lower slope and was blown on the breeze to the summit of the great rock.</p> + +<p>"That's maw, hollerin' for me to get back home with that bucket o' +water," said the girl; and, as she was descending the tree ladder: "You +didn't s'picion why I give you that apple, did you, Tommy-Jeffy?"</p> + +<p>"'Cause you didn't want it yourself, I reckon," said the second Adam.</p> + +<p>"No; it was 'cause you said I was goin' to hell and I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>wanted comp'ny. +That apple was stole and you knowed it!"</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson flung the core far out over the tree-tops and shut his +eyes till he could see without seeing red. Then he rose to the serenest +height he had yet attained and said: "I forgive you, you wicked, wicked +girl!"</p> + +<p>Her laugh was a screaming taunt.</p> + +<p>"But you've et the apple!" she cried; "and if you wasn't scared of goin' +to hell, you'd cuss me again—you know you would! Lemme tell you, +Tom-Jeff, if the preacher had dipped me in the creek like he did you, +I'd be a mighty sight holier than what you are. I cert'nly would."</p> + +<p>And now anger came to its own again.</p> + +<p>"You don't know what you're talking about, Nan Bryerson! You're nothing +but a—a miserable little heathen; my mother said you was!" he cried out +after her.</p> + +<p>But a back-flung grimace was all the answer he had.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + +<h3>OF THE FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN</h3> + + +<p>Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, Caleb the elder, was an old man before +his son, Caleb the younger, went to the wars, and he figured in the +recollections of those who remembered him as a grim, white-haired +octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace which he +had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes. The eyes +lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the sympathetic +or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; never sleeping, they +said—though that could hardly be—until that last day of all when they +fixed themselves on the wall and followed nothing more in this world.</p> + +<p>Caleb, the son, was well past his first youth when the Civil War broke +out; yet youthful ardor was not wanting, nor patriotism, as he defined +it, to make him the first of the Paradise folk to write his name on the +muster-roll of the South. And it was his good fortune, rather than any +lack of battle hazards, that brought him through the four fighting years +to the Appomattox end of that last running fight on the Petersburg and +Lynchburg road in which, with his own hands, he had helped to destroy +the guns of his battery.</p> + +<p>Being alive and not dead on the memorable April Sunday when his +commander-in-chief signed the articles <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>of capitulation in Wilmer +McLean's parlor in Appomattox town, this soldier Gordon was one among +the haggard thousands who shared the enemy's rations to bridge over the +hunger gap; and it was the sane, equable Gordon blood that enabled him +to eat his portion of the bread of defeat manfully and without +bitterness.</p> + +<p>Later it was the steadfast Gordon courage that helped him to mount the +crippled battery horse which had been his own contribution to the lost +cause; to mount and ride painfully to the distant Southern valley, +facing the weary journey, and the uncertain future in a land despoiled, +as only a brave man might.</p> + +<p>His homing was to the old furnace and the still older house at the foot +of Lebanon. The tale of the years succeeding may be briefed in a bare +sentence or two. It was said of him that he reached Paradise and the old +homestead late one evening, and that the next day he was making ready +for a run of iron in the antiquated blast-furnace. This may be only +neighborhood tradition, but it depicts the man: sturdy, tenacious, +dogged; a man to knot up the thread of life broken by untoward events, +following it thereafter much as if nothing had happened.</p> + +<p>Such men are your true conservatives. When his son was born, nine years +after the great struggle had passed into history, Caleb, the soldier, +was still using charcoal for fuel and blowing his cupola fire with the +wooden air-pump whose staves had been hooped together by the hands of +his father, and whose motive power was a huge overshot wheel swinging +rhythmically below the stone dam in the creek.</p> + +<p>The primitive air-blast being still in commission, it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>may itself say +that the South, in spite of the war upheaval and the far more seismic +convulsion of the reconstruction period, was still the Old South when +Caleb married Martha Crafts.</p> + +<p>It was as much a love match as middle-age marriages are wont to be, and +following it there was Paradise gossip to assert that Caleb's wife +brought gracious womanly reforms to the cheerless bachelor house at the +furnace. Be this as it may, she certainly brought one innovation—an +atmosphere of wholesome, if somewhat austere, piety hitherto unbreathed +by the master or any of his dusky vassals.</p> + +<p>Such moderate prosperity as the steadily pulsating iron-furnace could +bring was Martha Gordon's portion from the beginning. Yet there was a +fly in her pot of precious ointment; an obstacle to her complete +happiness which Caleb Gordon never understood, nor could be made to +understand. Like other zealous members of her communion, she took the +Bible in its entirety for her creed, striving, as frail humanity may, to +live up to it. But among the many admonitions which, for her, were no +less than divine commands, was one which she had wilfully disregarded: +<i>Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.</i></p> + +<p>Caleb respected her religion; stood a little in awe of it, if the truth +were known, and was careful to put no straw of hindrance in the thorny +upward way. But there are times when neutrality bites deeper than open +antagonism. In the slippery middle ground of tolerance there is no +foothold for one who would push or pull another into the kingdom of +Heaven.</p> + +<p>Under such conditions Thomas Jefferson was sure to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>be the child of many +prayers on the mother's part; and perhaps of some naturally prideful +hopes on Caleb's. When a man touches forty before his firstborn is put +into his arms, he is likely to take the event seriously. Martha Gordon +would have named her son after the great apostle of her faith, but Caleb +asserted himself here and would have a manlier name-father for the boy. +So Thomas Jefferson was named, not for an apostle, nor yet for the +statesman—save by way of an intermediary. For Caleb's "Thomas +Jefferson" was the stout old schoolmaster-warrior, Stonewall Jackson; +the soldier iron-master's general while he lived, and his deified hero +ever afterward.</p> + +<p>When the mother was able to sit up in bed she wrote a letter to her +brother Silas, the South Tredegar preacher. On the margin of the paper +she tried the name, writing it "Reverend Thomas Jefferson Gordon." It +was a rather appalling mouthful, not nearly so euphonious as the name of +the apostle would have been. But she comforted herself with the thought +that the boy would probably curtail it when he should come to a +realizing sense of ownership; and "Reverend" would fit any of the +curtailments.</p> + +<p>So now we see to what high calling Thomas Jefferson's mother purposed +devoting him while yet he was a helpless monad in pinning-blankets; to +what end she had striven with many prayers and groanings that could not +be uttered, from year to year of his childhood.</p> + +<p>Does it account in some measure for the self-conscious young Pharisee +kneeling on the top of the high rock under the cedars, and crying out on +the girl scoffer that she was no better than she should be?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + +<h3>THE NEWER EXODUS</h3> + + +<p>One would always remember the first day of a new creation; the day when +God said, <i>Let there be light</i>.</p> + +<p>It has been said that nothing comes suddenly; that the unexpected is +merely the overlooked. For weeks Thomas Jefferson had been scenting the +unwonted in the air of sleepy Paradise. Once he had stumbled on the +engineers at work in the "dark woods" across the creek, spying out a +line for the new railroad. Another day he had come home late from a +fishing excursion to the upper pools to find his father shut in the +sitting-room with three strangers resplendent in town clothes, and the +talk—what he could hear of it from his post of observation on the porch +step—was of iron and coal, of a "New South," whatever that might be, +and of wonderful changes portending, which his father was exhorted to +help bring about.</p> + +<p>But these were only the gentle heavings and crackings of the ground +premonitory of the real earthquake. That came on a day of days when, as +a reward of merit for having faultlessly recited the eighty-third Psalm +from memory, he was permitted to go to town with his father. Behold him, +then, dangling his feet—uncomfortable because they were stockinged and +shod—from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>the high buggy seat while the laziest of horses ambled +between the shafts up the white pike and around and over the hunched +shoulder of Mount Lebanon. This in the cool of the morning of the day of +revelations.</p> + +<p>In spite of the premonitory tremblings, the true earthquake found Thomas +Jefferson totally unprepared. He had been to town often enough to have a +clear memory picture of South Tredegar—the prehistoric South Tredegar. +There was a single street, hub-deep in mud in the rains, beginning +vaguely at the steamboat landing, and ending rather more definitely in +the open square surrounding the venerable court-house of pale brick and +stucco-pillared porticoes. There were the shops—only Thomas Jefferson +and all his kind called them "stores"—one-storied, these, the wooden +ones with lying false fronts to hide the mean little gables; the brick +ones honester in face, but sadly chipped and crumbling and dingy with +age and the weather.</p> + +<p>Also, there were houses, some of them built of the pale red brick, with +pillared porticoes running to the second story; hip-roofed, with a +square balustered observatory on top; rather grand looking and +impressive till you came near enough to see that the bricks were +shaling, and the portico floors rotting, and the plaster falling from +the pillars to show the grinning lath-and-frame skeletons behind.</p> + +<p>Also, on the banks of the river, there was the antiquated iron-furnace +which, long before the war, had given the town its pretentious name. And +lastly, there was the Calhoun House, dreariest and most inhospitable inn +of its kind; and across the muddy street from it the great echoing +train-shed, ridiculously out of pro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>portion to every other building in +the town, the tavern not excepted, and to the ramshackle, once-a-day +train that wheezed and rattled and clanked into and out of it.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson had seen it all, time and again; and this he +remembered, that each time the dead, weather-worn, miry or dusty +dullness of it had crept into his soul, sending him back to the +freshness of the Paradise fields and forests at eventide with grateful +gladness in his heart.</p> + +<p>But now all this was to be forgotten, or to be remembered only as a +dream. On the day of revelations the earlier picture was effaced, +blacked out, obliterated; and it came to the boy with a pang that he +should never be able to recall it again in its entirety. For the genius +of modern progress is contemptuous of old landmarks and impatient of +delays. And swift as its race is elsewhere, it is only in that part of +the South which has become "industrial" that it came as a thunderclap, +with all the intermediate and accelerative steps taken at a bound. Men +spoke of it as "the boom." It was not that. It was merely that the +spirit of modernity had discovered a hitherto overlooked corner of the +field, and made haste to occupy it.</p> + +<p>So in South Tredegar, besprent now before the wondering eyes of a Thomas +Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black +roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the +pike after a sweeping summer storm. The shops, with their false fronts +and shabby lean-to awnings, were gone, or going, and in their room +majestic vastnesses in brick and cut stone were rising, by their own +might, as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>it would seem, out of disorderly mountains of building +material.</p> + +<p>Street-cars, propelled as yet by the patient mule, tinkled their bells +incessantly. Smart vehicles of many kinds strange to Paradise eyes +rattled recklessly in and out among the street obstructions. Bustling +throngs were in possession of the sidewalks; of the awe-inspiring +restaurant, where they gave you lemonade in a glass bowl and some people +washed their fingers in it; of the rotunda of the Marlboro, the mammoth +hotel which had grown up on the site of the old Calhoun +House,—distressing crowds and multitudes of people everywhere.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson, awe-struck and gaping, found himself foot-loose for a +time in the Marlboro rotunda while his father talked with a man who +wanted to bargain for the entire output of the Paradise furnace by the +year. The commercial transaction touched him lightly; but the moving +groups, the imported bell-boys, the tesselated floors, frescoed ceiling +and plush-covered furniture—these bit deeply. Could this be South +Tredegar, the place that had hitherto figured chiefly to him as +"court-day" town and the residence of his preacher uncle? It seemed +hugely incredible.</p> + +<p>After the conference with the iron buyer they crossed the street to the +railway station; and again Thomas Jefferson was foot-loose while his +father was closeted with some one in the manager's office.</p> + +<p>An express train, with hissing air-brakes, Solomon-magnificent sleeping +cars, and a locomotive large enough to swallow whole the small affair +that used to bring the once-a-day train from Atlanta, had just backed +in, and the boy took its royal measure with eager and curious <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>eyes, +walking slowly up one side of it and down the other.</p> + +<p>At the rear of the string of Pullmans was a private car, with a deep +observation platform, much polished brass railing, and sundry other +luxurious appointments, apparent even to the eye of unsophistication. +Thomas Jefferson spelled the name in the medallion, "Psyche,"—spelled +it without trying to pronounce it—and then turned his attention to the +people who were descending the rubber-carpeted steps and grouping +themselves under the direction of a tall man who reminded Thomas +Jefferson of his Uncle Silas with an indescribable something left out of +the face.</p> + +<p>"As I was about to say, General, this station building is one of the +relics. You mustn't judge South Tredegar—our new South Tredegar—by +this. Eh?—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Vanadam? Oh, the hotel? It is just +across the street, and a very good house; remarkably good, indeed, all +things considered. In fact, we're quite proud of the Marlboro."</p> + +<p>One of the younger women smiled.</p> + +<p>"How enthusiastic you are, Mr. Parley. I thought we had outgrown all +that—we moderns."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear Miss Elleroy, if you could know what we have to be +enthusiastic about down here! Why, these mountains we've been passing +through for the last six hours are simply so many vast treasure-houses; +coal at the top, iron at the bottom, and enough of both to keep the +world's industries going for ages! There's millions in them!"</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson overheard without understanding, but his eyes served a +better purpose. Away back in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>line of the Scottish Gordons there +must have been an ancestor with the seer's gift of insight, and some +drop or two of his blood had come down to this sober-faced country boy +searching the faces of the excursionists for his cue of fellowship or +antipathy.</p> + +<p>For the sweet-voiced young woman called Miss Elleroy there was love at +first sight. For a severe, be-silked Mrs. Vanadam there was awe. For the +portly General with mutton-chop whiskers, overlooking eyes and the air +of a dictator, there was awe, also, not unmingled with envy. For the +tall man in the frock-coat, whose face reminded him of his Uncle Silas, +there had been shrinking antagonism at the first glance—which keen +first impression was presently dulled and all but effaced by the +enthusiasm, the suave tongue, and the benignant manner. Which proves +that insight, like the film of a recording camera, should have the dark +shutter snapped on it if the picture is to be preserved.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson made way when the party, marshaled by the enthusiast, +prepared for its descent on the Marlboro. Afterward, the royalties +having departed and a good-natured porter giving him leave, he was at +liberty to examine the wheeled palace at near-hand, and even to climb +into the vestibule for a peep inside.</p> + +<p>Therewith, castles in the air began to rear themselves, tower on wall. +Here was the very sky-reaching summit of all things desirable: to have +one's own brass-bound hotel on wheels; to come and go at will; to give +curt orders to a respectful and uniformed porter, as the awe-inspiring +gentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers had done.</p> + +<p>Time was when Thomas Jefferson's ideals ran quite <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>otherwise: to a lodge +in some vast wilderness, like the rock-strewn slopes of high Lebanon; to +the company of the birds and trees, of the wide heavens and the shy wild +creatures of the forest. But it is only the fool or the weakling who may +not reconsider.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, when the day of revelations was come to an end, and the +ambling horse was inching the ancient buggy up the homeward road, the +boy found himself turning his back on the wonderful new world with +something of the same blessed sense of relief as that which he had +experienced in former home-goings from South Tredegar, the commonplace.</p> + +<p>At the highest point on the hunched shoulder of the mountain Thomas +Jefferson twisted himself in the buggy seat for a final backward look +into the valley of new marvels. The summer day was graying to its +twilight, and a light haze was stealing out of the wooded ravines and +across from the river. From the tall chimneys of a rolling-mill a dense +column of smoke was ascending, and at the psychological moment the slag +flare from an iron-furnace changed the overhanging cloud into a fiery +ægis.</p> + +<p>Having no symbolism save that of Holy Writ, Thomas Jefferson's mind +seized instantly on the figure, building far better than it knew. It was +a new Exodus, with its pillar of cloud by day and its pillar of fire by +night. And its Moses—though this, we may suppose, was beyond a boy's +imaging—was the frenzied, ruthless spirit of commercialism, named +otherwise, by the multitude, Modern Progress.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + +<h3>THE DABNEYS OF DEER TRACE</h3> + + +<p>If you have never had the pleasure of meeting a Southern gentleman of +the patriarchal school, I despair of bringing you well acquainted with +Major Caspar Dabney until you have summered and wintered him. But the +Dabneys of Deer Trace—this was the old name of the estate, and it +obtains to this day among the Paradise Valley folk—figure so largely in +Thomas Jefferson's boyhood and youth as to be well-nigh elemental in +these retrospective glimpses.</p> + +<p>To know the Major even a little, you should not refer him to any of the +accepted types, like Colonel Carter, of Cartersville, or that other +colonel who has made Kentucky famous; this though I am compelled to +write it down that Major Caspar wore the soft felt hat and the +full-skirted Prince Albert coat, without which no reputable Southern +gentleman ever appears in the pages of fiction. But if you will ignore +these concessions to the conventional, and picture a man of heroic +proportions, straight as an arrow in spite of his sixty-eight years, +full-faced, well-preserved, with a massive jaw, keen eyes that have lost +none of their lightnings, and huge white mustaches curling upward +militantly at the ends you will have the Major's outward presentment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>Notwithstanding, this gives no adequate hint of the contradictory inner +man. By turns the most lovingly kind and the most violent, the most +generously magnanimous and the most vindictive of the unreconstructed +minority, Caspar Dabney was rarely to be taken for granted, even by +those who knew him best. Of course, Ardea adored him; but Ardea was his +grandchild, and she was wont to protest that she never could see the +contradictions, for the reason that she was herself a Dabney.</p> + +<p>It was about the time when Thomas Jefferson was beginning to reconsider +his ideals, with a leaning toward brass-bound palaces on wheels and +dictatorial authority over uniformed lackeys and other of his fellow +creatures, that fate dealt the Major its final stab and prepared to pour +wine and oil into the wound—though of the balm-pouring, none could +guess at the moment of wounding. It was not in Caspar Dabney to be +patient under a blow, and for a time his ragings threatened to shake +even Mammy Juliet's loyalty—than which nothing more convincing can be +said.</p> + +<p>"'Fo' Gawd, Mistuh Scipio," she would say, when the master had sworn +volcanically at her for the fifth time in the course of one forenoon, +"I'se jus' erbout wo'ed out! I done been knowin' Mawstuh Caspah ebber +sence I was Ol' Mistis's tiah-'ooman—dat's what she call me in de +plantashum days—an' I ain't nev' seen him so fractious ez he been sence +dat letter come tellin' him come get dat po' li'l gal-child o' Mawstuh +Louis's. Seems lak he jus' gwine r'ar round twel he hu't somebody!"</p> + +<p>Scipio, the Major's body-servant, had grown gray in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>the Dabney service, +and he was well used to the master's storm periods.</p> + +<p>"Doan' you trouble yo'se'f none erbout dat, Mis' Juliet. Mawstuh Majah +tekkin' hit mighty hawd 'cause Mawstuh Louis done daid. But bimeby you +gwine see him climm on his hawss an' ride up yondeh to whah de big +steamboats comes in an' fotch dat li'l gal-child home; an' den: +uck—uh-h! look out, niggahs! dar ain't gwine be nuttin' on de top side +dishyer yearth good ernough for li'l Missy. You watch what I done tol' +you erbout dat, now!"</p> + +<p>Scipio's prophecy, or as much of it as related to the bringing of the +orphaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor, wrought itself out speedily, as a +matter of course, though there was a vow to be broken by the necessary +journey to the North. At the close of the war, Captain Louis, the +Major's only son, had become, like many another hot-hearted young +Confederate, a self-expatriated exile. On the eve of his departure for +France he had married the Virginia maiden who had nursed him alive after +Chancellorsville. Major Caspar had given the bride away,—the war had +spared no kinsman of hers to stand in this breach,—and when the +God-speeds were said, had himself turned back to the weed-grown fields +of Deer Trace Manor, embittered and hostile, swearing never to set foot +outside of his home acres again while the Union should stand.</p> + +<p>For more than twenty years he kept this vow almost literally. A few of +the older negroes, a mere handful of the six score slaves of the old +patriarchal days, cast in their lot with their former master, and with +these the Major made shift thriftily, farming a little, stock<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>raising a +little, and, unlike most of the war-broken plantation owners, clinging +tenaciously to every rood of land covered by the original Dabney +title-deeds.</p> + +<p>In this cenobitic interval, if you wanted a Dabney colt or a Dabney cow, +you went, or sent, to Deer Trace Manor on your own initiative, and you, +or your deputy, never met the Major: your business was transacted with +lean, lantern-jawed Japheth Pettigrass, the Major's stock-and-farm +foreman. And although the Dabney stock was pedigreed, you kept your wits +about you; else Pettigrass got much the better of you in the trade, like +the shrewd, calculating Alabama Yankee that he was.</p> + +<p>Ardea was born in Paris in the twelfth year of the exile; and the +Virginian mother, pining always for the home land, died in the fifteenth +year. Afterward, Captain Louis fought a long-drawn, losing battle, +figuring bravely in his infrequent letters to his father as a rising +miniature painter; figuring otherwise to the students of the Latin +Quarter as "<i>ce pauvre Monsieur D'Aubigné</i>;" leading his little girl +back and forth between his lodgings and the studio where he painted +pictures that nobody would buy, and eking out a miserable existence by +giving lessons in English when he was happy enough to find a pupil.</p> + +<p>The brave letters imposed on the Major, as they were meant to do; and +Ardea, the loyal, happening on one of them in her first Deer Trace +summer, read it through with childish sobs and never thereafter opened +her lips on the story of those distressful Paris days. Later she +understood her father's motive better: how he would not be a charge on +an old man rich in nothing but ruin; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>and the memory of the pinched +childhood became a thing sacred.</p> + +<p>How the Major, a second Rip Van Winkle, found his way to New York, and +to the pier of the incoming French Line steamer, must always remain a +mystery. But he was there, with the fierce old eyes quenched and +swimming and the passionate Dabney lips trembling strangely under the +great mustaches, when the black-frocked little waif from the Old World +ran down the landing stage and into his arms. Small wonder that they +clung to each other, these two at the further extremes of three +generations; or that the child opened a door in the heart of the fierce +old partizan which was locked and doubly barred against all others.</p> + +<p>As may be imagined, the Major got away from Yankeeland with his charge +as soon as a train could be made to serve; and he was grim and +forbidding to all and sundry until the Cumberland Mountains had +displaced the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge on the western horizon. +Indeed, the grimness,—to all save Ardea,—persisted quite to and +through the transformed and transforming city at the eastern foot of +Lebanon. Major Caspar was not in tune with the bravura of modern +progress, and if he had been, his hatred of Northern importations of +whatever nature would have made and kept him hostile.</p> + +<p>But when the ancient carriage, with Scipio and Ardea's one small steamer +trunk on the box, had topped the shrugged shoulder of Lebanon, and that +view which we have seen from the summit of Thomas Jefferson's high rock +among the cedars opened out before the eyes of the wondering child, the +Major grew eloquent.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>"Look youh fill, my deah child; thah it lies—God's country, and youh's +and mine; the fines', the most inspiring, the most beautiful land the +sun eveh shone on! And whilst you are givin' praise to youh Makeh for +creatin' such a Gyarden of Eden, don't forget to thank him on youh +bended knees for not putting anything oveh yondeh in ouh home lot to +tempt these house-buildin', money-makin', schemin' Yankees that are +swarming again oveh the land like anotheh plague of Egyptian locus'es."</p> + +<p>"These—Yankees?" queried Ardea. In his later years the exiled Captain +Louis had remembered only that he was an American, and his child knew no +North nor South.</p> + +<p>The Major did not explain. Not that there were any compunctions of +conscience concerning the planting of the seed of sectionalism in this +virgin soil, quite the contrary. He abstained because he made sure that +time, and the Dabney blood, would do it better.</p> + +<p>So he talked to the small one of safely prehistoric things, showing her +the high mountain battle-field where John Sevier had broken the power of +the savage Chickamaugas, and, as the carriage rolled down toward the +head of Paradise, the tract of land where the first Dabney had sent his +ax-men to blaze the trees for his lordly boundaries.</p> + +<p>It was all new and very strange to a child whose only outlook on life +had been urban and banal. She had never seen a mountain, and nothing +more nearly approaching a forest than the parked groves of the Bois de +Boulogne. Would it be permitted that she should sometimes walk in the +woods of the first Dabney, she <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>asked, with the quaint French twisting +of the phrases that she was never able fully to overcome.</p> + +<p>It would certainly be permitted; more, the Major would make her a deed +to as many of the forest acres as she would care to include in her +promenade. By which we see that the second part of Unc' Scipio's +prophecy was finding its fulfilment in the beginning.</p> + +<p>How the French-born child fitted into the haphazard household at Deer +Trace Manor, with what struggles she came through the inevitable attack +of homesickness, and how Mammy Juliet and every one else petted and +indulged her, are matters which need not be dwelt on. But we shall +gladly believe that she was too sensible, even at the early and tender +age of ten, to be easily spoiled.</p> + +<p>Many foolish things have been said and written about the wax-like +quality of a child's mind; how each new impression effaces the old, and +how character in permanence is not to be looked for until the bones have +stopped growing. Yet who has not known criminals at twelve, and saints +and angels, and wise men and women—in fine, the entire gamut of +humanity—in short frocks or knee-breeches?</p> + +<p>Ardea, child of adversity and the Paris ateliers, brought one lasting +memory up out of those early Deer Trace Manor years: she was always +immeasurably older than such infants as Mammy Juliet and Uncle Scipio. +And this also she remembered: that when these and all the others, +including her grandfather and Japheth Pettigrass, were busily leveling +all the barriers of restraint for her, she had built some of her own and +set herself the task of living within them.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>I am sure she began to realize, almost at the first, that she must rise +superior to the Dabney weakness, which, as exemplified by the Major, was +ungoverned, and perhaps ungovernable, temper. At all events, she never +forgot a summer day soon after her arrival when she first saw her +grandfather transformed into a frenzied madman.</p> + +<p>He was sitting on the wide portico, smoking his long-stemmed pipe and +directing Japheth Pettigrass, who was training the great crimson-rambler +rose that ran well up to the eaves. Ardea, herself, was on the lawn, +playing with her grandfather's latest gift, a huge, solemn-eyed Great +Dane, so she did not see the man who had dismounted at the gate and +walked up the driveway until he was handing his card to her grandfather.</p> + +<p>When she did see him, she looked twice at him; not because he was trigly +clad in brown duck and tightly-buttoned service leggings, but because he +wore his beard trimmed to a point, after the manner of the students in +the Latin Quarter, and so was reminiscent of things freshly forsaken.</p> + +<p>She had succeeded in making the Great Dane carry her on his back quite +all the way around the circular coleus bed when the explosion took +place. There was a startling thunderclap of fierce words from the +portico, and she slipped from the dog's back and stared wide-eyed. Her +grandfather was on his feet, towering above the visitor as if he were +about to fall on and crush him.</p> + +<p>"Bring youh damned Yankee railroad through my fields and pastchuhs, suh? +Foul the pure, God-given ai-ah of this peaceful Gyarden of Eden with +youh dust-flingin', smoke-pot locomotives? Not a rod, suh! not a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>foot +or an inch oveh the Dabney lands! Do I make it plain to you, suh?"</p> + +<p>"But Major Dabney—one moment; this is purely a matter of business; +there is nothing personal about it. Our company is able and willing to +pay liberally for its right of way; and you must remember that the +coming of the railroad will treble and quadruple your land values. I am +only asking you to consider the matter in a business way, and to name +your own price."</p> + +<p>Thus the smooth-spoken young locating engineer in brown duck, serving as +plowman for his company. But there be tough old roots in some soils, +roots stout enough to snap the colter of the commercializing plow,—as, +for example, in Paradise Valley, owned, in broken areas, principally by +an unreconciled Major Dabney.</p> + +<p>"Not anotheh word, or by Heaven, suh, you'll make me lose my tempah! You +add insult to injury, suh, when you offeh me youh contemptible Yankee +gold. When I desiah to sell my birthright for youh beggahly mess of +pottage, I'll send a black boy in town to infawm you, suh!"</p> + +<p>It is conceivable that the locating engineer of the Great Southwestern +Railway Company was younger than he looked; or, at all events, that his +experience hitherto had not brought him in contact with fire-eating +gentlemen of the old school. Else he would hardly have said what he did.</p> + +<p>"Of course, it is optional with you, Major Dabney, whether you sell us +our right of way peaceably or compel us to acquire it by condemnation +proceedings in the courts. As for the rest—is it possible that you +don't know the war is over?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>With a roar like that of a maddened lion the Major bowed himself, +caught his man in a mighty wrestler's grip and flung him broadcast into +the coleus bed. The words that went with the fierce attack made Ardea +crouch and shiver and take refuge behind the great dog. Japheth +Pettigrass jumped down from his step-ladder and went to help the +engineer out of the flower bed. The Major had sworn himself to a stand, +but the fine old face was a terrifying mask of passion.</p> + +<p>"The old firebrand!" the engineer was muttering under his breath when +Pettigrass reached him; but the foreman cut him short.</p> + +<p>"You got mighty little sense, looks like, to me. Stove up any?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing to hurt, I guess."</p> + +<p>"Well, your hawss is waitin' for ye down yonder at the gate, and I don't +b'lieve the Major is allowin' to ask ye to stay to supper."</p> + +<p>The railroad man scowled and recovered his dignity, or some portion of +it.</p> + +<p>"You're a hospitable lot," he said, moving off toward the driveway. "You +can tell the old maniac he'll hear from us later."</p> + +<p>Pettigrass stooped with his back to the portico and patted the dog.</p> + +<p>"Don't you look so shuck up, little one," he whispered reassuringly to +Ardea. "There ain't nothin' goin' to happen, worse than has happened, I +reckon." But Ardea was mute.</p> + +<p>When the engineer had mounted and ridden away down the pike, the foreman +straightened himself and faced about. The Major had dropped into his big +arm-chair <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>and was trying to relight his pipe. But his hands shook and +the match went out.</p> + +<p>Pettigrass moved nearer and spoke so that the child should not hear. "If +you run me off the place the nex' minute, I'm goin' to tell you you ort +to be tolerably 'shamed of yourse'f, Maje' Dabney. That po' little gal +is scared out of a year's growin', right now."</p> + +<p>"I know, Japheth; I know. I'm a damned old heathen! For, insultin' as he +was, the man was for the time bein' my guest, suh—my guest!"</p> + +<p>"I'm talkin' about the little one—not that railroader. So far as I +know, he earned what he got. I allowed they'd make some sort of a swap +with you, so I didn't say anything when they was layin' out their lines +thoo' the hawss-lot and across the lower corn-field this mornin'—easy, +now; no more r'arin' and t'arin' with that thar little gal not a-knowin' +which side o' the earth's goin' to cave in next!"</p> + +<p>The Major dropped his pipe, laid fast hold of the arms of his chair, and +breathed hard.</p> + +<p>"Laid out <i>theyuh</i> lines—across <i>my</i> prope'ty? Japheth, faveh me by +riding down to the furnace and askin' Caleb Gordon if he will do me the +honor to come up heah—this evenin', if he can. I—I—it's twenty yeahs +and mo' since I've troubled the law cou'ts of ouh po', Yankee-ridden +country with any affai-ah of mine; and now—well, I don't know—I don't +know," with a despondent shake of the leonine head.</p> + +<p>After Pettigrass had gone on his errand the Major rose and went +unsteadily into the house. Then, and not till then, Ardea got up on her +knees and put her arms around the neck of the Great Dane.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>"O, Hector!" she whispered; "me, I am Dabney, too! Once the gamins +killed a poor little cat of mine; and I forgot God—the good God—and +said wicked things; and I could have torn them into little, little +pieces! But we—we shall be very good and patient after this, won't we, +Hector—you and me—no, you and <i>I</i>? What is it when you lick my face +that way? Does it mean that you understand?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + +<h3>BLUE BLOOD AND RED</h3> + + +<p>In a world full of puzzling questions for Thomas Jefferson, one of the +chief clustering points of the persistent "whys" was Major Dabney's +attitude, as a Man of Sin, and as the natural overlord of Paradise +Valley.</p> + +<p>That the Major was a Man of Sin there could be no manner of doubt. +During the revival he had been frequently and pointedly prayed for by +that name, and the groans from the Amen corner were conclusively +damning. Just what the distinction was between a Man of Sin and a +sinner—spelled with a small "s"—was something which Thomas Jefferson +could never quite determine; but the desire to find out made him spy on +Major Dabney at odd moments when the spying could be done safely and +with a clear field for retreat in the event of the Major's catching him +at it.</p> + +<p>Thus far the spying had been barren of results—of that kind which do +not have to be undone and made over to fit in with other things. Once, +Thomas Jefferson had been picking blackberries behind the wall of his +father's infield when the Major and Squire Bates had met on the pike. +There was some talk of the new railroad; and when the Squire allowed +that it was certain to come through Paradise, the Major had taken the +name <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>of God in vain in a way that suggested the fiery blast roaring +from the furnace lip after the iron was out.</p> + +<p>This was one of the results. But on reflection, Thomas Jefferson decided +that this could not be The Sin. Profane swearing—that was what the +Sunday-school lesson-leaf called it—was doubtless a mortal sin in a +believer; was not he, Thomas Jefferson, finding the heavens as brass and +the earth a place of fear and trembling because of that word to Nan +Bryerson? But in other people—well, he had heard his father swear once, +when one of the negroes at the furnace had opened the sand at the end of +the sow and let the stream of molten iron run out into the creek.</p> + +<p>The charge of profanity being tried and found wanting in the Major's +case, there remained that of violence. One day, Tike Bryerson—Nan's +father and the man who had tried to kill his Uncle Silas in the revival +meeting—was beating his horses because they would not take the water at +the lower ford. Tike had been stilling more pine-top whisky, and had +been to town with some jugs hidden under the cornstalks in his +wagon-bed. When he did that, he always came back with his eyes red like +a squirrel's, and everybody gave him all the road.</p> + +<p>But this time the Major had happened along, and when Tike would not stop +beating the horses for a shouted cursing-out from the bank, the Major +had spurred his Hambletonian into the creek and knocked Tike winding. +More than that, he had made him lead his team out of the ford and go +back to the bridge crossing.</p> + +<p>Being himself committed to the theory of turning the other cheek, Thomas +Jefferson could not question the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>acute sinfulness of all this; yet it +did not sufficiently account for the Major as a Man of Sin. Had not +Peter, stirred, no doubt, by some such generous rage as the Major's, +snatched out his sword and smitten off a man's ear?</p> + +<p>In the other field, that of overlordship, the subtleties were still more +elusive. That the negroes, many of whom were the sons and daughters of +the Major's former slaves, should pass the old-time "Mawstuh" on the +pike with uncovered heads and respectful heel-scrapings, was a matter of +course. Thomas Jefferson was white, free, and Southern born. But why his +own father and mother should betray something of the same deference was +not so readily apparent.</p> + +<p>On rare occasions the Major, riding to or from the cross-roads +post-office in Hargis's store, would rein in his horse at the Gordon +gate and ask for a drink of water from the Gordon well. At such times +Thomas Jefferson remarked that his mother always hastened to serve the +Major with her own hands; this notwithstanding her own and Uncle Silas's +oft-repeated asseveration touching the Major's unenviable preëminence as +a Man of Sin. Also, he remarked that the Major's manner at such moments +was a thing to dazzle the eye, like the reflection of the summer sun on +the surface of burnished metal. But beneath the polished exterior, the +groping perceptions of the boy would touch a thing repellent; a thing to +stir a slow current of resentment in his blood.</p> + +<p>It was Thomas Jefferson's first collision with the law of caste; a law +Draconian in the Old South. Before the war, when Deer Trace Manor had +been a seigniory with its six score black thralls, there had been no +visiting be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>tween the great house on the inner knoll and the overgrown +log homestead at the iron furnace. Quarrel there was none, nor any +shadow of enmity; but the Dabneys were lords of the soil, and the +Gordons were craftsmen.</p> + +<p>Even in war the distinction was maintained. The Dabneys, father and son, +were officers, having their commissions at the enrolment; while Caleb +Gordon, whose name headed the list of the Paradise volunteers, began and +ended a private in the ranks.</p> + +<p>In the years of heart-hardenings which followed, a breach was opened, +narrow at first, and never very deep, but wide enough to serve. Caleb +Gordon had accepted defeat openly and honestly, and for this the +unreconstructed Major had never fully forgiven him. It was an added +proof that there was no redeeming drop of the <i>sang azure</i> in the Gordon +veins—and Major Caspar was as scrupulously polite to Caleb Gordon's +wife as he would have been, and was, to the helpmate of Tike Bryerson, +mountaineer and distiller of illicit whisky.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson was vaguely indignant when Pettigrass came to ask his +father to go forthwith to the manor-house. In the mouth of the foreman +the invitation took on something of the flavor of a command. Besides, +since the Major's return from New York, Thomas Jefferson had a grudge +against him of a purely private and personal nature.</p> + +<p>None the less, he was eager for news when his father came back, and +though he got it only from overhearing the answer to his mother's +question, it was satisfyingly thrilling.</p> + +<p>"It's mighty near as we talked, Martha. The Major lumps the railroad in +with all the other improvements, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>calls 'em Yankee, and h'ists his +battle-flag. The engineer, that smart young fellow with the peaked +whiskers and the eye-glasses, went to see him this evenin' about the +right of way down the valley, and got himself slung off the porch of the +great house into a posy bed."</p> + +<p>"There is going to be trouble, Caleb; now you mark my words. You mustn't +mix up in it."</p> + +<p>"I don't allow to, if I can he'p it. The railroad's goin' to be a mighty +good thing for us if I can get Mr. Downing to put in a side-track for +the furnace."</p> + +<p>Following this there were other conferences, the Major unbending +sufficiently to come and sit on the Gordon porch in the cool of the +evening. The iron-master, as one still in touch with the moving world, +gave good advice. Failing to buy, the railroad company might possibly +seek to bully a right of way through the valley. But in that case, there +would certainly be redress in the courts for the property owners. In the +meantime, nothing would be gained by making the contest a personal fight +on individuals.</p> + +<p>So counseled Caleb Gordon, sure, always, of his own standing-ground in +any conflict. But from the last of the conferences the Major had ridden +home through the fields; and Thomas Jefferson, with an alert eye for +windstraws of conduct, had seen him dismount now and then to pull up and +fling away the locating stakes driven by the railroad engineers.</p> + +<p>In such a contention, in an age wholly given over to progress, there +could be, one would say, no possible doubt of the outcome.</p> + +<p>Giving the Major a second and a third chance to refuse to grant an +easement, the railroad company pushed its <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>grading and track-laying +around the mountain and up to the stone wall marking the Dabney +boundary, quietly accumulated the necessary material, and on a summer +Sunday morning—Sunday by preference because no restraining writ could +be served for at least twenty-four hours—a construction train, black +with laborers, whisked around the nose of the mountain and dropped +gently down the grade to the temporary end of track.</p> + +<p>It was Thomas Jefferson who gave the alarm. Little Zoar, unable to +support a settled pastor, was closed for the summer, but Martha Gordon +kept the fire spiritual alight by teaching her son at home. One of the +boy's Sunday privileges, earned by a faultless recitation of a +prescribed number of Bible verses, was forest freedom for the remainder +of the forenoon. It was while he was in the midst of the Beatitudes that +he heard the low rumble of the coming train, and it was only by +resolutely ignoring the sense of hearing that he was enabled to get +through, letter-perfect.</p> + +<p>"'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you,'" he +chanted monotonously, with roving eyes bent on finding his cap with the +loss of the fewest possible seconds—"'and shall say all manner of evil +against you falsely, for my sake,'—and that's all." And he was off like +a shot.</p> + +<p>"Mind, now, Thomas Jefferson; you are not to go near that railroad!" his +mother called to him as he raced down the path to the gate.</p> + +<p>Oh, no; he would not go near the railroad! He would only run up the pike +and cut across through the Dabney pasture to see if the train were +really there.</p> + +<p>It was there, as he could tell by the noise of hissing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>steam when the +cross-cut was reached. But the parked wooding of the pasture still +screened it. How near could he go without being "near" in the +transgressing sense of the word? There was only one way of finding +out—to keep on going until his conscience pricked sharply enough to +stop him. It was a great convenience, Thomas Jefferson's conscience. As +long as it kept quiet he could be reasonably sure there was no sin in +sight. Yet he had to confess that it was not always above playing mean +tricks; as that of sleeping like a log till after the fact, and then +rising up to stab him till the blood ran.</p> + +<p>He was half-way across the pasture when the crash of a falling tree +stopped him in mid-rush. And in the vista opened by the felled tree he +saw a sight to make him turn and race homeward faster than he had come. +The invaders, hundreds strong, had torn down the boundary wall and the +earth for the advancing embankment was flying from uncounted shovels.</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon was at work in the blacksmith shop, Sunday-repairing while +the furnace was cool, when Thomas Jefferson came flying with his news. +The iron-master dropped his hammer and cast aside the leather apron.</p> + +<p>"You hear that, Buck?" he said, frowning across the anvil at his helper, +a white man and the foreman of the pouring floor.</p> + +<p>The helper nodded, being a man of as few words as the master.</p> + +<p>"Well, I reckon we-all hain't got any call to stand by and see them +highflyers ride it roughshod over Major Dabney thataway," said Gordon +briefly. "Go down to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>the shanties and hustle out the day shift. Get +Turk and Hardaway and every white man you can lay hands on, and all the +guns you can find. And send one o' the black boys up the hill to tell +the Major. Like as not, he ain't up yet."</p> + +<p>Helgerson hastened away to obey his orders, and Caleb Gordon went out to +the foundry scrap yard. In the heap of broken metal lay an old cast-iron +field-piece, a relic of the battle which had one day raged hotly on the +hillside across the creek. A hundred times the iron-master had been on +the point of breaking it up for re-melting, and as often the old +artilleryman in him had stayed his hand.</p> + +<p>Now it was quickly hoisted in the crane shackle,—Thomas Jefferson +sweating manfully at the crab crank,—clamped on the axle of a pair of +wagon wheels, cleaned, swabbed, loaded with quarry blasting powder and +pieces of broken iron to serve for grape, and trundled out on the pike +at the heels of the ore team.</p> + +<p>By this time Helgerson had come up with the furnace men, a motley crew +in all stages of Sunday-morning dishevelment, and armed only as a mob +may arm itself at a moment's notice. Caleb, the veteran, looked the +squad over with a slow smile gathering the wrinkles at the corners of +his eyes.</p> + +<p>"You boys'll have to make up in f'erceness what-all you're lacking in +soldier-looks," he observed mildly. Then he gave the word of command to +Helgerson. "Take the gun and put out for the major's hawss-lot. I'll be +along as soon as I can saddle the mare."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson went with his father to the stable and helped silently +with the saddling. Afterward he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>held the mare, gentling her in +suppressed excitement while his father went into the house for his +rifle.</p> + +<p>Martha Gordon met her husband at the door. She had seen the volunteer +gun crew filing past on the pike.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Caleb?" she asked anxiously.</p> + +<p>He made no attempt to deceive her.</p> + +<p>"The railroaders are allowin' to take what the Major wouldn't sell +'em—the right of way through his land down the valley. Buddy brought +the word."</p> + +<p>"Well?" she said, love and fear hardening her heart. "The railroad would +be a good thing for us—for the furnace. You know you said it would."</p> + +<p>He shook his head slowly.</p> + +<p>"I reckon we mustn't look at it thataway, Martha. I'm going to stand by +my neighbor, like I'd expect him to stand by me. Let me get my gun; the +boys'll be there ahead o' me, and they won't know what to do."</p> + +<p>"Caleb! There will be bloodshed; and you remember what the Word says: +'whoso sheddeth man's blood....' And on the Lord's Day, too!"</p> + +<p>"I know. But ain't it somewhere in the same Good Book that it says +there's a time for peace and a time to make war? And then that there +passage about lovin' your neighbor. Don't hender me, little woman. There +ain't goin' to be no blood shed—onless them bushwhackers are a mighty +sight f'ercer for it than what I think they are."</p> + +<p>She let him go without further protest, not because he had convinced +her, but because she had long since come to know this man, who, making +her lightest wish his law in most things, could be as inflexible as the +chilled iron of the pouring floor at the call of loyalty <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>to his own +standard of right and wrong. But when he passed down the path to the +gate she knelt on the door-stone and covered her face with her hands.</p> + +<p>Gordon gathered the slack of the reins on the neck of the mare and put a +leg over the saddle.</p> + +<p>"That'll do, Buddy," he said. "Run along in to your mammy, now."</p> + +<p>But Thomas Jefferson caught again at the bridle and held on, choking.</p> + +<p>"O pappy!—take me with you! I—I'll die if you don't take me with you!"</p> + +<p>Who can tell what Caleb Gordon saw in his son's eyes when he bent to +loosen the grip of the small brown hand on the rein? Was it some +sympathetic reincarnation of his own militant soul striving to break its +bonds? Without a word he bent lower and swung the boy up to a seat +behind him. "Hold on tight, Buddy," he cautioned. "I'll have to run the +mare some to catch up with the boys."</p> + +<p>And the mother? She was still kneeling on the door-stone, but the burden +of her prayer was not now for Caleb Gordon. "O Lord, have mercy on my +boy! Thou knowest how, because of my disobedience, he has the fierce +fighting blood and the stubborn unbelief of all the Gordons to contend +with: save him alive and make him a man of peace and a man of faith, I +beseech Thee, and let not the unbelief of the father or the +unfaithfulness of the mother be visited on the son!"</p> + +<p>When the one-piece battery dashed at a clumsy gallop through the open +gate of the Dabney pasture and swung with a sharp turn into the vista of +felled trees, Thomas Jefferson beheld a thing to set his heritage of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>soldier blood dancing through his veins. Standing fair in the midst of +the ax-and-shovel havoc and clearing a wide circle to right and left +with the sweep of his old service cavalry saber, was the Major, +coatless, hatless, cursing the invaders with mighty and corrosive +soldier oaths, and crying them to come on, the unnumbered host of them +against one man.</p> + +<p>Opposed to him the men of the construction force, generaled by the young +engineer in brown duck and buttoned leggings, were deploying cautiously +to surround him. Gordon spoke to his mare; and when he drew rein and +wheeled to shout to the gun crew, Thomas Jefferson heard the engineer's +low-toned order to the shovelers: "Be careful and don't hurt him, boys. +He's the old maniac who threw me off the veranda of his house. Two of +you take him behind, and—"</p> + +<p>The break came on the uprush of the unanticipated reinforcements. With +the battle readiness of a disciplined soldier, Caleb Gordon whipped from +the saddle and ran to help the gun crew slue the makeshift field-piece +into position.</p> + +<p>"Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "fall back on your front line and give +the artillery a chanst at 'em. I reckon a dose o' broken pot-iron'll +carry fu'ther than that saber o' yourn. Buddy, hunt me a punk match, +quick, will ye?"</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/illus02.png" width="400" height="542" alt=""Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "give the artillery a chanst"" title=""Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "give the artillery a chanst"" /> +<span class="caption">"Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "give the artillery a chanst"</span> +</div> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson ran to the nearest rotting log, but one of the negroes +was before him with a blazing pitch-pine splint. There was a respectful +recoil in the opposing ranks which presently became a somewhat panicky +surge to the rear. The shovelers, more than half of whom were negroes, +had not come out to be blown from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>a cannon's mouth by a grim-faced +veteran who was so palpably at home with the tools of his trade.</p> + +<p>"That's right: keep right on goin'!" yelled the iron-master, waving his +blazing slow-match dangerously near to the priming. "Keep it up, 'r by +the Lord that made ye—"</p> + +<p>There was no need to specify the alternative. For now the panic had +spread by its own contagion, and the invaders were fighting among +themselves for place on the flat-cars. And while yet the rear guard was +swarming upon the engine, hanging by toe-and hand-holds where it could, +the train was backed rapidly out of range.</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon kept his pine splint alight until the echoes of the +engine's exhaust came faintly from the overhanging cliffs of the +mountain.</p> + +<p>"They've gone back to town, and I reckon the fire's plum' out for +to-day, Major," he drawled. "Buck and a few o' the boys 'll stay by the +gun, against their rallyin' later on, and you might as well go home to +your breakfast. Didn't bring your hawss, did ye? Take the mare, and +welcome. Buddy and me'll walk."</p> + +<p>But the Major would not mount, and so the two men walked together as far +as the manor-house gates, with Thomas Jefferson a pace in the rear, +leading the mare.</p> + +<p>It was no matter of wonder to him that his father and the Major marched +in solemn silence to the gate of parting. But the wonder came +tumultuously when the Major wheeled abruptly at the moment of +leave-taking and wrung his father's hand.</p> + +<p>"By God, suh, you are a right true-hearted gentleman, and my very good +friend, <i>Mistuh</i> Gordon!" he said, with the manner of one who has been +carefully weighing the words beforehand. "If you had been given youh +just dues, suh, you'd have come home from F'ginia wearin' youh +shouldeh-straps." And then, with a little throat-clearing pause to come +between: "Damn it, suh; an own brotheh couldn't have done'mo'! I—I've +been misjudgin' you, Caleb, all these yeahs, and now I'm proud to shake +you by the hand and call you my friend. Yes, suh, I am that!"</p> + +<p>It was, in a manner not to be understood by the Northern alien, the +accolade of knighthood, and Caleb Gordon's toil-rounded shoulders +straightened visibly when he returned the hearty hand-grasp. And as for +Thomas Jefferson: in his heart gratified pride flapped its wings and +crowed lustily; and for the moment he was almost willing to bury that +private grudge he was holding against Major Dabney—almost, but not +quite.</p> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + +<h3>THE PRAYER OF THE RIGHTEOUS</h3> + + +<p>Having come thus far with Thomas Jefferson on the road to whatever goal +he will reach, it is high time we were looking a little more closely +into this matter of his grudge against Major Dabney.</p> + +<p>Primarily, it based itself upon the dominant quality in a masterful +character; namely, a desire to possess the earth and its fullness +without partnership encumbrances.</p> + +<p>From a time back of which memory refused to run, the woods and the +fields of Paradise Valley, the rampart hills and the backgrounding +mountain side, had belonged to Thomas Jefferson by the right of +discovery. The Bates boys and the Cantrells lived over in the great +valley of the Tennessee, and when they planned a fishing excursion up +Turkey Creek, they recognized Thomas Jefferson's suzerainty by +announcing that they were coming over to <i>his</i> house. In like manner, +the Pendrys and the Lumpkins and the Hardwicks were scattered at +farm-width intervals down the pike, and the rampart hills marked the +boundary of their domain on that side.</p> + +<p>Now from possession which is recognized unquestioningly by one's +compeers to fancied possession in fee simple is but a step; and from +that to the putting up of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>"No Trespass" signs the interval can be read +only on a micrometer scale. Wherefore, Thomas Jefferson had developed a +huge disgust on hearing that Major Dabney was going to upset the natural +order of things by bringing his granddaughter to Deer Trace Manor. If +Ardea—the very name of her had a heathenish sound in his +Scripturally-trained ear—had been a boy, the matter would have +simplified itself. Thomas Jefferson had a sincere respect for his own +prowess, and a boy might have been mauled into subjection. But a girl!</p> + +<p>His lip curled stiffly at the thought of a girl, a town girl and +therefore a thing without legs, or at best with legs only half useful +and totally unfit for running or climbing trees, dividing the +sovereignty of the fields and the forest, the swimming-hole and the +perch pools in the creek, with him! She would do it, or try to do it. A +girl would not have any more sense than to come prying around into all +the quiet places to say, "This is my grandfather's land. What are <i>you</i> +doing here?"</p> + +<p>At such thoughts as these a queer prickling sensation like a hot shiver +would run over him from neck to heel, and his eyes would gloom sullenly. +There would be another word to put with that; a word of his own +choosing. No matter if her grandfather, the terrifying Major, did own +the fields and the wood and the stream: God was greater than Major +Dabney, and had he not often heard his mother say on her knees that the +fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous availeth much? If it should +avail even a little, there would be no catastrophe, no disputed +sovereignty of the woods, the fields and the creek.</p> + +<p>It was in the middle of a sultry afternoon in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>hotter half of +August, two weeks or such a matter after the Great Southwestern Railway +had given up the fight for Paradise Valley to run its line around the +encompassing hills, that Thomas Jefferson was cast alive into the pit of +burnings.</p> + +<p>He made sure he should always remember his latest glimpse of the +pleasant, homely earth. He was sitting idly on the porch step, letting +his gaze go adrift over the nearer green-clad hills to the purple deeps +of the western mountain, already steeped in shadow. The pike was +deserted, and the shrill hum of the house-flies played an insistent tune +in which the low-pitched boom of a bumblebee tumbling awkwardly among +the clover heads served for an intermittent bass.</p> + +<p>Suddenly into the hot silence came the quick <i>cloppity-clop</i> of +galloping hoofs. Thomas Jefferson's heart was tender on that side of it +which was turned toward the dumb creatures, and his thought was +instantly pitiful and indignant. Who would be cruel enough to gallop a +horse in such weltering weather?</p> + +<p>The unspoken query had its answer when Major Dabney's fleet saddle +stallion thundered up to the gate in a white nimbus of dust, and the +Major flung himself from the saddle and called loudly for Mistress +Gordon. Thomas Jefferson sprang up hastily to forward the cry, fear +clutching at his heart; but the Major was before him in the wide passage +opening upon the porch.</p> + +<p>"My deah Mistress Gordon! We are in a world of trouble at the +manor-house! Little Ardea, my grand-daughteh, was taken sick last night, +and to-day she's out of huh head—think of it, <i>out of huh head!</i> I'm +riding hotfoot for Doctah Williams, but Lord of Heaven! it'll <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>be nigh +sundown befo' I can hope to get back with him. Could you, my deah madam, +faveh us—"</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson heard no more; would stay to hear no more. The forest, +always his refuge in time of trial, reached a long finger of scattering +oaks down to the opposite side of the creek, and thither he fled, cold +to the marrow of his bones, though the sun-heated stone coping of the +dam on which he crossed the stream went near to blistering his bare feet +as he ran.</p> + +<p>From the crotch of one of the oaks—his watch-tower in other periods of +stress—he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the +pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and +went in a smother of white dust, wheeling in front of the home gate and +pausing only long enough to take up his mother hastening to the rescue.</p> + +<p>After that he was alone with the hideous tumult of his thoughts. The +girl would die. He was as sure of it as if the heavens and the earth had +instantly become articulate to shout the terrible sentence. God had +taken him at his word! There would be no intruder to tell him that the +woods and the creek belonged to her grandfather. She would be dead; +slain by the breath of his mouth. And for all the years and years and +ages to come, he would be roasting and grilling in that place prepared +for the devil and his angels—and for murderers!</p> + +<p>In the acutest misery of it a trembling fit seized him and the oak +seemed to rock and sway as if to be rid of him. When the fit passed he +slid to the ground and flung himself face downward under the spreading +branches. The grass was cool to his face, but there was no moisture <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>in +it, and he thought of Dives praying that Lazarus might come and put a +drop of water on his tongue.</p> + +<p>Then the torment took a new and more terrible form. Though he had never +been inside of the gray stone manor-house, his imagination transported +him thither; to the house and to a darkened room on the upper floor with +a bed in it, and in the bed a girl whose face he could not see.</p> + +<p>The girl was dying: the doctor had told his mother and the Major, and +they were all waiting. Thomas Jefferson had never seen any one die, only +a dog that Tike Bryerson had shot on one of his drunken home-goings. But +death was death, to a dog or to a girl; and vivid imagination supplied +the appalling details. Over and over again in pitiless minuteness the +heartbreaking scene was repeated: the little twitchings of the +bed-clothing, the tossing of the girl's arms in the last desperate +struggle for breath, his mother's low sobs, and the haggard face of the +old Major.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson dug his fingers and toes into the grass and bit a +mouthful of it to stifle the cry wrung from him by the torturing +poignancy of it. Was there no way of escape?</p> + +<p>He turned over and sat up to try to think it out. Yes, there was a +way—the way which would be taken by the boy in the Sunday-school books. +He would say he was sorry, and would have his sins washed away, and +there would be rejoicing in Heaven over the one sinner who had repented. +Of course, the girl would die, just the same, and all the misery his sin +had caused would remain unchanged. But <i>he</i> would escape.</p> + +<p>For one unworthy moment Thomas Jefferson was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>fiercely tempted. Then the +dogged Gordon blood reasserted itself. He had done the dreadful thing: +he had asked God to take this girl out of his way, and now he would +accept what he had coveted and would not try to sneak out of paying. It +comforted him a little to think that, after all, there must eventually +be some sort of end to the torment, away on in the eternities to come. +When he had suffered all he could suffer, not even God could make him +suffer any more.</p> + +<p>When he finally recrossed the creek on the dam head it was supper-time, +and his mother had returned. The misery had now settled into dumb +despair, both more and less agonizing than the acute remorse of the +afternoon. What he needed to know was told in his mother's answer to his +father's inquiry: "Yes; she is a very sick child. I'm going up again +after supper to stay as long as I'm needed. It's a judgment on the +Major; he has been setting the creature above the Creator."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson knew well enough that the judgment was his, and not the +Major's; but he let his supper choke him in silence. Afterward, when his +mother had gone back to the house of anxiety and he was alone with his +father, there were some vague promptings toward confession and a cry for +human sympathy. What sealed his lips was the conviction that his father +would comfort him without understanding, just as his mother would +understand and condemn him. Early in the evening his father went back to +the furnace and his chance was lost.</p> + +<p>For four heart-searching days Thomas Jefferson lived and endured, +because living and enduring were the two unalterable conditions of the +brimstone pit to which he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>had consigned himself. During these days his +mother came and went, and prayed oftener than usual—not for the girl's +life, as Thomas Jefferson noticed with deep stirrings of bitterness, but +that the dispensation of Providence might inure to the lasting and +eternal benefit of an impenitent and idolatrous Major Dabney.</p> + +<p>Throughout these four days the sickening August heat remained unbroken; +but on the fifth the thunderheads began to gather and a fresh breeze +swept down from the slopes of the distant Cumberland; a wind smelling +sweetly of rain and full of cooling promise.</p> + +<p>On this fifth day, Thomas Jefferson, lying in wait at the gate of the +manor-house grounds, waylaid Doctor Williams coming out, and asked the +question which had hitherto had its doleful answer without the necessity +of asking. If the doctor had struck him with the buggy whip the shock +would not have been more real than that consequent on the snapping of +mental tension strings and the surging, strangling uprush of the tidal +wave of relief.</p> + +<p>"Little Ardea?" said the doctor. "Oh, she'll do well enough now, I hope. +The fever is broken and she's asleep."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson shut the gate mechanically when the doctor had driven +out; but when there was nothing more to hold him, he scrambled over the +stone wall on the opposite side of the pike and ran for the hills like +one demented.</p> + +<p>The girl would live! Hell had yawned and cast him up once more on the +pleasant, homely earth; and now the gentle rain of penitence, which +could never water the dry places for a soul in torment, drenched him +like <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>the real rain which was falling to slake the thirst of the parched +fields and the brittle-leaved, rustling forest.</p> + +<p>For a long time he lay on his face on the first bit of tree-sheltered +grass he had come to, caring nothing for the storm which was driving all +the wild creatures of the wood to cover. God had not been so pitiless, +after all. There was yet a balm in Gilead.</p> + +<p>And for the future? O just Heavens! how straitly and circumspectly he +would walk all the days of his life! Never again should Satan, going +about like a roaring lion, take him unawares. He would even learn to +love the girl, as one should love an enemy; and when she should come and +tell him that all the sacred places were hers by her grandfather's +right, he would smile reproachfully, like the boy being led forth to the +stake in the <i>Book of Martyrs</i>, and say—</p> + +<p>But the time was not yet fully come for self-pityings; and when Thomas +Jefferson went home after the shower, not even the soggy chill of his +wet clothes could depress the spirit which had made good its footing on +the high mount of humility.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE BACKSLIDER</h3> + + +<p>It was late in September before the dreaded invasion of the sacred +places, foreboded by Thomas Jefferson's prophetic soul, became one of +the things to be looked back on; and the interval had sufficed for +another change of heart, or, more correctly, for a descent to the valley +of things as they are from the top of that high mountain of spiritual +humility.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson did not analyze the reactionary process. But the +milestones along the backward way were familiar.</p> + +<p>In a little while he found that he was once more able to say his prayers +at bedtime with the old glibness, and with the comfortable feeling that +he had done his whole duty if he remained on his knees for sixty full +ticks of the heirloom grandfather clock. It was an accomplishment on +which he prided himself, this knack of saying his prayers and counting +the clock ticks at the same time. Stub Helgerson, whose mother was a +Lutheran and said her prayers out of a book, could not do it. Thomas +Jefferson had asked him.</p> + +<p>A little farther along he came to the still more familiar milestone of +the doubtful questionings. Did God really trouble Himself about the +millions of things peo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>ple asked Him to do? It seemed highly incredible, +not to say impossible, in the very nature of it. And if He did, would He +make one person sick for the sake of making another person sorry? These +questions were answerless, like so many of the others; but after the +perplexity had been pushed aside, the doubt remained.</p> + +<p>Coming down by such successive steps from the mount of penitent +thanksgivings, it was but a short time before he found himself back on +the old camping-ground of sullen resentment.</p> + +<p>When the girl got well enough to go about, she would find him out and +warn him off; or perhaps she might do even worse, and tag him. In either +case he should hate her, and there was a sort of ferocious joy in the +thought that she would doubtless be a long time getting well, and would +probably not be able to find him if he kept far enough out of her way.</p> + +<p>Acting on this wise conclusion, he carefully avoided the manor-house and +its neighborhood, making a wide circuit when he went fishing in the +upper pools. And once, when his father had sent him with a message to +the Major, he did violence to his own sense of exact obedience by +transferring the word at the house gate to Mammy Juliet's grandson, +Pete.</p> + +<p>But when one's evil star is in the ascendent, precautions are like the +vain strugglings of the fly in the web. The day of reckoning may be +postponed, but it will by no means be effaced from the calendar. One +purple and russet afternoon, when all the silent forest world was +steeped in the deep peace of early autumn, Thomas Jefferson was fishing +luxuriously in the most distant of the upper pools. There were three fat +perch gill-strung on <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>a forked withe under the overhanging bank, and a +fourth was rising to the bait, when the peaceful stillness was rudely +rent by a crashing in the undergrowth, and a great dog, of a breed +hitherto unknown to Paradise, bounded into the little glade to stand +glaring at the fisherman, his teeth bared and his back hairs bristling.</p> + +<p>Now Thomas Jefferson in his thirteenth year was as well able to defend +himself as any clawed and toothed creature of the wood, and fear, the +fear of anything he could face and grapple with, was a thing unknown. +Propping his fishing pole so that no chance of a nibble might be lost in +the impending struggle, he got on his knees and picked out the exact +spot in the dog's neck where he would drive the bait knife home when +hostilities actual should begin.</p> + +<p>"Oh, please! Don't you hurt my dog!" said a rather weak little voice out +of the rearward void.</p> + +<p>But, gray eyes human, holding brown canine in an unwinking gaze: "You +come round here and call him off o' me."</p> + +<p>"He is not wishing to hurt you, or anybody," said the voice. "Down, +Hector!"</p> + +<p>The Great Dane passed from suspicious rigidity and threatening lip +twitchings to mighty and frivolous gambolings, and Thomas Jefferson got +up to give him room. A girl—<i>the</i> girl, as some inner sense instantly +assured him—was trying to make the dog behave. So he had a chance to +look her over before the battle for sovereignty should begin.</p> + +<p>There was a little shock of disdainful surprise to go with the first +glance. Somehow he had been expecting something very different; +something on the order of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>Queen of Sheba—done small, of course—as +that personage was pictured in the family Bible; a girl, proud and +scornful, and possibly wearing a silk dress and satin shoes.</p> + +<p>Instead, she was only a pale, tired baby in a brier-torn frock; a girl +whose bones showed brazenly at every angle, and whose only claim to a +second glance lay in her thick mop of reddish-brown hair and in a pair +of great, slate-blue eyes two sizes too large for the thin face. A +double conclusion came and sat in Thomas Jefferson's mind: she was +rather to be contemptuously pitied than feared; and as for looks—well, +she was not to be thought of in the same day with black-eyed Nan +Bryerson.</p> + +<p>When the dog was reduced to quietude, the small one repaid Thomas +Jefferson's stare with a level gaze out of the over-sized eyes.</p> + +<p>"Was it that you were afraid of Hector?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson, and the scorn was partly for her queer way +of speaking and partly for the foolishness of the question. "Huh! I +reckon you don't know who I am. I'd have killed your dog if he'd jumped +on me, maybe."</p> + +<p>"Me? I do know who you are. You are Thomas Gordon. Your mother took care +of me and prayed for me when I was sick. Hector is a—an extremely good +dog. He would not jump at you."</p> + +<p>"It's mighty lucky for him he didn't," bragged Thomas Jefferson, with a +very creditable imitation of his father's grim frown. Then he sat down +on the bank of the stream and busied himself with his fishing-tackle as +if he considered the incident closed.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>"What is it that you are trying to do?" asked Ardea, when the silence +had extended to the third worm impaled on the hook and promptly +abstracted therefrom by a wily sucker lying at the bottom of the pool.</p> + +<p>"I was fishin' some before you and your dog came along and scared all +the perch away," he said sourly. Then, turning suddenly on her: "Why +don't you go ahead and say it? Is it 'cause you're afeard to?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean."</p> + +<p>"I know what you're going to say; you are going to tell me this is your +grandfather's land and run me off. But I ain't aimin' to go till I'm +good and ready."</p> + +<p>She looked down on him without malice.</p> + +<p>"You are such a funny boy," she remarked, and there was something in her +way of saying it that made Thomas Jefferson feel little and infantile +and inferior, though he was sure there must be an immense age difference +in his favor.</p> + +<p>"Why?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know; just because you are. If you knew French I could +explain it better that way."</p> + +<p>"I don't know anybody by that name, and I don't care," said Thomas +Jefferson doggedly; and went back to his fishing.</p> + +<p>Followed another interval of silence, in which two more worms were fed +to the insatiable sucker at the bottom of the pool. Then came the +volcanic outburst.</p> + +<p>"I think you are mean, mean!" she sobbed, with an angry stamp of her +foot. "I—I want to go ho-ome!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I reckon there ain't anybody holdin' you," said Thomas Jefferson +brutally. He was intent on fixing the sixth worm on the hook in such +fashion as per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>manently to discourage the bait thief, and was coming to +his own in the matter of self-possession with grateful facility. It was +going to be notably easy to bully her—another point of difference +between her and Nan Bryerson.</p> + +<p>"I know there isn't anybody holding me, but—but I can't find the way."</p> + +<p>That any one could be lost within an easy mile of the manor-house was +ridiculously incredible to Thomas Jefferson. Yet there was no telling, +in the case of a girl.</p> + +<p>"You want me to show you the way?" he asked, putting all the +ungraciousness he could muster into the query.</p> + +<p>"You might tell me, I should think! I've walked and walked!"</p> + +<p>"I reckon I'd better take you; you might get lost again," he said, with +gloomy sarcasm. Then he consumed all the time he could for the +methodical disposal of his fishing-tackle. It would be good for her to +learn that she must wait on his motions.</p> + +<p>She waited patiently, sitting on the ground with one arm around the neck +of the Great Dane; and when Thomas Jefferson stole a glance at her to +see how she was taking it, she looked so tired and thin and woebegone +that he almost let the better part of him get the upper hand. That made +him surlier than ever when he finally recovered his string of fish from +the stream and said: "Well, come on, if you're comin'."</p> + +<p>He told himself, hypocritically, that it was only to show her what +hardships she would have to face if she should try to tag him, that he +dragged her such a weary round over the hills and through the worst +brier patches <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>and across and across the creek, doubling and circling +until the easy mile was spun out into three uncommonly difficult ones. +But at bottom the motive was purely wicked. In all the range of sentient +creatures there is none so innately and barbarously cruel as the human +boy-child; and this was the first time Thomas Jefferson had ever had a +helplessly pliable subject.</p> + +<p>The better she kept up, the more determined he became to break her down; +but at the very last, when she stumbled and fell in an old leaf bed and +cried for sheer weariness, he relented enough to say: "I reckon you'll +know better than to go projectin' round in the woods the next time. Come +on—we're 'most there, now."</p> + +<p>But Ardea's troubles were not yet at an end. She stopped crying and got +up to follow him blindly over more hills and through other brier +tangles; and when they finally emerged in the cleared lands, they were +still on the wrong side of the creek.</p> + +<p>"It's only about up to your chin; reckon you can wade it?" asked Thomas +Jefferson, in a sudden access of heart-hardening. But it softened him a +little to see her gather her torn frock and stumble down to the water's +edge without a word, and he added: "Hold on; maybe we can find a log, +somewhere."</p> + +<p>There was a foot log just around the next bend above, as he very well +knew, and thither he led the way. The dog made the crossing first, and +stood wagging his tail encouragingly on the bank of safety. Then Thomas +Jefferson passed his trembling victim out on the log.</p> + +<p>"You go first," he directed; "so 't I can catch you if you slip."</p> + +<p>For the first time she humbled herself to beg a boon.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>"Oh, you please go first, so I won't have to look down at the water!"</p> + +<p>"No; I'm coming behind—then I can catch you if you get dizzy and go to +fall," he said stubbornly.</p> + +<p>"Will you walk right up close, so I can know you are there?"</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson's smile was cruelly misleading, as were his words. "All +you'll have to do will be to reach your hand back and grab me," he +assured her; and thereupon she began to inch her way out over the +swirling pool.</p> + +<p>When he saw that she could by no possibility turn to look back, Thomas +Jefferson deliberately sat down on the bank to watch her. There had +never been anything in his life so tigerishly delightful as this game of +playing on the feelings and fears of the girl whose coming had spoiled +the solitudes.</p> + +<p>For the first few feet Ardea went steadily forward, keeping her eyes +fixed on the Great Dane sitting motionless at the farther end of the +bridge of peril. Then, suddenly the dog grew impatient and began to leap +and bark like a foolish puppy. It was too much for Ardea to have her +eye-anchor thus transformed into a dizzying whirlwind of gray monsters. +She reached backward for the reassuring hand: it was not there, and the +next instant the hungry pool rose up to engulf her.</p> + +<p>In all his years Thomas Jefferson had never had such a stab as that +which an instantly awakened conscience gave him when she slipped and +fell. Now he was her murderer, beyond any hope of future mercies. For a +moment the horror of it held him vise-like. Then the sight of the Great +Dane plunging to the rescue freed him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>"Good dog!" he screamed, diving headlong from his own side of the pool; +and between them Ardea was dragged ashore, a limp little heap of +saturation, conscious, but with her teeth chattering and great, dark +circles around the big blue eyes.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson's first word was masculinely selfish.</p> + +<p>"I'm awful sorry!" he stammered. "If you can't make out to forgive me, +I'm going to have a miser'ble time of it after I get home. God will whip +me worse for this than He did for the other."</p> + +<p>It was here, again, that she gave him the feeling that she was older +than he.</p> + +<p>"It will serve you quite right. Now you'd better get me home as quick as +ever you can. I expect I'll be sick again, after this."</p> + +<p>He held his peace and walked her as fast as he could across the fields +and out on the pike. But at the Dabney gates he paused. It was not in +human courage to face the Major under existing conditions.</p> + +<p>"I reckon you'll go and tell your gran'paw on me," he said hopelessly.</p> + +<p>She turned on him with anger ablaze.</p> + +<p>"Why should I not tell him? And I never want to see you or hear of you +again, you cruel, hateful boy!"</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the +driveway, leaning heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached +the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded in +the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of +tyranny the lees are apt to be like the little book the Revelator +ate—sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the belly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>That evening at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear +dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put +by his father.</p> + +<p>"Yes; the Major sent for me again this afternoon. That child is back in +bed again with a high fever. It seems she was out playing with that +great dog of hers and fell into the creek. I wanted to tell the Major he +is just tempting Providence, the way he makes over her and indulges her, +but I didn't dare to."</p> + +<p>And again Thomas Jefferson knew that he was the one who had tempted +Providence.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> + +<h3>THE RACE TO THE SWIFT</h3> + + +<p>From the grave and thoughtful vantage-ground of thirteen, Thomas +Jefferson could look back on the second illness of Ardea Dabney as the +closing incident of his childhood.</p> + +<p>The industrial changes which were then beginning, not only for the city +beyond the mountain, but for all the region round about, had rushed +swiftly on Paradise; and the old listless life of the unhasting period +soon receded quickly into a far-away past, rememberable only when one +made an effort to recall it.</p> + +<p>First had come the completion of the Great Southwestern. Diverted by the +untiring opposition of Major Dabney from its chosen path through the +valley, it skirted the westward hills, passing within a few hundred +yards of the Gordon furnace. Since business knows no animosities, the +part which Caleb Gordon and his gun crew had played in the right-of-way +conflict was ignored. The way-station at the creek crossing was named +Gordonia, and it was the railway traffic manager himself who suggested +to the iron-master the taking of a partner with capital, the opening of +the vein of coking coal on Mount Lebanon, the installation of +coking-ovens, and the modernizing and enlarging of the furnace and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>foundry plant—hints all pointing to increased traffic for the road.</p> + +<p>With the coming of Mr. Duxbury Farley to Paradise, Thomas Jefferson +lost, not only the simple life, but the desire to live it. This Mr. +Farley, whom we have seen and heard, momentarily, on the station +platform in South Tredegar, the expanded, hailed from Cleveland, Ohio; +was, as he was fond of saying pompously, a citizen of no mean city. His +business in the reawakening South was that of an intermediary between +cause and effect; the cause being the capital of confiding investors in +the North, and the effect the dissipation of the same in various and +sundry development schemes in the new iron field.</p> + +<p>To Paradise, in the course of his goings to and fro, came this purger of +other men's purses, and he saw the fortuitous grouping of the +possibilities at a glance: abundant iron of good quality; an accessible +vein of coal, second only to Pocahontas for coking; land cheap, water +free, and a persuadable subject in straightforward, simple-hearted Caleb +Gordon.</p> + +<p>Farley had no capital, but he had that which counts for more in the +promoter's field; namely, the ability to reap where others had sown. His +plan, outlined to Caleb in a sweeping cavalry-dash of enthusiasm, was +simplicity itself. Caleb should contribute the raw material—land, water +and the ore quarry—and it should also be his part to secure a lease of +the coal land from Major Dabney. In the meantime he, Farley, would +undertake to float the enterprise in the North, forming a company and +selling stock to provide the development capital.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>The iron-master demurred a little at first. There were difficulties, +and he pointed them out.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Colonel Farley. It appears like I'm givin' all I've got +for a handout at the kitchen door of the big company. Then, again, +there's the Major. He's pizon against all these improvements. You don't +know the Major."</p> + +<p>"On the contrary, my dear Mr. Gordon, it is because I do know him, or +know of him, that I am turning him over to you. You are the one person +in the world to obtain that coal lease. I confess I couldn't touch the +Major with a ten-foot pole, any more than you could go North and get the +cash. But you are his neighbor, and he likes you. What you recommend, +he'll do." Thus the enthusiast.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," said Caleb doubtfully; "I reckon I can try. He +can't any more 'n fire me, like he did the Southwestern right-o'-way +man. But then, about t'other part of it: I've got a little charcoal +furnace here that don't amount to much, maybe, but it's all mine, and +I'm the boss. When this other thing goes through, the men who are +putting up the money will own it and me. I'll be just about as much +account as the tag on a shoe-string."</p> + +<p>This part of the conference was held on the slab-floored porch of the +oak-shingled house, with Thomas Jefferson as a negligible listener. +Since he was listening with both eyes and ears, he saw something in Mr. +Duxbury Farley's face that carried him swiftly back to the South +Tredegar railway station and to that first antipathetic impression. But +again the suave tongue quickly turned the page.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>"Don't let that trouble you for a moment, Mr. Gordon," was the +reassuring rejoinder. "I shall see that your apportionment of stock in +the company is as large as the flotation scheme will stand; and as I, +too, shall be a minority stock-holder, I shall share your risk. But +there will be no risk. If the Lord prospers us, we shall both come out +of this rich men, Mr. Gordon."</p> + +<p>The slow smile that Thomas Jefferson knew so well came and went like a +flitting shadow.</p> + +<p>"I reckon the Lord don't make n'r meddle much with these here little +child's playhouses of our'n," said Caleb; and then he gave his consent +to the promoter's plan.</p> + +<p>Singularly or not, as we choose to view it, the difficulties effaced +themselves at the first onset. Though tact was no part of Caleb Gordon's +equipment, his presentation of the matter to Major Dabney became so +nearly a personal asking—with Mr. Duxbury Farley and the Northern +capitalists distantly backgrounding—that the Major granted the lease of +the coal lands on purely personal grounds; would, indeed, have waived +the matter of consideration entirely, if Caleb had not insisted. Had not +the iron-master been raised to the high degree of fellowship by the hand +that signed the lease?</p> + +<p>On his part, Mr. Duxbury Farley was equally successful. A company was +formed, the charter was obtained, and the golden stream began to flow +into the treasury; into it and out again in the raceway channels of +development. Thomas Jefferson stood aghast when an army of workmen swept +down on Paradise and began to change the very face of nature. But that +was only the beginning.</p> + +<p>For a time Chiawassee Coal and Iron figured buoy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>antly in the market +quotations, and delegations of stock-holders, both present and +prospective, were personally conducted to the scene of activities by +enthusiastic Vice-President Farley. But when these had served their +purpose a thing happened. One fine morning it was whispered on 'Change +that Chiawassee iron would not Bessemer, and that Chiawassee coke had +been rejected by the Southern Association of Iron Smelters.</p> + +<p>Followed a crash which was never very clearly understood by the +simple-hearted soldier iron-master, though it was merely a repetition of +a lesson well conned by the earlier investors in Southern coal and iron +fields. Caleb's craft was the making of iron; not the financing of +top-heavy corporations. So, when he was told that the company had +failed, and that he and Farley had been appointed receivers, he took it +as a financial matter, of course, somewhat beyond his ken, and went +about his daily task of supervision with a mind as undisturbed as it +would have been distraught had he known something of the subterranean +mechanism by which the failure and the receivership had been brought to +pass.</p> + +<p>Why Mr. Duxbury Farley spared the iron-master in the freezing-out +process was an unsolved riddle to many. But there were reasons. For one, +there was the lease of the coal lands, renewable year by year—this was +Caleb's own honest provision inserted in the contract for the Major's +protection—and renewable only by the Major's friend. Further, a +practical man at the practical end of an industry is a sheer necessity; +and by contriving to have honest Caleb associated with himself in the +receivership, a fine color of uprightness was imparted to the promoter's +far-reaching plan of aggrandizement.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>So, later, when the reorganization was effected; when the troublesome, +dividend-hungry stock-holders of the original company were eliminated by +due process of law, Caleb's name appeared on the Farley slate with the +title of general manager of the new company—for the same good and +sufficient reasons.</p> + +<p>It was during the fervid six months of Chiawassee Coal and Iron +development that Thomas Jefferson had passed from the old life to the +new—from childhood to boyhood.</p> + +<p>Simultaneously, there were the coal-mines opening under the cliffs of +Mount Lebanon, the long, double row of coking-ovens building on the flat +below the furnace, and the furnace itself taking on undreamed-of +magnitudes under the hands of the army of workmen. Thomas Jefferson did +his best to keep the pace, being driven by a new and eager thirst for +knowledge mechanical, and by a gripping desire to be present at all the +assemblings of all the complicated parts of the threefold machine. And +when he found it impossible to be in three places at one and the same +moment, it distressed him to tears.</p> + +<p>Of the home life during that strenuous interval there was little more +than the eating and sleeping for one whose time for the absorbent +process was all too limited. Also, the perplexing questions reaching +down into the under-soul of things were silent. Also, again—mark of a +change so radical that none but a Thomas Jefferson may read and +understand—an awe-inspiring Major Dabney had ceased to be the first +citizen of the world, that pinnacle being now occupied by a tall, +sallow, smooth-faced gentleman, persuasive of speech and superhuman in +accomplishment, who was the life and soul of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>the activities, and whom +his father and mother always addressed respectfully as "Colonel" Farley.</p> + +<p>One day, in the very heat of the battle, this commanding personage, at +whose word the entire world of Paradise was in travail, had deigned to +speak directly to him—Thomas Jefferson. It was at the mine on the +mountain. The workmen were bolting into place the final trestle of the +inclined railway which was to convey the coal in descending carloads to +the bins at the coke-ovens, and Thomas Jefferson was absorbing the +details as a dry sponge soaks water.</p> + +<p>"Making sure that they do it just right, are you, my boy?" said the +great man, patting him approvingly on the shoulder. "That's good. I like +to see a boy anxious to get to the bottom of things. Going to be an +iron-master, like your father, are you?"</p> + +<p>"N-no," stammered the boy. "I wisht I was!"</p> + +<p>"Well, what's to prevent? We are going to have the completest plant in +the country right here, and it will be a fine chance for your father's +son; the finest in the world."</p> + +<p>"'Tain't goin' to do me any good," said Thomas Jefferson dejectedly. "I +got to be a preacher."</p> + +<p>Mr. Duxbury Farley looked down at him curiously. He was a religious +person himself, coming to be known as a pillar in St. Michael's Church +at South Tredegar, a liberal contributor, and a prime mover in a plan to +tear down the old building and to erect a new one more in keeping with +the times and South Tredegar's prosperity. Yet he was careful to draw +the line between religion as a means of grace and business as a means of +making money.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>"That is your mother's wish, I suppose: and it's a worthy one; very +worthy. Yet, unless you have a special vocation—but there; your mother +doubtless knows best. I am only anxious to see your father's son succeed +in whatever he undertakes."</p> + +<p>After that, Thomas Jefferson secretly made Success his god, and was +alertly ready to fetch and carry for the high priest in its temple, only +the opportunities were infrequent.</p> + +<p>For, wide as the Paradise field seemed to be growing from Thomas +Jefferson's point of view, it was altogether too narrow for Duxbury +Farley. The principal offices of Chiawassee Coal and Iron were in South +Tredegar, and there the first vice-president was building a hewn-stone +mansion, and had become a charter member of the city's first club; was +domiciled in due form, and was already beginning to soften his final +"r's," and to speak of himself as a Southerner—by adoption.</p> + +<p>So sped the winter and the spring succeeding Thomas Jefferson's +thirteenth birthday, and for the first time in his life he saw the +opening buds of the ironwood and the tender, fresh greens of the herald +poplars, and smelled the sweet, keen fragrance of awakening nature, +without being moved thereby.</p> + +<p>Ardea he saw only now and then, as old Scipio drove her back and forth +between the manor-house and the railway station, morning and evening. He +had heard that she was going to school in the city, and as yet there +were no stirrings of adolescence in him to make him wish to know more.</p> + +<p>As for Nan Bryerson, he saw her not at all. For one thing, he climbed no +more to the spring-sheltering altar <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>rock among the cedars; and for +another, among all the wild creatures of the mountain, your moonshiner +is the shyest, being an anachronism in a world of progress. One bit of +news, however, floated in on the gossip at Little Zoar. It related that +Nan's mother was dead, and that the body had lain two days unburied +while Tike was drowning his sorrow in a sea of his own "pine-top."</p> + +<p>In the new life, as in the old, summer followed quickly on the heels of +spring, and when the hepaticas and the violets were gone, and the laurel +and the rhododendron were decking the cliffs of Lebanon in their summer +robes of pink and white and magenta, another door was opened for Thomas +Jefferson.</p> + +<p>Vaguely it had been understood in the Gordon household that Mr. Duxbury +Parley was a widower with two children: a boy, some two years older than +Thomas Jefferson, at school in New England, and a girl younger, name and +place of sojourn unknown. The boy was coming South for the long +vacation, and the affairs of Chiawassee Coal and Iron—already reaching +out subterraneously toward the future receivership—would call the first +vice-president North for the better portion of July. Would Mrs. Martha +take pity on a motherless lad, whose health was none of the best, and +open her home to Vincent?</p> + +<p>Mrs. Martha would and did; not ungrudgingly on the vice-president's +account, but with many misgivings on Thomas Jefferson's. She was finding +the surcharged industrial atmosphere of the new era inimical at every +point to the development of the spiritual passion she had striven to +arouse in her son; to paving the way for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>the realizing of that ideal +which had first taken form when she had written "Reverend Thomas +Jefferson Gordon" on the margin of the letter to her brother Silas.</p> + +<p>As it fell out, the worst happened that could happen, considering the +apparent harmlessness of the exciting cause. Vincent Farley proved to be +an anemic stripling, cold, reserved, with no surface indications of +moral depravity, and with at least a veneer of good breeding. But in +Thomas Jefferson's heart he planted the seed of discontent with his +surroundings, with the homely old house on the pike, unchanged as yet by +the rising tide of prosperity, and more than all, with the prospect of +becoming a chosen vessel.</p> + +<p>It was of no use to hark back to the revival and the heart-quaking +experiences of a year agone. Thomas Jefferson tried, but all that seemed +to belong to another world and another life. What he craved now was to +be like this envied and enviable son of good fortune, who wore his +Sunday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly +and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and +traveled Ardea.</p> + +<p>Later in the summer the envy died down and Thomas Jefferson developed a +pronounced case of hero-worship, something to the disgust of the +colder-hearted, older boy. It did not last very long, nor did it leave +any permanent scars; but before Thomas Jefferson was fully convalescent +the subtle flattery of his adulation warmed the subject of it into +something like companionship, and there were bragging stories of +boarding-school life and of the world at large to add fresh fuel to the +fire of discontent.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>Though Thomas Jefferson did not know it, his deliverance on that side +was nigh. It had been decided in the family council of two—with a +preacher-uncle for a casting-vote third—that he was to be sent away to +school, Chiawassee Coal and Iron promising handsomely to warrant the +expense; and the decision hung only on the choice of courses to be +pursued.</p> + +<p>Caleb had marked the growing hunger for technical knowledge in the boy, +and had secretly gloried in it. Here, at least, was a strong stream of +his own craftsman's blood flowing in the veins of his son.</p> + +<p>"It'd be a thousand pities to spoil a good iron man and engineer to make +a poor preacher, Martha," he objected; this for the twentieth time, and +when the approach of autumn was forcing the conclusion.</p> + +<p>"I know, Caleb; but you don't understand," was the invariable rejoinder. +"You know that side of him, because it's your side. But he is my son, +too; and—and Caleb, the Lord has called him!"</p> + +<p>Gordon's smile was lenient, tolerant, as it always was in such +discussions.</p> + +<p>"Not out loud, I reckon, little woman; leastwise, Buddy don't act as if +he'd heard it. As I've said, there's plenty of time. He's only a little +shaver yet. Let him try the school in the city for a year 'r so, goin' +and comin' on the railroads, nights and mornin's, like the Major's +gran'daughter. After that, we might see."</p> + +<p>But now Martha Gordon was fighting the last great battle in the war of +spiritual repression which had been going on ever since the day when +that text, <i>Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers</i>, had +been turned into a whip of scorpions to chasten her, and she <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>fought as +those who will not be denied the victory. Caleb yielded finally, but +with some such hand-washing as Pilate did when he gave way to the +pressure from without.</p> + +<p>"I aim to do what's for the best, Martha, but I own I hain't got your +courage. You've been shovin' that boy up the steps o' the pulpit ever +since he let on like he could understand what you was sayin' to him, and +maybe it's all right. I've never been over on your side o' that fence, +and I don't know how things look over there. But if it was my doin's, +I'd be prayin' mighty hard to whatever God I believed in not to let me +make a hypocrite out'n o' Buddy. I would <i>so</i>."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson was told what was in store for him only a short time +before his outsetting for the sectarian home school in a neighboring +state, which was the joint selection of his mother and Uncle Silas. He +took it with outward calm, as he would have taken anything from a prize +to a whipping. But there was dumb rebellion within when his mother read +him the letter he was to carry to the principal—a letter written by +Brother Crafts to one of like precious faith, commending the lamb of the +flock, and definitely committing that lamb as a chosen vessel. It was +unfair, he cried inwardly, in a hot upflash of antagonism. He might +choose to be a preacher; he had always meant to be one, for his mother's +sake. But to be pushed and driven—</p> + +<p>He took his last afternoon for a ramble in the fields and woods beyond +the manor-house, in that part of the valley as yet unfurrowed by the +industrial plow. It was not the old love of the solitudes that called +him; it was rather a sore-hearted desire to go apart and give <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>place to +all the hard thoughts that were bubbling and boiling within.</p> + +<p>A long circuit over the boundary hills brought him at length to the +little glade with the pool in its center where he had been fishing for +perch on that day when Ardea and the great dog had come to make him +back-slide. He wondered if she had ever forgiven him. Most likely she +had not. She never seemed to think him greatly worth while when they +happened to meet.</p> + +<p>He was sitting on the overhanging bank, just where he had sat that other +day, when suddenly history repeated itself. There was a rustling in the +bushes; the Great Dane bounded out, though not as before to stand +menacing; and when he turned his head she was there near him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said coolly; and then she called to the dog +and made as if she would go away. But Thomas Jefferson's heart was full, +and full hearts are soft.</p> + +<p>"You needn't run," he hazarded. "I reckon I ain't going to bite you. I +don't feel much like biting anybody to-day."</p> + +<p>"You did bite me once, though," she said airily.</p> + +<p>"And you've never forgiven me for it," he asserted, in deepest +self-pity.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I have; the Dabneys always forgive—but they never forget. And +me, I am a Dabney."</p> + +<p>"That's just as bad. You wouldn't be so awful mean to me if you knew. +I—I'm going away."</p> + +<p>She came a little nearer at that and sat down beside him on the yellow +grass with an arm around the dog's neck.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>"Does it hurt?" she asked. "Because, if it does, I'm sorry; and I'll +promise to forget."</p> + +<p>"It does hurt some," he confessed. "Because, you see, I'm going to be a +preacher."</p> + +<p>"You?" she said, with the frank and unsympathetic surprise of childhood. +Then politeness came to the rescue and she added: "I'm sorry for that, +too, if you are wanting me to be. Only I should think it would be fine +to wear a long black robe and a pretty white surplice, and to learn to +sing the prayers beautifully, and all that."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson was honestly horrified, and he looked it.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what in the world you're talking about," he said.</p> + +<p>"About your being a minister, of course. Only in France, they call them +priests of the church."</p> + +<p>The boy's lips went together in a fine straight line. Not for nothing +did the blood of many generations of Protestants flow in his veins. +"Priest" was a Popish word.</p> + +<p>"The Pope of Rome is antichrist!" he declared authoritatively.</p> + +<p>She seemed only politely interested.</p> + +<p>"Is he? I didn't know." Then, with a tactfulness worthy of graver years, +she drew away from the dangerous topic. "When are you going?"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Is it far?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; it's an awful long ways."</p> + +<p>"Never mind; you'll be coming back after a while, and then we'll be +friends—if you want to."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>Surely Thomas Jefferson's heart was as wax before the fire that day.</p> + +<p>"I'm mighty glad," he said. Then he got up. "Will you let me show you +the way home again?—the short, easy way, this time?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment, and then stood up and gave him her hand.</p> + +<p>"I'm not afraid of you now; <i>we</i> don't hate him any more, do we, +Hector?"</p> + +<p>And so they went together through the yellowing aisles of the September +wood and across the fields to the manor-house gates.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> + +<h3>THE SHADOW OF THE ROCK</h3> + + +<p>Tom Gordon—Thomas Jefferson now only in his mother's letters—was +fifteen past, and his voice was in the transition stage which made him +blushingly self-conscious when he ran up the window-shade in the Pullman +to watch for the earliest morning outlining of old Lebanon on the +southern horizon.</p> + +<p>There had been no home-going for him at the close of his first year in +the sectarian school. The principal had reported him somewhat backward +in his studies for his age,—which was true enough,—and had intimated +that a summer spent with the preceptor who had the vacation charge of +the school buildings would be invaluable to a boy of such excellent +natural parts. So Tom had gone into semi-solitary confinement for three +months with a man who thought in the dead languages and spoke in terms +of ancient history, studying with sullen resentment in his heart, and +charging his imprisonment to his preacher-uncle, who was, indeed, +chiefly responsible.</p> + +<p>He had mourned that loss of liberty all through his second year, and was +conscious the while that it would prove the parent of a still greater +loss. It is the exile's anchorage in a shifting world to think of the +home <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>haven as unchanged and unchanging; as a place where by and by the +thread of life as it was may be knotted up with that of life as it shall +be. But Tom remembered that he had left Paradise in the midst of +convulsive upheavals, and was correspondingly fearful.</p> + +<p>The sickening sense of unfamiliarity seized him when the train stopped +for breakfast in the city which had once been the village of the single +muddy street. The genius of progress had transformed it so completely +that there was nothing but the huge, backgrounding mass of Lebanon, +visible from the windows of the station breakfast-room, to identify the +grave of the old and the birthplace of the new.</p> + +<p>The boy laid desperate eye-holds on the comforting solidity of the +background, and would not loose them when the train sped away southward +again through mile-long yards with their boundaries picked out by +black-vomiting factory chimneys. The mountain, at least, was unchanged, +and there might be hope for the country beyond.</p> + +<p>But the homesickness returned with renewed qualms when the train had +doubled the nose of Lebanon and threaded its way among the hills to the +Paradise portal. Gordonia, of the single side-track, had grown into a +small iron town, with the Chiawassee plant flanking a good half-mile of +the railway; with a cindery street or two, and a scummy wave of +operatives' cottages and laborers' shacks spreading up the hillsides +which were stripped bare of their trees and undergrowth.</p> + +<p>Tom's eyes filled, and he was wondering faintly if the desolating tide +of progress had topped the hills to pour over into the home valley +beyond, when his father <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>accosted him. There was a little shock at the +sight of the grizzled hair and beard turned so much grayer; but the +welcoming was like a grateful draft of cool water in a parched +wilderness.</p> + +<p>"Well, now then! How are ye, Buddy, boy? Great land o' Canaan! but +you've shot up and thickened out mightily in two years, son."</p> + +<p>Tom was painfully conscious of his size. Also of the fact that he was +clumsily in his own way, particularly as to hands and feet. The +sectarian school dwelt lightly on athletics and such purely mundane +trivialities as physical fitness and the harmonious education of the +growing body and limbs.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I'm so big it makes me right tired," he said gravely, and his +voice cracked provokingly in the middle of it. Then he asked about his +mother.</p> + +<p>"She's tolerable—only tolerable, Buddy. She allows she don't have +enough to keep her doin' in the new—" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly +and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all +have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet a hen worth fifty +dollars ye've gone and lost it."</p> + +<p>But Tom had not; and when the luggage was found there was another +innovation to buffet him. The old buggy with its high seat had vanished, +and in its room there was a modern surrey with a negro driver. Tom +looked askance at the new equipage.</p> + +<p>"Can't we make out to walk, pappy?" he asked, dropping unconsciously +into the child-time phrase.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; I reckon we could. You're not too young, and I'm not so +terr'ble old. But—get in, Buddy, get in; there'll be trampin' enough +for ye, all summer long."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>The limestone pike was the same, and the creek was still rushing +noisily over the stones in its bed, as Tom remarked gratefully. But the +heaviest of the buffets came when the barrier hills were passed and the +surrey horses made no motion to turn in at the gate of the old +oak-shingled house beyond the iron-works.</p> + +<p>"Hold on!" said Tom. "Doesn't the driver know where we live?"</p> + +<p>The old-time, gentle smile wrinkled about the iron-master's eyes.</p> + +<p>"That's the sup'rintendent's office and lab'ratory now, son. It was +getting to be tolerable noisy down here for your mammy, so nigh to the +plant. And we allowed to s'prise you. We've been buildin' us a new house +up on the knoll just this side o' Major Dabney's."</p> + +<p>It was the cruelest of the changes—the one hardest to bear; and it +drove the boy back into the dumb reticence which was a part of his +birthright. Had they left him nothing by which to remember the old +days—days which were already beginning to take on the glamour of +unutterable happiness past?</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, he could not help looking curiously for the new home—the +old being irretrievably sacked and ruined; but there were more shocks to +come between. One of Mr. Duxbury Farley's side issues had been a real +estate boom for Paradise Valley proper. South Tredegar being prosperous, +the time had seemed propitious for the engrafting of the country-house +idea. By some means, marvelous to those who knew Major Dabney's +tenacious land-grip, the promoter had bought in the wooded hillsides +facing the mountain, cut them into ten-acre residence plots, run a +graveled drive on the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>western side of the creek to front them, and +presto! the thing was done.</p> + +<p>Tom saw well-kept lawns, park-like groves and pretentious country villas +where he had once trailed Nance Jane through the "dark woods," and his +father told him the names and circumstance of the owners as they drove +up the pike. There was Rockwood, the summer home of the Stanleys, and +The Dell, owned, and inhabited at intervals, by Mr. Young-Dickson, of +the South Tredegar potteries. Farther along there was Fairmount, whose +owner was a wealthy cotton-seed buyer; Rook Hill, which Tom remembered +as the ancient roosting ground of the migratory winter crows; and +Farnsworth Park, ruralizing the name of its builder. On the most +commanding of the hillsides was a pile of rough-cut Tennessee marble +with turrets and many gables, rejoicing in the classic name of Warwick +Lodge. This, Tom was told, was the country home of Mr. Farley himself, +and the house alone had cost a fortune.</p> + +<p>At the turn in the pike where you lost sight finally of the iron-works, +there was a new church, a miniature in native stone of good old Stephen +Hawker's church of Morwenstow. Tom gasped at the sight of it, and +scowled when he saw the gilded cross on the tower.</p> + +<p>"Catholic!" he said. "And right here in our valley!"</p> + +<p>"No," said the father; "it's 'Piscopalian. Colonel Farley is one o' the +vestries, or whatever you call 'em, of St. Michael's yonder in town. I +reckon he wanted to get his own kind o' people round him out here, so he +built this church, and they run it as a sort of side-show to the big +church. Your mammy always looks the other way when we come by."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>Tom looked the other way, too, watching anxiously for the first sight +of the new home. They reached it in good time, by a graveled driveway +leading up from the white pike between rows of forest trees; and there +was a second negro waiting to take the team, when they alighted at the +veranda steps.</p> + +<p>The new house was a two-storied brick, ornate and palpably assertive, +with no suggestion of the homely country comfort of the old. Yet, when +his mother had wept over him in the wide hall, and there was time to go +about, taking it all in like a cat exploring a strange garret, it was +not so bad.</p> + +<p>Or rather, let us say, there were compensations. The love of luxury is +only dormant in the heart of the hardiest barbarian; and the polished +floors and soft-piled rugs, the bath-room with its great china dish, and +the carpeted stair with the old grandfather clock ticking bravely on the +landing, presently began to thrum the tuneful chord of pride. Perhaps +Ardea Dabney would not laugh and say, "What a funny, <i>funny</i> old place!" +as she had once said when the Major had brought her to the log-walled +homestead on the lower pike.</p> + +<p>Still, there were incongruities—hopeless janglings of things married by +increasing prosperity, but never meant to be bedfellows in the +harmonious course of nature. One was the unblushing effrontery of the +new brick pairing itself brazenly with the venerable gray stone +manor-house on the adjoining knoll—impudence perceivable even to a +hobbledehoy fresh from the school desk and the dormitory. Another was +the total lack of sympathy between the housing and the housed.</p> + +<p>This last was painfully evident in all the waking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>hours of the +household. Tom observed that his father escaped early in the morning, +and lived and moved and had his being in the industries at the lower end +of the valley, as of old. But his mother's occupation was quite gone. +And the summer evenings, sat out decorously on the ornate veranda, were +full of constraint and awkward silences, having no part nor lot with +those evenings of the older time on the slab-floored porch of the old +homestead on the pike.</p> + +<p>But there were compensations again, even for Martha Gordon, and Tom +discovered one of them on the first Wednesday evening after his arrival. +The new home was within easy walking distance of Little Zoar, and he +went with his mother to the prayer-meeting.</p> + +<p>The upper end of the pike was unchanged, and the little, weather-beaten +church stood in its groving of pines, the same yesterday, to-day and for +ever. Better still, the congregation, the small Wednesday-night +gathering at least, held the familiar faces of the country folk. The +minister was a young missionary, zealously earnest, and lacking as yet +the quality of hardness and doctrinal precision which had been the boy's +daily bread and meat at the sectarian school. What wonder, then, that +when the call for testimony was made, the old pounding and +heart-hammering set in, and duty, <i>duty</i>, <span class="smcap">duty</span>, wrote itself in +flaming letters on the dingy walls?</p> + +<p>Tom set his teeth and swallowed hard, and let a dozen of the others rise +and speak and sit again. He could feel the beating of his mother's +heart, and he knew she was praying silently for him, praying that he +would not deny his Master. For her sake, then ... but not yet; there was +still time enough—after the next hymn—after <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>the next testimony—when +the minister should give another invitation. He was chained to the bench +and could not rise; his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth and his +lips were like dry leaves. The silences grew longer; all, or nearly all, +had spoken. He was stifling.</p> + +<p>"<i>Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess +also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me +before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.</i>" +It was the solemn voice of the young minister, and Tom staggered to his +feet with the lamps whirling in giddy circles.</p> + +<p>"I feel to say that the Lord is precious to my soul to-night. Pray for +me, that I may ever be found faithful."</p> + +<p>He struggled through the words of the familiar form gaspingly and sat +down. A burst of triumphant song arose,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"O happy day, that fixed my choice</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">On Thee, my Saviour and my God!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and the ecstatic aftermath came. Truly, it was better to be a doorkeeper +in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. What bliss +was there to be compared with this heart-melting, soul-lifting blessing +for duty done?</p> + +<p>It went with him a good part of the way home, and Martha Gordon +respected his silence, knowing well what heights and depths were +engulfing the young spirit.</p> + +<p>But afterward—alas and alas! that there should always be an +"afterward"! When Tom had kissed his mother good night and was alone in +his upper room, the reaction set in. What had he done? Were the words +the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>outpouring of a full heart? Did they really mean anything to him, +or to those who heard them? He grasped despairingly at the fast-fading +glories of the vision, dropping on his knees at the bedside. "O God, let +me see Thee and touch Thee, and be sure, <i>sure</i>!" he prayed, over and +over again; and so finally sleep found him still on his knees with his +face buried in the bed-clothes.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> + +<h3>THE TRUMPET-CALL</h3> + + +<p>For the first few vacation days Tom rose with the sun and lived with the +industries, marking all the later expansive strides and sorrowing keenly +that he had not been present to see them taken in detail.</p> + +<p>But this was a passing phase. When the mechanical hunger was sated; when +he had started and stopped every engine in the big plant, had handled +the levers of the great steam-hoist that shot the coal-cars from the +mine to the coke-yard bins, and had prevailed on the engineer of the +dinkey engine to let him haul out and dump a pot of slag, he had a sharp +relapse into the primitive, and went roaming afield in search of his +lost boyhood.</p> + +<p>It was not to be found in any of the valley haunts, these having been +transformed by the country-house colony. The old water-wheel below the +dam hung motionless, being supplanted by the huge, modern, +blowing-engines; and the black wash from the coal-mines had driven the +perch from the pools and spoiled the swimming-holes in the creek. In the +farther forests of the rampart hills the chopper's ax had been busy; and +the blackberry patches in all the open spaces were sacked daily by +chattering swarms of the work-people's children, white and black.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>On the third morning Tom turned his steps despairingly toward the +slopes of the mountain. He was at a pass when he would have given worlds +to find one of the sacred places undesecrated. And there remained now +only the high altar under the cedars of Lebanon to be visited.</p> + +<p>It comforted him not a little to find that he had the old-time, burning +thirst when he came within earshot of the dripping spring under the +great rock. But when he would have knelt to drink from his palms like +Gideon's men, there was no pool in the rocky basin. A barrel had been +sunk in the sand-filled crevice, and a greedy pipe-line sucked up the +water as fast as it trickled from the rock, to pass it on to one of the +thirsty mechanisms in the iron plant a thousand feet below.</p> + +<p>In its way this was the final straw, and Tom sat down beside the +utilized spring with a lump in his throat. Afterward, he slaked his +thirst as he could at the trickle from the rock's lip, and then set his +face toward the higher steeps. Major Dabney,—not yet fully in tune with +his new neighbors of the country-house colony,—and his granddaughter +were spending the summer at Crestcliffe Inn, the new hotel on top of the +mountain, and Tom felt that Ardea would understand if he could find and +tell her. There are times when one must find a sympathetic ear, or be +rent and torn by the pent-up things within.</p> + +<p>In one sense the sympathy quest was a devitalizing failure. When he +reached the summit of the mountain, hot and tired and dusty, the mere +sight of the great hotel, with its thronged verandas and its +overpowering air of grandeur and exclusiveness, quenched all desires +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>save that which prompted a hasty retreat. The sectarian school paid as +little attention to the social as to the athletic side of its youth; and +Tom Gordon at fifteen past was as helpless conventionally as if he had +never set foot outside of Paradise.</p> + +<p>But at the retractive moment he ran plump into the Major, stalking +grandly along the tile-paved walk and smoking a war-time cheroot of +preposterous length. The despot of Paradise, despot now only by courtesy +of the triumphant genius of modernity, put on his eye-glasses and stared +Thomas into respectful rigidity.</p> + +<p>"Why, bless my soul!—if it isn't Captain Gordon's boy! Well, well, you +young limb! If you didn't faveh youh good fatheh in eve'y line and +lineament of youh face, I should neveh have known you—you've grown so. +Shake hands, suh!"</p> + +<p>Tom did it awkwardly. It is a gift to be able to shake hands easily; a +gift withheld from most girls and all boys up to the soulful age. But +there was worse to follow. Ardea was somewhere on the peopled verandas, +and the Major, more terrible in his hospitality than he had ever +appeared in the old-time rage-fits, dragged his hapless victim up and +down and around and about in search of her. "Not say 'Howdy' to Ardea? +Why, you young cub, where are youh mannehs, suh?" Thus the Major, when +the victim would have broken away.</p> + +<p>It was a fiery trial for Tom—a way-picking among red-hot plowshares of +embarrassment. How the well-bred folk smiled, and the grand ladies drew +their immaculate skirts aside to make passing-room for his dusty feet! +How one of them wondered, quite audibly, where in the world Major Dabney +had unearthed that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>young native! Tom was conscious of every fleck of +dust on his clothes and shoes; of the skilless knot in his necktie; of +the school-desk droop in his shoulders; of the utter superfluousness of +his big hands.</p> + +<p>And when, at the long last, Ardea was discovered sitting beside a +gorgeously-attired Queen of Sheba, who also smiled and examined him +minutely through a pair of eye-glasses fastened on the end of a +gold-mounted stick, the place of torment, wherever and whatever it might +be, held no deeper pit for him. What he had climbed the mountain to find +was a little girl in a school frock, who had sat on the yellowing grass +with one arm around the neck of a great dog, looking fearlessly up at +him and telling him she was sorry he was going away. What he had found +was a very statuesque little lady, clad in fluffy summer white, with the +other Ardea's slate-blue eyes and soft voice, to be sure, but with no +other reminder of the lost avatar.</p> + +<p>From first to last, from the moment she made room for him, dusty clothes +and all, on the settee between herself and the Queen of Sheba, Tom was +conscious of but one clearly-defined thought—an overmastering desire to +get away—to be free at any cost. But the way of escape would not +disclose itself, so he sat in stammering misery, answering Ardea's +questions about the sectarian school in bluntest monosyllables, and +hearing with his other ear a terrible Major tell the Queen of Sheba all +about the railroad invasion, and how he—Tom Gordon—had run to find a +punk match to fire a cannon in the Dabney cause.</p> + +<p>All of which was bad enough, but the torture rack had still another turn +left in its screw. After he had sat <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>for awkward hours, as it seemed, +though minutes would have measured it, there was a stir on the veranda +and he became vaguely conscious of an impending catastrophe.</p> + +<p>"Grandpa is telling you you must stay to luncheon with us," prompted +Ardea. "Will you take me in?"</p> + +<p>The Major had already given his arm to the Queen of Sheba, and there was +no help for the helpless. Tom crooked his arm as stiffly as possible and +said "May I?"—which was an inspiration—and they got to the great +dining-room with no worse mishap than a collision at the door brought +about by his stepping on the train of one of the grand ladies.</p> + +<p>But at luncheon his troubles began afresh; or rather, a new and more +agonizing set of them took the field. The fourth seat at the small table +was occupied by the lady with the stick eye-glasses, and Tom was made +aware that she was a Dabney cousin once removed. Thereupon, what little +dexterity was left in him fled away, and the table-trial, under the +smiling eyes of a Miss Euphrasia, became a chapter of horrors.</p> + +<p>From absently picking and choosing among the forks, and trying to drink +his bouillon out of the cup in which it was served, to upsetting his +glass of iced tea, he stumbled on in a dream of awkwardness; and when, +to cover the tea mishap, Ardea, emulating the lady hostess who broke one +of her priceless tea-cups at a similar crisis, promptly overturned her +own glass, he was unreasonable enough to be angry.</p> + +<p>Taking it all in all, anger was coming to be the one constant quantity +in the procession of varying emotions. By what right did this hollow, +insincere, mocking world, of whose very existence he had been in utter +ignorance, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>make him a butt for its well-bred sneers? Its fashions and +fripperies and meaningless forms were not beyond learning; and, by +Heaven! he would learn them, too, and put them all to shame. They should +see!</p> + +<p>And Ardea: was she laughing at him, too, in the depths of her big, +beautiful eyes? No, that was too much; he would never believe that. But +she was insincere, like the rest of them. It was acting a lie for her to +make-believe clumsiness just to keep the others from laughing at him. +She must stand with her kind.</p> + +<p>From that station to the top of the high, bare crag of righteous +condemnation was but a short stage in the wrathful journey; and while he +was choking over the meal of strange dishes the zealous under-thought +was reaching out into the future.</p> + +<p>Some day, when his tongue should be loosed, he would stand before this +mocking, smiling, heathenish world with the open Bible in his hand; then +it should be taught what it needed to know—that while it was saying it +was rich, and increased with goods, and had need of nothing, it was +wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.</p> + +<p>So it came about that it was the convert of Little Zoar, and not the +self-pitying youth searching for his lost boyhood, who escaped finally +from the entanglements of Major Dabney's hospitality.</p> + +<p>On the way down the cliff path the fire burned and the revival zeal was +kindled anew. There had been times, in the last year, especially, when +he had thought coldly of the disciple's calling and was minded to break +away and be a skilled craftsman, like his father. Now he was aghast to +think that he had ever been so near the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>brink of apostasy. With the +river of the Water of Life springing crystal clear at his feet, should +he turn away and drink from the bitter pools in the wilderness of this +world? With prophetic eye he saw himself as another Boanerges, lifting, +with all the inspiring eloquence of the son of thunder, the Baptist's +soul-shaking cry, <i>Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand</i>!</p> + +<p>The thought thrilled him, and the fierce glow of enthusiasm became an +intoxicating ecstasy. The tinkling drip of falling water broke into the +noonday silence of the forest like the low-voiced call of a sacred bell. +For the first time since leaving the mountain top he took note of his +surroundings. He was standing beside the great, cubical boulder under +the cedars—the high altar in nature's mountain tabernacle.</p> + +<p>Ah, Martha Gordon, mother of many prayers, look now, if you can, but not +too closely or too long! Is it merely the boy you have molded and +fashioned, or is it the convinced and consecrated evangelist of the +future, who falls on his knees beside the great rock, with head bent and +fingers tightly interlocked, groping desperately for words in which to +rededicate himself to the God of your fathers?</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson had the deep peace of the fully committed when he rose +from his knees and went to drink at the spouting rock lip. It was +decided now, this thing he had been holding half-heartedly in abeyance. +There would be no more dallying with temptation, no more rebellion, no +more irreverent stumblings in the dark valley of doubtful questions. +More especially, he would be vigilant to guard against those +backslidings that came so swiftly on the heels of each spiritual +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>quickening. His heart was fixed, so irrevocably, so surely, that he +could almost wish that Satan would try him there and then. But the enemy +of souls was nowhere to be seen in the leafy arches of the wood, and Tom +bent again to take a second draft at the spouting rock lip.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> + +<h3>THE IRON IN THE FORGE FIRE</h3> + + +<p>He was bending over the sunken barrel. A shadow, not his own, blurred +the water mirror. He looked up quickly.</p> + +<p>"Nan!" he cried.</p> + +<p>She was standing on the opposite side of the barrel basin, looking down +on him with good-natured mockery in the dark eyes.</p> + +<p>"I 'lowed maybe you wouldn't have such a back load of religion after +you'd been off to the school a spell," she said pointedly. And then: +"Does it always make you right dry an' thirsty to say your prayers, +Tommy-Jeffy?"</p> + +<p>Tom sat back on his heels and regarded her thoughtfully. His first +impulse was out of the natural heart, rageful, wounded vanity spurring +it on. It was like her heathenish impertinence to look on at such a +time, and then to taunt him about it afterward.</p> + +<p>But slowly as he looked a curious change came over him. She was the same +Nan Bryerson, bareheaded, barelegged, with the same tousled mat of dark +hair, and the same childish indifference to a whole frock. And yet she +was not the same. The subtle difference, whatever it was, made him get +up and offer to shake <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>hands with her,—and he thought it was the +newly-made vows constraining him, and took credit therefor.</p> + +<p>"You can revile me as much as you like now, Nan," he said, with prideful +humility. "You can't make me mad any more, like you used to."</p> + +<p>"Why can't I?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"Because I'm older now, and—and better, I hope. I shall never forget +that you have a precious soul to save."</p> + +<p>Her response to this was a scoffing laugh, shrill and challenging. Yet +he could not help thinking that it made her look prettier than before.</p> + +<p>"You can laugh as much as you want to; but I mean it," he insisted. +"And, besides, Nan,—of all the things that I've been wanting to come +back to, you're the only one that isn't changed." And again he thought +it was righteous guile that was making him kind to her.</p> + +<p>In a twinkling the mocking hardness went out of her eyes and she leaned +across the barrel mouth and touched his hand.</p> + +<p>"D'you reckon you shorely mean that, Tom Gordon?" she said; and the lips +which lent themselves so easily to scorn were tremulous. She was just +his age, and womanhood was only a step across the threshold for her.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I do. Let me carry your bucket for you."</p> + +<p>She had hung the little wooden piggin under the drip of the spring and +it was full and running over. But when he had lifted it out for her, she +rinsed and emptied it.</p> + +<p>"I just set it there to cool some," she explained. "I'm goin' up to +Sunday Rock afte' huckleberries. Come and go 'long with me, Tom."</p> + +<p>He assented with a willingness as eager as it was un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>accountable. If she +had asked him to do a much less reasonable thing, he was not sure that +he could have refused.</p> + +<p>And as they went together through the wood, spicy with the June +fragrances, questions like those of the boyhood time thronged on him, +and he welcomed them as a return of at least one of the vanished +thrills—and was grateful to her.</p> + +<p>Why had he never before noticed that she was so much prettier than any +other girl he had ever seen? What was there in the touch of her hand to +make him feel like the iron in the forge fire—warm and glowing and +putty-soft and yielding? Other girls were not that way. Only a half-hour +since, Ardea Dabney had put her hand in his when she had said good-by, +and that feeling was the kind you have when you have climbed through +breathless summer woods to a high mountain top and the cool breeze blows +through your hair and makes you quietly glad and lifted-up and +satisfied.</p> + +<p>These were questions to be buried deep in the secret places, and yet he +had a curious eagerness to talk to Nan about them; to find out if she +could understand. But he could not get near to any serious or +confidential side of her. Her mood was playful, hilarious, daring. Once +she ran squirrel-like out on the bole of a great tree leaning to its +fall over the cliff, hung her piggin on a broken limb, and told him he +must go after it. Next it was a squeeze through some "fat-man's-misery" +crevice in the water-worn sandstone, with a cry to him to come on if he +were not a girl-boy. And when they were fairly under the overhanging +cliff face of Sunday Rock, she darted away, laughing back at him over +her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>shoulder, and daring him to follow her along a dizzy shelf half-way +up the crag; a narrow ledge, perilous for a mountain goat.</p> + +<p>This, as he remembered later, was the turning-point in her mood. In +imagination he saw her try it and fail; saw her lithe, shapely beauty +lying broken and mangled at the cliff's foot; and in three bounds he had +her fast locked in his restraining arms. She strove with him at first, +like a wrestling boy, laughing and taunting him with being afraid for +himself. Then—</p> + +<p>Tom Gordon, clean-hearted as yet, did not know precisely what happened. +Suddenly she stopped struggling and lay panting in his arms, and quite +as suddenly he released her.</p> + +<p>"Nan!" he said, in a swiftly submerging wave of tenderness, "I didn't go +to hurt you!"</p> + +<p>She sank down on a stone at his feet and covered her face with her +hands. But she was up again and turning from him with eyes downcast +before he could comfort her.</p> + +<p>"I ain't hurt none," she said gravely. And then: "I reckon we'd better +be gettin' them berries. It looks like it might shower some; and paw'll +kill me if I ain't home time to get his supper."</p> + +<p>Here was an end of the playtime, and Tom helped industriously with the +berry-picking, wondering the while why she kept her face turned from +him, and why his brain was in such a turmoil, and why his hands shook so +if they happened to touch hers in reaching for the piggin.</p> + +<p>But this new mood of hers was more unapproachable than the other; and it +was not until the piggin was filled <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>and they had begun to retrace their +steps together through the fragrant wood, that she let him see her eyes +again, and told him soberly of her troubles: how she was fifteen and +could neither read nor write; how the workmen's children in Gordonia +hooted at her and called her a mountain cracker when she went down to +buy meal or to fill the molasses jug; and, lastly, how, since her mother +had died, her father had worked little and drunk much, till at times +there was nothing to eat save the potatoes she raised in the little +patch back of the cabin, and the berries she picked on the mountain +side.</p> + +<p>"I hain't never told anybody afore, and you mustn't tell, Tom. But times +I'm scared paw 'll up and kill me when—when he ain't feelin' just +right. He's some good to me when he ain't red-eyed; but that ain't very +often, nowadays."</p> + +<p>Tom's heart swelled within him; and this time it was not the heart of +the Pharisee. There is no lure known to the man part of the race that is +half so potent as the tale of a woman in trouble.</p> + +<p>"Does—does he beat you, Nan?" he asked; and there was wrathful horror +in his voice.</p> + +<p>For answer she bent her head and parted the thick black locks over a +long scar.</p> + +<p>"That's where he give me one with the skillet, a year come Christmas. +And this,"—opening her frock to show him a black-and-blue bruise on her +breast,—"is what I got only day afore yisterday."</p> + +<p>Tom was burning with indignant compassion, and bursting because he could +think of no adequate way of expressing it. In all his fifteen years no +one had ever <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>leaned on him before, and the sense of protectorship over +this abused one budded and bloomed like a juggler's rose.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could take you home with me, Nan," he said simply.</p> + +<p>There was age-old wisdom in the dark eyes when they were lifted to his.</p> + +<p>"No, you don't," she said firmly. "Your mammy would call me a little +heathen, same as she used to; and I reckon that's what I am—I hain't +had no chanst to be anything else. And you're goin' to be a preacher, +Tom."</p> + +<p>Why did it rouse a dull anger in his heart to be thus reminded of his +own scarce-cooled pledge made on his knees under the shadowing cedars? +He could not tell; but the fact remained.</p> + +<p>"You hear me, Nan; I'm going to take care of you when I'm able. No +matter what happens, I'm going to take care of you," was what he said; +and a low rumbling of thunder and a spattering of rain on the leaves +punctuated the promise.</p> + +<p>She looked away and was silent. Then, when the rain began to come +faster: "Let's run, Tom. I don't mind gettin' wet; but you mustn't."</p> + +<p>They reached the great rock sheltering the barrel-spring before the +shower broke in earnest, and Tom led the way to the right. Half-way up +its southern face the big boulder held a water-worn cavity, round, and +deeply hollowed, and carpeted with cedar needles. Tom climbed in first +and gave her a hand from the mouth of the little cavern. When she was up +and in, there was room in the nest-like hollow, but none to spare. And +on the instant <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>the summer shower shut down upon the mountain side and +closed the cave mouth as with a thick curtain.</p> + +<p>There was no speech in that little interval of cloud-lowering and +cloud-lifting. The boy tried for it, would have taken up the confidences +where the storm-coming had broken them off; but it was blankly +impossible. All the curious thrills foregone seemed to culminate now in +a single burning desire: to have it rain for ever, that he might nestle +there in the hollow of the great rock with Nan so close to him that he +could feel the warmth of her body and the quick beating of her heart +against his arm.</p> + +<p>Yet the sleeping conscience did not stir. The moment of recognition was +withheld even when the cloud curtain began to lift and he could see the +long lashes drooped over the dark eyes, and the flush in the brown cheek +matching his own.</p> + +<p>"Nan!" he whispered, catching his breath; "you're—you're the—"</p> + +<p>She slipped away from him before he could find the word, and a moment +later she was calling to him from below that the rain was over and she +must hurry.</p> + +<p>He walked beside her to the door of the miserable log shack under the +second cliff, still strangely shaken, but striving manfully to be +himself again. The needed fillip came when the mountaineer staggered to +the threshold to swear thickly at his daughter. In times past, Tom would +quickly have put distance between himself and Tike Bryerson in the +squirrel-eyed stage of intoxication. But now his promise to Nan was +behind him, and the Gordon blood was to the fore.</p> + +<p>"It was my fault that Nan stayed so long," he said bravely; and he was +immensely relieved when Bryerson, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>making quite sure of his identity, +became effusively hospitable.</p> + +<p>"Cap'n Gordon's boy—'f cou'se; didn't make out to know ye, 't firs'. +Come awn in the house an' sit a spell; come in, I say!"</p> + +<p>Again, for Nan's sake, Tom could do no less. It was the final plunge. +The boy was come of abstinent stock, which was possibly the reason why +the smell of the raw corn liquor with which the cabin reeked gripped him +so fiercely. Be that as it may, he could make but a feeble resistance +when the tipsy mountaineer pressed him to drink; and the slight barrier +went down altogether when he saw the appealing look in Nan's eyes. +Straightway he divined that there would be consequences for her when he +was gone if the maudlin devil should be aroused in her father.</p> + +<p>So he put the tin cup to his lips and coughed and strangled over a +single swallow of the fiery, nauseating stuff; did this for the girl's +sake, and then rose and fled away down the mountain with his heart +ablaze and a fearful clamor as of the judgment trumpet sounding in his +ears.</p> + +<p>For now the sleeping conscience was broad awake and plying its merciless +dagger; now, indeed, he knew very well what he had done—what he had +been doing since that fatal moment at the barrel-spring when he had +fallen under the spell of Nan Bryerson's beauty; nay, back of that—how +the up-bubbling of zeal had been nothing more than wounded vanity; the +smoke of a vengeful fire of anger lighted by a desire to strike back at +those who had laughed at him.</p> + +<p>The next morning he came hollow-eyed to his break<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>fast, and when the +chance offered, besought his father to give him one of the many boy's +jobs in the iron plant during the summer vacation—asked and obtained.</p> + +<p>And neither the hotel on the mountain top nor the hovel cabin under the +second cliff saw him more the long summer through.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> + +<h3>A SISTER OF CHARITY</h3> + + +<p>It was just before the Christmas holidays, in his fourth year of the +sectarian school, that Tom Gordon was expelled.</p> + +<p>Writing to the Reverend Silas at the moment of Tom's dismissal, the +principal could voice only his regret and disappointment. It was a most +singular case. During his first and second years Thomas had set a high +mark and had attained to it. On the spiritual side he had been somewhat +non-committal, to be sure, but to offset this, he had been deeply +interested in the preparatory theological studies, or at least he had +appeared to be.</p> + +<p>But on his return from his first summer spent at home there was a marked +change in him, due, so thought Doctor Tollivar, to his association with +the rougher class of workmen in the iron mills. It was as if he had +suddenly grown older and harder, and the discipline of the school, +admirable as the Reverend Silas knew it to be, was not severe enough to +reform him.</p> + +<p>"It grieves me more than I can tell you, my dear brother, to be obliged +to confess that we can do nothing more for him here," was the concluding +paragraph of the principal's letter, "and to add that his continued +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>presence with us is a menace to the morals of the school. When I say +that the offense for which he is expelled is by no means the first, and +that it is the double one of gambling and keeping intoxicating liquors +in his room, you will understand that the good repute of Beersheba was +at stake, and there was no other course open to us."</p> + +<p>It was as well, perhaps, for what remained of Tom's peace of mind that +he knew nothing of this letter at the time of its writing. The long day +had been sufficiently soul-harrowing and humiliating. Since the morning +exercises, when he had been publicly degraded by having his sentence +read out to the entire school, he had spent the time in his room, +watched, if not guarded, by some one of the assistants. And now he was +to be shipped off on the night train like a criminal, with no chance for +a word of leave-taking, however much he might desire it.</p> + +<p>He was tramping up and down with his hands in his pockets, the Gordon +scowl making him look like a young thunder-cloud, when one of the +preceptors came to drive with him to the railroad station. It was the +final indignity, and he resented it bitterly.</p> + +<p>"I can make out to find my way down to the train without troubling you, +Mr. Martin," he burst out in boyish anger.</p> + +<p>"Doubtless," said the preceptor, quite unmoved. "But we are still +responsible for you. Doctor Tollivar wishes me to see you safely aboard +your train, and I shall certainly do so. Take the side stairway down, if +you please."</p> + +<p>The principal's buggy was waiting at the gate, and the preceptor drove. +Tom sat back under the hood with his overcoat across his knees. The +evening was freezing cold, with an edged wind, and the drive to the +sta<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>tion was a hilly mile. If it had been ten miles he would not have +moved or opened his lips.</p> + +<p>As it chanced, there were no other passengers for the train, which was a +through south-bound express. Tom was meaning to sit up all night and +think; and the most comfortless seat in the smoking-car would answer. +There would be the meeting with his father and mother in the morning, +and he thought he should not dare to let sleep come between. He had a +firm grip of himself now, and it must not be relaxed until that meeting +was over.</p> + +<p>But the preceptor had already stepped to the ticket window. "That +sleeping-car reservation for Thomas Gordon—have you secured it?" he +asked of the agent; and Tom heard the reply: "Lower ten in car number +two." That disposed of the seat in the smoker and the bit of penance, +and he was unreasonable enough to be resentful for favors.</p> + +<p>Hence, when the train came to a stand beside the platform, he went +straight to the Pullman, ignoring his keeper. But the preceptor followed +him to the car step, held out his hand coldly, and said: "I'm sorry for +you, Gordon. Good-by."</p> + +<p>Tom drew himself up stiffly, overlooking the extended hand.</p> + +<p>"'Good-by'—that is 'God be with you,' isn't it, Mr. Martin? I reckon +you don't mean that. Good night." And this is the way Thomas Jefferson +turned his back on three and a half years of Beersheba, with hot tears +in his eyes and an angry word on his lips.</p> + +<p>The Pintsch lights were burning brightly in the Pullman, and these—and +the tears—blinded him. Some of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>the sections in the middle of the car +were made down for the night, and while he was stumbling in the wake of +the porter over the shoes and the hand-bags left in the aisle, the train +started.</p> + +<p>"Lower ten, sah," said the black boy, and went about his business in the +linen locker. But Tom stood balancing himself with the swaying of the +car and staring helplessly at the occupant of lower twelve, a young girl +in a gray traveling coat and hat, sitting with her face to the window.</p> + +<p>"Why, you—somebody!" she exclaimed, turning to surprise him in the act +of glowering down on her. "Do you know, I thought there might be just +one chance in a thousand that you'd go home for Christmas, so I made the +porter tell me when we were coming to Beersheba. Why don't you sit +down?"</p> + +<p>Tom edged into the opposite seat and shook hands with her, all in +miserable, comfortless silence. Then he blurted out:</p> + +<p>"If I'd had any idea you were on this train, I'd have walked."</p> + +<p>Ardea laughed, and for all his misery he could not help remarking how +much sweeter the low voice was growing, and how much clearer the blue of +her eyes was under the forced light of the gas-globes. He had seen her +only two or three times since that blush-kindling noon at Crestcliffe +Inn. Their Paradise goings and comings had not coincided very evenly.</p> + +<p>"You are just the same rude boy, aren't you?" she said leniently. "Are +there no girls in Beersheba to teach you how to be nice?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean it that way," he hastened to say. "I'm <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>always saying the +wrong thing to you. But if you only knew, you wouldn't speak to me; much +less let me sit here and talk to you."</p> + +<p>"If I only knew what? Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge +for myself," she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the +memory whip to make him feel again that she was immeasurably his senior.</p> + +<p>"I'm expelled," he said bluntly.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" For a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out +of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady +drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When +it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand +again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and the slate-blue +eyes confirmed it.</p> + +<p>Tom hung his head, just as he had in the trying interview with Doctor +Tollivar. But he told her a great deal more than he had told the +principal.</p> + +<p>"It was this way: three of the boys came to my room to play +cards—because their rooms were watched. I didn't want to play—oh, I'm +none too good;"—this in answer to something in her eyes that made him +eager to tell her the exact truth—"I've done it lots of times. But that +night I'd been thinking—well, I just didn't want to, that's all. Then +they said I was afraid, and of course, that settled it."</p> + +<p>"Of course," she agreed loyally.</p> + +<p>"Wait; I want you to know it all," he went on doggedly. "When +Martin—he's the Greek and Latin, you know—slipped up on us, there was +a bottle of whisky on the table. He took down our names, and then he +pointed at the bottle, and said, 'Which one of you does <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>that belong +to?' Nobody said anything, and after it began to get sort of—well, kind +of monotonous, I picked up the bottle and offered him a drink, and put +it in my pocket. That settled <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"But it wasn't yours," she averred.</p> + +<p>His smile was a rather ferocious grin. "Wasn't it? Well, I took it, +anyway; and I've got it yet. Now see here: that's my berth over there +and I'm going over to it. You needn't let on like you know me any more."</p> + +<p>"Fiddle!" she said, making a face at him. "You say that like a little +boy trying, oh, so hard, to be a man. I'll believe you are just as bad +as bad can be, if you want me to; but you mustn't be rude to me. We +don't play cards or drink things at Carroll College, but some of us have +brothers, and—well, we can't help knowing."</p> + +<p>Tom was soberly silent for the space of half a hundred rail-lengths. +Then he said: "I wish I'd had a sister; maybe it would have been +different."</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"No, indeed, it wouldn't. You're going to be just what you are going to +be, and a dozen sisters wouldn't make any difference."</p> + +<p>"One like you would make a lot of difference." It made him blush and +have a slight return of the largeness of hands; but he said it.</p> + +<p>She laughed. "That's nice. You couldn't begin to say anything like that +the day you came up to Crestcliffe Inn. But I mean what I say. Sisters +wouldn't help you to be good, unless you really wanted to be good +yourself. They're just comfortable persons to have around when you are +taking your whipping for being naughty."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>"Well, that's a good deal, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Again she made the adorable little face at him. "Do you want me to be +your sister for a little while—till you get out of this scrape? Is that +what you are trying to say?"</p> + +<p>He took heart of grace, for the first time in three bad days. "Say, +Ardea; I'm hunting for sympathy; just as I used to a long time ago. But +you mustn't mix up with me. I'm not worth it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I suppose not; no boy is. But tell me; what are you going to do +when you get back to Paradise?"</p> + +<p>"Why—I don't know; I haven't thought that far ahead; go to work in the +iron plant and be a mucker all the rest of my life, I reckon."</p> + +<p>"How silly! You are nearly eighteen, now, aren't you?—and about six +feet tall?"</p> + +<p>"Both," he said briefly.</p> + +<p>"And all the way along you've been meaning to be a minister?"</p> + +<p>He gritted his teeth. "That's all over, now; I reckon it's been over for +a long time."</p> + +<p>"That is more serious. Does your mother know?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"She mustn't, Tom; it will just break her heart."</p> + +<p>"As if I didn't know!" he said bitterly. "But, Ardea, I haven't been +quite square with you. The way I told it about the cards and the whisky +you might think—"</p> + +<p>"I know what you are going to say. But it needn't make any all-the-time +difference, need it? You've been backsliding—isn't that what you call +it?—but now you are sorry, and—"</p> + +<p>"No; that's the worst of it. I'm not sorry, the way I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>ought to be. +Besides, after what I've been these last two years—but you can't +understand; it would just be mockery—mocking God. I told you I wasn't +worth your while."</p> + +<p>She smiled gravely. "You are such a boy, Tom. Don't you know that all +through life you'll have two kinds of friends: those who will stand by +you because they won't believe anything bad about you, and those who +will take you for just what you are and still stand by you?"</p> + +<p>He scowled thoughtfully at her. "Say, Ardea; I'd just like to know how +old you are, anyhow! You say things every once in a while that make me +feel as if I were a little kid in knee-breeches."</p> + +<p>She laughed in his face. "That is the rudest thing you've said yet! But +I don't mind telling you—since I'm to be your sister. I'll be seventeen +a little while after you're eighteen."</p> + +<p>"Haven't you ever been foolish, like other girls?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She laughed again, more heartily than ever. "They say I'm the silliest +tomboy in our house, at Carroll. But I have my lucid intervals, I +suppose, like other people, and this is one of them. I am going to stand +by you to-morrow morning, when you have to tell your father and +mother—that is, if you want me to."</p> + +<p>His gratitude was too large for speech, but he tried to look it. Then +the porter came to make her section down, and he had to say good night +and vanish.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> + +<h3>ON JORDAN'S BANK</h3> + + +<p>Ardea saw cause for increasing satisfaction in Thomas Jefferson the next +morning, when they sat together in section nine to give the porter a +chance to rehabilitate ten and twelve.</p> + +<p>He had grown so much surer of himself in the two years, and his manners +were gratefully improved. Also, she was constrained to admit—frank +glances of the slate-blue eyes appraising him—that he was developing +hopefully in the matter of good looks. The dust-colored hair of boyhood +had become a sort of viking yellow, and the gray eyes, so they should +not be overcast by trouble shadows, were honest and fearless.</p> + +<p>Then, too, the Gordon jaw was beginning to assert itself—square in the +angle and broad at the point of the chin, with a deep cleft to mark its +center. Ardea thought it would not be well, later on, for those who +should find that jaw and chin opposing them. There would certainly be +stubborn and aggressive resistance—and none too much mercy when the +fight should end.</p> + +<p>The improved manners were pleasantly apparent when the train reached +South Tredegar. There were twenty minutes for breakfast, and Tom +bestirred himself manfully, and as if the awkward day at Crestcliffe Inn +had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>never been; helping Ardea with her coat, steering her masterfully +through the crowd, choosing the fortunate seats at the most convenient +table, and commanding the readiest service in spite of the hurry and +bustle.</p> + +<p>Ardea marked it all with a little thrill of vicarious triumph, which was +straightway followed by a little pang personal. What had wrought the +change in him? Was it merely the natural chivalry of the coming man +breaking through the crust of boyish indifference to the social +conventions? Or was it one of the effects of the late plunge into +rebellious wickedness?</p> + +<p>She hoped it was the chivalry, but she had a vague fear that it was the +wickedness. There was a young woman among the seniors in Carroll College +who was old in a certain brilliant hardness of mind—a young woman with +a cynical outlook on life, and who was not always regardful of her +seed-sowing in fresher hearts. Ardea remembered a saying of hers, flung +out one evening in the college parlors when the talk of her group had +turned on the goodness of good boys: "Why can't you be sincere with +yourselves? Not one of you has any use for the truly good boy until +after he has learned how to respect you by being a bad boy. You haven't +been saying it in so many words, perhaps, but that is the crude fact." +Was this the secret of Tom's new acceptability? Ardea hoped it was +not—and feared lest it might be.</p> + +<p>When they were once more in the train, and the mile-long labyrinth of +the factory chimneys had been threaded and left behind, Thomas Jefferson +gave proof of another and still more gratifying change.</p> + +<p>"Say, Ardea," he began, "you said last night that you'd stand by me in +what I've got to face this morning. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>That's all right; and I reckon I'll +never live long enough to even it up with you. But, of course, you know +I'm not going to let you do it."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Because I'm not mean enough, or coward enough. After a while, if you +get a chance to sort of make it easier for mother—"</p> + +<p>"I'll do that, if I can," she promised quickly. "But I hope you are not +going to break her heart, Tom."</p> + +<p>"You can be mighty sure I'm not; if anything I can do now will help it. +But—but, say, Ardea, I can't go back and begin all over again. I should +be the meanest, low-down thing in all this world—and that's a +hypocrite."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Ardea, catching her breath. Her religion was very much a +matter of fact to her, and the thought of Tom—Martha Gordon's +son—stumbling in the plain path of belief was dismaying. "Why would you +have to be a hypocrite? Do you mean that you are not sure you ought to +be a minister?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that I don't know any more what I believe and what I don't +believe. I feel as if I'd just like to let myself alone on that side for +a while, and make everybody else let me alone. It seems—but you don't +know; a girl can't know."</p> + +<p>She smiled up at him, and the smile effaced some of the trouble furrows +between his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Last night you were telling me that I seemed ages older than you; what +is it that I can't know?"</p> + +<p>"Stumpings like mine,—a man's stumpings," he said, with a touch of the +old self-assurance. "You've swallowed your religion whole; it's the best +thing for a girl <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>to do, I reckon. But I've got to have whys and +wherefores; I've always had to have them. And there are no wherefores in +religion; just none whatever."</p> + +<p>She was plainly shocked. "O Tom!" she urged; "think of your mother!"</p> + +<p>"Thinking of her isn't going to change the value of pi any," he rejoined +soberly. "I suppose I've thought of her, and of what she wants me to be, +ever since the first day I went to Beersheba. The first two years I +tried, honestly tried. But it's no use. It appears like we've got so far +away from taw that we can't even see what-all we're aiming at. I've been +grinding theology till I'm fairly sick of the word, and I've learned +just one thing, Ardea, and that is that you can't prove a single theorem +in it."</p> + +<p>"But there are some things that don't appear to need any proof; one +seems to have been born knowing them. Don't you feel that way?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head slowly.</p> + +<p>"I used to think I did; but now I'm afraid I don't. I can't remember the +time when I wasn't asking why. Don't they teach you to ask why at +Carroll?"</p> + +<p>"Not in matters of—of conscience."</p> + +<p>"Well, they don't at Beersheba, when you come right down to it. And when +you do ask, they put you off with a text out of the Bible that, just as +like as not, doesn't come within a row of apple-trees of hitting the +mark. I remember one time I said something about the 'why' to Doctor +Tollivar. He sniffled—he <i>does</i> sniffle, Ardea—and said: 'Mr. Gordon, +I recommend that you read what Paul says to the Romans, fourteen and +twenty-three: "He that doubteth is damned." And you will <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>note the verb +in the original—<i>is damned</i>, present tense.' Do you happen to remember +the verse?"</p> + +<p>Ardea confessed ignorance, and he went on, with a lip-curl of contempt.</p> + +<p>"Well, the whole chapter is about being careful for the weak brother. +The Romans used to eat the flesh of the animals offered in the +sacrifices to the gods, and some of the Christian Romans didn't seem to +be strong enough or sensible enough to eat it as just plain, every-day +meat. They tangled it up with the idol worship. So Paul, or whoever it +was that wrote the chapter, said: 'He that doubteth is damned if he eat, +because he eateth not of faith,' that is, the Christian faith, I +suppose, which would teach him that the meat wasn't any the worse for +having been offered to a block of wood or stone called a god. Now, +honestly, Ardea, what would you think of a teacher who would +deliberately cut a verse in two in the middle and make his half of it +mean something else, just to put a fellow down?"</p> + +<p>"It doesn't seem quite honest," she could not help admitting.</p> + +<p>"Honest! It's low-down trickery. And they all do it. Last year when I +was going up to Beersheba I happened to sit in the same seat with a +Catholic priest. We got to talking, I don't remember just how, and I +said something about doubting the Pope's infallibility. Out pops the +same old text: 'My son, hear the words of the holy Apostle, Saint +Paul—" He that doubteth is damned!"' He was old enough to be my father, +but I couldn't help slapping the other half of the verse at him, and +saying that we'd most luckily escape because there wasn't any +dinner-stop for our train."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>The flippant tone of all this disheartened Thomas Jefferson's listener, +and a silence succeeded which lasted until the train had stormed around +the nose of Lebanon and the whistle was blowing for Gordonia. Then Tom +said: "I didn't mean to hurt you; but now you see why I can't go back +and begin all over again." And she nodded assent.</p> + +<p>There was no one at the station to meet the disgraced one, news of the +disaster at Beersheba being as yet only on the way. Thomas Jefferson was +rather glad of it; especially glad that there was no one from +Woodlawn—this was the name of the new home—to recognize him and ask +discomforting questions. But Ardea was expected, and the Dabney +carriage, with old Scipio on the box, was drawn up beside the platform.</p> + +<p>Tom put Ardea into the carriage and was giving her hand luggage to +Scipio when she called to him.</p> + +<p>"Isn't there any one here to meet you, Tom?"</p> + +<p>"They don't know I'm coming," he explained. Whereupon she quickly made +room for him, holding the door open. But he hung back.</p> + +<p>"I reckon I'd better ride on the box with Unc' Scipio," he suggested.</p> + +<p>"I am sure I don't know why you should," she objected.</p> + +<p>He told her straight; or at least gave her his own view of it.</p> + +<p>"By to-morrow morning everybody in Gordonia and Paradise Valley will +know that I'm home in disgrace. It won't hurt Unc' Scipio any if I'm +seen riding with him."</p> + +<p>It was the first time that he had been given to see the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>Dabney +imperiousness shining star-like in Miss Ardea's slate-blue eyes.</p> + +<p>"I wish you to get your hand-bag and ride in here with me," she said, +with the air of one whose wish was law. But when he was sitting opposite +and the carriage door was shut, she smiled companionably across at him +and added: "You foolish boy!"</p> + +<p>"It wasn't foolish," he maintained doggedly. "I know what I ought to +do—and I'm not doing it. Everybody around here knows both of us, and—"</p> + +<p>"Hush!" she commanded. "I refuse to hear another word. I said you were a +foolish boy, and it will be inexcusably impolite in you to prove that +you are not."</p> + +<p>Tom was glad enough to be silent; and it came to him, after a little, +that she was giving him a chance to pull himself together to meet the +ordeal that was before him. In all the misery of the moment—the misery +which belongs to those who ride to the block, the gallows or other +mortal finalities—he marveled that she could be a girl and still be so +thoughtful and far-seeing; and once again it made him feel young and +inadequate and awkwardly her inferior.</p> + +<p>At the Woodlawn gates she pulled the old-fashioned, check-strap signal, +and Scipio reined in his horses.</p> + +<p>"Are you quite sure you don't want me to go in with you?" she asked, +while Tom was fumbling the door-latch.</p> + +<p>He nodded and said: "There'll be trouble enough to go around among as +many as can crowd in, all right. But I can't let you."</p> + +<p>"Still, you won't say you don't want me?"</p> + +<p>"No; lying isn't one of the things I was expelled for. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>When I stand up +to my mother to tell her what I've got to tell her, I'd be glad if there +was a little fise-dog sniffling around to back me up. But I'm not going +to call in the neighbors—you, least of all."</p> + +<p>"You are disappointing me right along—and I'm rather glad," she said. +And then, almost wistfully: "You are going to be good, aren't you, Tom?"</p> + +<p>His look was so sober that it was well-nigh sullen. "I'm going to say +what I've got to say, and then hold my tongue if I have to bite it," he +answered. "Good-by; and—and a Merry Christmas, and—thank you."</p> + +<p>He shut the carriage door and gave Scipio the word to go on; and +afterward stood at the gate looking after the great lumbering ark on +wheels until it turned in at the Deer Trace driveway and was lost in the +winding avenue of thick-set evergreens. Then he let himself in at the +home gate, walking leaden-footed toward the ornate house at the top of +the knoll and wishing the distance were ten times as great.</p> + +<p>When he reached the house there was an ominous air of quiet about it, +and a horse and buggy, with a black boy holding the reins, stood before +the door. Tom's heart came into his mouth. The turnout was Doctor +Williams's.</p> + +<p>"Who's sick?" he asked of the boy who was holding the doctor's horse, +and his tongue was thick with a nameless fear.</p> + +<p>The black boy did not know; and Tom crept up the steps and let himself +in as one enters a house of mourning, breaking down completely when he +saw his father sitting bowed on the hall seat.</p> + +<p>"You, Buddy?—I'm mighty glad," said the man; and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>when he held out his +arms the boy flung himself on his knees beside the seat and buried his +face in the cushions.</p> + +<p>"Is she—is she going to die?" he asked; when the dreadful words could +be found and spoken.</p> + +<p>"We're hoping for the best, Buddy, son. It's some sort of a stroke, the +doctor says; it took her yesterday morning, and she hasn't been herself +since. Did somebody telegraph to you?"</p> + +<p>Tom rocked his head on the cushion. How could he add to the blackness of +darkness by telling his miserable story of disgrace? Yet it had to be +done, and surely no hapless penitent in the confessional ever emptied +his soul with more heartfelt contrition or more bitter remorse.</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon listened, with what inward condemnings one could only guess +from his silence. It was terrible! If his father would strike him, curse +him, drive him out of the house, it would be easier to bear than the +stifling silence. But when the words came finally they were as balm +poured into an angry wound.</p> + +<p>"There, there, Buddy; don't take on so. You're might' nigh a man, now, +and the sun's still risin' and settin' just the same as it did before +you tripped up and fell down. And it'll go on risin' and settin', too, +long after you and me and all of us have quit goin' to bed and gettin' +up by it. If it wasn't for your poor mammy—"</p> + +<p>"That's it—that's just it," groaned Tom. "It would kill her, even if +she was well."</p> + +<p>"Nev' mind; you're here now, and I reckon that's the main thing. If she +gets up again, of course she'll have to know; but we won't cross that +bridge till we <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>come to it. And Buddy, son, whatever happens, your old +pappy ain't goin' to believe that you'll be the first Gordon to die in +the gutter. You've got better blood in you than what that calls for."</p> + +<p>Tom felt the lightening of his burden to some extent; but beyond was the +alternative of suffering, or causing suffering. He had never realized +until now how much he loved his mother; how large a place she had filled +in his life, and what a vast void there would be when she was gone. He +was yet too young and too self-centered to know that this is the +mother-cross: to live for love and to be crowned and enthroned oftenest +in memory.</p> + +<p>For days,—days which brought back the boyhood agony of the time when he +had believed himself to be Ardea's murderer,—he went softly about the +house, sharing, with his father and his uncle, the watch in the +sick-room; doing what little there was to be done in dumb hopelessness, +and beating at times on the brazen gates of Heaven in sheer despair. +There was no answer to his prayers; in his inmost soul he knew there +would not be; but even in this the eternal query assailed him. Was it +for lack of faith that no whisper of reply came from the unseen world +beyond the veil? Or was it only because there was no ear to hear, no +voice to answer? He could not tell. He made sure he was doomed to live +and die, buffeting with these submerging waves of doubt—doubt of +himself on one hand, and of God on the other.</p> + +<p>In that time of sore trial, his Uncle Silas's forbearance wiped out many +a score of boyish resentment. There was no word of reproach, still less +the harsh arraignment and condemnation to which he began to look forward +on the day when Doctor Tollivar had announced <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>his purpose of writing +the facts to his brother in the faith. But Tom remarked that in the +daily morning and evening prayers his uncle spoke of him as a soul in +peril, and he wondered that this pointed reference, which once would +have stirred the pool of bitterness to its bottom, now left him unmoved +and immovable. Later, he knew it was because there was now no pool of +bitterness to be stirred; the spiritual well-springs had failed and +there was no water in them—either for healing or for penitential +cleansing.</p> + +<p>The fifth day after his home-coming was Christmas Eve. Late in the +afternoon, when the doctor had made his second visit and had gone away, +leaving no word of encouragement for the watchers, Tom left the house +and took the path that led up through the young orchard to the foot of +Lebanon.</p> + +<p>He was deep within the winter-stripped forest on the mountain side, +plunging upward through the beds of dry leaves in the little hollows, +when he met Ardea. She was coming down with her arms full of holly, and +for the moment he forgot his troubles in the keen pleasure of looking at +her. It had not occurred to him sooner to think of her as other than the +girl of his boyhood days, grown somewhat, as he himself had grown. But +now he saw that she was very beautiful.</p> + +<p>None the less, his greeting was a brotherly reproof.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what you're thinking of, tramping around on the +mountain alone," he said, frowning at her.</p> + +<p>"I have been thinking of you, most of the time, and wishing you could be +with me," she answered, so artlessly as to mollify him instantly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/illus03.png" width="400" height="554" +alt=""I have been wishing you could be with me"" +title=""I have been wishing you could be with me"" /> +<span class="caption">"I have been wishing you could be with me"</span> +</div> + +<p>"I ought to row you like smoke, but when you say things like that, I +can't. Don't you know you oughtn't to go projecting around in the woods +all alone?"</p> + +<p>"I have always done it, haven't I? And Hector was with me till a few +minutes ago, when he took it into his foolish old head to run after a +rabbit. Is your mother any better this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Sit down," he commanded abruptly. "I want to talk to you."</p> + +<p>She hung the bunch of holly on the twigged limb of a small oak and sat +down on a moss-covered rock. Tom sprawled at her feet in the dry leaves, +and for a little while he was silent.</p> + +<p>"You haven't told me yet how your mother is," she reminded him.</p> + +<p>"She is just the same; lying there so still that you have to look close +to see whether she is breathing. The doctor says that if there isn't a +change pretty soon, she'll die."</p> + +<p>"O Tom!"</p> + +<p>He looked up at her with the old boyish frown pulling his eyebrows +together.</p> + +<p>"She's been good to God all her life; what do you reckon He's letting +her die this way for?"</p> + +<p>It was a terrible question, made more terrible by the savage hardihood +that lay behind it. Ardea could not reason with him; and she felt +intuitively that at this crisis only reason would appeal to him. Yet she +could not turn him away empty-handed in his hour of need.</p> + +<p>"How can we tell?" she said, and there were tears in her voice. "We only +know that He does everything for the best."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>"Yes; that is what they tell us. But how are we going to <i>know</i>?" he +demanded.</p> + +<p>The girl's faith was as simple and confiding as it was defenseless under +any fire of argument.</p> + +<p>"I suppose we can't know, in your sense of the word. But we can +believe."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> can't," said Tom fiercely. "I can pretend to; I reckon I've been +pretending to all my life; but now I've got to a place where I can't +feel anything that I can't touch, nor hear anything that doesn't make a +noise, nor see anything that everybody else can't see. From what you've +said at different times, you seem to be able to do all these things. Do +you really believe?"</p> + +<p>"I hope I do," she answered, and her voice was low and very earnest. But +she would be altogether honest. "Perhaps you wouldn't call it 'belief +unto righteousness,' as your Uncle Silas would say. I've never thought +much about such things—in the way he says we ought to think about them. +They seem to me to be true, like the—well, like the stars and the +universe. You don't think about the universe all the time; but you know +it is there, and that you are a little, tiny fraction of it, yourself."</p> + +<p>But these were abstractions, and Tom's need was terribly concrete.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you mean you haven't been converted, and all that; never mind +about that. What I want to know is, did you ever ask God for anything +and get it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes; I ask Him for things every day, and get them. Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"No, not now. But are you sure the things you ask for are not things +that you'd get anyway?" he persisted.</p> + +<p>She was growing a little restive under the fire of re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>lentless +questions. There are modesties in religion as in morals,—inner shrines +to be defended at any and all costs. In the Crafts part of Thomas +Jefferson's veins ran the blood of those who had fought with the sword +in one hand and the Bible in the other, stabling their horses overnight +in the enemy's churches. Ardea rose and began to untangle the great +bunch of holly.</p> + +<p>"I think we had better be going," she said, ignoring his clenching +question. "Cousin Euphrasia gets nervous about me, sometimes, as you +made believe you were."</p> + +<p>He did not look around, or make any move toward getting up. But there +was a new note of hardness in his voice when he said: "I thought you'd +have to dodge, just like all the others, if I could only make out to +throw straight enough. 'Way down deep inside of you, you don't believe +God worries Himself much about what happens to us little dry leaves in +His big woods."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I do!—that is, I believe He cares. The things you spoke of are +things I might easily be deprived of; and I choose to believe that He +gives and continues them."</p> + +<p>He was quiet for a full minute, sitting with his knees drawn up to his +chin and his hands tightly clasped over them. When he looked up at her +his face was the face of one tormented.</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd ask Him to let my mother live!" he said brokenly. "I've +tried and tried, and the words just die in my mouth."</p> + +<p>There is a Mother of Sorrows in every womanly heart, to whom the appeal +of the stricken is never made in vain. Ardea saw only a boy-brother +crying out in his pain, and she dropped on her knees and put her arms +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>around his neck and wept over him in a pure transport of sisterly +sympathy.</p> + +<p>"Indeed and indeed I will help, Tom! And you mustn't let it drive you +out into the dark. You poor boy! I know just how it hurts, and I'm so +sorry for you!"</p> + +<p>He freed himself gently from the comforting arms, got up rather +unsteadily, and lifted her to her feet. Then the manly bigness of him +sent the hot blood to her cheeks and she was ashamed.</p> + +<p>"O Tom!" she faltered; "what must you think of me!"</p> + +<p>He turned to gather up the scattered holly.</p> + +<p>"I think God made you—and that was one time when His hand didn't +tremble," he said gravely.</p> + +<p>They had picked their way down the leaf-slippery mountain side and he +was giving her the bunch of holly at the Dabney orchard gate before he +spoke again. But at the moment of leave-taking he said:</p> + +<p>"How did you know what I needed more than anything else in all the +world, Ardea?"</p> + +<p>She blushed painfully and the blue eyes were downcast.</p> + +<p>"You must never speak of that again. I didn't stop to think. It's a +Dabney failing, I'm afraid—to do things first and consider them +afterward. It was as if we were little again, and you had fallen down +and hurt yourself."</p> + +<p>"I know," he acquiesced, with the same manly gentleness that had made +her ashamed. "I won't speak of it any more—and I'll never forget it the +longest day I live. Good-by."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>And he went the back way to his own orchard gate, plunging through the +leaf beds with his head down and his hands in his pockets, struggling as +he could to stem the swift current which was whirling him out beyond all +the old landmarks. For now he was made to know that boyhood was gone, +and youth was going, and for one intoxicating moment he had looked over +the mountain top into the Promised Land of manhood.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> + +<h3>NOËL</h3> + + +<p>The night was far spent and the Christmas dawn was graying in the +remotest east when Tom, sleeping in his clothes on a lounge before the +fire in the lower hall, roused himself and went noiselessly up stairs to +beg his father to go and lie down for a little while.</p> + +<p>There was a trained nurse from South Tredegar in charge of the +sick-room; but from the beginning the three—husband, brother and +son—had kept watch at the bedside of the stricken one. There was little +to be done; nothing, in fact; and the nurse would have spared them the +nights. Yet no one of the three would surrender his privilege.</p> + +<p>His father relieved, Tom mended the fire in the grate; and when he found +the nurse dozing in her chair, he woke her and persuaded her to go and +rest in the adjoining room, promising to call her instantly if she were +needed.</p> + +<p>Left alone with his mother, he tiptoed to the bedside and stood for many +minutes looking with sorrow-blurred eyes at the still, rigid face on the +pillow. It was terribly like death; so like, that more than once he laid +his hand softly on the bed-covering to make sure that she still +breathed. When he could bear it no longer, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>he crossed the room to the +western window, drawing the draperies and standing between them to stare +miserably out into the calm, starlit void. While he looked, a meteor +burned its way across the inverted bowl of the heavens, and its passing +kindled the embers of the inextinguishable fire.</p> + +<p><i>And, lo, the star ... came and stood over where the young child was.</i> +The curtains of the void were parted by invisible hands, and down the +long vista of the centuries he saw the familiar scene of the Nativity, +dwelt on so often and so faithfully in his childhood training that it +seemed almost like a part of the material scheme of the universe: the +Babe in the manger; the shepherds watching their flocks; the heavenly +host singing the triumphant anthem of the ages, <i>Glory to God in the +highest, and on earth, peace</i>; the star of Bethlehem shining serenely +above a world lying in darkness and in the shadow of death.</p> + +<p>Was it all true? or was it only a beautiful myth? If it were true, where +was the proof? Not in history, for this, the most wonderful and +miraculous thing in all the story of mankind, stands unrecorded save by +the pens of those who were themselves under the spell of it. In +subsequent marvels and wonder-workings?—he shook his head mournfully. +If any such there had been, those impartial witnesses who must have +known and should have spoken were silent, and now all the earth was +silent: storms rose in their fury and were calmed for no man's <i>Peace, +be still</i>; earthquakes engulfed pagan and Christian believer alike; all +nature was cruel, relentless, mechanical.</p> + +<p>Was there nothing then to reach down the ages from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>that Christmas +morning so long ago to make the beautiful first-century myth a +latter-day reality? Tom cast about him hopelessly. There was the +Church—one and indivisible, if the myth were true. The slow Gordon +smile gathered at the corners of his eyes. He remembered a thing his +mother had said to him long ago, when, in a moment of boyish confidence, +he had told her of the climb to Crestcliffe Inn and its purpose. +"Ardea's a dear girl, as the children of this world go, Thomas; she's +been right loving and kind to me since we've come to be such close +neighbors. But"—with a note of solemn warning in her voice—"you must +never forget that she's an Episcopalian, a lost soul, dead in forms and +ceremonies and trespasses and sins." So his mother scoffed at Ardea's +faith; and Ardea—no, she did not scoff, her contempt was too generous +for that; but it was there, just the same. And the Methodists +fellowshiped neither, and the Baptists excluded the Methodists, and the +Catholics retorted to the Protestant charge of apostasy with the +centuries-old cry of "heretics all"! Which of the scores of divisions +and subdivisions was the one true indivisible body of Christ? Tom shook +his head again. There was no hope of proof in the churches.</p> + +<p>And the world? He was only now verging on manhood, and he had seen +little of the world. But that little was frankly indifferent to the +things which, if they were worthy of belief, should shake an unsaved +world to its very foundations. Its people bought and sold, built houses +and laid up stores of the things that perish, grasped, overreached, did +what they listed. But for that matter, even those who professed to be +followers of the Christ, who asserted most loudly their belief in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>unproved things, fought and struggled and sinned in common with the +worldlings, as far as Tom could see.</p> + +<p>He turned from the window and from the vision, and went to stand with +his back to the flickering blaze in the grate. It was going to leave a +huge rift in his life when this thing, with all its rootings and +anchorings in childhood and boyhood, was torn out and cast aside. The +mere thought of it was appalling. What would there be to fill the void?</p> + +<p>As if the question had evoked them, alluring shapes began to rise out of +the depths. Ambition, though he knew it not by name, was the first that +beckoned. The craftsman's blood stirred to its reawakening: to know how, +and to do things; to compel the iron and steel and the stubborn forces +of nature. This would be worthwhile; but better still, he would learn to +be a leader of men. The magic vista opened again, but this time it +stretched away into the future, and he saw himself keeping step with the +ever-advancing march of progress—nay, even setting the pace in his own +corner of the vast field. His father was content to follow; he would +learn the trick of it and lead. The Farleys were said to be rich and +steadily growing richer—not out of Chiawassee Iron, to be sure, but in +others of their multifarious out-reachings; very good,—he would be +rich, too. What a Duxbury Farley could do, he would do; on a larger +scale and with a stubborner patience. He—</p> + +<p>It was a mere turning of the head that sent the air-castles tumbling and +left him choking in the dust of their dissolution. Something, he fancied +it was a noise or some slight movement, made him look quickly toward the +bed; and at sight of the still, white face among <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>the pillows, boyish +love—God Himself has made no stronger passion—swept doubt, distrust, +rebellion, worldly ambition, all, into the abyss of renunciation. He +went softly, groping because the quick tears blinded him, to kneel at +the bedside. She was his mother; for one thing she had lived and striven +and prayed; living or dying she must not, she should not, be +disappointed. And if his service must be of the lip and not of the +heart, she should never suspect, never, never!</p> + +<p>And so it came about that he knelt in the graying dawn of the Christmas +morning, with his soul in thick darkness, lifting the prayer that in +some form has shaped itself in all the ages on lips of trembling: "O +God, if there be a God, have mercy on my soul, if I have a soul!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2> + +<h3>THE BUBBLE, REPUTATION</h3> + + +<p>It was not until late in the afternoon of Christmas Day that Ardea was +able to slip away from her guests long enough to run over to apprise +herself of the condition of things at the Gordon house.</p> + +<p>Tom opened the door for her, and he made her come to the fire before he +would answer her questions. Even then he sat glowering at the cheerful +blaze as if he had forgotten her presence; and she was womanly enough, +or amiable enough, to let him take his own time. When he began, it was +seemingly at a great distance from matters present and pressing.</p> + +<p>"Say, Ardea; do you believe in miracles?" he asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>It was a large question to be answered offhand, but she broke the back +of it with a simple, "Yes."</p> + +<p>"How do you account for them? Did God make His laws so they could be +taken apart and put together again when some little human ant loses its +way on a grass stalk or drops its grain of sugar?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she confessed frankly. "I am not sure that I ever tried +to account for them; I suppose I have swallowed them whole, as you say I +have swallowed my religion."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>"Well, you believe in them, anyway," he said, "and that makes it easier +to hit what I'm aiming at. Do you reckon they stopped short in the +Apostles' time?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know that, either," she admitted.</p> + +<p>"You ought to know it, if you're consistent," he said, bluntly dogmatic. +"Any answer to any prayer would be a miracle."</p> + +<p>"Would it? I never happened to think of it that way."</p> + +<p>"It certainly would. You chop a tree in two and it falls; that's cause +and effect. If you ask God to make it stand up after it's cut in two, +and it does stand, that's a miracle."</p> + +<p>"You are the queerest boy," she commented. "I ran over here just for a +minute to ask how your mother is, and you won't tell me."</p> + +<p>"I'm coming to that," he rejoined gravely. "But I wanted to get this +other thing straightened out first. Now tell me this: did you pray for +my mother last night, like you said you would?"</p> + +<p>Once again he was offending the guardian of the inner shrines, and her +heightened color was not all the reflection of the ruddy firelight.</p> + +<p>"You can be so barbarously personal when you try, Tom," she protested. +And then she added: "But I did."</p> + +<p>"Well, the miracle was wrought. Early this morning mother came to +herself and asked for something to eat. Doctor Williams has been here, +and now he tells us all the things he wouldn't tell us before. It was +some little clot in one of the veins or arteries of the brain, and nine +times out of ten there is no hope."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>"O Tom!—and she will get well again?"</p> + +<p>"She has more chances to-day of getting well than she had last night of +dying—so the doctor says. But it's a miracle, just the same."</p> + +<p>"I'm so glad! And now I really must go home." And she got up.</p> + +<p>"No, sit down; I'm not through with you yet. I want to know what you +think about promises."</p> + +<p>She smiled and pushed her chair back from the soft-coal blaze in the +fireplace.</p> + +<p>"Don't you know you are a perfect 'old man of the sea,' Tom?"</p> + +<p>"That's all right; but tell me: is a bad promise better broken or kept?"</p> + +<p>"I am sure I couldn't say without knowing the circumstances. Tell me all +about it," and she resigned herself to listen.</p> + +<p>"It was at daybreak this morning. I was alone with mother, looking at +her lying there so still and helpless—dead, all but the little flicker +of breath that seemed just about ready to go out. It came over me all of +a sudden that I couldn't disappoint her, living or dead; that I'd have +to go on and be what she has always wanted me to be. And I promised +her."</p> + +<p>"But she couldn't hear you?"</p> + +<p>"No; it was before she came to herself. Nobody heard me but God; and I +reckon He wasn't paying much attention to anything I said."</p> + +<p>"Why do you say that?"</p> + +<p>"Because—well, because it wasn't the kind of a promise that makes the +angels glad. I said I'd go on and do it, if I had to be a hypocrite all +the rest of my life."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>"O Tom! would you have to be?"</p> + +<p>"That's the way it looks to me now. I told you the other day that I +didn't know what I believed and what I didn't believe. But I do know +some of the <i>don'ts</i>. For instance: if there is a hell—and I'm not +anyways convinced that there is—I don't believe—but what's the use of +cataloguing it? They'd ask me a string of questions when I was ordained, +and I'd have to lie like Ananias."</p> + +<p>She rose and met his gloomy eyes fairly.</p> + +<p>"Tom Gordon, if you should do that, you would be the wickedest thing +alive—the basest thing that ever breathed!"</p> + +<p>"That's about the way it strikes me," he said coolly. "So you see it +comes down to a case of big wicked or little wicked; it's been that way +all along. Did you know that one time I asked God to kill you?"</p> + +<p>She looked horrified, as was her undoubted right.</p> + +<p>"Why, of all things!" she gasped.</p> + +<p>"It's so. I took a notion that I'd be mad because your grandfather +brought you here to Paradise. And when you took sick—well, I reckon +there isn't any hell deeper or hotter than the one I frizzled in for +about four days that summer."</p> + +<p>It was too deep in the past to be tragic, and she laughed.</p> + +<p>"I used to think then that you were the worst, as well as the queerest, +boy I had ever seen."</p> + +<p>"And now you know it," he said. Then: "What's your rush? I'm not trying +to get rid of you now."</p> + +<p>"I positively must go back. We have company, and I ran away without +saying a word."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>"Anybody I know?" inquired Tom.</p> + +<p>"Three somebodies whom you know, or ought to know, very well: Mr. +Duxbury Farley, Mr. Vincent Farley, Miss Eva Farley."</p> + +<p>His eyes darkened suddenly.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know how under the sun they managed to get on your +grandfather's good side!" he grumbled.</p> + +<p>Ardea Dabney's expressive face mirrored dawning displeasure.</p> + +<p>"Why do you say that?" she retorted. "Eva was my classmate for years at +Miss De Valle's."</p> + +<p>He made a boyish face of disapproval, saying bluntly: "I don't care if +she was. You shouldn't make friends of them. They are not fit for you to +wipe your shoes on."</p> + +<p>For the second time since his home-coming, Tom saw the Dabney +imperiousness flash out; saw and felt it.</p> + +<p>"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Gordon! Less than an hour ago, +we were speaking of you, and of what happened at Beersheba. Mr. Farley +and his son both stood up for you."</p> + +<p>"And you took the other side, I reckon," he broke out, quite +unreasonably. It had not as yet come to blows between him and his +father's business associates, but it made him immeasurably dissatisfied +to find them on social terms at Deer Trace Manor.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I did, and perhaps I did not," she answered, matching his +tartness.</p> + +<p>"Well, you can tell them both that I'm much obliged to them for +nothing," he said, rising and going to the door with her. "They would be +mighty glad to see it patched up again and me back in the Beersheba +school."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>"Of course they would; so would all of your friends."</p> + +<p>"But they are not my friends. They have fooled my father, and they'll +fool your grandfather, if he doesn't watch out. But they can't fool me."</p> + +<p>He had opened the outer door for her, and she drew herself up till she +could face him squarely, slate-blue eyes flashing scornfully into sullen +gray.</p> + +<p>"That is the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to +say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson +Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva +Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for her +leave-taking, she turned her back on him and went swiftly across the two +lawns to the great gray house on the opposite knoll.</p> + +<p>For the first fortnight of his mother's convalescence Tom slept badly, +and his days were as the days of the accused whose sentence has been +suspended; jail days, these, with chains to clank when he thought of the +promise made in the gray Christmas dawn; with whips to flog him when the +respite grew shorter and the time drew near when his continued stay at +home must be explained to his mother.</p> + +<p>Ardea had gone back to Carroll the Saturday before New Year's, and there +was no one to talk to. But for that matter, he had cut himself out of +her confidence by his assault on the Farleys. Every morning for a week +after the Christmas-day clash, Scipio came over with the compliments of +"Mawsteh Majah," Miss Euphrasia, and Miss Dabney, and kindly inquiries +touching the progress of the invalid. But after New Year's, Tom remarked +that there were only the Major and Miss Euphrasia to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>send compliments, +and despair set in. For out of his boyhood he had brought up +undiminished the longing for sympathy, or rather for a burden-bearer on +whom he might unload his troubles, and Ardea had begun to promise well.</p> + +<p>It was on a crisp morning in the second week of January when the +prolonged agony of suspense drove him to the mountain. His mother was +sitting up, and was rapidly recovering her strength. His father had gone +back to his work in the iron plant, and his uncle was preparing to +return to his charge in South Tredegar. With Uncle Silas and the nurse +both gone, Tom knew that the evil hour must come speedily; and it was +with some half-cowardly hope that his uncle would break the ice for him +that he ran away on the crisp morning of happenings.</p> + +<p>With no particular destination in view, it was only natural that his +feet should find the familiar path leading up to the great boulder under +the cedars. He had not visited the rock of the spring since the summer +day when he and Nan Bryerson had taken refuge from the shower in the +hollow heart of it, nor had he seen Nan since their parting at the door +of her father's cabin under the cliff. Rumor in Gordonia had it that +Tike Bryerson had been hunted out by the revenue officers; and, for +reasons which he would have found it difficult to declare in words, Tom +had been shy about making inquiries.</p> + +<p>For this cause an apparition could scarcely have startled him more than +did the sight of Nan filling her bucket at the trickling barrel-spring +under the cliff face of the great rock. He came on her suddenly at the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>end of the long climb up the wooded slopes, at a moment +when—semi-tropical growth having had two full seasons in which to +change the natural aspect of things—he was half-bewildered with the +unwonted look of the place. But there was no doubt about it; it was Nan +in the flesh, a little fuller in the figure, something less childish in +the face, but with all the fascinating, wild-creature beauty of the +child-time promise to dazzle the eye and breed riot in the brain of the +boy-man.</p> + +<p>When she stood up with a little cry of pleased surprise, the dark eyes +lighting quick joy-fires, and the welcoming blush mounting swiftly to +neck and cheek, Tom thought she was the most alluring thing he had ever +looked on. Yet the bottom stone in the wall of recrudescent admiration +was the certainty that he had found a sympathetic ear.</p> + +<p>"Did you know I was coming? Were you waiting for me, Nan?" he bubbled, +gazing into the great black eyes as eagerly as a freed dog plunges into +the first pool that offers.</p> + +<p>"How could I be knowin' to it?" she asked, taking him seriously, or +appearing to. "I nev' knowed school let out this time o' year."</p> + +<p>"It's let out for me, Nan," he said meaningly. "I came home—for +good—nearly three weeks ago. My mother has been sick. Didn't you hear +of it?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head gravely.</p> + +<p>"I hain't been as far as Paradise sence paw and me moved back from Pine +Knob, two months ago. I don't hear nothin' any more."</p> + +<p>In times long past, Tom, valley-born and of superior clay, used to be +scornful of the mountain dialect. Now, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>on Nan's lips, it charmed him. +It was blessedly reminiscent of the care-free days of yore.</p> + +<p>"Say, Nan; I hope you haven't got to hurry home," he interposed, when +she stooped to lift the overflowing bucket. "I want to talk to you—to +tell you something."</p> + +<p>She looked up quickly, and there were scrolls unreadable in the black +eyes.</p> + +<p>"Air you a man now, Tom-Jeff, or on'y a boy like you used to be?" she +asked.</p> + +<p>Tom squared his broad shoulders and laughed.</p> + +<p>"I'm big enough to be in my own way a good deal of the time. I believe I +could muddy Sim Cantrell's back for him now, at arm-holts."</p> + +<p>But there was still a question in the black eyes.</p> + +<p>"Where's your preacher's coat, Tom-Jeff? I was allowin' you'd be wearin' +it nex' time we met up."</p> + +<p>"I reckon there isn't going to be any preacher's coat for me, Nan; +that's one of the things I want to talk to you about. Let's go over +yonder and sit down in the sun."</p> + +<p>The place he chose for her was a flat stone half embedded in the +up-climbing slope beyond the great boulder. She sat facing the path and +the spring, listening, while Tom, stretched luxuriously on a bed of dry +leaves at her feet, told her what had befallen; how he had been turned +out of Beersheba, and what for; how, all the former things having passed +away, he was torn and distracted in the struggle to find a footing in +the new order.</p> + +<p>In the midst of it he had a feeling that she was only dimly +apprehending; that some of his keenest pains—most of them, perhaps—did +not appeal to her. But there was comfort in her bodily presence, in the +listen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>ing ear. It was a shifting of the burden in some sort, and there +be times when the humblest pack animal may lighten a king's load.</p> + +<p>His fears touching her understanding, or her lack of it, were confirmed +when he had reached a stopping-place.</p> + +<p>"They-all up yonder in that school where you was at hain't got much +sense, it looks like to me," was her comment. "You're a man growed now, +Tom-Jeff, and if you want to play cards or drink whisky, what-all +business is it o' their'n?"</p> + +<p>He smiled at her elemental point of view; laughed outright when the +significance of it struck him fairly. But it betokened allegiance of a +kind to gladden the heart of the masculine tyrant, and he rolled the +declaration of fealty as a sweet morsel under his tongue.</p> + +<p>"You stand by your friends, right or wrong, don't you, girl?" he said, +in sheerest self-gratulation. "That's what I like in you. You asked me a +little while back if I was a man or a boy; I believe you could make a +man of me, Nan, if you'd try."</p> + +<p>He was looking up into her face as he said it and the change that came +over her lighted a strange fire in his blood. The black eyes kindled it, +and the red lips, half parted, blew it into a blaze. His face flushed +and he broke the eye-hold and looked down. In their primal state, when +Nature mothered the race, the man was less daring than the woman.</p> + +<p>"If you'd said that two year ago," she began, in a half-whisper that +melted the marrow in his bones. "But you was on'y a boy then; and now I +reckon it's too late."</p> + +<p>"You mean that you don't care for me any more, Nan? I know better than +that. You'd back me if I had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>come up here to tell you that I'd killed +somebody. Wouldn't you, now?"</p> + +<p>He waited overlong for his answer. There were sounds in the air: a +metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled +with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over +the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three +men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the +first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind +Tom, trembling, shaking with terror.</p> + +<p>"Hide me, Tom-Jeff! Oh, for God's sake, hide me, quick!" she panted. +"Lookee there!"</p> + +<p>He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which +drained the barrel-spring. They were too far away to be recognizable to +him, and since they were stopping momently to examine the pipe, there +was good hope of an escape unseen.</p> + +<p>Tom waited breathless for the propitious instant when the tapping of the +pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When +it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of +the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, and rolled swiftly +after her.</p> + +<p>Before she could rise he had picked her up and was dragging her to the +climbing point under the lip of the boulder cave.</p> + +<p>"Up with you!" he commanded, making a step of his hand. "Give me your +foot and then climb to my shoulder—quick!" But she drew back.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can't!" she gasped. "I—I'm too skeered!"</p> + +<p>Tom's brows went together in the Gordon frown. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>Bone-meltings and +blood-firings apart, he was neither a fool nor a dastard, and he was +older now than on that day when the storm had driven them to take refuge +in the heart of the great rock. And since he had decided that the cavern +was only big enough for one, he had meant to put Nan up, going himself +to meet the intruders to make sure that they should not discover her. +But her trembling fit—a new and curious thing in the girl who used to +make his flesh creep with her reckless daring—spoiled the plan.</p> + +<p>"Can't you climb up?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>She shook her head despairingly, and he lost no time in trying to +persuade her. Jumping to catch the lip of the cavern's mouth, he +ascended cat-like, and a moment later he had drawn her up after him.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what got the matter with you all at once," he said +severely, when they were crowded together in the narrow rock cell; and +then, without waiting for her answer: "You stay here while I drop down +and keep those fellows away from this side of things."</p> + +<p>But it was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an +indistinct murmur of voices testified. The girl had another trembling +fit when she heard them, and Tom's wonder was fast lapsing into contempt +or something like it.</p> + +<p>"Oh-h-h!" she shuddered. "Do you reckon they saw us, Tom-Jeff?"</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't wonder," he whispered back unfeelingly. "We could see them +plain enough."</p> + +<p>"He'll kill me, for shore, Tom-Jeff! O God!"</p> + +<p>Tom's lip curled. The wolf does not mate with the jackal. Not all her +beauty could atone for such spirit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>less cringing. Love would have pitied +her, but passion is not moved by qualities opposite to those which have +evoked it.</p> + +<p>"Then you know them—or one of them, at least," he said. "Who is he?"</p> + +<p>She would not tell; and since the murmur of voices was still plainly +audible, she begged in dumb-show for silence. Whereupon Tom shut his +mouth and did not open it again until the sound of the voices had died +away and the fainter tappings of the hammers on the pipe-line advertised +the retreat of the inspection party.</p> + +<p>"They're gone now," he said shortly. "Let's get out of here before we +stifle."</p> + +<p>But a second time ill chance intervened. Tom had a leg over the brink +and was looking for a soft leaf bed to drop into, when the baying of a +hound broke on the restored quiet of the mountain side. "Oh, dang it +all!" said Tom heartily, and drew back into hiding.</p> + +<p>The girl's ague fit of fear had passed, and she seemed less concerned +about the equivocal situation than a girl should be; at least, this is +the way Tom's thought was shaping itself. He tried to imagine Ardea in +Nan's place, but the thing was baldly unimaginable. A daughter of the +Dabneys would never run and cower and beg to be hidden at the possible +cost of her good name. And Nan's word did not help matters.</p> + +<p>"What makes you so cross to me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked, when he drew back +with the impatient exclamation. "I hain't done nothin' to make you let +on like you hate me, have I?"</p> + +<p>"I don't hate you," said Tom, frowning. "If I did, I shouldn't care." +Just then the hound burst out of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>laurel thicket on the brow of the +lower slope, running with its nose to the ground, and he added: "That's +Japhe Pettigrass's dog; I hope to goodness he isn't anywhere behind it."</p> + +<p>But the horse-trader was behind the dog; so close behind that he came +out on the continuation of the pipe-line path while the hound was still +nosing among the leaves where Tom had lain sunning himself and telling +his tale of woe.</p> + +<p>"Good dog—seek him! What is it, old boy?" Pettigrass came up, patted +the hound, and sat down on the flat stone to look on curiously while the +dog coursed back and forth among the dead leaves. "Find him, Cæsar; find +him, boy!" encouraged Japheth; and finally the hound pointed a sensitive +nose toward the rift in the side of the great boulder and yelped +conclusively.</p> + +<p>"D'ye reckon he climm up thar', Cæsar?" Pettigrass unfolded his long +legs and stood up on the flat stone to attain an eye-level with the +interior of the little cavern. Tom crushed Nan into the farthest cranny, +and flattened himself lizard-like against the nearer side wall. The +horse-trader looked long and hard, and they could hear him still talking +to the dog.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> +<p>"You're an old fool, Cæsar—that's about what you are—and Solomon +allowed thar' wasn't no fool like an old one. But you needn't to swaller +that whole, old boy; I've knowed some young ones in my time—sometimes +gals, sometimes boys, sometimes <i>both</i>. But thar' ain't no 'possum up +yonder, Cæsar; you've flew the track this time, for certain. Come on, +old dog; let's be gettin' down the mountain."</p> + +<p>The baying dog and the whistling man were still within hearing when Tom +swung Nan lightly to the ground and dropped beside her. No word was +spoken until she had emptied and refilled her bucket at the spring, then +Tom said, with the bickering tang still on his tongue:</p> + +<p>"Say, Nan, I want to know who it is that's going to kill you if he +happens to find you talking to me."</p> + +<p>She shook her head despondently. "I cayn't nev' tell you that, +Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know why you can't."</p> + +<p>"Because he'd shore kill me then."</p> + +<p>"Then I'll find out some other way."</p> + +<p>"What differ' does it make to you?" she asked; and again the dark eyes +searched him till he was fain to look away from her.</p> + +<p>"I reckon it doesn't make any difference, if you don't want it to. But +one time you were willing enough to tell me your troubles, and—"</p> + +<p>"And I'll nev' do it nare 'nother time; never, <i>never</i>. And let me tell +you somethin' else, Tom-Jeff Gordon: if you know what's good for you, +don't you nev' come anigh me again. One time we usen to be a boy and a +girl together; you're nothin' but a boy yet, but I—oh, God, +Tom-Jeff—I'm a woman!"</p> + +<p>And with that saying she snatched her bucket and was gone before he +could find a word wherewith to match it.</p> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2> + +<h3>ABSALOM, MY SON!</h3> + + +<p>Three days after the episode at the barrel-spring, Tom went afield +again, this time to gather plunging courage for the confession to his +mother—a thing which, after so many postponements, could be put off no +longer.</p> + +<p>It was more instinct than purpose that led him to avoid the mountain. +Thinking only of the crying need for solitude, he crossed the pike and +the creek and rambled aimlessly for an hour or more over that farther +hill ground beyond the country-house colony where he had once tried to +break the Dabney spirit in a weary, bedraggled little girl with +colorless lips and saucer-like eyes.</p> + +<p>When he recrossed the stream, at a point some distance above the +boy-time perch pools, the serving foot-log chanced to be that used by +the Little Zoar folk coming from beyond the boundary hills. Following +the windings of the path he presently came out in the rear of the +weather-beaten, wooden-shuttered church standing, blind-eyed and silent, +in week-day desertion in the midst of its groving of pines.</p> + +<p>The spot was rife with memories, and Tom passed around the building to +the front, treading softly as on hallowed ground. Whatever the future +might hold for him, there would always be heart-stirring recollections +to cluster about this frail old building sheltered by the whispering +pines.</p> + +<p>How many times he had sat on the steps in the door-opening days of +boyhood, looking out across the dusty pike and up to the opposing steeps +of Lebanon lifting the eastward horizon half-way to the zenith! +Leg-weariness, and a sudden desire to live over again thus much of the +past turning him aside, he went to sit on the highest of the three +steps, with the brooding silence for company and the uplifted landscape +to revamp the boyhood memories.</p> + +<p>The sun had set for Paradise Valley, but his parting rays were still +volleying in level lines against the great gray cliffs at the top of +Lebanon, silvering the bare sandstone, blackening the cedars and pines +by contrast, and making a fine-lined tracery, blue on gray, of the twigs +and leafless branches of the deciduous trees. Off to the left a touch of +sepia on the sky-line marked the chimneys of Crestcliffe Inn, and +farther around, and happily almost hidden by the shouldering of the +hills, a grayer cloud hung over the industries at Gordonia.</p> + +<p>Nearer at hand were the wooded slopes of the Dabney lands—lordly +forests culled and cared for through three generations of land-lovers +until now their groves of oaks and hickories, tulip-trees and sweet-and +black-gums were like those the pioneers looked on when the land was +young.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson had the appreciative eye and heart of one born with a +deep and abiding love of the beautiful in nature, and for a time the +sunset ravishment possessed him utterly. But the blurring of the +fine-lined traceries and the fading of the silver and the gray into +twilight purple broke the spell. The postponed resolve was the thing +present and pressing. His mother was as nearly recovered as she was ever +likely to be, and his uncle would be returning to South Tredegar in the +morning. The evil tale must be told while there was yet one to whom his +mother could turn for help and sympathy in her hour of bitter +disappointment.</p> + +<p>He was rising from his seat on the church step when he heard sounds like +muffled groans. Recovering quickly from the first boyish startle of fear +oozing like a cool breeze blowing up the back of his neck, he saw that +the church door was ajar. By cautiously adding another inch to the +aperture he could see the interior of the building, its outlines taking +shape when his eyes had become accustomed to darkness relieved only by +the small fan-light over the door. Some one was in the church: a man, +kneeling, with clasped hands uplifted, in the open space fronting the +rude pulpit. Tom recognized the voice and withdrew quickly. It was his +Uncle Silas, praying fervently for a lost sheep of the house of Israel.</p> + +<p>In former times, with grim rebellion gripping him as it gripped him now, +Tom would have run away. But there was a prompting stronger than +rebellion: a sudden melting of the heart that made him remember the +loving-kindnesses, and not any of the austerities, of the man who was +praying for him, and he sat down on the lowest step to wait.</p> + +<p>The twilight was glooming to dusk when Silas Crafts came out of the +church and locked the door behind him. If he were surprised to find Tom +waiting for him, he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>made no sign. Neither was there any word of +greeting passed between them when he gathered his coat tails and sat +down on the higher step, self-restraint being a heritage which had come +down undiminished from the Covenanter ancestors of both. A little +grayer, a little thinner, but with the deep-set eyes still glowing with +the fires of utter convincement and the marvelous voice still +unimpaired, Silas Crafts would have refused to believe that the passing +years had changed him; yet now there was kinsman love to temper solemn +austerity when he spoke to the lost sheep—as there might not have been +in the sterner years.</p> + +<p>"The way of the transgressor is hard, grievously hard, Thomas. I think +you are already finding it so, are you not?"</p> + +<p>Tom shook his head slowly.</p> + +<p>"That doesn't mean what it used to, to me, Uncle Silas; nothing means +the same any more. It's just as if somebody had hit that part of me with +a club; it's all numb and dead. I'm sure of only one thing now: that is, +that I'm not going to be a hypocrite after this, if I can help it."</p> + +<p>The man put his hand on the boy's knee.</p> + +<p>"Have you been that all along, Thomas?"</p> + +<p>"I reckon so,"—monotonously. "At first it was partly scare, and partly +because I knew what mother wanted. But ever since I've been big enough +to think, I've been asking why, and, as you would say, doubting."</p> + +<p>Silas Crafts was silent for a moment. Then he said:</p> + +<p>"You have come to the years of discretion, Thomas, and you have chosen +death rather than life. If you go on as you have begun, you will bring +the gray hairs of your <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>father and mother in sorrow to the grave. +Leaving your own soul's salvation out of the question, can you go on and +drag an upright, honorable name in the dust and mire of degradation?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tom definitely. "And what's more, I don't mean to. I don't +know what Doctor Tollivar wrote you about me, and it doesn't make any +difference now. That's over and done with. You haven't been seeing me +every day for these three weeks without knowing that I'm ashamed of it."</p> + +<p>"Ashamed of the consequences, you mean, Thomas. You are not repentant."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am, Uncle Silas; though maybe not in your way. I don't allow to +make a fool of myself again."</p> + +<p>The preacher's comment was a groan.</p> + +<p>"Tom, my boy, if any one had told me a year ago that a short twelvemonth +would make you, not only an apostate to the faith, but a shameless liar +as well—"</p> + +<p>Tom started as if he had been struck with a whip.</p> + +<p>"Hold on, Uncle Silas," he broke in hardily. "That's mighty near a +fighting word, even between blood kin. When have you ever caught me in a +lie?"</p> + +<p>"Now!" thundered the accusing voice; "this moment! You have been giving +me to understand that your sinful rebellion at Beersheba was the worst +that could be charged against you. Answer me: isn't that what you want +me to believe?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care whether you believe it or not. It's so."</p> + +<p>"It is not so. Here, at your own home, when your mother had just been +spared to you by the mercies of the God whose commandments you set at +naught, you have been wallowing in sin—in crime!"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>Tom locked his clasped fingers fast around his knees and would not open +the flood-gates of passion.</p> + +<p>"If I can sit here and take that from you, it's because it isn't so," he +replied soberly.</p> + +<p>Silas Crafts rose, stern and pitiless.</p> + +<p>"Wretched boy! Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted. Where were +you on Wednesday morning?"</p> + +<p>Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and +his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of +conscious guilt.</p> + +<p>"I was at home most of the time; between ten o'clock and noon I was on +the mountain."</p> + +<p>"Alone?"</p> + +<p>"No; not all of the time."</p> + +<p>"You say well. There were three of you: a hardened, degraded boy, a +woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you."</p> + +<p>The flood-gates of passion would hold no longer.</p> + +<p>"It's a lie!" he denied hotly. "I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at +the spring under the big rock, and—"</p> + +<p>"Well, go on," said the inexorable voice.</p> + +<p>Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness. He saw how +incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation +it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him. So he took +refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened +guilt.</p> + +<p>"I don't have to defend myself!" he burst out. "If you can believe I'm +that low-down, you're welcome to!" Then, abruptly: "I reckon we'd better +be going on home; they'll be waiting dinner for us at the house."</p> + +<p>He got on his feet with that, but the accuser was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>still confronting +him, with the dark eyes glowing and a monitory finger pointed to detain +him.</p> + +<p>"Not yet, Thomas Gordon; there is a duty laid on me. I had hoped and +prayed that I might find you repentant; you are not repentant."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tom, and he confirmed it with an oath in sheer bravado.</p> + +<p>"Peace, miserable boy! God is not mocked. Your father has a letter from +Doctor Tollivar; the doors of Beersheba are open to you again. I had +hoped—" The pause was not for effect. It was merely that the man and +the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge. "It +breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it. You have put it out of your +power to say with the Psalmist, 'I will wash mine hands in innocency: so +will I compass thine altar, O Lord.' You must give up all thoughts of +going back to Beersheba."</p> + +<p>"Don't trouble yourself," said Tom, with more bravado. "I wouldn't go +back there if it was the only place on earth." Then suddenly: "Who was +it that told on me, Uncle Silas?"</p> + +<p>"Never mind about that. It was one who could have no object in +misstating the fact—which you have not denied. Let us go home."</p> + +<p>The mile walk down the pike, lying white and ghostly under the +starlight, was paced in silence, man and boy striding side by side and +each busy with his own thoughts. As they were passing the Deer Trace +gates a loose-jointed figure loomed black against the palings, and the +voice of Japheth Pettigrass said:</p> + +<p>"Why, howdy, Brother Silas! Thought ye'd gone back to South Tredegar. +When are ye comin' out to Little <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>Zoar ag'in to give us another o' them +old-fashioned, spiritual times o' refreshin' from the presence of the +Lord?"</p> + +<p>Silas Crafts turned short on the scoffer.</p> + +<p>"Why do you ask that, Japheth Pettigrass? The Lord will deal with you, +one day."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I reckon so; that's what makes me say what I does. There's a heap +o' sinners left round here, yit, Brother Silas. There's the Major, for +one, and I know you're always countin' me in for another. I dunno but +you might snatch me as a brand from the burnin', if you could make out +to try it one more lap around the you'se. I been thinkin' right +p'intedly about—"</p> + +<p>But the preacher had cut in with a curt "Good night," and was gone, with +his broad-shouldered nephew at his heels; and the horse-trader went on, +with the stars for his audience.</p> + +<p>"Look at that, now, will ye? Old Brother Silas is gettin' right smart +tetchy with the passin' of the years; he is, so. But he's a powerful +preacher. If anybody ever gits me for a star in their crown, it's +Brother Silas ag'inst the field, even money up."</p> + +<p>Pettigrass turned and was groping for the gate latch when a hand fell on +his shoulder, and a clutch that was more than half a blow twirled him +about to face the roadway. He was doubling his fists for defense when he +saw who his assailant was.</p> + +<p>"Why, Tom-Jeff! what's ailin' ye?" he began; but Tom broke in with +gaspings of rage.</p> + +<p>"Japhe Pettigrass, what did you think you saw last Wednesday forenoon up +yonder at Big Rock Spring on the mountain? Tell it straight, this time, +or by the God <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>you don't believe in, I'll dig the truth out of you with +my bare hands!"</p> + +<p>"Sho, now, Tom-Jeff; don't you git so servigrous over nothin'. I didn't +see nothin' but a couple o' young fly-aways playin' 'possum in a hole in +the big rock. And I'll leave it to you if I didn't call Cæsar off and go +my ways, jes' like I'd like to be done by."</p> + +<p>"Yes," snarled Tom, dog-mad and furious in this second submergence of +the wave of wrath. "Yes; and then you came straight down here and told +my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front, +clutching a stone snatched up from the metaling of the pike as he ran. +"If I should break your face in with this, Japhe Pettigrass, it wouldn't +be any more than you've earned!"</p> + +<p>"By gravy! <i>I</i> tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff? You show me the man +'at says I done any such low-down thing as that, and I'll frazzle a +fifty-dollar hawsswhip out on his ornery hide—I will, so. Say, boy; you +don't certain'y believe that o' me, do ye?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to believe it of you, Japhe," quavered Tom, as near to +tears as the pride of his eighteen years would sanction. "But somebody +saw and told, and made it a heap worse than it was." He leaned over the +top of the wall and put his face in the crook of his elbow, being +nothing better than a hurt child, for all his bigness.</p> + +<p>"Well, now; I wouldn't let a little thing like that gravel me, if I was +you, Tom-Jeff," said Pettigrass, turned comforter. "Nan's a mighty +pretty gal, and you ort to be willin' to stand a little devilin' on her +account—more especially as you've—"</p> + +<p>Tom put up his arm as if to ward a blow.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>"Don't you say it, Japhe, or I'll go mad again," he broke out.</p> + +<p>"I ain't sayin' nothin'. But who do you reckon it was told on you? Was +there anybody else in the big woods that mornin'?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; there were three men testing the pipe-line. We both saw them, and +Nan was scared stiff at sight of one of them; that's why I put her up in +that hole."</p> + +<p>"Who was the man?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I didn't recognize any of them—they were too far off +when I saw them. And afterward, Nan wouldn't tell me."</p> + +<p>"Did any of 'em see you and Nan?"</p> + +<p>"I thought not. Nan was sitting on the flat rock where you stood and +looked into the cave, and when she began to whimper, I flung her over +into the leaves and ran with her to the hole."</p> + +<p>"H'm," said Japheth. "When you find out who that feller is that Nan's +skeered of, you can lay your hand on the man that told Brother Silas on +you. But I wouldn't trouble about it none, if I was you. You've got a +long ways the best of him, whoever he is, and—"</p> + +<p>But Tom had turned to go home, feeling his way by the wall because the +angry tears were still blinding him, and the horse-trader fell back into +his star-gazing.</p> + +<p>"Law, law," he mused; "'the horrible pit an' the miry clay.' What a +sufferin' pity it is we pore sinners cayn't dance a little now and ag'in +'thout havin' to walk right up and pay the fiddler! Tom-Jeff, there, +now, he's a-thinkin' the price is toler'ble high; and I don't know but +it is—I don't know but what it is."</p> + +<p>The dinner at Woodlawn that night was a stiff and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>comfortless meal, as +it had come to be with the taking on of four-tined forks and the other +conventions for which an oak-paneled dining-room in an ornate brick +mansion sets the pace. Caleb Gordon was fathoms deep in the mechanical +problems of the day's work, as was his wont. Silas Crafts was abstracted +and silent. Tom's food choked him, as it had need under the sharp stress +of things; and the convalescent housemother remained at table only long +enough to pour the coffee.</p> + +<p>Tom excused himself a few minutes later, and followed his mother to her +room, climbing the stair to her door, leaden-footed and with his heart +ready to burst.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Thomas?" said the gentle voice within, answering his tap +on the panel. "Come in, son; come in and sit by my fire. It's right +chilly to-night."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson entered and placed his chair so that she could not see +him without turning, and for many minutes the silence was unbroken. Then +he began, as begin he must, sometime and in some way.</p> + +<p>"Mammy," he said, feeling unconsciously for the childish phrase, "Mammy, +has Uncle Silas been telling you anything about me?"</p> + +<p>She gave a little nod of assent.</p> + +<p>"Something, Thomas, but not a great deal. You have had some trouble with +Doctor Tollivar?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I have known that for some little time. Your uncle might have told me +more, but I wouldn't let him. There has never been anything between us +to break confidence, Tom. I knew you would tell me yourself, when the +time came."</p> + +<p>"I have come to tell you to-night, mammy. You must <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>hear it all, from +beginning to end. It goes back a long way—back to the time when you +used to let me kneel with my head in your lap to say my prayers; when +you used to think I was good...."</p> + +<p>The fire had died down to a few glowing masses of coke on the grate bars +when he had finished the story of his wanderings in the valley of dry +bones. Through it all, Martha Gordon had sat silent and rigid, her thin +hands lying clasped in her lap, and her low willow rocking-chair barely +moving at the touch of her foot on the fender.</p> + +<p>But when it was over; when Tom, his voice breaking in spite of his +efforts to control it, told her that he could walk in the way she had +chosen for him only at the price a conscious hypocrite must pay, she +reached up quickly and took him in her arms and wept over him as those +who sorrow without hope, crying again and again, <i>"O my son Absalom, my +son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, +my son!"</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2> + +<h3>THE AWAKENING</h3> + + +<p>Once in a lifetime for every youngling climbing the facile or difficult +slope of the years there comes a day of realization, of a sudden +extension of vision, of Rubicon-crossing from the hither shore of joyous +and irresponsible adolescence to that further one of conscious +grapplings with the adult fact.</p> + +<p>For Thomas Jefferson, grinding tenaciously in the Boston technical +school, whither he had gone late in the winter of Beersheban discontent, +the stream-crossing fell in the spring of the panic year 1893, what time +he was twenty-one, a quarter-back on his college eleven, fit, hardy, +studious and athletic; a pace-setter for his fellows and the pride of +the faculty, but still little more than an overgrown, care-free boy in +his outlook on life. Glimpses there had been over into the Promised Land +of manhood, but the brimming cup of college work and play quaffed in +health-giving heartiness is the elixir of youth. The speculative habit +of the boy slept in the college undergraduate. The days were full, each +of the things of itself, and if Tom looked forward to the workaday +future,—as he did by times,—the boyish impatience to be at it was +gone. Chiawassee Consolidated was moderately prosperous; the home +letters were mere <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>chronicles of sleepy Paradise. The skies were clear, +and the present was acutely present. Tom studied hard and played hard; +ate like an ogre and slept like a log. And when he finally awoke to find +himself stumbling bewildered on the bank of the epoch-marking Rubicon, +he was over and across before he could realize how so narrow a stream +should fill so vast a chasm.</p> + +<p>The call of the ferryman—to keep the figure whole—was a letter from +his father, a letter longer than the commonplace chronicles, and +painfully written with the mechanic hand on both sides of a company +letter-head. Caleb Gordon wrote chiefly of business. Mutterings of the +storm of financial depression were already in the air. Iron, more +sensitive than the stock-market, was the barometer, and its readings in +the Southern field were growing portentous. Within the month several of +the smaller furnaces had gone out of blast, and Chiawassee Consolidated, +though still presenting a fair exterior, was, Caleb feared, rotten at +heart. What would Tom advise?</p> + +<p>Tom found this letter in his mail-box one evening after a strenuous day +in the laboratory; and that night he sat up with the corpse of his later +boyhood, though he was far enough from putting it that way. His father +was in trouble, and the letter was a call for help. It seemed vastly +incredible. Thomas Jefferson's ideal of steady courage, of invincible +human puissance, was formed on the model of the stout-hearted old +soldier who had fought under Stonewall Jackson. What a trumpet blast of +alarm must have sounded to make such a man turn to a raw recruit for +help!</p> + +<p>Suddenly Tom began to realize that he was no longer <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>a raw recruit, a +boy to ride care-free while men were afoot and fighting. It astounded +him that the realization had been so slow in arriving. It was as if he +had been led blindfolded to the firing line, there to have the bandage +plucked from his eyes by an unseen hand. Tumultuously it rushed on him +that he was weaponed as the men of his father's generation could not be; +that his hand could be steady and his heart fearless under threatenings +that might well shake the courage of the old man who had borne only the +burden and the heat of the day of smaller things.</p> + +<p>He sat long with his elbows on the study table and his chin resting on +his hands. The room was small but the walls gave before the steady gaze +of the gray eyes, and Tom saw afar; down a vistaed highway wherein a +strong man walked, leading a boy by the hand. Swiftly, with a click like +that of the mechanism in a kinetoscope, the scene changed. The highway +was the same, but now the man's steps had grown cautious and uncertain +and he was groping for the shoulder of the boy, as for a leaning-staff.</p> + +<p>Tom broke the eye-hold on the vision and sprang up to pace the narrow +limits of the study.</p> + +<p>"It's up to me," he mused, "and I'd like to know what I've been thinking +of all this time. Why, pappy's old! he was forty before I was born. And +I've been up here taking it easy and having all sorts of a good time, +while he's been playing Sindbad to Duxbury Farley's Old Man of the Sea. +Coming, pappy!" he shouted; and forthwith flung himself down at the +table to write a letter that was to put new life into a weary old man +who was fighting against odds in the far-away Southland.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>The lone soldier was to take heart of grace, remembering that he had a +son; remembering also that the son was now a man grown, stout of arm, +steady of head, and otherwise fighting-fit. If the storm should come, +the watchword must be to hold on all, keeping steerage-way on the +Chiawassee Consolidated craft at all hazards. The June examinations were +not far off, and these disposed of, the man-son would be ready to lay +hold. Meanwhile, let Caleb Gordon, in his capacity of principal minor +stock-holder, insist on a full and exact statement of the company's +affairs, and—here the new manhood asserted itself boldly—let that +statement, or a copy of it, come to Boston by the first mail.</p> + +<p>To this letter there was a grateful reply in which Tom read with a smile +his father's half-bewildered attempt to get over to the new point of +view. It began, "Dear Buddy," and ended, "Your affectionate pappy," but +there was man-to-man matter between the salutation and the signature. +The inquiry into the affairs of Chiawassee Consolidated had revealed +little or nothing more than the general manager already knew. The +president had turned the inquiring stock-holder over to Dyckman, the +bookkeeper, with instructions to give Mr. Gordon the fullest possible +information, and:</p> + +<p>"Dyckman slid out of it, smooth and easy-like," Caleb's letter went on. +"He allowed he was <i>mighty</i> busy, right about then. Wouldn't I just make +myself at home and examine the books for myself? I reckon that was about +what Farley wanted him to do. I'm no book expert, and I couldn't make +head or tail out of Dyckman's spider tracks. Looks to me like all the +books are good for is to keep people from finding where the com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>pany is +at. What little I found out, young Norman told me. He says we're in a +hole, and the first wagon-load of dirt that comes along will bury us out +of sight."</p> + +<p>Tom, driven now with the closing work of the college year, yet took time +to write another heartening letter to the hard-pressed old soldier. It +had been his good fortune to win the Clarkson prize for crucible tests, +and to have gained thereby a speaking acquaintance with the +multimillionaire iron king who had founded it. Mr. Clarkson did not +believe that the financial storm would grow to panic size. As for +himself, Tom thought the hazard was less in the times than in the +Farleys. Father Caleb was to keep his finger on the pulse of the main +office, wiring Boston at the first sign of its weakening.</p> + +<p>The junior metallurgical was in the thick of the June examinations when +the catastrophe befell. The brief story of it came to Tom in the first +dictated letter he had ever received from his father, and the tremulous +shakiness of the signature pointed eloquently to the reason. Chiawassee +Consolidated was out of blast—"temporarily suspended," in the pleasant +euphemism of the elder Farley; the force, clerical and manual, was +discharged, with only Dyckman left in the deserted South Tredegar +offices to answer questions; and the three Farleys, with Major Dabney, +Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, were to spend the summer in Europe.</p> + +<p>Caleb wrote in some bitterness of spirit. Though the Gordon holdings in +the company, increased from time to time as the iron-master had +prospered, amounted to a little more than a third of the capital stock, +everything had been done secretly. The general manager's own no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>tice of +the shut-down had come in the posted "Notice to Employees." When the +Farleys should leave, he would be utterly helpless; on their return they +could repudiate everything he might do in their absence. Meantime, ruin +was imminent. The affairs of the company were in the utmost confusion; +the treasury was empty, and there were no apparent assets apart from the +idle plant. Creditors were pressing; the discharged workmen, led by the +white coal-miners, were on the verge of riot; and Major Dabney's +royalties on the coal lands were many months in arrears.</p> + +<p>Tom rose promptly to the occasion, and in all the stress of things found +space to wonder how it chanced that he knew instinctively what to do and +how to go about it. Before his information was an hour old a rush +telegram had gone to his father, asking from what port and by what +steamer the Farleys would sail; asking also that certain documents be +sent to a given New York address by first mail.</p> + +<p>This done, he laid the exigencies frankly before the examiners in the +technical school, praying for such lenity as might be extended under the +circumstances. Since all things are possible for an honor-man, beloved +of those whose mission it is to grind the human weapon to its edge, the +difficulties in this field vanished. Mr. Gordon could go on with the +examinations until his presence was needed elsewhere; and after the +stressful moment was passed he could return and finish.</p> + +<p>Tom, the boy, could not have gone on. It would have been blankly +impossible. But Tom, the man, was a new creature. While waiting for the +reply to his telegram, he plunged doggedly back into the scholastic +whirlpool, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>kicked, struggled, strangled, got his head above water, and +found, vastly to his own amazement, that the thing was actually +compassable in spite of the mighty distractions.</p> + +<p>The return telegram from Gordonia was a day late. Knowing diplomacy only +by name, Caleb Gordon had gone directly to Dyckman for information +regarding the Farleys' movements. Dyckman was polite to the general +manager, but unhappily he knew nothing of Mr. Farley's plans. Caleb +tried elsewhere, and the little mystery thickened. At his club, Mr. +Farley had spoken of taking a Cunarder from Boston; to a friend in the +South Tredegar Manufacturers' Association he had confided his intention +of sailing from Philadelphia. But at the railway ticket office he had +engaged Pullman reservations for six persons to New York.</p> + +<p>This last was conclusive, as far as it went; and Japheth Pettigrass +supplied the missing item. The Dabneys and the Farleys made one party, +and Japheth knew the steamer and the sailing date.</p> + +<p>"Party will sail by White Star Line Baltic, New York, to-morrow. New +York address, Fifth Avenue Hotel. Papers to you care 271 Broadway by +mail yesterday," was the message which was signed for by the doorkeeper +at the mines and metallurgy examination room in Boston, late in the +forenoon of the second day; and Tom looked at the clock. Nothing would +be gained by taking a train which would land him in New York late in the +evening; so he plunged again into the examination pool and thought no +more of Chiawassee Consolidated until his paper on qualitative analysis +had been neatly folded, docketed and handed to the examiner.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>The hands of his watch were pointing to eight o'clock the following +morning when Tom made his way through the throng in the Grand Central +station and found a cab. The sailing hour of the <i>Baltic</i> was ten, and +he picked his cabman accordingly.</p> + +<p>"I shall want you for a couple of hours, and it's double fare if you +don't miss. 271 Broadway, first," was his fillip for the driver; and he +was speedily rattling away to the down-town address.</p> + +<p>The taking of the cab was his first mistake, and he discovered it before +he had gone very far. Time was precious, and the horse, pushed to the +police limit, was too slow. Tom signaled his Irishman.</p> + +<p>"Get me over to the Elevated, and then go to Madison Square and wait for +me," he ordered; and by this change of conveyance he obtained his mail +and won back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel by late breakfast time.</p> + +<p>From that on, luck was with him. The Farleys, father and son, were in +the lobby of the hotel, waiting for the others to come down to the café +breakfast. Tom saw them, confronted them, and went at things very +concisely.</p> + +<p>"I have come all the way from Boston to ask for a few minutes of your +time, Mr. Farley," he said to the president. "Will you give it to me +now?"</p> + +<p>"Surely!" was the genial reply, and the promoter signed to his son and +drew apart with the importunate one. "Well, go on, my boy; what can I do +for you at this last American moment?—some message from your good +father?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tom shortly; "it's from me, individually. You know in what +shape you have left things at home; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>they've got to be stood on their +feet before you go aboard the <i>Baltic</i>."</p> + +<p>"What's this—what's this? Why, my dear young man! what can you possibly +mean?"—this in buttered tones of the gentlest expostulation.</p> + +<p>"I mean just about what I say. You have smashed Chiawassee Consolidated, +and now you are going off to leave my father to hold the bag. Or rather +I should say, you are taking the bag with you."</p> + +<p>The president was visibly moved.</p> + +<p>"Why, Thomas—you must be losing your mind! You've—you've been studying +too hard; that's it—the term work up there in Boston has been too much +for you."</p> + +<p>"Cut it out, Mr. Farley," said Tom savagely, all the Gordon fighting +blood singing in his veins. "You've got a thing to do, and it is going +to be done before you leave America. Will you talk straight business, or +not?"</p> + +<p>The president adjusted his eye-glasses, and gave this brand-new Gordon a +calm over-look.</p> + +<p>"And if I decline to discuss business matters with a rude school-boy?" +he intimated mildly.</p> + +<p>"Then it will be rather the worse for you," was the defiant rejoinder. +"Acting for my father and the minority stock-holders, I shall try to +have you and your son held in America, pending an expert examination of +the company's affairs."</p> + +<p>It was a long shot, with a thousand chances of missing. If there was +anything criminal in the Farley administration, the evidences were +doubtless well buried. But Tom was looking deep into the shifty blue +eyes of his antagonist when he fired, and he saw that he had not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>wholly +missed. None the less, the president attempted to carry it off lightly.</p> + +<p>"What do you think of this, Vincent?" he said, turning to his son. "Here +is Tom Gordon—our Tom—talking wildly about investigations and arrests, +and I don't know what all. Shall we give him his breakfast and send him +back to school?"</p> + +<p>Tom cut in quickly before Vincent could make a reply.</p> + +<p>"If you're sparring to gain time, it's no use, Mr. Farley. I mean what I +say, and I'm dead in earnest." Then he tried another long shot: "I tell +you right now we've had this thing cocked and primed ever since we found +out what you and Vincent meant to do. You must turn over the control of +Chiawassee Consolidated, legally and formally, to my father before you +go aboard the <i>Baltic</i>, or—<i>you don't go aboard</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Let me understand," said the treasurer, cutting in. "Are you accusing +us of crime?"</p> + +<p>"You will find out what the accusation is, later on," said Tom, taking +yet another cartridge from the long-range box. "What I want now is a +plain, straightforward yes or no, if either of you is capable of saying +it."</p> + +<p>The president took his son aside.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose Dyckman has been talking too much?" he asked hurriedly.</p> + +<p>Vincent shook his head.</p> + +<p>"You can't tell ... it looks a little rocky. Of course, we had a right +to do as we pleased with our own, but we don't want to have an +unfriendly construction put on things."</p> + +<p>"But they can't do anything!" protested the president. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>"Why, I'd be +perfectly willing to turn over my private papers, if they were asked +for!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course. But there would be misconstruction. There is that +contract with the combination, for example; we had a right to manipulate +things so we'd have to close down, and it might not transpire that we +made money by doing it. But, on the other hand, it might leak out, and +there'd be no end of a row. Then there is another thing: there is +somebody behind this who is bigger than the old soldier or this young +foot-ball tough. It's too nicely timed."</p> + +<p>"But, heavens and earth! you wouldn't turn the property over to Gordon, +would you?"</p> + +<p>The younger man's smile was a mere contortion of the lips. "It's a +sucked orange," he said. "Let the old man have it. He may work a miracle +of some sort and pull out alive. I should call it a snap, and take him +up too quick. If he wins out, so much the better for all concerned. If +he doesn't, why, we left the property entirely in his hands, and he +smashed it. Don't you see the beauty of it?"</p> + +<p>The president wheeled short on Tom.</p> + +<p>"What you may think you are extorting, my dear boy, you are going to get +through sheer good-will and a desire to give your father every chance in +the world," he said blandly. "We discussed the plan of electing him +vice-president, with power to act, before we left home, but there seemed +to be some objections. We are willing to give him full control—and this +altogether apart from any foolish threats you have seen fit to make. +Bring your legal counsel to Room 327 after breakfast and we will go +through the formalities. Are you satisfied?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>"I shall be a lot better satisfied after the fact," said Tom bluntly; +and he turned away to avoid meeting Major Dabney and the ladies, who +were coming from the elevator to join the two early risers. He had seen +next to nothing of Ardea during the three Boston years, and would +willingly have seen more. But the new manhood was warning him that time +was short, and that he must not mix business with sentiment. So Ardea +saw nothing but his back, which, curiously enough, she failed to +recognize.</p> + +<p>Picking up his cab at the curb, Tom had himself driven quickly to the +office of the corporation lawyer whose name he had obtained from Mr. +Clarkson the day before, and with whom he had made a wire appointment +before leaving Boston. The attorney was waiting for him, and Tom stated +the case succinctly, adding a brief of the interview which had just +taken place at the hotel.</p> + +<p>"You say they agreed to your proposal?" observed the lawyer. "Did Mr. +Farley indicate the method?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Have you a copy of the by-laws of your company?"</p> + +<p>Tom produced the packet of papers received that morning from his father, +and handed the required pamphlet to Mr. Croswell.</p> + +<p>"H'm—ha! the usual form. A stock-holders' meeting, with a resolution, +would be the simplest way out of it; but that can't be held without the +published call. You say your father is a stock-holder?"</p> + +<p>"He has four hundred and three of the original one thousand shares. I +hold his proxy."</p> + +<p>The attorney smiled shrewdly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>"You are a very remarkable young man. You seem to have come prepared at +all points. I assume that you are acting under your father's +instructions?"</p> + +<p>"Why, with his approval, of course," Tom amended. "But it is my own +initiative, under the advice of a good friend of mine in Boston, thus +far. Oh, I know what I'm about," he added, in answer to the latent +question in the lawyer's eyes.</p> + +<p>"You seem to," was the laconic reply. "Now let us see exactly what it is +that you want Mr. Farley to concede."</p> + +<p>"I want him to turn over the entire control of the company's business, +operative and financial, to my father."</p> + +<p>The lawyer smiled again.</p> + +<p>"That is a pretty big asking. Have you any reason to suppose that Mr. +Farley will accede to any such demand?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I have very good reasons, but I reckon we needn't go into them +here and now. The time is too short; their liner sails at ten."</p> + +<p>The attorney tilted his chair and became reflective.</p> + +<p>"The simple way out of it is to have Mr. Farley constitute your father, +or yourself, his proxy to vote his stock at a certain specified meeting +of the stock-holders, which can be called later. Of course, with a +majority vote of the stock, you can rearrange matters to suit +yourselves, subject only to Mr. Farley's disarrangement when he resumes +control of his holdings. How would that serve?"</p> + +<p>"You're the doctor," said Tom bruskly. "Any way to get him out and get +my father in."</p> + +<p>"It's the simplest way, as I say. But if the property <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>is worth anything +at all, I should think Mr. Farley would fight you to a finish before he +would consent."</p> + +<p>"You fix up the papers, Mr. Croswell, and I'll see to it that he +consents. Make the proxy run in my father's name."</p> + +<p>The attorney went into another room and dictated to his stenographer. +While he was absent, Tom sat, watch in hand, counting the minutes. It +was his first pitched battle with the Farleys, and victory promised. But +with industrial panic in the air the victory threatened to be of the +Cadmean sort, and a scowl of anxiety gathered between his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Never mind," he gritted, with an out-thrust of the square jaw; "it's +the Gordon fighting chance; and pappy says that's all we've ever +asked—it's all I'm going to ask, anyway. But I wish Ardea wasn't going +over with that crowd!"</p> + +<p>The conference in Room 327, Fifth Avenue Hotel, held while the carriages +were waiting to take the steamer party to the pier, was brief and +businesslike. Something to Tom's surprise, Major Dabney was present; and +a little later he learned, with a shock of resentment, that the Major +was also a minority stock-holder in the moribund Chiawassee +Consolidated. The master of Deer Trace was as gracious to Caleb Gordon's +son as only a Dabney knew how to be.</p> + +<p>"Nothing could give me greateh pleasure, my deah boy, than this plan of +having youh fatheh in command at Gordonia," he beamed, shaking Tom's +hand effusively. "I hope you'll have us all made millionaihs when we get +back home again; I do, for a fact, suh."</p> + +<p>Tom smiled and shook his head.</p> + +<p>"It looks pretty black, just now, Major. I'm afraid we're in for rough +weather."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; not that, son; a meah passing cloud." And then, with the big +Dabney laugh: "You youngstehs oughtn't to leave it for us old fellows to +keep up the stock of optimism, suh. A word in youh ear, young man: if +these heah damned Yankee rascals would quit thei-uh monkeying right heah +in Wall Street, the country would take on a new lease of life, suh; it +would for a fact," and he said it loudly enough to be heard in the +corridor.</p> + +<p>During this bit of side play the attorney was laboring with the two +Farleys, and Tom, watching narrowly, saw that there was a hitch of some +kind.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he demanded, turning shortly on the trio at the table.</p> + +<p>The lawyer explained. Mr. Farley thought the plan proposed was entirely +too far-reaching in its effects, or possible effects. He was willing to +delegate his authority as president of the company to Caleb Gordon in +writing. Would not that answer all the requirements?</p> + +<p>Tom asked his attorney with his eyes if it would answer, and read the +negative reply very clearly. So he shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, turning his back on the Major and lowering his voice. "We +must have your proxy, Mr. Farley."</p> + +<p>"And if I don't choose to accede to your demands?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think we need to go over that ground again," said Tom coolly. +"If you don't sign that paper, you'll miss your steamer."</p> + +<p>The president glanced toward the open door, as if he half expected to +see an officer waiting for him. Then he said, "Oh, well; it's as broad +as it is long," and signed.</p> + +<p>The leave-takings were brief, and somewhat constrained, save those of +the genial Major. Tom pleaded business, further business, with his +attorney, when the Major would have had him wait to tell the ladies +good-by; hence he saw no more of the tourists after the conference broke +up.</p> + +<p>Not to lose time, Tom took a noon train back to Boston, first wiring his +father to try and keep things in <i>statu quo</i> at Gordonia for another +week at all hazards. Winning back to the technical school, he plunged +once more into the examination whirlpool, doing his best to forget +Chiawassee Consolidated and its mortal sickness for the time being, and +succeeding so well that he passed with colors flying.</p> + +<p>But the school task done, he turned down the old leaf, pasting it firmly +in place. Telegraphing his father to meet him, on the morning of the +third day following, at the station in South Tredegar, he allowed +himself a few hours for a run up the North Shore and a conference with +the Michigan iron king; after which he turned his face southward and was +soon speeding to the battle-field through a land by this time shaking to +its industrial foundations in the throes of the panic earthquake.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2> + +<h3>ISSACHAR</h3> + + +<p>In accordance with Tom's telegram, Caleb Gordon met his son at the +station in South Tredegar, and they went together to breakfast in one of +the dining-rooms of the Marlboro. Tom's heart burned within him when he +saw how the late stress of things had aged his father, and for the first +time in his life he opened a vengeance account: if the Farleys ever came +back there should be reckoning for more than the looting of Chiawassee +Consolidated. But this was only the primitive under-thought. Uppermost +at the moment was the joy of the young soldier arrived, fit and +vigorous, on his maiden battle-field.</p> + +<p>"You don't know how good it seems to get back home again, pappy," he +said, over the bacon and eggs. "I've been grinding pretty hard this +year, and now it's over, I feel as if I could whip my weight in +wildcats, as Japheth used to say. By the way, how is Japheth?"</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon smiled in spite of the corroding industrial anxieties.</p> + +<p>"Japheth's going to surprise you some, I reckon, son; he's gone and got +religion."</p> + +<p>Tom put down his knife and fork.</p> + +<p>"Why, the old sinner!" he laughed. "How did that happen?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>"Oh, just about the way it always does," said Caleb slowly. "The spirit +moved your Uncle Silas to come out to Little Zoar and hold a protracted +meetin', and Japhe joined the mourners and was gathered into the fold."</p> + +<p>"Pshaw!" said Tom, in good-natured incredulity. "Why, the very meat and +marrow of his existence is his horse-trading; and who could swap horses +and tell the truth at the same time?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," was the doubtful reply. "But Brother Japheth allows +that's about what he aims to do. It's sort o' curious the way it works +out, too. About a week after the baptizin', Jim Bledsoe came down from +Pine Knob with a horse to swap. 'Long about sundown he met up with +Japhe, and struck him for a trade on a piebald that the Major wouldn't +let run in the same lot with the Deer Trace stock. They had it up one +side and down the other; Brother Japhe tryin' to tell Bledsoe that his +piebald was about the no-accountest horse in the valley, and Jim takin' +it all by contraries and gettin' more and more p'intedly anxious to +trade."</p> + +<p>"Well?" said Tom, enjoying his return to nature like any creature freed +of the urban cage.</p> + +<p>"They came to the trade, after a tolerable spell of it," Caleb went on, +"and the last thing I heard Japhe say was, 'now you recollect, Brother +Bledsoe, I done told you that there piebald's no account on the face of +the earth—a-lovin' of my neighbor like I promise' Brother Silas I +would.'"</p> + +<p>Tom laughed again. There was the smell of the good red soil in the +little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But +the under-thought laid hold on Japheth and his change of heart.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>"Japhe was about the last man in Paradise, always excepting Major +Dabney," he said half-musingly. "Haven't you often wondered what sort of +a maggot it is that gets into the human brain to give it the +superstitious twist?"</p> + +<p>Caleb's gentle frown was the upcast of paternal bewilderment, partly +prideful, partly disconcerting. He was not yet fully acquainted with +this young giant with the frank face, the sober gray eyes, and the +conscious grasp of himself. More than once since their meeting at the +steps of the Pullman car he had felt obliged to reassure himself by +saying, "This is Tom; this is my son." There were so many and such +marked changes: the quick, curt speech, caught in the Northland; the +nervous, sure-footed stride, and the athletic swing of the shoulders; +the easy manner and confident air, not of college-boy conceit, but of +the assurance of young manhood; and, lastly, this blunt right-about-face +in matters of religion. Caleb was not quite sure that this latter change +was entirely welcome.</p> + +<p>"Whereabouts did ye learn to call it superstition, son? Not at your +mammy's knee, leastwise," he said, in sober deprecation.</p> + +<p>Tom shook his head. "No; and not altogether at yours. But I guess I've +worked around to your point of view, after so long a time."</p> + +<p>"It's your mammy's faith, all the same, Buddy," said the father gravely. +"Let's not belittle it any more'n we can help."</p> + +<p>"I don't belittle it," was the quick response. "In some of its phases it +is grand—magnificent. We can't always be prying into the cause; the +effect is what <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>counts. And there is no denying that the fairy tale +which we call Christianity has built some of the most godlike heroes the +world has ever seen."</p> + +<p>"You're right sure now that it is a fairy story, son?" said the old man, +a little wistfully.</p> + +<p>"There is no doubt about that," was the decisive rejoinder. "There is +room for credulity only in ignorance. Any thinking person who is brought +face to face with the materialistic facts—"</p> + +<p>Caleb held up a toil-hardened hand.</p> + +<p>"Hold on, Buddy; you'll have to pick a place where the water deepens +sort o' gradually for the old man or you'll have him flounderin'. I +reckon I been sittin' up on the bank all my life, waitin' for somebody +to come along and pole the bottom for me in that pool."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tom definitively. "There isn't any bank to that pool. You're +in it, or you are out of it; one or the other. That was the notion I +took with me to Boston. I thought I'd get well up above the eternal +wrangle and look down on it—wouldn't believe, wouldn't disbelieve. It +can't be done. Jesus, Himself, said, if they've reported Him straight, +'He that is not with me is against me.'"</p> + +<p>"Well," said the father, still deprecating, "that's some farther along +than I've ever been able to get—not sayin' that I wouldn't be willin' +to go." And then: "You don't allow to argue with your mammy about these +things, do you, Tom?"</p> + +<p>Tom's rejoinder was gravely considerate.</p> + +<p>"It is a sealed book between us, now, pappy. She knows—and knows it +can't be helped. If I wasn't her son, I hope I should still be the last +person in the world <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>to try to shake her faith—or any one's, for that +matter. I have merely turned my own back—because I had to."</p> + +<p>The old man put down his coffee-cup and the look in his eyes was +half-appealing.</p> + +<p>"What was it turned you, son?—nothing I've ever said or done, I hope?"</p> + +<p>Tom shook his big blond head slowly.</p> + +<p>"No, not directly; though I suppose a man does go back to his father for +a measuring-stick. But indirectly you, and the other Gordons, are +responsible for the best there is in me—and that's the questioning +part. Given the doubt, I hunted till I found the man who could resolve +or confirm it."</p> + +<p>"Who was he?" inquired Caleb, willing to hear more particularly.</p> + +<p>"His name is Bauer—the man I've been rooming with. He is a German +biologist who was to have been educated for the Lutheran ministry. His +people made the capital mistake of sending him to Freiburg for a couple +of years as a preliminary, and, when they found out what the German +university had done for him, they sent him to Boston, under the +impression that the Puritan American city might correct some of his +materialism."</p> + +<p>Caleb smiled. "That ain't just the way we think of Boston over here," he +remarked.</p> + +<p>"No; and, of course, Bauer didn't change his point of view. We used to +have it up hill and down. I had Scripture—mother and the Beershebans +had taught me that—and Bauer had immense reading, flinty Dutch common +sense, and a huge lack of the reverence for the so-called sacred +subjects which seems to be ingrained <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>in every race but the Teutonic. I +fought hard, both for mother's sake and because it was the first time I +had ever met a man with his sword out on the other side."</p> + +<p>"Well?" said Caleb.</p> + +<p>"He downed me, horse, foot and artillery; made me realize as I never had +before what an absolute begging of the premises the entire Christian +argument is."</p> + +<p>"But how?" persisted the iron-master.</p> + +<p>"Held me up at the muzzle of the cold facts. For example: do you happen +to know that the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence go back only to +the fourth century, and are doubtless copies of copies of copies?"</p> + +<p>The father had pushed back his chair and was trying to fold his napkin +in the original creases.</p> + +<p>"No; there's a heap o' things I don't know, son, but I'm willin' to +learn. One o' these days, if we ever get out o' this business tangle +alive, we'll sit down quiet together and you'll do for me what this +Dutchman has done for you. For, in spite of what you say, I've been +sittin' on the fence all these years, and I reckon you're the one to +help me down."</p> + +<p>Tom smiled first at the thought of it and then grew suddenly sober. It +is one thing to be serenely critical for oneself, and quite another to +set the pace for a disciple. And when that disciple chances to be one's +father?</p> + +<p>"I don't know about that, pappy," he said, rather dubiously. "I'd like +to have you meet some of the people on my side of the road first. Maybe +you wouldn't like the company."</p> + +<p>But Caleb would not have it so. "If they're good <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>enough for you, son, +they're good enough for me," he said. "Not but what there's some mighty +good folks trampin' along on the other side, too."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and some mighty bad ones," said Tom, thinking of the promoter +vestryman of St. Michael's and his Bible-class-teaching son. "We are +going right now to investigate the financiering methods of a pair of +them. Is Dyckman still on duty? Or are the offices closed?"</p> + +<p>"Dyckman's there," was the answer; and they left the breakfast-room +together to go around the block and have themselves lifted to the fifth +floor of the Coosa Building, where half a dozen gilt-lettered glass +doors advertised the administrative headquarters of Chiawassee +Consolidated.</p> + +<p>If Caleb Gordon had been mildly bewildered by the outward and instantly +visible changes in his college-bred son, he was quite lost in wondering +admiration when the young man had climbed fairly into the business +saddle and gathered his grip on the reins. Notwithstanding the fact of +his stock-holding, Caleb the iron-master had always stood a little in +awe of the general office grandeurs; of chief priest Dyckman in +particular. But Tom seemed to recognize no distinctions of class, age, +or previous condition of overlordship. Dyckman was found busily lounging +in the absent president's easy-chair, smoking a good cigar and reading +the morning papers. At the outset he was inclined to be genially +supercilious, thus:</p> + +<p>"Ah, good morning, Mr. Gordon! Hello, Tom! Back from college, are you? +The books and papers? They are over in the vaults of the Iron City +National—by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>Mr. Farley's orders. I suppose he thought they'd be safer +there in case of fire. Won't you sit down and have a fresh cigar?"</p> + +<p>What Tom said, or the precise wording of it, Caleb could never remember. +But the staccato sentence or two had the effect of instantly +electrifying Mr. Dyckman. Certainly; whatever Mr. Thomas desired should +be done. He—Dyckman—had had no notice of the change in the plans of +the company, and Mr. Farley's instructions—</p> + +<p>Tom cut the oath of fealty short and stated his desires succinctly. The +bookkeeper was to reassemble his office force immediately, taking +particular care to reinstate Norman, the correspondence man. That done, +he was to prepare full and complete exhibits of the company's condition: +assets, liabilities, contracts, in short, the results in statement form +of a thorough and searching house-cleaning in the accounting and +administrative departments.</p> + +<p>"I am going to put you on your good behavior, Dyckman," said the new +tyrant in conclusion, driving the words home with a shrewd sword-thrust +of the gray eyes. "At first I thought I'd bring an expert accountant +down here from New York and put him on your books; but I'm going to +spare you that—on one condition. Those exhibits must be made absolutely +without fear or favor; they must contain the exact truth and all of it. +If you tinker them, you'll not be able to run fast enough nor far enough +to get away from me. Do I make it plain?"</p> + +<p>"Very plain, indeed, Mr. Tom; the office boy would catch your meaning, I +think."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>"All right, then; gather up your force and pitch in. I haven't time to +watch you, and I don't mean to take it. But I shall know it when you +begin to flicker."</p> + +<p>When the two early morning disturbers of Mr. Dyckman's peace were once +more in the street and on the way to the station to take the train for +Gordonia and the seat of war, Caleb found speech.</p> + +<p>"Son," he said gravely, "do you know that you've made a mighty bitter +enemy in the last fifteen minutes? Dyckman is Farley's confidential man, +and when he gets his knife ground good and sharp he's goin' to cut you +with it, once for himself and once for his boss."</p> + +<p>Tom's laugh was an easing of strains.</p> + +<p>"It does me a heap of good to know that I can crack the whip where you'd +be putting on the brakes, pappy; it does, for a fact. But you needn't +worry about Dyckman. He won't quarrel with his bread and butter. I don't +care anything about his personal loyalty so long as he does his work."</p> + +<p>Again Caleb had to withdraw a little and look his stalwart young captain +over and say: "It is Tom; it's just Buddy, grown up and come to be a +man." But it was hard to realize.</p> + +<p>"I reckon you've got it all figured out—what-all we're goin' to do, +Tom," he said, when they were seated in the car of the accommodation +train.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think I have; at least, I have the beginning struck out. We are +going to call a stock-holders' meeting, vote you into the presidency, +take the bull squarely by the horns and blow in the Chiawassee furnace +again—dig coal, roast coke and make iron."</p> + +<p>"But, son! at the present price of iron, we can't make <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>any money; +couldn't clear a dollar a car if the buyers would push their cars right +into our yard. And there ain't any buyers."</p> + +<p>Tom was looking out of the window at the procession of smokeless factory +chimneys. The blight had already fallen on the South Tredegar +industries.</p> + +<p>"It's going to be a battle to the strong, to the fellow who can wait, +and work while he waits," he said, half to himself. Then, more +particularly to his father's protest: "I know, we are in pretty bad +shape. When we get those exhibits we shall find that the Farleys have +picked the bones, leaving them for us to bury decently out of sight. +Then, when the funeral is over, they'll come back and charge it all to +the Gordon mismanagement. It's a cinch, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>The old iron-master was silent for the train-speed's measuring of a long +mile. Then he said slowly:</p> + +<p>"I don't aim to go back on you, Buddy; not a foot 'r an inch. But it +does seem to me like you put your finger in the fire when you hilt up +Duxbury Farley for that proxy paper in New York. If we go under—and the +good Lord only knows how we can he'p it—they'll come out of it with +clean clothes, and we'll have to take all the mud-slingin', just as you +say."</p> + +<p>Tom's smile would have stamped him as the son of the grim old +ex-artilleryman in any court of inquiry.</p> + +<p>"Did your old general ever go into battle with the idea that he was +bound to be licked, pappy?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Who? Stonewall Jackson? Well, I reckon not, son."</p> + +<p>"Neither shall we," said Tom laconically. "We are going in to win. We +are in bad shape, I admit, but we are better off than a lot of these +furnaces that are shut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>ting down. We have our own ore beds, and our own +coking plant. Our coal costs us seventy-five cents less than Pocahontas, +our water is free, and we can hold the property as long as we can stand +the sheriff off. My notion is to make iron and hold it; stack it in the +yards, mortgage it for what we can get, and make more iron. Some day the +country will get iron hungry; then we'll have it to sell when the other +fellows will have to make it first and sell it afterward. Have I got it +straight?"</p> + +<p>Caleb nodded.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I don't know but what you have. What's puzzlin' me right now, son, +is <i>where</i> you got it."</p> + +<p>Tom's laugh was a tonic for sore nerves.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what you've been spending your good money on me for if +it wasn't to give me a chance to get it. Do you think I've been playing +foot-ball all the time?"</p> + +<p>"No; but—well, Tom, the last I knew of you, you was just a little +shaver, spattin' around barefooted in the dust o' the Paradise pike, and +I can't seem to climb up to where you're at now."</p> + +<p>Tom laughed again.</p> + +<p>"You'll come to it, after while. I reckon I haven't much more sense, in +some ways, than the little shaver had; but I've been trying my level +best to learn my trade. There is only one thing about this tangle that +is worrying me: that's the labor end of it."</p> + +<p>"We can get all the labor we want," said Caleb.</p> + +<p>"Yes; but didn't you write me that the men were on strike?"</p> + +<p>"I said the white miners were likely to make trouble if they got hungry +enough."</p> + +<p>"Was there any pay in arrears when you shut down?"</p> + +<p>"No. Farley wanted to scale the men, but I fought him out o' that."</p> + +<p>"Good! Then what are they kicking about?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, because they're out of a job. There are always a lot of keen noses +in a crowd the size of ours, and they've smelled out some o' the Farley +doin's. Of course, they don't believe in the cry of hard times; laborin' +men are always the last to believe that."</p> + +<p>The train was tracking thunderously around the nose of Lebanon, and Tom +was looking out of the window again, this time for the first glimpse of +the Gordonia chimney-stacks and the bounding hills of the home valley.</p> + +<p>"That is where you will have to put your shoulder into the collar with +me, pappy," he said. "Most of the older men know me as a boy who has +grown up among them. When I spring my proposition, they'll howl, if only +for that reason."</p> + +<p>But now Caleb was shaking his gray head more dubiously than ever.</p> + +<p>"You won't get any help from the men, Buddy, more 'n what you pay for. +You know the whites—Welshmen, Cornishmen, and a good sprinklin' o' +'huckleberries.' And the blacks don't count, one way or the other."</p> + +<p>The engineer of the accommodation had whistled for Gordonia, and Tom was +gathering his dunnage.</p> + +<p>"Our scramble is going to depend very largely on the outcome of the +meeting which I'm going to ask you to call for say, two o'clock this +afternoon on the floor of the foundry building," he said. "Will you stay +in town and get the men together, while I go home and see mother and +shape up my talk?"</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon acquiesced, glad of a chance to have somewhat to do. And +so, in the very beginning of things, it was the son and not the father +who took the helm of the tempest-driven ship.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2> + +<h3>DRY WELLS</h3> + + +<p>As early as one o'clock in the afternoon, the elder Helgerson, acting as +day watchman at the iron-works, had opened the great yard gates, and the +men began to gather by twos and threes and in little caucusing knots on +the sand floor of the huge, iron-roofed foundry building. Some of the +more heedful set to work making seats of the wooden flask frames and +bottom boards; and in the pouring space fronting one of the cupolas they +built a rough-and-ready platform out of the same materials.</p> + +<p>As the numbers increased the men fell into groups, dividing first on the +color-line, and then by trades, with the white miners in the majority +and doing most of the talking.</p> + +<p>"What's all this buzzin' round about young Tom?" queried one of the men +in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was, +'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n +knee-high to a hop-toad!"</p> + +<p>"Well, you bet your life he's a heap higher'n that now," said another, +who had chanced to be at the station when the Gordons, father and son, +left the train together. "He's a half a head taller than the old man, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>an' built like one o' Maje' Dabney's thoroughbreds. But I reckon he +ain't nothin' but a school-boy, for all o' that."</p> + +<p>"Gar-r-r!" spat a third. "We've had one kid too many in this outfit, all +along. I'll bet, if the truth was knowed, th't that young Farley'd skin +a louse for the hide and tallow."</p> + +<p>"Yes," chimed in a fourth, a "huckleberry" miner from the Bald Mountain +district, "and I reckon whar thar's sich a hell of a smoke, thar's a +right smart heap o' fire, ef it could on'y be onkivered."</p> + +<p>But all of this was in a manner beside the mark, and there were many to +inquire what the Gordons were going to do. Ludlow, check weigher in +Number Two entry, and the head of the local union, took it on himself to +reply.</p> + +<p>"B'gosh! I don't b'lieve the old man knows, himself. He fit around and +fit around, talkin' to me, and never said nothin' more'n that there was +goin' to be a meetin' here at two o'clock, and Tom—his son Tom—was +goin' to speak to it."</p> + +<p>"All right; we're a-waitin' on son Tom right now," said a grizzled old +coal-digger on the outer edge of the group. "And ef he's got anything to +say, he cayn't say hit none too sudden. My ol' woman told me this +mornin' she was a-hittin' the bottom o' the meal bar'l, kerchuck! ever' +time she was dippin' into hit. Hit's erbout time there was somepin +doin', ez I allow."</p> + +<p>"Saw it off!" warned Ludlow. "Here they come, both of 'em."</p> + +<p>Tom and his father had entered the building from the cupola side, and +Tom mounted the flask-built plat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>form while the men were scattering to +find seats. He made a goodly figure of young manhood, standing at ease +on the pile of frames until quiet should prevail, and the glances flung +up from the throng of workmen were friendly rather than critical. When +the time came, he began to speak quietly, but with a certain masterful +quality in his voice that unmistakably constrained attention.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you have all been told why the works are shut down—why you +are out of a job in the middle of summer; and I understand you are not +fully satisfied with the reason that was given—hard times. You have +been saying among yourselves that if the president and the treasurer +could go off on a holiday trip to Europe, the situation couldn't be so +very desperate. Isn't that so?"</p> + +<p>"That's so; you've hit it in the head first crack out o' the box," was +the swift reply from a score of the men.</p> + +<p>"Good; then we'll settle that point before we go any further. I want to +tell you men that the hard times are here, sure enough. We are all +hoping that they won't last very long; but the fact remains that the +wheels have stopped. Let me tell you: I've just come down from the +North, and the streets of the cities up there are full of idle men. All +the way down here I didn't see a single iron-furnace in blast, and those +of you who have been over to South Tredegar know what the conditions are +there. Mr. Farley has gone to Europe because he believes there is +nothing to be done here, and the facts are on his side. For anybody with +money enough to live on, this is a mighty good time to take a vacation."</p> + +<p>There was a murmur of protest, voicing itself gen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>erally in a denial of +the possibility for men who wrought with their hands and ate in the +sweat of their brows.</p> + +<p>"I know that," was Tom's rejoinder. "Some of us can't afford to take a +lay-off; I can't, for one. And that's why we are here this afternoon. +Chiawassee can blow in again and stay in blast if we've all got nerve +enough to hang on. If we start up and go on making pig, it'll be on a +dead market and we'll have to sell it at a loss or stack it in the +yards. We can't do the first, and I needn't tell you that it is going to +take a mighty long purse to do the stacking. It will be all outgo and no +income. If—"</p> + +<p>"Spit it out," called Ludlow, from the forefront of the miners' +division. "I reckon we all know what's comin'."</p> + +<p>Gordon thrust out his square jaw and gave them the fact bluntly.</p> + +<p>"It's a case of half a loaf or no bread. If Chiawassee blows in again, +it will be on borrowed money. If you men will take half-pay in cash and +half in promises, the promised half to be paid when we can sell the +stacked pig, we go on. If not, we don't. Talk it over among yourselves +and let us have your decision."</p> + +<p>There was hot caucusing and a fair imitation of pandemonium on the +foundry floor following this bomb-hurling, and Tom sat down on the edge +of the platform to give the men time. Caleb Gordon sat within arm's +reach, nursing his knee, diligently saying nothing. It was Tom, +undoubtedly, but a Tom who had become a citizen of another world, a +newer world than the one the ex-artilleryman knew and lived in. +He—Caleb—had freely predicted a riot as the result of the half-pay +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>proposal; yet Tom had applied the match and there was no explosion. The +buzzing, arguing groups were not riotous—only fiercely questioning.</p> + +<p>It was Ludlow, hammering clamorously for silence on the shell of the big +crane ladle, who acted as spokesman when the uproar was quelled.</p> + +<p>"You're all right, Tom Gordon—you and your daddy. But you've hit us +plum' 'twixt dinner and supper. If you two was the company—"</p> + +<p>Tom stood up and interrupted.</p> + +<p>"We are the company. While Mr. Farley is away we're the bosses; what we +say, goes."</p> + +<p>"All right," Ludlow went on. "That's a little better. But we've got a +kick or two comin'. Is this half-pay goin' to be in orders on the +company's store?"</p> + +<p>"I said cash," said Tom briefly.</p> + +<p>"Good enough. But I s'pose we'd have to spend it at the company's store, +jest the same, 'r get fired."</p> + +<p>"No!"—emphatically. "I'm not even sure that we should reopen the store. +We shall not reopen it unless you men want it. If you do want it, we'll +make it strictly coöperative, dividing the profits with every employee +according to his purchases."</p> + +<p>"Well, by gol, that's white, anyway," commented one of the coke burners. +"Be a mighty col' day in July when old man Farley'd talk as straight as +that."</p> + +<p>"Ag'in," said Ludlow, "what's this half-pay to be figured on—the +reg'lar scale?"</p> + +<p>"Of course."</p> + +<p>"And what security do we have that t'other half 'll be paid, some time?"</p> + +<p>"My father's word, and mine."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>"And if old man Farley says no?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Farley is out of it for the present, and he has nothing to say +about it. You are making this deal with Gordon and Gordon."</p> + +<p>"Well, now, that's a heap more like it." Ludlow turned to the miners. +"What d'ye say, boys? Fish or cut bait? Hands up!"</p> + +<p>There was a good showing of hands among the white miners and the coke +burners, but the negro foundry men did not vote. Patty, the mulatto +foreman who was Helgerson's second, explained the reason.</p> + +<p>"You ain't said nuttin' 'bout de foundry, Boss Tom. W-w-w-w-we-all boys +been wukkin' short ti-ti-time, and m-m-m-makin' pig ain't gwine give +we-all n-n-nuttin' ter do." Patty had a painful impediment in his +speech, and the strain of the public occasion doubled it.</p> + +<p>"We are going to run the foundry, too, Patty, and on full time. There +will be work for all of you on the terms I have named."</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon closed his eyes and put his face in his hands. For weeks +before the shut-down the foundry had been run on short time, because +there was no market for its miscellaneous output. Surely Tom must be +losing his mind!</p> + +<p>But the negro foundry men were taking his word for it, as the miners +had. "Pup-pup-put up yo' hands, boys!" said Patty, and again the ayes +had it.</p> + +<p>Tom looked vastly relieved.</p> + +<p>"Well, that was a short horse soon curried," he said bruskly. "The power +goes on to-morrow morning, and we'll blow in as soon as the furnaces are +relined. Ludlow, you come to the office at five o'clock and I'll <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>list +the shifts with you. Patty, you report to Mr. Helgerson, and you and the +pattern-maker show up at half-past five. I want to talk over some new +work with you. Anybody else got anything to say? If not, we'll adjourn."</p> + +<p>Caleb followed his son out and across the yard to the old log homestead +which still served as the superintendent's office and laboratory. When +the door was shut, he dropped heavily into a chair.</p> + +<p>"Son," he said brokenly, "you're—you're crazy—plum' crazy. Don't you +know you can't do the first one o' these things you've been promisin'?"</p> + +<p>Tom was already busy at the desk, emptying the pigeonholes one after +another and rapidly scanning their contents.</p> + +<p>"If I believed that, I'd be taking to the high grass and the tall +timber. But don't you worry, pappy; we're going to do them—all of +them."</p> + +<p>"But, Buddy, you can't sell a pound of foundry product! We may be able +to make pig cheaper than some others, but when it comes to the foundry +floor, South Tredegar can choke us off in less'n a week."</p> + +<p>"Wait," said Tom, still rummaging. "There is one thing we can make—and +sell."</p> + +<p>"I'd like tolerable well to know what it is," was the hopeless +rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"You ought to know, better than any one else. It's cast-iron +pipe—water-pipe. Where are the plans of that invention of yours that +Farley wouldn't let you install?"</p> + +<p>Caleb found the blue-prints, and his hands were trembling. The +invention, a pit machine process for molding and casting water-and +gas-pipe at a cost that would <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>put all other makers of the commodity out +of the field, had been wrought out and perfected in Tom's second Boston +year. It was Caleb's one ewe lamb, and he had nursed it by hand through +a long preparatory period.</p> + +<p>Tom took the blue-prints and spread them on the desk, absorbing the +details as his father leaned over him and pointed them out. He saw +clearly that the invention would revolutionize pipe-making. The accepted +method was to cast each piece separately in a floor flask made in two +parts, rammed by hand, once for the drag and again for the cope, with +reversings, crane-handlings and all the manipulations necessary for the +molding of any heavy casting. But the new process substituted machinery. +A cistern-like pit; a circular table pivoted over it, with a hundred or +more iron flasks suspended upright from its edges; a huge crane carrying +a mechanical ram, these were the main points of the machine which, with +a single small gang of men, would do the work of an entire foundry +floor.</p> + +<p>"It's great!" said Tom enthusiastically. "I got your idea pretty well +from your letters, but you've improved on it since then. I wonder Farley +didn't snap at it."</p> + +<p>"He was willin' to," said Caleb grimly. "Only he wanted me to transfer +the patents to the company; in other words, to make him a present of the +controlling interest. I bucked at that, and we come near havin' a +fall-out. If there was any market for pipe now—"</p> + +<p>"There is a market," said Tom hopefully. "I got a pointer on that before +I left Boston. Did I tell you I had a little talk with Mr. Clarkson the +day I came away?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>"Well, I did. I told him the conditions and asked his advice. Among +other things, I spoke of this pipe pit of yours, and he said at once, +'There is your chance. Cast-iron water-pipe is like bread, or sugar, or +butcher's meat—it's a necessity, in good times or bad. If that machine +is practicable, you can make pipe for less than half the present labor +cost.' Then we talked ways and means. Money is tighter than a shut +fist—up East as well as everywhere else. But men with money to invest +will still bet on a sure thing. Mr. Clarkson advised me to try our own +banks first. Failing with them, he authorized me to call on him. Now you +know where I'm digging my sand."</p> + +<p>The old iron-master sat back in his chair with his hands locked over one +knee, once more taking the measure of this new creation calling itself +Tom Gordon and purporting to be his son.</p> + +<p>"Say, Buddy," he said at length, "are there many more like you out +yonder in the big road?—young fellows that can walk right out o' school +and tell their daddies how to run things?"</p> + +<p>Tom's laugh was boyishly hearty.</p> + +<p>"Plenty of 'em, pappy; lots of 'em! The old world is moving right along; +it would be a pity if it didn't, don't you think? But about this pipe +business: I want you to make over these patents to me."</p> + +<p>"They're yours now, Tom; everything I've got will be yours in a little +while," said the father; but his voice betrayed the depth of that +thrust. Was the new Tom beginning so soon to grasp and reach out +avariciously for the fruit of the old tree?</p> + +<p>"You ought to know I don't mean it that way," said <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>Tom, frowning a +little. "But here is the way it sizes up. There is money in this +pipe-making; some money now, and big money later on. Farley has refused +to go into it unless you make it a company proposition; as president and +a controlling stock-holder you can't very well go into it now without +making it in some sort a company proposition. But you can transfer the +patents to me, and I can contract with Chiawassee Consolidated to make +pipe for me."</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon's frown matched that of his son.</p> + +<p>"That would certainly be givin' Colonel Duxbury a dose of his own +medicine; but I don't like it, Tom. It looks as if we were taking +advantage of him."</p> + +<p>"No. I'd make the proposition to him, personally, if he were here, and +the boss; and he'd be a fool if he didn't jump at it," said Tom +earnestly. "But there is more to it than that. If we make a go of this, +and don't protect ourselves, the two Farleys will come back and put the +whole thing in their pockets. I won't go into it on any such terms. When +they do come back, I'm going to have money to fight them with, and this +is our one little ghost of a chance. Ring up Judge Bates and get him to +come over here and make a legal transfer of these patents to me."</p> + +<p>The thing was done, though not without some misgivings on Caleb's part. +Honesty and fair dealing, even with a known enemy, had been the rule of +his life; and while he could not put his finger on the equivocal thing +in Tom's plan, he was vaguely troubled. Analyzed after the fact, the +trouble was vicarious, and for Tom. It defined itself more clearly when +they went together to South Tredegar to have an attorney draw up <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>the +agreement under which Tom's pipe venture was to be conducted. Tom, as +the owner of the patents, was fair with the Chiawassee Consolidated, but +he was not liberal; indeed, he would have been quite illiberal if the +attorney had not warned him that an agreement, to be defensible, must be +equitable as well as legal.</p> + +<p>At this stage in the journey Tom could not have accounted for himself in +the ethical field. Something, a thing intangible, had gone out of him. +He could not tell what it was; but he missed it. The kindly Gordon +nature was intact, or he hoped it was, but the neighbor-love, which was +his father's rule of life, seemed not to have come down to him in its +largeness. Ruth for the Farleys was not to be expected of him, he +argued; but behind this was a vaster ruthlessness, arming him to win the +industrial battle, making him a hard man as he had suddenly become a +strong one.</p> + +<p>And the experiences of the summer were all hardening. He plunged +headlong into the world of business, into a panic-time competition which +was in grim reality a fight for life, and there seemed to be little to +choose between trampling or being trampled. By early autumn the iron +industries of the country were gasping, and the stacks of pig in the +Chiawassee yards, kept down a little during the summer by a few meager +orders, grew and spread until they covered acres. As long as money could +be had, the iron was bonded as fast as it was made, and the proceeds +were turned into wages to make more. But when money was no longer +obtainable from this source, the pipe venture was the only hope.</p> + +<p>With the entire foundry force at the Chiawassee making pipe, Tom had +gone early into the market with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>his low-priced product. But the +commercial side of the struggle was fire-new to him, and he found +himself matched against men who knew buying and selling as he knew +smelting and casting. They routed him, easily at first, with increasing +difficulty as he learned the new trade, but always with certainty. It +was Norman, the correspondence man, transformed now into a sales agent, +who gave him his first hint of the inwardnesses.</p> + +<p>"We're too straight, Mr. Gordon; that's at the bottom of it," he said to +Tom, over a grill-room luncheon at the Marlboro one day. "It takes money +to make money."</p> + +<p>Tom's eyebrows went up and his ears were open. The battle had grown +desperate.</p> + +<p>"Our prices are right," he said. "Isn't that enough?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Norman, looking down. Like all the others, he stood a little +in awe of the young boss.</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Four times out of five we have to sell to a municipal committee, and +the other time we have to monkey with the purchasing agent of a +corporation. In either case it takes money—other money besides the +difference in price."</p> + +<p>Tom wagged his head in a slow affirmative. "It's rotten!" he said.</p> + +<p>Norman smiled.</p> + +<p>"It's our privilege to cuss it out; but it's a condition."</p> + +<p>Tom was in town that day for the purpose of taking a train to +Louisville, where he was to meet the officials of an Indiana city +forced, despite the hard times, to relay many miles of worn-out +water-mains. He made <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>a pencil computation on the back of an envelope. +The contract was a large one, and his bid, which he was confident was +lower than any competitor could make, would still stand a cut and leave +a margin of profit. Before he took the train he went to the bank, and, +when he reached the Kentucky metropolis, his first care was to assure +the "wheel-horse" member of the municipal purchasing board that he was +ready to talk business on a modern business basis.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, he lost the contract. Other people were growing +desperate, too, it appeared, and his bribe was not great enough. One +member of the committee stood by him and gave him the facts. A check had +been passed, and it was a bigger check than Tom could draw without +trenching on the balance left in the Iron City National to meet the +month's pay-roll at Gordonia.</p> + +<p>"You sent a boy to mill," said the loyal one. "And now it's all over, I +don't mind telling you that you sent him to the wrong mill, at that. +Bullinger's a hog."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to do him up," said Tom vindictively.</p> + +<p>"Well, that might be done, too. But it would cost you something."</p> + +<p>Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance. But on the way +home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile. He could meet one more +pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come. This one +contract would have saved the day, and it was lost.</p> + +<p>The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him +down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station +to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>no herald +to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time, +the big plant was silent and deserted.</p> + +<p>Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the +Woodlawn porch.</p> + +<p>"You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung +himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this +morning."</p> + +<p>"What was in the papers?"</p> + +<p>"About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the +business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm +brewin' when we missed the pay-day yesterday."</p> + +<p>Tom started as if he had been stung.</p> + +<p>"Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to +Louisville!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know you did. When Dyckman didn't come out with the pay-rolls +yesterday evening I telephoned him. He said Vint Farley, as treasurer of +the company, had made a draft on him and taken it all."</p> + +<p>Tom sprang out of his chair and the bitter oaths upbubbled and choked +him. But he stifled them long enough to say: "And the men?"</p> + +<p>"The miners went out at ten o'clock this morning. The blacks would have +stood by us, but Ludlow's men drove 'em out—made 'em quit. We're done, +Buddy."</p> + +<p>Tom dashed his hat on the floor, and the Gordon rage, slow to fire and +fierce to scorch and burn when once it was aflame, made for the moment a +yelling, cursing maniac of him. In the midst of it he turned, and the +tempest of imprecation spent itself in a gasp of dismay. His mother was +standing in the doorway, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>thin, frail, with the sorrow in her eyes that +had been there since the long night of chastenings three years agone.</p> + +<p>As he looked he saw the growing pallor in her face, the growing +speechless horror in her gaze. Then she put out her hands as one groping +in darkness and fell before he could reach her.</p> + +<p>It was her stalwart son who carried Martha Gordon to her room and laid +her gently on the bed, with the husband to follow helplessly behind. +Also, it was Tom, tender and loving now as a woman, who sat upon the +edge of the bed, chafing the bloodless hands and striving as he could to +revive her.</p> + +<p>"I'm afeard you've killed her for sure, this time, son!" groaned the +man.</p> + +<p>But Tom saw the pale lips move and bent low to catch their whisperings. +What he heard was only the echo of the despairing cry of the broken +heart: "<i>Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son</i>!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2> + +<h3>GILGAL</h3> + + +<p>In these days of slowing wheels and silenced anvils South Tredegar had +its own troubles, and when some one telephoned the editor of the +<i>Morning Tribune</i> that Chiawassee Consolidated had succumbed at last, he +did not deem it worth while to inquire whether the strike at Gordonia +was the cause or the consequence of the sudden shut-down.</p> + +<p>But a day or two later, when rumors of threatened violence began to +trickle in over the telephone wires, a <i>Tribune</i> man called, in passing, +at the general offices in the Coosa Building, and was promptly put to +sleep by the astute Dyckman, who, for reasons of his own, was quite +willing to conceal the true state of affairs. Yes, there was a +suspension of active operations at Gordonia, and he believed there had +been some hot-headed talk among the miners. But there would be no +trouble. Mr. Farley was at present in London negotiating for English +capital. When he should return, the capital stock of the company would +be increased, and the plant would probably be removed to South Tredegar +and enlarged.</p> + +<p>All of which was duly jotted down to be passed into the <i>Tribune's</i> +archives; and the following morning Tom, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>doing guard duty with his +father, the two Helgersons and a squad of the yard men at the threatened +plant, read a pointless editorial in which misstatement of fact and +sympathy for the absent and struggling Farleys were equally and +impartially blended.</p> + +<p>"Look at that!" he growled wrathfully, handing the paper across the +office desk to Caleb. "One of these fine days I'm going to land that +fellow Dyckman in the penitentiary."</p> + +<p>The iron-master put on his spectacles and plodded slowly and +conscientiously through the editorial, turning the paper, at length, to +glance over the headings on the telegraphic page. In the middle of it he +looked up suddenly to say:</p> + +<p>"Son, what was the name o' that Indiany town with the big water-pipe +contract?"</p> + +<p>Tom gave it in a word, and Caleb passed the paper back, with his thumb +on one of the press despatches.</p> + +<p>"Read that," he said.</p> + +<p>Tom read, and the wrathful scowl evoked by the foolish editorial gave +place to a flitting smile of triumph. There was trouble in the Indiana +city over the awarding of the pipe contract. In some way unknown to the +press reporter, it had leaked out that a much lower bid than the one +accepted had been ignored by the purchasing committee. A municipal +election was pending, and the people were up in arms. Rumors of a +wholesale indictment of the suspected officials were rife, and the city +offices were in a state of siege.</p> + +<p>Tom put the paper down and smote on the desk.</p> + +<p>"Damn them!" he said; "I thought perhaps I could give them a run for +their money."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>"You?" said Caleb, removing his glasses. "How's that?"</p> + +<p>The new recruit in the army of business chicane nodded his head.</p> + +<p>"It was a shot in the dark, and I didn't want to brag beforehand," he +explained. "I wrestled it out Saturday night when I was tramping the +hills after Doc Williams had brought mother around. One member of the +purchasing committee was ready to dodge; he gave me a pointer before I +left Louisville. I didn't see anything in it then but revenge; but +afterward I saw how we might spend some money to a possible advantage."</p> + +<p>Caleb's eyes had grown narrow.</p> + +<p>"I reckon I'm sort o' dull, Buddy; what-all did you do?"</p> + +<p>"Wired the disgruntled one that there was a letter and a check in the +mail for him, to be followed by another and a bigger if his pole proved +long enough to reach the persimmons."</p> + +<p>The old iron-master left his chair and began to walk the floor, six +steps and a turn. After a little he said:</p> + +<p>"Tom, is that business?"</p> + +<p>"It is the modern definition of it."</p> + +<p>"What's goin' to happen up yonder in Indiany?"</p> + +<p>"If I knew, I'd be a good bit easier in my mind. What I'm hoping is that +the rumpus will be big enough to make 'em turn the contract our way."</p> + +<p>Caleb stopped short.</p> + +<p>"My God!" he ejaculated. "Where's your heart, Buddy? Would you take the +chance of sendin' these fellows to jail for the sake of gettin' that +contract?"</p> + +<p>"Cheerfully," said Tom. "They're rascals; I could <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>have bought them if +I'd had money enough; and the other fellow did buy them."</p> + +<p>The old man resumed his monotonous tramp up and down the room. The +hardness in Tom's voice unnerved him. After another interval of silence +he spoke again.</p> + +<p>"I wish you hadn't done it, son. It's a dirty job, any way you look at +it."</p> + +<p>Tom shrugged.</p> + +<p>"Norman says it's a condition, not a theory; and he is right. We are +living under a new order of things, and if we want to stay alive, we've +got to conform to it. It gagged me at first: I reckon there are some +traces of the Christian tradition left. But, pappy, I'm going to win. +That is what I'm here for."</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon shook his head as one who deprecates helplessly, but he sat +down again and asked Tom what the programme was to be.</p> + +<p>"There is nothing for us to do but to sit tight and wait. If we get a +telegram from Indiana before these idiots of ours lose their heads and +go to rioting and burning, we shall still have a fighting chance. If +not, we're smashed."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't be too hard on the men, Buddy. They've been mighty +patient."</p> + +<p>The scowl deepened between the level gray eyes.</p> + +<p>"If I could do what I'd like to, I'd fire the last man of them. It makes +me savage to have them turn up and knock us on the head after we've been +sweating blood to pull through. Have you seen Ludlow?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I saw him last night. He's right ugly; swore he wouldn't raise a +hand even if the boys took kerosene and dynamite to us."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>"Well, if they do, he'll be the first man to pay for it," said Tom; and +he left the office and the house to make the round of the guarded gates.</p> + +<p>Ludlow was as good as his word. On the night following the day of +suspense an attempt was made to wreck the inclined railway running from +the mines on Lebanon to the coke yard. It was happily frustrated; but +when Tom and his handful of guards got back to the foot of the hill they +found a fire started in a pile of wooden flasks heaped against the end +of the foundry building.</p> + +<p>The fire was easily extinguishable by a willing hand or two, but Tom +tried an experiment. Steam had been kept up in a single battery of +boilers against emergencies, and he directed Helgerson to throw open the +great gates while he ran to the boiler room and sent the fire call of +the huge siren whistle shrieking out on the night.</p> + +<p>The experiment was only meagerly successful. Less than a score of the +strikers answered the call, but these worked with a will, and the fire +was quickly put out.</p> + +<p>Tom was under the arc-light at the gates when the volunteers straggled +out. He had a word for each man,—a word of appreciation and a plea for +suspended judgment. Most of the men shook their heads despondently, but +a few of them promised to stand on the side of law and order. Tom took +the names of the few, and went back to his guard duty with the burden a +little lightened. But the succeeding night there were more attempts at +violence, three of them so determined as to leave no doubt that the +crisis was at hand. This was Tom's discouraged admission when his father +came to relieve him in the morning.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>"We're about at the end of the rope," he said wearily, when Caleb had +closed the door of the log-house yard office behind him. "The two +Helgersons are played out, and neither of us can stand this strain for +another twenty-four hours. I'm just about dead on my feet for sleep, and +I know you are."</p> + +<p>The old ex-artilleryman stifled a yawn, and admitted the fact.</p> + +<p>"I'm gettin' right old and no-account, son; there's no denyin' that. And +you can't make out to shoulder it all, stout as you are. But what-all +can we do different?"</p> + +<p>"I know what I'm going to do. I had a 'phone wire from Bradley, the +sheriff, last night after you went home. He funked like a boy; said he +couldn't raise a posse in South Tredegar that would serve against +striking workmen. Then I wired the governor, and his answer came an hour +ago. We can have the soldiers if we make a formal demand for them."</p> + +<p>"But, Tom, son; you wouldn't do that!" protested Caleb tremulously. +Then, getting up to walk the floor as was his wont under sharp stress: +"Let's try to hold out a little spell longer, Buddy. It'll be like fire +to tow; there'll be men killed—men that I've known ever since they were +boys: men killed, and women made widders. Tom, I've seen enough of war +to last me."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Tom. None the less, he found a telegraph blank and began +to write the message. There had been shots fired in the night, in a +sally on the inclined railway, and one of them had scored his arm. If +the rioters needed the strong hand to curb them, they should have it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>"Think of what it'll mean for this town that we've built up, son. We'll +have to stay here—'er leastwise, I will, and there'll be blood on the +streets for me to see as long as I walk 'em."</p> + +<p>"I know," Tom reiterated, in the same monotonous tone. But his pen did +not pause.</p> + +<p>"Then there's your mammy," Caleb pleaded, and now the pen stopped.</p> + +<p>"Mother must not know."</p> + +<p>"How can we he'p her knowin', Buddy? I tell you, son, the very stones o' +Paradise'll rise up to testify against us, now, and at the last great +day, maybe."</p> + +<p>The frown deepened between the young man's eyes.</p> + +<p>"The old, old phantom!" he said, half to himself. "Will it never be +laid, even for those who know it to be a myth?" And then to his father: +"It's no use, pappy. I tell you we've got to take this thing by the +neck. See here; that's how near they came to settling me last night," +and he showed the perforated coat-sleeve.</p> + +<p>Caleb Gordon was silenced. He resumed his restless pacing while Tom +signed the call for help, read it over methodically, and placed it +between dampened sheets in the letter-press. He had pushed the electric +button which summoned Stub Helgerson, when the door opened silently and +Jeff Ludlow's boy thrust face and hand through the aperture.</p> + +<p>"Well; what is it?" demanded Tom, more sharply than he meant to. The +strain was beginning to tell on his nerves.</p> + +<p>"Hit's a letter for you-all from Mr. Stamford at the dee-po," said the +boy. "He allowed maybe you-all'd gimme a nickel for bringin' hit."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>The coin was found and passed, and the small boy was whooping and +yelling for Helgerson to come and let him through the gates when Tom +tore the envelope across and read the telegram. It was from the Indiana +city, and it was signed by the chairman of the Board of Public Works.</p> + +<p>"Proposals for water-pipe have been reopened, and your bid is accepted. +Wire how soon you can begin to ship eighteen-inch mains," was what it +said. Tom handed it to his father and stepped quickly to the telephone. +There was a little delay in getting the ear of the president of the Iron +City National at South Tredegar, and the bounding, pulsing blood of +impatience made it seem interminable.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Mr. Henniker? This is Gordon at the Chiawassee plant, +Gordonia. We have secured that Indiana contract I was telling you about, +and I'll be in to see you on the ten o'clock train. Will you save five +minutes for me? Thank you. Good-by."</p> + +<p>Tom hung the ear-piece on its hook and turned to face his father.</p> + +<p>"Have you surrounded it?" he laughed, with a little quaver of excitement +in his voice, which he had been careful to master in the announcement to +the bank president. "We live, pappy; we live and win! Get word to the +men to come up here at three o'clock for their pay. Tell them we blow in +again to-morrow, and they can all come back to work and no questions +asked. Can you stay on your feet long enough to do all that?"</p> + +<p>Caleb was nodding gravely; yet bewilderment was still in the saddle.</p> + +<p>"But the money for the pay-rolls, son—this is only <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>an order to go to +work," he said, fingering the telegram doubtfully.</p> + +<p>Tom laughed joyously.</p> + +<p>"If I can't make Mr. Henniker believe that he can afford to carry us a +while longer on the strength of that bit of yellow paper, I'll rob his +bank. You get the men together by three o'clock, and I'll be here with +the money. If I'm not, it will be because somebody has sandbagged me +between the bank and the train."</p> + +<p>Caleb was still wrestling with the incredible thing, but light was +breaking in on him slowly.</p> + +<p>"Hold on, son," he said, and the old-time smile was wrinkling at the +corners of his eyes; "how much did you allow to make out o' this job? I +disremember what you said when you talked about it before."</p> + +<p>Tom checked off the items on his fingers.</p> + +<p>"Enough to put us through the winter; enough to stand us on our feet +independent of Duxbury Farley and his son; enough to let us pay Major +Dabney the back royalties on the coal. More than this, it's going to use +up iron—hundreds of tons of it. We'll buy out of our own yards, and the +men shall have the back-pay dividends."</p> + +<p>The general manager had taken his burned-out corn-cob pipe from his +pocket and was looking at it speculatively.</p> + +<p>"Well, now, if that's the case, I reckon I can go down to Hargis's and +buy me a new pipe, Buddy; and I—I'll be switched if I don't do it right +now."</p> + +<p>And in such gladsome easing of the strain were the wheels of Chiawassee +Consolidated oiled to their new whirlings on the road to fortune. If +Caleb Gordon re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>membered how the miracle had been wrought, he said no +word to clench his disapproval; and as for Tom—ah, well; it was not the +first time in the history of the race that the end has served to justify +the means—to make them clean and white and spotless, if need were.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2> + +<h3>LOVE</h3> + + +<p>If Tom Gordon could have known how slightly the Dabney's European plans +coincided with those of the Farleys, he might have had fewer +heartburnings in those intervals when the harassing struggle for +industrial existence gave him time to think of Ardea.</p> + +<p>As a strict matter of fact, the voyage across, and some little +guide-book touring of England, were the sum total of coincidence. On +leaving London the Farleys set out on the grand tour which was to land +them in Naples for the winter, while the Dabneys went directly to Paris +and to a modest pension in the Rue Cambon to spend the European holiday +in a manner better befitting the purse of a country gentleman.</p> + +<p>So it befell that by the time Miss Eva Farley was rhapsodizing over the +Rhine castles in twenty-page letters, boring Ardea a little, if the +truth must be told, the Dabneys had settled down to their quiet life in +the French capital. Ardea was anxious to do something with her music +under a Parisian master—and was doing it. The Major found melancholy +pleasure in reviewing at large the city of his son's long exile; and +Miss Euphrasia came and went with one or the other of her cousins, as +the exigencies of chaperonage or companionship constrained her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>In such moderate pleasuring the French summer began for the Major and +his charges; so it continued, and so it ended; and late in September +they began to talk about going home.</p> + +<p>"We really mean it this time," wrote Ardea in a letter to Martha Gordon. +"I confess we are all a little homesick for America, and Paradise, and +dear old Deer Trace Manor. The Farleys are settled for the remainder of +the year or longer in a fine old palazzo on the Bay of Naples, and we +have a very pressing invitation to go and help them inhabit it. But thus +far we have not been tempted beyond our strength. Major Grandpa is +talking more and more pointedly about the Morgan mares, and is growing a +habit of comparison-drawing in which America profits at the expense of +Europe; so I suppose by the time you are reading this we shall have made +our sailing arrangements. Nevertheless, the Naples invitation is dying +hard. Eva seems to have set her heart on having us for the winter."</p> + +<p>Ardea's figure of speech was no figure. The palazzo-sharing invitation +did die hard; and when Miss Farley's letters failed, Mr. Vincent Farley +made a journey to Paris for the express purpose of persuading the +Dabneys to reconsider. Miss Euphrasia was neutral. The Major was +homesick for a sight of his native Southland, but for Ardea's sake he +generously concealed the symptoms—or thought he did. So the decision +was finally left to Ardea.</p> + +<p>She said no, and adhered to it, partly because she knew her grandfather +was pining for Paradise, and partly on her own account. Ardea at twenty +was a young woman who might have made King Solomon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>pause with suspended +pen when he was writing that saying about his inability to find one +woman among a thousand. She was not beautiful beyond compare, as the +Southern young woman is so likely to be under the pencil of her loyal +limners. She had the Dabney nose, which was not quite classical, and the +Courtenay mouth, well-lined and expressive, rather than too suggestive, +of feminine softness. But her eyes were beautiful, and her luxuriant +masses of copper-gold hair fitted her shapely head like a glorious +aureole; also, she had that indefinable adorableness called charm, and +the sweet, direct, childlike frankness of speech which is its +characteristic.</p> + +<p>This was the external Ardea, known of men, and of those women who were +large-minded enough not to envy her. But the inner Ardea was a being +apart—high-seated, alone, self-sufficient in the sense that it saw too +clearly to be hoodwinked, infinitely reasonable, with vision unclouded +either by passion or the conventions. This inner Ardea knew Vincent +Farley better than he knew himself: the small mind, the mask of outward +correctness, the coldness of heart, the utter lack of the heroic +soul-strength which, even in a brutal man, may sometimes draw and +conquer and merge within itself the woman-soul that, yielding, still +yields open-eyed and undeceived.</p> + +<p>He was the most moderate of lovers, as such a man must needs be, but his +anxiety to second the wishes of his father and sister was not to be +misunderstood by the clear-eyed inner Ardea, whose intuition served her +as a sixth sense. She knew that sometime he would ask her to marry him; +and in that region where her answer should lie she found only a vast +indecision. He was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>not her ideal, but the all-seeing inner self told +her that she would never find the ideal. There comes to every woman, +sooner or later, the conviction that if she would marry she must take +men as they are, weighing the good against the evil, choosing as she may +the man whose vices may be condoned or whose virtues are great enough to +overshadow them. Ardea knew that Vincent Farley was not great in either +field; but the little virtues were not to be despised. If he were not, +in the best sense of the word, well-bred, he had at least been well +nurtured, well schooled in the conventions. Ardea sighed. It was in her +to be something more than the conventional wife, yet she saw no reason +to believe that she would ever be called on to be anything else. By +which it will be apparent that the sacred flame of love had not yet been +kindled in her maiden heart.</p> + +<p>As for Vincent Farley, the real man, Ardea's appraisal of him was not +greatly at fault. He was tall, like his father, but there the +resemblance paused. The promoter's shifty blue eyes were always at the +point of lighting up with enthusiasm; the son's, of precisely the same +hue, were cold and calmly calculating. The human polyhedron has as many +facets as a curiously-cut gem, and Vincent Farley's gift lay in the +ability always to present the same side to the same person. His attitude +toward Ardea had always been a pose; but it was a pose maintained so +faithfully that it had become one of the facets of the polyhedron. Such +men do not love, as a woman defines love; they merely have the mating +instinct. And even lust finds a cold hearth in such hearts, though on +occasion it will rake the embers together and make shift to blow them +into some brief, fierce <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>flame. At times, Farley's thought of Ardea was +libertine; but oftener she figured as the woman who would grace the home +of affluence, giving it charm and tone. Also, he had an affection for +the Dabney manorial acres, and especially for that portion of them +overlying the coal measures.</p> + +<p>The pose-facet was at the precisely effective angle when he came to +Paris as his sister's messenger and pictured, with what warmth there was +in him, the delights in the prospect of a Neapolitan winter. But Ardea, +shrinking from a six months' guesting with any one, said no, and told +her grandfather she was ready to go home.</p> + +<p>The start was from Havre, and Vincent, with time on his hands, was her +companion on the railway journey, her <i>courrier du place</i> in the +embarkation, and her faithful shadow up to the instant when the warning +cry for the shore-goers rang through the ship. It was scarcely a moment +for sentimental passages, and under the most favoring conditions, +Vincent Farley was something less than sentimental. Yet he found time to +declare himself in conventional fashion, modestly asking only for the +right to hope.</p> + +<p>Ardea was not ready to give an answer, even to the tentative question; +yet she did it—was, in a manner, surprised into doing it. For the young +woman who has not loved, it is easy to doubt the existence of the +seventh Heaven, or at least to reckon without its possibilities. At the +very crucial moment the clear-sighted inner self was assuring her that +this cold-eyed young man, who walked in the paths of righteousness +because he found them easier and pleasanter than the way of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>the +transgressor, was at best only a mildly exciting apotheosis of the +negative virtues. But the negative virtues, failing to score +brilliantly, nevertheless have the advantage of continuous innings. +Ardea was turned twenty in the year of the European holiday, and she +had—or believed she had—her heritage of the Dabney impetuosity well in +hand. Vincent's self-restraint was admirable, and his gentle deference, +conventional as it was, rose almost to the height of sentiment. So she +gave him his answer; gave him her hand at parting, and stood dutifully +fluttering her handkerchief for him while the liner drew out of its slip +and pointed its prow toward the headlands.</p> + +<p>With rough weather on the homeward passage, she had space and +opportunity to consider the consequences. Being the only good sailor in +the trio, she had her own self-communings for company during the greater +part of the six days, and the incident sentimental took on an aspect of +finality which was rather dismaying. It was quite in vain that she +sought comfort in the reflection that she was committed to nothing +conclusive. Vincent Farley had not taken that view of it. True, he had +asked for nothing more than a favorable attitude on her part; but she +thought he would be less than a man if he had not seen his final answer +foreshadowed in her acquiescence.</p> + +<p>The finality admitted, a query arose. Was Vincent Farley the man who, +giving her his best, could call out the best there was in her? It +annoyed her to admit the query, or rather the doubt which fathered it; +it distressed her when the doubt appeared to grow with the lengthening +leagues of distance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>Now vacillation was not a Dabney failing; and the aftermath of these +storm-tossed musings made for Vincent Farley's cause. Romance also, in +the eternal feminine, is a constant quantity, and if it be denied the +Romeo-and-Juliet form of expression, will find another. Vincent Farley, +as man or as lover, presented obstacles to any idealizing process, but +Ardea set herself resolutely to overcome them. Distance and time have +other potentialities besides the obliterative: they may breed halos. +When the French liner reached its New York slip, Ardea was remembering +only the studied kindnesses, the conventional refinements, the +correctnesses which, if they did seem artificial at times, were so many +guarantees of self-respect: when the Great Southwestern train had roared +around the cliffs of Lebanon with the returning exiles, and the +locomotive whistle was sounding for Gordonia, some other of the negative +virtues had become definitely positive, and the halo was beginning to be +distinctly visible.</p> + +<p>How Tom Gordon had informed himself of the precise day and train of +their home-coming, Ardea did not think to inquire. But he was on the +platform when the train drew in, and was the first to welcome them.</p> + +<p>She was quick to see and appreciate the changes wrought in him, by time, +by the Boston sojourn, by the summer's struggle with adverse men and +things—though of this last she knew nothing as yet. It seemed scarcely +credible that the big, handsome young fellow who was shaking hands with +her grandfather, helping Miss Euphrasia with her multifarious +belongings, and making himself generally useful and hospitable, could be +a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>later reincarnation of the abashed school-boy who had sweated through +the trying luncheon at Crestcliffe Inn.</p> + +<p>"Not a word for me, Tom?" she said, when the last of Cousin Euphrasia's +treasures had been rescued from the impatient train porter and added to +the heap on the platform.</p> + +<p>"All the words are for you—or they shall be presently," he laughed. +"Just let me get your luggage out of pawn and started Deer-Traceward, +and I'll talk you to a finish."</p> + +<p>She stood by and looked on while he did it. Surely, he had grown and +matured in the three broadening years! There was conscious manhood, +effectiveness, in every movement; in the very bigness of him. She had a +little attack of patriotism, saying to herself that they did not fashion +such young men in the Old World—could not, perhaps.</p> + +<p>Mammy Juliet's grandson, Pete, was down with the family carriage, and he +took his orders from Tom touching the bestowal of the luggage as he +would have taken them from Major Dabney. Ardea marked this, too, and +being Southern bred, wrote the Gordon name still a little higher on the +scroll of esteem. Pete's respectful obedience was, in its way, a patent +of nobility. The negro house-servant, to the manner born, draws the line +sharply between gentle and simple and is swift to resent interlopings.</p> + +<p>When Pete had done his office with the European gatherings of the party +the ancient carriage looked like a van, and there was scant room inside +for three passengers.</p> + +<p>"That means us for old Longfellow and the buggy," <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>said Tom to Ardea. +"Do you mind? Longfellow is fearfully and wonderfully slow, same as +ever, but he's reasonably sure."</p> + +<p>"Any way," said Ardea; so he put her into the buggy and they drew in +behind the carriage. Before they were half-way to the iron-works they +had the pike to themselves, and Tom was not urging the leisurely horse.</p> + +<p>"My land! but it's good for tired eyes to have another sight of you!" he +declared, applying the remedy till she laughed and blushed a little. +Then: "It has been a full month of Sundays. Do you realize that?"</p> + +<p>"Since we saw each other? It has been much longer than that, hasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Not so very much. I saw you in New York the day you sailed."</p> + +<p>"You did! Where was I?"</p> + +<p>"You had just come down in the elevator at the hotel with your +grandfather and Miss Euphrasia."</p> + +<p>"And you wouldn't stop to speak to us? I think that was simply +barbarous!"</p> + +<p>"Wasn't it?" he laughed. "But the time was horribly unpropitious."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her quizzically.</p> + +<p>"I'm wondering whether I'd better lie out of it; say I knew you were on +your way to breakfast, and that I hoped to have a later opportunity, and +all that. Shall I do it?"</p> + +<p>She did not reply at once. The undeceived inner self was telling her +that here lay the parting of the ways; that on her answer would be built +the structure, formal or confidential, of their future intercourse. +Loyalty to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>the halo demanded self-restraint; but every other fiber of +her was reaching out for a reëstablishment of the old boy-and-girl +openness of heart and mind. Her hesitation was only momentary.</p> + +<p>"You are just as rude and Gothic as you used to be, aren't you, Tom? +Don't you know, I'm childishly glad of it; I was afraid you might be +changed in that way, too,—and I don't want to find anything changed. +You needn't be polite at the expense of truth—not with me."</p> + +<p>He looked at her with love in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"This time, you mean—or all the time."</p> + +<p>"All the time, if you like."</p> + +<p>"I do like; there has got to be some one person in this world to whom I +can talk straight, Ardea."</p> + +<p>She laughed a little laugh of half-constraint.</p> + +<p>"You speak as if there had been a vacancy."</p> + +<p>"There has been—for just about three years. I remember you told me once +that I'd find two kinds of friends: those who would refuse to believe +anything bad of me, and those who would size me up and still stick to +me. You are the only one of that second lot I have discovered thus far."</p> + +<p>"We are getting miles away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel," she reminded +him.</p> + +<p>"No; we are just now approaching it from the proper direction. I had my +war paint on that morning, and I wasn't fit to talk to you."</p> + +<p>"Business?" she queried.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Didn't the Major tell you about it?"</p> + +<p>"Not a word. I hope you didn't quarrel with him, too?"</p> + +<p>He marked the adverb of addition and wondered if <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>Vincent Farley had +been less reticent than Major Dabney.</p> + +<p>"No; I didn't quarrel with your grandfather."</p> + +<p>"But you did quarrel with Mr. Farley?—or was it with Vincent?"</p> + +<p>He smiled and shook his head.</p> + +<p>"We can't do it, Ardea—go back to the old way, you know. You see +there's a stump in the road, the very first thing."</p> + +<p>"I shan't admit it," she said half-defiantly. "I am going to make you +like the Farleys."</p> + +<p>He shook his head again. "You'll have to make a Christian of me first, +and teach me how to love my enemies."</p> + +<p>"Don't you do that now?"</p> + +<p>"No; not unless you are my enemy; I love you."</p> + +<p>She looked up at him appealingly.</p> + +<p>"Don't make fun of such things, Tom. Love is sacred."</p> + +<p>"I was never further from making fun of things in my life. I mean it +with every drop of blood in me. You said you didn't want to find me +changed; I'm not changed in that, at least."</p> + +<p>"You ridiculous boy!" she said; but that was only a stop-gap, and +Longfellow added another by coming to a stand opposite a vast +obstruction of building material half damming the white road. "What are +you doing here—building more additions?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"No," said Tom. "It is a new plant—a pipe foundry."</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me we are going to have more neighbors in Paradise," she +said in mock concern.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>"I'll tell you something that may shock you worse than that: the owner +of this new plant has camped down right next door to Deer Trace."</p> + +<p>"How dreadful! You don't mean that!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I do. He's a young man, of poor but honest parentage, with a +large eye for the main chance. I shouldn't be surprised if he took every +opportunity to make love to you."</p> + +<p>"How absurd you can be, Tom! Who is he?"</p> + +<p>"He is Mr. Caleb Gordon's son. I think you think you know him, but you +don't; nobody does."</p> + +<p>"Really, Tom? Have you gone into business for yourself? I thought you +had another year at Boston."</p> + +<p>"I have another year coming to me, but I don't know when I shall get it. +And I am in business for myself; though perhaps I should be modest and +call it a firm—Gordon and Gordon."</p> + +<p>"What does the firm do?"</p> + +<p>"A number of things; among others, it buys the entire iron output of the +Chiawassee Consolidated, just at present."</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" she said; "how fine and large that sounds! If I should say +anything like that you would tell me that Brag was a good dog, but—"</p> + +<p>He grinned ecstatically. It was so like old times—the good old +times—to be bandying good-tempered abuse with her.</p> + +<p>"I do brag a lot, don't I? But have you ever noticed that I 'most always +have something to brag about? This time, for instance. I built this new +firm, and it is all that has kept Chiawassee from going into the +sheriff's hands any time during the past six months."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>Longfellow had picked his way judiciously around the obstructions and +through the gap in the boundary hills, and was jogging in a vertical +trot up the valley pike made clean and hard and stony-white by the +sweeping and hammering of the autumn rains. The mingled clamor of the +industries was left behind, but the throbbing pulsations of the big +blowing-engines hung in the air like the sighings of an imprisoned +giant. They were passing the miniature copy of Morwenstow Church when +Ardea spoke again.</p> + +<p>"You have been home all summer?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"At home and on the road, trying to hypnotize somebody into buying +something—anything—made out of cast-iron. Ah, girl! it's been a bitter +fight!"</p> + +<p>She was instantly sympathetic; more, there was a little thrill of +vicarious triumph to go with the sympathy. She was sure he had won, or +was winning, the battle.</p> + +<p>"We read something about the hard times in the American papers," she +said. "You don't know how far away anything like that seems when there +is an ocean between. And I was hoping all the time that our homeland +down here was escaping."</p> + +<p>"Escaping? You came through South Tredegar a little while ago; it is +dead—too dead to bury. You hear the sob of those blowing-engines?—you +will travel two hundred miles in the iron belt before you will hear it +again. When I came home in June we were smashed, like all the other +furnaces in the South—only worse."</p> + +<p>"How worse, Tom?"</p> + +<p>He forgot the tacit truce for the moment.</p> + +<p>"Duxbury Farley and his son had deliberately wrecked the company."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>She laid a restraining hand on his arm.</p> + +<p>"Let us understand each other," she said gently. "You must not say such +things of Mr. Farley and—and his son to me. If you do, I can't listen."</p> + +<p>"You don't believe what I say?"</p> + +<p>"I believe you have convinced yourself. But you are vindictive; you know +you are. And I mean to be fair and just."</p> + +<p>He let the plodding horse measure a full half-mile before he turned and +looked at her with anger and despair glooming in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Tell me one thing, Ardea, and maybe it will shut my mouth. What is +Vincent Parley to you—anything more than Eva's brother?"</p> + +<p>Another young woman might have claimed her undoubted right to evade such +a pointed question. But Ardea saw safety only in instant frankness.</p> + +<p>"He has asked me to be his wife, Tom."</p> + +<p>"And you have consented?"</p> + +<p>"I wonder if I have," she said half-musingly.</p> + +<p>"Don't you <i>know</i>?" he demanded. And then, "Ardea, I'd rather see you +dead and in your coffin!"</p> + +<p>"Just why—apart from your prejudice?"</p> + +<p>"It's Beauty and the Beast over again. You don't know Vint Farley."</p> + +<p>"Don't I? My opportunities have been very much better than yours," she +retorted.</p> + +<p>"That may be, but I say you don't know him. He is a whited sepulcher."</p> + +<p>"But you can not particularize," she insisted. "And the evidence is all +the other way."</p> + +<p>Tom was silent. During the summer of strugglings <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>he had gone pretty +deeply into the history of Chiawassee Consolidated, and there was +commercial sharp practice in plenty, with some nice balancings on the +edge of criminality. Once, indeed, the balance had been quite lost, but +it was Dyckman who had been thrust into the breach, or who had been +induced to enter it by falsifying his books. Yet these were mere +business matters, without standing in the present court.</p> + +<p>"The evidence isn't all one-sided," he asserted. "If you were a man, I +could convince you in two minutes that both of the Farleys are rascals +and hypocrites."</p> + +<p>"Yet they are your father's business associates," she reminded him.</p> + +<p>He saw the hopelessness of any argument on that side, and was silent +again, this time until they had passed the Deer Trace gates and he had +cut the buggy before the great Greek-pillared portico of the +manor-house. When he had helped her out, she thanked him and gave him +her hand quite in the old way; and he held it while he asked a single +blunt question.</p> + +<p>"Tell me one thing more, Ardea: do you love Vincent Farley?"</p> + +<p>Her swift blush answered him, and he did not wait for her word.</p> + +<p>"That settles it; you needn't say it in so many words. Isn't it a hell +of a world, Ardea? I love you—love you as this man never will, never +could. And with half his chance, I could have made you love me. I—"</p> + +<p>"Don't, Tom! please don't," she begged, trying to free her hand.</p> + +<p>"I must, for this once; then we'll quit and go back to the former +things. You said a while ago that I was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>vindictive; I'll show you that +I am not. When the time comes for me to put my foot on Vint Farley's +neck, I'm going to spare him for your sake. Then you'll know what it +means to have a man's love. Good-by; I'm coming over for a few minutes +this evening if you'll let me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2> + +<h3>TARRED ROPES</h3> + + +<p>"Now jest you listen at me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't goin' to make out to +find no better hawss 'n that this side o' the Blue Grass. Sound as a +dollar in lung <i>and</i> leg, highstepper—my Land! jest look at the way he +holds his head—rides like a baby's cradle; why, that hawss is a perfect +gentleman, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>Since her return from Europe Miss Ardea Dabney had taken to horseback +riding, a five-mile canter before breakfast in the fine brisk air of the +autumn mornings; and Tom had discovered that he needed a saddle animal. +Wherefore Brother Japheth was parading a handsome bay up and down before +the door of the small office building of the new foundry, descanting +glowingly on its merits, while Tom lounged on the step and pretended to +make difficulties.</p> + +<p>"You think he's a pretty good horse, do you, Japhe—worth the money?" he +queried, with the air of one who is about to surrender, not to the fact, +but to the presentation of it.</p> + +<p>"If you cayn't stable him this winter and then get your money back on +him in ary hawss market this side o' the Ohio River, I'll eat hawss for +the rest o' my bawn days. Now that's fair, ain't it?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>"It's more than fair; it's generous. But let me ask you: is this +protracted-meeting talk you're giving me, or just plain, every-day horse +lies?"</p> + +<p>Brother Japheth halted the parade and there was aggrieved +reproachfulness in every line of his long, lantern-jawed face.</p> + +<p>"Now lookee here; I didn't 'low to find <i>you</i> a-sittin' in the seat of +the scornful, Tom-Jeff; I shore didn't. Ain't the good cause precious to +your soul no mo' sence you to'd loose f'om your mammy's apron-string?"</p> + +<p>Tom's shrewd overlooking of the horse-trader spoke eloquently of the +spiritual landmarks past and left behind.</p> + +<p>"I don't know about you, Japhe. A fair half of the time you have me +cornered; and the other half I'm wondering if you are just ordinary, +canting hypocrite, like the majority of 'the brethren.'"</p> + +<p>"Now see here, Tom-Jeff, you know a heap better'n that! First and +fo'most, the majority ain't the majority, not by three sights and a +horn-blow. Hit don't take more'n one good, perseverin' hypocrite in the +chu'ch to spile the name o' chu'ch-member as fur as ye can holler it. +You been on a railroad train and seen the con-duc-tor havin' a furss +with the feller 'at pays for one seat and tries to hog four, and you've +set back and said, 'My gosh! what a lot o' swine the human race is when +hit gits away f'om home!' And right at that ve'y minute, mebbe, ther' +was forty-five 'r fifty other people in that cyar goin' erlong, mindin' +their own business, and not hoggin' any more 'n they paid for."</p> + +<p>Tom smiled. "And you think that's the way it is in the church, do you?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>"I don't think nare' thing about hit; I know sufferin' well that's the +how of it. Lord forgive me! didn't I let one scribe-an'-Pharisee keep me +out o' the Isra'l o' God for nigh on to twenty year?"</p> + +<p>"Who was it?" asked Tom, tranquilly curious.</p> + +<p>"That ther' Jim Bledsoe, Brother Bill Layne's brother-in-law. He kep' +Brother Bill out, too, for a right smart spell."</p> + +<p>Tom was turning the memory pages half-absently.</p> + +<p>"Let me see," he said. "Didn't I hear something about your whaling the +everlasting daylights out of Bledsoe sometime last winter?"</p> + +<p>Japheth hung his head after the manner of one who has spoiled a good +argument by overstating it.</p> + +<p>"That ther's jest like me," he said disgustedly. "I nev' do know enough +to quit when I git thoo. Ain't it somewher's in the Bible 'at it says +some folks is bawn troublesome, and some goes round huntin' for trouble, +and some has trouble jammed up ag'inst 'em?"</p> + +<p>"You can't prove it by me," Tom laughed. "I believe Shakespeare said +something like that about greatness."</p> + +<p>"Well, nev' mind; whoa, Saladin, boy, we'll git round to you ag'in, +bime-by. As I was sayin', this here furss with Jim Bledsoe jest +natchelly couldn't be holped, nohow. Hit was thisaway: 'long late in the +fall I swapped Jim a piebald that was jest erbout the no-accountest +hawss 'at ever had a bit in his mouth. I done told Jim all his meanness; +but Jim, he 'lowed I was lyin' and made the trade anyhow. Inside of a +week he was back here, callin' me names. I turned him first one cheek +and then t'other, like the Good Book says, till they was jest plum' wo' +out; and then I says, says I: 'Lookee here, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>Jim, you've done smack' me +on both sides o' the jaw, and that ther's your priv'lege—me bein' a +chu'ch-member in good and reg'lar standin', and no low-down, +in-fergotten, turkey-trodden hypocrite like you. But right here the +torections erbout what I'm bounden to do sort o' peter out. I got as +many cheeks to turn as any of 'em, but that ain't sayin' that the +stock's immortil' With that he ups and allows a heap mo' things about my +morils; and me havin' turned both cheeks till my neck ached, and not +havin' any mo' <i>toe</i> turn, what-all could I do—what-all would you 'a' +done, Tom-Jeff?"</p> + +<p>"Don't ask me. I'm one of the hair-hung and breeze-shaken majority. I +should most probably have punched his head."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's jest what I did. I says, says I, 'Jim, whom the Lord +loveth He chasteneth, and jest at this time present, I'm the +instru<i>ment</i>.' And when the dust got settled down, Jim he druv' home +with that ther' piebald, allowin' he wasn't such an all-fired bad hawss +after all. But lookee here, Tom-Jeff, this ain't sellin' you the finest +saddle-hawss in the valley. What do ye say about Saladin?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," said Tom. "I don't love horses very much. You know +what the Bible says: <i>A horse is a vain thing for safety</i>. Is this bay +going to make me lose my temper and knock his pinhead brains out the +first time I put a leg over him?"</p> + +<p>"No-o-o, suh! Why, he's as kind and gentle and lovin as a woman. You +jest natchelly <i>couldn't</i> whup this here bay, Tom-Jeff!"</p> + +<p>"All right, Japhe; I was only deviling you a little. Take him up to the +Woodlawn stables and tell William <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>Henry Harrison to give him the box +stall. I'll try him to-morrow morning, if the weather is good."</p> + +<p>Brother Japheth's business was concluded, and the architect who was +building the latest extension to the pipe-pit floor was heading across +the yard to consult the young boss. Pettigrass paused with his foot in +the stirrup to say, "Old Tike Bryerson's on the rampage ag'in; folks up +at the valley head say he's a-lookin' for you, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>"For me?" said Tom; then he laughed easily. "I don't owe him anything, +and I'm not very hard to find. What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>He thought it a little singular at the time that Japheth gave him a +curious look and mounted and rode away without answering his question. +But the building activities were clamoring for time and attention, and +his father was waiting to consult him about a run of iron that was not +quite up to the pipe-making test requirements. So he forgot Japheth's +half-accusing glance at parting, and the implied warning that had +preceded it, until an incident at the day's end reminded him of both.</p> + +<p>The incident turned on the fact of his walking home. Ordinarily he +struck work when the furnace whistle blew, riding home with his father +behind old Longfellow; but on this particular evening Kinderling, the +architect, missed his South Tredegar train, and Tom spent an extra hour +with him, discussing further and future possibilities of expansion. +Kinderling got away on a later train, and Tom closed his office and took +the long mile up the pike afoot in the dusk of the autumn evening, +thinking pointedly of many things mechanical and industrial, and never +by any chance forereaching to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>the epoch-marking event that was awaiting +him at the Woodlawn gate.</p> + +<p>His hand was upon the latch of the ornamental side wicket opening on the +home foot-path when a woman, crouching in the shadow of the great-gate +pillar, rose suddenly and stood before him. He did not recognize her at +first; it was nearly dark, and her head was snooded in a shawl. Then she +spoke, and he saw that it was Nancy Bryerson—a Nan sadly and terribly +changed, but with much of the wild-creature beauty of face and form +still remaining.</p> + +<p>"You done forgot me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked; and then, at his start of +recognition: "I allow I have changed some."</p> + +<p>"Surely I haven't forgotten you, Nan. But you took me by surprise; and I +can't see in the dark any better than most people. What are you doing +down here in the valley so late in the evening?" He tried to say it +superiorly, paternally, as an older man might have said it—and was not +altogether successful. The mere sight of her set his blood aswing in the +old throbbing ebb and flow, though, if he had known it, it was pity now +rather than passion that gave the impetus.</p> + +<p>"You allow it ain't fittin' for me to be out alone after night?" she +said, with a hard little laugh. "I reckon it ain't goin' to hurt me +none; anyways, I had to come. Paw's been red-eyed for a week, and he's +huntin' for you, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>Then Tom recalled Japheth's word of the morning.</p> + +<p>"Hunting for me? Well, I'm not very hard to find," he said, +unconsciously repeating the answer he had made to the horse-trader's +warning.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>"Couldn't you make out to go off somewheres for a little spell?" she +asked half-pleadingly.</p> + +<p>"Run away, you mean? Hardly; I'm too busy just at present. Besides, I +haven't any quarrel with your father. What's he making trouble about +now?"</p> + +<p>She put her face in her hands, and though she was silent, he could see +that sobs were shaking her. Being neither more nor less than a man, her +tears made him foolish. He put his arm around her and was trying to find +the comforting word, when the heavens fell.</p> + +<p>How Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, going the round-about way from one house +to the other to avoid the dew-wet grass of the lawns, came fairly within +arm's-reach before he saw or heard them, remained a thing inexplicable. +But when he looked up they were there, Miss Euphrasia straightening +herself aloof in virtuous disapproval, and Ardea looking as if some one +had suddenly shown her the head of Medusa.</p> + +<p>Tom separated himself from Nan in hot-hearted confusion and stood as a +culprit taken in the act. Nan hid her face again and turned away. It was +Miss Dabney the younger who found words to break the smarting silence.</p> + +<p>"Don't mind us, Mr. Gordon," she said icily. "We were going to Woodlawn +to see if your father and mother could come over after dinner."</p> + +<p>Tom smote himself alive and made haste to open the foot-path gate for +them. There was nothing more said, or to be said; but when they were +gone and he was once more alone with Nan, he was fighting desperately +with a very manlike desire to smash something; to relieve the wrathful +pressure by hurting somebody. Let it be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>written down to his credit +that he did not wreak his vengeance on the defenseless. Thomas +Jefferson, the boy, would not have hesitated.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/illus04.png" width="400" height="559" alt="Tom made haste to open the foot-path gate for them." title="Tom made haste to open the foot-path gate for them." /> +<span class="caption">Tom made haste to open the foot-path gate for them.</span> +</div> + +<p>"You were going to tell me about your father," he said, striving to hold +the interruption as if it had not been, and yet tingling in every nerve +to be free. "Did you come all the way down the mountain to warn me?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, adding: "But that didn't make no differ'; I had to come +anyway. He run me out, paw did."</p> + +<p>"Heavens!" ejaculated Tom, prickling now with a new sensation. "And you +haven't any place to stay?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"No. I was allowin' maybe your paw'd let me sleep where you-uns keep the +hawsses—jest for a little spell till I could make out what-all I'm +goin' to do."</p> + +<p>He was too rageful to be quite clear-sighted. Yet he conceived that he +had a duty laid on him. Once in the foolish, infatuated long-ago he had +told her he would take care of her; he remembered it; doubtless she was +remembering it, too. But her suggestion was not to be considered for a +moment.</p> + +<p>"I can't let you go to the stables," he objected. "The horse-boys sleep +there. But I'll put a roof over you, some way. Wait here a minute till I +come back."</p> + +<p>His thought was to go to his mother and ask her help; but half-way to +the house his courage failed him. Since the breach in spiritual +confidence he had been better able to see the lovable side of his +mother's faith; but he could not be blind to that quality of hardness in +it which, even in such chastened souls as Martha Gordon's, finds +expression in woman's inhumanity to woman. Besides, Ardea and her cousin +were still in the way.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>He swung on his heel undecided. On the hillside back of the new foundry +there was a one-roomed cabin built on the Gordon land years before by a +hermit watchman of the Chiawassee plant. It was vacant, and Tom +remembered that the few bits of furniture had not been removed when the +old watchman died. Would the miserable shack do for a temporary refuge +for the outcast? He concluded it would have to do; and, making a wide +circuit of the house, he went around to the stables to harness +Longfellow to the buggy. Luckily, the negroes were all in the detached +kitchen, eating their supper, so he was able to go and come undetected.</p> + +<p>When he drove down to the gate he found Nan waiting where he had left +her; but now she had a bundle in her arms. As he got out to swing the +driveway grille, the house door opened; a flood of light from the hall +lamp banded the lawn, and there were voices and footsteps on the +veranda. He flung a nervous glance over his shoulder; Ardea and her +cousin were returning down the foot-path. Wherefore he made haste, +meaning not to be caught again, if he could help it. But the fates were +against him. Longfellow, snatched ruthlessly from his half-emptied oat +box, made equine protest, yawing and veering and earning himself a +savage cut of the whip before he consented to place the buggy at the +stone mounting-step.</p> + +<p>"Quick!" said Tom, flinging the reins on the dashboard. "Chuck your +bundle under the seat and climb in!"</p> + +<p>But Nan was provokingly slow, and when she tried to get in with the +bundle still in her arms, the buggy hood was in the way. Tom had to help +her, was in the act <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>of lifting her to the step, when the wicket latch, +clicked and Ardea and Miss Euphrasia came out. They passed on without +comment, but Tom could feel the electric shock of righteous scorn +through the back of his head. That was why he drove half-way to the +lower end of the pike before he turned on Nan to say:</p> + +<p>"What's in that bundle you're so careful of? Why don't you put it under +the seat?"</p> + +<p>She looked around at him, and dark as it was, he saw that the great +black eyes were shining with a strange light—strange to him.</p> + +<p>"I reckon you wouldn't want me to do that, Tom-Jeff," she answered +simply. "Hit's my baby—my little Tom."</p> + +<p>He was struck dumb. It often happens that in the fiercest storm of +gossip the one most nearly concerned goes his way without so much as +suspecting that the sun is hidden. But Tom had not been exposed to the +violence of the storm. Nan's shame was old, and the gossip tongues had +wagged themselves weary two years before, when the child was born. So +Tom was quite free to think only of his companion. A great anger rose +and swelled in his heart. What scoundrel had taken advantage of an +ignorance so profound as to be the blood sister of innocence? He would +have given much to know; and yet the true delicacy of a manly soul made +him hold his peace.</p> + +<p>Thus it befell that they drove in silence to the deserted cabin on the +hillside; and Tom went down to the foundry office and brought a lamp for +light. The cabin was a mere shelter; but when he would have made +excuses, Nan stopped him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>"Hit's as good as I been usen to, as you know mighty well, Tom-Jeff. I +on'y wisht—"</p> + +<p>He was on his knees at the hearth, kindling a fire, and he looked up to +see why she did not finish. She was sitting on the edge of the old +watchman's rude bed, bowed low over the sleeping child, and again sobs +were shaking her like an ague fit. There was something heartrending in +this silent, wordless anguish; but there was nothing to be said, and Tom +went on making the fire. After a little she sat up and continued +monotonously:</p> + +<p>"<i>He</i> was liken to me thataway, too; the Man 'at I heard your Uncle +Silas tellin' about one night when I sot on the doorstep at Little +Zoar—He hadn't no place to lay His'n head; not so much as the red foxes +'r the birds ... and I hain't."</p> + +<p>The blaze was racing up the chimney now with a cheerful roar, and Tom +rose to his feet, every good emotion in him stirring to its awakening.</p> + +<p>"Such as it is, Nan, this place is yours, for as long as you want to +stay," he said soberly. And then: "You straighten things around here to +suit you, and I'll be back in a little while."</p> + +<p>He was gone less than half an hour, but in that short interval he +lighted another fire: a blaze of curiosity and comment to tingle the +ears and loosen the tongues of the circle of loungers in Hargis's store +in Gordonia. He ignored the stove-hugging contingent pointedly while he +was giving his curt orders to the storekeeper; and the contingent +avenged itself when he was out of hearing.</p> + +<p>"Te-he!" chuckled Simeon Cantrell the elder, pursing his lips around the +stem of his corn-cob pipe; "looks like Tom-Jeff was goin' to +house-keepin' right late in the evenin'."</p> + +<p>"By gol, I wonder what's doin'?" said another. "Reckon he's done tuk up +with Nan Bryerson, afte' all's been said an' done?"</p> + +<p>Bastrop Clegg, whose distinction was that of being the oldest loafer in +the circle, spat accurately into the drafthole of the stove, sat back +and tilted his hat over his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Well, boys, I reckon hit's erbout time, ain't hit?" he moralized. +"Leetle Tom must be a-goin' awn two year old; and I don't recommember ez +Tom 'r his pappy has ever done a livin' thing for Nan."</p> + +<p>Whereupon one member of the group got up and addressed himself to the +door. It was Japheth Pettigrass; and what he said was said to the +starlit night outside.</p> + +<p>"My Lord! that ther' boy <i>was</i> lyin' to me, after all! I didn't believe +hit that night when he r'ared and took on so to me and 'lowed to chunk +me with a rock, and I don't want to believe hit now. But Lordy gracious! +hit do look mighty bad, with him a-buyin' all that outfit and loadin' +hit in his pappy's buggy; hit do, for shore!"</p> + +<p>A half-hour later, Brother Japheth, trudging back to Deer Trace on the +pike, saw the light in the long-deserted cabin back of the new foundry +plant; saw this and was overtaken at the Woodlawn gates by Thomas +Jefferson with Longfellow and the buggy. And he could not well help +observing that the buggy had been lightened of its burden of household +supplies.</p> + +<p>Tom turned the horse over to William Henry Harrison and went in to his +belated dinner somberly reflective. He was not sorry to find that his +mother and father had gone over to the manor-house. Solitude was +grateful at the moment; he was glad of the chance to try to think +himself uninterruptedly out of the snarl of misunderstanding in which +his impulsiveness had entangled him.</p> + +<p>The pointing of the thought was to see Ardea and have it out with her at +once. Reconsidered, it appeared the part of prudence to wait a little. +The muddiest pool will settle if time and freedom from ill-judged +disturbance be given it. But we, who have known Thomas Jefferson from +his beginnings, may be sure that it was the action-thought that +triumphed. <i>They also serve who only stand and wait</i>, was meaningless +comfort to him; and when he had finished his solitary dinner and had +changed his clothes, he strode across the double lawns and rang the +manor-house bell.</p> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2> + +<h3>THE UNDER-DEPTHS</h3> + +<p>The Deer Trace family and the two guests from Woodlawn were in the +music-room when Tom was admitted, with Ardea at the piano playing war +songs for the pleasuring of her grandfather and the ex-artilleryman. +Under cover of the music, Tom slipped into the circle of listeners and +went to sit beside his mother. There was a courteous hand-wave of +welcome from Major Dabney, but Miss Euphrasia seemed not to see him. He +saw and understood, and was obstinately impervious to the chilling east +wind in that quarter. It was with Ardea that he must make his peace, and +he settled himself to wait for his opportunity.</p> + +<p>It bade fair to be a long time coming. Ardea's repertoire was apparently +inexhaustible, and at the end of an added hour he began to suspect that +she knew what was in store for her and was willing to postpone the +afflictive moment. From the battle hymns of the Confederacy to the +militant revival melodies best loved by Martha Gordon the transition was +easy; and from these she drifted through a Beethoven sonata to Mozart, +and from Mozart to Chopin.</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson knew music as the barbarian knows it, which is to say +that it lighted strange fires in him; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>stirred and thrilled him in +certain heart or soul labyrinths locked against all other influences. As +Ardea's fingers sought the changing chords he felt vaguely that she was +speaking to him, now scorning, now rebuking, now pleading, but always in +a tongue that he only half comprehended. He stole a glance at his watch, +impatient to come to hand-grips with her and have it over. The suspense +could not last much longer. It was past ten; the Major was dozing +peacefully in his great arm-chair, and Miss Euphrasia yawned decorously +behind her hand.</p> + +<p>Ardea lingered lovingly on the closing harmonies of the nocturne, and +when the final chord was struck her hands lingered on the keys until the +sweet voices of the strings had sung themselves afar into the higher +sound heaven. Then she turned quickly and surprised her anesthetized +audience.</p> + +<p>"You poor things!" she laughed. "In another five minutes the last one of +you would have succumbed. Why didn't somebody stop me?"</p> + +<p>The iron-master said something about the heavy work of the day, and +helped his wife to her feet. The Major came awake with a start and +bestirred himself hospitably, and Miss Euphrasia rose to speed the +parting guests—or rather the two of them who had been invited. In the +drift down the wide hall Ardea fell behind with Tom, whom Cousin +Euphrasia continued to ignore.</p> + +<p>"I came to tell you," he said in a low tone, snatching his opportunity. +"I can't sleep until I have fought it out with you."</p> + +<p>"You don't deserve a hearing, even from your best friend," was her +discouraging reply; but when they were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>at the door she gave him a +formal reprieve. "I shall walk for a few minutes on the portico to rest +my nerves," she said. "If you want to come back—"</p> + +<p>He thanked her gravely, and went obediently when his mother called to +him from the steps. But on the Woodlawn veranda he excused himself to +smoke a cigar in the open; and when the door closed behind the two +in-going, he swiftly recrossed the lawns to pay the penalty.</p> + +<p>The front door of the manor-house was shut and the broad, pillared +portico was untenanted. He sat down in one of the rustic chairs and +searched absently in his pockets for a cigar. Before he could find it +the door opened and closed and Ardea stood before him. She had thrown a +wrap over her shoulders, and the light from the music-room windows +illuminated her. There was cool scorn in the slate-blue eyes, but in +Tom's thought she had never appeared more unutterably beautiful and +desirable—and unattainable.</p> + +<p>"I have come," she said, in a tone that cut him to the heart for its +very indifference. "What have you to say for yourself?"</p> + +<p>He rose quickly and offered her the chair; and when she would not take +it, he put his back to the wall and stood with her.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I haven't left myself much to say," he began penitently. "I +was born foolish, and it seems that I haven't outgrown it. But, really, +if you could know—"</p> + +<p>"Unhappily, I do know," she interrupted. "If I did not, I might listen +to you with better patience."</p> + +<p>"It did look pretty bad," he confessed. "And that's <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>what I wanted to +say; it looked a great deal worse than it was, you know."</p> + +<p>"I <i>don't</i> know," she retorted.</p> + +<p>"You are tangling me," he said, gaining something in self-possession +under the flick of the whip. "First you say you know, and then you say +you don't know. Which is which?"</p> + +<p>"If you are flippant I shall go in," she threatened. "There are things +that not even the most loyal friendship can condone."</p> + +<p>"That's the difference between friendship and love," he asserted. "I +believe I'd enjoy a little more real confidence and a little less of the +dutiful kind of loyalty."</p> + +<p>"You ask too much," she said, quite coolly. "Forgiveness implies +penitence and continued good behavior."</p> + +<p>"No, it doesn't, anything of the kind," he denied, matching her tone. +"That is the purely pagan point of view, and you are barred from taking +it. You are bound to consider the motive."</p> + +<p>"I am bound to believe what I see with my own eyes," she rejoined. +"Perhaps you can make it appear that seeing is not believing."</p> + +<p>"Of course I can't, if you take that attitude," he complained. And then +he said irritably: "You talk about friendship! You don't know the +meaning of the word!"</p> + +<p>"If I didn't, I should hardly be here at this moment," she suggested. +"You don't seem to apprehend to what degrading depths you have sunk."</p> + +<p>His sins in the business field rose before him accusingly and prompted +his reply.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do; but that is another matter. We were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>speaking of what you +saw this evening. Will you let me try to explain?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, if you will tell the plain truth."</p> + +<p>"Lacking imagination, I can't do anything else. Nan has had a +falling-out with the old scamp of a moonshiner who calls himself her +father. She came to me for help, and broke down in the midst of telling +me about it. I can't stand a woman's crying any better than other men."</p> + +<p>The slate-blue eyes were transfixing him.</p> + +<p>"And that was all—absolutely all, Tom?"</p> + +<p>"I don't lie—to you," he said briefly.</p> + +<p>She gave him her hand with an impulsive return to the old comradeship. +"I believe you, Tom, in the face of all the—the unlikelinesses. But +please don't try me again. After what has happened—" she stopped in +deference to something in his eyes, half anger, half bewilderment, or a +most skilful simulation of both.</p> + +<p>"Go on," he said; "tell me what has happened. I seem to have missed +something."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, with sudden gravity. "I don't want to be your accuser or +your confessor; and if you should try to prevaricate, I should hate +you!"</p> + +<p>"There is nothing for me to confess to you, Ardea," he said soberly, +still holding the hand she had given him. "You have known the worst of +me, always and all along, I think."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I <i>have</i> known," she replied, freeing the imprisoned hand and +turning from him. "And I have been sorry, sorry; not less for you than +for poor Nancy Bryerson. You know now what I thought—what I <i>had</i> to +think—when I saw you with her this evening."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>It was slowly beating its way into his brain. Little things, atoms of +suggestion, were separating themselves from the mass of things +disregarded to cluster thickly on this nucleus of revealment: the old +story of his companying with Nan on the mountain; his uncle's and +Japheth's accusation at the time; and now the old moonshiner's enmity, +Japheth's meaning look and distrustful silence, Nan's appearance with a +child bearing his own name, the glances askance in Hargis's store when +he was buying the little stock of necessaries for the poor outcast. It +was all plain enough. For reasons best known to herself, Nan had not +revealed the name of her betrayer, and all Gordonia, and all Paradise, +believed him to be the man. Even Ardea ...</p> + +<p>She had moved aside out of the square of window light, and he followed +her.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," he said thickly; "you heard this: you have believed it. Have +I been misjudging you?"</p> + +<p>"Not more than I misjudged you, perhaps. But that is all over, now: I am +trusting you again, Tom. Only, as I said before, you mustn't try me too +hard."</p> + +<p>"Let me understand," he went on, still in the same strained tone. +"Knowing this, or believing it, you could still find a place in your +heart for me—you could still forgive me, Ardea?"</p> + +<p>"I could still be your friend; yes," she replied. "I believed—others +believed—that your punishment would be great enough; there are all the +coming years for you to be sorry in, Tom. But in the fullness of time I +meant to remind you of your duty. The time has come; you must play the +man's part now. What have you done with her?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>"Wait a moment. I must know one other thing," he insisted. "You heard +this before you went to Europe?"</p> + +<p>"Long before."</p> + +<p>"And it didn't make any difference in the way you felt toward me?"</p> + +<p>"It did; it made the vastest difference." They were pacing slowly up and +down the portico, and she waited until they had made the turn at the +Woodlawn end before she went on. "I thought I knew you when we were boy +and girl together, and, girl-like, I suppose I had idealized you in some +ways. I thought I knew your wickednesses, and that they were not +weaknesses; so—so it was a miserable shock. But it was not for me to +judge you—only as you might rise or sink from that desperate starting +point. When I came home I was sure that you had risen; I have been sure +of it ever since until—until these few wretched hours to-night. They +are past, and now I'm going to be sure of it some more, Tom."</p> + +<p>It was his turn to be silent, and they had measured twice the length of +the pillared floor when at last he said:</p> + +<p>"What if I should tell you that you are mistaken—that all of them are +mistaken?"</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said softly. "That would only be smashing what is left of +the ideal. I think I couldn't bear that."</p> + +<p>"God in Heaven!" he said, under his breath. "And you've been calling +this friendship! Ardea, girl, it's <i>love</i>!"</p> + +<p>She shook her head slowly.</p> + +<p>"No," she rejoined gravely. "At one time I thought—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>I was afraid—that +it might be. But now I know it isn't."</p> + +<p>"How do you know it?"</p> + +<p>"Because love, as I think of it, is stronger than the traditions, +stronger than anything else in the world. And the traditions are still +with me. I admit the existence of the social pale, and as long as I live +within it I have a right to demand certain things of the man who marries +me."</p> + +<p>"And love doesn't demand anything," he said, putting the remainder of +the thought into words for her. "You are right. If I could clear myself +with a word, I should not say it."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because your—loyalty, let us call it, is too precious to be exchanged +for anything else you could give me in place of it—esteem, respect, and +all the other well-behaved and virtuous bestowals."</p> + +<p>"But the loyalty is based on the belief that you are trying to earn the +well-behaved approvals," she continued.</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't. It exists 'in spite of' everything, and not 'because of' +anything. The traditions may try to make you stand it on the other leg, +it's a way they have; but the fact remains."</p> + +<p>She shook her head in deprecation.</p> + +<p>"The 'traditions,' are about to send me into the house, and the +principal problem is yet untouched. What have you done with Nancy?"</p> + +<p>He told her briefly and exactly, adding nothing and omitting nothing; +and her word for it was "impossible."</p> + +<p>"Don't you understand?" she objected. "I may choose <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>to believe that +this home making for poor Nan and her waif is merely a bit of tardy +justice on your part and honor you for it. But nobody else will take +that view of it. If you keep her in that little cabin of yours, Mountain +View Avenue will have a fit—and very properly."</p> + +<p>"I don't see why it should," he protested densely.</p> + +<p>"Don't you? That's because you are still so hopelessly primeval. People +won't give you credit for the good motive; they will quote that +Scripture about the dog and the sow. You must think of some other way."</p> + +<p>"Supposing I say I don't care a hang?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but you do. You have your father and mother and—and me to +consider, however reckless you may be for yourself and Nancy. You +mustn't leave her where she is for a single day."</p> + +<p>"I can leave her there if I like. I've told her she may stay as long as +she wants to."</p> + +<p>They had paused in front of the great door, and Ardea's hand was on the +knob.</p> + +<p>"No," she said decisively, "you will have a perfect hornets' nest about +your ears. Every move you make will be watched and commented on. Don't +you see that you are playing the part of the headstrong, obstinate boy +again?"</p> + +<p>"Yet you think I ought to provide for Nan, in some way; how am I going +to do it unless I ignore the hornets?"</p> + +<p>"Now you are more reasonable," she said approvingly. "I shall ride +to-morrow morning, and if you should happen to overtake me, we might +think up something."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>The door was opening gently under the pressure of her hand, but he was +loath to go.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't take five added years of life for what I've learned +to-night, Ardea;" he said passionately. And then: "Have you fully made +up your mind to marry Vincent Farley?"</p> + +<p>In the twinkling of an eye she was another woman—cold, unapproachable, +with pride kindling as if she had received a mortal affront.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes—and they are bad times for you, Mr. Gordon—I am tempted to +forget the boy-and-girl anchorings in the past. Have you no sense of the +fitness of things—no shame?"</p> + +<p>"Not very much of either, I guess," he said quite calmly. "Love hasn't +any shame; and it doesn't concern itself much about the fitness of +anything but its object."</p> + +<p>And then he bade her good night and went his way with a lilting song of +triumph in his heart which not even the chilling rebuff of the +leave-taking was sufficient to silence.</p> + +<p>"She loves me! She would still love me if she were ten times Vincent +Farley's wife!" he said, over and over to himself; the words were on his +lips when he fell asleep, and they were still ringing in his ears the +next morning at dawn-break when he rose and made ready to go to ride +with her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2> + +<h3>THE PLOW IN THE FURROW</h3> + + +<p>One of Miss Ardea Dabney's illuminating graces was the ability to return +easily and amicably to the <i>status quo ante bellum</i>; to "kiss and be +friends," in the unfettered phrase of Margaret Catherwood, her chum and +room-mate at Carroll College.</p> + +<p>Wherefore, when Tom, mounted on Saladin, overtook her on the morning +next after the night of offenses, she greeted him quite as if nothing +had happened, challenging him gaily to a gallop with the valley head for +its goal, and refusing to be drawn into anything more serious than +joyous persiflage until they were returning at a walk down a +boulder-strewn wood road at the back of the Dabney horse pasture. Then, +and not till then, was the question of Nancy Bryerson's future suffered +to present itself.</p> + +<p>For Miss Dabney the question was settled before it came up for +discussion. In the Major's young manhood Deer Trace had maintained a +pack of foxhounds, and it was the Major's bride, a city-bred Charleston +belle, who first objected to the dooryard kennels and the clamor of the +dogs. Back of the horse pasture, and a hundred yards vertical above the +road Ardea and Tom were traversing, a pocket-like glen indented the +mountain <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>side, and in this glen the kennels had been established, with +a substantial log cabin for the convenience of the dog-keeper.</p> + +<p>Dogs and dog-keeper had long since gone the way of most of the old-time +Southern manorial largenesses; but the cabin still stood solidly planted +in the midst of its overgrown garden patch, with a dense thicket of +mountain laurel backgrounding it, and a giant tulip-tree standing +sentinel over a gate hanging by one rusted hinge.</p> + +<p>This was what Tom saw when he had followed Ardea's lead up the steep bit +of path climbing from the road and the pasture wall, and it evoked +memories. Often in the boyhood days, when the Nazarite fit was on, he +had climbed to the deserted solitude of the glen to sit on the broad +door-stone of the dog-keeper's cabin as a hermit at large,—monarch for +the monastic moment of a kingdom as remote as that of John the Baptist +in the Wilderness of Sin.</p> + +<p>"I thought of it last night," said Ardea, nodding toward the cabin. "It +is just the place for Nancy, if she can not, or will not, go back to her +father. After breakfast, I shall send Dinah and a man up to set things +in order, and she can come as soon as she likes. She won't mind the +loneliness?"</p> + +<p>Tom shook his head. "I should think not; she has never been used to +anything else. I'll bring her and the youngster over in the buggy any +time you telephone." He had quite forgotten his lesson of the previous +evening.</p> + +<p>"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind," was the quick reply. "Japheth +will go after her when we are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>ready; and if you are prudently wise you +will have business in South Tredegar for the next few days."</p> + +<p>The blue-grass, seeded once in the dog-keeper's dooryard, had spread to +the farthest limits of the glen, and the autumn rains had given it a +spring-like start. Tom let Saladin crop a dozen mouthfuls unchecked +before he said:</p> + +<p>"That looks like dodging; and I don't like to dodge."</p> + +<p>"You will have to do many things you don't like before you say your <i>ave +atque vale</i>," she remarked. "But you shall be permitted to carry your +full share of the burden. I mean to let you give me some money, if you +can afford it, and I'll spend it for you."</p> + +<p>"Charity itself couldn't be kinder," he asseverated. "And, luckily, I +can afford it. But—"</p> + +<p>He was looking at her wistfully, and the old longing for sympathy, for +the sympathy which has been quite to the bottom of the well where truth +lies, was about to cry out against this riveting of the fetters of +misunderstanding and false accusation.</p> + +<p>"But you would rather spend it yourself?" she broke in, fancying she had +divined his thought. "That cannot be. The one condition on which I shall +consent to help is the completest isolation for Nan. You must promise me +you will not try to see her. I am hoping against hope that none of the +Mountain View Avenue people will find out what you did last night."</p> + +<p>"Oh, confound their gossiping tongues!" he railed; adding hastily: "Not +that I care so very much what they say, either."</p> + +<p>Ardea let her horse pick his way down to the wood road, and when they +were approaching the Deer Trace <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>gate: "You haven't promised yet, Tom; +and you must, you know."</p> + +<p>"Not to see Nan? That's easy. I'll keep out of her way, if you can keep +her out of mine. All I care is to know that she is comfortably provided +for."</p> + +<p>This he said, thinking only of the boy-time obligation voluntarily +assumed; but it was quite inevitable that Ardea should mistake the +motive.</p> + +<p>"It is right and proper that you should care about that," she said +judicially. And a little farther along she added: "But I don't like your +attitude."</p> + +<p>"I don't like it myself," he rejoined heartily. "I never wanted so badly +to say things in all my life! But you've nailed the lid on and I can't."</p> + +<p>"They are better unsaid," she returned quickly. "Will you take that for +your cue in the future?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly; it is for you to command," he said lightly, swinging from +his saddle to open the pasture gate for her; and so the morning ride +came to its end.</p> + +<p>Since provincialism is by no means the exclusive distinction of the +landward bred, there was an immediate restirring of the gossip pool when +the story of Tom's befriending of Nancy Bryerson and her child got +abroad in Gordonia and among the country colonists.</p> + +<p>In the comment of the simpler-minded Gordonia folk, the iron-master's +son had finally "made it up" with Nancy, and here the note of approval +was not wholly lacking. There were good-hearted souls to say that boys +will be boys, and to express the hope that Tom would go on from this +beginning and make an honest woman of Nancy by marrying her.</p> + +<p>Quite naturally, the point of view of the country-house <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>people was +different; more critical, if not less charitable. Though the social +acceptance of the Gordons, as an ancient family, as friends of the +Dabneys, and as land-holding neighbors was fairly complete, it still +lacked somewhat of the class kinship which breeds leniency and the +closed eye to the sins of its own household. But for Tom, personally, as +a distinct social improvement on honest Caleb, the welcome into the +charmed circle of Mountain View Avenue had been warm enough to make his +sudden apparent relapse into the primitive figure as an affront to the +colony. Hence, there were rods laid in pickle for the sinner, as when +Mrs. Vancourt Henniker gave the footman at Rook Hill a hint that for the +present the Misses Henniker were not at home to Mr. Thomas Gordon; and +if Tom had known it, there were other and similar chastenings lying in +wait for him behind more of the colonial doors.</p> + +<p>But Tom did not know it. He was in the crucial month of the panic year, +striving desperately to maintain the foothold given to him by the +pipe-casting invention, and he had little time for the amenities. So it +came about that he escaped for the moment; or, which was quite the same, +he did not know he was pursued. Another Northern city, with its full +complement of grafting officials, was in the market for some train-loads +of water-mains, and again Thomas Jefferson was fighting the old battle +of conscience against expediency, this time in the evil-smelling ditches +where the dead and wounded lie.</p> + +<p>"You are sure you went into it thoroughly, Norman?" he demanded of his +lieutenant, when the latter returned from a personal reconnaissance of +the field. "The break <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>they are making at us seems almost too rank to be +taken at its face value."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; I dug it up from the bottom," said the henchman. "It's rotten +and riotous. The political machine runs the town, and the bosses own the +machine. So much to this one, so much to that, so much to half a dozen +others, and we get the contract. Otherwise, most emphatically <i>nit</i>."</p> + +<p>"That comes straight, does it?"</p> + +<p>"As straight as a shot out of a gun. They got together on it, eight of +the big bosses, called me in and told me flat-footed what we had to do," +said the salesman. "Oh, I tell you, those fellows are on to their job."</p> + +<p>"No chance to go behind the returns and stir up popular indignation, as +we did in Indiana?" suggested Tom.</p> + +<p>"No show on top of earth. The ring owns or controls two of the dailies, +and has the other two scared. Besides, they've just had their municipal +election."</p> + +<p>The Gordon-and-Gordon manager was absently jabbing holes in the desk +blotter with the paper-knife.</p> + +<p>"Well, we can do what we have to, I suppose," he said, after a hesitant +pause. "Say nothing to my father, but make your arrangements to take the +train for the North again to-night. I'll meet you in town at the +Marlboro at four o'clock."</p> + +<p>To prepare for the new exigency, Tom took the afternoon local for South +Tredegar. The lump sum required for the bribery was considerably in +excess of his balance in bank. Notwithstanding the stringency of the +times, he made sure he could borrow; but it was in some vague hope that +the moral chasm might be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>widened to impassibility, or decently bridged +for him, that he was moved to state the case in detail to President +Henniker of the Iron City National. Mr. Vancourt Henniker could dig +ditches, on occasion, making them too vast for the boldest borrower to +cross; but Tom's credit was gilt-edged, and in the present instance the +president chose rather to build bridges.</p> + +<p>"We have to shut our eyes to a good many disagreeable things in +business, Mr. Gordon," he said, genially didactic. "Our problem in this +day and generation is so to draw the line of distinction that these +necessary concessions to human frailty will not debauch us; may be made +without prejudice to that high sense of personal honor and integrity +which must be the corner-stone of any successful business career. This +state of affairs which you describe is deplorable—most deplorable; +but—well, we may think of such obstacles as we do of toll-gates on the +highway. The road is a public utility, and it should be free; but we pay +the toll, under protest, and pass on."</p> + +<p>Mr. Henniker was a large man, benign and full-favored, not to say +unctuous; and his manner in delivering an opinion was blandly +impressive, and convincing to many. Yet Tom was not convinced.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I came to ask for the loan, and not specially to justify +it," he said, in mild irony which was quite lost on the philosopher in +the president's chair. "I wasn't sure just how you would regard it if +you should know the object for which we are borrowing, and this high +sense of personal honor you speak of impelled me to be altogether frank +with you."</p> + +<p>"Quite right; you were quite right, Mr. Gordon," said <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>the banker +urbanely. "You are young in business, but you have learned the first +lesson in the book of success—to be perfectly open and outspoken with +your banker. As I have said, the venality of these men with whom you are +dealing is most deplorable, but...."</p> + +<p>There was some further glozing over of the putrid fact, a good bit of +it, and Tom sat back in his chair and listened, outwardly respectful, +inwardly hot-hearted and contemptuous. Was this smooth-spoken, oracular +prince of the market-place a predetermined hypocrite, shaping his words +to fit the money-gathering end without regard to their demoralizing +effect? Or was he only a subconscious Pharisee, self-deceived and +complacent? Tom's thought ran lightning-like over the long list of the +Vancourt Hennikers: men of the business world successful to the Croesus +mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and +hospitals, gift-givers to their fellow men, irreproachable in private +life, and yet apparently stone blind on the side of the larger equities. +Could it be possible that such men deliberately admitted and accepted +the double standard in morals? It seemed fairly incredible, and yet +their lives appeared to proclaim it.</p> + +<p>When the president had finished his apology for those who bow the head +in the house of Rimmon, Tom rose to take his bit of approved paper +around to the cashier's window. The bridge was built, and he meant to +cross it; but he was honest enough, or blunt enough, to give his own +point of view in a crisp sentence or two.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could look at it in some such way as you do, Mr. Henniker, but +I can't," he objected. "To me it is just plain bribery; the corrupting +of officials who <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>have sworn, among other things, to administer their +offices honestly. I'm immoral, or unmoral, enough to yield to the +apparent necessity, but it is quite without prejudice to a firm +conviction that I am no better than the men I am going to purchase."</p> + +<p>Having obtained the sinews of war, he kept the appointment with Norman, +and their joint discussion of the business situation made him too late +for the early dinner at Woodlawn. To complete the delay, the evening +train lost half an hour with a hot box at a point a mile short of +Gordonia. Two things came of these combined time-killings: a man in a +slouched hat and the brown jeans of the mountaineers, who had been +watching the Woodlawn gates since dusk from his hiding-place behind the +field wall across the pike, got up stiffly and went away; and Tom +reached home just in time to intercept Ardea on the steps of the +picturesque veranda.</p> + +<p>"Been visiting the little mother?" he asked, when she paused on the step +above him.</p> + +<p>"Yes—no; I ran over to tell you that we moved Nancy to-day."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Well, that's comfortable. She was willing?"</p> + +<p>"Y-es: almost, at first; and altogether willing when I told her that +I—that she—" There was an embarrassed moment and then the truth came +out. "Perhaps I should have asked you first: but she was quite satisfied +when I told her that she owed her changed condition to the person whose +duty it was to provide for her. You don't mind, do you?"</p> + +<p>The question was almost a beseechment; but Tom was thinking of something +else.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>"No, I don't mind," he said absently, and the under-thought dealt +savagely with Nan—with a woman who, for the sake of the loaves and the +fishes, and the shielding of the real offender, would suffer an innocent +man to go to the social gallows for lack of the word which would have +cleared him. He laughed rather bitterly and added, out of the heart of +the under-thought: "I'm glad I'm not naturally inclined to be +pessimistic."</p> + +<p>"What makes you say that?"</p> + +<p>"Because, after hearing"—he changed his mind suddenly, and transferred +the hard word from Nan to Mr. Vancourt Henniker—"after what I've been +hearing this afternoon I find myself more in the notion of weeping with +the angels than of laughing with the devils."</p> + +<p>"What has happened?" she asked, sympathetically alive to his need in one +breath, and keenly apprehensive for her own peace of mind in the next.</p> + +<p>"An exceedingly small thing, as the world's measurements go. I was in +town, and made a business call on Mr. Henniker. He's a member of your +church, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Of St. Michael's in the city," she corrected. "You know I claim +membership here at home in St. John's."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's all the same. He is what you would call a Christian man, I +take it?"</p> + +<p>"Why not?" she demanded. "What has he done to make you doubt it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing worth mentioning, perhaps. I needed some money to bribe a +lot of political grafters in a Pennsylvania city where I'm trying to +sell a bill of water-pipe. I went to Mr. Henniker to borrow it."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>"And, of course, he wouldn't let you have it for any such wretched +purpose!" she flamed out.</p> + +<p>"No, you are mistaken; it's just the other way around. I told him what +it was for, hoping rather vaguely, I think, that he'd sit on me and make +the crime impossible. But he didn't."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean that he lent you the money after you had told him what +you purposed doing with it?" It was too dark for him to see her face, +but there was something like a breath-catching of horror in her voice.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry it shocks you, but he did. More than that, he took the +trouble to try to explain away my scruples; made it seem quite a +virtuous thing before he got through. You wouldn't believe it now, would +you?"</p> + +<p>"But, Tom! you didn't take the money?"</p> + +<p>"How could I refuse so good a man? Norman is on his way to Pennsylvania +at this present moment, with a letter of credit in his pocket big enough +to make the mouth of even a professional grafter water. At least, I hope +it is big enough."</p> + +<p>She was hurt, shocked, horrified, and he knew it and found pleasure of a +certain sort in the knowledge. When a man has done violence to his own +best impulses, the thing that comes nearest to the holy joy of penitence +is the unholy joy of making somebody else sorry for him. There were +unmistakable tears in her voice when she said:</p> + +<p>"Tom, why have you told me this—this unspeakable thing?"</p> + +<p>"Why—I guess it was because I wanted to ask you how you supposed the +Mr. Henniker kind of men square <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>such things with their conscience; or +don't they have any conscience?"</p> + +<p>"That is <i>not</i> the reason," she faltered.</p> + +<p>"You are right," he rejoined quickly. "It was diabolism pure and +unstrained. I had hurt myself, and I wanted to pass it along—to hurt +some one else. But it is too cold to keep you standing here. Won't you +come in again?"</p> + +<p>"No; I must go home." And she went down the broad steps.</p> + +<p>He drew her arm through his and walked with her, down one grassy slope +and up the other. At the manor-house steps he found at last sufficient +grace to say: "It was a currish thing to do; will you forgive me, +Ardea?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said, in a tone that thrilled him curiously. "Such +things are hard to forgive. I don't mean your slapping me in the face +with it, that is nothing. But to know that you have gone so far aside +... that you have sunk your manhood and all the promise of it...."</p> + +<p>He nodded perfect intelligence. "I know; it's hell, Ardea. I've been +frizzling in it for the past six months, more or less; ever since I came +home with the one sole, single determination to climb out of the panic +ditch if I had to make steps of dead bodies or lost souls. I'm doing it, +and I'm paying the price. Sometimes I can find it in my heart to curse +the mistaken mother-love that gave me to eat of the fruit of the tree of +the knowledge of good and evil. I'm pagan in all else, but I can't sin +like a pagan. Why is it? Why can't I be a smug, peaceful, sound-sleeping +scoundrel like other men?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>She was standing on the step above him, as she had stood on the other +side of the two dew-wet lawns.</p> + +<p>"I have a theory," she rejoined, "but you wouldn't accept it. You'll +never be able to do wrong without paying for it. Is it worth while to +try?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing is worth while—nothing at all. I don't mean that I'm going to +quit; I shall doubtless go on trampling and grinding the face of the +poor, and the rich, if they come in my way. But at the end of the ends I +shall curse God and die, as Job's wife wanted him to."</p> + +<p>She put her hands on his shoulders impulsively, and again the tears were +in her voice.</p> + +<p>"What can I say to help you, Tom? God knows I would do anything that a +true friend may do!"</p> + +<p>He freed himself of the touch of her hands, but very gently.</p> + +<p>"There might have been a thing; but you have made it impossible. No, +don't freeze me again—it's the last time. If I could have won your love +... but what is the use of trying to put it in words; you know—you have +always known. And now it is too late."</p> + +<p>For a single instant Vincent Farley's chance of marrying the Deer Trace +coal lands trembled in the balance. Ardea forgot him, forgot Nan, +thought of nothing but the passionate yearning that was drawing her like +gripping hands toward the man who had bared his inmost heart to her. +Again she leaned on him with a touch so light that he scarcely felt it, +and her lips brushed his forehead.</p> + +<p>"It is not too late for you to be a man, noble, upright, honorable. Let +the world find that for which it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>is looking, my friend—my brother: the +strong man armed who can stand where others faint and fall. Oh, I wish I +knew how to say the word that would make you the man you were meant to +be!"</p> + +<p>When it was said, she was gone and the sound of the closing door was in +his ears when he turned and went slowly down the driveway and out on the +white pike, lying like a snowy ribbon under the December stars. On the +highway he hung undecided for a moment; but an hour later, William +Layne, driving homeward from South Tredegar, overtook him plodding +slowly southward far beyond the head of Paradise; and it was nearing +midnight when he won back, pacing steadily past the Deer Trace and +Woodlawn gates and holding his way down the pike to Gordonia.</p> + +<p>The railway station was his goal; and when he had aroused the sleepy +night operator and gained admittance, he sat at the telegraph table to +write a message. It was to Norman, addressed to intercept the salesman +at the breakfast stop.</p> + +<p>"Cancel Pennsylvania date and come in at once to take managership of +plant," was the wording of it; and at the breakfast-table the following +morning Tom announced his intention of leaving the industrial plow in +the furrow while he should go to Boston to complete his course in the +technical school.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2> + +<h3>AS WITH A MANTLE</h3> + + +<p>The month of March in the great, southward-reaching bight of the +Tennessee River is the pattern and form of fickleness climatic. Normally +it is the time of starting sap and swelling buds and steaming leaf beds +odorous of spring; the month when the migratory crows wing their flight +northward, and Nature, lightest of winter sleepers in the azurine +latitudes, stirs to her vernal awakening. None the less, in the +Tennessee March the orchardist, watching the high-blown clouds in skies +of the softest blue, is glad if the peach buds are slow in responding to +the touch of the wooing airs, or, chewing a black birch twig as he makes +the leisurely round of his line fence, warns his gardening neighbor that +it is too early to plant beans. True, the poplars may be showing a tinge +of green, and the buds of the hickory may have lighted their tiny candle +flames on the winter-bared boughs; but the "blackberry winter" is yet to +come, and there are rigorous possibilities still lingering in the +high-flying clouds and the sudden-shifting winds.</p> + +<p>It was on the fourth Sunday in the month that Ardea rose early and went +fasting to the communion service at St. John's-in-Paradise. Primarily, +St. John's was merely <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>the religious factor in Mr. Duxbury Farley's +scheme of country-colony promotion, and for the greater part of the year +its silver-toned bell was silent and its appeal was mainly to the +artistic eye. But latterly St. Michael's, the mother church in South +Tredegar, had attained a new assistant rector whose zeal was not yet +dulled by apathetic unresponsiveness on the part of the to-be-helped. +Hence St. Michael's various missions flourished for the time, and once a +month, if not oftener, the bell of St. John's sent its note abroad on +the still morning air of Paradise.</p> + +<p>On this particular Sunday morning Ardea was early at the church, and she +was glad she had decided to wear her cloth gown. It had turned cooler in +the night and the azure March sky was hidden behind a gray cloud mass +which hung low on the slopes of the mountain. There was no fire in the +church heater; and the few worshipers—the Vancourt Henniker girls, the +two Misses Harrison, John Young-Dickson, of The Dell, dragged out at the +chilly hour by his new wife, and Mrs. Schuyler Farnsworth and her +daughter, all of the country-house colony beyond the creek—sat or +knelt, and shivered through the service in decorous discomfort.</p> + +<p>Miss Dabney was not looking quite as well as usual, as Miss Betsy +Harrison remarked to her sister, Miss Willie, in a church whisper. She +had grown thinner during the winter, and though the slate-blue eyes were +as clear and steadfast as before, there was a strained look in them like +that in the eyes of the spent runner. Mountain View Avenue, rurally +alert for something to talk about, decided it was trouble rather than +ill health. Miss Eva Farley corresponded with Jessica Farnsworth, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>and +there had been European hints of an understanding between Vincent and +Ardea. Coupling this with young Gordon's ostentatious devotion, Nan's +appearance, and Tom's sudden determination to go back to college, there +was the groundwork for a very pretty story which sufficiently accounted +for Miss Dabney's changed looks and for her growing reluctance to be +included in the country colony's social divagations. She was engaged to +one man and in love with another, who was clearly ineligible—this was +the Mountain View Avenue summing-up of the matter; and some condemned +and some pitied, and all were careful not to step within the barrier of +aloofness with which Miss Dabney had of late surrounded herself.</p> + +<p>On this Sunday morning of weather portents it chanced to be Ardea's turn +to entertain the young minister, or rather to give him his breakfast +after the service; and she waited for him in the vestibule after the +others had gone. The outer doors were open, and she could see the gray +cloud mass feathering on its under side and creeping lower on the slopes +of Lebanon in every stormy gust of the chill wind.</p> + +<p>"It was prudent to bring your overcoat this morning, Mr. Morelock," she +said, when her guest emerged from the vesting-room with his cassock in a +neat bundle under his arm. "If I'd had any idea it would turn cold so +fast, I should have had the carriage come for us."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, my dear Miss Dabney, if you could walk to church, I'm sure I +can walk home with you," was the ready response; nevertheless, the +rather fragile-looking young man shuddered a little in sympathy with the +rawness of the wind. He was from well-sheltered New <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>England, and he had +not yet acquired the native Southron's indifference to weather +discomforts; would never acquire them this side of a consumptive's +grave, it was to be feared.</p> + +<p>"The attendance was pretty good for such a disagreeable morning, don't +you think?" Ardea ventured, trying to make talk as they breasted the +gusts together on the Deer Trace side of the pike.</p> + +<p>The young missioner shook his head rather despondently. "There are +English churchmen among the English and Welsh miners at Gordonia,—quite +a number of them," he rejoined. "Not one of them was present."</p> + +<p>It was the clear-sighted inner Ardea that smiled. There was little in +the stately service and luxurious appointments of the country colony's +church to attract the working-men, and much to repel them. She wondered +that Mr. Morelock, young as he was, did not understand this.</p> + +<p>"The mission of St. John's is hardly to the working people of Gordonia, +is it?" she said, more in exculpation than in criticism.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear young lady! the church knows no class distinctions!" +protested the zealous one warmly. "Her call is to rich and poor, gentle +and simple, young and old alike; and it is imperative. I must make a +round of visitation among these miners at the very first opportunity."</p> + +<p>Ardea bent low to the buffet of a stronger blast and fought for a moment +with her clinging skirts. When she had breath to say it, she said: "Will +you really do that? Then let me tell you how. Come out here some +week-day in your roughest clothes, and make your round <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>among the men +while they are at work in the mine. They will listen to you then."</p> + +<p>"Bless me! what an idea!" he gasped.</p> + +<p>"It is not original with me," was the gentle reply. "You will remember +that the example was set a good many hundred years ago among the +fishermen of Galilee. And, after all, Mr. Morelock, it is the only way. +You can not reach down to a living soul on this earth—that is worth +saving."</p> + +<p>It had begun to rain in spiteful little dashes and squalls, and the +clergyman was turning up the collar of his overcoat and buttoning it +about his throat. Moreover, the wind had risen to half a gale, and +talking was difficult when it was not wholly impossible. But when they +reached the Deer Trace gates and the shelter of the driveway evergreens, +he had a defensive word ready.</p> + +<p>"I can't fully agree with you, you know, Miss Ardea," he said. "Of +course, we must not reach down in the Pharisaical sense. But neither +must we lower the dignity of the sacred calling."</p> + +<p>Her smile was neither disloyal nor cynical; it was merely pitying. She +was thinking in her heart of hearts how much this zealous young apostle +had yet to learn.</p> + +<p>"Do you call it undignified to be a man among men?" she asked; adding +quickly: "But I know you don't. And what other way is open to the true +brother-helper?"</p> + +<p>"There is the church and its ministrations," he began, but she broke in.</p> + +<p>"To get the drowning man ashore you have first to go down into the water +and lay hold of him, Mr. Morelock. That means personal contact, personal +association."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>The young man was clearly bewildered. His experience thus far had not +been enriched by many intimacies with clear-eyed young women who calmly +defined the larger humanities for him.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I don't quite understand your point of view," he demurred.</p> + +<p>"Don't you? I'm not sure that I can explain just what I mean. But it +seems to me that really to help any one, you must know that one; not +superficially, as people meet in ordinary ways, but intimately. And you +can't hope to do that if you hold aloof; if you—if you—pose as a +minister all the time." The word was not flattering, but she could lay +hold of no other.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I hope I don't do that!" he laughed. "But to creep around +underground in a sooty coal-mine, a laughing-stock to those who know how +to do it—er—professionally—"</p> + +<p>"The men have to do it as breadwinners, Mr. Morelock, and the most +ribald one of them wouldn't laugh at you. I wouldn't be afraid to +promise that you could fill St. John's, forbidding as its atmosphere is +to the average working-man, the very next Sunday after such a +visitation."</p> + +<p>Now this young zealot was a man of imagination, hidebound only in his +traditions. Also, he was not above taking ideas where he found them.</p> + +<p>"Really, Miss Dabney, I'm not sure but you have hold of the matter at +the practical end," he conceded. "I—I'd like to talk with you further +about it, when we have time. Do you suppose I could get permission to go +into the mines during working-hours?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly you could—for the mere asking. We can <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>speak to Mr. Caleb +Gordon about it after breakfast, if you wish. My! doesn't that rain +sting! I'm glad we are at home."</p> + +<p>"Yes; and it is freezing as it falls. At home in New England we should +say it was too cold to rain."</p> + +<p>"It is never too cold or too anything to rain here," she said; and she +let him take her arm to help her up the slippery stone steps to the +stately portico.</p> + +<p>A moment later the hospitable door of the manor house yawned for them, +and the warmth of the Major's welcome, the light and glow of the +crackling wood fires, and the solid comfort of surrounding stone walls +soon banished the memory of the small struggle with the elements.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my deah suh! you are not going back to town this mo'ning!" +protested the warm-hearted Major Caspar, as the quartet was rising from +the breakfast-table an hour later. "Why, bless youh soul! I wouldn't +think of letting you go from undeh my roof in such weatheh as this! Tell +him it's his duty to stay, Ardea, my deah; persuade him that he'll neveh +have a betteh oppo'tunity to wrestle with the wickedest old sinner in +Paradise Valley."</p> + +<p>Young Mr. Morelock objected, zealously at first, but less strenuously +when Ardea drew the sash curtain and showed him the ice crust already an +inch thick, coating tree trunk and twig, grass blade and graveled +driveway.</p> + +<p>"I doubt very much if the horses could keep their footing; and it is +quite out of the question for you to walk to Gordonia," she decided. "We +have the long-distance, and you can explain matters to Doctor Channing."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>The young man called up St. Michael's rectory and explained first, and +smoked companionably with the Major in the library afterward. Further +along, there was a one-sided discussion polemical, it being meat and +drink to Major Caspar to ensnare a young theologian to his discomfiture +in the unaxiomatic field of religion. Ardea was in and out of the +library frequently while the discussion was in progress, but she had +little to say; indeed, there was scant room for a third when the Major +was once well warmed to his favorite relaxation. But Morelock remarked +as he might, in the few breathing-spaces allowed him by his host, that +Miss Dabney seemed restless and anxious about something, and that she +spent much of the time at the windows watching the steady growth of the +ice sheet.</p> + +<p>After luncheon they all gathered in the deep-recessed window of the +music-room which commanded a view of the groved pasture with its +background of mountain slope and precipice. The rain was still falling, +and the temperature remained at the freezing-point, but the wind had +gone down and the slow, measured swaying of the trees under the weight +of the thickening armor of ice was portentous of disaster, if the +weather conditions should continue unchanged.</p> + +<p>But as yet the storm was only in the magnificent stage. Far and near, +the outdoor world was a world of cold, white crystal, gleaming pure and +unsullied under the gray skies. Even the blackened tree trunks had their +shining panoply of silver; and from the eaves of the projecting window a +fringe of huge icicles was lengthening drop by drop.</p> + +<p>Miss Euphrasia thought of her roses, already in leaf, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>and refused to be +enthusiastic over the supernal beauty of the crystalline stage settings. +Major Caspar was anxious about the pasturing stock, and was relieved +when Japheth Pettigrass came in sight, leading a slipping, sliding +cavalcade of terrified horses to shelter in the great stables. The young +clergyman's thoughts were with the ill-housed poor of the South Tredegar +parish; and Ardea's—?</p> + +<p>Young Mr. Morelock put his private anxieties aside in deference to the +growing terror in the eyes of his young hostess. He had known her but a +short time, meeting her only as his St. John's-in-Paradise duties gave +him opportunity; but from the first she had stood to him as a type of +womanly serenity and fortitude. Yet now she was visibly terrified and +distressed, and the clergyman wondered. She had never before given him +the impression that she belonged to the storm-fearing group of women.</p> + +<p>"Can't we have a little music, Miss Ardea?" he asked, after a while, +hoping to suggest a comforting diversion.</p> + +<p>"You will have to excuse me," she said, in a low voice. "I—I think I am +not quite well."</p> + +<p>Cousin Euphrasia overheard the admission and recommended the quiet of up +stairs, drawn curtains and possets. But Ardea let the suggestion fall to +the ground, and a little while afterward Morelock surprised her at her +forenoon occupation of going from window to window, with the look of +distress rising to sharp agony when the overladen trees began to groan +and crack under the crushing ice burden.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Miss Dabney?" he said, out of the heart <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>of sympathy, when +he came on her alone in the library. "Is there anything I can do?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she rejoined quickly. "The moment the storm subsides even a +little, I must go out. My excuse will be a desire to see, a thirst for +fresh air—anything; and you must abet me if there is any opposition."</p> + +<p>"But I thought you were afraid of the storm," he interposed.</p> + +<p>"I? I should be out in it this minute if I thought grandfather wouldn't +be tempted to lock me in my room for proposing such a thing. And I +<i>must</i> go before dark, whatever happens."</p> + +<p>The young man from New England was a gentleman born. He neither asked +questions nor raised objections.</p> + +<p>"Of course, you may command me utterly," he said warmly. "I'll help; and +I'll go with you, if you will let me."</p> + +<p>"That is what I want," she said frankly. "Will you propose it? I—I +can't explain, even to my cousin."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he agreed; and a little later, when the temperature dropped +the necessary three degrees and the rain stopped, he calmly announced +his intention of taking Miss Ardea out to see the devastation which, by +this time, was beginning to be apparent on all sides.</p> + +<p>There was a protest, as a matter of course, quite shrill on the part of +Miss Euphrasia, but not absolutely prohibitory on the Major's. Morelock +saw to it that his charge was well wrapped; in her haste and agitation +Ardea would have overlooked the common precautions. They used the side +door for a sally-port, and were soon slipping and sliding almost +helplessly across the lawn. Walking was next to impossible, and the +crashes of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>falling branches and trees came like the detonations of +quick-firing guns. The minister locked arms with the determined young +woman at his side and picked the way for her as he could.</p> + +<p>"This is something awful for you," he said, when they had covered half +the distance to the nearest pasture wall. "Does the necessity warrant +it?"</p> + +<p>"It does," she rejoined; and they pressed on in awe-inspired silence to +the gate which opened on the pasture grove.</p> + +<p>The quarter of a mile intervening between the gate and that side of the +inclosure bounded by the lower slope of the mountain was truly a passage +perilous. A dozen times in the crossing Ardea fell, and so far from +being able to save her, Morelock could do no more than fall with her. +Once a great limb of a spreading oak split off with a clashing of ice +and came sweeping down to give them the narrowest of escapes; and after +that they kept the open where they might.</p> + +<p>At a rude rock stile over the limestone boundary wall at the mountain's +foot they paused to take breath.</p> + +<p>"Is there much more of it?" asked the escort, regretting for the first +time in his life, perhaps, that he had so studiously ignored the +athletic side of his seminary training.</p> + +<p>"The distance is nothing," she panted. "But we must take the path for a +little way up the mountain. No, don't tell me it can't be done; it +<i>must</i> be done,"—this in answer to his dubious scanning of the glassy +ascent.</p> + +<p>Again his good breeding asserted itself.</p> + +<p>"Certainly it can be done, if you so desire." And he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>picked up a stone +and patiently hammered the ice from the steps of the stile so she could +cross in safety.</p> + +<p>It was no more than a three-hundred-yard dash up the slope to the +dog-keeper's cabin in the little glen, but it was a fight for inches. +Every stone, every hand-hold of bush or shrub or tuft of dried grass was +an icy treachery. Ardea knew the mountain and the path, and was less +helpless than she would otherwise have been; yet she was willing to +confess that she could never have done it alone. With all their care and +caution they were exhausted and breathless when they topped the +acclivity and Morelock saw the cabin in the pocket cove, with the great +tulip-tree in the dooryard bending and distorted and groaning like a +living thing in agony.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it terrible!" he said; but Ardea's glance had gone beyond the +tortured tree to the shuttered windows and smokeless chimney of the +cabin.</p> + +<p>"Oh, let us hurry!" she gasped; but at the gate of the tiny dooryard she +stopped in sudden embarrassment. "I can't take you into the house, Mr. +Morelock. Will you wait for me here—just a moment?"</p> + +<p>He said "Certainly," as he had been saying it from the first. But it was +quite without prejudice to a healthy and growing curiosity. The small +adventure was taking on an air of mystery which thickened momently, +demanding insistently a complete rearrangement of his preconceived +notions of Miss Ardea Dabney.</p> + +<p>She left him at once and made her way cautiously to the ice-encrusted +door-stone. What she saw, when she lifted the wooden latch and entered, +was what she had been praying she might not see.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>On the small hearth was a heap of white ashes, dead and cold, and the +tomb-like chill of the tightly-closed room was benumbing. Asleep in the +fireplace corner, his little knees drawn up to his chin and his face +streaked with the dried tears, was the three-year-old baby who bore Tom +Gordon's name. And on the bed in the recess at the back of the room, her +hands clenched and her passionate face a mask of long-continued agony, +lay the mother.</p> + +<p>Ardea was white to the lips and trembling when she retreated to the +door-stone and beckoned to her companion.</p> + +<p>"Can you find the way back to Deer Trace alone?" she faltered. "There is +trouble here, as I feared there might be—terrible trouble and +suffering. Say to my cousin that I must have Aunt Eliza, if she has to +crawl here on her hands and knees. Then telephone for Doctor Williams, +at Gordonia. He'll come if you tell him the message is from me. Oh, +please go, quickly!"<br /></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/illus05.png" width="400" height="559" alt=""Oh, please go quickly!"" title="" /> +<span class="caption">"Oh, please go quickly!"</span> +</div> + +<p>He was waiting only for her to finish.</p> + +<p>"Is it quite safe for you here?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Quite; but I shall die of impatience if you don't hurry!" Then her good +blood made its protest heard. "Oh, please forgive me! I don't forget +that you are my guest, but—"</p> + +<p>"Not a word, Miss Dabney. Shall I come back here with the woman or the +doctor?"</p> + +<p>"No; I'll send for you if—if there is no hope. Otherwise you could do +nothing."</p> + +<p>He lifted his hat and was gone, and she turned and reëntered the house +of trouble, bravely facing that which had to be faced.</p> + +<p>An hour later, when Doctor Williams, with Mammy Juliet's Pete chopping +the way for him up the hazardous path, reached the end of his journey of +mercy, there was a bright fire crackling on the hearth, and Miss Dabney +was sitting before it, holding little Tom, who was still sleeping. Aunt +Eliza, a deft middle-aged negress who had succeeded Mammy Juliet as +housekeeper at Deer Trace, was bending over the bed, and the physician +went quickly to stand beside her, shaking his head dubiously. A moment +afterward he turned short on Ardea.</p> + +<p>"You must go home, my dear—at once—and take the child with you. Pete +is outside to help you, and my buggy is just at the foot of the path. I +can't have you here."</p> + +<p>"Can't I be of some use if I stay?" she pleaded.</p> + +<p>"No; you'd only hinder. You are much too sympathetic. Don't delay; the +minutes may count for lives," and the physician began to unbuckle the +straps of the canvas-covered case he had brought with him.</p> + +<p>Ardea wrapped the child hastily and gave him to Pete to carry, following +as quickly as she could down the path made possible by the coachman's +choppings. Happily, the doctor's horse was freshly shod, and the +quarter-mile to the manor-house was measured in safety. Ardea left +little Tom with Mammy Juliet at her cabin in the old quarters, and went +up to the great house to wait anxiously for news. It was drawing on to +the early dusk of the cloudy evening when she saw from the window of the +music-room the muffled figure of Pete opening the pasture gate for the +doctor to drive through. Instantly she flew to the door and out on the +steps.</p> + +<p>"Go in, child; go in," was the fatherly command. "I've got to stop to +take Morelock in. I promised to carry him to the station."</p> + +<p>"But Nancy?" she questioned anxiously.</p> + +<p>"She will live," said the doctor briefly. And then he added with a +frown: "But the child may not—which would doubtless be the best thing +possible for all concerned. I'm afraid the woman is incorrigible." Then +the professional part of him came to its own again: "You'll have to send +somebody up there to relieve Eliza. Care is all that is needed now, but +it mustn't be stinted."</p> + +<p>There were tears standing in the slate-blue eyes of the listener, but +Doctor Williams did not see them. If he had, he would not have +understood; neither would he have plumbed the depths of misery in that +whispered saying of Ardea's as she turned and fled to her room: "O Tom! +how could you! how could you!"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2> + +<h3>SWEPT AND GARNISHED</h3> + + +<p>Thomas Jefferson Gordon, Bachelor of Science, and one of the six +prize-men in his class, was expected home on the first day of July; and +it was remarked as a coincidence by the curious that Deer Trace +manor-house was closed for the summer no more than a week before the +return of the Gordon black sheep.</p> + +<p>That Tom was a black sheep, a hopeless and incorrigible social +iconoclast, was no longer a matter of doubt in the minds of any. +Something may be forgiven a promising young man who has been unhappy +enough, or imprudent enough, to begin to make history for himself in the +irresponsible 'teens; but also the act of oblivion may be repealed. When +it became noised about that there were two children instead of one in +the old dog-keeper's cabin in the glen, Mountain View Avenue was justly +indignant, and even the lenient Gordonians scowled and shook their heads +at the mention of the young boss's name. All the world loves a lover, as +in just measure it despises a libertine; and there were fathers of +daughters among the miner and foundry folk of the town.</p> + +<p>On the lips of the transplanted urbanites of the hill houses comment was +less elemental, but no less con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>demnatory. It was no wonder the Dabneys +had closed their house and had gone to Crestcliffe Inn to save Ardea the +humiliation of having to meet Tom before she was safely married to +Vincent Farley. It was what any self-respecting young woman would wish +under like trying conditions. The country colony approved; likewise, it +commended Miss Dabney's foresight and prudence in causing the Bryerson +woman and her two children to disappear from the cabin in the glen; +though Mrs. Vancourt Henniker, in secret session over the tea-cups with +the elder Miss Harrison, voiced her surprise that Ardea could continue +to be charitable in that quarter.</p> + +<p>"It is quite beyond me," was the matron's thin-lipped phrasing of it. +"When one remembers that this wretched mountain girl has been Ardea's +understudy from the very beginning—faugh! it is simply disgusting! I +should think Ardea would never want to see or hear of her again."</p> + +<p>To such an atmosphere of potential social ostracism Tom returned after +the final scholastic triumph in Boston; and for the first few days he +escaped asphyxiation chiefly because the affairs of Gordon and Gordon +and the Chiawassee Consolidated gave him no time to test its quality.</p> + +<p>But after the first week he began to breathe it unmistakably. One +evening he called on the Farnsworths; the ladies were not at home to +him. The next night he saddled Saladin and rode over to Fairmont; the +Misses Harrison were also unable to see him, and the butler conveyed a +deftly-worded intimation pointing to future invisibilities on the part +of his mistresses. The evening <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>being still young, Tom tried Rockwood +and the Dell, suspicion settling into conviction when the trim +maidservant at the Stanley villa went near to shutting the door in his +face. At the Dell he fared a little better. The Young-Dicksons were +going out for an after-dinner call on one of the neighbors, and Tom met +them at the gate as he was dismounting. There were regrets apparently +hearty; but in recasting the incident later, Tom remembered that it was +the husband who did the talking, and that Mrs. Young-Dickson stood in +the shadow of the gate tree, frigidly silent and with her face averted.</p> + +<p>"Once more, old boy, and then we'll quit," he said to Saladin at the +remounting, and the final rein-drawing was at the stone-pillared gates +of Rook Hill. Again the ladies were not at home, but Mr. Vancourt +Henniker came out and smoked a cigar with his customer on the piazza. +The talk was pointedly of business, and the banker was urbanely +gracious—and mildly inquisitive. Would there be a consolidation of the +allied iron industries of Gordonia when the Farleys should return? Mr. +Henniker thought it would be undeniably profitable to all concerned, and +offered his services as financiering promoter and intermediary. Would +Mr. Gordon come and talk it over with him—at the bank?</p> + +<p>Tom found his father smoking a bedtime pipe on the picturesque veranda +at Woodlawn when he reached home. Whistling for William Henry Harrison +to come and take his horse, he drew up one of the porch chairs and +filled and lighted his own pipe. For a time there was such silence as +stands for communion between men of one blood, and it was the father who +first broke it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>"Been out callin', son?" he asked, marking the Tuxedo and the white +expanse of shirt front.</p> + +<p>"No, I reckon not," was the reply, punctuated by a short laugh. "The +Avenue seems to be depopulated."</p> + +<p>"So? I hadn't heard of anybody goin' away," said Caleb the literal.</p> + +<p>"Nor I," said Tom curtly; and the conversation paused until the +iron-master had deliberately refilled and lighted his corn-cob.</p> + +<p>"It's a-plenty onprofitable, Buddy, don't you reckon?" he ventured, +referring to the social diversion.</p> + +<p>There was a picric quality in Tom's tone when he replied: "The calling +act?—I have certainly found it so to-night." Then, more humanely: "But +as a means of relaxation it beats sitting here in the dark and stewing +over to-morrow's furnace run—which is what you've been doing."</p> + +<p>Caleb chuckled. "That's one time you missed the whole side o' the barn, +Buddy. I was settin' here wonderin' if a man ever did get over bein' +surprised at the way his children turn out."</p> + +<p>"Meaning me?" said Tom, knocking the ash from his pipe and feeling in +his pockets for a cigar.</p> + +<p>"Yes, meanin' you, son. You've somehow got away from me again in these +last six months 'r so."</p> + +<p>"I'm older, pappy; and I hope I'm bigger and broader. I was a good bit +of a kid a year ago; tough in some spots and fearfully and wonderfully +raw in others. Do you recollect how I climbed up on the fence the first +dash out of the box and read off the law to you about religion and such +things?"</p> + +<p>"I reckon so," said the iron-master. "And that's one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>o' the things—I +ain't heard you cuss out the hypocrites once since you got back. Have +you gone back on the Dutchman and his argyment?"</p> + +<p>"Bauer, you mean?—no; only on the nullifying part of it. Bauer's +no-religion doctrine is a doctrine of denial, and it's pure theory. What +we have to deal with in this world is the practical human fact, and a +good half of that is tangled up with some sort of religious belief or +sentiment. At least, that's the way I'm finding it."</p> + +<p>"It's the way it <i>is</i>," said Caleb sententiously. And after a pause: "I +allow it helps some, too; greases the wheels some if it don't do +anything more."</p> + +<p>"It does much more," was the quick reply. "When you find it in a woman +like Ardea Dabney, it raises her to the seventh power angelic. It is +only when you find it, or some ghastly imitation of it, in such people +as the Farleys...." He changed the subject abruptly. "You said the +Dabneys had gone up on the mountain for the summer, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I believe they're allowin' to come back in August, in time for the +weddin'."</p> + +<p>The younger man's wince was purely involuntary. He had been trying +latterly to train up to the degree of mental fitness which would enable +him to think calmly of Ardea as another man's wife. The effort commended +itself as a part of the new broadening process, but it was not entirely +successful.</p> + +<p>"You wrote me the Farleys would be back this month, didn't you?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"The fifteenth," said Caleb; smoking reflectively through another long +pause before he added. "And <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>then come the business fireworks. Have you +made up your mind what-all you're goin' to do, Buddy?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Tom, as if this were merely a matter in passing. "We'll +consolidate the two plants and the coal-mine, if it's agreeable all +around."</p> + +<p>The iron-master took a fresh hitch in his chair. Truly, this was a +retransformed Tom; a creature totally and radically different from the +college junior who had sweltered through the industrial battle of the +previous summer, breathing out curses and threatenings.</p> + +<p>"Was you allowin' to let Colonel Duxbury climb into all three o' the +saddles?" he inquired, keeping his emotions out of his voice as he +could.</p> + +<p>"That will be for you and Major Dabney to decide," was the even-toned +response. "I would suggest a three-cornered alliance: a third to you, +another to Farley, and the remaining third to the Major. The pipe +foundry can't run without the furnace and, under present conditions, the +furnace is pretty largely dependent on the pipe foundry for its market; +and neither could run without the Major's coal."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that scheme might carry far enough to hit three of us. But +whereabouts do you figure out the fourth third for yourself, son?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not in it; or I'm not going to be after the Farleys come back. +I made up my mind to that six months ago," said Tom coolly.</p> + +<p>"Great Peter!" ejaculated Caleb, stirred for once out of his +slow-speaking, reticent habit. But he made amends by remaining silent +for five full minutes before he hazarded the query: "Got something else +on the string, Buddy?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>"Yes, two or three things," was Tom's immediate and frank rejoinder. "I +can have a place as chemist with the steel people at Bethlehem; and Mr. +Clarkson is anxious to have me to go to the New Arizona iron country for +him."</p> + +<p>It was the brightest of midsummer nights, and a late moon was swinging +clear of the Lebanon sky-line, but the prospect of close-clipped lawn +and stately trees suddenly went dim before the eyes of the old +ex-artillery-man.</p> + +<p>"You're all I got in this world, son, and I reckon it makes me sort o' +narrow. I know in reason it must seem mighty little and pindlin' down +here to you, after what you've seen out in the big road, and I ain't +goin' to say a word. But if you can sort it round somehow in the mix-up +so I can get a few thousand dollars quittin' money out of it—jest +enough to keep your mammy and me from gettin' hongry what few years +we've got to eat, I'd be mighty proud."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Tom, still unmoved, as it seemed, "we can do better than +that, if you want to pull out. But I made sure you'd rather stay in and +hold your job. I've a notion you'd find 'retiring' pretty hard work +after so many years spent in the furnace yard."</p> + +<p>"You're right about that, son; I sure would," agreed Caleb. Then he went +back to the main proposition. "What-all makes you restless, Buddy? Is it +because Chiawassee and the pipe-makin' ain't big enough for you?"</p> + +<p>Tom answered promptly and without apparent reserve.</p> + +<p>"The job's big enough, but I don't want to stay here <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>and yoke up with +the Farleys; they'd ruin me in a year."</p> + +<p>"Get the better of you in the business—is that what you're aimin' to +say?"</p> + +<p>"Not exactly. I'm still brash enough to believe I could hold my own on +that score. But—oh, well; you know what we found out last summer about +their business methods. I can do business that way, too; as a matter of +fact, I did do a good bit more of it last year than you knew anything +about. But I'm out of it now, and I mean to stay out."</p> + +<p>A longer interval of silence followed, and at the end of it another +query.</p> + +<p>"Is that all that's the matter, Buddy?"</p> + +<p>"No—it isn't," hesitantly. "I'm seventeen other kinds of a fool, too, +pappy."</p> + +<p>"Reckon ye couldn't make out to onload the whole of it on to a pair o' +right old shoulders, could ye, son Tom?" was the gentle invitation.</p> + +<p>"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. I'm foolish about Ardea; been +that way ever since she used to wear frocks and I used to run barefoot. +I don't believe I could stand it to stay here and be her husband's +business partner."</p> + +<p>Caleb was shrouding himself in tobacco smoke and nodding complete +intelligence.</p> + +<p>"How did you ever come to let her get away from you, son?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"That's a large question—too big for me to answer, I'm afraid. I always +knew we were meant for each other, and I guess I took too much for +granted. Then Vint Farley came along, and I helped his case by pitch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>ing +into him every time she gave me a chance. Naturally, she leaned the +other way; and the European business settled it."</p> + +<p>Caleb drew a long breath. "Reckon it's everlastin'ly too late now, do +ye, Tom?"</p> + +<p>The young man's smile was wintry.</p> + +<p>"You said the wedding-day was set, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes; <i>toe</i> be sure. Leastwise, your mammy talked like it was. But, +lawzee, son! the Gordon stock don't lie down in the harness. Ardee +thinks a heap o' you, and if you could jest've made out to keep from +gettin' so everlastin'ly tangled with that gal o' Tike—" he stopped +abruptly, but not quite soon enough, and the word was as the flick of a +whip on a wound already made raw by the abrasion of the closed doors.</p> + +<p>"So that miserable story has got around to you at last, has it?" said +Tom, in fine scorn. "I did hope they'd spare you and mother."</p> + +<p>"She's spared yet, so far as I know," said the father, with a backward +nod to indicate the antecedent of the pronoun. Following which, he said +what lay uppermost in his mind. "I been allowin' maybe you'd come back +this time with your head sot on lettin' that gal alone, son."</p> + +<p>Thomas Jefferson was on his feet and a hot anger wave was sweeping him +back over the years to other times when things used to turn red under +the rage blast. But he got some sort of grip on himself before the words +came.</p> + +<p>"You've believed all you've heard, have you?—condemned me before I +could say a word in my own defense? That's what they've all done."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>"I don't say that, son." Then, with a note of fatherly yearning in his +voice: "I'm waitin' to hear that word right now, Buddy—or as much of it +as ye can say honestly."</p> + +<p>"You'll never hear it from me—never in this world or another. Now tell +me who told you!"</p> + +<p>"Why, it's in mighty near ever'body's mouth, son!" said Caleb, in mild +surprise. "You certain'y didn't take any pains to cover it up."</p> + +<p>"Didn't take any pains? Why, in the name of God, should I?" Tom burst +out. After which he tramped heavily to the farther end of the veranda, +refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked furiously for a time, glooming +over at the darkened windows of Deer Trace and letting bitter anger and +disappointment work their will on him. And when he finally turned and +tramped back it was only to say an abrupt "Good night," and to pass into +the house and up to his room.</p> + +<p>He thought he was alone in the moon-lighted dusk of the upper chamber +when he closed the door and began to pace a rageful sentry-beat back and +forth between the windows. But all unknown to him one of the three fell +sisters, she of the implacable front and deep-set, burning eyes, had +entered with him to pace evenly as he paced, and to lay a maddening +finger on his soul.</p> + +<p>Without vowing a vow and confirming it with an oath, he had partly +turned a new life-leaf on the night of heavenly comfort when Ardea had +sent him forth to tramp the pike with her kiss of sisterly love still +caressing him. Beyond the needs of the moment, the recall of Norman and +the determination to turn his back on the world struggle for the time +being, he had not gone in that first fervor of the uplifting impulse. +But later on there had been other steps: a growing hunger for success +with self-respect kept whole; a dulling of the sharp edge of his hatred +for the Farleys; a meliorating of his fierce contempt for all the +hypocrites, conscious and subconscious.</p> + +<p>With the changing point of view had come a corresponding change in the +life. The men of his class had marked it, and there were helping hands +held out, as there always are when one struggles toward the forward +margin of any Slough of Despond. He had even gone to church at long +intervals, having there the good hap to fall under the influence of a +man whose faults were neither of ignorance nor of insincerity.</p> + +<p>In these surface-scratchings of the heart soil there had sprung up a +mixed growth in which the tares of self-righteousness began presently to +overtop the good grain of humility. One must not be too exacting. If the +world were not all good, neither was it all bad; at all events, it was +the part of wisdom to make the magnanimous best of it, and to be +thankful that the day-star of reason had at last arisen for one's self. +At the close of his college course he would go home prepared to deal +firmly but justly with the Farleys, prepared to show Ardea and the small +world of Paradise a pattern of business rectitude, of filial devotion, +of upright, honorable manhood. As Ardea had said, the example was +needed; it should be forthcoming. And perhaps, in the dim and distant +future, Ardea herself would look back to the night when her word and her +kiss had fashioned a man after her own heart, and be—not sorry (true +love was still stronger than prideful Phariseeism here), but a little +regretful, it might be, that her love could not have gone where it was +sent.</p> + +<p>And now.... With Alecto's maddening finger pressed on the soul-hurt, no +man is responsible. After the furious storm of upbubbling curses had +spent itself there was a little calm, not of surcease but of vacuity, +since even the cursing vocabulary has its limitations. Then a grouping +of words long forgotten arrayed itself before him, like the handwriting +on the wall of Belshazzer's banqueting hall.</p> + +<p><i>When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry +places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return +into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it +empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself +seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and +dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.</i></p> + +<p>He put his hands before his face to shut out the sight of the words. +Farther on, he felt his way across the room to stand at the window where +he could look across to the gray, shadowy bulk of the manor-house, to +the house and to the window of the upper room which was Ardea's.</p> + +<p>"They've got me down," he whispered, as if the words might reach her +ear. "The devils have come back, Ardea, my love; but you can cast them +out again, if you will. Ah, girl, girl! Vincent Farley will never need +you as I need you this night!"</p> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2> + +<h3>THE BURDEN OF HABAKKUK</h3> + + +<p>During the first half of the year 1894, with Norman too busy at the pipe +foundry to worry him, and the iron-master president too deeply engrossed +in matters mechanical, Mr. Henry Dyckman, still bookkeeper and cashier +for Chiawassee Consolidated, had fewer nightmares; and by the time he +had been a month in undisputed command at the general office he had +given over searching for a certain packet of papers which had +mysteriously disappeared from a secret compartment in his desk.</p> + +<p>Later, when the time for the return of the younger Gordon drew near, +there was encouraging news from Europe. Dyckman had not failed to keep +the mails warm with reports of the Gordon and Gordon success; with +urgings for the return of the exiled dynasty; and late in May he had +news of the home-coming intention. From that on there were alternating +chills and fever. If Colonel Duxbury should arrive and resume the reins +of management before Tom Gordon should reappear, all might yet be well. +If not,—the alternative impaired the bookkeeper's appetite, and there +were hot nights in June when he slept badly.</p> + +<p>When Tom's advent preceded the earliest date named <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>by Mr. Farley by a +broad fortnight or more, the bookkeeper missed other of his meals, and +one night fear and a sharp premonition of close-pressing disaster laid +cold hands on him; and nine o'clock found him skulking in the great +train shed at the railway station, a ticket to Canada in his pocket, a +goodly sum of the company's money tightly buckled in a safety-belt next +to his skin—all things ready for flight save one, the courage requisite +to the final step-taking.</p> + +<p>The following morning the premonition became a certainty. In the +Gordonia mail there was a note from the younger Gordon, directing him to +come to the office of the pipe foundry, bringing the cash-book and +ledger for a year whose number was written out in letters of fire in the +bookkeeper's brain. He went, again lacking the courage either to refuse +or to disappear, and found Gordon waiting for him. There were no +preliminaries.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Dyckman," said the tyrant, pushing aside the papers on +his desk. "You have brought the books? Sit down at that table and open +the ledger at the company's expense account for the year. I wish to make +a few comparisons," and he took a thick packet of papers from a +pigeonhole of the small iron safe behind his chair.</p> + +<p>Dyckman was unbuckling the shawl-strap in which he had carried the two +heavy books, but at the significant command he desisted, went swiftly to +the door opening into the stenographer's room, satisfied himself that +there were no listeners, and resumed his chair.</p> + +<p>"You have cut out some of the preface, Mr. Gordon; I'll cut out the +remainder," he said, moistening his dry lips. "You have the true record +of the expense account <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>in that package. I'm down and out; what is it +you want?"</p> + +<p>The inexorable one at the desk did not keep him in suspense.</p> + +<p>"I want a written confession of just what you did, and what you did it +for," was the direct reply. "You'll find Miss Ackerman's type-writer in +the other room; I'll wait while you put it in type."</p> + +<p>The bookkeeper's lips were dryer than before, and his tongue was like a +stick in his mouth when he said:</p> + +<p>"You're not giving me a show, Mr. Gordon; the poor show a common +murderer would have in any court of law. You are asking me to convict +myself."</p> + +<p>Gordon held up the packet of papers.</p> + +<p>"Here is your conviction, Mr. Dyckman—the original leaves taken from +those books when you had them re-bound. I need your statement of the +facts for quite another purpose."</p> + +<p>"And if I refuse to make it? A cornered rat will fight for his life, Mr. +Gordon."</p> + +<p>"If you refuse I shall be reluctantly compelled to hand these papers +over to our attorneys—reluctantly, I say, because you can serve me +better just now out of jail than in it."</p> + +<p>Dyckman made a final attempt to gain fighting space.</p> + +<p>"It's an unfair advantage you're taking; at the worst, I am only an +accessory. My principals will be here in a few days, and—"</p> + +<p>"Precisely," was the cold rejoinder. "It is because your principals are +coming home, and because they are not yet here, that I want your +statement. Oblige me, if you please; my time is limited this morning."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>There was no help for it, or none apparent to the fear-stricken; and +for the twenty succeeding minutes the type-writer clicked monotonously +in the small ante-room. Dyckman could hear his persecutor pacing the +floor of the private office, and once he found himself looking about him +for a weapon. But at the end of the writing interval he was handing the +freshly-typed sheet to a man who was yet alive and unhurt.</p> + +<p>Gordon sat down at his desk to read it, and again the roving eyes of the +bookkeeper swept the interior of the larger room for the means to an +end; sought and found not.</p> + +<p>The eye-search was not fully concluded when Gordon pressed the electric +button which summoned the young man who kept the local books of the +Chiawassee plant across the way. While he waited he saw the conclusion +of the eye-search and smiled rather grimly.</p> + +<p>"You'll not find it, Dyckman," he said, divining the desperate purpose +of the other; adding, as an afterthought: "and if you should, you +wouldn't have the courage to use it. That is the fatal lack in your +makeup. It is what kept you from taking the train last night with the +money belt which you emptied this morning. You'll never make a +successful criminal; it takes a good deal more nerve than it does to be +an honest man."</p> + +<p>The bookkeeper was sliding lower in his chair.</p> + +<p>"I—I believe you are the devil in human shape," he muttered; and then +he made an addendum which was an unconscious slipping of the +under-thought into words: "It's no crime to kill a devil."</p> + +<p>Gordon smiled again. "None in the least,—only you <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>want to make sure +you have a silver bullet in the gun when you try it."</p> + +<p>Hereupon the young man from the office across the pike came in, and +Gordon handed a pen to Dyckman.</p> + +<p>"I want you to witness Mr. Dyckman's signature to this paper, Dillard," +he said, folding the confession so that it could not be read by the +witness; and when the thing was done, the young man appended his +notarial attestation and went back to his duties.</p> + +<p>"Well?" said Dyckman, when they were once more alone together.</p> + +<p>"That's all," said Gordon curtly. "As long as you are discreet, you +needn't lose any sleep over this. If you don't mind hurrying a little, +you can make the ten-forty back to town."</p> + +<p>Dyckman restrapped his books and made a show of hastening. But before he +closed the office door behind him he had seen Gordon place the +type-written sheet, neatly folded, on top of the thick packet, snapping +an elastic band over the whole and returning it to its pigeonhole in the +small safe.</p> + +<p>Later in the day, Tom crossed the pike to the oak-shingled office of the +Chiawassee Consolidated. His father was deep in the new wage scale +submitted by the miners' union, but he sat up and pushed the papers away +when his son entered.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen this morning's <i>Tribune</i>?" asked Tom, taking the paper +from his pocket.</p> + +<p>"No; I don't make out to find much time for it before I get home o' +nights," said Caleb. "Anything doin'?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; they are having a hot time in Chicago and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>Pullman. The strike is +spreading all over the country on sympathy lines."</p> + +<p>"Reckon it'll get down to us in any way?" queried the iron-master.</p> + +<p>"You can't tell. I'd be a little easy with Ludlow and his outfit on that +wage scale, if I were you."</p> + +<p>"I don't like to be scared into doin' a thing."</p> + +<p>"No; but we don't want a row on our hands just now. Farley might make +capital out of it."</p> + +<p>Caleb nodded. Then he said: "Didn't I see Dyckman comin' out of your +shanty 'long about eleven o'clock?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; he came out to do me a little favor, and it went mighty near to +making him sweat blood. Shall you need me any more to-day?"</p> + +<p>"No, I reckon not. Goin' away?"</p> + +<p>"I'm going to town on the five-ten, and I may not be back till late."</p> + +<p>Tom's business in South Tredegar was unimportant. There was a word or +two to be said personally in the ear of Hanchett, the senior member of +the firm of attorneys intrusted with the legal concernments of Gordon +and Gordon, and afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro. But the +real object of the town trip disclosed itself when he took an electric +car for the foot of Lebanon on the line connecting with the inclined +railway running up the mountain to Crestcliffe Inn. He had not seen +Ardea since the midwinter night of soul-awakenings; and Alecto's finger +was still pressing on the wound inflicted by the closed doors of +Mountain View Avenue and his father's misdirected sympathy.</p> + +<p>He found Major Dabney smoking on the hotel ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>randa, and his welcome was +not scanted here, at least. There was a vacant chair beside the Major's +and the Major's pocket case of long cheroots was instantly forthcoming. +Would not the returned Bachelor of Science sit and smoke and tell an old +man what was going on in the young and lusty world beyond the +mountain-girt horizons?</p> + +<p>Tom did all three. His boyish awe for the old autocrat of Paradise had +mellowed into an affection that was almost filial, and there was plenty +to talk about: the final dash in the technical school; the outlook in +the broader world; the great strike which was filling all mouths; the +business prospects for Chiawassee Consolidated.</p> + +<p>The moment being auspicious, Tom sounded the master of the Deer Trace +coal lands on the reorganization scheme, and found nothing but +complaisance. Whatever rearrangement commended itself to Tom and his +father, and to Colonel Duxbury Farley, would be acceptable to the Major.</p> + +<p>"I reckon I can trust you, Tom, and my ve'y good friend, youh fatheh, to +watch out for Ardea's little fo'tune," was the way he put it. "I haven't +so ve'y much longeh to stay in Paradise," he went on, with a silent +little chuckle for the grim pun, "and what I've got goes to her, as a +matteh of cou'se." Then he added a word that set Tom to thinking hard. +"I had planned to give her a little suhprise on her wedding-day: suppose +you have the lawyehs make out that block of new stock to Mistress +Vincent Farley instead of to me?"</p> + +<p>Tom's hard thinking crystallized into a guarded query.</p> + +<p>"Of course, Major Dabney, if you say so. But <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>wouldn't it be more +prudent to make it over in trust for her and her children before she +becomes Mrs. Farley?"</p> + +<p>The piercing Dabney eyes were on him, and the fierce white mustaches +took the militant angle.</p> + +<p>"Tell me, Tom, have you had <i>youh</i> suspicions in that qua'teh, too? I'm +speaking in confidence to a family friend, suh."</p> + +<p>"It is just as well to be on the safe side," said Tom evasively. There +was enough of the uplift left to make him reluctant to strike his enemy +in the dark.</p> + +<p>"No, suh, that isn't what I mean. You've had youh suspicions aroused. +Tell me, suh, what they are."</p> + +<p>"Suppose you tell me yours, Major," smiled the younger man.</p> + +<p>Major Dabney became reflectively reminiscent. "I don't know, Tom, and +that's the plain fact. Looking back oveh ouh acquaintance, thah's +nothing in that young man for me to put a fingeh on; but, Tom, I tell +you in confidence, suh, I'd give five yeahs of my old life, if the good +Lord has that many mo' in His book for me, if the blood of the Dabneys +didn't have to be—uh—mingled with that of these heah damned Yankees. I +would, for a fact, suh!"</p> + +<p>Tom rose and flung away the stub of his third cheroot.</p> + +<p>"Then you'll let me place your third of the new stock in trust for her +and her children?" he said. "That will be best, on all accounts. By the +way, where shall I find Miss Ardea?"</p> + +<p>"She's about the place, somewhahs," was the reply; and Tom passed on to +the electric-lighted lobby to send his card in search of her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>Chance saved him the trouble. Some one was playing in the music-room +and he recognized her touch and turned aside to stand under the looped +portières. She was alone, and again, as many times before, it came on +him with the sense of discovery that she was radiantly beautiful—that +for him she had no peer among women.</p> + +<p>It was the score of a Bach fugue that stood on the music-rack, and she +was oblivious to everything else until her fingers had found and struck +the final chords. Then she looked up and saw him.</p> + +<p>There was no greeting, no welcoming light in the slate-blue eyes; and +she did not seem to see when he came nearer and offered to shake hands.</p> + +<p>"I've been talking to your grandfather for an hour or more," he began, +"and I was just going to send my card after you. Haven't you a word of +welcome for me, Ardea?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes were holding him at arm's length.</p> + +<p>"Do you think you deserve a welcome from any self-respecting woman?" she +asked in low tones.</p> + +<p>His smile became a scowl—the anger scowl of the Gordons.</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I?" he demanded. "What have I done to make every woman I +meet look at me as if I were a leper?"</p> + +<p>She rose from the piano-stool and confronted him bravely. It was now or +never, if their future attitude each to the other was to be succinctly +defined.</p> + +<p>"You know very well what you have done," she said evenly. "If you had a +spark of manhood left in you, you would know what a dastardly thing you +are doing now in coming here to see me."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>"Well, I don't," he returned doggedly. "And another thing: I'm not to +be put off with hard words. I ask you again what has happened? Who has +been lying about me this time?"</p> + +<p>Three other guests of the hotel were entering the music-room and the +quarrel had to pause. Ardea had a nerve-shaking conviction that it would +never do to leave it in the air. He must be made to understand, once for +all, that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. She caught up the light wrap +she had been wearing earlier in the evening and turned to one of the +windows opening on the rear veranda. "Come with me," she whispered; and +he followed obediently.</p> + +<p>But there was no privacy to be had out of doors. There was a goodly +scattering of people in the veranda chairs enjoying the perfect night +and the white moonlight. Ardea stopped suddenly.</p> + +<p>"You were intending to walk down to the valley?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>"I will walk with you to the cliff edge."</p> + +<p>It was a short hundred yards, and there were many abroad in the graveled +walks: lovers in pairs, and groups of young people pensive or +chattering. So it was not until they stood on the very battlements of +the western cliff that they were measurably alone.</p> + +<p>"Has no one told you what happened last March—on the day of the ice +storm?" she asked coldly.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Don't you know it without being told?"</p> + +<p>"Of course, I don't; why should I?"</p> + +<p>His angry impassiveness shook her resolution. It <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>seemed incredible that +the most accomplished dissembler could rise to such supreme heights of +seeming.</p> + +<p>"I used to think I knew you," she said, faltering, "but I don't. Why +don't you despise hypocrisy and double-dealing as you used to?"</p> + +<p>"I do; more heartily than ever."</p> + +<p>"Yet, in spite of that, you have—oh, it is perfectly unspeakable!"</p> + +<p>"I am taking your word for it," he rejoined gloomily. "You are denying +me what the most wretched criminal is taught to believe is his right—to +know what he is accused of."</p> + +<p>"Have you forgotten that night last winter when you—when I saw you at +the gate with Nancy Bryerson?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not likely to forget it."</p> + +<p>She seized her courage and held it fast, putting maidenly shame to the +wall.</p> + +<p>"Tom, it is a terrible thing to say—and your punishment will be +terrible. <i>But you must marry Nancy!</i>"</p> + +<p>"And father another man's child?—not much!" he answered brutally.</p> + +<p>"And father your own children—two of them," she said, with bitter +emphasis.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's it, is it?" he said, with a deeper scowl. "So there are two +of them, are there? That's why no woman in Mr. Farley's country colony +is at home to me any more, I suppose." And then, still more bitterly: +"Of course, you are all sure of this?—Nan has at last confessed that I +am the guilty man?"</p> + +<p>"You know she has not, Tom. Her loyalty is still as strong and true at +it is mistaken. But your duty remains."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>He was standing on the brink of the cliff, looking down on Paradise +Valley, spread like a silver-etched map far below in the moonlight. The +flare and sough of the furnace at the iron-works came and went with +regular intermittency; and just beyond the group of Chiawassee stacks a +tiny orange spot appeared and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp. He +was staring down at the curious spot when he said:</p> + +<p>"If I say that I have no duty toward Nan, you will believe it is a +lie—as you did once before. Have you ever reflected that it is possible +to trample on love until it dies—even such love as I bear you?"</p> + +<p>"It is a shame for you to speak of such things to me, Tom. Consider what +I have endured—what you have made me endure. People said I was standing +by you, condoning a sin that no right-minded young woman should condone. +I bore it because I thought, I believed, you were sorry. And at that +very time you were deceiving me—deceiving every one. You have dragged +me in the very dust of shame!"</p> + +<p>"There is no shame save what we make for ourselves," he retorted. "One +day, according to your creed, we shall stand naked before your God, and +before each other. In that day you will know what you have done to me +to-night. No, don't speak, please; let me finish. The last time we were +together you gave me a strong word, and—and you kissed me. For the sake +of that word and that kiss I went out into the world a different man. +For the little fragment of your love that you gave me then, I have lived +a different man from that day to this. Now you shall see what I shall be +without it."</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> +<p>Before he had finished she had turned from him gasping, choking, +strangling in the grip of a mighty passion, new-born and yet not new. +With the suddenness of a revealing flash of lightning she understood; +knew that she loved him, that she had been loving him from childhood, +not because, but in spite of everything, as he had once defined love. It +was terrible, heartbreaking, soul-destroying. She called on shame for +help, but shame had fled. She was cold with a horrible fear lest he +should find out and she should be for ever lost in the bottomless pit of +humiliation.</p> + +<p>It was the sight of the little orange-colored spot glowing and growing +beyond the Chiawassee chimneys that saved her.</p> + +<p>"Look!" she cried. "Isn't that a fire down in the valley just across the +pike from the furnace? It <i>is</i> a fire!"</p> + +<p>He made a field-glass of his hands and looked long and steadily.</p> + +<p>"You are quite right," he said coolly. "It's my foundry. Can you get +back to the hotel alone? If you can, I'll take the short cut down +through the woods. Good night, and—good-by." And before she could +reply, he had lowered himself over the cliff's edge and was crashing +through the underbrush on the slopes below.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2> + +<h3>AS BRUTES THAT PERISH</h3> + + +<p>It was the office building of the pipe foundry that burned on the night +of July fifteenth, and the fire was incendiary. Suspicion, put on the +scent by the night-watchman's story, pointed to Tike Bryerson as the +criminal. The old moonshiner, in the bickering stage of intoxication, +had been seen hanging about the new plant during the day, and had made +vague threats in the hearing of various ears in Gordonia.</p> + +<p>Wherefore the small world of Paradise and its environs looked to see a +warrant sworn out for the mountaineer's arrest; and when nothing was +done, gossip reawakened to say that Tom Gordon did not dare to +prosecute; that Bryerson's crime was a bit of wild justice, so +recognized by the man whose duty it was to invoke the law.</p> + +<p>It was remarked, also, that neither of the Gordons had anything to say, +and that an air of mystery enveloped the little that they did. The small +wooden office building was a total loss, but the night shift at the +Chiawassee had saved most of the contents; everything of value except +the small iron safe which had stood behind the manager's desk in the +private office. The safe, as the onlookers observed, was taken from the +debris <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>and conveyed, unopened, across the road to the Chiawassee +laboratory and yard office. Whether or not its keepings were destroyed +by the fire, was known only to the younger Gordon, who, as the foreman +of the Chiawassee night shift informed a <i>Tribune</i> reporter, had broken +it open himself, deep in the small hours of the night following the +fire, and behind the locked door of the furnace laboratory.</p> + +<p>At another moment South Tredegar newspaperdom might have made something +of the little mystery. But there were more exciting topics to the fore. +The great strike, with Chicago and Pullman as its storm-centers, was +gripping the land in its frenzied fist, and the press despatches were +greedy of space. Hence, young Gordon was suffered to open his safe in +mysterious secrecy; to rebuild his burned office; and to let the +incendiary, sufficiently identified by the watchman, it was believed, go +scot-free.</p> + +<p>With the greater land-wide interest to divert it, even Paradise failed +to note the curious change that had come over the younger of the +Gordons, dating from the night of burnings. But the few who came in +contact with him in the business day saw and felt it. Miss Ackerman, the +pipe-works stenographer, quit when her week was up. It was nothing that +the young manager had said or done; but, as she confided to her sister, +more fortunately situated in town, it was like being caged with a living +threat. Even Norman, the trusted lieutenant, was cut out of his +employer's confidence; and for hours on end in the business day the card +"Not in" would be displayed on the glass-paneled door of the private +room in the rebuilt office.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>Not to make a mystery of it for ourselves, Tom had passed another +milestone in the descent to the valley of lost souls. Or rather, let us +say, he had taken a longer step backward toward the primitive. Daggered +<i>amour-propre</i> is rarely a benign wound. Oftener than not it gangrenes, +and there is loss of sound tissue and the setting-up of strange and +malevolent growth. With the passing of the first healthful shock of +honest resentment, Tom became a man of one idea. Somewhere in the land +of the living dwelt a man who had robbed him, intentionally or +otherwise, indirectly, but none the less effectually, of the ennobling +love of the one woman; to find that man and to deal with him as Joab +dealt with Amasa became the one thing worth living for.</p> + +<p>The first step was taken in secrecy. One day a stranger, purporting to +be a walking delegate for the United Miners, but repudiated as such by +check-weigher Ludlow, took up his residence in Gordonia and began to +interest himself, quite unminer-like, in the various mechanical +appliances of the Chiawassee plant, and particularly in the different +sources of its water supply.</p> + +<p>Divested of his cloakings, this sham walking delegate was a Pinkerton +man, detailed grudgingly from the Chicago storm-center on Tom's +requisition. His task was to scrutinize Nancy Bryerson's past, and to +identify, if possible, one or more of the three men who, in January of +the year 1890, had inspected and repaired the pipe-line running from the +coke-yard tank up to the barrel-spring on high Lebanon.</p> + +<p>To the detective the exclusion card on Tom's door did not apply, and the +conferences between the hired and the hirer were frequent and prolonged. +If we shall <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>overhear one of them—the final one, held on the day of the +Farleys' return to Paradise and Warwick Lodge—it will suffice.</p> + +<p>"It looks easy enough, as you say, Mr. Gordon," the human ferret is +explaining; "but in point of fact there's nothing to work on—less than +nothing. Three years ago you had no regular repair gang, and when a job +of that kind was to be done, any Tom, Dick or Harry picked up a helper +or two and did it. But I think you can bet on one thing: none of the +three men who made that inspection is at present in your employ."</p> + +<p>"In other words, you'd like to get back to your job at Pullman," snaps +Tom.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I ain't in any hurry! That job looks as if it would keep for a +while longer. But I don't like to take a man's good money for nothing; +and that's about what I'm doing here."</p> + +<p>Tom swings around to his desk and writes a check.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you have no further report to make on the woman?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing of any importance. I told you where she is living—in a little +cabin up on the mountain in a settlement called Pine Knob."</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I found that out for myself."</p> + +<p>"So you did. Well, she's living straight, as far as anybody knows; and +if you can believe what you hear, the only follower she ever had was a +young mountaineer named Kincaid. I looked him up; he's been gone from +these parts for something over three years. He is ranching in Indian +Territory, and only came back last week. You can check him off your +list."</p> + +<p>"He was never on, and I have no list," says the man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>hunter grittingly. +"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Beckham," passing the signed check to +the other, "I shall begin where you leave off, and end by finding my +man."</p> + +<p>"I hope you do, I'm sure," says the Pinkerton, moved by the liberal +figure of the check. "And if there's anything more the Agency can do—"</p> + +<p>In the afternoon of the same day, when the self-dismissed detective was +speeding northward toward Chicago and the car-burners, Tom saddled the +bay and rode long and hard over a bad mountain cart track to the hamlet +of Pine Knob. It was a measure of his abandonment that he was breaking +his promise to Ardea; and another of his reckless singleness of purpose +that he rode brazenly through the little settlement to Nan's door, +dismounted and entered as if he had right.</p> + +<p>The cabin was untenanted, but he found Nan sitting on the slab step of a +rude porch at the back, nursing her child. She greeted him without +rising, and her eyes were downcast.</p> + +<p>"I've come for justice, Nan," he said, without preface, seating himself +on the end of the step and flicking the dust from his leggings with his +riding-crop. "You know what they're saying about us—about you and me. I +want to know who to thank for it: what is the man's name?"</p> + +<p>She did not reply at once, and when she lifted the dark eyes to his they +were full of suffering, like those of an animal under the lash.</p> + +<p>"I nev' said hit was you," she averred, after a time.</p> + +<p>"No; but you might as well. Everybody believes it, and you haven't +denied it. Who is the man?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>"I cayn't tell," she said simply.</p> + +<p>"You mean you won't tell."</p> + +<p>"No, I cayn't; I'm livin' on his money, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>"No, you are not. What makes you say that?"</p> + +<p>"She told me I was."</p> + +<p>"Who? Miss Dabney?"</p> + +<p>Her nod was affirmative, and he went on: "Tell me just what she said; +word for word, if you can remember."</p> + +<p>The answer came brokenly.</p> + +<p>"I was ashamed—you don't believe hit, but hit's so. I allowed it was +<i>her</i> money. When I made out like I'd run off, she said, 'No; it's his +money 'at's bein' spent for you, and you have a right to it.'"</p> + +<p>Tom was silent for a time; then he said the other necessary word.</p> + +<p>"She believes I am the man who wronged you, Nan. It was my money."</p> + +<p>The woman half rose and then sat down again, rocking the child in her +arms.</p> + +<p>"You're lyin' to me, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Hit's on'y a lie to make me tell!" +she panted.</p> + +<p>"No, it's the truth. I was sorry for you and helped you because—well, +because of the old times. But everybody has misunderstood, even Miss +Dabney."</p> + +<p>Silence again; the silence of the high mountain plateau and the +whispering pines. Then she asked softly:</p> + +<p>"Was you aimin' to marry her, Tom-Jeff?"</p> + +<p>His voice was somber. "I've never had the beginning of a chance; and +besides, she is promised to another man."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>The woman was breathing hard again. "I heerd about that, too—jest the +other day. I don't believe hit!"</p> + +<p>"It is true, just the same. But I didn't come out here to talk about +Miss Dabney. I want to know a name—the name of a man."</p> + +<p>She shook her head again and relapsed into unresponsiveness.</p> + +<p>"I cayn't tell; he'd shore kill me. He's always allowed he'd do hit if I +let on."</p> + +<p>"Tell me his name, and I'll kill him before he ever gets a chance at +you," was the savage rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"D'ye reckon you'd do that, Tom-Jeff—for me?"</p> + +<p>The light of the old allurement was glowing in the dark eyes when she +said it, but there was no answering thrill of passion in his blood. For +one moment, indeed, the bestial demon whispered that here was vengeance +of a sort, freely proffered; but the fiercer devil thrust this one +aside, and Tom found himself looking consciously and deliberately into +the abyss of crime. Once he might have said such a thing in the mere +exuberance of anger, meaning nothing more deadly than the retaliatory +buffet of passion. But now—</p> + +<p>It was as if the curtain of the civilizing, the humanizing, ages had +been withdrawn a hand's-breadth to give him a clear outlook on +primordial chaos. Once across the mystic threshold, untrammeled by the +hamperings of tradition, unterrified by the threat of the mythical +future, the human atom becomes its own law, the arbiter of its own +momentary destiny. What it wills to do, it may do—if iron-shod chance, +blind and stumbling blindly, does not happen to trample on and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>efface +it. Who first took it on him to say, <i>Thou shalt not kill</i>? What were +any or all of the prohibitions but the frantic shrillings of some of the +atoms to the others?</p> + +<p>In the clear outlook Thomas Gordon saw himself as one whose foot was +already across the threshold. True, he had thus far broken with the +world of time-honored traditions only in part. But why should he scruple +to be wholly free? If the man whose deed of brutality or passion was +disturbing the chanceful equilibrium for two other human dust-grains +should be identified, why should he not be effaced?</p> + +<p>The child at Nan's breast stirred in its sleep and threw up its tiny +hands in the convulsive movement which is the human embryo's first +unconscious protest against the helplessness of which it is born +inheritor. Tom stood up, beating the air softly with the hunting-crop.</p> + +<p>"The man has spoiled your life, Nan; and, incidentally, he has muddied +the spring for me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in +the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall +blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head +of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little +disorganized mass of black and yellow down and broken wing-filaments.</p> + +<p>The glow in the dark eyes of the woman had died down again, and her +voice was hard and lifeless when she said:</p> + +<p>"But not for me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't wantin' to kill him like my brother +would, if I had one."</p> + +<p>"No; not at all for you, Nan," he said half-absently. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>And then he +tramped away to the gate, and put a leg over Saladin, and rode down the +straggling street of the little settlement, again in the face and eyes +of all who cared to see.</p> + +<p>The bay had measured less than a mile of the homeward way when there +came a clatter of hoof-beats in the rear. Tom awoke out of the absent +fit, spoke to Saladin and rode the faster. Nevertheless, the pursuing +horseman overtook him, and a drawling voice said:</p> + +<p>"Hit's right smart wicked to shove the bay thataway down-hill, son."</p> + +<p>Tom pulled his horse down to a walk. He was in no mood for +companionship, but he knew Pettigrass would refuse to be shaken off.</p> + +<p>"Where have you been?" he asked sourly.</p> + +<p>"Me? I been over to McLemore's Valley, lookin' at some brood-mares that +old man Mac is tryin' to sell the Major."</p> + +<p>"Did you come through Pine Knob?"</p> + +<p>"Shore, I did. I was a-settin' on Brother Bill Layne's porch whilst you +was talkin' to Nan Bryerson. Seems sort o' pitiful you cayn't let that +pore gal alone, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>"That's enough," said Tom hotly. "I've heard all I'm going to about that +thing, from friends or enemies."</p> + +<p>"I ain't no way shore about that," said the horse-trader easily. "I was +'lottin' to say a few things, m'self."</p> + +<p>Tom pulled the bay up short in the cart track.</p> + +<p>"There's the road," he said, pointing. "You can have the front half or +the back half—whichever you like."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>Japheth's answer was a good-natured laugh and a tacit refusal to take +either.</p> + +<p>"You cayn't rile me thataway, boy," he said. "I've knowed you a heap too +long. Git in the fu'ther rut and take your medicine like a man."</p> + +<p>Since there appeared to be no help for it, Tom set his horse in motion +again, and Japheth gave him a mile of silence in which to cool down.</p> + +<p>"Now you listen at me, son," the horse-trader began again, when he +judged the cooling process was sufficiently advanced. "I ain't goin' to +tell no tales out o' school this here one time. But you got to let Nan +alone, d'ye hear?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, shut up!" was the irritable rejoinder. "I'll go where I please, and +do what I please. You seem to forget that I'm not a boy any longer!"</p> + +<p>"Ya-as, I do; that's the toler'ble straight fact," drawled the other. +"But I ain't so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff."</p> + +<p>Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to +bend all means to the one end, the trivial as well as the potent.</p> + +<p>"Tell me something, Japhe," he said, changing front in the twinkling of +an eye. "Is Nan coming back to the dog-keeper's cabin when the family +leaves the hotel?"</p> + +<p>"'Tain't goin' to make any difference to you if she does," said +Pettigrass, wondering where he was to be hit next.</p> + +<p>"It may, if you'll do me a favor. You'll be where you can see and hear. +I want to know who visits her—besides Miss Ardea."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>Brother Japheth's smile was more severe than the sharpest reproach.</p> + +<p>"Still a-harpin' on that old string, are ye? Say, Tom-Jeff, I been +erbout the best friend you've had, barrin' your daddy, for a right smart +spell o' years. Don't you keep on tryin' to th'ow dust in my eyes."</p> + +<p>"Call it what you please; I don't care what you think or say. But when +you find a man hanging around Nan—"</p> + +<p>"They's one right now," said the horse-trader casually.</p> + +<p>Tom reined up as if he would ride back to Pine Knob forthwith.</p> + +<p>"Who is it?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Young fellow named Kincaid—jest back f'om out West, somewheres. +Brother Bill Layne let on to me like maybe he'd overlook what cayn't be +he'ped, and marry Nan anyhow. And that's another reason you got to keep +away."</p> + +<p>"Let up on that," said Tom, stiffening again. "If you had been where you +could have used your ears as you did your eyes back yonder at Pine Knob, +you'd know more than you seem to know now."</p> + +<p>There was silence between them from this on until the horses were +footing it cautiously down the bridle-path connecting the cart track +with the Paradise pike. Then Pettigrass said:</p> + +<p>"Allowin' ther' might be another man, Tom-Jeff, jest for the sake of +argyment, what-all was you aimin' to do if you found him?"</p> + +<p>It was drawing on to dusk, and the electric lights of Mountain View +Avenue and the colonial houses were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>twinkling starlike in the blue-gray +haze of the valley. They had reach the junction of the steep bridle-path +with the wood road which edged the Dabney horse pasture and led directly +to the Deer Trace paddocks, and when Japheth pulled his horse aside into +the short cut, Tom drew rein to answer.</p> + +<p>"It's nobody's business but mine, Japhe; but I'd just as soon tell you: +it runs in my head that he needs killing mighty badly, and I've thought +about it till I've come to the conclusion that I'm the appointed +instrument. You turn off here? Well, so long."</p> + +<p>Brother Japheth made the gesture of leave-taking with his riding-switch, +and sent his mount at an easy amble down the wood road, apostrophizing +great nature, as his habit was. "Lawzee! <i>how</i> we pore sinners do tempt +the good Lord at every crook and elbow in the big road, <i>toe</i> be shore! +Now ther's Tom-Jeff, braggin' how he'll be the one to kill the pappy o' +Nan's chillern: he's a-ridin' a mighty shore-footed hawss, but hit do +look like he'd be skeered the Lord might take him at his word and make +that hawss stumble. Hit do, for a fact!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2> + +<h3>THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY</h3> + + +<p>On the night of the fire, Ardea had remained on the cliff's edge until +the blaze died down and disappeared, which was some little time, she +decided, before Tom could possibly have reached the foot of the +mountain.</p> + +<p>When there was nothing more to be seen she went back to the hotel and +called up the Young-Dicksons, whose cottage commanded a short-range view +of the Gordon plant. It was Mrs. Young-Dickson who answered the +telephone. Yes; the fire was one of the foundry buildings—the office, +she believed. Mr. Young-Dickson had gone over, and she would have him +call up when he should return, if Miss Dabney wished.</p> + +<p>Ardea said it did not matter, and having exhausted this small vein of +distraction she returned to the music-room and the Bach fugue, as one, +who has had a fall, rises and tries to go on as before, ignoring the +shock and the bruisings. But the shock had been too severe. Tom Gordon +had proved himself a wretch, beyond the power of speech to portray, +and—she loved him! Not all the majestic harmonies of the inspired +<i>Kapellmeister</i> could drown that terrible discord.</p> + +<p>The next day it was worse. There was a goodly number of South Tredegar +people summering at the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>Inn, and hence no lack of companionship. But +the social distractions were powerless in the field where Bach and the +piano had failed, and after luncheon Ardea shut herself in her room, +desperately determined to try what solitude would do.</p> + +<p>That failed, too, more pathetically than the other expedients. It was to +no purpose that she went bravely into the torture chamber of opprobrium +and did penance for the sudden lapse into the elemental. It was the +passion of the base-born, she cried bitterly. He was unworthy, unworthy! +Why had he come? Why had she not refused to see him—to speak to him?</p> + +<p>Such agonizing questions flung themselves madly on the spear points of +fact and were slain. He had come; she had spoken. Never would she forget +the look in his eyes when he had said, "Good night, and—good-by;" nor +could she pass over the half-threat in the words that had gone before +the leave-taking. To what deeper depth despicable could he plunge, +having already sounded the deepest of them all—that of unfaith, of +infidelity alike to the woman he had wronged and to the woman he +professed to love?</p> + +<p>At dinner-time she sent word to her grandfather and her cousin that she +was not feeling well, which was a mild paraphrasing of the truth, and +had a piece of toast and a cup of tea sent to her room. The bare thought +of going down to the great dining-room and sitting through the hour-long +dinner was insupportable. She made sure every eye would see the shame in +her face.</p> + +<p>With the toast and tea the servant brought the evening paper, sent up by +a doting Major Caspar, thoughtful always for her comfort. A marked item +in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>social gossip transfixed her as if it had been an arrow. The +Farleys had sailed from Southampton, and the house renovators were +already busy at Warwick Lodge.</p> + +<p>After that the toast proved too dry to be eaten and the tea took on the +taste of bitter herbs. Vincent Farley was returning, coming to claim the +fulfilment of her promise. She had never loved him; she knew it as she +had not known it before; and that was dreadful enough. But now there +were a thousand added pangs to go with the conviction. For in the +interval love had been found—found and lost in the same moment—and the +solid earth was still reeling at the shock.</p> + +<p>Ardea of the strong heart and the calm inner vision had always had a +feeling bordering on contempt for women of the hysterical type; yet now +she felt herself trembling and slipping on the brink of the pit she had +derided.</p> + +<p>The third day brought surcease of a certain sort. In the Gallic blood +there is ever a trace of fatalism; the shrug is its expression. It was +generations back to the D'Aubignés, yet now and then some remote +ancestor would reach up out of the shadowy past to lay a compelling +finger on the latest daughter of his race. Her word was passed, beyond +honorable recall. Somewhere and in some way she would find the courage +to tell Vincent that she did not love him as the wife should love the +husband; and if he should still exact the price, she would pay it. After +all, it would be a refuge, of a kind.</p> + +<p>Now it is human nature to assume finalities and to base conduct on the +assumption. Conversely, it is not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>in human nature to tighten one knot +without loosening another. Having firmly resolved to be unflinchingly +just to a Vincent Farley, one could afford to be humanely interested in +the struggles shoreward or seaward of a poor swimmer in the welter of +the tideway. She did not put it thus baldly, even in her secret thought. +But the thing did itself.</p> + +<p>The opportunities for marking the struggles of the poor swimmer were +limited; but where is the woman who can not find the way when desire +drives? Ardea had something more than a speaking acquaintance with Mr. +Frederic Norman who, as acting-manager of the foundry plant in Tom's +absence, had generously thrown one of the buildings open for a series of +Sunday services for the workmen, promoted by Miss Dabney and the +Reverend Francis Morelock. Since the warm nights had come, Norman had +taken a room at the Inn, climbing the mountain from the Paradise side in +time for dinner, and going down in the cool of the morning after an +early breakfast.</p> + +<p>Being first and last a man of business, he knew, or seemed to know, +nothing of the valley gossip, or of the social sentence passed on his +chief by the Mountain View Avenue court. When Ardea had assured herself +of this, she utilized Norman freely as a source of information.</p> + +<p>"You've known the boss a long time, haven't you, Miss Dabney?" asked the +manager, one evening when Ardea had made room for him in a quiet corner +of the veranda between the Major's chair and her own.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Gordon? Oh, yes; a very long time, indeed. We were children +together, you know."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>"Well, I'd like to ask you one thing," said Frederic, the unfettered. +"Did you ever get to know him well enough to guess what he'd do next? I +thought I'd been pretty close to him, but once in a while he runs me up +a tree so far that I get dizzy."</p> + +<p>"As for example?" prompted Miss Ardea, leaving the personal question in +the air.</p> + +<p>"I mean his way of breaking out in a new spot every now and then. Last +winter was one of the times, when he made up his mind between two +minutes to chuck the pipe-making and go back to college. And now he's +got another streak."</p> + +<p>Miss Dabney made the necessary show of interest.</p> + +<p>"What is it this time—too much business, or not enough?"</p> + +<p>Norman rose and went to the edge of the veranda to flick his cigar ash +into the flower border. When he came back he took a chair on that side +of Miss Dabney farthest from the Major, who was dozing peacefully in a +great flat-armed rocker.</p> + +<p>"I declare I don't know, Miss Dabney; he's got me guessing harder than +ever," he said, lowering his voice. "Since the night when the office +burned he's been miles beyond me. While the carpenters were knocking +together the shack we're in now, he put in the time wandering around the +plant and looking as if he had lost something and forgotten what it was. +Now that we've got into the new office, he shuts himself up for hours on +end; won't see anybody—won't talk—scamps his meals half the time, and +has actually got old Captain Caleb scared stiff."</p> + +<p>"How singular!" said Ardea; but in her heart there <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>was a great pity. +"Do you suppose it was his loss in the fire?" she asked.</p> + +<p>The manager shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No; that was next to nothing, and we're doing a good business. It was +something else; something that happened about the same time. If I can't +find out what it is, I'll have to quit. He's freezing me out."</p> + +<p>Ardea was inconsistent enough to oppose the alternative.</p> + +<p>"No," she objected. "You mustn't do that, Mr. Norman. It is a friend's +part to stand by at such times, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm willing," was the generous reply. "Only I'm a little lonesome; +that's all."</p> + +<p>At another time Norman told her of the mysterious walking delegate, who +was admitted to the private office when an anxious and zealous business +manager was excluded. Later still, he made a half-confidence. Caleb, in +despair at the latest transformation in his son, had finally unfolded +his doubts and fears, business-wise, to the manager. The Farleys were +returning; a legal notice of a called meeting of the Chiawassee +Consolidated had been published; and it was evident that Colonel Duxbury +meant to take hold with his hands. And Tom seemed to have forgotten that +there was a battle to be fought.</p> + +<p>Norman's recounting of this to Miss Dabney was the merest unburdening of +an overloaded soul, and he was careful to garble it so that the +prospective daughter-in-law of Colonel Duxbury might not be hurt. But +Ardea read between the lines. Could it be possible that Tom's lifelong +enmity for the Farleys, father and son, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>had even a little justification +in fact? She put the thought away, resolutely setting herself the task +of disbelieving. Yet, in the conversation which followed, Mr. Frederic +Norman was very thoroughly cross-questioned without his suspecting it. +Ardea meant to cultivate the open mind, and she did not dream that it +was the newly-discovered love which was prompting her to master the +intricacies of the business affair.</p> + +<p>Two days later the Farleys came home, and since Vincent went promptly +into residence at Crestcliffe, the evenings with Norman were +interrupted. But they had served their purpose; and when Vincent began +to press for the naming of an early day in September for the wedding, +Ardea found it quite feasible to be calmly indefinite. You see, she had +still to tell him that it had become purely a matter of promise-keeping +with her—a task easy only for the heartless.</p> + +<p>It was in the third week in August, a full month, earlier than their +original plans contemplated, that the Dabneys returned to Paradise and +Deer Trace. Miss Euphrasia was led to believe that the Major had tired +of the hotel and the mountain; and the Major thought the suggestion came +first from Miss Euphrasia.</p> + +<p>But the real reason for the sudden return lay in a brief note signed +"Norman," and conveyed privately to Ardea's hands by a grimy-faced boy +from the foundry.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Tom was waylaid by two footpads at the Woodlawn gates Saturday +night and half killed," it read. "He is delirious and asks continually +for you. Could you come?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2> + +<h3>THE NET OF THE FOWLER</h3> + + +<p>Which of the Cynic Fathers was it who defined virtue as an attitude of +the mind toward externals? One may not always recall a pat quotation on +the spur of the moment, but it sounds like Demonax or another of the +later school, when the philosophy of cynicism had sunk to the level of a +sneer at poor human nature.</p> + +<p>To say that Mr. Duxbury Farley, returning to find Chiawassee +Consolidated in some sense at the mercy of the new pipe plant, regarded +himself as a benefactor whose confidence had been grossly abused, is +only to take him at his word. What, pray tell us, was Caleb Gordon in +the crude beginning of things?—a village blacksmith or little more, +dabbling childishly in the back-wash of the great wave of industry and +living poverty-stricken between four log walls. To whom did he owe the +brick mansion on the Woodlawn knoll, the comforts and luxuries of +civilized life, the higher education of his son?</p> + +<p>In Mr. Farley's Index Anathema, ingratitude ranked with crime. He had +trusted these Gordons, and in return they had despoiled him; crippled a +great and growing industry by segregating the profitable half of it; +cast doubt on the good name of its founder by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>reversing his business +methods. Chiawassee had been making iron by the hundreds of tons: where +were the profits? The query answered itself. They were in the credit +account of Gordon and Gordon, every dollar of which justly belonged to +the parent company. Was not the pipe-making invention perfected by a +Chiawassee stock-holder, who was also a Chiawassee employee, on +Chiawassee time, and with Chiawassee materials? Then why, in the name of +justice, was it not to be considered a legitimate Chiawassee asset?</p> + +<p>Mr. Duxbury Farley asked these questions pathetically and insistently; +at the Cupola Club, in the Manufacturers' Association, in season and out +of season, wherever there was a willing ear to hear or the smallest +current of public sentiment to be diverted into the channel so patiently +dug for it. Was his virtuous indignation merely the mental attitude of +all the Duxbury Farleys toward things external? That bubble is too huge +for this pen to prick; besides, its bursting might devastate a world.</p> + +<p>But if we may not probe too deeply into primal causes, we may still be +regardful of the effects. Mr. Farley's bid for public sympathy was not +without results. True, there were those who hinted that the veteran +promoter was only paving the way for a <i>coup de grâce</i> which should +obliterate the Gordons, root and branch; but when the days and weeks +passed, and Mr. Farley had done nothing more revolutionary than to +reëlect himself president of Chiawassee Consolidated, and to resume, +with Dyckman as his lieutenant, the direction of its affairs, these +prophets of evil were discredited.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>It was observed also that Caleb remained general manager at Gordonia, +and still received the patronizing friendship of former times; and to +Tom the full width of the pike was given—a distance which he kept +scrupulously. But as for the younger Gordon, he knew it was the lull +before the storm, and he was watching the horizon for the signs of its +coming—when he was not searching for clues or brooding behind the +closed door of his private office with the devil of homicide for a +closet companion.</p> + +<p>During this reproachful period Vincent Farley gave himself unreservedly, +as it would seem, to the sentimental requirements, spending much time on +the mountain top and linking his days to Ardea's in a way to give her a +sinking of the heart at the thought that this was an earnest of all time +to come.</p> + +<p>Mountain View Avenue had understood that the wedding was to be in +September; but as late as the final week in August the cards were not +out, and Miss Euphrasia, the source and fountainhead of the Avenue's +information, could only say that she supposed the young people were +making up for the time lost by separation and absence, and were willing +to prolong the delights sentimental of an acknowledged engagement.</p> + +<p>But at the risk of cutting sentiment to the very bone, it must be +admitted that, after the first ardent attempt to commit Ardea to a +certain and early day, the delay was of Vincent's own making; and the +motive was basely commercial. Through Major Dabney, who was not proof +against Colonel Duxbury's blandishments at short range, however much he +might distrust them at a distance, Tom's plan of reorganization, with +the sug<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>gestion of the trusteeship for Ardea's third, had become known +to the Farleys. Thereupon ensued a conference of two held in Vincent's +room in the hotel, and sentence of extinction was passed on Tom and +Caleb.</p> + +<p>"The ungrateful cub!" was Colonel Duxbury's indignant comment. "To use +his influence over Major Dabney to sequestrate, absolutely sequestrate, +a full third of our property!"</p> + +<p>"Forewarned is forearmed," said the son coolly. "It's up to us to break +the slate."</p> + +<p>"We'll do it, never fear. Just give me a little more time in which to +win public sentiment over to our side, and don't press Ardea to name the +exact day until I give the word," was the promoter's parting injunction +to his son; and Vincent trimmed his sails accordingly, as we have seen.</p> + +<p>Planting the good seed, which was a little later to yield an abundant +harvest of public approbation sanctioning anything he might see fit to +do to the Gordons, was a congenial task to Mr. Farley; but in the midst +it was rather rudely interrupted by a belated unburdening on the part of +his first lieutenant in the South Tredegar offices.</p> + +<p>Dyckman held his peace as long as he dared; in point of fact he did not +speak until he saw his superiors rushing blindly into the pit digged for +their feet by the astute young tyrant of the pipe foundry. If they could +have fallen without carrying him with them, it is conceivable that the +bookkeeper might have remained dumb. But their immunity was doubly his, +and the end of it was a bad quarter of an hour for him, two of them, to +be precise: the first, in which he told the president and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>the treasurer +the story of the missing cash-book and ledger pages and the extorted +confession, and the other, during which he sat under a scathing fire of +abuse poured on him by the younger of his two listeners. After it was +over, he escaped to the welcome refuge of his own office while father +and son took counsel together against this new and unsuspected peril.</p> + +<p>"Anybody but an idiot like Dyckman would have found out long ago if +those papers were burned in Gordon's safe," snapped Vincent, when the +danger had been duly weighed and measured.</p> + +<p>The president shook his head mournfully.</p> + +<p>"Anybody but Dyckman would have burned them himself, you'd think. It was +criminally careless in him not to do so."</p> + +<p>"They are the key to the lock," summed up the younger man. "We've got to +have them."</p> + +<p>"Assuredly—if they are in existence."</p> + +<p>"You needn't try to squeeze comfort out of that. I tell you, they went +through the fire all right, and Tom has them."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid you are right, Vincent; afraid, also, that Dyckman so far +forgot himself as to set fire to Gordon's office in the hope of +retrieving his own neglect. But how are we to regain them?" Mr. Farley's +weapons were two, only: first persuasion, and when that failed, +corruption.</p> + +<p>Vincent's cold blue eyes were darkening. The little virtues interpose +but a slight barrier to a sharp attack of the large vices.</p> + +<p>"The fight has fallen into halves," he said briefly. "You go on with +your part as if nothing had happened, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>and I'll do mine. Has the old +iron-melter been taken in on it, do you think?"</p> + +<p>"No; I don't believe Caleb knows."</p> + +<p>"That's better. Are you going up the mountain to-night?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I had thought of it. Eva wants me to take her."</p> + +<p>"All right; you go, and get Major Dabney to yourself for a quiet +half-hour. Tell him we are all ready to close the deal, and we're only +waiting on the Gordons. I'll be up to dinner, and if anybody asks for me +later, let it be understood that I have gone to my room to write +letters."</p> + +<p>This bomb-hurling of Dyckman's occurred on the Wednesday. That night, +between the hours of nine and eleven, the new steel safe in Tom Gordon's +private office was broken open and ransacked, though nothing was taken. +On Thursday afternoon, while Martha Gordon was over at Deer Trace +training the new growth on Ardea's roses, Tom's room at Woodlawn was +thoroughly and systematically pillaged: drawers were pulled out and +emptied on the floor, the closets were stripped of their contents, and +even the bed mattresses were ripped open and destroyed.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Martha was terrified, as so bold a daylight housebreaking gave her +a right to be; and Caleb was for sending to the county workhouse for the +bloodhounds. But Tom was apparently unmoved.</p> + +<p>"It won't happen again," he said; and it did not. But on the Saturday +evening, just before the late dinner-hour at Woodlawn, Japheth +Pettigrass, who had been trying to halter a shy filly running loose in +the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>field across the pike, saw a stirring little drama enacted at the +Woodlawn gates; saw it, and played some small part in it.</p> + +<p>It centered on Tom, who was late getting home. He never rode with his +father now if he could avoid it, and Japheth saw him swinging along up +the pike, with his head down and his hands in the pockets of his short +coat. The Woodlawn entrance was a walled semicircle giving back from the +roadway, with the carriage gates hinged to great stone pillars in the +center, and a light iron grille at the side for foot-passengers. Tom's +hand was on the latch of the little gate when two men darted from the +shadow of the nearest pillar and flung themselves on him.</p> + +<p>Japheth saw them first and gave a great yell of warning. Tom turned at +the cry, and so was not taken entirely unawares. But the two had beaten +him down and were busily searching him when Japheth dashed across the +pike, shouting as he ran. The footpads persisted until the horse-trader +came near enough to see that they were black men, or rather white men +with blackened faces and hands. Then they sprang up and vanished in the +gathering dusk.</p> + +<p>Tom was conscious when Pettigrass got him on his feet and hastily bound +a handkerchief over the ugly wound in his head. He was still conscious +when Japheth walked him slowly up the path to the house, and was sanely +concerned lest his mother should be frightened.</p> + +<p>But after they got him to bed he sank into an inert sleep out of which +he awoke the next morning wildly delirious. Ardea's name was oftenest on +his lips in his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>ravings, and while his strength remained, his calling +for her was monotonously insistent. He seemed to think she was at the +great house across the lawns, and it took the united efforts of Japheth +and Norman to hold him when he tried to get to the window to shout +across for her.</p> + +<p>Norman stood it until late Monday afternoon. Then, when Caleb had +relieved him at Tom's bedside, he drove down to Gordonia and wrote the +note to Miss Dabney, sending it up the mountain by one of the Helgerson +boys with strict injunctions to give it to Miss Ardea herself.</p> + +<p>The Dabneys came down from the mountain Tuesday morning, and Ardea was +so far from disregarding her summons that she stopped the carriage at +the Woodlawn gates and went directly to comfort Mrs. Martha and to offer +her services in the sick-room. Tom was in one of his stubbornest +paroxysms when she entered, but at the touch of her hand he became +quiet, and a little later fell into a deep sleep, the first since the +Saturday night of coma and stertorous breathings.</p> + +<p>That same afternoon Crestcliffe Inn lost another guest, and the +smoking-room at Warwick Lodge was lighted far into the night. Two men +talked in low tones behind the carefully-shaded windows, one of them, +the younger, lounging in the depths of an easy-chair, and the other +pacing the floor in deepest abstraction.</p> + +<p>"I only know what Ardea tells me," said the lounger, answering the final +question put by the floor pacer. "He's out of his head—and out of the +way, temporarily, at least. Now is your time to strike."</p> + +<p>Mr. Duxbury Farley nodded his head slowly.</p> + +<p>"It was providential for us, Vincent, this assault <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>just at the critical +moment. I have struck. I had an interview with Caleb this evening and +made him an offer for the pipe plant. He is to give us his answer +to-morrow morning."</p> + +<p>Silence fell for a little time, and then the younger man in the wicker +chair smote his palms together.</p> + +<p>"Curse him!" he gritted vengefully, transferring his thought from Caleb +Gordon to Caleb Gordon's son. "I hope he'll die!"</p> + +<p>The elder man paused in his walk. "Why, Vincent, my son! What has come +over you? It is merely a matter of business, and we mustn't be +vindictive."</p> + +<p>"Business be damned!" snarled the younger man. "Can't you see? She has +promised to marry me—and she loves <i>him</i>. Are you going to bed? Well, +I'm not. I've got something else to do first."</p> + +<p>A few minutes later he let himself noiselessly out at the side door of +the Lodge, and turned down the avenue in the direction of Deer Trace. +But after crossing the bridge over the creek, he took a diagonal course +through the stubble-fields and bore to the right. And when he finally +reached and climbed the wall into the pike, it was at a point directly +opposite the forking of the rough wood road which led off to the Pine +Knob settlement.</p> + +<p>As he leaped over into the highway, a man carrying a squirrel gun +stepped from behind a tree.</p> + +<p>"I was allowin' you'd done forgot," said the man, yawning sleepily.</p> + +<p>"I never forget," was the short rejoinder. Then: "Come with me, and you +shall hear with your own ears, since you won't take my word for it. +Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it's your own affair."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2> + +<h3>WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT</h3> + + +<p>If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week +morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight +of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it, +possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the +tired brain to grapple with first.</p> + +<p>For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream +somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness, +stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to +life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this +was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible +presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone +together.</p> + +<p>"Ardea!" he said tremulously.</p> + +<p>She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the +fever fires in his.</p> + +<p>"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother."</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his +head. "What happened to me?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Saturday evening as +you were coming home. One of them struck you."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>"Saturday? And this is—"</p> + +<p>"This is Wednesday."</p> + +<p>The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not +need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for +him, but for his mother. He remembered the Saturday evening quite +clearly now: Japheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant +just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his +assailants and guessed the identity of the other.</p> + +<p>"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It +was the least you could do, since your—"</p> + +<p>She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the +effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him.</p> + +<p>"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same +colorless tone.</p> + +<p>"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that. +But no matter; we have passed the Saturday and have come to the +Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?"</p> + +<p>"He has been with you almost constantly from the first. He was here less +than an hour ago."</p> + +<p>"Where is he now?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated. "There is urgency of some kind in your business affairs. +Your father spent the night in South Tredegar; and a little while ago he +telephoned for Mr. Norman—from the iron-works, I think." She had moved +away again, and her hand was on the door-knob.</p> + +<p>He raised himself on one elbow.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>"You are in a desperate hurry, aren't you?" he gritted; though the +teeth-grinding was from the pain it cost him to move. "Would you mind +handing me that desk telephone before you go?"</p> + +<p>She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to +reach to the bed.</p> + +<p>"If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you," she +suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone.</p> + +<p>His smile was a mere grimace of torture.</p> + +<p>"If you could stretch your good-will to—to my mother—that far," he +said. "Please call my office—number five-twenty-six G—and ask for Mr. +Norman."</p> + +<p>She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the +other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary. "This is +Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn. Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to +say—what did you want to say?" she asked, turning to him.</p> + +<p>"Just ask what's going on; if it's Norman you've got, he'll know," said +Tom, sinking back on the pillows.</p> + +<p>What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea's +color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and +thoughtful as she listened. When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to +the sick man, her tone was kinder.</p> + +<p>"There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace +office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father," she said. "The +stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you +may have, and—"</p> + +<p>She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>was creeping like a +curious mask over the face of the man in the bed. Through all the strain +of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for +him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger. But +there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven.</p> + +<p>"Tom!" she gasped, rising quickly to go to him.</p> + +<p>"Wait," he muttered; "let me pull myself together. The +papers—are—in—"</p> + +<p>He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured +out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and +gave it to him. It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the +pillow and raised his head. It was the nearness of her that revived him.</p> + +<p>"I—I'm weaker than a girl," he whispered. "Vince—I mean the thug, hit +me a lot harder than he needed to. What was I saying?—oh, yes; the +papers. Will you—will you go over there in the corner by the door and +look behind the mopboard? You will find a piece of it sawed so it will +come out. In the wall behind it there ought to be a package."</p> + +<p>She found it readily,—a thick packet securely tied with heavy twine and +a little charred at the corners.</p> + +<p>"That's it," he said weakly. "Now one more last favor; please send Aunt +'Phrony up as you go down. Tell her I want my clothes."</p> + +<p>Miss Dabney became the trained nurse again in the turning of a leaf.</p> + +<p>"You are not going to get up?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I must; I'm due this minute at that meeting down yonder."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>"Indeed, you shall do no such insane thing!" she cried. "What are you +thinking of!"</p> + +<p>"Listen!" he commanded. "My father has worked hard all his life, and +he's right old now, Ardea. If I should fail him—but I'm not going to. +Please send Aunt 'Phrony."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to call your mother," she said firmly.</p> + +<p>"If you do, you'll regret it the longest day you live."</p> + +<p>"Then let me take the papers down to Mr. Norman for you."</p> + +<p>He considered the alternative for a moment—only a moment. What an +exquisite revenge it would be to make her the messenger! But he found he +did not hate her so bitterly as he had been trying to since that +soul-torturing evening on the cliff's edge.</p> + +<p>"No, I can't quite do that," he objected; and again he besought her to +send the old negro housekeeper.</p> + +<p>She consented finally, and as she was leaving him, she said:</p> + +<p>"I hope your mother is still asleep. She was here with you all night, +and Mr. Norman and I made her go to bed at daybreak. If you must go, get +out of the house as quietly as you can, and I'll have Pete and the buggy +waiting for you at the gate."</p> + +<p>"God bless you!" said Tom fervently; and then he set his teeth hard and +did that which came next.</p> + +<p>The Dabney buggy was waiting for him when, after what seemed like a +pilgrimage of endless miles, he had crept down to the gate. But it was +Miss Dabney, and not Mammy Juliet's Pete, who was holding the reins.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't find Pete, and Japheth has gone to town," she explained. +"Can you get in by yourself?"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>He was holding on by the cut wheel, and the death-look was creeping +over his face again.</p> + +<p>"I can't let you," he panted; and she thought he was thinking of the +disgrace for her.</p> + +<p>"I am my own mistress," she said coldly. "If I choose to drive you when +you are too sick to hold the reins, it is my own affair."</p> + +<p>He shook his head impatiently.</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking of that; but you must first know just what you're +doing. My father stands to lose all he has got to—to the Farley's. +That's what the meeting is for. Do you understand?"</p> + +<p>She bit her lip and a far-away look came into her eyes. Then she turned +on him with a little frown of determination gathering between her +straight eyebrows—a frown that reminded him of the Major in his +militant moods.</p> + +<p>"I must take your word for it," she said, and the words seemed to cut +the air like edged things. "Tell me the truth: is your cause entirely +just? Your motive is not revenge?"</p> + +<p>"As God is my witness," he said solemnly. "It is my father's cause, and +none of mine; more than that, it is your grandfather's cause—and +yours."</p> + +<p>She pushed the buggy hood back with a quick arm sweep and gave him her +free hand. "Step carefully," she cautioned; and a minute later they were +speeding swiftly down the pike in a white dust cloud of their own +making.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There was a sharp crisis to the fore in the old log-house office at the +furnace. Caleb Gordon, haggard and tremulous, sat at one end of the +trestle-board which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>served as a table, with Norman at his elbow; and +flanking him on either side were the two Farleys, Dyckman, Trewhitt, +acting general counsel for the company in the Farley interest, and +Hanchett, representing the Gordons.</p> + +<p>Having arranged the preliminaries to his entire satisfaction, Colonel +Duxbury had struck true and hard. The pipe foundry might be taken into +the parent company at a certain nominal figure payable in a new issue of +Chiawassee Limited stock, or three several things were due to happen +simultaneously: the furnace would be shut down indefinitely "for +repairs," thus cutting off the iron supply and making a ruinous +forfeiture of pipe contracts inevitable; suit would be brought to +recover damages for the alleged mismanagement of Chiawassee Consolidated +during the absence of the majority stock-holders; and the validity of +the pipe-pit patents would be contested in the courts. This was the +ultimatum.</p> + +<p>The one-sided battle had been fought to a finish. Hanchett, hewing away +in the dark, had made every double and turn that keen legal acumen and a +sharp wit could suggest to gain time. But Mr. Farley was inexorable. The +business must be concluded at the present sitting; otherwise the papers +in the two suits, which were already prepared, would be filed before +noon. Hanchett took his principal into the laboratory for a private +word.</p> + +<p>"It's for you to decide, Mr. Gordon," he said. "If you want to follow +them into the court, we'll do the best we can. But as a friend I can't +advise you to take that course."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>"If we could only make out to find out what Tom's holdin' over 'em!" +groaned Caleb helplessly.</p> + +<p>"Yes; but we can't," said the lawyer. "And whatever it may be, they are +evidently not afraid of it."</p> + +<p>"We'll never see a dollar's dividend out o' the stock, Cap'n Hanchett. I +might as well give 'em the foundry free and clear."</p> + +<p>"That's the chance you take, of course. But on the other hand, they can +force you to the wall in a month and make you lose everything you have. +I've been over the books with Norman: if you can't fill your pipe +contracts, the forfeitures will ruin you. And you can't fill them unless +you can have Chiawassee iron, and at the present price."</p> + +<p>The old iron-master led the way back to the room of doom and took his +place at the end of the trestle-board table.</p> + +<p>"Give me the papers," he said gloomily; and the Farleys' attorney passed +them across, with his fountain-pen.</p> + +<p>There was a purring of wheels in the air and the staccato clatter of a +horse's hoofs on the hard metaling of the pike. Vincent Farley rose +quietly in his place and tiptoed to the door. He was in the act of +snapping the catch of the spring-latch, when the door flew inward and he +fell back with a smothered exclamation. Thereupon they all looked up, +Caleb, the tremulous, with the pen still suspended over the signatures +upon which the ink was still wet.</p> + +<p>Tom was standing in the doorway, deathly sick and clinging to the jamb +for support. In putting on his hat he had slipped the bandages, and the +wound was bleeding afresh. Dyckman yelped like a stricken dog, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>overturning his chair as he leaped up and backed away into a corner. +Only Mr. Duxbury Farley and his attorney were wholly unmoved. The lawyer +had taken his fountain-pen from Caleb's shaking fingers and was +carefully recapping it; and Mr. Farley was pocketing the agreement, by +the terms of which the firm of Gordon and Gordon had ceased to exist.</p> + +<p>Tom lurched into the room and threw himself feebly on the promoter, and +Vincent made as if he would come between. But there was no need for +intervention. Duxbury Farley had only to step aside, and Tom fell +heavily, clutching the air as he went down.</p> + +<p>The dusty office which had once been his mother's sitting-room was +cleared of all save his father when Tom recovered consciousness and sat +up, with Caleb's arm to help.</p> + +<p>"There, now, Buddy; you ortn't to tried to get up and come down here," +said the father soothingly. But Tom's blood was on fire.</p> + +<p>"Tell me!" he raved: "have they got the foundry away from you?"</p> + +<p>Caleb nodded gravely. "But don't you mind none about that, son. What I'm +sweatin' about now is the fix you're in. My God! ain't Fred ever goin' +to get back with Doc Williams!"</p> + +<p>Tom struggled to his feet, tottering.</p> + +<p>"I don't need any doctor, pappy; you couldn't kill me with a bullet—not +till I've cut the heart out of these devils that have robbed you. Give +me the pistol from that drawer, and drive me down to the station before +their train comes. I'll do it, and by God, I'll do it now!"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>But when old Longfellow, jigging vertically between the buggy shafts, +picked his way out of the furnace yard, he was permitted to turn of his +own accord in the homeward direction; and an hour later the sick man was +back in bed, mingling horrible curses with his insistent calls for +Ardea. And this time Miss Dabney did not come.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2> + +<h3>THE WINE-PRESS OF WRATH</h3> + + +<p>There was more to that crazy outburst of Tom's about the cutting out of +hearts, and the like, than would appear on the surface of things, to you +who dwell in a land shadowed with wings, where law abides and a man sues +his neighbor for defamation of character, if he is called a liar, I +mean.</p> + +<p>In the land unshadowed, where Polaris makes a somewhat sharper angle +with the horizon, there is law, also, but much of it is unwritten. And +one of the unwritten statutes is that which maintains the inherent right +of a man to avenge his own quarrel with his own hand.</p> + +<p>So, when the younger Gordon was up and about again, and was able to keep +his seat soldierly on the back of the big bay, folk who knew the Gordon +blood and temper looked for trouble, not of the plaintiff-and-defendant +sort; and when it did not come, there were a few to lament the +degeneracy of the times, and to say that old Caleb, for example, would +never have so slept on his father's wrongs.</p> + +<p>But Tom was not degenerate, even in the sense of those who thought he +should have called out and shot the younger of the Farleys. It was in +him to kill or be killed, quite in the traditional way: that grim gift +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>is in the blood as the wine is in the grape—to stay unless you shall +water it to extinction with many base inbreedings. Nor was the spur +lacking. When the sweeping extent of the business <i>coup de grâce</i> was +measured, Woodlawn was left, and there were a few thousands in bank; +these and the three hundred and fifty shares of the reorganization stock +which the Farleys might render worthless at will.</p> + +<p>Tom's heart burned within him, and the race thirst—for vengeance that +could be touched and seen and handled—parched his lips and swelled the +veins in his forehead. Vincent Farley had it all: the business, the good +repute, the love of the one woman. At such crises the wild beast in a +man, if any there be, rattles the bars of its cage, and—well, you will +see that the gnashing of teeth and that fierce talk of heart-cutting at +the quickening moment were not inartistic.</p> + +<p>Soberer second thought, less frenzied, was no less vengeful and +vindictive. Tom had lived four formative years in a climate where the +passions are colder—and more comprehensive. Also, he was of his own +generation—which slays its enemy peacefully and without messing in +bloody-angle details.</p> + +<p>Riding up the pike one sun-shot afternoon in the golden September, Tom +saw Ardea entering the open door of the Morwenstow church-copy, drew +rein, flung himself out of the saddle and followed her. She saw him and +stopped in the vestibule, quaking a little as she felt she must always +quake until the impassable chasm of wedlock with another should be +safely opened between them.</p> + +<p>"Just a moment," he said abruptly. "There was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>time when I said I +would spare Vincent Farley and his kin for your sake. Do you remember +it?"</p> + +<p>She bowed her head without speaking. Her lips were dry.</p> + +<p>"That was a year ago," he went on roughly. "Things have changed since +then; I have changed. When my father is buried, I shall do my best to +fill the mourners' carriages with those who have killed him."</p> + +<p>"How is your father to-day?" she asked, not daring to trust speech +otherwise.</p> + +<p>"He is the same as he was yesterday and the day before; the same as he +will always be from this on—a broken man."</p> + +<p>"You will strike back?" She said it with infinite sadness in her voice +and an upcasting of eyes that were swimming. "I don't question your +right—but I pity you. The blow may be just—I don't know, but God +knows—yet it will fall hardest on you in the end, Tom."</p> + +<p>His smile was almost boyish in its frank anger. But there was a man's +sneer in his words.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me; I forgot for the moment that we are in a church. But I am +taking consequences, these days."</p> + +<p>She looked out from the cool, dark refuge of the vestibule when he +mounted and rode on, and her heart was full. It was madness, vindictive +madness and fell anger. But it was a generous wrath, large and manlike. +It was not to be a blow in the dark or in the back, as some men struck; +and he would not strike without first giving her warning. Ardea had been +cross-questioning Japheth about the assault at the Woodlawn gates—to +her own hurt. Japheth had evaded as he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>could, but she had guessed what +he was keeping back—the identity of the two footpads blackened to look +like negroes. It was a weary world, and life had lost much that had made +it worth living.</p> + +<p>After the incident of the church vestibule, Tom spent a week or more +roaming the forests of Lebanon in rough shooting clothes, with the +canvas hat pulled well over his eyes and a fowling-piece under his arm.</p> + +<p>People said harsher things then. With old Caleb failing visibly from day +to day, and his mother keeping her room for the greater part of the +time, it was a shame that a great strong young giant like Tom should go +loitering about on the mountain, deliberately shirking his duty. This +was the elder Miss Harrison's wording of the censure; and it was kinder +than Mrs. Henniker's, since it was the banker's wife who first asked, +with uplifted brows and the accent accusative, if the unspeakable +Bryerson woman were safely beyond tramping distance from Woodlawn.</p> + +<p>They were both mistaken. For all Tom thought of her, Nancy Bryerson was +as safe in her retreat at Pine Knob as were the squirrels he was +supposed to be hunting; and they came and frisked unharmed on the +branches of the tree under which he sat and munched his bit of bread and +meat when the sun was at the meridian.</p> + +<p>And he was not killing time. He was deep in an inventive trance, with +vengeance for the prize to be won, and for the means to the end, +iron-works and pipe plants and forgings—especially the forging of one +particular thunderbolt which should shatter the Farley fortunes beyond +repair. When this bolt was finally <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>hammered into shape he came out of +the wood and out of the inventive trance, had an hour's interview with +Major Dabney, and took a train for New York.</p> + +<p>I am not sure, but I think it was at Bristol, Tennessee, that the +telegram from Norman, begging him to come back to South Tredegar at +speed, overtook him. This is a detail, important only as a marker of +time. For three days a gentleman with shrewd eyes and a hard-bitted jaw, +registering at the Marlboro as "A. Dracott, New York," had been shut up +with Mr. Duxbury Farley in the most private of the company's offices in +the Coosa Building, and on the fourth day Norman had made shift to find +out this gentleman's business. Whereupon the wire to Tom, already on his +way to New York, and the prayer for returning haste.</p> + +<p>Tom caught a slow train back, and was met at a station ten miles out of +town by his energetic ex-lieutenant.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I didn't dare do anything more than give him a hint," was +the conclusion of Norman's exciting report. "I didn't know but he might +give us away to Colonel Duxbury. So, without telling him much of +anything, I got him to agree to meet you at his rooms in the Marlboro +to-night after dinner. Then I was scared crazy for fear my wire to you +would miss."</p> + +<p>"You are a white man, Fred, and a friend to tie to," said Tom; which was +more than he had ever said to Norman by way of praise in the days of +master and man. Then, as the train was slowing into the South Tredegar +station: "If this thing wins out, you'll come in for something bigger +than you had with Gordon and Gordon; you can bet on that."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>It was ordained that Gordon should anticipate his appointment by +meeting his man at the dinner-table in the Marlboro café; and it was +accident or design, as you like to believe, that Dyckman should be +sitting two tables away, choking over his food and listening only by the +road of the eye, since he was unhappily out of ear range. When the two +had lighted their cigars and passed out to the elevator, the bookkeeper +rose hastily and made for the nearest telephone. This, at least, was not +accidental.</p> + +<p>The conference in Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight, with Dyckman +painfully shadowing the corridor and sweating like a furnace laborer, +though the night was more than autumn cool. The door was thick, the +transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded nothing but a square of +blank wall opposite in the electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. +Hence the bookkeeper could only guess what we may know.</p> + +<p>"You have let in a flood of light on Mr. Farley's proposition, Mr. +Gordon," said the representative of American Aqueduct, when the ground +had been thoroughly gone over. "I don't mind telling you now that he +made his first overtures to us on his arrival from Europe, giving us to +understand that he owned or controlled the pipe-making patents +absolutely."</p> + +<p>"At that time he controlled nothing, as I have explained," said Tom, +"not even his majority stock in Chiawassee Consolidated. Of course, he +resumed control as soon as he reached home, and his next move was to +have me quietly sandbagged while he froze my father out. But father did +not transfer the patents, for the simple reason that he couldn't. They +are my personal <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>property, made over to me before the firm of Gordon and +Gordon came into existence."</p> + +<p>The pipe-trust promoter nodded.</p> + +<p>"You are the man we'll have to do business with, Mr. Gordon," he said +promptly. "Are you quite sure of your legal status in the case?"</p> + +<p>"I have good advice. Hanchett, Goodloe and Tryson, Richmond Building, +are my attorneys. They will put you in the way of finding out anything +you'd like to know."</p> + +<p>There was a pause while the New Yorker was making a memorandum of the +address. Then he went straight to the point.</p> + +<p>"As I have said, I'm here to do business. We don't need the plant. Will +you sell us your patents?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; on one condition."</p> + +<p>"And that is—?"</p> + +<p>"That you first put us out of business. You'll have to smash Chiawassee +Limited painstakingly and permanently before you can buy my holdings."</p> + +<p>The shrewd-eyed gentleman who had unified practically all of the pipe +foundries in the United States smiled a gentle negative.</p> + +<p>"That would be rather out of our line. If Mr Farley owned the patents, +and was disposed to fight us—as, indeed, he is not—we might try to +convince him. But we are not out for vengeance—another man's vengeance, +at that."</p> + +<p>"Very well, then; you won't get what you've come after. The patents go +with the plant. You can't have one without the other," said Tom, eyeing +his opponent through half-closed lids.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>"But we can buy the plant to-morrow, at a very reasonable figure. +Farley is anxious enough to come in out of the wet."</p> + +<p>"Excuse me, Mr. Dracott, but you can't buy the plant at any price."</p> + +<p>"Eh? Why can't we?"</p> + +<p>"Because the majority of the stock will vote to fight you to a +standstill."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear sir! Mr. Farley controls sixty-five per cent. of the +stock!"</p> + +<p>"That is where you were lied to one more time," said Tom with great +coolness. "The capital stock of Chiawassee Limited is divided into one +thousand shares, all distributed. My father holds three hundred and +fifty shares; Mr. Farley and his son together own four hundred and +fifty; and the remaining two hundred are held in trust for Miss Ardea +Dabney, to become her property in fee simple when she marries. Pending +her marriage, which is currently supposed to be near at hand, the voting +power of these two hundred shares resides in Miss Dabney's grandfather, +<i>and my father holds his proxy</i>."</p> + +<p>This was the thunderbolt Tom had been forging during those quiet days +spent on the mountain side; and there was another pause while one might +count ten. After which the man from New York spoke his mind freely.</p> + +<p>"Your row with these people must be pretty bitter, Mr. Gordon. Are you +willing to see your father and these Dabneys go by the board for the +sake of breaking the president and his son?"</p> + +<p>"I know what I am doing," was the quiet reply. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>"Neither my father nor +Miss Dabney will lose anything that is worth keeping."</p> + +<p>"Have you figured that out, too? The field is too small for you down +here, Mr. Gordon—much too small. You should come to New York."</p> + +<p>Tom rose and took his hat.</p> + +<p>"You will fight us?" he asked.</p> + +<p>The short-circuiter of corporations laughed.</p> + +<p>"We'll put you out of business, if you insist on it. Anything to oblige. +Better light a fresh cigar before you go."</p> + +<p>Tom helped himself from the box on the table.</p> + +<p>"You have it to do, Mr. Dracott. On the day you have hammered Chiawassee +Limited down to a dead proposition, you can have my pipe patents at the +figure named. If you will meet me at the office of Hanchett, Goodloe and +Tryson to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, we will put it in writing. Good +night."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2> + +<h3>THE SMOKE OF THE FURNACE</h3> + + +<p>Hoping always for the best, after the manner prescribed for optimistic +gentlemen who successfully exploit their fellows, Mr. Duxbury Farley did +not deem it necessary to confide fully in his son when the +representative of American Aqueduct broke off negotiations abruptly and +went back to New York.</p> + +<p>It is a sad state of affairs, reached by respectably villainous fathers +the world over, when the son demonstrates the mathematical law of +progression by becoming a villain without regard for the +respectabilities. Mr. Farley saw the growing outlaw in his son, was not +a little disturbed thereby, and was beginning to crouch when it menaced.</p> + +<p>Hence, when the comfortable arrangement with the pipe trust threatened +to miscarry, all he did was to urge Vincent to hasten the day when Miss +Dabney's stock could be utilized as a Farley asset. Pressed for +particular reasons, he turned it off lightly. A young man in the fever +of ante-nuptial expectancy was a mere pawn in the business game: let it +be over and done with, so that the nominal treasurer of Chiawassee +Limited could once more become the treasurer in fact.</p> + +<p>Whereupon Vincent, who rode badly at best, bought ><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>a new saddle-horse +and took his place at Miss Dabney's whip-hand in the early morning +rides, the place formerly filled by Tom Gordon,—which was not the part +of wisdom, one would say. Contrasts are pitiless things; and the wary +woman-hunter will break new paths rather than traverse those already +broken by his rival.</p> + +<p>Tom, meanwhile, had apparently relapsed into his former condition of +disinterest, and was once more spending his days on the mountain, +seemingly bent on effacing himself socially, as he had been effaced +business-wise by the Farley overturn.</p> + +<p>A week or more after the relapse, as he was crossing the road leading +over the mountain's shoulder, he came on the morning riders walking +their horses toward Paradise, and saw trouble in Miss Dabney's eyes, and +on Farley's impassive face a mask of sullen anger.</p> + +<p>When they were out of sight and hearing, Tom sat on a flat stone by the +roadside with his gun between his knees, thoughtfully speculative. Were +the high gods invoked in the midnight conference at the Marlboro +beginning to point the finger of fate at these two? He was malevolent +enough to hope so, and in the comfort of the hope, walked many miles +that day through the forests of crimson and gold showering with falling +leaves.</p> + +<p>Whatever their influence in the field of sentiment, undeniably in that +of fact the high gods were imposing Sisyphean labors on Mr. Duxbury +Farley.</p> + +<p>With the negotiations for the sale to the trust so abruptly terminated, +the promoter-president set instant and anxious inquiry afoot to +determine the cause. It was soon revealed; and when Mr. Farley found +that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>the pipe-pit patents had not been transferred with the Gordon +plant, and that Major Dabney had given Caleb Gordon a power of attorney +over Ardea's stock in the company, there were hard words said in the +town offices of Messrs. Trewhitt and Slocumb, Chiawassee attorneys, and +a torrent of persuasive ones poured into the Major's ear—the latter +pointing to the crying necessity for the revocation of the power of +attorney, summarily and at once.</p> + +<p>The Major proved singularly obstinate and non-committal. "Mistah Caleb +Gordon is my friend, suh, and I was mighty proud to do him this small +faveh. What his object is makes no manneh of diffe'ence to me, suh; no +manneh of diffe'ence, whateveh," was all an anxious promoter could get +out of the old autocrat of Deer Trace. But Mr. Farley did not desist; +neither did he fail to keep the telegraph wires to New York heated to +incandescence with his appeals for a renewal of the negotiations for +surrender.</p> + +<p>When the wired appeals brought forth nothing but evasive replies, Mr. +Farley began to look for trouble, and it came: first in a mysterious +closing of the market against Chiawassee pipe, and next in an alarming +advance of freight rates from Gordonia on the Great Southwestern.</p> + +<p>Colonel Duxbury doubled his field force and gave his travelers a free +hand on the price list. Persuasion and diplomacy having failed, a frenzy +like that of one who finds himself slipping into the sharp-staked +pitfall prepared for others seized on him. It was the madness of those +who have seen the clock hands stop and begin to turn steadily backward +on the dial of success.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>Ten days later the freight rates went up another notch, and there began +to be a painful dearth of cars in which to ship the few orders the +salesmen were still able to place. Mr. Farley shut his eyes to the +portents, put himself recklessly into Mr. Vancourt Henniker's hands as a +borrower, and posted a notice of a slashing cut in wages at the works.</p> + +<p>As a matter of course, the cut bred immediate and tumultuous trouble +with the miners, and in the midst of it the president made a flying trip +to New York; to the metropolis and to the offices of American Aqueduct +to make a final appeal in person.</p> + +<p>But the door was shut. Mr. Dracott was not to be seen, though his +assistant was very affable. No; American Aqueduct was not trying to +assimilate the smaller plants, or to crush out all competition, as the +public seemed to believe. With fifty million dollars invested it could +easily control a market for its own product, which was all the +share-holders demanded. Was Mr. Farley in the city for some little time? +and would he not dine with the assistant at the Waldorf-Astoria?</p> + +<p>Mr. Farley took a fast train, south-bound, instead, and on reaching +South Tredegar, wired his New York broker to test the market with a +small block of Chiawassee Limited. There were no takers at the upset +price; and the highest bid was less than half of the asking. Colonel +Duxbury was writing letters at the Cupola when the broker's telegram was +handed him, and he broke a rule which had held good for the better part +of a cautious, self-contained lifetime: he went to the buffet and took a +stiff drink of brandy—alone. The following morning the miners and all +the white <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>men employed in the furnace and foundries and coke yards at +Gordonia went on strike.</p> + +<p>"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad," has a wide +application in the commercial world. Duxbury Farley had resources! a +comfortable fortune as country fortunes go, amassed by far-seeing +shrewdness, a calm contempt for the well-being of his business +associates, and most of all by a crowning gift in the ability to +recognize the psychological moment at which to let go.</p> + +<p>But under pressure of the combined disasters he lost his head, quarreled +with his colder-blooded son, and in spite of Vincent's angry protests, +began the suicidal process of turning his available assets into +ammunition for the fighting of a battle which could have but one +possible outcome.</p> + +<p>Strike-breakers were imported at fabulous expense. Armed guards under +pay swarmed at the valley foot, and around the company's property +elsewhere. By hook or crook the foundries were kept going, turning out +water-pipe for which there was no market, and which, owing to the +disturbances which were promptly made an excuse by the railway company, +could not be moved out of the Chiawassee yard.</p> + +<p>Later, when the striking workmen began to grow hungry, riot, arson and +bloodshed were nightly occurrences. A charging of coal, mined under the +greatest difficulties, was conveyed to the coke yards, only to be +destroyed—and half of the ovens with it—by dynamite cunningly +blackened and dropped into the chargings. For want of fuel, the furnace +went out of blast, but with the small store of coke remaining in the +foundry <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>yards, the pipe pits were kept at work. By this time the +promoter-president was little better than a madman, fighting like a +berserker, and breeding a certain awed respect in the comment of those +who had hitherto held him only as a shrewd schemer.</p> + +<p>And Thomas Jefferson: how did this return to primordial chaos, brought +about in no uncertain sense by his own premeditated act, affect him? +Only a man quite lost to all promptings of the grace that saves and +softens could look unmoved on the burnings and riotings, the cruel +wastings and the bloodlettings, one would say.</p> + +<p>When he was not galloping Saladin afar in the country roads to the +landward side of Paradise, Tom Gordon was idling purposefully in the +Lebanon forests, with the fowling-piece under his arm and Japheth +Pettigrass's dog trotting soberly at heel, as care-free, to all +appearances, as a school-boy home for a holiday.</p> + +<p>The dog, a mongrel, liver-spotted cur with hound's ears, chose to be of +this companionship, and he was always waiting at the orchard gate when +Tom fared forth. For the unsympathetic analyst of dog motives there will +be sufficient reason in expectation, since Tom never failed to share his +noon-time snack of bread and meat with Cæsar. Yet Deer Trace set a good +table, and there were bones with meat on them to be had without +following a gunsman who never shot anything, miles on end on the +mountain side.</p> + +<p>Then there were children,—a brood of dusty-haired, barelegged shynesses +at a mountaineer's cabin in a cove far beyond the rock of the shadowing +cedars, where Tom sometimes stopped to beg a drink of water from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>the +cold spring under the dooryard oaks. They were not afraid of the +strong-limbed, duck-clad stranger, whose manner was the manner of the +town folk, but whose speech was the gentle drawl of the mountain +motherland. Once he had eaten with them in the single room of the +tumble-down cabin; and again he had made a grape-vine swing for the +boys, and had ridden the littlest girl on his shoulder up to the +steep-pitched corn patch where her father was plowing. We may bear this +in mind, since it has been said that there is hope still for the man of +whom children and dogs have no fear.</p> + +<p>In these forest-roaming weeks, business, or the carking thought of it, +seemed furthest from him; it is within belief that he heard the news of +the rapidly succeeding tragedies at Gordonia only through the +dinner-table monologues of his father, since his wanderings never by any +chance took him within eye-or ear-shot of them.</p> + +<p>Caleb's ailment based itself chiefly on broken habit and the lack of +something to do, and in a manner the trouble at Gordonia was a tonic. +What a man beloved of his kind, and loving it, could do toward damping +the fierce fires of passion and hatred and lawlessness alight at the +lower end of Paradise, he was doing daily, going where the armed guards +and the sheriff's deputies dared not go, and striving manfully to do his +duty as he saw it.</p> + +<p>Tom was always a silent listener at the dinner-table recountings of the +day's happenings; attentive, but only filially interested: willing to +encourage his father to talk, but never commenting.</p> + +<p>Why he was so indifferent, so little stirred by the tale of the +tragedies, was the most perplexing of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>puzzles he presented, and was +always presenting, to Caleb, the simple-hearted. Thomas Jefferson, the +small boy who had threatened to die if he should not be permitted to be +in and of the struggle with the railway invaders, was completely and +hopelessly lost in this quiet-eyed, reticent young athlete who ate +heartily and slept soundly and went afield with his gun and the borrowed +dog while Rome was burning. So said Caleb in his musings; which proves +nothing more than that a father's sense of perspective may not be quite +perfect.</p> + +<p>But Tom's indifference was only apparent. In reality he was eagerly +absorbing his father's daily report of the progress of the game of +extinction—and triumphing hard-heartedly.</p> + +<p>It was on an evening a fortnight after the furnace had gone out of blast +for lack of fuel that Caleb filled his after-dinner pipe and followed +his son out on the veranda. The Indian summer was still at its best, and +since the first early frosts there had been a return of dry weather and +mild temperatures, with warm, soft nights when the blue haze seemed to +hold all objects in suspension.</p> + +<p>Tom had pushed out a chair for his father and was lighting his own pipe +when he suddenly became aware that the still air was once more thrumming +and murmuring to the familiar sob and sigh of the great furnace +blowing-engines. He started up quickly.</p> + +<p>"What's that?" he demanded. "Surely they haven't blown in again?"</p> + +<p>Caleb nodded assent.</p> + +<p>"I reckon so. Colonel Duxbury allowed to me this mornin' that he was +about out o' the woods—in spite of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>you, he said; as if you'd been the +one that was doin' him up."</p> + +<p>"But he can't be!" exclaimed Tom, so earnestly and definitely that the +mask fell away and the father was no longer deceived.</p> + +<p>"I'm only tellin' you what he allowed to me, son. I reckoned he was +about all in, quite a spell ago; but you can't tell nothing by what you +see—when it's Colonel Duxbury. He got two car-loads o' new men to-day, +the Lord on'y knows where from; and he's shippin' Pocahontas coke, and +gettin' it here, too."</p> + +<p>Tom sat glooming over it for a time, shrouding himself in tobacco smoke. +Then he said:</p> + +<p>"You feazed me a little at first; but I think I know now what has +happened."</p> + +<p>Caleb took time to let the remark sink in. It carried inferences.</p> + +<p>"Buddy, I been suspectin' for a good while back that you know more about +this sudden smash-up than you've let on. Do you?"</p> + +<p>"I know all about it," was the quiet rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"You do? What on top o' God's green earth—"</p> + +<p>Tom held up his hand for silence. A man had let himself in at the +roadway gate and was walking rapidly up the path to the house. It was +Norman; and after a few hurried words in private with Tom, he went as he +had come, declining Caleb's invitation to stay and smoke a pipe on the +veranda.</p> + +<p>When the gate latch clicked at Norman's outgoing, Tom had risen and was +knocking the ash from his pipe and buttoning his coat.</p> + +<p>"I was admitting that I knew," he said. "I can tell <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>you more now than I +could a moment ago, because the time for which I have been waiting has +come. You remarked that you thought the Farleys were at the end of their +rope. They were not until to-day, but to-day they are. Every piece of +property they have, including Warwick Lodge, is mortgaged to the hilt, +and this afternoon Colonel Duxbury put his Chiawassee stock into +Henniker's hands as security for a final loan—so Norman tells me. +Perhaps it would interest you a trifle to know something about the +figure at which Henniker accepted it."</p> + +<p>"It would, for a fact, Buddy."</p> + +<p>"Well, he took it for less than the annual dividend that it earned the +year we ran the plant; and between us two, he's scared to death, at +that."</p> + +<p>"Heavens and earth! Why, Buddy, son! we're plum' ruined—and so's old +Major Dabney!"</p> + +<p>Tom had finished buttoning his coat and was settling his soft hat on his +head.</p> + +<p>"Don't you worry, pappy," he said, with a touch of the old boyish +assurance. "Our part, since Colonel Duxbury saw fit to freeze us out, is +to say nothing and saw wood. If the Major comes to you, you can tell him +that my word to him holds good: he can have par for Ardea's stock any +time he wants it, and he could have it just the same if Chiawassee were +wiped off of the map—as it's going to be."</p> + +<p>"But Tom; tell me—"</p> + +<p>"Not yet, pappy; be patient just a little while longer and you shall +know all there is to tell. I'm leaving you with a clear conscience to +say to any one who asks that you don't know."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>Caleb had struggled up out of his chair, and now he laid a hand on his +son's shoulder.</p> + +<p>"I ain't askin', Buddy," he said, with a tremulous quaver in his voice; +"I ain't askin' a livin' thing. I'm just a-hopin'—hopin' I'll wake up +bime-by and find it's on'y a bad dream." Then, with sudden and agonizing +emphasis: "My God, son! they been butcherin' one 'nother down yonder for +four long weeks!"</p> + +<p>"I can't help that!" was the savage response. "It's a battle to the +death, and the smoke of it has got into my blood. If I believed in God, +as I used to once, I'd be down on my knees to Him this minute, asking +Him to let me live long enough to see these two hypocritical +thieves,—thugs,—sandbaggers,—hit the bottom!"</p> + +<p>He turned away, walked to the north end of the veranda, where the flare +of the rekindled furnace was redly visible over the knolls, and +presently came back.</p> + +<p>"I said you should know after a little: you may as well know now. I +planned this thing; I set out to break them; and, as it happened, I +wasn't a moment too soon. In another week you and Major Dabney would +have had a chance to sell out for little or nothing, or lose it all. +Farley had it fixed to be swallowed by the trust, and this is how it was +to be done. Farley stipulated that the stock transaction should figure +as a forced sale at next to nothing, in which all the stock-holders +should participate, and that the remainder of the purchase price, which +would have been a fair figure for all the stock, should be paid to him +and his son individually as a bonus!"</p> + +<p>The old iron-master groaned. In spite of the hard teaching of all the +years, he would have clung to some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>poor shadow of belief in Duxbury +Farley if he could have done so.</p> + +<p>"That's all," Tom went on stridently: "all but the turning of the trick +that put them in the hole they were digging for you and the Major. Vint +Farley had no notion of letting Ardea bring her money into the family of +her own free will: he planned to rob her first and marry her afterward. +Now, by God, I'm going down to tell them both what they're up against! +Don't sit up for me."</p> + +<p>He had taken a dozen strides down the graveled path when he saw some one +coming hurriedly across the lawns from Deer Trace, and heard a +voice—the voice of the woman he loved—calling to him softly in the +stillness:</p> + +<p>"Tom! O Tom!" it said, "please wait—just one minute!"</p> + +<p>But there are lusts mightier, momentarily, than love, and the lust of +vengeance is one. He made as if he did not see or hear; and lest she +should overtake him, left the path to lose himself among the trees and +to vault the low boundary wall into the pike at a point safely out of +sight from the gate.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV</h2> + +<h3>A SOUL IN SHACKLES</h3> + + +<p>The blue autumn night haze had almost the consistency of a cloud when +Gordon leaped the wall and set his face toward the iron-works. Or rather +it was like the depths of a translucent sea in which the distant +electric lights of Mountain View Avenue shone as blurs of phosphorescent +life on one hand, and the great dark bulk of Lebanon loomed as the +massive foundations of a shadowy island on the other.</p> + +<p>Farther on, the recurring flare from the tall vent of the blast-furnace +lighted the haze depths weirdly, turning the mysterious sea bottom into +fathomless abysses of dull-red incandescence for the few seconds of its +duration—a slow lightning flash submerged and half extinguished.</p> + +<p>Gordon was passing the country colony's church when one of the +torch-like flares reddened on the night, and the glow picked out the +gilt cross at the top of the sham Norman tower. He flung up a hand +involuntarily, as if to put the emblem, and that for which it stood, out +of his life. At the same instant a whiff of the acrid smoke from the +distant furnace fires tingled in his nostrils, and he quickened his +pace. The hour for which all other hours had been waiting had struck. +Love had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>called, and religion had made its silent protest; but the +smell in his nostrils was the smoky breath of Mammon, the breath which +has maddened a world: he strode on doggedly, thinking only of his +triumph and how he should presently compass it.</p> + +<p>The two great poplar-trees, sentineling what had once been the gate of +the old Gordon homestead, had been spared through all the industrial +changes. When he would have opened the wicket to pass on to the +log-house offices, an armed man stepped from behind one of the trees +with an oath in his mouth and his gun-butt drawn up to strike. Before +the blow could fall, the furnace flare blazed aloft like a mighty torch, +and the man grounded his weapon.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gordon; I—I took ye for somebody else," he +stammered; and Tom scanned his face sharply by the light of the burning +gases.</p> + +<p>"Whom?—for instance," he queried.</p> + +<p>"Why-e-yeh—I reckon it don't make any diff'rence—my tellin' you; you'd +ought to have it in for him, too. I was layin' for that houn'-dog 'at +walks on his hind legs and calls hisself Vint Farley."</p> + +<p>"Who are you?" Tom demanded.</p> + +<p>"Kincaid's my name, and I'm s'posed to be one o' the strike guards; +leastwise, that's what I hired out for a little spell ago. I couldn't +think of nare' a better way o' gettin' at the damned—"</p> + +<p>Gordon interrupted bruskly. "Cut out the curses and tell me what you owe +Vint Farley. If your debt is bigger than mine, you shall have the first +chance."</p> + +<p>The gas-flash came again. There was black wrath in the man's eyes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>"You can tote it up for yourself, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Late yeste'day +evening when me and Nan Bryerson drove to town for your Uncle Silas to +marry us, she told me what I'd been mistrustin' for a month back—that +Vint Farley was the daddy o' her chillern. He's done might' nigh +ever'thing short o' killin' her to make her swear 'em on to you; and I +allowed I'd jest put off goin' back West till I'd fixed his lyin' face +so 'at no yuther woman'd ever look at it."</p> + +<p>Gordon staggered and leaned against the fence palings, the red rage of +murder boiling in his veins. Here, at last, was the key to all the +mysteries; the source of all the cruel gossip; the foundation of the +wall of separation that had been built up between his love and Ardea. +When he could trust himself to speak he asked a question.</p> + +<p>"Who knows this, besides yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Your Uncle Silas, for one: he allowed he wouldn't marry us less'n she +told him. I might' nigh b'lieve he had his suspicions, too. He let on +like it was Farley that told him on you, years ago, when you was a boy."</p> + +<p>"He did? Then Farley was one of the three men who saw us up yonder at +the barrel-spring?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; and I was another one of 'em. I was right hot at you that mornin'; +I shore was."</p> + +<p>"Well, who else knows about it?"</p> + +<p>"Brother Bill Layne, and Aunt M'randy, and Japhe Pettigrass. They-all +went in town to stan' up with me and Nan."</p> + +<p>Then Tom remembered the figure coming swiftly across the lawns and the +call of the voice he loved. Had Japheth told her, and was she hastening +to make such <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>reparation as she could? No matter, it was too late now. +The fierce hatred of the wounded savage was astir in his heart and it +would not be denied or silenced.</p> + +<p>"Give me that gun, and you shall have your first chance," he conceded. +"I make but one condition: if you kill him, I'll kill you."</p> + +<p>Kincaid laughed and gave up his weapon.</p> + +<p>"I was only allowin' to sp'ile his face some, and a rock'll do for that. +You can have what's left o' him atter I get thoo—and it'll be enough to +kill, I reckon."</p> + +<p>At the moment of weapon-passing there came sounds audible above the sob +and sigh of the blowing-engines—a clatter of horses' hoofs and the +grinding of carriage wheels on the pike. Gordon signed quickly to +Kincaid and drew back carefully behind the bole of the opposite poplar.</p> + +<p>It was the Warwick Lodge surrey, and it stopped at the gate. Two men got +out and went up the path, and an instant later, Kincaid followed +stealthily.</p> + +<p>Gordon waited for the next gas-flare, and by the light of it he threw +the breech-block of the repeating rifle to make sure the cartridge was +in place. Then he, too, passed through the wicket and went to stand in +the shadow of the slab-floored porch, redolent of memories. He had +forgotten the lesser vengeance in the thirst for the greater,—that he +had come to fling their misfortunes into the faces of the father and the +son, and to tell them that the work was his. He heard only the voice of +the savage in his heart, and that was whispering "Kill! kill!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was close on midnight when the door giving on <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>the porch opened and +two men stood on the threshold. The younger of the two was speaking.</p> + +<p>"It's quieter than usual to-night. That was a good move—getting Ludlow +and the two Helgersons jailed. I was in hopes we could snaffle old Caleb +with the others. He pretends to be peacemaking, but as long as he is +loose, these fools will hang to the idea that they're fighting his +battle against us."</p> + +<p>"It is already fought," said the older man dejectedly. "My luck has +gone. When Henniker puts us to the wall, we shall be beggars."</p> + +<p>The young man's rejoinder was an exclamation of contempt.</p> + +<p>"You've lost your nerve. What you need most is to go to bed and sleep. +Wait for me till I've made a round of the guards, and we'll go home. +Better ring up the surrey right now."</p> + +<p>He left the porch on the side nearest the furnace, and Gordon saw an +active figure glide from the shelter of a flask-shed and go in pursuit. +He followed at a distance. It was needful only that he should know where +to find Farley when Kincaid should have squared his account.</p> + +<p>The leisurely chase led the round of the great gates first, and thence +through the deserted and ruined coke yard to the foot of the huge slag +dump, cold now from the long shut-down.</p> + +<p>Tom looked to see Farley turn back from the toe of the dump. There were +no gates on that side of the yard, and consequently no guards.</p> + +<p>But the short cut to the office was up the slope of the dump and along +the railway track over which the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>drawings of molten slag were run out +to be spilled down the face of the declivity. There had been no +slag-drawing since the new "blow-in" earlier in the day; but while he +was watching to keep Farley in sight in the intervals between the +gas-flares, Gordon was conscious of the note of preparation behind him: +the slackening of the blast, the rattle and clank of the dinkey +locomotive pushing the dumping ladle into place under the furnace lip.</p> + +<p>Farley had taken two or three scrambling steps up the rough-seamed +declivity when the workmen tapped the furnace. There was a sputtering +roar and the air was filled with coruscating sparks.</p> + +<p>Then the stream of molten matter began to pour into the great ladle, a +huge eight-foot pot swung on tilting trunnions and mounted on a skeleton +flat-car; and for Gordon, standing at the corner of the ore shed with +his back to the slag drawers, the red glow picked out the man scrambling +up the miniature mountain of cooled scoria,—this man and another man +running swiftly to overtake him.</p> + +<p>He looked on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face +his adversary. Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in +Farley's right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the +roar from the furnace lip. Then the two men closed and rolled together +to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned his back.</p> + +<p>When he looked again the trampling note of the big blast-engines had +quickened to its normal beat, the blow-hole was plugged with its stopper +of damp clay, and a red twilight born of the reflection from the +sur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>face of the great pot of seething slag had succeeded to the blinding +glare. Where there had been two men locked in struggle there was now +only one, and he was lying quietly with one leg doubled under him. +Gordon set his teeth on an angry oath of disappointment. Had Kincaid +broken his compact?</p> + +<p>The first long-drawn exhaust of the dinkey engine moving the slag kettle +out to its spilling place ripped the silence. Gordon heard—and he did +not hear: he was watching the prone figure at the dump's toe. When it +should rise, he meant to fire from where he stood under the eaves of the +ore-shed. The murder-thought contemplated nothing picturesque or +dramatic. It was merely the dry thirst for the blood of a mortal enemy, +as it is wont to be off the stage or out of the pages of the romancers.</p> + +<p>The puffing locomotive had pushed the slag-pot car half-way to the +track-end before Farley sat up as one dazed and seemed to be trying to +get on his feet. Twice and once again he essayed it, falling back each +time upon the bent and doubled leg. Then he looked up and saw the +slag-car coming; saw and cried out as men scream in the death agony. The +end rails of the dumping track were fairly above him.</p> + +<p>Gordon heard the yell of terror and witnessed the frenzied efforts of +the doomed man to rise and get out of the path of the impending torrent. +Whereupon the murder devil whispered in his ear again. Farley's foot was +caught in one of the many scars or seams in the lava bed. It was only +necessary to wait, to withhold the merciful bullet, to go away and leave +the wretched man to his fate.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>That fate was certain, lacking a miracle to avert it. There were no +workmen in that part of the yard; and the two men in charge of the slag +kettle were on the opposite side of the engine where the dumping +mechanism was connected. Farley was screaming again, but now the +safety-valve of the locomotive was blowing off steam with a din to drown +all.</p> + +<p>Gordon tossed the gun aside and turned away. It was better so. Possibly +at the climaxing instant he might have lacked the firmness to aim and +press the trigger. This was simpler, easier, more in keeping with +Vincent Farley's deserts; more satisfying to the thirst for vengeance.</p> + +<p>Was it? Like a bolt from the heavens, into the very midst of the +cold-blooded, murderous triumph, came a long-neglected form of words, +writing itself in flaming letters in his brain: <i>Thou shall do no +murder.</i> And after it another: <i>But I say unto you, love your enemies, +bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.</i></p> + +<p>He put his hands before his eyes, stumbled blindly and fell down, +groveling in the yellow sand of the ore floor, as that one of old whom +the possessing devils tore and rended. Hell and the furies!—was this to +be the end of it? Did the old, time-worn fables planted in the lush and +mellow soil of childhood wait only for the moment of superhuman trial to +assert themselves truth of the very truth? God in Heaven! must he be +flogged back into the ranks he had deserted when every drop of blood in +his veins was crying out for shame?</p> + +<p>Something gripped him and stood him on his feet, and before he realized +what he was doing he was run<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>ning, gasping, tripping and falling +headlong, only to spring up and run again, with all thoughts trampled +out and beaten down by one: would he still be in time?</p> + +<p>There was something wrong with the dumping machinery of the slag-car, +and two men were working with it on the side away from the spilling +slope. Gordon had not breath wherewith to shout; moreover the +safety-valve was still screeching to gulf all human cries. Farley was +lying face down and motionless, with the twisted foot still held fast in +a wedge-shaped crack in the cooled slag. Tom bent and lifted him; +yelled, swore, tugged, strained, kicked fiercely at the imprisoned +shoe-heel. Still the vise-grip held, and the great kettle on the height +above was creaking and slowly careening under the winching of the engine +crew. If the molten torrent should plunge down the slope now, there +would be two human cinders instead of one.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the frenzy, so alien to the Gordon blood, spent itself, leaving +him cool and determined. Quite methodically he found his pocket-knife, +and he remembered afterward that he had been collected enough to choose +and open the sharper of the two blades. There was a quick, sure slash at +the shoe-lacing and the crippled foot was freed. With another yell, this +time of glad triumph, he snatched up his burden and backed away with it +in the tilting half-second when the deluge of slag, firing the very air +with shriveling heat, was pouring down the slope.</p> + +<p>Then he fell in a heap, with Farley under him, and fainted as a woman +might—when the thing was done.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI</h2> + +<h3>FREE AMONG THE DEAD</h3> + + +<p>The skirmish-line rivulets of melted slag had crept to within a few feet +of the two at the toe of the dump when the men of the engine crew ran +with water to drench them.</p> + +<p>Tom recovered consciousness under the dashing of the water, and was one +of the bearers who carried Vincent Farley on a hastily improvised +stretcher to the surrey waiting at the office gate.</p> + +<p>Afterward, he went for Doctor Williams, deriding himself Homerically for +playing the second act in the drama of the Good Samaritan, but playing +it, none the less. And not to quit before he was quite through, he drove +with the physician to Warwick Lodge, and sat in the buggy till the other +Good Samaritan had performed his office.</p> + +<p>"Nothing very serious, is it, Doctor?" he asked, when the old physician +took the reins to drive his horse-holder home.</p> + +<p>"H'm; he'll be rather badly scarred, and there is a chance that he will +lose the sight of one eye," was the reply. Then: "It's none of my +quarrel, Tom, but you hammered him pretty cruelly—with a stone, too, I +should say."</p> + +<p>"Did I?" grinned Tom. He was willing to bear the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>blame until Kincaid +should have ample time to disappear.</p> + +<p>"Yes; and with all due allowance for your provocation, it was a good bit +beneath you, my boy."</p> + +<p>The younger man laughed grimly. "Wait till you know the full size of the +provocation, Doctor. I'm not half as bad as I might be. Another man +would have left him to burn—here and hereafter."</p> + +<p>The doctor said no more. It was not his province to make or meddle in +the quarrel between the Gordons and the Farleys. And Tom also was +silent, having many things to render him reflective.</p> + +<p>When he was put down at Woodlawn it was after one o'clock. Yet he sat +for an hour or more on the veranda, smoking many pipes and trying as he +could to prefigure the future in the light of the night's happenings.</p> + +<p>What an insufferable animal Farley was, to be sure!—with the love of a +woman like Ardea Dabney failing to keep him on the hither side of common +decency! Would Ardea break with him, now that she knew the truth? Tom +shook his head. Not she; she would stand by him all the more stoutly, if +not for love, then for pride's sake. That was the fine thing in her +loyalty.</p> + +<p>That thought led to another. When they were married, there would have to +be a beginning in a new field. Chiawassee was gone, and the Farley +fortune with it; and the new field would be a bald necessity. Tom +decided that not even Ardea's pride and fortitude could face the looks +askance of the Mountain View Avenue folk.</p> + +<p>He measured the country colonists justly. They might have forgiven the +moral lapse, though that was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>not the side they had turned toward him. +Yet he fancied that when the business failure should be super-added, the +Farley sins would become too multitudinous for the broadest mantle of +charity to cover.</p> + +<p>"Which brings on more talk," he mused, pulling thoughtfully at the pipe. +"They can't start in the new diggings without money. Anyway, Vincent's +no moneymaker; and if the look on a man's face counts for anything, old +Colonel Duxbury has made his last flight from the promoting perch. O +Lord!"—rising with a cavernous yawn and a mighty stretching of his arms +overhead,—"I reckon it's up to me to go on doing all the things I don't +want to do; that I didn't in the least mean to do. Somebody ought to +write a book and call it <i>Saints Inveterate</i>. It would have simplified +things a whole lot if I could have left him to be cremated after all."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Mr. Vancourt Henniker was not greatly surprised when Tom Gordon asked +for a private interview on the morning following the final closing down +of all the industries at Gordonia.</p> + +<p>Without being in Gordon's confidence, or in that of American Aqueduct, +the banker had been shrewdly putting two and two together and applying +the result as a healing plaster to the stock he had taken as security +for the final loan to Colonel Duxbury.</p> + +<p>"I thought, perhaps, you might wish to buy this stock, Mr. Gordon," he +said, when Tom had stated his business. "Of course, it can be arranged, +with Mr. Farley's consent to our anticipating the maturity of his notes. +But"—with a genial smile and a glance over his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>eye-glasses—"I'm not +sure that we care to part with it. Perhaps some of us would like to hold +it and bid it in."</p> + +<p>Tom's smile matched the genial expansiveness of the president's.</p> + +<p>"I reckon you don't want it, Mr. Henniker. You'll understand that it +isn't worth the paper it is printed on when I tell you that I have sold +my pipe-pit patents to American Aqueduct."</p> + +<p>"Heavens and earth! Then the plant doesn't carry the patents? You've +kept this mighty quiet, among you!"</p> + +<p>"Haven't we!" said Tom fatuously. "I know just how you feel—like a man +who has been looking over the edge of the bottomless pit without knowing +it. You'll let me have the stock for the face of the loan, won't you?"</p> + +<p>But the president was already pressing the button of the electric bell +that summoned the cashier. There was no time like the present when the +fate of a considerable bank asset hung on the notion of a smiling young +man whose mind might change in the winking of an eye.</p> + +<p>With the Farley stock in his pocket Tom took a room at the Marlboro and +spent the remainder of that day, and all the days of the fortnight +following, wrestling mightily with the lawyers in winding up the tangled +skein of Chiawassee affairs. Propped in his bed at Warwick Lodge, the +bed he had not left since the night of violence, Duxbury Farley signed +everything that was offered to him, and the obstacles to a settlement +were vanquished, one by one.</p> + +<p>When it was all over, Tom began to draw checks on the small fortune +realized from the sale of the patents. One was to Major Dabney, +redeeming his two <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>hundred shares of Chiawassee Limited at par. Another +was to the order of Ardea Dabney, covering the Farley shares at a +valuation based on the prosperous period before the crash of '93. With +this check in his pocket he went home—for the first time in two weeks.</p> + +<p>It was well beyond the Woodlawn dinner-hour before he could muster up +the courage to cross the lawns to Deer Trace. No word had passed between +him and Ardea since the September afternoon when he had overtaken her at +the church door,—counting as nothing the effort she had made to speak +to him on the night of vengeance.</p> + +<p>How would she receive him? Not too coldly, he hoped. It was known that +Vincent's assailant in the furnace yard was a stranger; a man who had +taken service as a guard: also that Mr. Gordon—they gave him his +courtesy title now—had saved Vincent from a terrible death. Tom thought +the rescue should count for something with Ardea.</p> + +<p>It did. She was sitting at the piano in the otherwise deserted +music-room when he entered; and she broke a chord in the middle to give +him both of her hands, and to say, with eyes shining, as if the rescue +were a thing of yesterday:</p> + +<p>"O Tom! I <i>knew</i> you had it in you! It was fine!"</p> + +<p>"Hold on," he said, a bit unsteadily. "There must be no more +misunderstandings. What happened that night three weeks ago, had to +happen; and five minutes before it happened I was wondering if I could +aim straight enough in the light from the slag-pot to hit him. And I +fully meant to do it."</p> + +<p>She shuddered.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>"I—I was afraid," she faltered. "I knew, you know—Japheth had told +me, in—in justice to you. That was why I ran across the lawn and called +to you."</p> + +<p>The sweet beauty of her laid hold on him and he felt his grip going. +Another word and he would be trespassing again. To keep from saying it +he crossed to the recessed window and sat down in the sleepy-hollow +chair which was the Major's peculiar possession in the music-room.</p> + +<p>After a little he said: "Play something, won't you?—something that will +make me a little less sorry that I didn't kill him."</p> + +<p>"The idea!" she said. But when he settled himself in the big easy-chair +as a listener, lying back with his eyes closed and his hands locked over +one knee, she turned to the piano and humored him. When the final chord +of the <i>Wanderlied</i> had sung itself asleep, he sat up and nodded +approvingly.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if you appreciate your gift as you should?—to be able to make +a man over in the moral part of him with the tips of your fingers? The +devil is exorcised, for the moment, and I can tell you all about it now, +if you care to know."</p> + +<p>"Of course I care," she assented.</p> + +<p>"Well, to begin with, I'm no better than I have been; a little less +despicable than you've been thinking me, perhaps, but more wicked. I've +hated these two men ever since I was old enough to know how; and to get +square with them, I haven't scrupled to sink to their level. The smash +at Gordonia is my smash, I'm responsible for everything that has +happened."</p> + +<p>"I know it," she said. "Mr. Norman has told me."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>"Looking it all over, I don't see that there is much to choose between +me and the men I've been hunting down. They went after the things they +needed, without much compunction for other people; and so did I. On the +night of the—on the night when you called to me and I wouldn't answer, +I was going down to rub it in; to tell them they were in the hole and +that I had put them there. I met a man at the gate who told me what +Japheth told you. It made a devil of me, Ardea. I took the man's gun and +followed Vincent around the yard. I meant to kill him."</p> + +<p>She nodded complete intelligence.</p> + +<p>"The provocation was very great," she said evenly. "Why didn't you do +it, Tom?"</p> + +<p>"Now you've cornered me: I don't know why I didn't. I had only to walk +away and let him alone when the time came. The slag-spilling would have +settled him. But I couldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"Of course you couldn't," she agreed convincingly. "God wouldn't let +you."</p> + +<p>"He lets other men commit murder; one a day, or such a matter."</p> + +<p>"Not one of those who have named His name, Tom—as you have."</p> + +<p>He shook his head slowly. "I wish that appealed to me, as it ought. But +it doesn't. Where is the proof?"</p> + +<p>She rose from the piano seat and went to stand before him.</p> + +<p>"Can you ask that, soberly and in earnest, after the wonderful +experience you have had?"</p> + +<p>"I have asked it," he insisted stubbornly. "You mustn't take anything +for granted. Just at that mo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>ment I couldn't kill a man; but that is all +the difference. I've done what I meant to do, or most of it."</p> + +<p>She was holding him steadily with her eyes. "Are you glad, or sorry, +Tom?"</p> + +<p>He frowned up at her.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Now that it's all over, the taste of it is like sawdust +in the mouth; I'll admit that much. I'm free; 'free among the dead, like +the slain that lie in the grave,' as David put it when he had sounded +all the depths. Is that being sorry?"</p> + +<p>"No—I don't know," she confessed.</p> + +<p>He was smiling now.</p> + +<p>"You think I ought to go back to first principles: get down on my knees +and agonize over it? Sometimes I wish I could be a boy long enough to do +just that thing, Ardea. But I can't. The mill won't grind with the water +that has passed."</p> + +<p>"But the stream isn't dry," she asserted, taking up his figure. "What +will you do now? That is the question: the only one that is ever worth +asking."</p> + +<p>He was frowning thoughtfully again, and the words came as an unconscious +voicing of vague under-depths.</p> + +<p>"They took to the woods, the waste places, the deserts—those men of old +who didn't understand. Some of them went blind and crazy and died there; +and some of them had their eyes opened and came back to make the world a +little better for their having lived in it. I'm minded to try it."</p> + +<p>She caught her breath in a little gasp which she was careful not to let +him see.</p> + +<p>"You are going away?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes; out to the 'beyond' in northern Arizona. There <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>is a new iron +field out there to be prospected, and Mr. Clarkson wants me to go and +report on it. And that brings us back to business. May I talk +business—cold money business—to you for a minute or two?"</p> + +<p>"If you like," she permitted. "Only I think the other kind of talk is +more profitable."</p> + +<p>"Wait till you hear what I have to say in dollars and cents. That ought +to interest you."</p> + +<p>"Why should it—particularly?"</p> + +<p>"Because you are going to marry a poor man, and—"</p> + +<p>She turned away from him quickly and stood facing the window. But he +went on with what he had to say.</p> + +<p>"That's all right; I can say it to your back, just as well. You know, I +suppose, that your—that the Farleys have lost out completely?"</p> + +<p>"Yes,"—to the window-pane.</p> + +<p>"Well, a curious thing has come to pass—quite a miraculous thing, in +fact. Chiawassee will pay the better part of its debts and—and redeem +its stock; or some of it, at least." He rose and stood beside her. +"Isn't it a thousand pities that Colonel Duxbury couldn't have held on +to his shares just a little longer?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; he is an old man and a broken one, now." There was a sob in her +voice, or he thought there was. But it was only the great heart of +compassion that missed no object of pity.</p> + +<p>"True; but the next best thing is to have the young woman who marries +into the family bring it back with her, don't you think? Here is a check +for what Mr. Farley's stock would have sold for before the troubles +began. It's made payable to you because—well, for obvious reasons; as I +have said, he lost out."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>She turned on him, and the blue eyes read him to his innermost depths.</p> + +<p>"You are still the headlong, impulsive boy, aren't you?" she said, not +altogether approvingly. "You are paying this out of your own money."</p> + +<p>"Well, what if I am?"</p> + +<p>"If you are, it is either a just restitution, or it is not. In either +case, I can not be your go-between."</p> + +<p>"Now look here," he argued; "you've got to be sensible about this. +There'll be four of you, and at least two incompetents; and you've got +to have money to live on. I made Colonel Duxbury lose it, and—"</p> + +<p>She stopped him with the imperious little gesture he knew so well.</p> + +<p>"Not another word, if you please. I can't do your errand in this, and I +wouldn't if I could."</p> + +<p>"You think I ought to be generous and give it to him, anyway, do you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't presume to say," was the cool rejoinder. "When you have come +fully to your right mind, you will know what to do, and how to go about +it."</p> + +<p>He crumpled the check, thrusting it into his pocket, and made two turns +about the room before he said:</p> + +<p>"I'll see them both hanged first!"</p> + +<p>"Very well; that is your own affair."</p> + +<p>He fell to walking again, and for a full minute the silence was broken +only by the murmur of men's voices in the library adjoining. The Major +had company, it seemed.</p> + +<p>"This is 'good-by,' Ardea; I'm going to-morrow. Can't we part friends?" +he said, when the silence had begun to rankle unbearably.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>"You've hurt me," she declared, turning again to the window.</p> + +<p>"You've hurt me, more than once," he retorted, raising his voice more +than he meant to; and she faced about quickly, holding up a warning +finger.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Henniker and Mr. Young-Dickson are in the library with grandpa. +They will hear you."</p> + +<p>"I don't care. I came here to-night with a heart full of what few good +things there are left in me, and you—you are so wrapped up in that +beggar that I didn't kill—"</p> + +<p>"Hush!" she commanded imperatively. "Grandfather has not heard: he knows +nothing, and he must nev—"</p> + +<p>The murmur of voices in the adjoining room had suddenly become a storm, +with the smooth tones of Mr. Henniker trying vainly to allay it. In the +thick of it the door of communication flew open and a white-haired, +fierce-mustached figure of wrath appeared on the threshold. For a moment +Tom's boyish awe of the old autocrat of Deer Trace came uppermost and he +was tempted to run away. But the wrath was not directed at him. Indeed, +the Major seemed not to see him.</p> + +<p>"What's all this I'm hearing now for the ve'y first time about these +heah low-down, schemin' scoundrels that want to mix thei-uh white-niggeh +blood with ouhs?" he roared at Ardea, quite beside himself with passion. +"Wasn't it enough that they should use my name and rob my good friend +Caleb? No, by heavens! That snivelin' young houn'-dog must pay his cou't +to you while he was keepin' his—"</p> + +<p>The Major's face had been growing redder, and he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>choked in sheer +poverty of speech. Moreover, Tom had come between; had taken Ardea in +his arms protectingly and was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man.</p> + +<p>"That's enough, Major," he said definitely. "You mustn't say things +you'll be sorry for after you cool down a bit. Miss Ardea is like the +king: she can do no wrong."</p> + +<p>There was a gasping pause, the sound of a big man breathing hard, +followed by the slamming of the door, and they were alone together +again, Ardea crying softly, with her face hidden on the shoulder of +shielding.</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't it terrible?" she sobbed; and Tom held her the closer.</p> + +<p>"Never mind," he comforted. "He was crazy-mad, as he had a good right to +be. You know he will be heart-broken when he comes to himself. You are +his one ewe lamb, Ardea."</p> + +<p>"I know," she faltered; "but O Tom! it was so unnecessary; so wretchedly +unnecessary! It's—it's more than two whole months since—since Vincent +Farley broke the engagement, and—"</p> + +<p>He held her at arm's length to look at her, but she hid her face in her +hands.</p> + +<p>"Broke the engagement!" he exclaimed, almost roughly. "Why did he do +that?"</p> + +<p>She stood before him with her hands clasped and the clear-welled eyes +meeting his bravely.</p> + +<p>"Because I told him I could not marry him without first telling him that +I loved you, Tom; that I had been loving you always and in spite of +everything," she said.</p> + +<p>And what more she said I do not know.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII</h2> + +<h3>WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD</h3> + + +<p>"Tom, isn't this the same foot-log you made me walk that day when you +were trying to convince me that you were the meanest boy that ever +breathed?" asked Ardea, gathering her skirts preparatory to the stream +crossing.</p> + +<p>"It is. But you didn't walk it, as you may remember: you fell off. Wait +a second and give me those azaleas. I'll go first and take your hand."</p> + +<p>Tom Gordon, lately home from a full half-year spent in the unfettered +solitudes of the Carriso iron fields, to be married first, and afterward +to start up—with Caleb for superintendent—the idle Chiawassee plant as +a test and experimental shop for American Aqueduct, was indemnifying +himself for the long exile.</p> + +<p>On this Saturday evening in the lovers' month of June he had walked +Ardea around and about through the fragrant summer wood of the upper +creek valley, retracing, in part, the footsteps of the boy whose fishing +had been spoiled and the little girl who was to be bullied into +submission; and so rambling they had come at length to the old +moss-grown foot-log which had been a newly-felled tree in the former +time. Tom went first across the rustic bridge, holding the hand of +ecstatic thrillings, and pausing in mid-passage that he might have +excuse for holding it the longer. Ah me! we were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>all young once; and +some of us are still young,—God grant,—in heart if not in years.</p> + +<p>It was during the mid-passage pause, and while she was looking down on +the swirling waters sometime of terrifying, that Miss Dabney said:</p> + +<p>"How deep is it, Tom? Would I really have drowned if you and Hector had +not pulled me out?"</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>"It's a thankless thing to spoil an idyl, isn't it? But that is the way +with all the little playtime heroics we leave behind in childhood. You +could have waded out."</p> + +<p>She made the adorable little grimace which was one of the survivals of +the yesterdays, and suffered him to lead her across.</p> + +<p>"And I have always believed that I owed my life to you—and Hector!" she +said reproachfully.</p> + +<p>"You owe me much more than that," he affirmed broadly, when they had sat +down to rest—they had often to do this, lest the way should prove +shorter than the happy afternoon—on the end of the bridge log.</p> + +<p>"Money?"—flippantly.</p> + +<p>"No; love. If it hadn't been for me, you might never have known what +love is."</p> + +<p>His saying it was only an upbubbling of love's audacity, but she chose +to take it seriously. She was gazing afar into the depths of the +fresh-green forest darkening softly to the sunset, with her hands +clasped around the tangle of late-blooming white azaleas in her lap.</p> + +<p>"It is a high gift," she said soberly; "the highest of all for a woman. +Once I thought I should live and die without knowing it, as many women +do. I wish I might give you something as great."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>"I am already overpaid," he asserted. "For a man there is nothing so +great, no influence so nearly omnipotent, as the love of a good woman. +It is the lever that moves the world—what little it does move—up the +hill to the high planes."</p> + +<p>"A lever?" she mused; "yes, perhaps. But levers are only links in the +chain binding cause to effect."</p> + +<p>His smile was lovingly tolerant.</p> + +<p>"Is that what your religion has brought you to, Ardea—a full-grown +belief in a Providence that takes cognizance of our little +ant-wanderings up and down the human runways?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think so," she said; but she said it without hesitancy or a +shadow of doubt.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad; glad you have attained," he rejoined quite unaffectedly.</p> + +<p>"It was hardly attainment, in my case," she qualified; and, after a +momentary pause, she added: "any more than it was in yours."</p> + +<p>"You think I, too, have attained?" he smiled. "I am not so sure of that. +Sometimes I think I am like my father, who is like Mahomet's coffin; +hanging somewhere between Heaven and earth, unable to climb to one or to +fall to the other. But I'm not as brash as I was a year or so ago; at +least, I'm not so cock-sure that I know it all. That evening in the +music-room at Deer Trace changed me—changed my point of view. You +haven't heard me rail once at the world, or at the hypocrites in it, +since I came home, have you?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't feel like railing. I reckon the old world is good enough +to live in—to work in; and cer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>tainly there are men in it who are +better than I'm ever likely to be. I met one of them last winter out in +the Carriso cow country; a 'Protestant' priest, he called himself, of +your persuasion. He was the most hopeless bigot I've ever known, and by +long odds the nearest masculine approach to true, gritty saintliness. +There was nothing he wouldn't do, no hardship he wouldn't cheerfully +undergo, to brother a man who was down, and the wickedest devil in all +that God-forsaken country swore by him. Yet he would argue with me by +the hour, splitting hairs over Apostolic Succession, or something of +that sort."</p> + +<p>She smiled in her turn. "Did he regard you as a heretic?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, sure! though he admitted that I might escape at the last by virtue +of my 'invincible ignorance.' Then I would laugh at him, telling him he +was a lot better than his bigotry. But he got the best of me in other +ways. I owned the one buckboard in the northern half of Apache County, +and my broncos were harness-broken and fast. So, when there was a +shoot-up at the Arroyo dance-hall, or any other job of swift brothering +to be done, I had to drive Father Philip."</p> + +<p>She was musing again. "You used to write me that you were on the edge of +things out there: it was a mistake, Tom; you were in the very heart of +them."</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No; the heart of them was back yonder in the music-room. There were +chaos and thick darkness to go before that day of days; and it was your +woman's love that changed the world for me."</p> + +<p>"No," she denied; "that was only an incident. When <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>chaos and darkness +fled away, it was God who said, 'Let there be light.' The dawn had come +for you before our day of days, Tom."</p> + +<p>He stretched himself luxuriously on the sward at her feet.</p> + +<p>"You may put it that way if you please. But I shall go on revering you +as my torch-bearer," he asserted.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," she said quickly; "was it for my sake that you spared Vincent +Farley when all you had to do was to turn your back and go away?"</p> + +<p>He took time to consider, and his answer put love under the foot of +truth.</p> + +<p>"No, it wasn't. If you make me confess the bald fact, I was not thinking +of you at all, just at that one moment."</p> + +<p>"I know it," she rejoined. "And I am big enough to be glad. Neither was +it for my sake that you instructed your lawyers to return good for evil +by redeeming the Farleys' stock just before they left for Colorado, or +that you made restitution to the families of the men at Gordonia for +their losses during the strike."</p> + +<p>But again he was shaking his head dubiously.</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure about that. It's in any man to play high when the good +opinion of the one woman is the stake. I'm a <i>poseur</i>, like all the +others."</p> + +<p>She smiled down on him and the slate-blue eyes were reading him to the +latest-indited heart-line.</p> + +<p>"You are posing now," she asseverated. "Don't I know?—don't I always +and always know?" And, after a reflective moment: "It is a great comfort +to be able to love the poses, and a still greater to be permitted to +discern the true man under them."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>"I am glad to believe that you don't see quite to the bottom of that +well, Ardea, girl," he said with sudden gravity. "I get only occasional +glimpses, myself, and they make me seasick. I don't believe any man +alive could endure it to look long into the inner abysses of himself."</p> + +<p>"'The heart knoweth his own bitterness,'" she quoted, speaking softly; +and then—O rarest of women!—she did not enlarge on it. Instead—</p> + +<p>Silence while she was gathering the sweet-smelling tangle in her lap +into some more portable arrangement. And afterward, when they were +drifting slowly homeward in the lengthening shadows, a small asking.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Morelock is coming out to-morrow to hold service in St. John's, and +I shall go to play for him. Will you go with me, Tom?"</p> + +<p>He smiled out of the gold and sapphire depths of a lover's reverie.</p> + +<p>"One week from the day after the day after to-morrow—and it will be the +longest week-and-two-days of my life, dearest—your grandfather will +take you to church, and I shall bring you away. Won't that be enough?"</p> + +<p>She took him quite seriously.</p> + +<p>"I shall never be a Felicita Young-Dickson, and drag you," she promised. +"But, O Tom! I wish—"</p> + +<p>"I know," he said gently. "You are thinking of the days to come; when +the paths may diverge—yours and mine—ever so little; when there may be +children to choose between their mother's faith and their father's +indifference. But I am not indifferent. So far from it, I am only +anxious now to prove what I was once so bent on disproving."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>"You yourself are the strongest proof," she interposed. "You will see +it, some day."</p> + +<p>"Shall I? I hope so; and that is an honest hope. And really and truly, I +think I have come up a bit—out of the wilderness, you know. I am +willing to admit that this is the best of all possible worlds; and I +want to do my part in making it a little better because I have lived in +it. Also, I'd like to believe in something bigger and better than +protoplasm."</p> + +<p>Her smile was of the kind which stands half-way in the path to tears, +but she spoke bravely to the doubt in his reply.</p> + +<p>"You do believe, Tom, dear; you have never seen the moment when you did +not. It was the doubt that was unreal. When the supreme test came, it +was God's hand that restrained you; you know it now—you knew it at the +time. And afterward it was His grace that enabled you to do what was +just and right. Haven't you admitted all this to yourself?"</p> + +<p>They had crossed the white pike to the manor-house gates and were +turning aside from the driveway into the winding lawn path when he said:</p> + +<p>"To myself, and to one other." Then, very softly: "I sat at my mother's +knee last night, Ardea, and told her all there was to tell."</p> + +<p>Ardea's eyes were shining. "What did she say, Tom, dear—or is it more +than I should ask?"</p> + +<p>"There is nothing you may not ask. She said—it wasn't altogether true, +I'm afraid—but she put her arms around my neck and cried and said: <i>For +this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.</i>"</p> + +<p>She slipped her arm in his, and there was a little sob <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span>of pure joy at +the catching of her breath. The moon was just rising above the Lebanon +cliff-line, and the beauty of the glorious night-dawn possessed her +utterly. Ah, it was a good world and a generous, bringing rich gifts to +the steadfast! Instinctively she felt that Tom's little confession did +not require an answer; that he was battling his way to the heights which +must be taken alone.</p> + +<p>So they came in the sacred hush of the young night to a great tulip-tree +on the lawn, and where a curiously water-worn limestone boulder served +as a rustic seat wide enough for two whose hearts are one they sat down +together, still in the companionship that needs no speech. It was Tom +who first broke the silence.</p> + +<p>"I have been trying ever since that night last winter to feel my way +out," he said slowly. "But what is to come of it? I can't go back to the +boyhood yesterdays; in a way I have hopelessly outgrown them. Let us +admit that religion has become real again; but Ardea, girl, it isn't +Uncle Silas's religion, or—or my mother's, or even yours. And I don't +know any other."</p> + +<p>She laid a hand on one of his.</p> + +<p>"It is all right, dear; there is only the one religion in all +Christendom—perhaps in all the world, or in God's part of it. The +difference is in people."</p> + +<p>"But this thing that has been slowly happening to me—this thing I am +trying to call convincement: shall I wake up some day and find it gone, +with all the old doubts in the saddle again?" he asked it almost +wistfully.</p> + +<p>"Who can tell?" she said gently. "But it will make no difference; the +immutable fact will be there just the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>same, whether you are asleep or +waking. We can't always stand on the Mount of Certainty, any of us; and +to some, perhaps, it is never given. But when one saves his enemy's life +and forgives and forgets—O Tom, dear! don't you understand?"</p> + +<p>But now his eyes are love-blinded, and the white-gowned figure beside +him fills all horizons.</p> + +<p>"I can't see past you, Ardea. Nevertheless, I'm going to believe that I +feel the good old pike solid underfoot ... and they say that the House +Beautiful is somewhere at the mountain end of it. If you will hold my +hand, I believe I can make out to walk in it; blindfolded, if I have +to—and without thinking too much of the yesterdays."</p> + +<p>"Ah, the yesterdays!" she said tenderly. "They are precious, too; for +out of them, out of their hindrances no less than their helpings, comes +to-day. Kiss me, twice, Tom; and then I must go in and read to Major +Grandpa."</p> + + +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUICKENING *** + +***** This file should be named 17357-h.htm or 17357-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/3/5/17357/ + +Produced by Paul Ereaut, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/17357-h/images/cover01.gif b/17357-h/images/cover01.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e954980 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/cover01.gif diff --git a/17357-h/images/fullcover.gif b/17357-h/images/fullcover.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff008d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/fullcover.gif diff --git a/17357-h/images/illus01.png b/17357-h/images/illus01.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9602da1 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/illus01.png diff --git a/17357-h/images/illus02.png b/17357-h/images/illus02.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7f27b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/illus02.png diff --git a/17357-h/images/illus03.png b/17357-h/images/illus03.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2dd693b --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/illus03.png diff --git a/17357-h/images/illus04.png b/17357-h/images/illus04.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e334491 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/illus04.png diff --git a/17357-h/images/illus05.png b/17357-h/images/illus05.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..34fa3d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/illus05.png diff --git a/17357-h/images/spine01.gif b/17357-h/images/spine01.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..64ad53d --- /dev/null +++ b/17357-h/images/spine01.gif diff --git a/17357.txt b/17357.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..87a1173 --- /dev/null +++ b/17357.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12855 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quickening + +Author: Francis Lynde + +Illustrator: E. M. Ashe + +Release Date: December 19, 2005 [EBook #17357] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUICKENING *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Ereaut, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + +Illustration: Tom was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man. + + + + + +THE QUICKENING + + +By + +FRANCIS LYNDE +Author of +The Grafters, +The Master of Appleby, +etc., etc. + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS +BY E.M. ASHE + +INDIANAPOLIS +THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY +PUBLISHERS + +Copyright 1906 +Francis Lynde + +March + +PRESS OF +BRAUNWORTH & CO. +BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS +BROOKLYN, N.Y. + +To My Mother + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I Bethesda 1 + + II The Cedars of Lebanon 11 + + III Of the Fathers Upon the Children 21 + + IV The Newer Exodus 25 + + V The Dabneys of Deer Trace 32 + + VI Blue Blood and Red 44 + + VII The Prayer of the Righteous 57 + + VIII The Backslider 65 + + IX The Race to the Swift 75 + + X The Shadow of the Rock 90 + + XI The Trumpet-Call 99 + + XII The Iron in the Forge Fire 107 + + XIII A Sister of Charity 116 + + XIV On Jordan's Bank 124 + + XV Noel 140 + + XVI The Bubble, Reputation 145 + + XVII Absalom, My Son! 160 + + XVIII The Awakening 172 + + XIX Issachar 188 + + XX Dry Wells 201 + + XXI Gilgal 216 + + XXII Love 226 + + XXIII Tarred Ropes 242 + + XXIV The Under-Depths 255 + + XXV The Plow in the Furrow 265 + + XXVI As With a Mantle 279 + + XXVII Swept and Garnished 294 + + XXVIII The Burden of Habakkuk 306 + + XXIX As Brutes That Perish 319 + + XXX Through a Glass Darkly 331 + + XXXI The Net of the Fowler 338 + + XXXII Whoso Diggeth a Pit 347 + + XXXIII The Wine-Press of Wrath 357 + + XXXIV The Smoke of the Furnace 366 + + XXXV A Soul in Shackles 378 + + XXXVI Free Among the Dead 387 + + XXXVII Whose Yesterdays Look Backward 399 + + +THE QUICKENING + + +I + +BETHESDA + + +The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts, +of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the +field--to use Brother Crafts' own word--was white to the harvest. + +Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the +valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past +by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from +the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening +the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble. + +Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time +twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike, +had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling +of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily +in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood +knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds--the +present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region +round-about. + +"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?" +asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands. + +"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o' +grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's +a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n--honest and +even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for +soap-kittles. But hot 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit, +and ye cayn't change _him_." + +"That's about right," said a third. "It looks to me like Caleb done sot +his stakes where he's goin' to run the furrow. If livin' a dozen years +and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to +toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin' +to do it." + +"Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the +only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly +put down by the tall mountaineer. + +"Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass! I allow the' ain't no dyed-in-the-wool +hawss-trader like you goin' to stand up and say anything ag'inst Marthy +Gordon while I'm a-listenin'. I'm recollectin' right now the time when +she sot up day and night for more'n a week with my Malviny--and me +a-smashin' the whisky jug acrost the wagon tire to he'p God to forgit +how no-'count and triflin' I'd been." + +Thomas Jefferson had opened the church-house doors and windows and was +out among the unhitched teams looking for Scrap Pendry, who had been one +of a score to go forward for prayers the night before. So it happened +that he overheard the flat-chested mountaineer's tribute to his mother. +It warmed him generously; but there was a boyish scowl for Japheth +Pettigrass. What had the horse-trader been saying to make it needful for +Bill Layne to speak up as his mother's defender? Thomas Jefferson +recorded a black mark against Pettigrass's name, and went on to search +for Scrap. + +"What you hiding for?" he demanded, when the newly-made convert was +discovered skulking in the dusky shadows of the pines beyond the +farthest outlying wagon. + +"I ain't hidin'," was the half-defiant answer. + +"You're a liar," said Thomas Jefferson coolly, ducking skilfully to +escape the consequences. + +But there were no consequences. Young Pendry's heavy face flushed a dull +red,--that could be seen even in the growing dusk,--but he made no move +retaliatory. Thomas Jefferson walked slowly around him, wary as a wild +creature of the wood, and to the full as curious. Then he stuck out his +hand awkwardly. + +"I only meant it 'over the left,' Scrap, hope to die," he said. "I +allowed I'd just like to know for sure if what you done last night made +any difference." + +Scrap was silent, glibness of tongue not being among the gifts of the +East Tennessee landward bred. But he grasped the out-thrust hand +heartily and crushed it forgivingly. + +"Come on out where the folks are," urged Thomas Jefferson. "Sim Cantrell +and the other fellows are allowin' you're afeard." + +"I ain't afeard," denied the convert. + +"No; but you're sort o' 'shamed, and that's about the same thing, I +reckon. Come on out; I'll go 'long with you." + +Then spake the new-born love in the heart of the big, rough, country +boy. "I cayn't onderstand how you can hold out, Tom-Jeff. I've come +thoo', praise the Lord! but I jest natchelly _got_ to have stars for my +crown. You say you'll go 'long with me, Tom-Jeff: say it ag'in, and mean +it." + +Again the doubtful-curious look came into Thomas Jefferson's gray eyes, +and he would not commit himself. Nevertheless, one point was safely +established, and it was a point gained: the miraculous thing called +conversion was beyond question real in Scrap's case. He turned to lead +the way between the wagons. The lamps were lighted in the church and the +people were filling the benches, while the choir gathered around the +tuneless little cottage organ to practise the hymns. + +"I--I'm studyin' about it some, Scrap," he confessed, half angry with +himself that the admission sent the blood to his cheeks. "Let's go in." + +It was admitted on all sides that Brother Crafts was a powerful +preacher. Other men had wrestled mightily in Zoar, but none to such +heart-shaking purpose. When he expatiated on the ineffable glories of +Heaven and the joys of the redeemed, which was not too often, the +reflection of the celestial effulgences could be seen rippling like +sunshine on the sea of faces spreading away from the shore of the pulpit +steps. When he spoke of hell and its terrors, which was frequently and +with thrilling descriptive, even so hardened a scoffer as Japheth +Pettigrass was wont to declare that you could hear the crackling of the +flames and the cries of the doomed. + +The opening exercises were over--the Bible reading, the long, +impassioned prayer, the hymn singing--and the preacher stood up in a +hush that could be felt, and stepped forward to the small desk which +served for a pulpit. + +He was a tall man, thin and erect, with a sallow, beardless face +unrelieved by any line of mobility, but redeemed and almost glorified by +the deep-set, eager, burning eyes. He had a way of bending to his +audience when he spoke, with one long arm crooked behind him and the +other extended to mark the sentences with a pointing finger, as if to +remove the final trace of impersonality; to break down the last of the +barriers of reserve which might be thrown up by the impenitent heart. + +The hush remained unbroken till he announced his text in a voice that +rang like an alarm-bell pealed in the dead of night. There are voices +and voices, but only now and then one which is pitched in the key of the +spheral harmonies. When the Reverend Silas hurled out the Baptist's +words, _Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!_ the responsive +thrill from the packed benches was like the sympathetic vibration of +harp-strings answering a trumpet blast. + +The thin, large-jointed hand went up for silence, as if there could be a +silence more profound than that which already hung on his word. Then he +began slowly, and in phrase so simple that the youngest child could not +fail to follow him, to draw the picture of that Judean morning scene on +the banks of the Jordan, of the wild, unkempt, skin-clad forerunner, +thundering forth his message to a sin--cursed world. On what deaf ears +had it fallen among the multitude gathered on Jordan's bank! On what +deaf ears would it fall in Zoar church this night! + +He classed them rapidly, and with a prescient insight into the mazes of +human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open +to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes--mint, anise and cummin--and +prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the +youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly +pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and +we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for +bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing +the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the +aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual +senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear +and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and +long-suffering God they had so long rejected. + +Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting of +The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day were +depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of an +inexorable judge. + +"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the +devil and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the +crowded church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your +end, impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a +fearful eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything +but the salvation of your soul, your sins, and the awful doom which is +awaiting you! Think of it, you who are throwing your lives away in the +pleasures of this world; you who have broken God's commands; you who +have stolen when you thought no eye was on you; you who have so often +committed murder in your hating hearts! Think not that you will be +suffered to escape! Every servant of the most high God who has ever +declared His message to you will be there to denounce you: I, Silas +Crafts, will meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ to bear my witness +against you!" + +A man, red-faced and with the devil of the cup of trembling peering from +under his shaggy eyebrows, rose unsteadily from his seat on the bench +nearest the door. + +"'Sh! he's fotched Tike Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but +the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the +door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle in +his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl +of a wild beast at bay. + +"No, by jacks, ye won't witness ag'inst me, Silas Crafts; ye'll be +dead!" + +The crack of the rifle went with the words, and at the flash of the +piece the man sprang backward through the doorway and was gone. Happily, +he had been too drunk or too tremulous to shoot straight. The preacher +was unhurt, and he was quick to quell the rising tumult and to turn the +incident to good account. + +"There went the arrow of conviction quivering to the heart of a +murderer!" he cried, dominating the commotion with his marvelous voice. +"Come back here, Japheth Pettigrass; and you, William Layne: God +Almighty will deal with that poor sinner in His own way. For him, for +every impenitent soul here to-night, the hour has struck. 'Now is the +accepted time; now is the day of salvation.' While we are singing, _Just +as I am, without one plea_, let the doors of divine mercy stand opened +wide, and let every hard heart be softened. Come, ye disconsolate; come +forward to the mercy-seat as we sing." + +The old, soul-moving, revival hymn was lifted in a triumphant burst of +sound, and Thomas Jefferson's heart began to pound like a trip-hammer. +Was this his call--his one last chance to enter the ark of safety? Just +there was the pinch. A saying of Japheth Pettigrass's, overheard in +Hargis's store on the first day of the meetings, flicked into his mind +and stuck there: "Hit's scare, first, last, and all the time, with +Brother Silas. He knows mighty well that a good bunch o' hickories, +that'll bring the blood every cut, beats a sugar kittle out o' sight +when it comes to fillin' the anxious seat." Was it really his call? Or +was he only scared? + +The twelve-year-old brain grappled hardily with the problem which has +thrown many an older wrestler. This he knew: that while he had been +listening with outward ears to the restless champing and stamping of the +horses among the pines, but with his inmost soul to the burning words of +his uncle, the preacher, a great fear had laid hold of him--a fear +mightier than desire or shame, or love or hatred, or any spring of +action known to him. It was lifting him to his feet; it was edging him +past the others on the bench and out into the aisle with the mourners +who were crowding the space in front of the pulpit platform. At the turn +he heard his mother's low-murmured, "I thank Thee, O God!" and saw the +grim, set smile on his father's face. Then he fell on his knees on the +rough-hewn floor, with the tall mountaineer called William Layne on his +right, and on his left a young girl from the choir who was sobbing +softly in her handkerchief. + + * * * * * + +June being the queen of the months in the valleys of Tennessee, the +revival converts of Little Zoar had the pick and choice of all the +Sundays of the year for the day of their baptizing. + +The font was of great nature's own providing, as was the mighty temple +housing it,--a clear pool in the creek, with the green-walled aisles in +the June forest leading down to it, and the blue arch of the flawless +June sky for a dome resplendent. + +All Paradise was there to see and hear and bear witness, as a matter of +course; and there were not wanting farm-wagon loads from the great +valley and from the Pine Knob highlands. Major Dabney was among the +onlookers, sitting his clean-limbed Hambletonian, and twisting his huge +white mustaches until they stood out like strange and fierce-looking +horns. Also, in the outer ranks of skepticism, Major Dabney's foreman +and horse-trader, Japheth Pettigrass, found a place. On the opposite +bank of the stream were the few negroes owning Major Dabney now as +"Majah Boss," as some of them,--most of them, in fact--had once owned +him as "Mawstuh Majah"; and mingling freely with them were the laborers, +white and black, from the Gordon iron-furnace. + +Thomas Jefferson brought up memories from that solemn rite administered +so simply and yet so impressively under the June sky, with the +many-pointing forest spires to lift the soul to heights ecstatic. One +was the singing of the choir, minimized and made celestially sweet by +the lack of bounding walls and roof. Another was the sight of his +father's face, with the grim smile gone, and the steadfast eyes gravely +tolerant as he--Thomas Jefferson--was going down into the water. A +third--and this might easily become the most lasting of all--was the +memory of how his mother clasped him in her arms as he came up out of +the water, all wet and dripping as he was, and sobbed over him as if her +heart would break. + + + + +II + +THE CEDARS OF LEBANON + + +Thomas Jefferson's twelfth summer fell in the year 1886; a year +memorable in the annals of the Lebanon iron and coal region as the first +of an epoch, and as the year of the great flood. But the herald of +change had not yet blown his trumpet in Paradise Valley; and the world +of russet and green and limestone white, spreading itself before the +eyes of the boy sitting with his hands locked over his knees on the top +step of the porch fronting the Gordon homestead, was the same world +which, with due seasonal variations, had been his world from the +beginning. + +Centering in the broad, low, split-shingled house at his back, it +widened in front to the old-fashioned flower garden, to the dooryard +with its thick turf of uncut Bermuda grass, to the white pike splotched +by the shadows of the two great poplars standing like sentinels on +either side of the gate, to the wooded hills across the creek. + +It was a hot July afternoon, a full month after the revival, and Thomas +Jefferson was at that perilous pass where Satan is said to lurk for the +purpose of providing employment for the idle. He was wondering if the +shade of the hill oaks would be worth the trouble it would take to +reach it, when his mother came to the open window of the living-room: a +small, fair, well-preserved woman, this mother of the boy of twelve, +with light brown hair graying a little at the temples, and eyes +remindful of vigils, of fervent beseeching, of mighty wrestlings against +principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. + +"You, Thomas Jefferson," she said gently, but speaking as one having +authority, "you'd better be studying your Sunday lesson than sitting +there doing nothing." + +"Yes'm," said the boy, but he made no move other than to hug his knees a +little closer. He wished his mother would stop calling him "Thomas +Jefferson." To be sure, it was his name, or at least two-thirds of it; +but he liked the "Buddy" of his father, or the "Tom-Jeff" of other +people a vast deal better. + +Further, the thought of studying Sunday lessons begot rebellion. At +times, as during those soul-stirring revival weeks, now seemingly +receding into a far-away past, he had moments of yearning to be wholly +sanctified. But the miracle of transformation which he had confidently +expected as the result of his "coming through" was still unwrought. When +John Bates or Simeon Cantrell undertook to bully him, as aforetime, +there was the same intoxicating experience of all the visible world +going blood-red before his eyes--the same sinful desire to slay them, +one or both. And as for Sunday lessons on a day when all outdoors was +beckoning-- + +He stole a glance at the open window of the living-room. His mother had +gone about her housework, and he could hear her singing softly, as +befitted the still, warm day: + + "O for a heart to praise my God!" + +and it nettled him curiously. All hymns were beginning to have that +effect, and this one in particular always renewed the conflict between +the yearning for sanctity and a desire to do something desperately +wicked; the only middle course lay in flight. Hence, the battle being +fairly on, he stole another glance at the window, sprang afoot, and ran +silently around the house and through the peach orchard to clamber over +the low stone wall which was the only barrier on that side between the +wilderness and the sown. + +Once under the trees on the mountain side, the pious prompting knocked +less clamorously at the door of his heart; and with its abatement the +temptation to say or do the desperate thing became less insistent, also. +It was always that way. When he was by himself in the forest, with no +particularly gnawing hunger for righteousness, the devil let him alone. +The thick wood was the true whisk to brush away all the naggings and +perplexities that swarmed, like house-flies in the cleared lands. Nance +Jane, the cow that did not know enough to come home at milking-time, +knew that. In the hot weather, when the blood-sucking horse-flies and +sweat-bees were worst, she would crash through the thickest underbrush +and so be swept clean of her tormentors. + +Emulating Nance Jane, Thomas Jefferson stormed through the nearest +sassafras thicket and emerged regenerate. What next? High up on the +mountain side, lifted far above Sunday lessons and soul conflicts and +perplexing questions that hung answerless in a person's mind, was a +place where the cedars smelled sweet and the west wind from the "other +mountain" plashed cool in your face what time a sun-smitten Paradise +Valley was like an oven. It would be three good hours before he would +have to go after Nance Jane; and the Sunday lesson--but he had already +forgotten about the Sunday lesson. + +Three-quarters of the first hour were gone, and he was warm and thirsty +when he topped the last of the densely-wooded lower slopes and came out +on a high, rock-strewn terrace thinly set with mountain cedars. Here his +feet were on familiar ground, and a little farther on, poised on the +very edge of the terrace and overtopping the tallest trees of the lower +slopes, was the great, square sandstone boulder which was his present +Mecca. + +On its outward face the big rock, gray, lichened and weather-worn, was a +miniature cliff as high as the second story of a house; and at this +cliff's foot was a dripping spring with a deep, crystalline pool for its +basin. There was a time when Thomas Jefferson used to lie flat on his +stomach and quench his thirst with his face thrust into the pool. But +that was when he had got no farther than the Book of Joshua in his +daily-chapter reading of the Bible. Now he was past Judges, so he knelt +and drank from his hands, like the men of Gideon's chosen three hundred. + +His thirst assuaged, he ascended the slope of the terrace to a height +whence the flat top of the cubical boulder could be reached by the help +of a low-branching tree. The summit of the great rock was one of the +sacred places in the temple of the solitudes; and when the earth became +too thickly peopled for comfort, he would come hither to lie on the very +brink of the cliff overhanging the spring, heels in air, and hands for a +chin-rest, looking down on a removed world mapping itself in softened +outlines near and far. + +Men spoke of Paradise as "the valley," though it was rather a sheltered +cove with Mount Lebanon for its background and a semicircular range of +oak-grown hills for its other rampart. Splitting it endwise ran the +white streak of the pike, macadamized from the hill quarry which, a full +quarter of a century before the Civil War, had furnished the stone for +the Dabney manor-house; and paralleling the road unevenly lay a ribbon +of silver, known to less poetic souls than Thomas Jefferson's as Turkey +Creek, but loved best by him under its almost forgotten Indian name of +Chiawassee. + +Beyond the valley and its inclosing hills rose the "other mountain," +blue in the sunlight and royal purple in the shadows--the Cumberland: +source and birthplace of the cooling west wind that was whispering +softly to the cedars on high Lebanon. Thomas Jefferson called the +loftiest of the purple distances Pisgah, picturing it as the mountain +from which Moses had looked over into the Promised Land. Sometime he +would go and climb it and feast his eyes on the sight of the Canaan +beyond; yea, he might even go down and possess the good land, if so the +Lord should not hold him back as He had held Moses. + +That was a high thought, quite in keeping with the sense of overlordship +bred of the upper stillnesses. To company with it, the home valley +straightway began to idealize itself from the uplifted point of view on +the mount of vision. The Paradise fields were delicately-outlined +squares of vivid green or golden yellow, or the warm red brown of the +upturned earth in the fallow places. The old negro quarters on the +Dabney grounds, many years gone to the ruin of disuse, were vine-grown +and invisible save as a spot of summer verdure; and the manor-house +itself, gray, grim and forbidding to a small boy scurrying past it in +the deepening twilight, was now no more than a great square roof with +the cheerful sunlight playing on it. + +Farther down the valley, near the place where the white pike twisted +itself between two of the rampart hills to escape into the great valley +of the Tennessee, the split-shingled roof under which Thomas Jefferson +had eaten and slept since the earliest beginning of memories became also +a part of the high-mountain harmony; and the ragged, red iron-ore beds +on the slope above the furnace were softened into a blur of joyous +color. + +The iron-furnace, with its alternating smoke puff and dull red flare, +struck the one jarring note in a symphony blown otherwise on great +nature's organ-pipes; but to Thomas Jefferson the furnace was as much a +part of the immutable scheme as the hills or the forests or the creek +which furnished the motive power for its air-blast. More, it stood for +him as the summary of the world's industry, as the white pike was the +world's great highway, and Major Dabney its chief citizen. + +He was knocking his bare heels together and thinking idly of Major +Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the +tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was +interrupted by a sudden splash. + +By shifting a little to the right he could see the spring. A girl of +about his own age, barefooted, and with only her tangled mat of dark +hair for a head covering, was filling her bucket in the pool. He broke a +dry twig from the nearest cedar and dropped it on her. + +"You better quit that, Tom-Jeff Gordon. I taken sight o' you up there," +said the girl, ignoring him otherwise. + +"That's my spring, Nan Bryerson," he warned her dictatorially. + +The girl looked up and scoffed. Hers was a face made for scoffing: oval +and finely lined, with a laughing mouth and dark eyes that had both the +fear and the fierceness of wild things in them. + +"Shucks! it ain't your spring any more'n it's mine!" she retorted. +"Hit's on Maje' Dabney's land." + +"Well, don't you muddy it none," said Thomas Jefferson, with threatening +emphasis. + +For answer to this she put one brown foot deep into the pool and +wriggled her toes in the sandy bottom. Things began to turn red for +Thomas Jefferson, and a high, buzzing note, like the tocsin of the bees, +sang in his ears. + +"Take your foot out o' that spring! Don't you mad me, Nan Bryerson!" he +cried. + +She laughed up at him and flung him a taunt. "You don't darst to get +mad, Tommy-Jeffy; _you've got religion_." + +It is a terrible thing to be angry in shackles. There are similes--pent +volcanoes, overcharged boilers and the like--but they are all +inadequate. Thomas Jefferson searched for missiles more deadly than dry +twigs, found none, and fell headlong--not from the rock, but from grace. +"_Damn!_" he screamed; and then, in an access of terrified remorse: "Oh, +hell, hell, hell!" + +The girl laughed mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in +deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave +her a cramp. + +"Now you've done it," she remarked. "The devil'll shore get ye for +sayin' that word, Tom-Jeff." + +There was no reply, and she stepped back to see what had become of him. +He was prone, writhing in agony. She knew the way to the top of the +rock, and was presently crouching beside him. + +"Don't take on like that!" she pleaded. "Times I cayn't he'p bein' mean: +looks like I was made thataway. Get up and slap me, if you want to. I +won't slap back." + +But Thomas Jefferson only ground his face deeper into the thick mat of +cedar needles and begged to be let alone. + +"Go away; I don't want you to talk to me!" he groaned. "You're always +making me sin!" + +"That's because you're Adam and I'm Eve, ain't it? Wasn't you tellin' me +in revival time that Eve made all the 'ruction 'twixt the man and God? I +reckon she was right sorry; don't you?" + +Thomas Jefferson sat up. + +"You're awfully wicked, Nan," he said definitively. + +"'Cause I don't believe all that about the woman and the snake and the +apple and the man?" + +"You'll go to hell when you die, and then I guess you'll believe," said +Thomas Jefferson, still more definitively. + +She took a red apple from the pocket of her ragged frock and gave it to +him. + +"What's that for?" he asked suspiciously. + +"You eat it; it's the kind you like--off 'm the tree right back of Jim +Stone's barn lot," she answered. + +"You stole it, Nan Bryerson!" + +"Well, what if I did? You didn't." + +He bit into it, and she held him in talk till it was eaten to the core. + +"Have you heard tell anything more about the new railroad?" she asked. + +Thomas Jefferson shook his head. "I heard Squire Bates and Major Dabney +naming it one day last week." + +"Well, it's shore comin'--right thoo' Paradise. I heard tell how it was +goin' to cut the old Maje's grass patch plumb in two, and run right +smack thoo' you-uns' peach orchard." + +"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson. "What do you reckon my father'd be doing +all that time? He'd show 'em!" + +A far-away cry, long-drawn and penetrating, rose on the still air of the +lower slope and was blown on the breeze to the summit of the great rock. + +"That's maw, hollerin' for me to get back home with that bucket o' +water," said the girl; and, as she was descending the tree ladder: "You +didn't s'picion why I give you that apple, did you, Tommy-Jeffy?" + +"'Cause you didn't want it yourself, I reckon," said the second Adam. + +"No; it was 'cause you said I was goin' to hell and I wanted comp'ny. +That apple was stole and you knowed it!" + +Thomas Jefferson flung the core far out over the tree-tops and shut his +eyes till he could see without seeing red. Then he rose to the serenest +height he had yet attained and said: "I forgive you, you wicked, wicked +girl!" + +Her laugh was a screaming taunt. + +"But you've et the apple!" she cried; "and if you wasn't scared of goin' +to hell, you'd cuss me again--you know you would! Lemme tell you, +Tom-Jeff, if the preacher had dipped me in the creek like he did you, +I'd be a mighty sight holier than what you are. I cert'nly would." + +And now anger came to its own again. + +"You don't know what you're talking about, Nan Bryerson! You're nothing +but a--a miserable little heathen; my mother said you was!" he cried out +after her. + +But a back-flung grimace was all the answer he had. + + + + +III + +OF THE FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN + + +Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, Caleb the elder, was an old man before +his son, Caleb the younger, went to the wars, and he figured in the +recollections of those who remembered him as a grim, white-haired +octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace which he +had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes. The eyes +lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the sympathetic +or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; never sleeping, they +said--though that could hardly be--until that last day of all when they +fixed themselves on the wall and followed nothing more in this world. + +Caleb, the son, was well past his first youth when the Civil War broke +out; yet youthful ardor was not wanting, nor patriotism, as he defined +it, to make him the first of the Paradise folk to write his name on the +muster-roll of the South. And it was his good fortune, rather than any +lack of battle hazards, that brought him through the four fighting years +to the Appomattox end of that last running fight on the Petersburg and +Lynchburg road in which, with his own hands, he had helped to destroy +the guns of his battery. + +Being alive and not dead on the memorable April Sunday when his +commander-in-chief signed the articles of capitulation in Wilmer +McLean's parlor in Appomattox town, this soldier Gordon was one among +the haggard thousands who shared the enemy's rations to bridge over the +hunger gap; and it was the sane, equable Gordon blood that enabled him +to eat his portion of the bread of defeat manfully and without +bitterness. + +Later it was the steadfast Gordon courage that helped him to mount the +crippled battery horse which had been his own contribution to the lost +cause; to mount and ride painfully to the distant Southern valley, +facing the weary journey, and the uncertain future in a land despoiled, +as only a brave man might. + +His homing was to the old furnace and the still older house at the foot +of Lebanon. The tale of the years succeeding may be briefed in a bare +sentence or two. It was said of him that he reached Paradise and the old +homestead late one evening, and that the next day he was making ready +for a run of iron in the antiquated blast-furnace. This may be only +neighborhood tradition, but it depicts the man: sturdy, tenacious, +dogged; a man to knot up the thread of life broken by untoward events, +following it thereafter much as if nothing had happened. + +Such men are your true conservatives. When his son was born, nine years +after the great struggle had passed into history, Caleb, the soldier, +was still using charcoal for fuel and blowing his cupola fire with the +wooden air-pump whose staves had been hooped together by the hands of +his father, and whose motive power was a huge overshot wheel swinging +rhythmically below the stone dam in the creek. + +The primitive air-blast being still in commission, it may itself say +that the South, in spite of the war upheaval and the far more seismic +convulsion of the reconstruction period, was still the Old South when +Caleb married Martha Crafts. + +It was as much a love match as middle-age marriages are wont to be, and +following it there was Paradise gossip to assert that Caleb's wife +brought gracious womanly reforms to the cheerless bachelor house at the +furnace. Be this as it may, she certainly brought one innovation--an +atmosphere of wholesome, if somewhat austere, piety hitherto unbreathed +by the master or any of his dusky vassals. + +Such moderate prosperity as the steadily pulsating iron-furnace could +bring was Martha Gordon's portion from the beginning. Yet there was a +fly in her pot of precious ointment; an obstacle to her complete +happiness which Caleb Gordon never understood, nor could be made to +understand. Like other zealous members of her communion, she took the +Bible in its entirety for her creed, striving, as frail humanity may, to +live up to it. But among the many admonitions which, for her, were no +less than divine commands, was one which she had wilfully disregarded: +_Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers._ + +Caleb respected her religion; stood a little in awe of it, if the truth +were known, and was careful to put no straw of hindrance in the thorny +upward way. But there are times when neutrality bites deeper than open +antagonism. In the slippery middle ground of tolerance there is no +foothold for one who would push or pull another into the kingdom of +Heaven. + +Under such conditions Thomas Jefferson was sure to be the child of many +prayers on the mother's part; and perhaps of some naturally prideful +hopes on Caleb's. When a man touches forty before his firstborn is put +into his arms, he is likely to take the event seriously. Martha Gordon +would have named her son after the great apostle of her faith, but Caleb +asserted himself here and would have a manlier name-father for the boy. +So Thomas Jefferson was named, not for an apostle, nor yet for the +statesman--save by way of an intermediary. For Caleb's "Thomas +Jefferson" was the stout old schoolmaster-warrior, Stonewall Jackson; +the soldier iron-master's general while he lived, and his deified hero +ever afterward. + +When the mother was able to sit up in bed she wrote a letter to her +brother Silas, the South Tredegar preacher. On the margin of the paper +she tried the name, writing it "Reverend Thomas Jefferson Gordon." It +was a rather appalling mouthful, not nearly so euphonious as the name of +the apostle would have been. But she comforted herself with the thought +that the boy would probably curtail it when he should come to a +realizing sense of ownership; and "Reverend" would fit any of the +curtailments. + +So now we see to what high calling Thomas Jefferson's mother purposed +devoting him while yet he was a helpless monad in pinning-blankets; to +what end she had striven with many prayers and groanings that could not +be uttered, from year to year of his childhood. + +Does it account in some measure for the self-conscious young Pharisee +kneeling on the top of the high rock under the cedars, and crying out on +the girl scoffer that she was no better than she should be? + + + + +IV + +THE NEWER EXODUS + + +One would always remember the first day of a new creation; the day when +God said, _Let there be light_. + +It has been said that nothing comes suddenly; that the unexpected is +merely the overlooked. For weeks Thomas Jefferson had been scenting the +unwonted in the air of sleepy Paradise. Once he had stumbled on the +engineers at work in the "dark woods" across the creek, spying out a +line for the new railroad. Another day he had come home late from a +fishing excursion to the upper pools to find his father shut in the +sitting-room with three strangers resplendent in town clothes, and the +talk--what he could hear of it from his post of observation on the porch +step--was of iron and coal, of a "New South," whatever that might be, +and of wonderful changes portending, which his father was exhorted to +help bring about. + +But these were only the gentle heavings and crackings of the ground +premonitory of the real earthquake. That came on a day of days when, as +a reward of merit for having faultlessly recited the eighty-third Psalm +from memory, he was permitted to go to town with his father. Behold him, +then, dangling his feet--uncomfortable because they were stockinged and +shod--from the high buggy seat while the laziest of horses ambled +between the shafts up the white pike and around and over the hunched +shoulder of Mount Lebanon. This in the cool of the morning of the day of +revelations. + +In spite of the premonitory tremblings, the true earthquake found Thomas +Jefferson totally unprepared. He had been to town often enough to have a +clear memory picture of South Tredegar--the prehistoric South Tredegar. +There was a single street, hub-deep in mud in the rains, beginning +vaguely at the steamboat landing, and ending rather more definitely in +the open square surrounding the venerable court-house of pale brick and +stucco-pillared porticoes. There were the shops--only Thomas Jefferson +and all his kind called them "stores"--one-storied, these, the wooden +ones with lying false fronts to hide the mean little gables; the brick +ones honester in face, but sadly chipped and crumbling and dingy with +age and the weather. + +Also, there were houses, some of them built of the pale red brick, with +pillared porticoes running to the second story; hip-roofed, with a +square balustered observatory on top; rather grand looking and +impressive till you came near enough to see that the bricks were +shaling, and the portico floors rotting, and the plaster falling from +the pillars to show the grinning lath-and-frame skeletons behind. + +Also, on the banks of the river, there was the antiquated iron-furnace +which, long before the war, had given the town its pretentious name. And +lastly, there was the Calhoun House, dreariest and most inhospitable inn +of its kind; and across the muddy street from it the great echoing +train-shed, ridiculously out of proportion to every other building in +the town, the tavern not excepted, and to the ramshackle, once-a-day +train that wheezed and rattled and clanked into and out of it. + +Thomas Jefferson had seen it all, time and again; and this he +remembered, that each time the dead, weather-worn, miry or dusty +dullness of it had crept into his soul, sending him back to the +freshness of the Paradise fields and forests at eventide with grateful +gladness in his heart. + +But now all this was to be forgotten, or to be remembered only as a +dream. On the day of revelations the earlier picture was effaced, +blacked out, obliterated; and it came to the boy with a pang that he +should never be able to recall it again in its entirety. For the genius +of modern progress is contemptuous of old landmarks and impatient of +delays. And swift as its race is elsewhere, it is only in that part of +the South which has become "industrial" that it came as a thunderclap, +with all the intermediate and accelerative steps taken at a bound. Men +spoke of it as "the boom." It was not that. It was merely that the +spirit of modernity had discovered a hitherto overlooked corner of the +field, and made haste to occupy it. + +So in South Tredegar, besprent now before the wondering eyes of a Thomas +Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black +roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the +pike after a sweeping summer storm. The shops, with their false fronts +and shabby lean-to awnings, were gone, or going, and in their room +majestic vastnesses in brick and cut stone were rising, by their own +might, as it would seem, out of disorderly mountains of building +material. + +Street-cars, propelled as yet by the patient mule, tinkled their bells +incessantly. Smart vehicles of many kinds strange to Paradise eyes +rattled recklessly in and out among the street obstructions. Bustling +throngs were in possession of the sidewalks; of the awe-inspiring +restaurant, where they gave you lemonade in a glass bowl and some people +washed their fingers in it; of the rotunda of the Marlboro, the mammoth +hotel which had grown up on the site of the old Calhoun +House,--distressing crowds and multitudes of people everywhere. + +Thomas Jefferson, awe-struck and gaping, found himself foot-loose for a +time in the Marlboro rotunda while his father talked with a man who +wanted to bargain for the entire output of the Paradise furnace by the +year. The commercial transaction touched him lightly; but the moving +groups, the imported bell-boys, the tesselated floors, frescoed ceiling +and plush-covered furniture--these bit deeply. Could this be South +Tredegar, the place that had hitherto figured chiefly to him as +"court-day" town and the residence of his preacher uncle? It seemed +hugely incredible. + +After the conference with the iron buyer they crossed the street to the +railway station; and again Thomas Jefferson was foot-loose while his +father was closeted with some one in the manager's office. + +An express train, with hissing air-brakes, Solomon-magnificent sleeping +cars, and a locomotive large enough to swallow whole the small affair +that used to bring the once-a-day train from Atlanta, had just backed +in, and the boy took its royal measure with eager and curious eyes, +walking slowly up one side of it and down the other. + +At the rear of the string of Pullmans was a private car, with a deep +observation platform, much polished brass railing, and sundry other +luxurious appointments, apparent even to the eye of unsophistication. +Thomas Jefferson spelled the name in the medallion, "Psyche,"--spelled +it without trying to pronounce it--and then turned his attention to the +people who were descending the rubber-carpeted steps and grouping +themselves under the direction of a tall man who reminded Thomas +Jefferson of his Uncle Silas with an indescribable something left out of +the face. + +"As I was about to say, General, this station building is one of the +relics. You mustn't judge South Tredegar--our new South Tredegar--by +this. Eh?--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Vanadam? Oh, the hotel? It is just +across the street, and a very good house; remarkably good, indeed, all +things considered. In fact, we're quite proud of the Marlboro." + +One of the younger women smiled. + +"How enthusiastic you are, Mr. Parley. I thought we had outgrown all +that--we moderns." + +"But, my dear Miss Elleroy, if you could know what we have to be +enthusiastic about down here! Why, these mountains we've been passing +through for the last six hours are simply so many vast treasure-houses; +coal at the top, iron at the bottom, and enough of both to keep the +world's industries going for ages! There's millions in them!" + +Thomas Jefferson overheard without understanding, but his eyes served a +better purpose. Away back in the line of the Scottish Gordons there +must have been an ancestor with the seer's gift of insight, and some +drop or two of his blood had come down to this sober-faced country boy +searching the faces of the excursionists for his cue of fellowship or +antipathy. + +For the sweet-voiced young woman called Miss Elleroy there was love at +first sight. For a severe, be-silked Mrs. Vanadam there was awe. For the +portly General with mutton-chop whiskers, overlooking eyes and the air +of a dictator, there was awe, also, not unmingled with envy. For the +tall man in the frock-coat, whose face reminded him of his Uncle Silas, +there had been shrinking antagonism at the first glance--which keen +first impression was presently dulled and all but effaced by the +enthusiasm, the suave tongue, and the benignant manner. Which proves +that insight, like the film of a recording camera, should have the dark +shutter snapped on it if the picture is to be preserved. + +Thomas Jefferson made way when the party, marshaled by the enthusiast, +prepared for its descent on the Marlboro. Afterward, the royalties +having departed and a good-natured porter giving him leave, he was at +liberty to examine the wheeled palace at near-hand, and even to climb +into the vestibule for a peep inside. + +Therewith, castles in the air began to rear themselves, tower on wall. +Here was the very sky-reaching summit of all things desirable: to have +one's own brass-bound hotel on wheels; to come and go at will; to give +curt orders to a respectful and uniformed porter, as the awe-inspiring +gentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers had done. + +Time was when Thomas Jefferson's ideals ran quite otherwise: to a lodge +in some vast wilderness, like the rock-strewn slopes of high Lebanon; to +the company of the birds and trees, of the wide heavens and the shy wild +creatures of the forest. But it is only the fool or the weakling who may +not reconsider. + +Notwithstanding, when the day of revelations was come to an end, and the +ambling horse was inching the ancient buggy up the homeward road, the +boy found himself turning his back on the wonderful new world with +something of the same blessed sense of relief as that which he had +experienced in former home-goings from South Tredegar, the commonplace. + +At the highest point on the hunched shoulder of the mountain Thomas +Jefferson twisted himself in the buggy seat for a final backward look +into the valley of new marvels. The summer day was graying to its +twilight, and a light haze was stealing out of the wooded ravines and +across from the river. From the tall chimneys of a rolling-mill a dense +column of smoke was ascending, and at the psychological moment the slag +flare from an iron-furnace changed the overhanging cloud into a fiery +aegis. + +Having no symbolism save that of Holy Writ, Thomas Jefferson's mind +seized instantly on the figure, building far better than it knew. It was +a new Exodus, with its pillar of cloud by day and its pillar of fire by +night. And its Moses--though this, we may suppose, was beyond a boy's +imaging--was the frenzied, ruthless spirit of commercialism, named +otherwise, by the multitude, Modern Progress. + + + + +V + +THE DABNEYS OF DEER TRACE + + +If you have never had the pleasure of meeting a Southern gentleman of +the patriarchal school, I despair of bringing you well acquainted with +Major Caspar Dabney until you have summered and wintered him. But the +Dabneys of Deer Trace--this was the old name of the estate, and it +obtains to this day among the Paradise Valley folk--figure so largely in +Thomas Jefferson's boyhood and youth as to be well-nigh elemental in +these retrospective glimpses. + +To know the Major even a little, you should not refer him to any of the +accepted types, like Colonel Carter, of Cartersville, or that other +colonel who has made Kentucky famous; this though I am compelled to +write it down that Major Caspar wore the soft felt hat and the +full-skirted Prince Albert coat, without which no reputable Southern +gentleman ever appears in the pages of fiction. But if you will ignore +these concessions to the conventional, and picture a man of heroic +proportions, straight as an arrow in spite of his sixty-eight years, +full-faced, well-preserved, with a massive jaw, keen eyes that have lost +none of their lightnings, and huge white mustaches curling upward +militantly at the ends you will have the Major's outward presentment. + +Notwithstanding, this gives no adequate hint of the contradictory inner +man. By turns the most lovingly kind and the most violent, the most +generously magnanimous and the most vindictive of the unreconstructed +minority, Caspar Dabney was rarely to be taken for granted, even by +those who knew him best. Of course, Ardea adored him; but Ardea was his +grandchild, and she was wont to protest that she never could see the +contradictions, for the reason that she was herself a Dabney. + +It was about the time when Thomas Jefferson was beginning to reconsider +his ideals, with a leaning toward brass-bound palaces on wheels and +dictatorial authority over uniformed lackeys and other of his fellow +creatures, that fate dealt the Major its final stab and prepared to pour +wine and oil into the wound--though of the balm-pouring, none could +guess at the moment of wounding. It was not in Caspar Dabney to be +patient under a blow, and for a time his ragings threatened to shake +even Mammy Juliet's loyalty--than which nothing more convincing can be +said. + +"'Fo' Gawd, Mistuh Scipio," she would say, when the master had sworn +volcanically at her for the fifth time in the course of one forenoon, +"I'se jus' erbout wo'ed out! I done been knowin' Mawstuh Caspah ebber +sence I was Ol' Mistis's tiah-'ooman--dat's what she call me in de +plantashum days--an' I ain't nev' seen him so fractious ez he been sence +dat letter come tellin' him come get dat po' li'l gal-child o' Mawstuh +Louis's. Seems lak he jus' gwine r'ar round twel he hu't somebody!" + +Scipio, the Major's body-servant, had grown gray in the Dabney service, +and he was well used to the master's storm periods. + +"Doan' you trouble yo'se'f none erbout dat, Mis' Juliet. Mawstuh Majah +tekkin' hit mighty hawd 'cause Mawstuh Louis done daid. But bimeby you +gwine see him climm on his hawss an' ride up yondeh to whah de big +steamboats comes in an' fotch dat li'l gal-child home; an' den: +uck--uh-h! look out, niggahs! dar ain't gwine be nuttin' on de top side +dishyer yearth good ernough for li'l Missy. You watch what I done tol' +you erbout dat, now!" + +Scipio's prophecy, or as much of it as related to the bringing of the +orphaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor, wrought itself out speedily, as a +matter of course, though there was a vow to be broken by the necessary +journey to the North. At the close of the war, Captain Louis, the +Major's only son, had become, like many another hot-hearted young +Confederate, a self-expatriated exile. On the eve of his departure for +France he had married the Virginia maiden who had nursed him alive after +Chancellorsville. Major Caspar had given the bride away,--the war had +spared no kinsman of hers to stand in this breach,--and when the +God-speeds were said, had himself turned back to the weed-grown fields +of Deer Trace Manor, embittered and hostile, swearing never to set foot +outside of his home acres again while the Union should stand. + +For more than twenty years he kept this vow almost literally. A few of +the older negroes, a mere handful of the six score slaves of the old +patriarchal days, cast in their lot with their former master, and with +these the Major made shift thriftily, farming a little, stockraising a +little, and, unlike most of the war-broken plantation owners, clinging +tenaciously to every rood of land covered by the original Dabney +title-deeds. + +In this cenobitic interval, if you wanted a Dabney colt or a Dabney cow, +you went, or sent, to Deer Trace Manor on your own initiative, and you, +or your deputy, never met the Major: your business was transacted with +lean, lantern-jawed Japheth Pettigrass, the Major's stock-and-farm +foreman. And although the Dabney stock was pedigreed, you kept your wits +about you; else Pettigrass got much the better of you in the trade, like +the shrewd, calculating Alabama Yankee that he was. + +Ardea was born in Paris in the twelfth year of the exile; and the +Virginian mother, pining always for the home land, died in the fifteenth +year. Afterward, Captain Louis fought a long-drawn, losing battle, +figuring bravely in his infrequent letters to his father as a rising +miniature painter; figuring otherwise to the students of the Latin +Quarter as "_ce pauvre Monsieur D'Aubigne_;" leading his little girl +back and forth between his lodgings and the studio where he painted +pictures that nobody would buy, and eking out a miserable existence by +giving lessons in English when he was happy enough to find a pupil. + +The brave letters imposed on the Major, as they were meant to do; and +Ardea, the loyal, happening on one of them in her first Deer Trace +summer, read it through with childish sobs and never thereafter opened +her lips on the story of those distressful Paris days. Later she +understood her father's motive better: how he would not be a charge on +an old man rich in nothing but ruin; and the memory of the pinched +childhood became a thing sacred. + +How the Major, a second Rip Van Winkle, found his way to New York, and +to the pier of the incoming French Line steamer, must always remain a +mystery. But he was there, with the fierce old eyes quenched and +swimming and the passionate Dabney lips trembling strangely under the +great mustaches, when the black-frocked little waif from the Old World +ran down the landing stage and into his arms. Small wonder that they +clung to each other, these two at the further extremes of three +generations; or that the child opened a door in the heart of the fierce +old partizan which was locked and doubly barred against all others. + +As may be imagined, the Major got away from Yankeeland with his charge +as soon as a train could be made to serve; and he was grim and +forbidding to all and sundry until the Cumberland Mountains had +displaced the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge on the western horizon. +Indeed, the grimness,--to all save Ardea,--persisted quite to and +through the transformed and transforming city at the eastern foot of +Lebanon. Major Caspar was not in tune with the bravura of modern +progress, and if he had been, his hatred of Northern importations of +whatever nature would have made and kept him hostile. + +But when the ancient carriage, with Scipio and Ardea's one small steamer +trunk on the box, had topped the shrugged shoulder of Lebanon, and that +view which we have seen from the summit of Thomas Jefferson's high rock +among the cedars opened out before the eyes of the wondering child, the +Major grew eloquent. + +"Look youh fill, my deah child; thah it lies--God's country, and youh's +and mine; the fines', the most inspiring, the most beautiful land the +sun eveh shone on! And whilst you are givin' praise to youh Makeh for +creatin' such a Gyarden of Eden, don't forget to thank him on youh +bended knees for not putting anything oveh yondeh in ouh home lot to +tempt these house-buildin', money-makin', schemin' Yankees that are +swarming again oveh the land like anotheh plague of Egyptian locus'es." + +"These--Yankees?" queried Ardea. In his later years the exiled Captain +Louis had remembered only that he was an American, and his child knew no +North nor South. + +The Major did not explain. Not that there were any compunctions of +conscience concerning the planting of the seed of sectionalism in this +virgin soil, quite the contrary. He abstained because he made sure that +time, and the Dabney blood, would do it better. + +So he talked to the small one of safely prehistoric things, showing her +the high mountain battle-field where John Sevier had broken the power of +the savage Chickamaugas, and, as the carriage rolled down toward the +head of Paradise, the tract of land where the first Dabney had sent his +ax-men to blaze the trees for his lordly boundaries. + +It was all new and very strange to a child whose only outlook on life +had been urban and banal. She had never seen a mountain, and nothing +more nearly approaching a forest than the parked groves of the Bois de +Boulogne. Would it be permitted that she should sometimes walk in the +woods of the first Dabney, she asked, with the quaint French twisting +of the phrases that she was never able fully to overcome. + +It would certainly be permitted; more, the Major would make her a deed +to as many of the forest acres as she would care to include in her +promenade. By which we see that the second part of Unc' Scipio's +prophecy was finding its fulfilment in the beginning. + +How the French-born child fitted into the haphazard household at Deer +Trace Manor, with what struggles she came through the inevitable attack +of homesickness, and how Mammy Juliet and every one else petted and +indulged her, are matters which need not be dwelt on. But we shall +gladly believe that she was too sensible, even at the early and tender +age of ten, to be easily spoiled. + +Many foolish things have been said and written about the wax-like +quality of a child's mind; how each new impression effaces the old, and +how character in permanence is not to be looked for until the bones have +stopped growing. Yet who has not known criminals at twelve, and saints +and angels, and wise men and women--in fine, the entire gamut of +humanity--in short frocks or knee-breeches? + +Ardea, child of adversity and the Paris ateliers, brought one lasting +memory up out of those early Deer Trace Manor years: she was always +immeasurably older than such infants as Mammy Juliet and Uncle Scipio. +And this also she remembered: that when these and all the others, +including her grandfather and Japheth Pettigrass, were busily leveling +all the barriers of restraint for her, she had built some of her own and +set herself the task of living within them. + +I am sure she began to realize, almost at the first, that she must rise +superior to the Dabney weakness, which, as exemplified by the Major, was +ungoverned, and perhaps ungovernable, temper. At all events, she never +forgot a summer day soon after her arrival when she first saw her +grandfather transformed into a frenzied madman. + +He was sitting on the wide portico, smoking his long-stemmed pipe and +directing Japheth Pettigrass, who was training the great crimson-rambler +rose that ran well up to the eaves. Ardea, herself, was on the lawn, +playing with her grandfather's latest gift, a huge, solemn-eyed Great +Dane, so she did not see the man who had dismounted at the gate and +walked up the driveway until he was handing his card to her grandfather. + +When she did see him, she looked twice at him; not because he was trigly +clad in brown duck and tightly-buttoned service leggings, but because he +wore his beard trimmed to a point, after the manner of the students in +the Latin Quarter, and so was reminiscent of things freshly forsaken. + +She had succeeded in making the Great Dane carry her on his back quite +all the way around the circular coleus bed when the explosion took +place. There was a startling thunderclap of fierce words from the +portico, and she slipped from the dog's back and stared wide-eyed. Her +grandfather was on his feet, towering above the visitor as if he were +about to fall on and crush him. + +"Bring youh damned Yankee railroad through my fields and pastchuhs, suh? +Foul the pure, God-given ai-ah of this peaceful Gyarden of Eden with +youh dust-flingin', smoke-pot locomotives? Not a rod, suh! not a foot +or an inch oveh the Dabney lands! Do I make it plain to you, suh?" + +"But Major Dabney--one moment; this is purely a matter of business; +there is nothing personal about it. Our company is able and willing to +pay liberally for its right of way; and you must remember that the +coming of the railroad will treble and quadruple your land values. I am +only asking you to consider the matter in a business way, and to name +your own price." + +Thus the smooth-spoken young locating engineer in brown duck, serving as +plowman for his company. But there be tough old roots in some soils, +roots stout enough to snap the colter of the commercializing plow,--as, +for example, in Paradise Valley, owned, in broken areas, principally by +an unreconciled Major Dabney. + +"Not anotheh word, or by Heaven, suh, you'll make me lose my tempah! You +add insult to injury, suh, when you offeh me youh contemptible Yankee +gold. When I desiah to sell my birthright for youh beggahly mess of +pottage, I'll send a black boy in town to infawm you, suh!" + +It is conceivable that the locating engineer of the Great Southwestern +Railway Company was younger than he looked; or, at all events, that his +experience hitherto had not brought him in contact with fire-eating +gentlemen of the old school. Else he would hardly have said what he did. + +"Of course, it is optional with you, Major Dabney, whether you sell us +our right of way peaceably or compel us to acquire it by condemnation +proceedings in the courts. As for the rest--is it possible that you +don't know the war is over?" + +With a roar like that of a maddened lion the Major bowed himself, +caught his man in a mighty wrestler's grip and flung him broadcast into +the coleus bed. The words that went with the fierce attack made Ardea +crouch and shiver and take refuge behind the great dog. Japheth +Pettigrass jumped down from his step-ladder and went to help the +engineer out of the flower bed. The Major had sworn himself to a stand, +but the fine old face was a terrifying mask of passion. + +"The old firebrand!" the engineer was muttering under his breath when +Pettigrass reached him; but the foreman cut him short. + +"You got mighty little sense, looks like, to me. Stove up any?" + +"Nothing to hurt, I guess." + +"Well, your hawss is waitin' for ye down yonder at the gate, and I don't +b'lieve the Major is allowin' to ask ye to stay to supper." + +The railroad man scowled and recovered his dignity, or some portion of +it. + +"You're a hospitable lot," he said, moving off toward the driveway. "You +can tell the old maniac he'll hear from us later." + +Pettigrass stooped with his back to the portico and patted the dog. + +"Don't you look so shuck up, little one," he whispered reassuringly to +Ardea. "There ain't nothin' goin' to happen, worse than has happened, I +reckon." But Ardea was mute. + +When the engineer had mounted and ridden away down the pike, the foreman +straightened himself and faced about. The Major had dropped into his big +arm-chair and was trying to relight his pipe. But his hands shook and +the match went out. + +Pettigrass moved nearer and spoke so that the child should not hear. "If +you run me off the place the nex' minute, I'm goin' to tell you you ort +to be tolerably 'shamed of yourse'f, Maje' Dabney. That po' little gal +is scared out of a year's growin', right now." + +"I know, Japheth; I know. I'm a damned old heathen! For, insultin' as he +was, the man was for the time bein' my guest, suh--my guest!" + +"I'm talkin' about the little one--not that railroader. So far as I +know, he earned what he got. I allowed they'd make some sort of a swap +with you, so I didn't say anything when they was layin' out their lines +thoo' the hawss-lot and across the lower corn-field this mornin'--easy, +now; no more r'arin' and t'arin' with that thar little gal not a-knowin' +which side o' the earth's goin' to cave in next!" + +The Major dropped his pipe, laid fast hold of the arms of his chair, and +breathed hard. + +"Laid out _theyuh_ lines--across _my_ prope'ty? Japheth, faveh me by +riding down to the furnace and askin' Caleb Gordon if he will do me the +honor to come up heah--this evenin', if he can. I--I--it's twenty yeahs +and mo' since I've troubled the law cou'ts of ouh po', Yankee-ridden +country with any affai-ah of mine; and now--well, I don't know--I don't +know," with a despondent shake of the leonine head. + +After Pettigrass had gone on his errand the Major rose and went +unsteadily into the house. Then, and not till then, Ardea got up on her +knees and put her arms around the neck of the Great Dane. + +"O, Hector!" she whispered; "me, I am Dabney, too! Once the gamins +killed a poor little cat of mine; and I forgot God--the good God--and +said wicked things; and I could have torn them into little, little +pieces! But we--we shall be very good and patient after this, won't we, +Hector--you and me--no, you and _I_? What is it when you lick my face +that way? Does it mean that you understand?" + + + + +VI + +BLUE BLOOD AND RED + + +In a world full of puzzling questions for Thomas Jefferson, one of the +chief clustering points of the persistent "whys" was Major Dabney's +attitude, as a Man of Sin, and as the natural overlord of Paradise +Valley. + +That the Major was a Man of Sin there could be no manner of doubt. +During the revival he had been frequently and pointedly prayed for by +that name, and the groans from the Amen corner were conclusively +damning. Just what the distinction was between a Man of Sin and a +sinner--spelled with a small "s"--was something which Thomas Jefferson +could never quite determine; but the desire to find out made him spy on +Major Dabney at odd moments when the spying could be done safely and +with a clear field for retreat in the event of the Major's catching him +at it. + +Thus far the spying had been barren of results--of that kind which do +not have to be undone and made over to fit in with other things. Once, +Thomas Jefferson had been picking blackberries behind the wall of his +father's infield when the Major and Squire Bates had met on the pike. +There was some talk of the new railroad; and when the Squire allowed +that it was certain to come through Paradise, the Major had taken the +name of God in vain in a way that suggested the fiery blast roaring +from the furnace lip after the iron was out. + +This was one of the results. But on reflection, Thomas Jefferson decided +that this could not be The Sin. Profane swearing--that was what the +Sunday-school lesson-leaf called it--was doubtless a mortal sin in a +believer; was not he, Thomas Jefferson, finding the heavens as brass and +the earth a place of fear and trembling because of that word to Nan +Bryerson? But in other people--well, he had heard his father swear once, +when one of the negroes at the furnace had opened the sand at the end of +the sow and let the stream of molten iron run out into the creek. + +The charge of profanity being tried and found wanting in the Major's +case, there remained that of violence. One day, Tike Bryerson--Nan's +father and the man who had tried to kill his Uncle Silas in the revival +meeting--was beating his horses because they would not take the water at +the lower ford. Tike had been stilling more pine-top whisky, and had +been to town with some jugs hidden under the cornstalks in his +wagon-bed. When he did that, he always came back with his eyes red like +a squirrel's, and everybody gave him all the road. + +But this time the Major had happened along, and when Tike would not stop +beating the horses for a shouted cursing-out from the bank, the Major +had spurred his Hambletonian into the creek and knocked Tike winding. +More than that, he had made him lead his team out of the ford and go +back to the bridge crossing. + +Being himself committed to the theory of turning the other cheek, Thomas +Jefferson could not question the acute sinfulness of all this; yet it +did not sufficiently account for the Major as a Man of Sin. Had not +Peter, stirred, no doubt, by some such generous rage as the Major's, +snatched out his sword and smitten off a man's ear? + +In the other field, that of overlordship, the subtleties were still more +elusive. That the negroes, many of whom were the sons and daughters of +the Major's former slaves, should pass the old-time "Mawstuh" on the +pike with uncovered heads and respectful heel-scrapings, was a matter of +course. Thomas Jefferson was white, free, and Southern born. But why his +own father and mother should betray something of the same deference was +not so readily apparent. + +On rare occasions the Major, riding to or from the cross-roads +post-office in Hargis's store, would rein in his horse at the Gordon +gate and ask for a drink of water from the Gordon well. At such times +Thomas Jefferson remarked that his mother always hastened to serve the +Major with her own hands; this notwithstanding her own and Uncle Silas's +oft-repeated asseveration touching the Major's unenviable preeminence as +a Man of Sin. Also, he remarked that the Major's manner at such moments +was a thing to dazzle the eye, like the reflection of the summer sun on +the surface of burnished metal. But beneath the polished exterior, the +groping perceptions of the boy would touch a thing repellent; a thing to +stir a slow current of resentment in his blood. + +It was Thomas Jefferson's first collision with the law of caste; a law +Draconian in the Old South. Before the war, when Deer Trace Manor had +been a seigniory with its six score black thralls, there had been no +visiting between the great house on the inner knoll and the overgrown +log homestead at the iron furnace. Quarrel there was none, nor any +shadow of enmity; but the Dabneys were lords of the soil, and the +Gordons were craftsmen. + +Even in war the distinction was maintained. The Dabneys, father and son, +were officers, having their commissions at the enrolment; while Caleb +Gordon, whose name headed the list of the Paradise volunteers, began and +ended a private in the ranks. + +In the years of heart-hardenings which followed, a breach was opened, +narrow at first, and never very deep, but wide enough to serve. Caleb +Gordon had accepted defeat openly and honestly, and for this the +unreconstructed Major had never fully forgiven him. It was an added +proof that there was no redeeming drop of the _sang azure_ in the Gordon +veins--and Major Caspar was as scrupulously polite to Caleb Gordon's +wife as he would have been, and was, to the helpmate of Tike Bryerson, +mountaineer and distiller of illicit whisky. + +Thomas Jefferson was vaguely indignant when Pettigrass came to ask his +father to go forthwith to the manor-house. In the mouth of the foreman +the invitation took on something of the flavor of a command. Besides, +since the Major's return from New York, Thomas Jefferson had a grudge +against him of a purely private and personal nature. + +None the less, he was eager for news when his father came back, and +though he got it only from overhearing the answer to his mother's +question, it was satisfyingly thrilling. + +"It's mighty near as we talked, Martha. The Major lumps the railroad in +with all the other improvements, calls 'em Yankee, and h'ists his +battle-flag. The engineer, that smart young fellow with the peaked +whiskers and the eye-glasses, went to see him this evenin' about the +right of way down the valley, and got himself slung off the porch of the +great house into a posy bed." + +"There is going to be trouble, Caleb; now you mark my words. You mustn't +mix up in it." + +"I don't allow to, if I can he'p it. The railroad's goin' to be a mighty +good thing for us if I can get Mr. Downing to put in a side-track for +the furnace." + +Following this there were other conferences, the Major unbending +sufficiently to come and sit on the Gordon porch in the cool of the +evening. The iron-master, as one still in touch with the moving world, +gave good advice. Failing to buy, the railroad company might possibly +seek to bully a right of way through the valley. But in that case, there +would certainly be redress in the courts for the property owners. In the +meantime, nothing would be gained by making the contest a personal fight +on individuals. + +So counseled Caleb Gordon, sure, always, of his own standing-ground in +any conflict. But from the last of the conferences the Major had ridden +home through the fields; and Thomas Jefferson, with an alert eye for +windstraws of conduct, had seen him dismount now and then to pull up and +fling away the locating stakes driven by the railroad engineers. + +In such a contention, in an age wholly given over to progress, there +could be, one would say, no possible doubt of the outcome. + +Giving the Major a second and a third chance to refuse to grant an +easement, the railroad company pushed its grading and track-laying +around the mountain and up to the stone wall marking the Dabney +boundary, quietly accumulated the necessary material, and on a summer +Sunday morning--Sunday by preference because no restraining writ could +be served for at least twenty-four hours--a construction train, black +with laborers, whisked around the nose of the mountain and dropped +gently down the grade to the temporary end of track. + +It was Thomas Jefferson who gave the alarm. Little Zoar, unable to +support a settled pastor, was closed for the summer, but Martha Gordon +kept the fire spiritual alight by teaching her son at home. One of the +boy's Sunday privileges, earned by a faultless recitation of a +prescribed number of Bible verses, was forest freedom for the remainder +of the forenoon. It was while he was in the midst of the Beatitudes that +he heard the low rumble of the coming train, and it was only by +resolutely ignoring the sense of hearing that he was enabled to get +through, letter-perfect. + +"'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you,'" he +chanted monotonously, with roving eyes bent on finding his cap with the +loss of the fewest possible seconds--"'and shall say all manner of evil +against you falsely, for my sake,'--and that's all." And he was off like +a shot. + +"Mind, now, Thomas Jefferson; you are not to go near that railroad!" his +mother called to him as he raced down the path to the gate. + +Oh, no; he would not go near the railroad! He would only run up the pike +and cut across through the Dabney pasture to see if the train were +really there. + +It was there, as he could tell by the noise of hissing steam when the +cross-cut was reached. But the parked wooding of the pasture still +screened it. How near could he go without being "near" in the +transgressing sense of the word? There was only one way of finding +out--to keep on going until his conscience pricked sharply enough to +stop him. It was a great convenience, Thomas Jefferson's conscience. As +long as it kept quiet he could be reasonably sure there was no sin in +sight. Yet he had to confess that it was not always above playing mean +tricks; as that of sleeping like a log till after the fact, and then +rising up to stab him till the blood ran. + +He was half-way across the pasture when the crash of a falling tree +stopped him in mid-rush. And in the vista opened by the felled tree he +saw a sight to make him turn and race homeward faster than he had come. +The invaders, hundreds strong, had torn down the boundary wall and the +earth for the advancing embankment was flying from uncounted shovels. + +Caleb Gordon was at work in the blacksmith shop, Sunday-repairing while +the furnace was cool, when Thomas Jefferson came flying with his news. +The iron-master dropped his hammer and cast aside the leather apron. + +"You hear that, Buck?" he said, frowning across the anvil at his helper, +a white man and the foreman of the pouring floor. + +The helper nodded, being a man of as few words as the master. + +"Well, I reckon we-all hain't got any call to stand by and see them +highflyers ride it roughshod over Major Dabney thataway," said Gordon +briefly. "Go down to the shanties and hustle out the day shift. Get +Turk and Hardaway and every white man you can lay hands on, and all the +guns you can find. And send one o' the black boys up the hill to tell +the Major. Like as not, he ain't up yet." + +Helgerson hastened away to obey his orders, and Caleb Gordon went out to +the foundry scrap yard. In the heap of broken metal lay an old cast-iron +field-piece, a relic of the battle which had one day raged hotly on the +hillside across the creek. A hundred times the iron-master had been on +the point of breaking it up for re-melting, and as often the old +artilleryman in him had stayed his hand. + +Now it was quickly hoisted in the crane shackle,--Thomas Jefferson +sweating manfully at the crab crank,--clamped on the axle of a pair of +wagon wheels, cleaned, swabbed, loaded with quarry blasting powder and +pieces of broken iron to serve for grape, and trundled out on the pike +at the heels of the ore team. + +By this time Helgerson had come up with the furnace men, a motley crew +in all stages of Sunday-morning dishevelment, and armed only as a mob +may arm itself at a moment's notice. Caleb, the veteran, looked the +squad over with a slow smile gathering the wrinkles at the corners of +his eyes. + +"You boys'll have to make up in f'erceness what-all you're lacking in +soldier-looks," he observed mildly. Then he gave the word of command to +Helgerson. "Take the gun and put out for the major's hawss-lot. I'll be +along as soon as I can saddle the mare." + +Thomas Jefferson went with his father to the stable and helped silently +with the saddling. Afterward he held the mare, gentling her in +suppressed excitement while his father went into the house for his +rifle. + +Martha Gordon met her husband at the door. She had seen the volunteer +gun crew filing past on the pike. + +"What is it, Caleb?" she asked anxiously. + +He made no attempt to deceive her. + +"The railroaders are allowin' to take what the Major wouldn't sell +'em--the right of way through his land down the valley. Buddy brought +the word." + +"Well?" she said, love and fear hardening her heart. "The railroad would +be a good thing for us--for the furnace. You know you said it would." + +He shook his head slowly. + +"I reckon we mustn't look at it thataway, Martha. I'm going to stand by +my neighbor, like I'd expect him to stand by me. Let me get my gun; the +boys'll be there ahead o' me, and they won't know what to do." + +"Caleb! There will be bloodshed; and you remember what the Word says: +'whoso sheddeth man's blood....' And on the Lord's Day, too!" + +"I know. But ain't it somewhere in the same Good Book that it says +there's a time for peace and a time to make war? And then that there +passage about lovin' your neighbor. Don't hender me, little woman. There +ain't goin' to be no blood shed--onless them bushwhackers are a mighty +sight f'ercer for it than what I think they are." + +She let him go without further protest, not because he had convinced +her, but because she had long since come to know this man, who, making +her lightest wish his law in most things, could be as inflexible as the +chilled iron of the pouring floor at the call of loyalty to his own +standard of right and wrong. But when he passed down the path to the +gate she knelt on the door-stone and covered her face with her hands. + +Gordon gathered the slack of the reins on the neck of the mare and put a +leg over the saddle. + +"That'll do, Buddy," he said. "Run along in to your mammy, now." + +But Thomas Jefferson caught again at the bridle and held on, choking. + +"O pappy!--take me with you! I--I'll die if you don't take me with you!" + +Who can tell what Caleb Gordon saw in his son's eyes when he bent to +loosen the grip of the small brown hand on the rein? Was it some +sympathetic reincarnation of his own militant soul striving to break its +bonds? Without a word he bent lower and swung the boy up to a seat +behind him. "Hold on tight, Buddy," he cautioned. "I'll have to run the +mare some to catch up with the boys." + +And the mother? She was still kneeling on the door-stone, but the burden +of her prayer was not now for Caleb Gordon. "O Lord, have mercy on my +boy! Thou knowest how, because of my disobedience, he has the fierce +fighting blood and the stubborn unbelief of all the Gordons to contend +with: save him alive and make him a man of peace and a man of faith, I +beseech Thee, and let not the unbelief of the father or the +unfaithfulness of the mother be visited on the son!" + +When the one-piece battery dashed at a clumsy gallop through the open +gate of the Dabney pasture and swung with a sharp turn into the vista of +felled trees, Thomas Jefferson beheld a thing to set his heritage of +soldier blood dancing through his veins. Standing fair in the midst of +the ax-and-shovel havoc and clearing a wide circle to right and left +with the sweep of his old service cavalry saber, was the Major, +coatless, hatless, cursing the invaders with mighty and corrosive +soldier oaths, and crying them to come on, the unnumbered host of them +against one man. + +Opposed to him the men of the construction force, generaled by the young +engineer in brown duck and buttoned leggings, were deploying cautiously +to surround him. Gordon spoke to his mare; and when he drew rein and +wheeled to shout to the gun crew, Thomas Jefferson heard the engineer's +low-toned order to the shovelers: "Be careful and don't hurt him, boys. +He's the old maniac who threw me off the veranda of his house. Two of +you take him behind, and--" + +The break came on the uprush of the unanticipated reinforcements. With +the battle readiness of a disciplined soldier, Caleb Gordon whipped from +the saddle and ran to help the gun crew slue the makeshift field-piece +into position. + +"Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "fall back on your front line and give +the artillery a chanst at 'em. I reckon a dose o' broken pot-iron'll +carry fu'ther than that saber o' yourn. Buddy, hunt me a punk match, +quick, will ye?" + +[Illustration: "Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "give the artillery a +chanst"] + +Thomas Jefferson ran to the nearest rotting log, but one of the negroes +was before him with a blazing pitch-pine splint. There was a respectful +recoil in the opposing ranks which presently became a somewhat panicky +surge to the rear. The shovelers, more than half of whom were negroes, +had not come out to be blown from a cannon's mouth by a grim-faced +veteran who was so palpably at home with the tools of his trade. + +"That's right: keep right on goin'!" yelled the iron-master, waving his +blazing slow-match dangerously near to the priming. "Keep it up, 'r by +the Lord that made ye--" + +There was no need to specify the alternative. For now the panic had +spread by its own contagion, and the invaders were fighting among +themselves for place on the flat-cars. And while yet the rear guard was +swarming upon the engine, hanging by toe-and hand-holds where it could, +the train was backed rapidly out of range. + +Caleb Gordon kept his pine splint alight until the echoes of the +engine's exhaust came faintly from the overhanging cliffs of the +mountain. + +"They've gone back to town, and I reckon the fire's plum' out for +to-day, Major," he drawled. "Buck and a few o' the boys 'll stay by the +gun, against their rallyin' later on, and you might as well go home to +your breakfast. Didn't bring your hawss, did ye? Take the mare, and +welcome. Buddy and me'll walk." + +But the Major would not mount, and so the two men walked together as far +as the manor-house gates, with Thomas Jefferson a pace in the rear, +leading the mare. + +It was no matter of wonder to him that his father and the Major marched +in solemn silence to the gate of parting. But the wonder came +tumultuously when the Major wheeled abruptly at the moment of +leave-taking and wrung his father's hand. + +"By God, suh, you are a right true-hearted gentleman, and my very good +friend, _Mistuh_ Gordon!" he said, with the manner of one who has been +carefully weighing the words beforehand. "If you had been given youh +just dues, suh, you'd have come home from F'ginia wearin' youh +shouldeh-straps." And then, with a little throat-clearing pause to come +between: "Damn it, suh; an own brotheh couldn't have done'mo'! I--I've +been misjudgin' you, Caleb, all these yeahs, and now I'm proud to shake +you by the hand and call you my friend. Yes, suh, I am that!" + +It was, in a manner not to be understood by the Northern alien, the +accolade of knighthood, and Caleb Gordon's toil-rounded shoulders +straightened visibly when he returned the hearty hand-grasp. And as for +Thomas Jefferson: in his heart gratified pride flapped its wings and +crowed lustily; and for the moment he was almost willing to bury that +private grudge he was holding against Major Dabney--almost, but not +quite. + + + + +VII + +THE PRAYER OF THE RIGHTEOUS + + +Having come thus far with Thomas Jefferson on the road to whatever goal +he will reach, it is high time we were looking a little more closely +into this matter of his grudge against Major Dabney. + +Primarily, it based itself upon the dominant quality in a masterful +character; namely, a desire to possess the earth and its fullness +without partnership encumbrances. + +From a time back of which memory refused to run, the woods and the +fields of Paradise Valley, the rampart hills and the backgrounding +mountain side, had belonged to Thomas Jefferson by the right of +discovery. The Bates boys and the Cantrells lived over in the great +valley of the Tennessee, and when they planned a fishing excursion up +Turkey Creek, they recognized Thomas Jefferson's suzerainty by +announcing that they were coming over to _his_ house. In like manner, +the Pendrys and the Lumpkins and the Hardwicks were scattered at +farm-width intervals down the pike, and the rampart hills marked the +boundary of their domain on that side. + +Now from possession which is recognized unquestioningly by one's +compeers to fancied possession in fee simple is but a step; and from +that to the putting up of "No Trespass" signs the interval can be read +only on a micrometer scale. Wherefore, Thomas Jefferson had developed a +huge disgust on hearing that Major Dabney was going to upset the natural +order of things by bringing his granddaughter to Deer Trace Manor. If +Ardea--the very name of her had a heathenish sound in his +Scripturally-trained ear--had been a boy, the matter would have +simplified itself. Thomas Jefferson had a sincere respect for his own +prowess, and a boy might have been mauled into subjection. But a girl! + +His lip curled stiffly at the thought of a girl, a town girl and +therefore a thing without legs, or at best with legs only half useful +and totally unfit for running or climbing trees, dividing the +sovereignty of the fields and the forest, the swimming-hole and the +perch pools in the creek, with him! She would do it, or try to do it. A +girl would not have any more sense than to come prying around into all +the quiet places to say, "This is my grandfather's land. What are _you_ +doing here?" + +At such thoughts as these a queer prickling sensation like a hot shiver +would run over him from neck to heel, and his eyes would gloom sullenly. +There would be another word to put with that; a word of his own +choosing. No matter if her grandfather, the terrifying Major, did own +the fields and the wood and the stream: God was greater than Major +Dabney, and had he not often heard his mother say on her knees that the +fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous availeth much? If it should +avail even a little, there would be no catastrophe, no disputed +sovereignty of the woods, the fields and the creek. + +It was in the middle of a sultry afternoon in the hotter half of +August, two weeks or such a matter after the Great Southwestern Railway +had given up the fight for Paradise Valley to run its line around the +encompassing hills, that Thomas Jefferson was cast alive into the pit of +burnings. + +He made sure he should always remember his latest glimpse of the +pleasant, homely earth. He was sitting idly on the porch step, letting +his gaze go adrift over the nearer green-clad hills to the purple deeps +of the western mountain, already steeped in shadow. The pike was +deserted, and the shrill hum of the house-flies played an insistent tune +in which the low-pitched boom of a bumblebee tumbling awkwardly among +the clover heads served for an intermittent bass. + +Suddenly into the hot silence came the quick _cloppity-clop_ of +galloping hoofs. Thomas Jefferson's heart was tender on that side of it +which was turned toward the dumb creatures, and his thought was +instantly pitiful and indignant. Who would be cruel enough to gallop a +horse in such weltering weather? + +The unspoken query had its answer when Major Dabney's fleet saddle +stallion thundered up to the gate in a white nimbus of dust, and the +Major flung himself from the saddle and called loudly for Mistress +Gordon. Thomas Jefferson sprang up hastily to forward the cry, fear +clutching at his heart; but the Major was before him in the wide passage +opening upon the porch. + +"My deah Mistress Gordon! We are in a world of trouble at the +manor-house! Little Ardea, my grand-daughteh, was taken sick last night, +and to-day she's out of huh head--think of it, _out of huh head!_ I'm +riding hotfoot for Doctah Williams, but Lord of Heaven! it'll be nigh +sundown befo' I can hope to get back with him. Could you, my deah madam, +faveh us--" + +Thomas Jefferson heard no more; would stay to hear no more. The forest, +always his refuge in time of trial, reached a long finger of scattering +oaks down to the opposite side of the creek, and thither he fled, cold +to the marrow of his bones, though the sun-heated stone coping of the +dam on which he crossed the stream went near to blistering his bare feet +as he ran. + +From the crotch of one of the oaks--his watch-tower in other periods of +stress--he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the +pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and +went in a smother of white dust, wheeling in front of the home gate and +pausing only long enough to take up his mother hastening to the rescue. + +After that he was alone with the hideous tumult of his thoughts. The +girl would die. He was as sure of it as if the heavens and the earth had +instantly become articulate to shout the terrible sentence. God had +taken him at his word! There would be no intruder to tell him that the +woods and the creek belonged to her grandfather. She would be dead; +slain by the breath of his mouth. And for all the years and years and +ages to come, he would be roasting and grilling in that place prepared +for the devil and his angels--and for murderers! + +In the acutest misery of it a trembling fit seized him and the oak +seemed to rock and sway as if to be rid of him. When the fit passed he +slid to the ground and flung himself face downward under the spreading +branches. The grass was cool to his face, but there was no moisture in +it, and he thought of Dives praying that Lazarus might come and put a +drop of water on his tongue. + +Then the torment took a new and more terrible form. Though he had never +been inside of the gray stone manor-house, his imagination transported +him thither; to the house and to a darkened room on the upper floor with +a bed in it, and in the bed a girl whose face he could not see. + +The girl was dying: the doctor had told his mother and the Major, and +they were all waiting. Thomas Jefferson had never seen any one die, only +a dog that Tike Bryerson had shot on one of his drunken home-goings. But +death was death, to a dog or to a girl; and vivid imagination supplied +the appalling details. Over and over again in pitiless minuteness the +heartbreaking scene was repeated: the little twitchings of the +bed-clothing, the tossing of the girl's arms in the last desperate +struggle for breath, his mother's low sobs, and the haggard face of the +old Major. + +Thomas Jefferson dug his fingers and toes into the grass and bit a +mouthful of it to stifle the cry wrung from him by the torturing +poignancy of it. Was there no way of escape? + +He turned over and sat up to try to think it out. Yes, there was a +way--the way which would be taken by the boy in the Sunday-school books. +He would say he was sorry, and would have his sins washed away, and +there would be rejoicing in Heaven over the one sinner who had repented. +Of course, the girl would die, just the same, and all the misery his sin +had caused would remain unchanged. But _he_ would escape. + +For one unworthy moment Thomas Jefferson was fiercely tempted. Then the +dogged Gordon blood reasserted itself. He had done the dreadful thing: +he had asked God to take this girl out of his way, and now he would +accept what he had coveted and would not try to sneak out of paying. It +comforted him a little to think that, after all, there must eventually +be some sort of end to the torment, away on in the eternities to come. +When he had suffered all he could suffer, not even God could make him +suffer any more. + +When he finally recrossed the creek on the dam head it was supper-time, +and his mother had returned. The misery had now settled into dumb +despair, both more and less agonizing than the acute remorse of the +afternoon. What he needed to know was told in his mother's answer to his +father's inquiry: "Yes; she is a very sick child. I'm going up again +after supper to stay as long as I'm needed. It's a judgment on the +Major; he has been setting the creature above the Creator." + +Thomas Jefferson knew well enough that the judgment was his, and not the +Major's; but he let his supper choke him in silence. Afterward, when his +mother had gone back to the house of anxiety and he was alone with his +father, there were some vague promptings toward confession and a cry for +human sympathy. What sealed his lips was the conviction that his father +would comfort him without understanding, just as his mother would +understand and condemn him. Early in the evening his father went back to +the furnace and his chance was lost. + +For four heart-searching days Thomas Jefferson lived and endured, +because living and enduring were the two unalterable conditions of the +brimstone pit to which he had consigned himself. During these days his +mother came and went, and prayed oftener than usual--not for the girl's +life, as Thomas Jefferson noticed with deep stirrings of bitterness, but +that the dispensation of Providence might inure to the lasting and +eternal benefit of an impenitent and idolatrous Major Dabney. + +Throughout these four days the sickening August heat remained unbroken; +but on the fifth the thunderheads began to gather and a fresh breeze +swept down from the slopes of the distant Cumberland; a wind smelling +sweetly of rain and full of cooling promise. + +On this fifth day, Thomas Jefferson, lying in wait at the gate of the +manor-house grounds, waylaid Doctor Williams coming out, and asked the +question which had hitherto had its doleful answer without the necessity +of asking. If the doctor had struck him with the buggy whip the shock +would not have been more real than that consequent on the snapping of +mental tension strings and the surging, strangling uprush of the tidal +wave of relief. + +"Little Ardea?" said the doctor. "Oh, she'll do well enough now, I hope. +The fever is broken and she's asleep." + +Thomas Jefferson shut the gate mechanically when the doctor had driven +out; but when there was nothing more to hold him, he scrambled over the +stone wall on the opposite side of the pike and ran for the hills like +one demented. + +The girl would live! Hell had yawned and cast him up once more on the +pleasant, homely earth; and now the gentle rain of penitence, which +could never water the dry places for a soul in torment, drenched him +like the real rain which was falling to slake the thirst of the parched +fields and the brittle-leaved, rustling forest. + +For a long time he lay on his face on the first bit of tree-sheltered +grass he had come to, caring nothing for the storm which was driving all +the wild creatures of the wood to cover. God had not been so pitiless, +after all. There was yet a balm in Gilead. + +And for the future? O just Heavens! how straitly and circumspectly he +would walk all the days of his life! Never again should Satan, going +about like a roaring lion, take him unawares. He would even learn to +love the girl, as one should love an enemy; and when she should come and +tell him that all the sacred places were hers by her grandfather's +right, he would smile reproachfully, like the boy being led forth to the +stake in the _Book of Martyrs_, and say-- + +But the time was not yet fully come for self-pityings; and when Thomas +Jefferson went home after the shower, not even the soggy chill of his +wet clothes could depress the spirit which had made good its footing on +the high mount of humility. + + + + +VIII + +THE BACKSLIDER + + +It was late in September before the dreaded invasion of the sacred +places, foreboded by Thomas Jefferson's prophetic soul, became one of +the things to be looked back on; and the interval had sufficed for +another change of heart, or, more correctly, for a descent to the valley +of things as they are from the top of that high mountain of spiritual +humility. + +Thomas Jefferson did not analyze the reactionary process. But the +milestones along the backward way were familiar. + +In a little while he found that he was once more able to say his prayers +at bedtime with the old glibness, and with the comfortable feeling that +he had done his whole duty if he remained on his knees for sixty full +ticks of the heirloom grandfather clock. It was an accomplishment on +which he prided himself, this knack of saying his prayers and counting +the clock ticks at the same time. Stub Helgerson, whose mother was a +Lutheran and said her prayers out of a book, could not do it. Thomas +Jefferson had asked him. + +A little farther along he came to the still more familiar milestone of +the doubtful questionings. Did God really trouble Himself about the +millions of things people asked Him to do? It seemed highly incredible, +not to say impossible, in the very nature of it. And if He did, would He +make one person sick for the sake of making another person sorry? These +questions were answerless, like so many of the others; but after the +perplexity had been pushed aside, the doubt remained. + +Coming down by such successive steps from the mount of penitent +thanksgivings, it was but a short time before he found himself back on +the old camping-ground of sullen resentment. + +When the girl got well enough to go about, she would find him out and +warn him off; or perhaps she might do even worse, and tag him. In either +case he should hate her, and there was a sort of ferocious joy in the +thought that she would doubtless be a long time getting well, and would +probably not be able to find him if he kept far enough out of her way. + +Acting on this wise conclusion, he carefully avoided the manor-house and +its neighborhood, making a wide circuit when he went fishing in the +upper pools. And once, when his father had sent him with a message to +the Major, he did violence to his own sense of exact obedience by +transferring the word at the house gate to Mammy Juliet's grandson, +Pete. + +But when one's evil star is in the ascendent, precautions are like the +vain strugglings of the fly in the web. The day of reckoning may be +postponed, but it will by no means be effaced from the calendar. One +purple and russet afternoon, when all the silent forest world was +steeped in the deep peace of early autumn, Thomas Jefferson was fishing +luxuriously in the most distant of the upper pools. There were three fat +perch gill-strung on a forked withe under the overhanging bank, and a +fourth was rising to the bait, when the peaceful stillness was rudely +rent by a crashing in the undergrowth, and a great dog, of a breed +hitherto unknown to Paradise, bounded into the little glade to stand +glaring at the fisherman, his teeth bared and his back hairs bristling. + +Now Thomas Jefferson in his thirteenth year was as well able to defend +himself as any clawed and toothed creature of the wood, and fear, the +fear of anything he could face and grapple with, was a thing unknown. +Propping his fishing pole so that no chance of a nibble might be lost in +the impending struggle, he got on his knees and picked out the exact +spot in the dog's neck where he would drive the bait knife home when +hostilities actual should begin. + +"Oh, please! Don't you hurt my dog!" said a rather weak little voice out +of the rearward void. + +But, gray eyes human, holding brown canine in an unwinking gaze: "You +come round here and call him off o' me." + +"He is not wishing to hurt you, or anybody," said the voice. "Down, +Hector!" + +The Great Dane passed from suspicious rigidity and threatening lip +twitchings to mighty and frivolous gambolings, and Thomas Jefferson got +up to give him room. A girl--_the_ girl, as some inner sense instantly +assured him--was trying to make the dog behave. So he had a chance to +look her over before the battle for sovereignty should begin. + +There was a little shock of disdainful surprise to go with the first +glance. Somehow he had been expecting something very different; +something on the order of the Queen of Sheba--done small, of course--as +that personage was pictured in the family Bible; a girl, proud and +scornful, and possibly wearing a silk dress and satin shoes. + +Instead, she was only a pale, tired baby in a brier-torn frock; a girl +whose bones showed brazenly at every angle, and whose only claim to a +second glance lay in her thick mop of reddish-brown hair and in a pair +of great, slate-blue eyes two sizes too large for the thin face. A +double conclusion came and sat in Thomas Jefferson's mind: she was +rather to be contemptuously pitied than feared; and as for looks--well, +she was not to be thought of in the same day with black-eyed Nan +Bryerson. + +When the dog was reduced to quietude, the small one repaid Thomas +Jefferson's stare with a level gaze out of the over-sized eyes. + +"Was it that you were afraid of Hector?" she asked. + +"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson, and the scorn was partly for her queer way +of speaking and partly for the foolishness of the question. "Huh! I +reckon you don't know who I am. I'd have killed your dog if he'd jumped +on me, maybe." + +"Me? I do know who you are. You are Thomas Gordon. Your mother took care +of me and prayed for me when I was sick. Hector is a--an extremely good +dog. He would not jump at you." + +"It's mighty lucky for him he didn't," bragged Thomas Jefferson, with a +very creditable imitation of his father's grim frown. Then he sat down +on the bank of the stream and busied himself with his fishing-tackle as +if he considered the incident closed. + +"What is it that you are trying to do?" asked Ardea, when the silence +had extended to the third worm impaled on the hook and promptly +abstracted therefrom by a wily sucker lying at the bottom of the pool. + +"I was fishin' some before you and your dog came along and scared all +the perch away," he said sourly. Then, turning suddenly on her: "Why +don't you go ahead and say it? Is it 'cause you're afeard to?" + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"I know what you're going to say; you are going to tell me this is your +grandfather's land and run me off. But I ain't aimin' to go till I'm +good and ready." + +She looked down on him without malice. + +"You are such a funny boy," she remarked, and there was something in her +way of saying it that made Thomas Jefferson feel little and infantile +and inferior, though he was sure there must be an immense age difference +in his favor. + +"Why?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I don't know; just because you are. If you knew French I could +explain it better that way." + +"I don't know anybody by that name, and I don't care," said Thomas +Jefferson doggedly; and went back to his fishing. + +Followed another interval of silence, in which two more worms were fed +to the insatiable sucker at the bottom of the pool. Then came the +volcanic outburst. + +"I think you are mean, mean!" she sobbed, with an angry stamp of her +foot. "I--I want to go ho-ome!" + +"Well, I reckon there ain't anybody holdin' you," said Thomas Jefferson +brutally. He was intent on fixing the sixth worm on the hook in such +fashion as permanently to discourage the bait thief, and was coming to +his own in the matter of self-possession with grateful facility. It was +going to be notably easy to bully her--another point of difference +between her and Nan Bryerson. + +"I know there isn't anybody holding me, but--but I can't find the way." + +That any one could be lost within an easy mile of the manor-house was +ridiculously incredible to Thomas Jefferson. Yet there was no telling, +in the case of a girl. + +"You want me to show you the way?" he asked, putting all the +ungraciousness he could muster into the query. + +"You might tell me, I should think! I've walked and walked!" + +"I reckon I'd better take you; you might get lost again," he said, with +gloomy sarcasm. Then he consumed all the time he could for the +methodical disposal of his fishing-tackle. It would be good for her to +learn that she must wait on his motions. + +She waited patiently, sitting on the ground with one arm around the neck +of the Great Dane; and when Thomas Jefferson stole a glance at her to +see how she was taking it, she looked so tired and thin and woebegone +that he almost let the better part of him get the upper hand. That made +him surlier than ever when he finally recovered his string of fish from +the stream and said: "Well, come on, if you're comin'." + +He told himself, hypocritically, that it was only to show her what +hardships she would have to face if she should try to tag him, that he +dragged her such a weary round over the hills and through the worst +brier patches and across and across the creek, doubling and circling +until the easy mile was spun out into three uncommonly difficult ones. +But at bottom the motive was purely wicked. In all the range of sentient +creatures there is none so innately and barbarously cruel as the human +boy-child; and this was the first time Thomas Jefferson had ever had a +helplessly pliable subject. + +The better she kept up, the more determined he became to break her down; +but at the very last, when she stumbled and fell in an old leaf bed and +cried for sheer weariness, he relented enough to say: "I reckon you'll +know better than to go projectin' round in the woods the next time. Come +on--we're 'most there, now." + +But Ardea's troubles were not yet at an end. She stopped crying and got +up to follow him blindly over more hills and through other brier +tangles; and when they finally emerged in the cleared lands, they were +still on the wrong side of the creek. + +"It's only about up to your chin; reckon you can wade it?" asked Thomas +Jefferson, in a sudden access of heart-hardening. But it softened him a +little to see her gather her torn frock and stumble down to the water's +edge without a word, and he added: "Hold on; maybe we can find a log, +somewhere." + +There was a foot log just around the next bend above, as he very well +knew, and thither he led the way. The dog made the crossing first, and +stood wagging his tail encouragingly on the bank of safety. Then Thomas +Jefferson passed his trembling victim out on the log. + +"You go first," he directed; "so 't I can catch you if you slip." + +For the first time she humbled herself to beg a boon. + +"Oh, you please go first, so I won't have to look down at the water!" + +"No; I'm coming behind--then I can catch you if you get dizzy and go to +fall," he said stubbornly. + +"Will you walk right up close, so I can know you are there?" + +Thomas Jefferson's smile was cruelly misleading, as were his words. "All +you'll have to do will be to reach your hand back and grab me," he +assured her; and thereupon she began to inch her way out over the +swirling pool. + +When he saw that she could by no possibility turn to look back, Thomas +Jefferson deliberately sat down on the bank to watch her. There had +never been anything in his life so tigerishly delightful as this game of +playing on the feelings and fears of the girl whose coming had spoiled +the solitudes. + +For the first few feet Ardea went steadily forward, keeping her eyes +fixed on the Great Dane sitting motionless at the farther end of the +bridge of peril. Then, suddenly the dog grew impatient and began to leap +and bark like a foolish puppy. It was too much for Ardea to have her +eye-anchor thus transformed into a dizzying whirlwind of gray monsters. +She reached backward for the reassuring hand: it was not there, and the +next instant the hungry pool rose up to engulf her. + +In all his years Thomas Jefferson had never had such a stab as that +which an instantly awakened conscience gave him when she slipped and +fell. Now he was her murderer, beyond any hope of future mercies. For a +moment the horror of it held him vise-like. Then the sight of the Great +Dane plunging to the rescue freed him. + +"Good dog!" he screamed, diving headlong from his own side of the pool; +and between them Ardea was dragged ashore, a limp little heap of +saturation, conscious, but with her teeth chattering and great, dark +circles around the big blue eyes. + +Thomas Jefferson's first word was masculinely selfish. + +"I'm awful sorry!" he stammered. "If you can't make out to forgive me, +I'm going to have a miser'ble time of it after I get home. God will whip +me worse for this than He did for the other." + +It was here, again, that she gave him the feeling that she was older +than he. + +"It will serve you quite right. Now you'd better get me home as quick as +ever you can. I expect I'll be sick again, after this." + +He held his peace and walked her as fast as he could across the fields +and out on the pike. But at the Dabney gates he paused. It was not in +human courage to face the Major under existing conditions. + +"I reckon you'll go and tell your gran'paw on me," he said hopelessly. + +She turned on him with anger ablaze. + +"Why should I not tell him? And I never want to see you or hear of you +again, you cruel, hateful boy!" + +Thomas Jefferson hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the +driveway, leaning heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached +the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded in +the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of +tyranny the lees are apt to be like the little book the Revelator +ate--sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the belly. + +That evening at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear +dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put +by his father. + +"Yes; the Major sent for me again this afternoon. That child is back in +bed again with a high fever. It seems she was out playing with that +great dog of hers and fell into the creek. I wanted to tell the Major he +is just tempting Providence, the way he makes over her and indulges her, +but I didn't dare to." + +And again Thomas Jefferson knew that he was the one who had tempted +Providence. + + + + +IX + +THE RACE TO THE SWIFT + + +From the grave and thoughtful vantage-ground of thirteen, Thomas +Jefferson could look back on the second illness of Ardea Dabney as the +closing incident of his childhood. + +The industrial changes which were then beginning, not only for the city +beyond the mountain, but for all the region round about, had rushed +swiftly on Paradise; and the old listless life of the unhasting period +soon receded quickly into a far-away past, rememberable only when one +made an effort to recall it. + +First had come the completion of the Great Southwestern. Diverted by the +untiring opposition of Major Dabney from its chosen path through the +valley, it skirted the westward hills, passing within a few hundred +yards of the Gordon furnace. Since business knows no animosities, the +part which Caleb Gordon and his gun crew had played in the right-of-way +conflict was ignored. The way-station at the creek crossing was named +Gordonia, and it was the railway traffic manager himself who suggested +to the iron-master the taking of a partner with capital, the opening of +the vein of coking coal on Mount Lebanon, the installation of +coking-ovens, and the modernizing and enlarging of the furnace and +foundry plant--hints all pointing to increased traffic for the road. + +With the coming of Mr. Duxbury Farley to Paradise, Thomas Jefferson +lost, not only the simple life, but the desire to live it. This Mr. +Farley, whom we have seen and heard, momentarily, on the station +platform in South Tredegar, the expanded, hailed from Cleveland, Ohio; +was, as he was fond of saying pompously, a citizen of no mean city. His +business in the reawakening South was that of an intermediary between +cause and effect; the cause being the capital of confiding investors in +the North, and the effect the dissipation of the same in various and +sundry development schemes in the new iron field. + +To Paradise, in the course of his goings to and fro, came this purger of +other men's purses, and he saw the fortuitous grouping of the +possibilities at a glance: abundant iron of good quality; an accessible +vein of coal, second only to Pocahontas for coking; land cheap, water +free, and a persuadable subject in straightforward, simple-hearted Caleb +Gordon. + +Farley had no capital, but he had that which counts for more in the +promoter's field; namely, the ability to reap where others had sown. His +plan, outlined to Caleb in a sweeping cavalry-dash of enthusiasm, was +simplicity itself. Caleb should contribute the raw material--land, water +and the ore quarry--and it should also be his part to secure a lease of +the coal land from Major Dabney. In the meantime he, Farley, would +undertake to float the enterprise in the North, forming a company and +selling stock to provide the development capital. + +The iron-master demurred a little at first. There were difficulties, +and he pointed them out. + +"I don't know, Colonel Farley. It appears like I'm givin' all I've got +for a handout at the kitchen door of the big company. Then, again, +there's the Major. He's pizon against all these improvements. You don't +know the Major." + +"On the contrary, my dear Mr. Gordon, it is because I do know him, or +know of him, that I am turning him over to you. You are the one person +in the world to obtain that coal lease. I confess I couldn't touch the +Major with a ten-foot pole, any more than you could go North and get the +cash. But you are his neighbor, and he likes you. What you recommend, +he'll do." Thus the enthusiast. + +"Well, I don't know," said Caleb doubtfully; "I reckon I can try. He +can't any more 'n fire me, like he did the Southwestern right-o'-way +man. But then, about t'other part of it: I've got a little charcoal +furnace here that don't amount to much, maybe, but it's all mine, and +I'm the boss. When this other thing goes through, the men who are +putting up the money will own it and me. I'll be just about as much +account as the tag on a shoe-string." + +This part of the conference was held on the slab-floored porch of the +oak-shingled house, with Thomas Jefferson as a negligible listener. +Since he was listening with both eyes and ears, he saw something in Mr. +Duxbury Farley's face that carried him swiftly back to the South +Tredegar railway station and to that first antipathetic impression. But +again the suave tongue quickly turned the page. + +"Don't let that trouble you for a moment, Mr. Gordon," was the +reassuring rejoinder. "I shall see that your apportionment of stock in +the company is as large as the flotation scheme will stand; and as I, +too, shall be a minority stock-holder, I shall share your risk. But +there will be no risk. If the Lord prospers us, we shall both come out +of this rich men, Mr. Gordon." + +The slow smile that Thomas Jefferson knew so well came and went like a +flitting shadow. + +"I reckon the Lord don't make n'r meddle much with these here little +child's playhouses of our'n," said Caleb; and then he gave his consent +to the promoter's plan. + +Singularly or not, as we choose to view it, the difficulties effaced +themselves at the first onset. Though tact was no part of Caleb Gordon's +equipment, his presentation of the matter to Major Dabney became so +nearly a personal asking--with Mr. Duxbury Farley and the Northern +capitalists distantly backgrounding--that the Major granted the lease of +the coal lands on purely personal grounds; would, indeed, have waived +the matter of consideration entirely, if Caleb had not insisted. Had not +the iron-master been raised to the high degree of fellowship by the hand +that signed the lease? + +On his part, Mr. Duxbury Farley was equally successful. A company was +formed, the charter was obtained, and the golden stream began to flow +into the treasury; into it and out again in the raceway channels of +development. Thomas Jefferson stood aghast when an army of workmen swept +down on Paradise and began to change the very face of nature. But that +was only the beginning. + +For a time Chiawassee Coal and Iron figured buoyantly in the market +quotations, and delegations of stock-holders, both present and +prospective, were personally conducted to the scene of activities by +enthusiastic Vice-President Farley. But when these had served their +purpose a thing happened. One fine morning it was whispered on 'Change +that Chiawassee iron would not Bessemer, and that Chiawassee coke had +been rejected by the Southern Association of Iron Smelters. + +Followed a crash which was never very clearly understood by the +simple-hearted soldier iron-master, though it was merely a repetition of +a lesson well conned by the earlier investors in Southern coal and iron +fields. Caleb's craft was the making of iron; not the financing of +top-heavy corporations. So, when he was told that the company had +failed, and that he and Farley had been appointed receivers, he took it +as a financial matter, of course, somewhat beyond his ken, and went +about his daily task of supervision with a mind as undisturbed as it +would have been distraught had he known something of the subterranean +mechanism by which the failure and the receivership had been brought to +pass. + +Why Mr. Duxbury Farley spared the iron-master in the freezing-out +process was an unsolved riddle to many. But there were reasons. For one, +there was the lease of the coal lands, renewable year by year--this was +Caleb's own honest provision inserted in the contract for the Major's +protection--and renewable only by the Major's friend. Further, a +practical man at the practical end of an industry is a sheer necessity; +and by contriving to have honest Caleb associated with himself in the +receivership, a fine color of uprightness was imparted to the promoter's +far-reaching plan of aggrandizement. + +So, later, when the reorganization was effected; when the troublesome, +dividend-hungry stock-holders of the original company were eliminated by +due process of law, Caleb's name appeared on the Farley slate with the +title of general manager of the new company--for the same good and +sufficient reasons. + +It was during the fervid six months of Chiawassee Coal and Iron +development that Thomas Jefferson had passed from the old life to the +new--from childhood to boyhood. + +Simultaneously, there were the coal-mines opening under the cliffs of +Mount Lebanon, the long, double row of coking-ovens building on the flat +below the furnace, and the furnace itself taking on undreamed-of +magnitudes under the hands of the army of workmen. Thomas Jefferson did +his best to keep the pace, being driven by a new and eager thirst for +knowledge mechanical, and by a gripping desire to be present at all the +assemblings of all the complicated parts of the threefold machine. And +when he found it impossible to be in three places at one and the same +moment, it distressed him to tears. + +Of the home life during that strenuous interval there was little more +than the eating and sleeping for one whose time for the absorbent +process was all too limited. Also, the perplexing questions reaching +down into the under-soul of things were silent. Also, again--mark of a +change so radical that none but a Thomas Jefferson may read and +understand--an awe-inspiring Major Dabney had ceased to be the first +citizen of the world, that pinnacle being now occupied by a tall, +sallow, smooth-faced gentleman, persuasive of speech and superhuman in +accomplishment, who was the life and soul of the activities, and whom +his father and mother always addressed respectfully as "Colonel" Farley. + +One day, in the very heat of the battle, this commanding personage, at +whose word the entire world of Paradise was in travail, had deigned to +speak directly to him--Thomas Jefferson. It was at the mine on the +mountain. The workmen were bolting into place the final trestle of the +inclined railway which was to convey the coal in descending carloads to +the bins at the coke-ovens, and Thomas Jefferson was absorbing the +details as a dry sponge soaks water. + +"Making sure that they do it just right, are you, my boy?" said the +great man, patting him approvingly on the shoulder. "That's good. I like +to see a boy anxious to get to the bottom of things. Going to be an +iron-master, like your father, are you?" + +"N-no," stammered the boy. "I wisht I was!" + +"Well, what's to prevent? We are going to have the completest plant in +the country right here, and it will be a fine chance for your father's +son; the finest in the world." + +"'Tain't goin' to do me any good," said Thomas Jefferson dejectedly. "I +got to be a preacher." + +Mr. Duxbury Farley looked down at him curiously. He was a religious +person himself, coming to be known as a pillar in St. Michael's Church +at South Tredegar, a liberal contributor, and a prime mover in a plan to +tear down the old building and to erect a new one more in keeping with +the times and South Tredegar's prosperity. Yet he was careful to draw +the line between religion as a means of grace and business as a means of +making money. + +"That is your mother's wish, I suppose: and it's a worthy one; very +worthy. Yet, unless you have a special vocation--but there; your mother +doubtless knows best. I am only anxious to see your father's son succeed +in whatever he undertakes." + +After that, Thomas Jefferson secretly made Success his god, and was +alertly ready to fetch and carry for the high priest in its temple, only +the opportunities were infrequent. + +For, wide as the Paradise field seemed to be growing from Thomas +Jefferson's point of view, it was altogether too narrow for Duxbury +Farley. The principal offices of Chiawassee Coal and Iron were in South +Tredegar, and there the first vice-president was building a hewn-stone +mansion, and had become a charter member of the city's first club; was +domiciled in due form, and was already beginning to soften his final +"r's," and to speak of himself as a Southerner--by adoption. + +So sped the winter and the spring succeeding Thomas Jefferson's +thirteenth birthday, and for the first time in his life he saw the +opening buds of the ironwood and the tender, fresh greens of the herald +poplars, and smelled the sweet, keen fragrance of awakening nature, +without being moved thereby. + +Ardea he saw only now and then, as old Scipio drove her back and forth +between the manor-house and the railway station, morning and evening. He +had heard that she was going to school in the city, and as yet there +were no stirrings of adolescence in him to make him wish to know more. + +As for Nan Bryerson, he saw her not at all. For one thing, he climbed no +more to the spring-sheltering altar rock among the cedars; and for +another, among all the wild creatures of the mountain, your moonshiner +is the shyest, being an anachronism in a world of progress. One bit of +news, however, floated in on the gossip at Little Zoar. It related that +Nan's mother was dead, and that the body had lain two days unburied +while Tike was drowning his sorrow in a sea of his own "pine-top." + +In the new life, as in the old, summer followed quickly on the heels of +spring, and when the hepaticas and the violets were gone, and the laurel +and the rhododendron were decking the cliffs of Lebanon in their summer +robes of pink and white and magenta, another door was opened for Thomas +Jefferson. + +Vaguely it had been understood in the Gordon household that Mr. Duxbury +Parley was a widower with two children: a boy, some two years older than +Thomas Jefferson, at school in New England, and a girl younger, name and +place of sojourn unknown. The boy was coming South for the long +vacation, and the affairs of Chiawassee Coal and Iron--already reaching +out subterraneously toward the future receivership--would call the first +vice-president North for the better portion of July. Would Mrs. Martha +take pity on a motherless lad, whose health was none of the best, and +open her home to Vincent? + +Mrs. Martha would and did; not ungrudgingly on the vice-president's +account, but with many misgivings on Thomas Jefferson's. She was finding +the surcharged industrial atmosphere of the new era inimical at every +point to the development of the spiritual passion she had striven to +arouse in her son; to paving the way for the realizing of that ideal +which had first taken form when she had written "Reverend Thomas +Jefferson Gordon" on the margin of the letter to her brother Silas. + +As it fell out, the worst happened that could happen, considering the +apparent harmlessness of the exciting cause. Vincent Farley proved to be +an anemic stripling, cold, reserved, with no surface indications of +moral depravity, and with at least a veneer of good breeding. But in +Thomas Jefferson's heart he planted the seed of discontent with his +surroundings, with the homely old house on the pike, unchanged as yet by +the rising tide of prosperity, and more than all, with the prospect of +becoming a chosen vessel. + +It was of no use to hark back to the revival and the heart-quaking +experiences of a year agone. Thomas Jefferson tried, but all that seemed +to belong to another world and another life. What he craved now was to +be like this envied and enviable son of good fortune, who wore his +Sunday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly +and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and +traveled Ardea. + +Later in the summer the envy died down and Thomas Jefferson developed a +pronounced case of hero-worship, something to the disgust of the +colder-hearted, older boy. It did not last very long, nor did it leave +any permanent scars; but before Thomas Jefferson was fully convalescent +the subtle flattery of his adulation warmed the subject of it into +something like companionship, and there were bragging stories of +boarding-school life and of the world at large to add fresh fuel to the +fire of discontent. + +Though Thomas Jefferson did not know it, his deliverance on that side +was nigh. It had been decided in the family council of two--with a +preacher-uncle for a casting-vote third--that he was to be sent away to +school, Chiawassee Coal and Iron promising handsomely to warrant the +expense; and the decision hung only on the choice of courses to be +pursued. + +Caleb had marked the growing hunger for technical knowledge in the boy, +and had secretly gloried in it. Here, at least, was a strong stream of +his own craftsman's blood flowing in the veins of his son. + +"It'd be a thousand pities to spoil a good iron man and engineer to make +a poor preacher, Martha," he objected; this for the twentieth time, and +when the approach of autumn was forcing the conclusion. + +"I know, Caleb; but you don't understand," was the invariable rejoinder. +"You know that side of him, because it's your side. But he is my son, +too; and--and Caleb, the Lord has called him!" + +Gordon's smile was lenient, tolerant, as it always was in such +discussions. + +"Not out loud, I reckon, little woman; leastwise, Buddy don't act as if +he'd heard it. As I've said, there's plenty of time. He's only a little +shaver yet. Let him try the school in the city for a year 'r so, goin' +and comin' on the railroads, nights and mornin's, like the Major's +gran'daughter. After that, we might see." + +But now Martha Gordon was fighting the last great battle in the war of +spiritual repression which had been going on ever since the day when +that text, _Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers_, had +been turned into a whip of scorpions to chasten her, and she fought as +those who will not be denied the victory. Caleb yielded finally, but +with some such hand-washing as Pilate did when he gave way to the +pressure from without. + +"I aim to do what's for the best, Martha, but I own I hain't got your +courage. You've been shovin' that boy up the steps o' the pulpit ever +since he let on like he could understand what you was sayin' to him, and +maybe it's all right. I've never been over on your side o' that fence, +and I don't know how things look over there. But if it was my doin's, +I'd be prayin' mighty hard to whatever God I believed in not to let me +make a hypocrite out'n o' Buddy. I would _so_." + +Thomas Jefferson was told what was in store for him only a short time +before his outsetting for the sectarian home school in a neighboring +state, which was the joint selection of his mother and Uncle Silas. He +took it with outward calm, as he would have taken anything from a prize +to a whipping. But there was dumb rebellion within when his mother read +him the letter he was to carry to the principal--a letter written by +Brother Crafts to one of like precious faith, commending the lamb of the +flock, and definitely committing that lamb as a chosen vessel. It was +unfair, he cried inwardly, in a hot upflash of antagonism. He might +choose to be a preacher; he had always meant to be one, for his mother's +sake. But to be pushed and driven-- + +He took his last afternoon for a ramble in the fields and woods beyond +the manor-house, in that part of the valley as yet unfurrowed by the +industrial plow. It was not the old love of the solitudes that called +him; it was rather a sore-hearted desire to go apart and give place to +all the hard thoughts that were bubbling and boiling within. + +A long circuit over the boundary hills brought him at length to the +little glade with the pool in its center where he had been fishing for +perch on that day when Ardea and the great dog had come to make him +back-slide. He wondered if she had ever forgiven him. Most likely she +had not. She never seemed to think him greatly worth while when they +happened to meet. + +He was sitting on the overhanging bank, just where he had sat that other +day, when suddenly history repeated itself. There was a rustling in the +bushes; the Great Dane bounded out, though not as before to stand +menacing; and when he turned his head she was there near him. + +"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said coolly; and then she called to the dog +and made as if she would go away. But Thomas Jefferson's heart was full, +and full hearts are soft. + +"You needn't run," he hazarded. "I reckon I ain't going to bite you. I +don't feel much like biting anybody to-day." + +"You did bite me once, though," she said airily. + +"And you've never forgiven me for it," he asserted, in deepest +self-pity. + +"Oh, yes, I have; the Dabneys always forgive--but they never forget. And +me, I am a Dabney." + +"That's just as bad. You wouldn't be so awful mean to me if you knew. +I--I'm going away." + +She came a little nearer at that and sat down beside him on the yellow +grass with an arm around the dog's neck. + +"Does it hurt?" she asked. "Because, if it does, I'm sorry; and I'll +promise to forget." + +"It does hurt some," he confessed. "Because, you see, I'm going to be a +preacher." + +"You?" she said, with the frank and unsympathetic surprise of childhood. +Then politeness came to the rescue and she added: "I'm sorry for that, +too, if you are wanting me to be. Only I should think it would be fine +to wear a long black robe and a pretty white surplice, and to learn to +sing the prayers beautifully, and all that." + +Thomas Jefferson was honestly horrified, and he looked it. + +"I'd like to know what in the world you're talking about," he said. + +"About your being a minister, of course. Only in France, they call them +priests of the church." + +The boy's lips went together in a fine straight line. Not for nothing +did the blood of many generations of Protestants flow in his veins. +"Priest" was a Popish word. + +"The Pope of Rome is antichrist!" he declared authoritatively. + +She seemed only politely interested. + +"Is he? I didn't know." Then, with a tactfulness worthy of graver years, +she drew away from the dangerous topic. "When are you going?" + +"To-morrow." + +"Is it far?" + +"Yes; it's an awful long ways." + +"Never mind; you'll be coming back after a while, and then we'll be +friends--if you want to." + +Surely Thomas Jefferson's heart was as wax before the fire that day. + +"I'm mighty glad," he said. Then he got up. "Will you let me show you +the way home again?--the short, easy way, this time?" + +She hesitated a moment, and then stood up and gave him her hand. + +"I'm not afraid of you now; _we_ don't hate him any more, do we, +Hector?" + +And so they went together through the yellowing aisles of the September +wood and across the fields to the manor-house gates. + + + + +X + +THE SHADOW OF THE ROCK + + +Tom Gordon--Thomas Jefferson now only in his mother's letters--was +fifteen past, and his voice was in the transition stage which made him +blushingly self-conscious when he ran up the window-shade in the Pullman +to watch for the earliest morning outlining of old Lebanon on the +southern horizon. + +There had been no home-going for him at the close of his first year in +the sectarian school. The principal had reported him somewhat backward +in his studies for his age,--which was true enough,--and had intimated +that a summer spent with the preceptor who had the vacation charge of +the school buildings would be invaluable to a boy of such excellent +natural parts. So Tom had gone into semi-solitary confinement for three +months with a man who thought in the dead languages and spoke in terms +of ancient history, studying with sullen resentment in his heart, and +charging his imprisonment to his preacher-uncle, who was, indeed, +chiefly responsible. + +He had mourned that loss of liberty all through his second year, and was +conscious the while that it would prove the parent of a still greater +loss. It is the exile's anchorage in a shifting world to think of the +home haven as unchanged and unchanging; as a place where by and by the +thread of life as it was may be knotted up with that of life as it shall +be. But Tom remembered that he had left Paradise in the midst of +convulsive upheavals, and was correspondingly fearful. + +The sickening sense of unfamiliarity seized him when the train stopped +for breakfast in the city which had once been the village of the single +muddy street. The genius of progress had transformed it so completely +that there was nothing but the huge, backgrounding mass of Lebanon, +visible from the windows of the station breakfast-room, to identify the +grave of the old and the birthplace of the new. + +The boy laid desperate eye-holds on the comforting solidity of the +background, and would not loose them when the train sped away southward +again through mile-long yards with their boundaries picked out by +black-vomiting factory chimneys. The mountain, at least, was unchanged, +and there might be hope for the country beyond. + +But the homesickness returned with renewed qualms when the train had +doubled the nose of Lebanon and threaded its way among the hills to the +Paradise portal. Gordonia, of the single side-track, had grown into a +small iron town, with the Chiawassee plant flanking a good half-mile of +the railway; with a cindery street or two, and a scummy wave of +operatives' cottages and laborers' shacks spreading up the hillsides +which were stripped bare of their trees and undergrowth. + +Tom's eyes filled, and he was wondering faintly if the desolating tide +of progress had topped the hills to pour over into the home valley +beyond, when his father accosted him. There was a little shock at the +sight of the grizzled hair and beard turned so much grayer; but the +welcoming was like a grateful draft of cool water in a parched +wilderness. + +"Well, now then! How are ye, Buddy, boy? Great land o' Canaan! but +you've shot up and thickened out mightily in two years, son." + +Tom was painfully conscious of his size. Also of the fact that he was +clumsily in his own way, particularly as to hands and feet. The +sectarian school dwelt lightly on athletics and such purely mundane +trivialities as physical fitness and the harmonious education of the +growing body and limbs. + +"Yes; I'm so big it makes me right tired," he said gravely, and his +voice cracked provokingly in the middle of it. Then he asked about his +mother. + +"She's tolerable--only tolerable, Buddy. She allows she don't have +enough to keep her doin' in the new--" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly +and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all +have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet a hen worth fifty +dollars ye've gone and lost it." + +But Tom had not; and when the luggage was found there was another +innovation to buffet him. The old buggy with its high seat had vanished, +and in its room there was a modern surrey with a negro driver. Tom +looked askance at the new equipage. + +"Can't we make out to walk, pappy?" he asked, dropping unconsciously +into the child-time phrase. + +"Oh, yes; I reckon we could. You're not too young, and I'm not so +terr'ble old. But--get in, Buddy, get in; there'll be trampin' enough +for ye, all summer long." + +The limestone pike was the same, and the creek was still rushing +noisily over the stones in its bed, as Tom remarked gratefully. But the +heaviest of the buffets came when the barrier hills were passed and the +surrey horses made no motion to turn in at the gate of the old +oak-shingled house beyond the iron-works. + +"Hold on!" said Tom. "Doesn't the driver know where we live?" + +The old-time, gentle smile wrinkled about the iron-master's eyes. + +"That's the sup'rintendent's office and lab'ratory now, son. It was +getting to be tolerable noisy down here for your mammy, so nigh to the +plant. And we allowed to s'prise you. We've been buildin' us a new house +up on the knoll just this side o' Major Dabney's." + +It was the cruelest of the changes--the one hardest to bear; and it +drove the boy back into the dumb reticence which was a part of his +birthright. Had they left him nothing by which to remember the old +days--days which were already beginning to take on the glamour of +unutterable happiness past? + +Nevertheless, he could not help looking curiously for the new home--the +old being irretrievably sacked and ruined; but there were more shocks to +come between. One of Mr. Duxbury Farley's side issues had been a real +estate boom for Paradise Valley proper. South Tredegar being prosperous, +the time had seemed propitious for the engrafting of the country-house +idea. By some means, marvelous to those who knew Major Dabney's +tenacious land-grip, the promoter had bought in the wooded hillsides +facing the mountain, cut them into ten-acre residence plots, run a +graveled drive on the western side of the creek to front them, and +presto! the thing was done. + +Tom saw well-kept lawns, park-like groves and pretentious country villas +where he had once trailed Nance Jane through the "dark woods," and his +father told him the names and circumstance of the owners as they drove +up the pike. There was Rockwood, the summer home of the Stanleys, and +The Dell, owned, and inhabited at intervals, by Mr. Young-Dickson, of +the South Tredegar potteries. Farther along there was Fairmount, whose +owner was a wealthy cotton-seed buyer; Rook Hill, which Tom remembered +as the ancient roosting ground of the migratory winter crows; and +Farnsworth Park, ruralizing the name of its builder. On the most +commanding of the hillsides was a pile of rough-cut Tennessee marble +with turrets and many gables, rejoicing in the classic name of Warwick +Lodge. This, Tom was told, was the country home of Mr. Farley himself, +and the house alone had cost a fortune. + +At the turn in the pike where you lost sight finally of the iron-works, +there was a new church, a miniature in native stone of good old Stephen +Hawker's church of Morwenstow. Tom gasped at the sight of it, and +scowled when he saw the gilded cross on the tower. + +"Catholic!" he said. "And right here in our valley!" + +"No," said the father; "it's 'Piscopalian. Colonel Farley is one o' the +vestries, or whatever you call 'em, of St. Michael's yonder in town. I +reckon he wanted to get his own kind o' people round him out here, so he +built this church, and they run it as a sort of side-show to the big +church. Your mammy always looks the other way when we come by." + +Tom looked the other way, too, watching anxiously for the first sight +of the new home. They reached it in good time, by a graveled driveway +leading up from the white pike between rows of forest trees; and there +was a second negro waiting to take the team, when they alighted at the +veranda steps. + +The new house was a two-storied brick, ornate and palpably assertive, +with no suggestion of the homely country comfort of the old. Yet, when +his mother had wept over him in the wide hall, and there was time to go +about, taking it all in like a cat exploring a strange garret, it was +not so bad. + +Or rather, let us say, there were compensations. The love of luxury is +only dormant in the heart of the hardiest barbarian; and the polished +floors and soft-piled rugs, the bath-room with its great china dish, and +the carpeted stair with the old grandfather clock ticking bravely on the +landing, presently began to thrum the tuneful chord of pride. Perhaps +Ardea Dabney would not laugh and say, "What a funny, _funny_ old place!" +as she had once said when the Major had brought her to the log-walled +homestead on the lower pike. + +Still, there were incongruities--hopeless janglings of things married by +increasing prosperity, but never meant to be bedfellows in the +harmonious course of nature. One was the unblushing effrontery of the +new brick pairing itself brazenly with the venerable gray stone +manor-house on the adjoining knoll--impudence perceivable even to a +hobbledehoy fresh from the school desk and the dormitory. Another was +the total lack of sympathy between the housing and the housed. + +This last was painfully evident in all the waking hours of the +household. Tom observed that his father escaped early in the morning, +and lived and moved and had his being in the industries at the lower end +of the valley, as of old. But his mother's occupation was quite gone. +And the summer evenings, sat out decorously on the ornate veranda, were +full of constraint and awkward silences, having no part nor lot with +those evenings of the older time on the slab-floored porch of the old +homestead on the pike. + +But there were compensations again, even for Martha Gordon, and Tom +discovered one of them on the first Wednesday evening after his arrival. +The new home was within easy walking distance of Little Zoar, and he +went with his mother to the prayer-meeting. + +The upper end of the pike was unchanged, and the little, weather-beaten +church stood in its groving of pines, the same yesterday, to-day and for +ever. Better still, the congregation, the small Wednesday-night +gathering at least, held the familiar faces of the country folk. The +minister was a young missionary, zealously earnest, and lacking as yet +the quality of hardness and doctrinal precision which had been the boy's +daily bread and meat at the sectarian school. What wonder, then, that +when the call for testimony was made, the old pounding and +heart-hammering set in, and duty, _duty_, duty, wrote itself in +flaming letters on the dingy walls? + +Tom set his teeth and swallowed hard, and let a dozen of the others rise +and speak and sit again. He could feel the beating of his mother's +heart, and he knew she was praying silently for him, praying that he +would not deny his Master. For her sake, then ... but not yet; there was +still time enough--after the next hymn--after the next testimony--when +the minister should give another invitation. He was chained to the bench +and could not rise; his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth and his +lips were like dry leaves. The silences grew longer; all, or nearly all, +had spoken. He was stifling. + +"_Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess +also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me +before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven._" +It was the solemn voice of the young minister, and Tom staggered to his +feet with the lamps whirling in giddy circles. + +"I feel to say that the Lord is precious to my soul to-night. Pray for +me, that I may ever be found faithful." + +He struggled through the words of the familiar form gaspingly and sat +down. A burst of triumphant song arose, + + "O happy day, that fixed my choice + On Thee, my Saviour and my God!" + +and the ecstatic aftermath came. Truly, it was better to be a doorkeeper +in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. What bliss +was there to be compared with this heart-melting, soul-lifting blessing +for duty done? + +It went with him a good part of the way home, and Martha Gordon +respected his silence, knowing well what heights and depths were +engulfing the young spirit. + +But afterward--alas and alas! that there should always be an +"afterward"! When Tom had kissed his mother good night and was alone in +his upper room, the reaction set in. What had he done? Were the words +the outpouring of a full heart? Did they really mean anything to him, +or to those who heard them? He grasped despairingly at the fast-fading +glories of the vision, dropping on his knees at the bedside. "O God, let +me see Thee and touch Thee, and be sure, _sure_!" he prayed, over and +over again; and so finally sleep found him still on his knees with his +face buried in the bed-clothes. + + + + +XI + +THE TRUMPET-CALL + + +For the first few vacation days Tom rose with the sun and lived with the +industries, marking all the later expansive strides and sorrowing keenly +that he had not been present to see them taken in detail. + +But this was a passing phase. When the mechanical hunger was sated; when +he had started and stopped every engine in the big plant, had handled +the levers of the great steam-hoist that shot the coal-cars from the +mine to the coke-yard bins, and had prevailed on the engineer of the +dinkey engine to let him haul out and dump a pot of slag, he had a sharp +relapse into the primitive, and went roaming afield in search of his +lost boyhood. + +It was not to be found in any of the valley haunts, these having been +transformed by the country-house colony. The old water-wheel below the +dam hung motionless, being supplanted by the huge, modern, +blowing-engines; and the black wash from the coal-mines had driven the +perch from the pools and spoiled the swimming-holes in the creek. In the +farther forests of the rampart hills the chopper's ax had been busy; and +the blackberry patches in all the open spaces were sacked daily by +chattering swarms of the work-people's children, white and black. + +On the third morning Tom turned his steps despairingly toward the +slopes of the mountain. He was at a pass when he would have given worlds +to find one of the sacred places undesecrated. And there remained now +only the high altar under the cedars of Lebanon to be visited. + +It comforted him not a little to find that he had the old-time, burning +thirst when he came within earshot of the dripping spring under the +great rock. But when he would have knelt to drink from his palms like +Gideon's men, there was no pool in the rocky basin. A barrel had been +sunk in the sand-filled crevice, and a greedy pipe-line sucked up the +water as fast as it trickled from the rock, to pass it on to one of the +thirsty mechanisms in the iron plant a thousand feet below. + +In its way this was the final straw, and Tom sat down beside the +utilized spring with a lump in his throat. Afterward, he slaked his +thirst as he could at the trickle from the rock's lip, and then set his +face toward the higher steeps. Major Dabney,--not yet fully in tune with +his new neighbors of the country-house colony,--and his granddaughter +were spending the summer at Crestcliffe Inn, the new hotel on top of the +mountain, and Tom felt that Ardea would understand if he could find and +tell her. There are times when one must find a sympathetic ear, or be +rent and torn by the pent-up things within. + +In one sense the sympathy quest was a devitalizing failure. When he +reached the summit of the mountain, hot and tired and dusty, the mere +sight of the great hotel, with its thronged verandas and its +overpowering air of grandeur and exclusiveness, quenched all desires +save that which prompted a hasty retreat. The sectarian school paid as +little attention to the social as to the athletic side of its youth; and +Tom Gordon at fifteen past was as helpless conventionally as if he had +never set foot outside of Paradise. + +But at the retractive moment he ran plump into the Major, stalking +grandly along the tile-paved walk and smoking a war-time cheroot of +preposterous length. The despot of Paradise, despot now only by courtesy +of the triumphant genius of modernity, put on his eye-glasses and stared +Thomas into respectful rigidity. + +"Why, bless my soul!--if it isn't Captain Gordon's boy! Well, well, you +young limb! If you didn't faveh youh good fatheh in eve'y line and +lineament of youh face, I should neveh have known you--you've grown so. +Shake hands, suh!" + +Tom did it awkwardly. It is a gift to be able to shake hands easily; a +gift withheld from most girls and all boys up to the soulful age. But +there was worse to follow. Ardea was somewhere on the peopled verandas, +and the Major, more terrible in his hospitality than he had ever +appeared in the old-time rage-fits, dragged his hapless victim up and +down and around and about in search of her. "Not say 'Howdy' to Ardea? +Why, you young cub, where are youh mannehs, suh?" Thus the Major, when +the victim would have broken away. + +It was a fiery trial for Tom--a way-picking among red-hot plowshares of +embarrassment. How the well-bred folk smiled, and the grand ladies drew +their immaculate skirts aside to make passing-room for his dusty feet! +How one of them wondered, quite audibly, where in the world Major Dabney +had unearthed that young native! Tom was conscious of every fleck of +dust on his clothes and shoes; of the skilless knot in his necktie; of +the school-desk droop in his shoulders; of the utter superfluousness of +his big hands. + +And when, at the long last, Ardea was discovered sitting beside a +gorgeously-attired Queen of Sheba, who also smiled and examined him +minutely through a pair of eye-glasses fastened on the end of a +gold-mounted stick, the place of torment, wherever and whatever it might +be, held no deeper pit for him. What he had climbed the mountain to find +was a little girl in a school frock, who had sat on the yellowing grass +with one arm around the neck of a great dog, looking fearlessly up at +him and telling him she was sorry he was going away. What he had found +was a very statuesque little lady, clad in fluffy summer white, with the +other Ardea's slate-blue eyes and soft voice, to be sure, but with no +other reminder of the lost avatar. + +From first to last, from the moment she made room for him, dusty clothes +and all, on the settee between herself and the Queen of Sheba, Tom was +conscious of but one clearly-defined thought--an overmastering desire to +get away--to be free at any cost. But the way of escape would not +disclose itself, so he sat in stammering misery, answering Ardea's +questions about the sectarian school in bluntest monosyllables, and +hearing with his other ear a terrible Major tell the Queen of Sheba all +about the railroad invasion, and how he--Tom Gordon--had run to find a +punk match to fire a cannon in the Dabney cause. + +All of which was bad enough, but the torture rack had still another turn +left in its screw. After he had sat for awkward hours, as it seemed, +though minutes would have measured it, there was a stir on the veranda +and he became vaguely conscious of an impending catastrophe. + +"Grandpa is telling you you must stay to luncheon with us," prompted +Ardea. "Will you take me in?" + +The Major had already given his arm to the Queen of Sheba, and there was +no help for the helpless. Tom crooked his arm as stiffly as possible and +said "May I?"--which was an inspiration--and they got to the great +dining-room with no worse mishap than a collision at the door brought +about by his stepping on the train of one of the grand ladies. + +But at luncheon his troubles began afresh; or rather, a new and more +agonizing set of them took the field. The fourth seat at the small table +was occupied by the lady with the stick eye-glasses, and Tom was made +aware that she was a Dabney cousin once removed. Thereupon, what little +dexterity was left in him fled away, and the table-trial, under the +smiling eyes of a Miss Euphrasia, became a chapter of horrors. + +From absently picking and choosing among the forks, and trying to drink +his bouillon out of the cup in which it was served, to upsetting his +glass of iced tea, he stumbled on in a dream of awkwardness; and when, +to cover the tea mishap, Ardea, emulating the lady hostess who broke one +of her priceless tea-cups at a similar crisis, promptly overturned her +own glass, he was unreasonable enough to be angry. + +Taking it all in all, anger was coming to be the one constant quantity +in the procession of varying emotions. By what right did this hollow, +insincere, mocking world, of whose very existence he had been in utter +ignorance, make him a butt for its well-bred sneers? Its fashions and +fripperies and meaningless forms were not beyond learning; and, by +Heaven! he would learn them, too, and put them all to shame. They should +see! + +And Ardea: was she laughing at him, too, in the depths of her big, +beautiful eyes? No, that was too much; he would never believe that. But +she was insincere, like the rest of them. It was acting a lie for her to +make-believe clumsiness just to keep the others from laughing at him. +She must stand with her kind. + +From that station to the top of the high, bare crag of righteous +condemnation was but a short stage in the wrathful journey; and while he +was choking over the meal of strange dishes the zealous under-thought +was reaching out into the future. + +Some day, when his tongue should be loosed, he would stand before this +mocking, smiling, heathenish world with the open Bible in his hand; then +it should be taught what it needed to know--that while it was saying it +was rich, and increased with goods, and had need of nothing, it was +wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. + +So it came about that it was the convert of Little Zoar, and not the +self-pitying youth searching for his lost boyhood, who escaped finally +from the entanglements of Major Dabney's hospitality. + +On the way down the cliff path the fire burned and the revival zeal was +kindled anew. There had been times, in the last year, especially, when +he had thought coldly of the disciple's calling and was minded to break +away and be a skilled craftsman, like his father. Now he was aghast to +think that he had ever been so near the brink of apostasy. With the +river of the Water of Life springing crystal clear at his feet, should +he turn away and drink from the bitter pools in the wilderness of this +world? With prophetic eye he saw himself as another Boanerges, lifting, +with all the inspiring eloquence of the son of thunder, the Baptist's +soul-shaking cry, _Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand_! + +The thought thrilled him, and the fierce glow of enthusiasm became an +intoxicating ecstasy. The tinkling drip of falling water broke into the +noonday silence of the forest like the low-voiced call of a sacred bell. +For the first time since leaving the mountain top he took note of his +surroundings. He was standing beside the great, cubical boulder under +the cedars--the high altar in nature's mountain tabernacle. + +Ah, Martha Gordon, mother of many prayers, look now, if you can, but not +too closely or too long! Is it merely the boy you have molded and +fashioned, or is it the convinced and consecrated evangelist of the +future, who falls on his knees beside the great rock, with head bent and +fingers tightly interlocked, groping desperately for words in which to +rededicate himself to the God of your fathers? + +Thomas Jefferson had the deep peace of the fully committed when he rose +from his knees and went to drink at the spouting rock lip. It was +decided now, this thing he had been holding half-heartedly in abeyance. +There would be no more dallying with temptation, no more rebellion, no +more irreverent stumblings in the dark valley of doubtful questions. +More especially, he would be vigilant to guard against those +backslidings that came so swiftly on the heels of each spiritual +quickening. His heart was fixed, so irrevocably, so surely, that he +could almost wish that Satan would try him there and then. But the enemy +of souls was nowhere to be seen in the leafy arches of the wood, and Tom +bent again to take a second draft at the spouting rock lip. + + + + +XII + +THE IRON IN THE FORGE FIRE + + +He was bending over the sunken barrel. A shadow, not his own, blurred +the water mirror. He looked up quickly. + +"Nan!" he cried. + +She was standing on the opposite side of the barrel basin, looking down +on him with good-natured mockery in the dark eyes. + +"I 'lowed maybe you wouldn't have such a back load of religion after +you'd been off to the school a spell," she said pointedly. And then: +"Does it always make you right dry an' thirsty to say your prayers, +Tommy-Jeffy?" + +Tom sat back on his heels and regarded her thoughtfully. His first +impulse was out of the natural heart, rageful, wounded vanity spurring +it on. It was like her heathenish impertinence to look on at such a +time, and then to taunt him about it afterward. + +But slowly as he looked a curious change came over him. She was the same +Nan Bryerson, bareheaded, barelegged, with the same tousled mat of dark +hair, and the same childish indifference to a whole frock. And yet she +was not the same. The subtle difference, whatever it was, made him get +up and offer to shake hands with her,--and he thought it was the +newly-made vows constraining him, and took credit therefor. + +"You can revile me as much as you like now, Nan," he said, with prideful +humility. "You can't make me mad any more, like you used to." + +"Why can't I?" she demanded. + +"Because I'm older now, and--and better, I hope. I shall never forget +that you have a precious soul to save." + +Her response to this was a scoffing laugh, shrill and challenging. Yet +he could not help thinking that it made her look prettier than before. + +"You can laugh as much as you want to; but I mean it," he insisted. +"And, besides, Nan,--of all the things that I've been wanting to come +back to, you're the only one that isn't changed." And again he thought +it was righteous guile that was making him kind to her. + +In a twinkling the mocking hardness went out of her eyes and she leaned +across the barrel mouth and touched his hand. + +"D'you reckon you shorely mean that, Tom Gordon?" she said; and the lips +which lent themselves so easily to scorn were tremulous. She was just +his age, and womanhood was only a step across the threshold for her. + +"Of course, I do. Let me carry your bucket for you." + +She had hung the little wooden piggin under the drip of the spring and +it was full and running over. But when he had lifted it out for her, she +rinsed and emptied it. + +"I just set it there to cool some," she explained. "I'm goin' up to +Sunday Rock afte' huckleberries. Come and go 'long with me, Tom." + +He assented with a willingness as eager as it was unaccountable. If she +had asked him to do a much less reasonable thing, he was not sure that +he could have refused. + +And as they went together through the wood, spicy with the June +fragrances, questions like those of the boyhood time thronged on him, +and he welcomed them as a return of at least one of the vanished +thrills--and was grateful to her. + +Why had he never before noticed that she was so much prettier than any +other girl he had ever seen? What was there in the touch of her hand to +make him feel like the iron in the forge fire--warm and glowing and +putty-soft and yielding? Other girls were not that way. Only a half-hour +since, Ardea Dabney had put her hand in his when she had said good-by, +and that feeling was the kind you have when you have climbed through +breathless summer woods to a high mountain top and the cool breeze blows +through your hair and makes you quietly glad and lifted-up and +satisfied. + +These were questions to be buried deep in the secret places, and yet he +had a curious eagerness to talk to Nan about them; to find out if she +could understand. But he could not get near to any serious or +confidential side of her. Her mood was playful, hilarious, daring. Once +she ran squirrel-like out on the bole of a great tree leaning to its +fall over the cliff, hung her piggin on a broken limb, and told him he +must go after it. Next it was a squeeze through some "fat-man's-misery" +crevice in the water-worn sandstone, with a cry to him to come on if he +were not a girl-boy. And when they were fairly under the overhanging +cliff face of Sunday Rock, she darted away, laughing back at him over +her shoulder, and daring him to follow her along a dizzy shelf half-way +up the crag; a narrow ledge, perilous for a mountain goat. + +This, as he remembered later, was the turning-point in her mood. In +imagination he saw her try it and fail; saw her lithe, shapely beauty +lying broken and mangled at the cliff's foot; and in three bounds he had +her fast locked in his restraining arms. She strove with him at first, +like a wrestling boy, laughing and taunting him with being afraid for +himself. Then-- + +Tom Gordon, clean-hearted as yet, did not know precisely what happened. +Suddenly she stopped struggling and lay panting in his arms, and quite +as suddenly he released her. + +"Nan!" he said, in a swiftly submerging wave of tenderness, "I didn't go +to hurt you!" + +She sank down on a stone at his feet and covered her face with her +hands. But she was up again and turning from him with eyes downcast +before he could comfort her. + +"I ain't hurt none," she said gravely. And then: "I reckon we'd better +be gettin' them berries. It looks like it might shower some; and paw'll +kill me if I ain't home time to get his supper." + +Here was an end of the playtime, and Tom helped industriously with the +berry-picking, wondering the while why she kept her face turned from +him, and why his brain was in such a turmoil, and why his hands shook so +if they happened to touch hers in reaching for the piggin. + +But this new mood of hers was more unapproachable than the other; and it +was not until the piggin was filled and they had begun to retrace their +steps together through the fragrant wood, that she let him see her eyes +again, and told him soberly of her troubles: how she was fifteen and +could neither read nor write; how the workmen's children in Gordonia +hooted at her and called her a mountain cracker when she went down to +buy meal or to fill the molasses jug; and, lastly, how, since her mother +had died, her father had worked little and drunk much, till at times +there was nothing to eat save the potatoes she raised in the little +patch back of the cabin, and the berries she picked on the mountain +side. + +"I hain't never told anybody afore, and you mustn't tell, Tom. But times +I'm scared paw 'll up and kill me when--when he ain't feelin' just +right. He's some good to me when he ain't red-eyed; but that ain't very +often, nowadays." + +Tom's heart swelled within him; and this time it was not the heart of +the Pharisee. There is no lure known to the man part of the race that is +half so potent as the tale of a woman in trouble. + +"Does--does he beat you, Nan?" he asked; and there was wrathful horror +in his voice. + +For answer she bent her head and parted the thick black locks over a +long scar. + +"That's where he give me one with the skillet, a year come Christmas. +And this,"--opening her frock to show him a black-and-blue bruise on her +breast,--"is what I got only day afore yisterday." + +Tom was burning with indignant compassion, and bursting because he could +think of no adequate way of expressing it. In all his fifteen years no +one had ever leaned on him before, and the sense of protectorship over +this abused one budded and bloomed like a juggler's rose. + +"I wish I could take you home with me, Nan," he said simply. + +There was age-old wisdom in the dark eyes when they were lifted to his. + +"No, you don't," she said firmly. "Your mammy would call me a little +heathen, same as she used to; and I reckon that's what I am--I hain't +had no chanst to be anything else. And you're goin' to be a preacher, +Tom." + +Why did it rouse a dull anger in his heart to be thus reminded of his +own scarce-cooled pledge made on his knees under the shadowing cedars? +He could not tell; but the fact remained. + +"You hear me, Nan; I'm going to take care of you when I'm able. No +matter what happens, I'm going to take care of you," was what he said; +and a low rumbling of thunder and a spattering of rain on the leaves +punctuated the promise. + +She looked away and was silent. Then, when the rain began to come +faster: "Let's run, Tom. I don't mind gettin' wet; but you mustn't." + +They reached the great rock sheltering the barrel-spring before the +shower broke in earnest, and Tom led the way to the right. Half-way up +its southern face the big boulder held a water-worn cavity, round, and +deeply hollowed, and carpeted with cedar needles. Tom climbed in first +and gave her a hand from the mouth of the little cavern. When she was up +and in, there was room in the nest-like hollow, but none to spare. And +on the instant the summer shower shut down upon the mountain side and +closed the cave mouth as with a thick curtain. + +There was no speech in that little interval of cloud-lowering and +cloud-lifting. The boy tried for it, would have taken up the confidences +where the storm-coming had broken them off; but it was blankly +impossible. All the curious thrills foregone seemed to culminate now in +a single burning desire: to have it rain for ever, that he might nestle +there in the hollow of the great rock with Nan so close to him that he +could feel the warmth of her body and the quick beating of her heart +against his arm. + +Yet the sleeping conscience did not stir. The moment of recognition was +withheld even when the cloud curtain began to lift and he could see the +long lashes drooped over the dark eyes, and the flush in the brown cheek +matching his own. + +"Nan!" he whispered, catching his breath; "you're--you're the--" + +She slipped away from him before he could find the word, and a moment +later she was calling to him from below that the rain was over and she +must hurry. + +He walked beside her to the door of the miserable log shack under the +second cliff, still strangely shaken, but striving manfully to be +himself again. The needed fillip came when the mountaineer staggered to +the threshold to swear thickly at his daughter. In times past, Tom would +quickly have put distance between himself and Tike Bryerson in the +squirrel-eyed stage of intoxication. But now his promise to Nan was +behind him, and the Gordon blood was to the fore. + +"It was my fault that Nan stayed so long," he said bravely; and he was +immensely relieved when Bryerson, making quite sure of his identity, +became effusively hospitable. + +"Cap'n Gordon's boy--'f cou'se; didn't make out to know ye, 't firs'. +Come awn in the house an' sit a spell; come in, I say!" + +Again, for Nan's sake, Tom could do no less. It was the final plunge. +The boy was come of abstinent stock, which was possibly the reason why +the smell of the raw corn liquor with which the cabin reeked gripped him +so fiercely. Be that as it may, he could make but a feeble resistance +when the tipsy mountaineer pressed him to drink; and the slight barrier +went down altogether when he saw the appealing look in Nan's eyes. +Straightway he divined that there would be consequences for her when he +was gone if the maudlin devil should be aroused in her father. + +So he put the tin cup to his lips and coughed and strangled over a +single swallow of the fiery, nauseating stuff; did this for the girl's +sake, and then rose and fled away down the mountain with his heart +ablaze and a fearful clamor as of the judgment trumpet sounding in his +ears. + +For now the sleeping conscience was broad awake and plying its merciless +dagger; now, indeed, he knew very well what he had done--what he had +been doing since that fatal moment at the barrel-spring when he had +fallen under the spell of Nan Bryerson's beauty; nay, back of that--how +the up-bubbling of zeal had been nothing more than wounded vanity; the +smoke of a vengeful fire of anger lighted by a desire to strike back at +those who had laughed at him. + +The next morning he came hollow-eyed to his breakfast, and when the +chance offered, besought his father to give him one of the many boy's +jobs in the iron plant during the summer vacation--asked and obtained. + +And neither the hotel on the mountain top nor the hovel cabin under the +second cliff saw him more the long summer through. + + + + +XIII + +A SISTER OF CHARITY + + +It was just before the Christmas holidays, in his fourth year of the +sectarian school, that Tom Gordon was expelled. + +Writing to the Reverend Silas at the moment of Tom's dismissal, the +principal could voice only his regret and disappointment. It was a most +singular case. During his first and second years Thomas had set a high +mark and had attained to it. On the spiritual side he had been somewhat +non-committal, to be sure, but to offset this, he had been deeply +interested in the preparatory theological studies, or at least he had +appeared to be. + +But on his return from his first summer spent at home there was a marked +change in him, due, so thought Doctor Tollivar, to his association with +the rougher class of workmen in the iron mills. It was as if he had +suddenly grown older and harder, and the discipline of the school, +admirable as the Reverend Silas knew it to be, was not severe enough to +reform him. + +"It grieves me more than I can tell you, my dear brother, to be obliged +to confess that we can do nothing more for him here," was the concluding +paragraph of the principal's letter, "and to add that his continued +presence with us is a menace to the morals of the school. When I say +that the offense for which he is expelled is by no means the first, and +that it is the double one of gambling and keeping intoxicating liquors +in his room, you will understand that the good repute of Beersheba was +at stake, and there was no other course open to us." + +It was as well, perhaps, for what remained of Tom's peace of mind that +he knew nothing of this letter at the time of its writing. The long day +had been sufficiently soul-harrowing and humiliating. Since the morning +exercises, when he had been publicly degraded by having his sentence +read out to the entire school, he had spent the time in his room, +watched, if not guarded, by some one of the assistants. And now he was +to be shipped off on the night train like a criminal, with no chance for +a word of leave-taking, however much he might desire it. + +He was tramping up and down with his hands in his pockets, the Gordon +scowl making him look like a young thunder-cloud, when one of the +preceptors came to drive with him to the railroad station. It was the +final indignity, and he resented it bitterly. + +"I can make out to find my way down to the train without troubling you, +Mr. Martin," he burst out in boyish anger. + +"Doubtless," said the preceptor, quite unmoved. "But we are still +responsible for you. Doctor Tollivar wishes me to see you safely aboard +your train, and I shall certainly do so. Take the side stairway down, if +you please." + +The principal's buggy was waiting at the gate, and the preceptor drove. +Tom sat back under the hood with his overcoat across his knees. The +evening was freezing cold, with an edged wind, and the drive to the +station was a hilly mile. If it had been ten miles he would not have +moved or opened his lips. + +As it chanced, there were no other passengers for the train, which was a +through south-bound express. Tom was meaning to sit up all night and +think; and the most comfortless seat in the smoking-car would answer. +There would be the meeting with his father and mother in the morning, +and he thought he should not dare to let sleep come between. He had a +firm grip of himself now, and it must not be relaxed until that meeting +was over. + +But the preceptor had already stepped to the ticket window. "That +sleeping-car reservation for Thomas Gordon--have you secured it?" he +asked of the agent; and Tom heard the reply: "Lower ten in car number +two." That disposed of the seat in the smoker and the bit of penance, +and he was unreasonable enough to be resentful for favors. + +Hence, when the train came to a stand beside the platform, he went +straight to the Pullman, ignoring his keeper. But the preceptor followed +him to the car step, held out his hand coldly, and said: "I'm sorry for +you, Gordon. Good-by." + +Tom drew himself up stiffly, overlooking the extended hand. + +"'Good-by'--that is 'God be with you,' isn't it, Mr. Martin? I reckon +you don't mean that. Good night." And this is the way Thomas Jefferson +turned his back on three and a half years of Beersheba, with hot tears +in his eyes and an angry word on his lips. + +The Pintsch lights were burning brightly in the Pullman, and these--and +the tears--blinded him. Some of the sections in the middle of the car +were made down for the night, and while he was stumbling in the wake of +the porter over the shoes and the hand-bags left in the aisle, the train +started. + +"Lower ten, sah," said the black boy, and went about his business in the +linen locker. But Tom stood balancing himself with the swaying of the +car and staring helplessly at the occupant of lower twelve, a young girl +in a gray traveling coat and hat, sitting with her face to the window. + +"Why, you--somebody!" she exclaimed, turning to surprise him in the act +of glowering down on her. "Do you know, I thought there might be just +one chance in a thousand that you'd go home for Christmas, so I made the +porter tell me when we were coming to Beersheba. Why don't you sit +down?" + +Tom edged into the opposite seat and shook hands with her, all in +miserable, comfortless silence. Then he blurted out: + +"If I'd had any idea you were on this train, I'd have walked." + +Ardea laughed, and for all his misery he could not help remarking how +much sweeter the low voice was growing, and how much clearer the blue of +her eyes was under the forced light of the gas-globes. He had seen her +only two or three times since that blush-kindling noon at Crestcliffe +Inn. Their Paradise goings and comings had not coincided very evenly. + +"You are just the same rude boy, aren't you?" she said leniently. "Are +there no girls in Beersheba to teach you how to be nice?" + +"I didn't mean it that way," he hastened to say. "I'm always saying the +wrong thing to you. But if you only knew, you wouldn't speak to me; much +less let me sit here and talk to you." + +"If I only knew what? Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge +for myself," she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the +memory whip to make him feel again that she was immeasurably his senior. + +"I'm expelled," he said bluntly. + +"Oh!" For a full minute, as it seemed to him, she looked steadfastly out +of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady +drumming of the wheels grated on his nerves and got into his blood. When +it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand +again. "I'm just as sorry as I can be!" she declared, and the slate-blue +eyes confirmed it. + +Tom hung his head, just as he had in the trying interview with Doctor +Tollivar. But he told her a great deal more than he had told the +principal. + +"It was this way: three of the boys came to my room to play +cards--because their rooms were watched. I didn't want to play--oh, I'm +none too good;"--this in answer to something in her eyes that made him +eager to tell her the exact truth--"I've done it lots of times. But that +night I'd been thinking--well, I just didn't want to, that's all. Then +they said I was afraid, and of course, that settled it." + +"Of course," she agreed loyally. + +"Wait; I want you to know it all," he went on doggedly. "When +Martin--he's the Greek and Latin, you know--slipped up on us, there was +a bottle of whisky on the table. He took down our names, and then he +pointed at the bottle, and said, 'Which one of you does that belong +to?' Nobody said anything, and after it began to get sort of--well, kind +of monotonous, I picked up the bottle and offered him a drink, and put +it in my pocket. That settled _me_." + +"But it wasn't yours," she averred. + +His smile was a rather ferocious grin. "Wasn't it? Well, I took it, +anyway; and I've got it yet. Now see here: that's my berth over there +and I'm going over to it. You needn't let on like you know me any more." + +"Fiddle!" she said, making a face at him. "You say that like a little +boy trying, oh, so hard, to be a man. I'll believe you are just as bad +as bad can be, if you want me to; but you mustn't be rude to me. We +don't play cards or drink things at Carroll College, but some of us have +brothers, and--well, we can't help knowing." + +Tom was soberly silent for the space of half a hundred rail-lengths. +Then he said: "I wish I'd had a sister; maybe it would have been +different." + +She shook her head. + +"No, indeed, it wouldn't. You're going to be just what you are going to +be, and a dozen sisters wouldn't make any difference." + +"One like you would make a lot of difference." It made him blush and +have a slight return of the largeness of hands; but he said it. + +She laughed. "That's nice. You couldn't begin to say anything like that +the day you came up to Crestcliffe Inn. But I mean what I say. Sisters +wouldn't help you to be good, unless you really wanted to be good +yourself. They're just comfortable persons to have around when you are +taking your whipping for being naughty." + +"Well, that's a good deal, isn't it?" + +Again she made the adorable little face at him. "Do you want me to be +your sister for a little while--till you get out of this scrape? Is that +what you are trying to say?" + +He took heart of grace, for the first time in three bad days. "Say, +Ardea; I'm hunting for sympathy; just as I used to a long time ago. But +you mustn't mix up with me. I'm not worth it." + +"Oh, I suppose not; no boy is. But tell me; what are you going to do +when you get back to Paradise?" + +"Why--I don't know; I haven't thought that far ahead; go to work in the +iron plant and be a mucker all the rest of my life, I reckon." + +"How silly! You are nearly eighteen, now, aren't you?--and about six +feet tall?" + +"Both," he said briefly. + +"And all the way along you've been meaning to be a minister?" + +He gritted his teeth. "That's all over, now; I reckon it's been over for +a long time." + +"That is more serious. Does your mother know?" + +He shook his head. + +"She mustn't, Tom; it will just break her heart." + +"As if I didn't know!" he said bitterly. "But, Ardea, I haven't been +quite square with you. The way I told it about the cards and the whisky +you might think--" + +"I know what you are going to say. But it needn't make any all-the-time +difference, need it? You've been backsliding--isn't that what you call +it?--but now you are sorry, and--" + +"No; that's the worst of it. I'm not sorry, the way I ought to be. +Besides, after what I've been these last two years--but you can't +understand; it would just be mockery--mocking God. I told you I wasn't +worth your while." + +She smiled gravely. "You are such a boy, Tom. Don't you know that all +through life you'll have two kinds of friends: those who will stand by +you because they won't believe anything bad about you, and those who +will take you for just what you are and still stand by you?" + +He scowled thoughtfully at her. "Say, Ardea; I'd just like to know how +old you are, anyhow! You say things every once in a while that make me +feel as if I were a little kid in knee-breeches." + +She laughed in his face. "That is the rudest thing you've said yet! But +I don't mind telling you--since I'm to be your sister. I'll be seventeen +a little while after you're eighteen." + +"Haven't you ever been foolish, like other girls?" he asked. + +She laughed again, more heartily than ever. "They say I'm the silliest +tomboy in our house, at Carroll. But I have my lucid intervals, I +suppose, like other people, and this is one of them. I am going to stand +by you to-morrow morning, when you have to tell your father and +mother--that is, if you want me to." + +His gratitude was too large for speech, but he tried to look it. Then +the porter came to make her section down, and he had to say good night +and vanish. + + + + +XIV + +ON JORDAN'S BANK + + +Ardea saw cause for increasing satisfaction in Thomas Jefferson the next +morning, when they sat together in section nine to give the porter a +chance to rehabilitate ten and twelve. + +He had grown so much surer of himself in the two years, and his manners +were gratefully improved. Also, she was constrained to admit--frank +glances of the slate-blue eyes appraising him--that he was developing +hopefully in the matter of good looks. The dust-colored hair of boyhood +had become a sort of viking yellow, and the gray eyes, so they should +not be overcast by trouble shadows, were honest and fearless. + +Then, too, the Gordon jaw was beginning to assert itself--square in the +angle and broad at the point of the chin, with a deep cleft to mark its +center. Ardea thought it would not be well, later on, for those who +should find that jaw and chin opposing them. There would certainly be +stubborn and aggressive resistance--and none too much mercy when the +fight should end. + +The improved manners were pleasantly apparent when the train reached +South Tredegar. There were twenty minutes for breakfast, and Tom +bestirred himself manfully, and as if the awkward day at Crestcliffe Inn +had never been; helping Ardea with her coat, steering her masterfully +through the crowd, choosing the fortunate seats at the most convenient +table, and commanding the readiest service in spite of the hurry and +bustle. + +Ardea marked it all with a little thrill of vicarious triumph, which was +straightway followed by a little pang personal. What had wrought the +change in him? Was it merely the natural chivalry of the coming man +breaking through the crust of boyish indifference to the social +conventions? Or was it one of the effects of the late plunge into +rebellious wickedness? + +She hoped it was the chivalry, but she had a vague fear that it was the +wickedness. There was a young woman among the seniors in Carroll College +who was old in a certain brilliant hardness of mind--a young woman with +a cynical outlook on life, and who was not always regardful of her +seed-sowing in fresher hearts. Ardea remembered a saying of hers, flung +out one evening in the college parlors when the talk of her group had +turned on the goodness of good boys: "Why can't you be sincere with +yourselves? Not one of you has any use for the truly good boy until +after he has learned how to respect you by being a bad boy. You haven't +been saying it in so many words, perhaps, but that is the crude fact." +Was this the secret of Tom's new acceptability? Ardea hoped it was +not--and feared lest it might be. + +When they were once more in the train, and the mile-long labyrinth of +the factory chimneys had been threaded and left behind, Thomas Jefferson +gave proof of another and still more gratifying change. + +"Say, Ardea," he began, "you said last night that you'd stand by me in +what I've got to face this morning. That's all right; and I reckon I'll +never live long enough to even it up with you. But, of course, you know +I'm not going to let you do it." + +"Why not?" she asked. + +"Because I'm not mean enough, or coward enough. After a while, if you +get a chance to sort of make it easier for mother--" + +"I'll do that, if I can," she promised quickly. "But I hope you are not +going to break her heart, Tom." + +"You can be mighty sure I'm not; if anything I can do now will help it. +But--but, say, Ardea, I can't go back and begin all over again. I should +be the meanest, low-down thing in all this world--and that's a +hypocrite." + +"Oh!" said Ardea, catching her breath. Her religion was very much a +matter of fact to her, and the thought of Tom--Martha Gordon's +son--stumbling in the plain path of belief was dismaying. "Why would you +have to be a hypocrite? Do you mean that you are not sure you ought to +be a minister?" + +"I mean that I don't know any more what I believe and what I don't +believe. I feel as if I'd just like to let myself alone on that side for +a while, and make everybody else let me alone. It seems--but you don't +know; a girl can't know." + +She smiled up at him, and the smile effaced some of the trouble furrows +between his eyes. + +"Last night you were telling me that I seemed ages older than you; what +is it that I can't know?" + +"Stumpings like mine,--a man's stumpings," he said, with a touch of the +old self-assurance. "You've swallowed your religion whole; it's the best +thing for a girl to do, I reckon. But I've got to have whys and +wherefores; I've always had to have them. And there are no wherefores in +religion; just none whatever." + +She was plainly shocked. "O Tom!" she urged; "think of your mother!" + +"Thinking of her isn't going to change the value of pi any," he rejoined +soberly. "I suppose I've thought of her, and of what she wants me to be, +ever since the first day I went to Beersheba. The first two years I +tried, honestly tried. But it's no use. It appears like we've got so far +away from taw that we can't even see what-all we're aiming at. I've been +grinding theology till I'm fairly sick of the word, and I've learned +just one thing, Ardea, and that is that you can't prove a single theorem +in it." + +"But there are some things that don't appear to need any proof; one +seems to have been born knowing them. Don't you feel that way?" + +He shook his head slowly. + +"I used to think I did; but now I'm afraid I don't. I can't remember the +time when I wasn't asking why. Don't they teach you to ask why at +Carroll?" + +"Not in matters of--of conscience." + +"Well, they don't at Beersheba, when you come right down to it. And when +you do ask, they put you off with a text out of the Bible that, just as +like as not, doesn't come within a row of apple-trees of hitting the +mark. I remember one time I said something about the 'why' to Doctor +Tollivar. He sniffled--he _does_ sniffle, Ardea--and said: 'Mr. Gordon, +I recommend that you read what Paul says to the Romans, fourteen and +twenty-three: "He that doubteth is damned." And you will note the verb +in the original--_is damned_, present tense.' Do you happen to remember +the verse?" + +Ardea confessed ignorance, and he went on, with a lip-curl of contempt. + +"Well, the whole chapter is about being careful for the weak brother. +The Romans used to eat the flesh of the animals offered in the +sacrifices to the gods, and some of the Christian Romans didn't seem to +be strong enough or sensible enough to eat it as just plain, every-day +meat. They tangled it up with the idol worship. So Paul, or whoever it +was that wrote the chapter, said: 'He that doubteth is damned if he eat, +because he eateth not of faith,' that is, the Christian faith, I +suppose, which would teach him that the meat wasn't any the worse for +having been offered to a block of wood or stone called a god. Now, +honestly, Ardea, what would you think of a teacher who would +deliberately cut a verse in two in the middle and make his half of it +mean something else, just to put a fellow down?" + +"It doesn't seem quite honest," she could not help admitting. + +"Honest! It's low-down trickery. And they all do it. Last year when I +was going up to Beersheba I happened to sit in the same seat with a +Catholic priest. We got to talking, I don't remember just how, and I +said something about doubting the Pope's infallibility. Out pops the +same old text: 'My son, hear the words of the holy Apostle, Saint +Paul--" He that doubteth is damned!"' He was old enough to be my father, +but I couldn't help slapping the other half of the verse at him, and +saying that we'd most luckily escape because there wasn't any +dinner-stop for our train." + +The flippant tone of all this disheartened Thomas Jefferson's listener, +and a silence succeeded which lasted until the train had stormed around +the nose of Lebanon and the whistle was blowing for Gordonia. Then Tom +said: "I didn't mean to hurt you; but now you see why I can't go back +and begin all over again." And she nodded assent. + +There was no one at the station to meet the disgraced one, news of the +disaster at Beersheba being as yet only on the way. Thomas Jefferson was +rather glad of it; especially glad that there was no one from +Woodlawn--this was the name of the new home--to recognize him and ask +discomforting questions. But Ardea was expected, and the Dabney +carriage, with old Scipio on the box, was drawn up beside the platform. + +Tom put Ardea into the carriage and was giving her hand luggage to +Scipio when she called to him. + +"Isn't there any one here to meet you, Tom?" + +"They don't know I'm coming," he explained. Whereupon she quickly made +room for him, holding the door open. But he hung back. + +"I reckon I'd better ride on the box with Unc' Scipio," he suggested. + +"I am sure I don't know why you should," she objected. + +He told her straight; or at least gave her his own view of it. + +"By to-morrow morning everybody in Gordonia and Paradise Valley will +know that I'm home in disgrace. It won't hurt Unc' Scipio any if I'm +seen riding with him." + +It was the first time that he had been given to see the Dabney +imperiousness shining star-like in Miss Ardea's slate-blue eyes. + +"I wish you to get your hand-bag and ride in here with me," she said, +with the air of one whose wish was law. But when he was sitting opposite +and the carriage door was shut, she smiled companionably across at him +and added: "You foolish boy!" + +"It wasn't foolish," he maintained doggedly. "I know what I ought to +do--and I'm not doing it. Everybody around here knows both of us, and--" + +"Hush!" she commanded. "I refuse to hear another word. I said you were a +foolish boy, and it will be inexcusably impolite in you to prove that +you are not." + +Tom was glad enough to be silent; and it came to him, after a little, +that she was giving him a chance to pull himself together to meet the +ordeal that was before him. In all the misery of the moment--the misery +which belongs to those who ride to the block, the gallows or other +mortal finalities--he marveled that she could be a girl and still be so +thoughtful and far-seeing; and once again it made him feel young and +inadequate and awkwardly her inferior. + +At the Woodlawn gates she pulled the old-fashioned, check-strap signal, +and Scipio reined in his horses. + +"Are you quite sure you don't want me to go in with you?" she asked, +while Tom was fumbling the door-latch. + +He nodded and said: "There'll be trouble enough to go around among as +many as can crowd in, all right. But I can't let you." + +"Still, you won't say you don't want me?" + +"No; lying isn't one of the things I was expelled for. When I stand up +to my mother to tell her what I've got to tell her, I'd be glad if there +was a little fise-dog sniffling around to back me up. But I'm not going +to call in the neighbors--you, least of all." + +"You are disappointing me right along--and I'm rather glad," she said. +And then, almost wistfully: "You are going to be good, aren't you, Tom?" + +His look was so sober that it was well-nigh sullen. "I'm going to say +what I've got to say, and then hold my tongue if I have to bite it," he +answered. "Good-by; and--and a Merry Christmas, and--thank you." + +He shut the carriage door and gave Scipio the word to go on; and +afterward stood at the gate looking after the great lumbering ark on +wheels until it turned in at the Deer Trace driveway and was lost in the +winding avenue of thick-set evergreens. Then he let himself in at the +home gate, walking leaden-footed toward the ornate house at the top of +the knoll and wishing the distance were ten times as great. + +When he reached the house there was an ominous air of quiet about it, +and a horse and buggy, with a black boy holding the reins, stood before +the door. Tom's heart came into his mouth. The turnout was Doctor +Williams's. + +"Who's sick?" he asked of the boy who was holding the doctor's horse, +and his tongue was thick with a nameless fear. + +The black boy did not know; and Tom crept up the steps and let himself +in as one enters a house of mourning, breaking down completely when he +saw his father sitting bowed on the hall seat. + +"You, Buddy?--I'm mighty glad," said the man; and when he held out his +arms the boy flung himself on his knees beside the seat and buried his +face in the cushions. + +"Is she--is she going to die?" he asked; when the dreadful words could +be found and spoken. + +"We're hoping for the best, Buddy, son. It's some sort of a stroke, the +doctor says; it took her yesterday morning, and she hasn't been herself +since. Did somebody telegraph to you?" + +Tom rocked his head on the cushion. How could he add to the blackness of +darkness by telling his miserable story of disgrace? Yet it had to be +done, and surely no hapless penitent in the confessional ever emptied +his soul with more heartfelt contrition or more bitter remorse. + +Caleb Gordon listened, with what inward condemnings one could only guess +from his silence. It was terrible! If his father would strike him, curse +him, drive him out of the house, it would be easier to bear than the +stifling silence. But when the words came finally they were as balm +poured into an angry wound. + +"There, there, Buddy; don't take on so. You're might' nigh a man, now, +and the sun's still risin' and settin' just the same as it did before +you tripped up and fell down. And it'll go on risin' and settin', too, +long after you and me and all of us have quit goin' to bed and gettin' +up by it. If it wasn't for your poor mammy--" + +"That's it--that's just it," groaned Tom. "It would kill her, even if +she was well." + +"Nev' mind; you're here now, and I reckon that's the main thing. If she +gets up again, of course she'll have to know; but we won't cross that +bridge till we come to it. And Buddy, son, whatever happens, your old +pappy ain't goin' to believe that you'll be the first Gordon to die in +the gutter. You've got better blood in you than what that calls for." + +Tom felt the lightening of his burden to some extent; but beyond was the +alternative of suffering, or causing suffering. He had never realized +until now how much he loved his mother; how large a place she had filled +in his life, and what a vast void there would be when she was gone. He +was yet too young and too self-centered to know that this is the +mother-cross: to live for love and to be crowned and enthroned oftenest +in memory. + +For days,--days which brought back the boyhood agony of the time when he +had believed himself to be Ardea's murderer,--he went softly about the +house, sharing, with his father and his uncle, the watch in the +sick-room; doing what little there was to be done in dumb hopelessness, +and beating at times on the brazen gates of Heaven in sheer despair. +There was no answer to his prayers; in his inmost soul he knew there +would not be; but even in this the eternal query assailed him. Was it +for lack of faith that no whisper of reply came from the unseen world +beyond the veil? Or was it only because there was no ear to hear, no +voice to answer? He could not tell. He made sure he was doomed to live +and die, buffeting with these submerging waves of doubt--doubt of +himself on one hand, and of God on the other. + +In that time of sore trial, his Uncle Silas's forbearance wiped out many +a score of boyish resentment. There was no word of reproach, still less +the harsh arraignment and condemnation to which he began to look forward +on the day when Doctor Tollivar had announced his purpose of writing +the facts to his brother in the faith. But Tom remarked that in the +daily morning and evening prayers his uncle spoke of him as a soul in +peril, and he wondered that this pointed reference, which once would +have stirred the pool of bitterness to its bottom, now left him unmoved +and immovable. Later, he knew it was because there was now no pool of +bitterness to be stirred; the spiritual well-springs had failed and +there was no water in them--either for healing or for penitential +cleansing. + +The fifth day after his home-coming was Christmas Eve. Late in the +afternoon, when the doctor had made his second visit and had gone away, +leaving no word of encouragement for the watchers, Tom left the house +and took the path that led up through the young orchard to the foot of +Lebanon. + +He was deep within the winter-stripped forest on the mountain side, +plunging upward through the beds of dry leaves in the little hollows, +when he met Ardea. She was coming down with her arms full of holly, and +for the moment he forgot his troubles in the keen pleasure of looking at +her. It had not occurred to him sooner to think of her as other than the +girl of his boyhood days, grown somewhat, as he himself had grown. But +now he saw that she was very beautiful. + +None the less, his greeting was a brotherly reproof. + +"I'd like to know what you're thinking of, tramping around on the +mountain alone," he said, frowning at her. + +"I have been thinking of you, most of the time, and wishing you could be +with me," she answered, so artlessly as to mollify him instantly. + +[Illustration: "I have been wishing you could be with me."] + +"I ought to row you like smoke, but when you say things like that, I +can't. Don't you know you oughtn't to go projecting around in the woods +all alone?" + +"I have always done it, haven't I? And Hector was with me till a few +minutes ago, when he took it into his foolish old head to run after a +rabbit. Is your mother any better this afternoon?" + +"Sit down," he commanded abruptly. "I want to talk to you." + +She hung the bunch of holly on the twigged limb of a small oak and sat +down on a moss-covered rock. Tom sprawled at her feet in the dry leaves, +and for a little while he was silent. + +"You haven't told me yet how your mother is," she reminded him. + +"She is just the same; lying there so still that you have to look close +to see whether she is breathing. The doctor says that if there isn't a +change pretty soon, she'll die." + +"O Tom!" + +He looked up at her with the old boyish frown pulling his eyebrows +together. + +"She's been good to God all her life; what do you reckon He's letting +her die this way for?" + +It was a terrible question, made more terrible by the savage hardihood +that lay behind it. Ardea could not reason with him; and she felt +intuitively that at this crisis only reason would appeal to him. Yet she +could not turn him away empty-handed in his hour of need. + +"How can we tell?" she said, and there were tears in her voice. "We only +know that He does everything for the best." + +"Yes; that is what they tell us. But how are we going to _know_?" he +demanded. + +The girl's faith was as simple and confiding as it was defenseless under +any fire of argument. + +"I suppose we can't know, in your sense of the word. But we can +believe." + +"_I_ can't," said Tom fiercely. "I can pretend to; I reckon I've been +pretending to all my life; but now I've got to a place where I can't +feel anything that I can't touch, nor hear anything that doesn't make a +noise, nor see anything that everybody else can't see. From what you've +said at different times, you seem to be able to do all these things. Do +you really believe?" + +"I hope I do," she answered, and her voice was low and very earnest. But +she would be altogether honest. "Perhaps you wouldn't call it 'belief +unto righteousness,' as your Uncle Silas would say. I've never thought +much about such things--in the way he says we ought to think about them. +They seem to me to be true, like the--well, like the stars and the +universe. You don't think about the universe all the time; but you know +it is there, and that you are a little, tiny fraction of it, yourself." + +But these were abstractions, and Tom's need was terribly concrete. + +"I suppose you mean you haven't been converted, and all that; never mind +about that. What I want to know is, did you ever ask God for anything +and get it?" + +"Why, yes; I ask Him for things every day, and get them. Don't you?" + +"No, not now. But are you sure the things you ask for are not things +that you'd get anyway?" he persisted. + +She was growing a little restive under the fire of relentless +questions. There are modesties in religion as in morals,--inner shrines +to be defended at any and all costs. In the Crafts part of Thomas +Jefferson's veins ran the blood of those who had fought with the sword +in one hand and the Bible in the other, stabling their horses overnight +in the enemy's churches. Ardea rose and began to untangle the great +bunch of holly. + +"I think we had better be going," she said, ignoring his clenching +question. "Cousin Euphrasia gets nervous about me, sometimes, as you +made believe you were." + +He did not look around, or make any move toward getting up. But there +was a new note of hardness in his voice when he said: "I thought you'd +have to dodge, just like all the others, if I could only make out to +throw straight enough. 'Way down deep inside of you, you don't believe +God worries Himself much about what happens to us little dry leaves in +His big woods." + +"Oh, but I do!--that is, I believe He cares. The things you spoke of are +things I might easily be deprived of; and I choose to believe that He +gives and continues them." + +He was quiet for a full minute, sitting with his knees drawn up to his +chin and his hands tightly clasped over them. When he looked up at her +his face was the face of one tormented. + +"I wish you'd ask Him to let my mother live!" he said brokenly. "I've +tried and tried, and the words just die in my mouth." + +There is a Mother of Sorrows in every womanly heart, to whom the appeal +of the stricken is never made in vain. Ardea saw only a boy-brother +crying out in his pain, and she dropped on her knees and put her arms +around his neck and wept over him in a pure transport of sisterly +sympathy. + +"Indeed and indeed I will help, Tom! And you mustn't let it drive you +out into the dark. You poor boy! I know just how it hurts, and I'm so +sorry for you!" + +He freed himself gently from the comforting arms, got up rather +unsteadily, and lifted her to her feet. Then the manly bigness of him +sent the hot blood to her cheeks and she was ashamed. + +"O Tom!" she faltered; "what must you think of me!" + +He turned to gather up the scattered holly. + +"I think God made you--and that was one time when His hand didn't +tremble," he said gravely. + +They had picked their way down the leaf-slippery mountain side and he +was giving her the bunch of holly at the Dabney orchard gate before he +spoke again. But at the moment of leave-taking he said: + +"How did you know what I needed more than anything else in all the +world, Ardea?" + +She blushed painfully and the blue eyes were downcast. + +"You must never speak of that again. I didn't stop to think. It's a +Dabney failing, I'm afraid--to do things first and consider them +afterward. It was as if we were little again, and you had fallen down +and hurt yourself." + +"I know," he acquiesced, with the same manly gentleness that had made +her ashamed. "I won't speak of it any more--and I'll never forget it the +longest day I live. Good-by." + +And he went the back way to his own orchard gate, plunging through the +leaf beds with his head down and his hands in his pockets, struggling as +he could to stem the swift current which was whirling him out beyond all +the old landmarks. For now he was made to know that boyhood was gone, +and youth was going, and for one intoxicating moment he had looked over +the mountain top into the Promised Land of manhood. + + + + +XV + +NOEL + + +The night was far spent and the Christmas dawn was graying in the +remotest east when Tom, sleeping in his clothes on a lounge before the +fire in the lower hall, roused himself and went noiselessly up stairs to +beg his father to go and lie down for a little while. + +There was a trained nurse from South Tredegar in charge of the +sick-room; but from the beginning the three--husband, brother and +son--had kept watch at the bedside of the stricken one. There was little +to be done; nothing, in fact; and the nurse would have spared them the +nights. Yet no one of the three would surrender his privilege. + +His father relieved, Tom mended the fire in the grate; and when he found +the nurse dozing in her chair, he woke her and persuaded her to go and +rest in the adjoining room, promising to call her instantly if she were +needed. + +Left alone with his mother, he tiptoed to the bedside and stood for many +minutes looking with sorrow-blurred eyes at the still, rigid face on the +pillow. It was terribly like death; so like, that more than once he laid +his hand softly on the bed-covering to make sure that she still +breathed. When he could bear it no longer, he crossed the room to the +western window, drawing the draperies and standing between them to stare +miserably out into the calm, starlit void. While he looked, a meteor +burned its way across the inverted bowl of the heavens, and its passing +kindled the embers of the inextinguishable fire. + +_And, lo, the star ... came and stood over where the young child was._ +The curtains of the void were parted by invisible hands, and down the +long vista of the centuries he saw the familiar scene of the Nativity, +dwelt on so often and so faithfully in his childhood training that it +seemed almost like a part of the material scheme of the universe: the +Babe in the manger; the shepherds watching their flocks; the heavenly +host singing the triumphant anthem of the ages, _Glory to God in the +highest, and on earth, peace_; the star of Bethlehem shining serenely +above a world lying in darkness and in the shadow of death. + +Was it all true? or was it only a beautiful myth? If it were true, where +was the proof? Not in history, for this, the most wonderful and +miraculous thing in all the story of mankind, stands unrecorded save by +the pens of those who were themselves under the spell of it. In +subsequent marvels and wonder-workings?--he shook his head mournfully. +If any such there had been, those impartial witnesses who must have +known and should have spoken were silent, and now all the earth was +silent: storms rose in their fury and were calmed for no man's _Peace, +be still_; earthquakes engulfed pagan and Christian believer alike; all +nature was cruel, relentless, mechanical. + +Was there nothing then to reach down the ages from that Christmas +morning so long ago to make the beautiful first-century myth a +latter-day reality? Tom cast about him hopelessly. There was the +Church--one and indivisible, if the myth were true. The slow Gordon +smile gathered at the corners of his eyes. He remembered a thing his +mother had said to him long ago, when, in a moment of boyish confidence, +he had told her of the climb to Crestcliffe Inn and its purpose. +"Ardea's a dear girl, as the children of this world go, Thomas; she's +been right loving and kind to me since we've come to be such close +neighbors. But"--with a note of solemn warning in her voice--"you must +never forget that she's an Episcopalian, a lost soul, dead in forms and +ceremonies and trespasses and sins." So his mother scoffed at Ardea's +faith; and Ardea--no, she did not scoff, her contempt was too generous +for that; but it was there, just the same. And the Methodists +fellowshiped neither, and the Baptists excluded the Methodists, and the +Catholics retorted to the Protestant charge of apostasy with the +centuries-old cry of "heretics all"! Which of the scores of divisions +and subdivisions was the one true indivisible body of Christ? Tom shook +his head again. There was no hope of proof in the churches. + +And the world? He was only now verging on manhood, and he had seen +little of the world. But that little was frankly indifferent to the +things which, if they were worthy of belief, should shake an unsaved +world to its very foundations. Its people bought and sold, built houses +and laid up stores of the things that perish, grasped, overreached, did +what they listed. But for that matter, even those who professed to be +followers of the Christ, who asserted most loudly their belief in the +unproved things, fought and struggled and sinned in common with the +worldlings, as far as Tom could see. + +He turned from the window and from the vision, and went to stand with +his back to the flickering blaze in the grate. It was going to leave a +huge rift in his life when this thing, with all its rootings and +anchorings in childhood and boyhood, was torn out and cast aside. The +mere thought of it was appalling. What would there be to fill the void? + +As if the question had evoked them, alluring shapes began to rise out of +the depths. Ambition, though he knew it not by name, was the first that +beckoned. The craftsman's blood stirred to its reawakening: to know how, +and to do things; to compel the iron and steel and the stubborn forces +of nature. This would be worthwhile; but better still, he would learn to +be a leader of men. The magic vista opened again, but this time it +stretched away into the future, and he saw himself keeping step with the +ever-advancing march of progress--nay, even setting the pace in his own +corner of the vast field. His father was content to follow; he would +learn the trick of it and lead. The Farleys were said to be rich and +steadily growing richer--not out of Chiawassee Iron, to be sure, but in +others of their multifarious out-reachings; very good,--he would be +rich, too. What a Duxbury Farley could do, he would do; on a larger +scale and with a stubborner patience. He-- + +It was a mere turning of the head that sent the air-castles tumbling and +left him choking in the dust of their dissolution. Something, he fancied +it was a noise or some slight movement, made him look quickly toward the +bed; and at sight of the still, white face among the pillows, boyish +love--God Himself has made no stronger passion--swept doubt, distrust, +rebellion, worldly ambition, all, into the abyss of renunciation. He +went softly, groping because the quick tears blinded him, to kneel at +the bedside. She was his mother; for one thing she had lived and striven +and prayed; living or dying she must not, she should not, be +disappointed. And if his service must be of the lip and not of the +heart, she should never suspect, never, never! + +And so it came about that he knelt in the graying dawn of the Christmas +morning, with his soul in thick darkness, lifting the prayer that in +some form has shaped itself in all the ages on lips of trembling: "O +God, if there be a God, have mercy on my soul, if I have a soul!" + + + + +XVI + +THE BUBBLE, REPUTATION + + +It was not until late in the afternoon of Christmas Day that Ardea was +able to slip away from her guests long enough to run over to apprise +herself of the condition of things at the Gordon house. + +Tom opened the door for her, and he made her come to the fire before he +would answer her questions. Even then he sat glowering at the cheerful +blaze as if he had forgotten her presence; and she was womanly enough, +or amiable enough, to let him take his own time. When he began, it was +seemingly at a great distance from matters present and pressing. + +"Say, Ardea; do you believe in miracles?" he asked abruptly. + +It was a large question to be answered offhand, but she broke the back +of it with a simple, "Yes." + +"How do you account for them? Did God make His laws so they could be +taken apart and put together again when some little human ant loses its +way on a grass stalk or drops its grain of sugar?" + +"I don't know," she confessed frankly. "I am not sure that I ever tried +to account for them; I suppose I have swallowed them whole, as you say I +have swallowed my religion." + +"Well, you believe in them, anyway," he said, "and that makes it easier +to hit what I'm aiming at. Do you reckon they stopped short in the +Apostles' time?" + +"I don't know that, either," she admitted. + +"You ought to know it, if you're consistent," he said, bluntly dogmatic. +"Any answer to any prayer would be a miracle." + +"Would it? I never happened to think of it that way." + +"It certainly would. You chop a tree in two and it falls; that's cause +and effect. If you ask God to make it stand up after it's cut in two, +and it does stand, that's a miracle." + +"You are the queerest boy," she commented. "I ran over here just for a +minute to ask how your mother is, and you won't tell me." + +"I'm coming to that," he rejoined gravely. "But I wanted to get this +other thing straightened out first. Now tell me this: did you pray for +my mother last night, like you said you would?" + +Once again he was offending the guardian of the inner shrines, and her +heightened color was not all the reflection of the ruddy firelight. + +"You can be so barbarously personal when you try, Tom," she protested. +And then she added: "But I did." + +"Well, the miracle was wrought. Early this morning mother came to +herself and asked for something to eat. Doctor Williams has been here, +and now he tells us all the things he wouldn't tell us before. It was +some little clot in one of the veins or arteries of the brain, and nine +times out of ten there is no hope." + +"O Tom!--and she will get well again?" + +"She has more chances to-day of getting well than she had last night of +dying--so the doctor says. But it's a miracle, just the same." + +"I'm so glad! And now I really must go home." And she got up. + +"No, sit down; I'm not through with you yet. I want to know what you +think about promises." + +She smiled and pushed her chair back from the soft-coal blaze in the +fireplace. + +"Don't you know you are a perfect 'old man of the sea,' Tom?" + +"That's all right; but tell me: is a bad promise better broken or kept?" + +"I am sure I couldn't say without knowing the circumstances. Tell me all +about it," and she resigned herself to listen. + +"It was at daybreak this morning. I was alone with mother, looking at +her lying there so still and helpless--dead, all but the little flicker +of breath that seemed just about ready to go out. It came over me all of +a sudden that I couldn't disappoint her, living or dead; that I'd have +to go on and be what she has always wanted me to be. And I promised +her." + +"But she couldn't hear you?" + +"No; it was before she came to herself. Nobody heard me but God; and I +reckon He wasn't paying much attention to anything I said." + +"Why do you say that?" + +"Because--well, because it wasn't the kind of a promise that makes the +angels glad. I said I'd go on and do it, if I had to be a hypocrite all +the rest of my life." + +"O Tom! would you have to be?" + +"That's the way it looks to me now. I told you the other day that I +didn't know what I believed and what I didn't believe. But I do know +some of the _don'ts_. For instance: if there is a hell--and I'm not +anyways convinced that there is--I don't believe--but what's the use of +cataloguing it? They'd ask me a string of questions when I was ordained, +and I'd have to lie like Ananias." + +She rose and met his gloomy eyes fairly. + +"Tom Gordon, if you should do that, you would be the wickedest thing +alive--the basest thing that ever breathed!" + +"That's about the way it strikes me," he said coolly. "So you see it +comes down to a case of big wicked or little wicked; it's been that way +all along. Did you know that one time I asked God to kill you?" + +She looked horrified, as was her undoubted right. + +"Why, of all things!" she gasped. + +"It's so. I took a notion that I'd be mad because your grandfather +brought you here to Paradise. And when you took sick--well, I reckon +there isn't any hell deeper or hotter than the one I frizzled in for +about four days that summer." + +It was too deep in the past to be tragic, and she laughed. + +"I used to think then that you were the worst, as well as the queerest, +boy I had ever seen." + +"And now you know it," he said. Then: "What's your rush? I'm not trying +to get rid of you now." + +"I positively must go back. We have company, and I ran away without +saying a word." + +"Anybody I know?" inquired Tom. + +"Three somebodies whom you know, or ought to know, very well: Mr. +Duxbury Farley, Mr. Vincent Farley, Miss Eva Farley." + +His eyes darkened suddenly. + +"I'd like to know how under the sun they managed to get on your +grandfather's good side!" he grumbled. + +Ardea Dabney's expressive face mirrored dawning displeasure. + +"Why do you say that?" she retorted. "Eva was my classmate for years at +Miss De Valle's." + +He made a boyish face of disapproval, saying bluntly: "I don't care if +she was. You shouldn't make friends of them. They are not fit for you to +wipe your shoes on." + +For the second time since his home-coming, Tom saw the Dabney +imperiousness flash out; saw and felt it. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Gordon! Less than an hour ago, +we were speaking of you, and of what happened at Beersheba. Mr. Farley +and his son both stood up for you." + +"And you took the other side, I reckon," he broke out, quite +unreasonably. It had not as yet come to blows between him and his +father's business associates, but it made him immeasurably dissatisfied +to find them on social terms at Deer Trace Manor. + +"Perhaps I did, and perhaps I did not," she answered, matching his +tartness. + +"Well, you can tell them both that I'm much obliged to them for +nothing," he said, rising and going to the door with her. "They would be +mighty glad to see it patched up again and me back in the Beersheba +school." + +"Of course they would; so would all of your friends." + +"But they are not my friends. They have fooled my father, and they'll +fool your grandfather, if he doesn't watch out. But they can't fool me." + +He had opened the outer door for her, and she drew herself up till she +could face him squarely, slate-blue eyes flashing scornfully into sullen +gray. + +"That is the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to +say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson +Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva +Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for her +leave-taking, she turned her back on him and went swiftly across the two +lawns to the great gray house on the opposite knoll. + +For the first fortnight of his mother's convalescence Tom slept badly, +and his days were as the days of the accused whose sentence has been +suspended; jail days, these, with chains to clank when he thought of the +promise made in the gray Christmas dawn; with whips to flog him when the +respite grew shorter and the time drew near when his continued stay at +home must be explained to his mother. + +Ardea had gone back to Carroll the Saturday before New Year's, and there +was no one to talk to. But for that matter, he had cut himself out of +her confidence by his assault on the Farleys. Every morning for a week +after the Christmas-day clash, Scipio came over with the compliments of +"Mawsteh Majah," Miss Euphrasia, and Miss Dabney, and kindly inquiries +touching the progress of the invalid. But after New Year's, Tom remarked +that there were only the Major and Miss Euphrasia to send compliments, +and despair set in. For out of his boyhood he had brought up +undiminished the longing for sympathy, or rather for a burden-bearer on +whom he might unload his troubles, and Ardea had begun to promise well. + +It was on a crisp morning in the second week of January when the +prolonged agony of suspense drove him to the mountain. His mother was +sitting up, and was rapidly recovering her strength. His father had gone +back to his work in the iron plant, and his uncle was preparing to +return to his charge in South Tredegar. With Uncle Silas and the nurse +both gone, Tom knew that the evil hour must come speedily; and it was +with some half-cowardly hope that his uncle would break the ice for him +that he ran away on the crisp morning of happenings. + +With no particular destination in view, it was only natural that his +feet should find the familiar path leading up to the great boulder under +the cedars. He had not visited the rock of the spring since the summer +day when he and Nan Bryerson had taken refuge from the shower in the +hollow heart of it, nor had he seen Nan since their parting at the door +of her father's cabin under the cliff. Rumor in Gordonia had it that +Tike Bryerson had been hunted out by the revenue officers; and, for +reasons which he would have found it difficult to declare in words, Tom +had been shy about making inquiries. + +For this cause an apparition could scarcely have startled him more than +did the sight of Nan filling her bucket at the trickling barrel-spring +under the cliff face of the great rock. He came on her suddenly at the +end of the long climb up the wooded slopes, at a moment +when--semi-tropical growth having had two full seasons in which to +change the natural aspect of things--he was half-bewildered with the +unwonted look of the place. But there was no doubt about it; it was Nan +in the flesh, a little fuller in the figure, something less childish in +the face, but with all the fascinating, wild-creature beauty of the +child-time promise to dazzle the eye and breed riot in the brain of the +boy-man. + +When she stood up with a little cry of pleased surprise, the dark eyes +lighting quick joy-fires, and the welcoming blush mounting swiftly to +neck and cheek, Tom thought she was the most alluring thing he had ever +looked on. Yet the bottom stone in the wall of recrudescent admiration +was the certainty that he had found a sympathetic ear. + +"Did you know I was coming? Were you waiting for me, Nan?" he bubbled, +gazing into the great black eyes as eagerly as a freed dog plunges into +the first pool that offers. + +"How could I be knowin' to it?" she asked, taking him seriously, or +appearing to. "I nev' knowed school let out this time o' year." + +"It's let out for me, Nan," he said meaningly. "I came home--for +good--nearly three weeks ago. My mother has been sick. Didn't you hear +of it?" + +She shook her head gravely. + +"I hain't been as far as Paradise sence paw and me moved back from Pine +Knob, two months ago. I don't hear nothin' any more." + +In times long past, Tom, valley-born and of superior clay, used to be +scornful of the mountain dialect. Now, on Nan's lips, it charmed him. +It was blessedly reminiscent of the care-free days of yore. + +"Say, Nan; I hope you haven't got to hurry home," he interposed, when +she stooped to lift the overflowing bucket. "I want to talk to you--to +tell you something." + +She looked up quickly, and there were scrolls unreadable in the black +eyes. + +"Air you a man now, Tom-Jeff, or on'y a boy like you used to be?" she +asked. + +Tom squared his broad shoulders and laughed. + +"I'm big enough to be in my own way a good deal of the time. I believe I +could muddy Sim Cantrell's back for him now, at arm-holts." + +But there was still a question in the black eyes. + +"Where's your preacher's coat, Tom-Jeff? I was allowin' you'd be wearin' +it nex' time we met up." + +"I reckon there isn't going to be any preacher's coat for me, Nan; +that's one of the things I want to talk to you about. Let's go over +yonder and sit down in the sun." + +The place he chose for her was a flat stone half embedded in the +up-climbing slope beyond the great boulder. She sat facing the path and +the spring, listening, while Tom, stretched luxuriously on a bed of dry +leaves at her feet, told her what had befallen; how he had been turned +out of Beersheba, and what for; how, all the former things having passed +away, he was torn and distracted in the struggle to find a footing in +the new order. + +In the midst of it he had a feeling that she was only dimly +apprehending; that some of his keenest pains--most of them, perhaps--did +not appeal to her. But there was comfort in her bodily presence, in the +listening ear. It was a shifting of the burden in some sort, and there +be times when the humblest pack animal may lighten a king's load. + +His fears touching her understanding, or her lack of it, were confirmed +when he had reached a stopping-place. + +"They-all up yonder in that school where you was at hain't got much +sense, it looks like to me," was her comment. "You're a man growed now, +Tom-Jeff, and if you want to play cards or drink whisky, what-all +business is it o' their'n?" + +He smiled at her elemental point of view; laughed outright when the +significance of it struck him fairly. But it betokened allegiance of a +kind to gladden the heart of the masculine tyrant, and he rolled the +declaration of fealty as a sweet morsel under his tongue. + +"You stand by your friends, right or wrong, don't you, girl?" he said, +in sheerest self-gratulation. "That's what I like in you. You asked me a +little while back if I was a man or a boy; I believe you could make a +man of me, Nan, if you'd try." + +He was looking up into her face as he said it and the change that came +over her lighted a strange fire in his blood. The black eyes kindled it, +and the red lips, half parted, blew it into a blaze. His face flushed +and he broke the eye-hold and looked down. In their primal state, when +Nature mothered the race, the man was less daring than the woman. + +"If you'd said that two year ago," she began, in a half-whisper that +melted the marrow in his bones. "But you was on'y a boy then; and now I +reckon it's too late." + +"You mean that you don't care for me any more, Nan? I know better than +that. You'd back me if I had come up here to tell you that I'd killed +somebody. Wouldn't you, now?" + +He waited overlong for his answer. There were sounds in the air: a +metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled +with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over +the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three +men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the +first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind +Tom, trembling, shaking with terror. + +"Hide me, Tom-Jeff! Oh, for God's sake, hide me, quick!" she panted. +"Lookee there!" + +He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which +drained the barrel-spring. They were too far away to be recognizable to +him, and since they were stopping momently to examine the pipe, there +was good hope of an escape unseen. + +Tom waited breathless for the propitious instant when the tapping of the +pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When +it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of +the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, and rolled swiftly +after her. + +Before she could rise he had picked her up and was dragging her to the +climbing point under the lip of the boulder cave. + +"Up with you!" he commanded, making a step of his hand. "Give me your +foot and then climb to my shoulder--quick!" But she drew back. + +"Oh, I can't!" she gasped. "I--I'm too skeered!" + +Tom's brows went together in the Gordon frown. Bone-meltings and +blood-firings apart, he was neither a fool nor a dastard, and he was +older now than on that day when the storm had driven them to take refuge +in the heart of the great rock. And since he had decided that the cavern +was only big enough for one, he had meant to put Nan up, going himself +to meet the intruders to make sure that they should not discover her. +But her trembling fit--a new and curious thing in the girl who used to +make his flesh creep with her reckless daring--spoiled the plan. + +"Can't you climb up?" he demanded. + +She shook her head despairingly, and he lost no time in trying to +persuade her. Jumping to catch the lip of the cavern's mouth, he +ascended cat-like, and a moment later he had drawn her up after him. + +"I'd like to know what got the matter with you all at once," he said +severely, when they were crowded together in the narrow rock cell; and +then, without waiting for her answer: "You stay here while I drop down +and keep those fellows away from this side of things." + +But it was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an +indistinct murmur of voices testified. The girl had another trembling +fit when she heard them, and Tom's wonder was fast lapsing into contempt +or something like it. + +"Oh-h-h!" she shuddered. "Do you reckon they saw us, Tom-Jeff?" + +"I shouldn't wonder," he whispered back unfeelingly. "We could see them +plain enough." + +"He'll kill me, for shore, Tom-Jeff! O God!" + +Tom's lip curled. The wolf does not mate with the jackal. Not all her +beauty could atone for such spiritless cringing. Love would have pitied +her, but passion is not moved by qualities opposite to those which have +evoked it. + +"Then you know them--or one of them, at least," he said. "Who is he?" + +She would not tell; and since the murmur of voices was still plainly +audible, she begged in dumb-show for silence. Whereupon Tom shut his +mouth and did not open it again until the sound of the voices had died +away and the fainter tappings of the hammers on the pipe-line advertised +the retreat of the inspection party. + +"They're gone now," he said shortly. "Let's get out of here before we +stifle." + +But a second time ill chance intervened. Tom had a leg over the brink +and was looking for a soft leaf bed to drop into, when the baying of a +hound broke on the restored quiet of the mountain side. "Oh, dang it +all!" said Tom heartily, and drew back into hiding. + +The girl's ague fit of fear had passed, and she seemed less concerned +about the equivocal situation than a girl should be; at least, this is +the way Tom's thought was shaping itself. He tried to imagine Ardea in +Nan's place, but the thing was baldly unimaginable. A daughter of the +Dabneys would never run and cower and beg to be hidden at the possible +cost of her good name. And Nan's word did not help matters. + +"What makes you so cross to me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked, when he drew back +with the impatient exclamation. "I hain't done nothin' to make you let +on like you hate me, have I?" + +"I don't hate you," said Tom, frowning. "If I did, I shouldn't care." +Just then the hound burst out of the laurel thicket on the brow of the +lower slope, running with its nose to the ground, and he added: "That's +Japhe Pettigrass's dog; I hope to goodness he isn't anywhere behind it." + +But the horse-trader was behind the dog; so close behind that he came +out on the continuation of the pipe-line path while the hound was still +nosing among the leaves where Tom had lain sunning himself and telling +his tale of woe. + +"Good dog--seek him! What is it, old boy?" Pettigrass came up, patted +the hound, and sat down on the flat stone to look on curiously while the +dog coursed back and forth among the dead leaves. "Find him, Caesar; find +him, boy!" encouraged Japheth; and finally the hound pointed a sensitive +nose toward the rift in the side of the great boulder and yelped +conclusively. + +"D'ye reckon he climm up thar', Caesar?" Pettigrass unfolded his long +legs and stood up on the flat stone to attain an eye-level with the +interior of the little cavern. Tom crushed Nan into the farthest cranny, +and flattened himself lizard-like against the nearer side wall. The +horse-trader looked long and hard, and they could hear him still talking +to the dog. + +"You're an old fool, Caesar--that's about what you are--and Solomon +allowed thar' wasn't no fool like an old one. But you needn't to swaller +that whole, old boy; I've knowed some young ones in my time--sometimes +gals, sometimes boys, sometimes _both_. But thar' ain't no 'possum up +yonder, Caesar; you've flew the track this time, for certain. Come on, +old dog; let's be gettin' down the mountain." + +The baying dog and the whistling man were still within hearing when Tom +swung Nan lightly to the ground and dropped beside her. No word was +spoken until she had emptied and refilled her bucket at the spring, then +Tom said, with the bickering tang still on his tongue: + +"Say, Nan, I want to know who it is that's going to kill you if he +happens to find you talking to me." + +She shook her head despondently. "I cayn't nev' tell you that, +Tom-Jeff." + +"I'd like to know why you can't." + +"Because he'd shore kill me then." + +"Then I'll find out some other way." + +"What differ' does it make to you?" she asked; and again the dark eyes +searched him till he was fain to look away from her. + +"I reckon it doesn't make any difference, if you don't want it to. But +one time you were willing enough to tell me your troubles, and--" + +"And I'll nev' do it nare 'nother time; never, _never_. And let me tell +you somethin' else, Tom-Jeff Gordon: if you know what's good for you, +don't you nev' come anigh me again. One time we usen to be a boy and a +girl together; you're nothin' but a boy yet, but I--oh, God, +Tom-Jeff--I'm a woman!" + +And with that saying she snatched her bucket and was gone before he +could find a word wherewith to match it. + + + + +XVII + +ABSALOM, MY SON! + + +Three days after the episode at the barrel-spring, Tom went afield +again, this time to gather plunging courage for the confession to his +mother--a thing which, after so many postponements, could be put off no +longer. + +It was more instinct than purpose that led him to avoid the mountain. +Thinking only of the crying need for solitude, he crossed the pike and +the creek and rambled aimlessly for an hour or more over that farther +hill ground beyond the country-house colony where he had once tried to +break the Dabney spirit in a weary, bedraggled little girl with +colorless lips and saucer-like eyes. + +When he recrossed the stream, at a point some distance above the +boy-time perch pools, the serving foot-log chanced to be that used by +the Little Zoar folk coming from beyond the boundary hills. Following +the windings of the path he presently came out in the rear of the +weather-beaten, wooden-shuttered church standing, blind-eyed and silent, +in week-day desertion in the midst of its groving of pines. + +The spot was rife with memories, and Tom passed around the building to +the front, treading softly as on hallowed ground. Whatever the future +might hold for him, there would always be heart-stirring recollections +to cluster about this frail old building sheltered by the whispering +pines. + +How many times he had sat on the steps in the door-opening days of +boyhood, looking out across the dusty pike and up to the opposing steeps +of Lebanon lifting the eastward horizon half-way to the zenith! +Leg-weariness, and a sudden desire to live over again thus much of the +past turning him aside, he went to sit on the highest of the three +steps, with the brooding silence for company and the uplifted landscape +to revamp the boyhood memories. + +The sun had set for Paradise Valley, but his parting rays were still +volleying in level lines against the great gray cliffs at the top of +Lebanon, silvering the bare sandstone, blackening the cedars and pines +by contrast, and making a fine-lined tracery, blue on gray, of the twigs +and leafless branches of the deciduous trees. Off to the left a touch of +sepia on the sky-line marked the chimneys of Crestcliffe Inn, and +farther around, and happily almost hidden by the shouldering of the +hills, a grayer cloud hung over the industries at Gordonia. + +Nearer at hand were the wooded slopes of the Dabney lands--lordly +forests culled and cared for through three generations of land-lovers +until now their groves of oaks and hickories, tulip-trees and sweet-and +black-gums were like those the pioneers looked on when the land was +young. + +Thomas Jefferson had the appreciative eye and heart of one born with a +deep and abiding love of the beautiful in nature, and for a time the +sunset ravishment possessed him utterly. But the blurring of the +fine-lined traceries and the fading of the silver and the gray into +twilight purple broke the spell. The postponed resolve was the thing +present and pressing. His mother was as nearly recovered as she was ever +likely to be, and his uncle would be returning to South Tredegar in the +morning. The evil tale must be told while there was yet one to whom his +mother could turn for help and sympathy in her hour of bitter +disappointment. + +He was rising from his seat on the church step when he heard sounds like +muffled groans. Recovering quickly from the first boyish startle of fear +oozing like a cool breeze blowing up the back of his neck, he saw that +the church door was ajar. By cautiously adding another inch to the +aperture he could see the interior of the building, its outlines taking +shape when his eyes had become accustomed to darkness relieved only by +the small fan-light over the door. Some one was in the church: a man, +kneeling, with clasped hands uplifted, in the open space fronting the +rude pulpit. Tom recognized the voice and withdrew quickly. It was his +Uncle Silas, praying fervently for a lost sheep of the house of Israel. + +In former times, with grim rebellion gripping him as it gripped him now, +Tom would have run away. But there was a prompting stronger than +rebellion: a sudden melting of the heart that made him remember the +loving-kindnesses, and not any of the austerities, of the man who was +praying for him, and he sat down on the lowest step to wait. + +The twilight was glooming to dusk when Silas Crafts came out of the +church and locked the door behind him. If he were surprised to find Tom +waiting for him, he made no sign. Neither was there any word of +greeting passed between them when he gathered his coat tails and sat +down on the higher step, self-restraint being a heritage which had come +down undiminished from the Covenanter ancestors of both. A little +grayer, a little thinner, but with the deep-set eyes still glowing with +the fires of utter convincement and the marvelous voice still +unimpaired, Silas Crafts would have refused to believe that the passing +years had changed him; yet now there was kinsman love to temper solemn +austerity when he spoke to the lost sheep--as there might not have been +in the sterner years. + +"The way of the transgressor is hard, grievously hard, Thomas. I think +you are already finding it so, are you not?" + +Tom shook his head slowly. + +"That doesn't mean what it used to, to me, Uncle Silas; nothing means +the same any more. It's just as if somebody had hit that part of me with +a club; it's all numb and dead. I'm sure of only one thing now: that is, +that I'm not going to be a hypocrite after this, if I can help it." + +The man put his hand on the boy's knee. + +"Have you been that all along, Thomas?" + +"I reckon so,"--monotonously. "At first it was partly scare, and partly +because I knew what mother wanted. But ever since I've been big enough +to think, I've been asking why, and, as you would say, doubting." + +Silas Crafts was silent for a moment. Then he said: + +"You have come to the years of discretion, Thomas, and you have chosen +death rather than life. If you go on as you have begun, you will bring +the gray hairs of your father and mother in sorrow to the grave. +Leaving your own soul's salvation out of the question, can you go on and +drag an upright, honorable name in the dust and mire of degradation?" + +"No," said Tom definitely. "And what's more, I don't mean to. I don't +know what Doctor Tollivar wrote you about me, and it doesn't make any +difference now. That's over and done with. You haven't been seeing me +every day for these three weeks without knowing that I'm ashamed of it." + +"Ashamed of the consequences, you mean, Thomas. You are not repentant." + +"Yes, I am, Uncle Silas; though maybe not in your way. I don't allow to +make a fool of myself again." + +The preacher's comment was a groan. + +"Tom, my boy, if any one had told me a year ago that a short twelvemonth +would make you, not only an apostate to the faith, but a shameless liar +as well--" + +Tom started as if he had been struck with a whip. + +"Hold on, Uncle Silas," he broke in hardily. "That's mighty near a +fighting word, even between blood kin. When have you ever caught me in a +lie?" + +"Now!" thundered the accusing voice; "this moment! You have been giving +me to understand that your sinful rebellion at Beersheba was the worst +that could be charged against you. Answer me: isn't that what you want +me to believe?" + +"I don't care whether you believe it or not. It's so." + +"It is not so. Here, at your own home, when your mother had just been +spared to you by the mercies of the God whose commandments you set at +naught, you have been wallowing in sin--in crime!" + +Tom locked his clasped fingers fast around his knees and would not open +the flood-gates of passion. + +"If I can sit here and take that from you, it's because it isn't so," he +replied soberly. + +Silas Crafts rose, stern and pitiless. + +"Wretched boy! Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted. Where were +you on Wednesday morning?" + +Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and +his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of +conscious guilt. + +"I was at home most of the time; between ten o'clock and noon I was on +the mountain." + +"Alone?" + +"No; not all of the time." + +"You say well. There were three of you: a hardened, degraded boy, a +woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you." + +The flood-gates of passion would hold no longer. + +"It's a lie!" he denied hotly. "I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at +the spring under the big rock, and--" + +"Well, go on," said the inexorable voice. + +Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness. He saw how +incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation +it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him. So he took +refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened +guilt. + +"I don't have to defend myself!" he burst out. "If you can believe I'm +that low-down, you're welcome to!" Then, abruptly: "I reckon we'd better +be going on home; they'll be waiting dinner for us at the house." + +He got on his feet with that, but the accuser was still confronting +him, with the dark eyes glowing and a monitory finger pointed to detain +him. + +"Not yet, Thomas Gordon; there is a duty laid on me. I had hoped and +prayed that I might find you repentant; you are not repentant." + +"No," said Tom, and he confirmed it with an oath in sheer bravado. + +"Peace, miserable boy! God is not mocked. Your father has a letter from +Doctor Tollivar; the doors of Beersheba are open to you again. I had +hoped--" The pause was not for effect. It was merely that the man and +the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge. "It +breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it. You have put it out of your +power to say with the Psalmist, 'I will wash mine hands in innocency: so +will I compass thine altar, O Lord.' You must give up all thoughts of +going back to Beersheba." + +"Don't trouble yourself," said Tom, with more bravado. "I wouldn't go +back there if it was the only place on earth." Then suddenly: "Who was +it that told on me, Uncle Silas?" + +"Never mind about that. It was one who could have no object in +misstating the fact--which you have not denied. Let us go home." + +The mile walk down the pike, lying white and ghostly under the +starlight, was paced in silence, man and boy striding side by side and +each busy with his own thoughts. As they were passing the Deer Trace +gates a loose-jointed figure loomed black against the palings, and the +voice of Japheth Pettigrass said: + +"Why, howdy, Brother Silas! Thought ye'd gone back to South Tredegar. +When are ye comin' out to Little Zoar ag'in to give us another o' them +old-fashioned, spiritual times o' refreshin' from the presence of the +Lord?" + +Silas Crafts turned short on the scoffer. + +"Why do you ask that, Japheth Pettigrass? The Lord will deal with you, +one day." + +"Yes, I reckon so; that's what makes me say what I does. There's a heap +o' sinners left round here, yit, Brother Silas. There's the Major, for +one, and I know you're always countin' me in for another. I dunno but +you might snatch me as a brand from the burnin', if you could make out +to try it one more lap around the you'se. I been thinkin' right +p'intedly about--" + +But the preacher had cut in with a curt "Good night," and was gone, with +his broad-shouldered nephew at his heels; and the horse-trader went on, +with the stars for his audience. + +"Look at that, now, will ye? Old Brother Silas is gettin' right smart +tetchy with the passin' of the years; he is, so. But he's a powerful +preacher. If anybody ever gits me for a star in their crown, it's +Brother Silas ag'inst the field, even money up." + +Pettigrass turned and was groping for the gate latch when a hand fell on +his shoulder, and a clutch that was more than half a blow twirled him +about to face the roadway. He was doubling his fists for defense when he +saw who his assailant was. + +"Why, Tom-Jeff! what's ailin' ye?" he began; but Tom broke in with +gaspings of rage. + +"Japhe Pettigrass, what did you think you saw last Wednesday forenoon up +yonder at Big Rock Spring on the mountain? Tell it straight, this time, +or by the God you don't believe in, I'll dig the truth out of you with +my bare hands!" + +"Sho, now, Tom-Jeff; don't you git so servigrous over nothin'. I didn't +see nothin' but a couple o' young fly-aways playin' 'possum in a hole in +the big rock. And I'll leave it to you if I didn't call Caesar off and go +my ways, jes' like I'd like to be done by." + +"Yes," snarled Tom, dog-mad and furious in this second submergence of +the wave of wrath. "Yes; and then you came straight down here and told +my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front, +clutching a stone snatched up from the metaling of the pike as he ran. +"If I should break your face in with this, Japhe Pettigrass, it wouldn't +be any more than you've earned!" + +"By gravy! _I_ tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff? You show me the man +'at says I done any such low-down thing as that, and I'll frazzle a +fifty-dollar hawsswhip out on his ornery hide--I will, so. Say, boy; you +don't certain'y believe that o' me, do ye?" + +"I don't want to believe it of you, Japhe," quavered Tom, as near to +tears as the pride of his eighteen years would sanction. "But somebody +saw and told, and made it a heap worse than it was." He leaned over the +top of the wall and put his face in the crook of his elbow, being +nothing better than a hurt child, for all his bigness. + +"Well, now; I wouldn't let a little thing like that gravel me, if I was +you, Tom-Jeff," said Pettigrass, turned comforter. "Nan's a mighty +pretty gal, and you ort to be willin' to stand a little devilin' on her +account--more especially as you've--" + +Tom put up his arm as if to ward a blow. + +"Don't you say it, Japhe, or I'll go mad again," he broke out. + +"I ain't sayin' nothin'. But who do you reckon it was told on you? Was +there anybody else in the big woods that mornin'?" + +"Yes; there were three men testing the pipe-line. We both saw them, and +Nan was scared stiff at sight of one of them; that's why I put her up in +that hole." + +"Who was the man?" + +"I don't know. I didn't recognize any of them--they were too far off +when I saw them. And afterward, Nan wouldn't tell me." + +"Did any of 'em see you and Nan?" + +"I thought not. Nan was sitting on the flat rock where you stood and +looked into the cave, and when she began to whimper, I flung her over +into the leaves and ran with her to the hole." + +"H'm," said Japheth. "When you find out who that feller is that Nan's +skeered of, you can lay your hand on the man that told Brother Silas on +you. But I wouldn't trouble about it none, if I was you. You've got a +long ways the best of him, whoever he is, and--" + +But Tom had turned to go home, feeling his way by the wall because the +angry tears were still blinding him, and the horse-trader fell back into +his star-gazing. + +"Law, law," he mused; "'the horrible pit an' the miry clay.' What a +sufferin' pity it is we pore sinners cayn't dance a little now and ag'in +'thout havin' to walk right up and pay the fiddler! Tom-Jeff, there, +now, he's a-thinkin' the price is toler'ble high; and I don't know but +it is--I don't know but what it is." + +The dinner at Woodlawn that night was a stiff and comfortless meal, as +it had come to be with the taking on of four-tined forks and the other +conventions for which an oak-paneled dining-room in an ornate brick +mansion sets the pace. Caleb Gordon was fathoms deep in the mechanical +problems of the day's work, as was his wont. Silas Crafts was abstracted +and silent. Tom's food choked him, as it had need under the sharp stress +of things; and the convalescent housemother remained at table only long +enough to pour the coffee. + +Tom excused himself a few minutes later, and followed his mother to her +room, climbing the stair to her door, leaden-footed and with his heart +ready to burst. + +"Is that you, Thomas?" said the gentle voice within, answering his tap +on the panel. "Come in, son; come in and sit by my fire. It's right +chilly to-night." + +Thomas Jefferson entered and placed his chair so that she could not see +him without turning, and for many minutes the silence was unbroken. Then +he began, as begin he must, sometime and in some way. + +"Mammy," he said, feeling unconsciously for the childish phrase, "Mammy, +has Uncle Silas been telling you anything about me?" + +She gave a little nod of assent. + +"Something, Thomas, but not a great deal. You have had some trouble with +Doctor Tollivar?" + +"Yes." + +"I have known that for some little time. Your uncle might have told me +more, but I wouldn't let him. There has never been anything between us +to break confidence, Tom. I knew you would tell me yourself, when the +time came." + +"I have come to tell you to-night, mammy. You must hear it all, from +beginning to end. It goes back a long way--back to the time when you +used to let me kneel with my head in your lap to say my prayers; when +you used to think I was good...." + +The fire had died down to a few glowing masses of coke on the grate bars +when he had finished the story of his wanderings in the valley of dry +bones. Through it all, Martha Gordon had sat silent and rigid, her thin +hands lying clasped in her lap, and her low willow rocking-chair barely +moving at the touch of her foot on the fender. + +But when it was over; when Tom, his voice breaking in spite of his +efforts to control it, told her that he could walk in the way she had +chosen for him only at the price a conscious hypocrite must pay, she +reached up quickly and took him in her arms and wept over him as those +who sorrow without hope, crying again and again, _"O my son Absalom, my +son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, +my son!"_ + + + + +XVIII + +THE AWAKENING + + +Once in a lifetime for every youngling climbing the facile or difficult +slope of the years there comes a day of realization, of a sudden +extension of vision, of Rubicon-crossing from the hither shore of joyous +and irresponsible adolescence to that further one of conscious +grapplings with the adult fact. + +For Thomas Jefferson, grinding tenaciously in the Boston technical +school, whither he had gone late in the winter of Beersheban discontent, +the stream-crossing fell in the spring of the panic year 1893, what time +he was twenty-one, a quarter-back on his college eleven, fit, hardy, +studious and athletic; a pace-setter for his fellows and the pride of +the faculty, but still little more than an overgrown, care-free boy in +his outlook on life. Glimpses there had been over into the Promised Land +of manhood, but the brimming cup of college work and play quaffed in +health-giving heartiness is the elixir of youth. The speculative habit +of the boy slept in the college undergraduate. The days were full, each +of the things of itself, and if Tom looked forward to the workaday +future,--as he did by times,--the boyish impatience to be at it was +gone. Chiawassee Consolidated was moderately prosperous; the home +letters were mere chronicles of sleepy Paradise. The skies were clear, +and the present was acutely present. Tom studied hard and played hard; +ate like an ogre and slept like a log. And when he finally awoke to find +himself stumbling bewildered on the bank of the epoch-marking Rubicon, +he was over and across before he could realize how so narrow a stream +should fill so vast a chasm. + +The call of the ferryman--to keep the figure whole--was a letter from +his father, a letter longer than the commonplace chronicles, and +painfully written with the mechanic hand on both sides of a company +letter-head. Caleb Gordon wrote chiefly of business. Mutterings of the +storm of financial depression were already in the air. Iron, more +sensitive than the stock-market, was the barometer, and its readings in +the Southern field were growing portentous. Within the month several of +the smaller furnaces had gone out of blast, and Chiawassee Consolidated, +though still presenting a fair exterior, was, Caleb feared, rotten at +heart. What would Tom advise? + +Tom found this letter in his mail-box one evening after a strenuous day +in the laboratory; and that night he sat up with the corpse of his later +boyhood, though he was far enough from putting it that way. His father +was in trouble, and the letter was a call for help. It seemed vastly +incredible. Thomas Jefferson's ideal of steady courage, of invincible +human puissance, was formed on the model of the stout-hearted old +soldier who had fought under Stonewall Jackson. What a trumpet blast of +alarm must have sounded to make such a man turn to a raw recruit for +help! + +Suddenly Tom began to realize that he was no longer a raw recruit, a +boy to ride care-free while men were afoot and fighting. It astounded +him that the realization had been so slow in arriving. It was as if he +had been led blindfolded to the firing line, there to have the bandage +plucked from his eyes by an unseen hand. Tumultuously it rushed on him +that he was weaponed as the men of his father's generation could not be; +that his hand could be steady and his heart fearless under threatenings +that might well shake the courage of the old man who had borne only the +burden and the heat of the day of smaller things. + +He sat long with his elbows on the study table and his chin resting on +his hands. The room was small but the walls gave before the steady gaze +of the gray eyes, and Tom saw afar; down a vistaed highway wherein a +strong man walked, leading a boy by the hand. Swiftly, with a click like +that of the mechanism in a kinetoscope, the scene changed. The highway +was the same, but now the man's steps had grown cautious and uncertain +and he was groping for the shoulder of the boy, as for a leaning-staff. + +Tom broke the eye-hold on the vision and sprang up to pace the narrow +limits of the study. + +"It's up to me," he mused, "and I'd like to know what I've been thinking +of all this time. Why, pappy's old! he was forty before I was born. And +I've been up here taking it easy and having all sorts of a good time, +while he's been playing Sindbad to Duxbury Farley's Old Man of the Sea. +Coming, pappy!" he shouted; and forthwith flung himself down at the +table to write a letter that was to put new life into a weary old man +who was fighting against odds in the far-away Southland. + +The lone soldier was to take heart of grace, remembering that he had a +son; remembering also that the son was now a man grown, stout of arm, +steady of head, and otherwise fighting-fit. If the storm should come, +the watchword must be to hold on all, keeping steerage-way on the +Chiawassee Consolidated craft at all hazards. The June examinations were +not far off, and these disposed of, the man-son would be ready to lay +hold. Meanwhile, let Caleb Gordon, in his capacity of principal minor +stock-holder, insist on a full and exact statement of the company's +affairs, and--here the new manhood asserted itself boldly--let that +statement, or a copy of it, come to Boston by the first mail. + +To this letter there was a grateful reply in which Tom read with a smile +his father's half-bewildered attempt to get over to the new point of +view. It began, "Dear Buddy," and ended, "Your affectionate pappy," but +there was man-to-man matter between the salutation and the signature. +The inquiry into the affairs of Chiawassee Consolidated had revealed +little or nothing more than the general manager already knew. The +president had turned the inquiring stock-holder over to Dyckman, the +bookkeeper, with instructions to give Mr. Gordon the fullest possible +information, and: + +"Dyckman slid out of it, smooth and easy-like," Caleb's letter went on. +"He allowed he was _mighty_ busy, right about then. Wouldn't I just make +myself at home and examine the books for myself? I reckon that was about +what Farley wanted him to do. I'm no book expert, and I couldn't make +head or tail out of Dyckman's spider tracks. Looks to me like all the +books are good for is to keep people from finding where the company is +at. What little I found out, young Norman told me. He says we're in a +hole, and the first wagon-load of dirt that comes along will bury us out +of sight." + +Tom, driven now with the closing work of the college year, yet took time +to write another heartening letter to the hard-pressed old soldier. It +had been his good fortune to win the Clarkson prize for crucible tests, +and to have gained thereby a speaking acquaintance with the +multimillionaire iron king who had founded it. Mr. Clarkson did not +believe that the financial storm would grow to panic size. As for +himself, Tom thought the hazard was less in the times than in the +Farleys. Father Caleb was to keep his finger on the pulse of the main +office, wiring Boston at the first sign of its weakening. + +The junior metallurgical was in the thick of the June examinations when +the catastrophe befell. The brief story of it came to Tom in the first +dictated letter he had ever received from his father, and the tremulous +shakiness of the signature pointed eloquently to the reason. Chiawassee +Consolidated was out of blast--"temporarily suspended," in the pleasant +euphemism of the elder Farley; the force, clerical and manual, was +discharged, with only Dyckman left in the deserted South Tredegar +offices to answer questions; and the three Farleys, with Major Dabney, +Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, were to spend the summer in Europe. + +Caleb wrote in some bitterness of spirit. Though the Gordon holdings in +the company, increased from time to time as the iron-master had +prospered, amounted to a little more than a third of the capital stock, +everything had been done secretly. The general manager's own notice of +the shut-down had come in the posted "Notice to Employees." When the +Farleys should leave, he would be utterly helpless; on their return they +could repudiate everything he might do in their absence. Meantime, ruin +was imminent. The affairs of the company were in the utmost confusion; +the treasury was empty, and there were no apparent assets apart from the +idle plant. Creditors were pressing; the discharged workmen, led by the +white coal-miners, were on the verge of riot; and Major Dabney's +royalties on the coal lands were many months in arrears. + +Tom rose promptly to the occasion, and in all the stress of things found +space to wonder how it chanced that he knew instinctively what to do and +how to go about it. Before his information was an hour old a rush +telegram had gone to his father, asking from what port and by what +steamer the Farleys would sail; asking also that certain documents be +sent to a given New York address by first mail. + +This done, he laid the exigencies frankly before the examiners in the +technical school, praying for such lenity as might be extended under the +circumstances. Since all things are possible for an honor-man, beloved +of those whose mission it is to grind the human weapon to its edge, the +difficulties in this field vanished. Mr. Gordon could go on with the +examinations until his presence was needed elsewhere; and after the +stressful moment was passed he could return and finish. + +Tom, the boy, could not have gone on. It would have been blankly +impossible. But Tom, the man, was a new creature. While waiting for the +reply to his telegram, he plunged doggedly back into the scholastic +whirlpool, kicked, struggled, strangled, got his head above water, and +found, vastly to his own amazement, that the thing was actually +compassable in spite of the mighty distractions. + +The return telegram from Gordonia was a day late. Knowing diplomacy only +by name, Caleb Gordon had gone directly to Dyckman for information +regarding the Farleys' movements. Dyckman was polite to the general +manager, but unhappily he knew nothing of Mr. Farley's plans. Caleb +tried elsewhere, and the little mystery thickened. At his club, Mr. +Farley had spoken of taking a Cunarder from Boston; to a friend in the +South Tredegar Manufacturers' Association he had confided his intention +of sailing from Philadelphia. But at the railway ticket office he had +engaged Pullman reservations for six persons to New York. + +This last was conclusive, as far as it went; and Japheth Pettigrass +supplied the missing item. The Dabneys and the Farleys made one party, +and Japheth knew the steamer and the sailing date. + +"Party will sail by White Star Line Baltic, New York, to-morrow. New +York address, Fifth Avenue Hotel. Papers to you care 271 Broadway by +mail yesterday," was the message which was signed for by the doorkeeper +at the mines and metallurgy examination room in Boston, late in the +forenoon of the second day; and Tom looked at the clock. Nothing would +be gained by taking a train which would land him in New York late in the +evening; so he plunged again into the examination pool and thought no +more of Chiawassee Consolidated until his paper on qualitative analysis +had been neatly folded, docketed and handed to the examiner. + +The hands of his watch were pointing to eight o'clock the following +morning when Tom made his way through the throng in the Grand Central +station and found a cab. The sailing hour of the _Baltic_ was ten, and +he picked his cabman accordingly. + +"I shall want you for a couple of hours, and it's double fare if you +don't miss. 271 Broadway, first," was his fillip for the driver; and he +was speedily rattling away to the down-town address. + +The taking of the cab was his first mistake, and he discovered it before +he had gone very far. Time was precious, and the horse, pushed to the +police limit, was too slow. Tom signaled his Irishman. + +"Get me over to the Elevated, and then go to Madison Square and wait for +me," he ordered; and by this change of conveyance he obtained his mail +and won back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel by late breakfast time. + +From that on, luck was with him. The Farleys, father and son, were in +the lobby of the hotel, waiting for the others to come down to the cafe +breakfast. Tom saw them, confronted them, and went at things very +concisely. + +"I have come all the way from Boston to ask for a few minutes of your +time, Mr. Farley," he said to the president. "Will you give it to me +now?" + +"Surely!" was the genial reply, and the promoter signed to his son and +drew apart with the importunate one. "Well, go on, my boy; what can I do +for you at this last American moment?--some message from your good +father?" + +"No," said Tom shortly; "it's from me, individually. You know in what +shape you have left things at home; they've got to be stood on their +feet before you go aboard the _Baltic_." + +"What's this--what's this? Why, my dear young man! what can you possibly +mean?"--this in buttered tones of the gentlest expostulation. + +"I mean just about what I say. You have smashed Chiawassee Consolidated, +and now you are going off to leave my father to hold the bag. Or rather +I should say, you are taking the bag with you." + +The president was visibly moved. + +"Why, Thomas--you must be losing your mind! You've--you've been studying +too hard; that's it--the term work up there in Boston has been too much +for you." + +"Cut it out, Mr. Farley," said Tom savagely, all the Gordon fighting +blood singing in his veins. "You've got a thing to do, and it is going +to be done before you leave America. Will you talk straight business, or +not?" + +The president adjusted his eye-glasses, and gave this brand-new Gordon a +calm over-look. + +"And if I decline to discuss business matters with a rude school-boy?" +he intimated mildly. + +"Then it will be rather the worse for you," was the defiant rejoinder. +"Acting for my father and the minority stock-holders, I shall try to +have you and your son held in America, pending an expert examination of +the company's affairs." + +It was a long shot, with a thousand chances of missing. If there was +anything criminal in the Farley administration, the evidences were +doubtless well buried. But Tom was looking deep into the shifty blue +eyes of his antagonist when he fired, and he saw that he had not wholly +missed. None the less, the president attempted to carry it off lightly. + +"What do you think of this, Vincent?" he said, turning to his son. "Here +is Tom Gordon--our Tom--talking wildly about investigations and arrests, +and I don't know what all. Shall we give him his breakfast and send him +back to school?" + +Tom cut in quickly before Vincent could make a reply. + +"If you're sparring to gain time, it's no use, Mr. Farley. I mean what I +say, and I'm dead in earnest." Then he tried another long shot: "I tell +you right now we've had this thing cocked and primed ever since we found +out what you and Vincent meant to do. You must turn over the control of +Chiawassee Consolidated, legally and formally, to my father before you +go aboard the _Baltic_, or--_you don't go aboard_!" + +"Let me understand," said the treasurer, cutting in. "Are you accusing +us of crime?" + +"You will find out what the accusation is, later on," said Tom, taking +yet another cartridge from the long-range box. "What I want now is a +plain, straightforward yes or no, if either of you is capable of saying +it." + +The president took his son aside. + +"Do you suppose Dyckman has been talking too much?" he asked hurriedly. + +Vincent shook his head. + +"You can't tell ... it looks a little rocky. Of course, we had a right +to do as we pleased with our own, but we don't want to have an +unfriendly construction put on things." + +"But they can't do anything!" protested the president. "Why, I'd be +perfectly willing to turn over my private papers, if they were asked +for!" + +"Yes, of course. But there would be misconstruction. There is that +contract with the combination, for example; we had a right to manipulate +things so we'd have to close down, and it might not transpire that we +made money by doing it. But, on the other hand, it might leak out, and +there'd be no end of a row. Then there is another thing: there is +somebody behind this who is bigger than the old soldier or this young +foot-ball tough. It's too nicely timed." + +"But, heavens and earth! you wouldn't turn the property over to Gordon, +would you?" + +The younger man's smile was a mere contortion of the lips. "It's a +sucked orange," he said. "Let the old man have it. He may work a miracle +of some sort and pull out alive. I should call it a snap, and take him +up too quick. If he wins out, so much the better for all concerned. If +he doesn't, why, we left the property entirely in his hands, and he +smashed it. Don't you see the beauty of it?" + +The president wheeled short on Tom. + +"What you may think you are extorting, my dear boy, you are going to get +through sheer good-will and a desire to give your father every chance in +the world," he said blandly. "We discussed the plan of electing him +vice-president, with power to act, before we left home, but there seemed +to be some objections. We are willing to give him full control--and this +altogether apart from any foolish threats you have seen fit to make. +Bring your legal counsel to Room 327 after breakfast and we will go +through the formalities. Are you satisfied?" + +"I shall be a lot better satisfied after the fact," said Tom bluntly; +and he turned away to avoid meeting Major Dabney and the ladies, who +were coming from the elevator to join the two early risers. He had seen +next to nothing of Ardea during the three Boston years, and would +willingly have seen more. But the new manhood was warning him that time +was short, and that he must not mix business with sentiment. So Ardea +saw nothing but his back, which, curiously enough, she failed to +recognize. + +Picking up his cab at the curb, Tom had himself driven quickly to the +office of the corporation lawyer whose name he had obtained from Mr. +Clarkson the day before, and with whom he had made a wire appointment +before leaving Boston. The attorney was waiting for him, and Tom stated +the case succinctly, adding a brief of the interview which had just +taken place at the hotel. + +"You say they agreed to your proposal?" observed the lawyer. "Did Mr. +Farley indicate the method?" + +"No." + +"Have you a copy of the by-laws of your company?" + +Tom produced the packet of papers received that morning from his father, +and handed the required pamphlet to Mr. Croswell. + +"H'm--ha! the usual form. A stock-holders' meeting, with a resolution, +would be the simplest way out of it; but that can't be held without the +published call. You say your father is a stock-holder?" + +"He has four hundred and three of the original one thousand shares. I +hold his proxy." + +The attorney smiled shrewdly. + +"You are a very remarkable young man. You seem to have come prepared at +all points. I assume that you are acting under your father's +instructions?" + +"Why, with his approval, of course," Tom amended. "But it is my own +initiative, under the advice of a good friend of mine in Boston, thus +far. Oh, I know what I'm about," he added, in answer to the latent +question in the lawyer's eyes. + +"You seem to," was the laconic reply. "Now let us see exactly what it is +that you want Mr. Farley to concede." + +"I want him to turn over the entire control of the company's business, +operative and financial, to my father." + +The lawyer smiled again. + +"That is a pretty big asking. Have you any reason to suppose that Mr. +Farley will accede to any such demand?" + +"Yes; I have very good reasons, but I reckon we needn't go into them +here and now. The time is too short; their liner sails at ten." + +The attorney tilted his chair and became reflective. + +"The simple way out of it is to have Mr. Farley constitute your father, +or yourself, his proxy to vote his stock at a certain specified meeting +of the stock-holders, which can be called later. Of course, with a +majority vote of the stock, you can rearrange matters to suit +yourselves, subject only to Mr. Farley's disarrangement when he resumes +control of his holdings. How would that serve?" + +"You're the doctor," said Tom bruskly. "Any way to get him out and get +my father in." + +"It's the simplest way, as I say. But if the property is worth anything +at all, I should think Mr. Farley would fight you to a finish before he +would consent." + +"You fix up the papers, Mr. Croswell, and I'll see to it that he +consents. Make the proxy run in my father's name." + +The attorney went into another room and dictated to his stenographer. +While he was absent, Tom sat, watch in hand, counting the minutes. It +was his first pitched battle with the Farleys, and victory promised. But +with industrial panic in the air the victory threatened to be of the +Cadmean sort, and a scowl of anxiety gathered between his eyes. + +"Never mind," he gritted, with an out-thrust of the square jaw; "it's +the Gordon fighting chance; and pappy says that's all we've ever +asked--it's all I'm going to ask, anyway. But I wish Ardea wasn't going +over with that crowd!" + +The conference in Room 327, Fifth Avenue Hotel, held while the carriages +were waiting to take the steamer party to the pier, was brief and +businesslike. Something to Tom's surprise, Major Dabney was present; and +a little later he learned, with a shock of resentment, that the Major +was also a minority stock-holder in the moribund Chiawassee +Consolidated. The master of Deer Trace was as gracious to Caleb Gordon's +son as only a Dabney knew how to be. + +"Nothing could give me greateh pleasure, my deah boy, than this plan of +having youh fatheh in command at Gordonia," he beamed, shaking Tom's +hand effusively. "I hope you'll have us all made millionaihs when we get +back home again; I do, for a fact, suh." + +Tom smiled and shook his head. + +"It looks pretty black, just now, Major. I'm afraid we're in for rough +weather." + +"Oh, no; not that, son; a meah passing cloud." And then, with the big +Dabney laugh: "You youngstehs oughtn't to leave it for us old fellows to +keep up the stock of optimism, suh. A word in youh ear, young man: if +these heah damned Yankee rascals would quit thei-uh monkeying right heah +in Wall Street, the country would take on a new lease of life, suh; it +would for a fact," and he said it loudly enough to be heard in the +corridor. + +During this bit of side play the attorney was laboring with the two +Farleys, and Tom, watching narrowly, saw that there was a hitch of some +kind. + +"What is it?" he demanded, turning shortly on the trio at the table. + +The lawyer explained. Mr. Farley thought the plan proposed was entirely +too far-reaching in its effects, or possible effects. He was willing to +delegate his authority as president of the company to Caleb Gordon in +writing. Would not that answer all the requirements? + +Tom asked his attorney with his eyes if it would answer, and read the +negative reply very clearly. So he shook his head. + +"No," he said, turning his back on the Major and lowering his voice. "We +must have your proxy, Mr. Farley." + +"And if I don't choose to accede to your demands?" + +"I don't think we need to go over that ground again," said Tom coolly. +"If you don't sign that paper, you'll miss your steamer." + +The president glanced toward the open door, as if he half expected to +see an officer waiting for him. Then he said, "Oh, well; it's as broad +as it is long," and signed. + +The leave-takings were brief, and somewhat constrained, save those of +the genial Major. Tom pleaded business, further business, with his +attorney, when the Major would have had him wait to tell the ladies +good-by; hence he saw no more of the tourists after the conference broke +up. + +Not to lose time, Tom took a noon train back to Boston, first wiring his +father to try and keep things in _statu quo_ at Gordonia for another +week at all hazards. Winning back to the technical school, he plunged +once more into the examination whirlpool, doing his best to forget +Chiawassee Consolidated and its mortal sickness for the time being, and +succeeding so well that he passed with colors flying. + +But the school task done, he turned down the old leaf, pasting it firmly +in place. Telegraphing his father to meet him, on the morning of the +third day following, at the station in South Tredegar, he allowed +himself a few hours for a run up the North Shore and a conference with +the Michigan iron king; after which he turned his face southward and was +soon speeding to the battle-field through a land by this time shaking to +its industrial foundations in the throes of the panic earthquake. + + + + +XIX + +ISSACHAR + + +In accordance with Tom's telegram, Caleb Gordon met his son at the +station in South Tredegar, and they went together to breakfast in one of +the dining-rooms of the Marlboro. Tom's heart burned within him when he +saw how the late stress of things had aged his father, and for the first +time in his life he opened a vengeance account: if the Farleys ever came +back there should be reckoning for more than the looting of Chiawassee +Consolidated. But this was only the primitive under-thought. Uppermost +at the moment was the joy of the young soldier arrived, fit and +vigorous, on his maiden battle-field. + +"You don't know how good it seems to get back home again, pappy," he +said, over the bacon and eggs. "I've been grinding pretty hard this +year, and now it's over, I feel as if I could whip my weight in +wildcats, as Japheth used to say. By the way, how is Japheth?" + +Caleb Gordon smiled in spite of the corroding industrial anxieties. + +"Japheth's going to surprise you some, I reckon, son; he's gone and got +religion." + +Tom put down his knife and fork. + +"Why, the old sinner!" he laughed. "How did that happen?" + +"Oh, just about the way it always does," said Caleb slowly. "The spirit +moved your Uncle Silas to come out to Little Zoar and hold a protracted +meetin', and Japhe joined the mourners and was gathered into the fold." + +"Pshaw!" said Tom, in good-natured incredulity. "Why, the very meat and +marrow of his existence is his horse-trading; and who could swap horses +and tell the truth at the same time?" + +"I don't know," was the doubtful reply. "But Brother Japheth allows +that's about what he aims to do. It's sort o' curious the way it works +out, too. About a week after the baptizin', Jim Bledsoe came down from +Pine Knob with a horse to swap. 'Long about sundown he met up with +Japhe, and struck him for a trade on a piebald that the Major wouldn't +let run in the same lot with the Deer Trace stock. They had it up one +side and down the other; Brother Japhe tryin' to tell Bledsoe that his +piebald was about the no-accountest horse in the valley, and Jim takin' +it all by contraries and gettin' more and more p'intedly anxious to +trade." + +"Well?" said Tom, enjoying his return to nature like any creature freed +of the urban cage. + +"They came to the trade, after a tolerable spell of it," Caleb went on, +"and the last thing I heard Japhe say was, 'now you recollect, Brother +Bledsoe, I done told you that there piebald's no account on the face of +the earth--a-lovin' of my neighbor like I promise' Brother Silas I +would.'" + +Tom laughed again. There was the smell of the good red soil in the +little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But +the under-thought laid hold on Japheth and his change of heart. + +"Japhe was about the last man in Paradise, always excepting Major +Dabney," he said half-musingly. "Haven't you often wondered what sort of +a maggot it is that gets into the human brain to give it the +superstitious twist?" + +Caleb's gentle frown was the upcast of paternal bewilderment, partly +prideful, partly disconcerting. He was not yet fully acquainted with +this young giant with the frank face, the sober gray eyes, and the +conscious grasp of himself. More than once since their meeting at the +steps of the Pullman car he had felt obliged to reassure himself by +saying, "This is Tom; this is my son." There were so many and such +marked changes: the quick, curt speech, caught in the Northland; the +nervous, sure-footed stride, and the athletic swing of the shoulders; +the easy manner and confident air, not of college-boy conceit, but of +the assurance of young manhood; and, lastly, this blunt right-about-face +in matters of religion. Caleb was not quite sure that this latter change +was entirely welcome. + +"Whereabouts did ye learn to call it superstition, son? Not at your +mammy's knee, leastwise," he said, in sober deprecation. + +Tom shook his head. "No; and not altogether at yours. But I guess I've +worked around to your point of view, after so long a time." + +"It's your mammy's faith, all the same, Buddy," said the father gravely. +"Let's not belittle it any more'n we can help." + +"I don't belittle it," was the quick response. "In some of its phases it +is grand--magnificent. We can't always be prying into the cause; the +effect is what counts. And there is no denying that the fairy tale +which we call Christianity has built some of the most godlike heroes the +world has ever seen." + +"You're right sure now that it is a fairy story, son?" said the old man, +a little wistfully. + +"There is no doubt about that," was the decisive rejoinder. "There is +room for credulity only in ignorance. Any thinking person who is brought +face to face with the materialistic facts--" + +Caleb held up a toil-hardened hand. + +"Hold on, Buddy; you'll have to pick a place where the water deepens +sort o' gradually for the old man or you'll have him flounderin'. I +reckon I been sittin' up on the bank all my life, waitin' for somebody +to come along and pole the bottom for me in that pool." + +"No," said Tom definitively. "There isn't any bank to that pool. You're +in it, or you are out of it; one or the other. That was the notion I +took with me to Boston. I thought I'd get well up above the eternal +wrangle and look down on it--wouldn't believe, wouldn't disbelieve. It +can't be done. Jesus, Himself, said, if they've reported Him straight, +'He that is not with me is against me.'" + +"Well," said the father, still deprecating, "that's some farther along +than I've ever been able to get--not sayin' that I wouldn't be willin' +to go." And then: "You don't allow to argue with your mammy about these +things, do you, Tom?" + +Tom's rejoinder was gravely considerate. + +"It is a sealed book between us, now, pappy. She knows--and knows it +can't be helped. If I wasn't her son, I hope I should still be the last +person in the world to try to shake her faith--or any one's, for that +matter. I have merely turned my own back--because I had to." + +The old man put down his coffee-cup and the look in his eyes was +half-appealing. + +"What was it turned you, son?--nothing I've ever said or done, I hope?" + +Tom shook his big blond head slowly. + +"No, not directly; though I suppose a man does go back to his father for +a measuring-stick. But indirectly you, and the other Gordons, are +responsible for the best there is in me--and that's the questioning +part. Given the doubt, I hunted till I found the man who could resolve +or confirm it." + +"Who was he?" inquired Caleb, willing to hear more particularly. + +"His name is Bauer--the man I've been rooming with. He is a German +biologist who was to have been educated for the Lutheran ministry. His +people made the capital mistake of sending him to Freiburg for a couple +of years as a preliminary, and, when they found out what the German +university had done for him, they sent him to Boston, under the +impression that the Puritan American city might correct some of his +materialism." + +Caleb smiled. "That ain't just the way we think of Boston over here," he +remarked. + +"No; and, of course, Bauer didn't change his point of view. We used to +have it up hill and down. I had Scripture--mother and the Beershebans +had taught me that--and Bauer had immense reading, flinty Dutch common +sense, and a huge lack of the reverence for the so-called sacred +subjects which seems to be ingrained in every race but the Teutonic. I +fought hard, both for mother's sake and because it was the first time I +had ever met a man with his sword out on the other side." + +"Well?" said Caleb. + +"He downed me, horse, foot and artillery; made me realize as I never had +before what an absolute begging of the premises the entire Christian +argument is." + +"But how?" persisted the iron-master. + +"Held me up at the muzzle of the cold facts. For example: do you happen +to know that the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence go back only to +the fourth century, and are doubtless copies of copies of copies?" + +The father had pushed back his chair and was trying to fold his napkin +in the original creases. + +"No; there's a heap o' things I don't know, son, but I'm willin' to +learn. One o' these days, if we ever get out o' this business tangle +alive, we'll sit down quiet together and you'll do for me what this +Dutchman has done for you. For, in spite of what you say, I've been +sittin' on the fence all these years, and I reckon you're the one to +help me down." + +Tom smiled first at the thought of it and then grew suddenly sober. It +is one thing to be serenely critical for oneself, and quite another to +set the pace for a disciple. And when that disciple chances to be one's +father? + +"I don't know about that, pappy," he said, rather dubiously. "I'd like +to have you meet some of the people on my side of the road first. Maybe +you wouldn't like the company." + +But Caleb would not have it so. "If they're good enough for you, son, +they're good enough for me," he said. "Not but what there's some mighty +good folks trampin' along on the other side, too." + +"Yes, and some mighty bad ones," said Tom, thinking of the promoter +vestryman of St. Michael's and his Bible-class-teaching son. "We are +going right now to investigate the financiering methods of a pair of +them. Is Dyckman still on duty? Or are the offices closed?" + +"Dyckman's there," was the answer; and they left the breakfast-room +together to go around the block and have themselves lifted to the fifth +floor of the Coosa Building, where half a dozen gilt-lettered glass +doors advertised the administrative headquarters of Chiawassee +Consolidated. + +If Caleb Gordon had been mildly bewildered by the outward and instantly +visible changes in his college-bred son, he was quite lost in wondering +admiration when the young man had climbed fairly into the business +saddle and gathered his grip on the reins. Notwithstanding the fact of +his stock-holding, Caleb the iron-master had always stood a little in +awe of the general office grandeurs; of chief priest Dyckman in +particular. But Tom seemed to recognize no distinctions of class, age, +or previous condition of overlordship. Dyckman was found busily lounging +in the absent president's easy-chair, smoking a good cigar and reading +the morning papers. At the outset he was inclined to be genially +supercilious, thus: + +"Ah, good morning, Mr. Gordon! Hello, Tom! Back from college, are you? +The books and papers? They are over in the vaults of the Iron City +National--by Mr. Farley's orders. I suppose he thought they'd be safer +there in case of fire. Won't you sit down and have a fresh cigar?" + +What Tom said, or the precise wording of it, Caleb could never remember. +But the staccato sentence or two had the effect of instantly +electrifying Mr. Dyckman. Certainly; whatever Mr. Thomas desired should +be done. He--Dyckman--had had no notice of the change in the plans of +the company, and Mr. Farley's instructions-- + +Tom cut the oath of fealty short and stated his desires succinctly. The +bookkeeper was to reassemble his office force immediately, taking +particular care to reinstate Norman, the correspondence man. That done, +he was to prepare full and complete exhibits of the company's condition: +assets, liabilities, contracts, in short, the results in statement form +of a thorough and searching house-cleaning in the accounting and +administrative departments. + +"I am going to put you on your good behavior, Dyckman," said the new +tyrant in conclusion, driving the words home with a shrewd sword-thrust +of the gray eyes. "At first I thought I'd bring an expert accountant +down here from New York and put him on your books; but I'm going to +spare you that--on one condition. Those exhibits must be made absolutely +without fear or favor; they must contain the exact truth and all of it. +If you tinker them, you'll not be able to run fast enough nor far enough +to get away from me. Do I make it plain?" + +"Very plain, indeed, Mr. Tom; the office boy would catch your meaning, I +think." + +"All right, then; gather up your force and pitch in. I haven't time to +watch you, and I don't mean to take it. But I shall know it when you +begin to flicker." + +When the two early morning disturbers of Mr. Dyckman's peace were once +more in the street and on the way to the station to take the train for +Gordonia and the seat of war, Caleb found speech. + +"Son," he said gravely, "do you know that you've made a mighty bitter +enemy in the last fifteen minutes? Dyckman is Farley's confidential man, +and when he gets his knife ground good and sharp he's goin' to cut you +with it, once for himself and once for his boss." + +Tom's laugh was an easing of strains. + +"It does me a heap of good to know that I can crack the whip where you'd +be putting on the brakes, pappy; it does, for a fact. But you needn't +worry about Dyckman. He won't quarrel with his bread and butter. I don't +care anything about his personal loyalty so long as he does his work." + +Again Caleb had to withdraw a little and look his stalwart young captain +over and say: "It is Tom; it's just Buddy, grown up and come to be a +man." But it was hard to realize. + +"I reckon you've got it all figured out--what-all we're goin' to do, +Tom," he said, when they were seated in the car of the accommodation +train. + +"Yes, I think I have; at least, I have the beginning struck out. We are +going to call a stock-holders' meeting, vote you into the presidency, +take the bull squarely by the horns and blow in the Chiawassee furnace +again--dig coal, roast coke and make iron." + +"But, son! at the present price of iron, we can't make any money; +couldn't clear a dollar a car if the buyers would push their cars right +into our yard. And there ain't any buyers." + +Tom was looking out of the window at the procession of smokeless factory +chimneys. The blight had already fallen on the South Tredegar +industries. + +"It's going to be a battle to the strong, to the fellow who can wait, +and work while he waits," he said, half to himself. Then, more +particularly to his father's protest: "I know, we are in pretty bad +shape. When we get those exhibits we shall find that the Farleys have +picked the bones, leaving them for us to bury decently out of sight. +Then, when the funeral is over, they'll come back and charge it all to +the Gordon mismanagement. It's a cinch, isn't it?" + +The old iron-master was silent for the train-speed's measuring of a long +mile. Then he said slowly: + +"I don't aim to go back on you, Buddy; not a foot 'r an inch. But it +does seem to me like you put your finger in the fire when you hilt up +Duxbury Farley for that proxy paper in New York. If we go under--and the +good Lord only knows how we can he'p it--they'll come out of it with +clean clothes, and we'll have to take all the mud-slingin', just as you +say." + +Tom's smile would have stamped him as the son of the grim old +ex-artilleryman in any court of inquiry. + +"Did your old general ever go into battle with the idea that he was +bound to be licked, pappy?" he asked. + +"Who? Stonewall Jackson? Well, I reckon not, son." + +"Neither shall we," said Tom laconically. "We are going in to win. We +are in bad shape, I admit, but we are better off than a lot of these +furnaces that are shutting down. We have our own ore beds, and our own +coking plant. Our coal costs us seventy-five cents less than Pocahontas, +our water is free, and we can hold the property as long as we can stand +the sheriff off. My notion is to make iron and hold it; stack it in the +yards, mortgage it for what we can get, and make more iron. Some day the +country will get iron hungry; then we'll have it to sell when the other +fellows will have to make it first and sell it afterward. Have I got it +straight?" + +Caleb nodded. + +"Yes; I don't know but what you have. What's puzzlin' me right now, son, +is _where_ you got it." + +Tom's laugh was a tonic for sore nerves. + +"I'd like to know what you've been spending your good money on me for if +it wasn't to give me a chance to get it. Do you think I've been playing +foot-ball all the time?" + +"No; but--well, Tom, the last I knew of you, you was just a little +shaver, spattin' around barefooted in the dust o' the Paradise pike, and +I can't seem to climb up to where you're at now." + +Tom laughed again. + +"You'll come to it, after while. I reckon I haven't much more sense, in +some ways, than the little shaver had; but I've been trying my level +best to learn my trade. There is only one thing about this tangle that +is worrying me: that's the labor end of it." + +"We can get all the labor we want," said Caleb. + +"Yes; but didn't you write me that the men were on strike?" + +"I said the white miners were likely to make trouble if they got hungry +enough." + +"Was there any pay in arrears when you shut down?" + +"No. Farley wanted to scale the men, but I fought him out o' that." + +"Good! Then what are they kicking about?" + +"Oh, because they're out of a job. There are always a lot of keen noses +in a crowd the size of ours, and they've smelled out some o' the Farley +doin's. Of course, they don't believe in the cry of hard times; laborin' +men are always the last to believe that." + +The train was tracking thunderously around the nose of Lebanon, and Tom +was looking out of the window again, this time for the first glimpse of +the Gordonia chimney-stacks and the bounding hills of the home valley. + +"That is where you will have to put your shoulder into the collar with +me, pappy," he said. "Most of the older men know me as a boy who has +grown up among them. When I spring my proposition, they'll howl, if only +for that reason." + +But now Caleb was shaking his gray head more dubiously than ever. + +"You won't get any help from the men, Buddy, more 'n what you pay for. +You know the whites--Welshmen, Cornishmen, and a good sprinklin' o' +'huckleberries.' And the blacks don't count, one way or the other." + +The engineer of the accommodation had whistled for Gordonia, and Tom was +gathering his dunnage. + +"Our scramble is going to depend very largely on the outcome of the +meeting which I'm going to ask you to call for say, two o'clock this +afternoon on the floor of the foundry building," he said. "Will you stay +in town and get the men together, while I go home and see mother and +shape up my talk?" + +Caleb Gordon acquiesced, glad of a chance to have somewhat to do. And +so, in the very beginning of things, it was the son and not the father +who took the helm of the tempest-driven ship. + + + + +XX + +DRY WELLS + + +As early as one o'clock in the afternoon, the elder Helgerson, acting as +day watchman at the iron-works, had opened the great yard gates, and the +men began to gather by twos and threes and in little caucusing knots on +the sand floor of the huge, iron-roofed foundry building. Some of the +more heedful set to work making seats of the wooden flask frames and +bottom boards; and in the pouring space fronting one of the cupolas they +built a rough-and-ready platform out of the same materials. + +As the numbers increased the men fell into groups, dividing first on the +color-line, and then by trades, with the white miners in the majority +and doing most of the talking. + +"What's all this buzzin' round about young Tom?" queried one of the men +in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was, +'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n +knee-high to a hop-toad!" + +"Well, you bet your life he's a heap higher'n that now," said another, +who had chanced to be at the station when the Gordons, father and son, +left the train together. "He's a half a head taller than the old man, +an' built like one o' Maje' Dabney's thoroughbreds. But I reckon he +ain't nothin' but a school-boy, for all o' that." + +"Gar-r-r!" spat a third. "We've had one kid too many in this outfit, all +along. I'll bet, if the truth was knowed, th't that young Farley'd skin +a louse for the hide and tallow." + +"Yes," chimed in a fourth, a "huckleberry" miner from the Bald Mountain +district, "and I reckon whar thar's sich a hell of a smoke, thar's a +right smart heap o' fire, ef it could on'y be onkivered." + +But all of this was in a manner beside the mark, and there were many to +inquire what the Gordons were going to do. Ludlow, check weigher in +Number Two entry, and the head of the local union, took it on himself to +reply. + +"B'gosh! I don't b'lieve the old man knows, himself. He fit around and +fit around, talkin' to me, and never said nothin' more'n that there was +goin' to be a meetin' here at two o'clock, and Tom--his son Tom--was +goin' to speak to it." + +"All right; we're a-waitin' on son Tom right now," said a grizzled old +coal-digger on the outer edge of the group. "And ef he's got anything to +say, he cayn't say hit none too sudden. My ol' woman told me this +mornin' she was a-hittin' the bottom o' the meal bar'l, kerchuck! ever' +time she was dippin' into hit. Hit's erbout time there was somepin +doin', ez I allow." + +"Saw it off!" warned Ludlow. "Here they come, both of 'em." + +Tom and his father had entered the building from the cupola side, and +Tom mounted the flask-built platform while the men were scattering to +find seats. He made a goodly figure of young manhood, standing at ease +on the pile of frames until quiet should prevail, and the glances flung +up from the throng of workmen were friendly rather than critical. When +the time came, he began to speak quietly, but with a certain masterful +quality in his voice that unmistakably constrained attention. + +"I suppose you have all been told why the works are shut down--why you +are out of a job in the middle of summer; and I understand you are not +fully satisfied with the reason that was given--hard times. You have +been saying among yourselves that if the president and the treasurer +could go off on a holiday trip to Europe, the situation couldn't be so +very desperate. Isn't that so?" + +"That's so; you've hit it in the head first crack out o' the box," was +the swift reply from a score of the men. + +"Good; then we'll settle that point before we go any further. I want to +tell you men that the hard times are here, sure enough. We are all +hoping that they won't last very long; but the fact remains that the +wheels have stopped. Let me tell you: I've just come down from the +North, and the streets of the cities up there are full of idle men. All +the way down here I didn't see a single iron-furnace in blast, and those +of you who have been over to South Tredegar know what the conditions are +there. Mr. Farley has gone to Europe because he believes there is +nothing to be done here, and the facts are on his side. For anybody with +money enough to live on, this is a mighty good time to take a vacation." + +There was a murmur of protest, voicing itself generally in a denial of +the possibility for men who wrought with their hands and ate in the +sweat of their brows. + +"I know that," was Tom's rejoinder. "Some of us can't afford to take a +lay-off; I can't, for one. And that's why we are here this afternoon. +Chiawassee can blow in again and stay in blast if we've all got nerve +enough to hang on. If we start up and go on making pig, it'll be on a +dead market and we'll have to sell it at a loss or stack it in the +yards. We can't do the first, and I needn't tell you that it is going to +take a mighty long purse to do the stacking. It will be all outgo and no +income. If--" + +"Spit it out," called Ludlow, from the forefront of the miners' +division. "I reckon we all know what's comin'." + +Gordon thrust out his square jaw and gave them the fact bluntly. + +"It's a case of half a loaf or no bread. If Chiawassee blows in again, +it will be on borrowed money. If you men will take half-pay in cash and +half in promises, the promised half to be paid when we can sell the +stacked pig, we go on. If not, we don't. Talk it over among yourselves +and let us have your decision." + +There was hot caucusing and a fair imitation of pandemonium on the +foundry floor following this bomb-hurling, and Tom sat down on the edge +of the platform to give the men time. Caleb Gordon sat within arm's +reach, nursing his knee, diligently saying nothing. It was Tom, +undoubtedly, but a Tom who had become a citizen of another world, a +newer world than the one the ex-artilleryman knew and lived in. +He--Caleb--had freely predicted a riot as the result of the half-pay +proposal; yet Tom had applied the match and there was no explosion. The +buzzing, arguing groups were not riotous--only fiercely questioning. + +It was Ludlow, hammering clamorously for silence on the shell of the big +crane ladle, who acted as spokesman when the uproar was quelled. + +"You're all right, Tom Gordon--you and your daddy. But you've hit us +plum' 'twixt dinner and supper. If you two was the company--" + +Tom stood up and interrupted. + +"We are the company. While Mr. Farley is away we're the bosses; what we +say, goes." + +"All right," Ludlow went on. "That's a little better. But we've got a +kick or two comin'. Is this half-pay goin' to be in orders on the +company's store?" + +"I said cash," said Tom briefly. + +"Good enough. But I s'pose we'd have to spend it at the company's store, +jest the same, 'r get fired." + +"No!"--emphatically. "I'm not even sure that we should reopen the store. +We shall not reopen it unless you men want it. If you do want it, we'll +make it strictly cooeperative, dividing the profits with every employee +according to his purchases." + +"Well, by gol, that's white, anyway," commented one of the coke burners. +"Be a mighty col' day in July when old man Farley'd talk as straight as +that." + +"Ag'in," said Ludlow, "what's this half-pay to be figured on--the +reg'lar scale?" + +"Of course." + +"And what security do we have that t'other half 'll be paid, some time?" + +"My father's word, and mine." + +"And if old man Farley says no?" + +"Mr. Farley is out of it for the present, and he has nothing to say +about it. You are making this deal with Gordon and Gordon." + +"Well, now, that's a heap more like it." Ludlow turned to the miners. +"What d'ye say, boys? Fish or cut bait? Hands up!" + +There was a good showing of hands among the white miners and the coke +burners, but the negro foundry men did not vote. Patty, the mulatto +foreman who was Helgerson's second, explained the reason. + +"You ain't said nuttin' 'bout de foundry, Boss Tom. W-w-w-w-we-all boys +been wukkin' short ti-ti-time, and m-m-m-makin' pig ain't gwine give +we-all n-n-nuttin' ter do." Patty had a painful impediment in his +speech, and the strain of the public occasion doubled it. + +"We are going to run the foundry, too, Patty, and on full time. There +will be work for all of you on the terms I have named." + +Caleb Gordon closed his eyes and put his face in his hands. For weeks +before the shut-down the foundry had been run on short time, because +there was no market for its miscellaneous output. Surely Tom must be +losing his mind! + +But the negro foundry men were taking his word for it, as the miners +had. "Pup-pup-put up yo' hands, boys!" said Patty, and again the ayes +had it. + +Tom looked vastly relieved. + +"Well, that was a short horse soon curried," he said bruskly. "The power +goes on to-morrow morning, and we'll blow in as soon as the furnaces are +relined. Ludlow, you come to the office at five o'clock and I'll list +the shifts with you. Patty, you report to Mr. Helgerson, and you and the +pattern-maker show up at half-past five. I want to talk over some new +work with you. Anybody else got anything to say? If not, we'll adjourn." + +Caleb followed his son out and across the yard to the old log homestead +which still served as the superintendent's office and laboratory. When +the door was shut, he dropped heavily into a chair. + +"Son," he said brokenly, "you're--you're crazy--plum' crazy. Don't you +know you can't do the first one o' these things you've been promisin'?" + +Tom was already busy at the desk, emptying the pigeonholes one after +another and rapidly scanning their contents. + +"If I believed that, I'd be taking to the high grass and the tall +timber. But don't you worry, pappy; we're going to do them--all of +them." + +"But, Buddy, you can't sell a pound of foundry product! We may be able +to make pig cheaper than some others, but when it comes to the foundry +floor, South Tredegar can choke us off in less'n a week." + +"Wait," said Tom, still rummaging. "There is one thing we can make--and +sell." + +"I'd like tolerable well to know what it is," was the hopeless +rejoinder. + +"You ought to know, better than any one else. It's cast-iron +pipe--water-pipe. Where are the plans of that invention of yours that +Farley wouldn't let you install?" + +Caleb found the blue-prints, and his hands were trembling. The +invention, a pit machine process for molding and casting water-and +gas-pipe at a cost that would put all other makers of the commodity out +of the field, had been wrought out and perfected in Tom's second Boston +year. It was Caleb's one ewe lamb, and he had nursed it by hand through +a long preparatory period. + +Tom took the blue-prints and spread them on the desk, absorbing the +details as his father leaned over him and pointed them out. He saw +clearly that the invention would revolutionize pipe-making. The accepted +method was to cast each piece separately in a floor flask made in two +parts, rammed by hand, once for the drag and again for the cope, with +reversings, crane-handlings and all the manipulations necessary for the +molding of any heavy casting. But the new process substituted machinery. +A cistern-like pit; a circular table pivoted over it, with a hundred or +more iron flasks suspended upright from its edges; a huge crane carrying +a mechanical ram, these were the main points of the machine which, with +a single small gang of men, would do the work of an entire foundry +floor. + +"It's great!" said Tom enthusiastically. "I got your idea pretty well +from your letters, but you've improved on it since then. I wonder Farley +didn't snap at it." + +"He was willin' to," said Caleb grimly. "Only he wanted me to transfer +the patents to the company; in other words, to make him a present of the +controlling interest. I bucked at that, and we come near havin' a +fall-out. If there was any market for pipe now--" + +"There is a market," said Tom hopefully. "I got a pointer on that before +I left Boston. Did I tell you I had a little talk with Mr. Clarkson the +day I came away?" + +"No." + +"Well, I did. I told him the conditions and asked his advice. Among +other things, I spoke of this pipe pit of yours, and he said at once, +'There is your chance. Cast-iron water-pipe is like bread, or sugar, or +butcher's meat--it's a necessity, in good times or bad. If that machine +is practicable, you can make pipe for less than half the present labor +cost.' Then we talked ways and means. Money is tighter than a shut +fist--up East as well as everywhere else. But men with money to invest +will still bet on a sure thing. Mr. Clarkson advised me to try our own +banks first. Failing with them, he authorized me to call on him. Now you +know where I'm digging my sand." + +The old iron-master sat back in his chair with his hands locked over one +knee, once more taking the measure of this new creation calling itself +Tom Gordon and purporting to be his son. + +"Say, Buddy," he said at length, "are there many more like you out +yonder in the big road?--young fellows that can walk right out o' school +and tell their daddies how to run things?" + +Tom's laugh was boyishly hearty. + +"Plenty of 'em, pappy; lots of 'em! The old world is moving right along; +it would be a pity if it didn't, don't you think? But about this pipe +business: I want you to make over these patents to me." + +"They're yours now, Tom; everything I've got will be yours in a little +while," said the father; but his voice betrayed the depth of that +thrust. Was the new Tom beginning so soon to grasp and reach out +avariciously for the fruit of the old tree? + +"You ought to know I don't mean it that way," said Tom, frowning a +little. "But here is the way it sizes up. There is money in this +pipe-making; some money now, and big money later on. Farley has refused +to go into it unless you make it a company proposition; as president and +a controlling stock-holder you can't very well go into it now without +making it in some sort a company proposition. But you can transfer the +patents to me, and I can contract with Chiawassee Consolidated to make +pipe for me." + +Caleb Gordon's frown matched that of his son. + +"That would certainly be givin' Colonel Duxbury a dose of his own +medicine; but I don't like it, Tom. It looks as if we were taking +advantage of him." + +"No. I'd make the proposition to him, personally, if he were here, and +the boss; and he'd be a fool if he didn't jump at it," said Tom +earnestly. "But there is more to it than that. If we make a go of this, +and don't protect ourselves, the two Farleys will come back and put the +whole thing in their pockets. I won't go into it on any such terms. When +they do come back, I'm going to have money to fight them with, and this +is our one little ghost of a chance. Ring up Judge Bates and get him to +come over here and make a legal transfer of these patents to me." + +The thing was done, though not without some misgivings on Caleb's part. +Honesty and fair dealing, even with a known enemy, had been the rule of +his life; and while he could not put his finger on the equivocal thing +in Tom's plan, he was vaguely troubled. Analyzed after the fact, the +trouble was vicarious, and for Tom. It defined itself more clearly when +they went together to South Tredegar to have an attorney draw up the +agreement under which Tom's pipe venture was to be conducted. Tom, as +the owner of the patents, was fair with the Chiawassee Consolidated, but +he was not liberal; indeed, he would have been quite illiberal if the +attorney had not warned him that an agreement, to be defensible, must be +equitable as well as legal. + +At this stage in the journey Tom could not have accounted for himself in +the ethical field. Something, a thing intangible, had gone out of him. +He could not tell what it was; but he missed it. The kindly Gordon +nature was intact, or he hoped it was, but the neighbor-love, which was +his father's rule of life, seemed not to have come down to him in its +largeness. Ruth for the Farleys was not to be expected of him, he +argued; but behind this was a vaster ruthlessness, arming him to win the +industrial battle, making him a hard man as he had suddenly become a +strong one. + +And the experiences of the summer were all hardening. He plunged +headlong into the world of business, into a panic-time competition which +was in grim reality a fight for life, and there seemed to be little to +choose between trampling or being trampled. By early autumn the iron +industries of the country were gasping, and the stacks of pig in the +Chiawassee yards, kept down a little during the summer by a few meager +orders, grew and spread until they covered acres. As long as money could +be had, the iron was bonded as fast as it was made, and the proceeds +were turned into wages to make more. But when money was no longer +obtainable from this source, the pipe venture was the only hope. + +With the entire foundry force at the Chiawassee making pipe, Tom had +gone early into the market with his low-priced product. But the +commercial side of the struggle was fire-new to him, and he found +himself matched against men who knew buying and selling as he knew +smelting and casting. They routed him, easily at first, with increasing +difficulty as he learned the new trade, but always with certainty. It +was Norman, the correspondence man, transformed now into a sales agent, +who gave him his first hint of the inwardnesses. + +"We're too straight, Mr. Gordon; that's at the bottom of it," he said to +Tom, over a grill-room luncheon at the Marlboro one day. "It takes money +to make money." + +Tom's eyebrows went up and his ears were open. The battle had grown +desperate. + +"Our prices are right," he said. "Isn't that enough?" + +"No," said Norman, looking down. Like all the others, he stood a little +in awe of the young boss. + +"Why?" + +"Four times out of five we have to sell to a municipal committee, and +the other time we have to monkey with the purchasing agent of a +corporation. In either case it takes money--other money besides the +difference in price." + +Tom wagged his head in a slow affirmative. "It's rotten!" he said. + +Norman smiled. + +"It's our privilege to cuss it out; but it's a condition." + +Tom was in town that day for the purpose of taking a train to +Louisville, where he was to meet the officials of an Indiana city +forced, despite the hard times, to relay many miles of worn-out +water-mains. He made a pencil computation on the back of an envelope. +The contract was a large one, and his bid, which he was confident was +lower than any competitor could make, would still stand a cut and leave +a margin of profit. Before he took the train he went to the bank, and, +when he reached the Kentucky metropolis, his first care was to assure +the "wheel-horse" member of the municipal purchasing board that he was +ready to talk business on a modern business basis. + +Notwithstanding, he lost the contract. Other people were growing +desperate, too, it appeared, and his bribe was not great enough. One +member of the committee stood by him and gave him the facts. A check had +been passed, and it was a bigger check than Tom could draw without +trenching on the balance left in the Iron City National to meet the +month's pay-roll at Gordonia. + +"You sent a boy to mill," said the loyal one. "And now it's all over, I +don't mind telling you that you sent him to the wrong mill, at that. +Bullinger's a hog." + +"I'd like to do him up," said Tom vindictively. + +"Well, that might be done, too. But it would cost you something." + +Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance. But on the way +home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile. He could meet one more +pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come. This one +contract would have saved the day, and it was lost. + +The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him +down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station +to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald +to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time, +the big plant was silent and deserted. + +Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the +Woodlawn porch. + +"You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung +himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this +morning." + +"What was in the papers?" + +"About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the +business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm +brewin' when we missed the pay-day yesterday." + +Tom started as if he had been stung. + +"Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to +Louisville!" + +"Yes, I know you did. When Dyckman didn't come out with the pay-rolls +yesterday evening I telephoned him. He said Vint Farley, as treasurer of +the company, had made a draft on him and taken it all." + +Tom sprang out of his chair and the bitter oaths upbubbled and choked +him. But he stifled them long enough to say: "And the men?" + +"The miners went out at ten o'clock this morning. The blacks would have +stood by us, but Ludlow's men drove 'em out--made 'em quit. We're done, +Buddy." + +Tom dashed his hat on the floor, and the Gordon rage, slow to fire and +fierce to scorch and burn when once it was aflame, made for the moment a +yelling, cursing maniac of him. In the midst of it he turned, and the +tempest of imprecation spent itself in a gasp of dismay. His mother was +standing in the doorway, thin, frail, with the sorrow in her eyes that +had been there since the long night of chastenings three years agone. + +As he looked he saw the growing pallor in her face, the growing +speechless horror in her gaze. Then she put out her hands as one groping +in darkness and fell before he could reach her. + +It was her stalwart son who carried Martha Gordon to her room and laid +her gently on the bed, with the husband to follow helplessly behind. +Also, it was Tom, tender and loving now as a woman, who sat upon the +edge of the bed, chafing the bloodless hands and striving as he could to +revive her. + +"I'm afeard you've killed her for sure, this time, son!" groaned the +man. + +But Tom saw the pale lips move and bent low to catch their whisperings. +What he heard was only the echo of the despairing cry of the broken +heart: "_Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son_!" + + + + +XXI + +GILGAL + + +In these days of slowing wheels and silenced anvils South Tredegar had +its own troubles, and when some one telephoned the editor of the +_Morning Tribune_ that Chiawassee Consolidated had succumbed at last, he +did not deem it worth while to inquire whether the strike at Gordonia +was the cause or the consequence of the sudden shut-down. + +But a day or two later, when rumors of threatened violence began to +trickle in over the telephone wires, a _Tribune_ man called, in passing, +at the general offices in the Coosa Building, and was promptly put to +sleep by the astute Dyckman, who, for reasons of his own, was quite +willing to conceal the true state of affairs. Yes, there was a +suspension of active operations at Gordonia, and he believed there had +been some hot-headed talk among the miners. But there would be no +trouble. Mr. Farley was at present in London negotiating for English +capital. When he should return, the capital stock of the company would +be increased, and the plant would probably be removed to South Tredegar +and enlarged. + +All of which was duly jotted down to be passed into the _Tribune's_ +archives; and the following morning Tom, doing guard duty with his +father, the two Helgersons and a squad of the yard men at the threatened +plant, read a pointless editorial in which misstatement of fact and +sympathy for the absent and struggling Farleys were equally and +impartially blended. + +"Look at that!" he growled wrathfully, handing the paper across the +office desk to Caleb. "One of these fine days I'm going to land that +fellow Dyckman in the penitentiary." + +The iron-master put on his spectacles and plodded slowly and +conscientiously through the editorial, turning the paper, at length, to +glance over the headings on the telegraphic page. In the middle of it he +looked up suddenly to say: + +"Son, what was the name o' that Indiany town with the big water-pipe +contract?" + +Tom gave it in a word, and Caleb passed the paper back, with his thumb +on one of the press despatches. + +"Read that," he said. + +Tom read, and the wrathful scowl evoked by the foolish editorial gave +place to a flitting smile of triumph. There was trouble in the Indiana +city over the awarding of the pipe contract. In some way unknown to the +press reporter, it had leaked out that a much lower bid than the one +accepted had been ignored by the purchasing committee. A municipal +election was pending, and the people were up in arms. Rumors of a +wholesale indictment of the suspected officials were rife, and the city +offices were in a state of siege. + +Tom put the paper down and smote on the desk. + +"Damn them!" he said; "I thought perhaps I could give them a run for +their money." + +"You?" said Caleb, removing his glasses. "How's that?" + +The new recruit in the army of business chicane nodded his head. + +"It was a shot in the dark, and I didn't want to brag beforehand," he +explained. "I wrestled it out Saturday night when I was tramping the +hills after Doc Williams had brought mother around. One member of the +purchasing committee was ready to dodge; he gave me a pointer before I +left Louisville. I didn't see anything in it then but revenge; but +afterward I saw how we might spend some money to a possible advantage." + +Caleb's eyes had grown narrow. + +"I reckon I'm sort o' dull, Buddy; what-all did you do?" + +"Wired the disgruntled one that there was a letter and a check in the +mail for him, to be followed by another and a bigger if his pole proved +long enough to reach the persimmons." + +The old iron-master left his chair and began to walk the floor, six +steps and a turn. After a little he said: + +"Tom, is that business?" + +"It is the modern definition of it." + +"What's goin' to happen up yonder in Indiany?" + +"If I knew, I'd be a good bit easier in my mind. What I'm hoping is that +the rumpus will be big enough to make 'em turn the contract our way." + +Caleb stopped short. + +"My God!" he ejaculated. "Where's your heart, Buddy? Would you take the +chance of sendin' these fellows to jail for the sake of gettin' that +contract?" + +"Cheerfully," said Tom. "They're rascals; I could have bought them if +I'd had money enough; and the other fellow did buy them." + +The old man resumed his monotonous tramp up and down the room. The +hardness in Tom's voice unnerved him. After another interval of silence +he spoke again. + +"I wish you hadn't done it, son. It's a dirty job, any way you look at +it." + +Tom shrugged. + +"Norman says it's a condition, not a theory; and he is right. We are +living under a new order of things, and if we want to stay alive, we've +got to conform to it. It gagged me at first: I reckon there are some +traces of the Christian tradition left. But, pappy, I'm going to win. +That is what I'm here for." + +Caleb Gordon shook his head as one who deprecates helplessly, but he sat +down again and asked Tom what the programme was to be. + +"There is nothing for us to do but to sit tight and wait. If we get a +telegram from Indiana before these idiots of ours lose their heads and +go to rioting and burning, we shall still have a fighting chance. If +not, we're smashed." + +"You mustn't be too hard on the men, Buddy. They've been mighty +patient." + +The scowl deepened between the level gray eyes. + +"If I could do what I'd like to, I'd fire the last man of them. It makes +me savage to have them turn up and knock us on the head after we've been +sweating blood to pull through. Have you seen Ludlow?" + +"Yes; I saw him last night. He's right ugly; swore he wouldn't raise a +hand even if the boys took kerosene and dynamite to us." + +"Well, if they do, he'll be the first man to pay for it," said Tom; and +he left the office and the house to make the round of the guarded gates. + +Ludlow was as good as his word. On the night following the day of +suspense an attempt was made to wreck the inclined railway running from +the mines on Lebanon to the coke yard. It was happily frustrated; but +when Tom and his handful of guards got back to the foot of the hill they +found a fire started in a pile of wooden flasks heaped against the end +of the foundry building. + +The fire was easily extinguishable by a willing hand or two, but Tom +tried an experiment. Steam had been kept up in a single battery of +boilers against emergencies, and he directed Helgerson to throw open the +great gates while he ran to the boiler room and sent the fire call of +the huge siren whistle shrieking out on the night. + +The experiment was only meagerly successful. Less than a score of the +strikers answered the call, but these worked with a will, and the fire +was quickly put out. + +Tom was under the arc-light at the gates when the volunteers straggled +out. He had a word for each man,--a word of appreciation and a plea for +suspended judgment. Most of the men shook their heads despondently, but +a few of them promised to stand on the side of law and order. Tom took +the names of the few, and went back to his guard duty with the burden a +little lightened. But the succeeding night there were more attempts at +violence, three of them so determined as to leave no doubt that the +crisis was at hand. This was Tom's discouraged admission when his father +came to relieve him in the morning. + +"We're about at the end of the rope," he said wearily, when Caleb had +closed the door of the log-house yard office behind him. "The two +Helgersons are played out, and neither of us can stand this strain for +another twenty-four hours. I'm just about dead on my feet for sleep, and +I know you are." + +The old ex-artilleryman stifled a yawn, and admitted the fact. + +"I'm gettin' right old and no-account, son; there's no denyin' that. And +you can't make out to shoulder it all, stout as you are. But what-all +can we do different?" + +"I know what I'm going to do. I had a 'phone wire from Bradley, the +sheriff, last night after you went home. He funked like a boy; said he +couldn't raise a posse in South Tredegar that would serve against +striking workmen. Then I wired the governor, and his answer came an hour +ago. We can have the soldiers if we make a formal demand for them." + +"But, Tom, son; you wouldn't do that!" protested Caleb tremulously. +Then, getting up to walk the floor as was his wont under sharp stress: +"Let's try to hold out a little spell longer, Buddy. It'll be like fire +to tow; there'll be men killed--men that I've known ever since they were +boys: men killed, and women made widders. Tom, I've seen enough of war +to last me." + +"I know," said Tom. None the less, he found a telegraph blank and began +to write the message. There had been shots fired in the night, in a +sally on the inclined railway, and one of them had scored his arm. If +the rioters needed the strong hand to curb them, they should have it. + +"Think of what it'll mean for this town that we've built up, son. We'll +have to stay here--'er leastwise, I will, and there'll be blood on the +streets for me to see as long as I walk 'em." + +"I know," Tom reiterated, in the same monotonous tone. But his pen did +not pause. + +"Then there's your mammy," Caleb pleaded, and now the pen stopped. + +"Mother must not know." + +"How can we he'p her knowin', Buddy? I tell you, son, the very stones o' +Paradise'll rise up to testify against us, now, and at the last great +day, maybe." + +The frown deepened between the young man's eyes. + +"The old, old phantom!" he said, half to himself. "Will it never be +laid, even for those who know it to be a myth?" And then to his father: +"It's no use, pappy. I tell you we've got to take this thing by the +neck. See here; that's how near they came to settling me last night," +and he showed the perforated coat-sleeve. + +Caleb Gordon was silenced. He resumed his restless pacing while Tom +signed the call for help, read it over methodically, and placed it +between dampened sheets in the letter-press. He had pushed the electric +button which summoned Stub Helgerson, when the door opened silently and +Jeff Ludlow's boy thrust face and hand through the aperture. + +"Well; what is it?" demanded Tom, more sharply than he meant to. The +strain was beginning to tell on his nerves. + +"Hit's a letter for you-all from Mr. Stamford at the dee-po," said the +boy. "He allowed maybe you-all'd gimme a nickel for bringin' hit." + +The coin was found and passed, and the small boy was whooping and +yelling for Helgerson to come and let him through the gates when Tom +tore the envelope across and read the telegram. It was from the Indiana +city, and it was signed by the chairman of the Board of Public Works. + +"Proposals for water-pipe have been reopened, and your bid is accepted. +Wire how soon you can begin to ship eighteen-inch mains," was what it +said. Tom handed it to his father and stepped quickly to the telephone. +There was a little delay in getting the ear of the president of the Iron +City National at South Tredegar, and the bounding, pulsing blood of +impatience made it seem interminable. + +"Is that you, Mr. Henniker? This is Gordon at the Chiawassee plant, +Gordonia. We have secured that Indiana contract I was telling you about, +and I'll be in to see you on the ten o'clock train. Will you save five +minutes for me? Thank you. Good-by." + +Tom hung the ear-piece on its hook and turned to face his father. + +"Have you surrounded it?" he laughed, with a little quaver of excitement +in his voice, which he had been careful to master in the announcement to +the bank president. "We live, pappy; we live and win! Get word to the +men to come up here at three o'clock for their pay. Tell them we blow in +again to-morrow, and they can all come back to work and no questions +asked. Can you stay on your feet long enough to do all that?" + +Caleb was nodding gravely; yet bewilderment was still in the saddle. + +"But the money for the pay-rolls, son--this is only an order to go to +work," he said, fingering the telegram doubtfully. + +Tom laughed joyously. + +"If I can't make Mr. Henniker believe that he can afford to carry us a +while longer on the strength of that bit of yellow paper, I'll rob his +bank. You get the men together by three o'clock, and I'll be here with +the money. If I'm not, it will be because somebody has sandbagged me +between the bank and the train." + +Caleb was still wrestling with the incredible thing, but light was +breaking in on him slowly. + +"Hold on, son," he said, and the old-time smile was wrinkling at the +corners of his eyes; "how much did you allow to make out o' this job? I +disremember what you said when you talked about it before." + +Tom checked off the items on his fingers. + +"Enough to put us through the winter; enough to stand us on our feet +independent of Duxbury Farley and his son; enough to let us pay Major +Dabney the back royalties on the coal. More than this, it's going to use +up iron--hundreds of tons of it. We'll buy out of our own yards, and the +men shall have the back-pay dividends." + +The general manager had taken his burned-out corn-cob pipe from his +pocket and was looking at it speculatively. + +"Well, now, if that's the case, I reckon I can go down to Hargis's and +buy me a new pipe, Buddy; and I--I'll be switched if I don't do it right +now." + +And in such gladsome easing of the strain were the wheels of Chiawassee +Consolidated oiled to their new whirlings on the road to fortune. If +Caleb Gordon remembered how the miracle had been wrought, he said no +word to clench his disapproval; and as for Tom--ah, well; it was not the +first time in the history of the race that the end has served to justify +the means--to make them clean and white and spotless, if need were. + + + + +XXII + +LOVE + + +If Tom Gordon could have known how slightly the Dabney's European plans +coincided with those of the Farleys, he might have had fewer +heartburnings in those intervals when the harassing struggle for +industrial existence gave him time to think of Ardea. + +As a strict matter of fact, the voyage across, and some little +guide-book touring of England, were the sum total of coincidence. On +leaving London the Farleys set out on the grand tour which was to land +them in Naples for the winter, while the Dabneys went directly to Paris +and to a modest pension in the Rue Cambon to spend the European holiday +in a manner better befitting the purse of a country gentleman. + +So it befell that by the time Miss Eva Farley was rhapsodizing over the +Rhine castles in twenty-page letters, boring Ardea a little, if the +truth must be told, the Dabneys had settled down to their quiet life in +the French capital. Ardea was anxious to do something with her music +under a Parisian master--and was doing it. The Major found melancholy +pleasure in reviewing at large the city of his son's long exile; and +Miss Euphrasia came and went with one or the other of her cousins, as +the exigencies of chaperonage or companionship constrained her. + +In such moderate pleasuring the French summer began for the Major and +his charges; so it continued, and so it ended; and late in September +they began to talk about going home. + +"We really mean it this time," wrote Ardea in a letter to Martha Gordon. +"I confess we are all a little homesick for America, and Paradise, and +dear old Deer Trace Manor. The Farleys are settled for the remainder of +the year or longer in a fine old palazzo on the Bay of Naples, and we +have a very pressing invitation to go and help them inhabit it. But thus +far we have not been tempted beyond our strength. Major Grandpa is +talking more and more pointedly about the Morgan mares, and is growing a +habit of comparison-drawing in which America profits at the expense of +Europe; so I suppose by the time you are reading this we shall have made +our sailing arrangements. Nevertheless, the Naples invitation is dying +hard. Eva seems to have set her heart on having us for the winter." + +Ardea's figure of speech was no figure. The palazzo-sharing invitation +did die hard; and when Miss Farley's letters failed, Mr. Vincent Farley +made a journey to Paris for the express purpose of persuading the +Dabneys to reconsider. Miss Euphrasia was neutral. The Major was +homesick for a sight of his native Southland, but for Ardea's sake he +generously concealed the symptoms--or thought he did. So the decision +was finally left to Ardea. + +She said no, and adhered to it, partly because she knew her grandfather +was pining for Paradise, and partly on her own account. Ardea at twenty +was a young woman who might have made King Solomon pause with suspended +pen when he was writing that saying about his inability to find one +woman among a thousand. She was not beautiful beyond compare, as the +Southern young woman is so likely to be under the pencil of her loyal +limners. She had the Dabney nose, which was not quite classical, and the +Courtenay mouth, well-lined and expressive, rather than too suggestive, +of feminine softness. But her eyes were beautiful, and her luxuriant +masses of copper-gold hair fitted her shapely head like a glorious +aureole; also, she had that indefinable adorableness called charm, and +the sweet, direct, childlike frankness of speech which is its +characteristic. + +This was the external Ardea, known of men, and of those women who were +large-minded enough not to envy her. But the inner Ardea was a being +apart--high-seated, alone, self-sufficient in the sense that it saw too +clearly to be hoodwinked, infinitely reasonable, with vision unclouded +either by passion or the conventions. This inner Ardea knew Vincent +Farley better than he knew himself: the small mind, the mask of outward +correctness, the coldness of heart, the utter lack of the heroic +soul-strength which, even in a brutal man, may sometimes draw and +conquer and merge within itself the woman-soul that, yielding, still +yields open-eyed and undeceived. + +He was the most moderate of lovers, as such a man must needs be, but his +anxiety to second the wishes of his father and sister was not to be +misunderstood by the clear-eyed inner Ardea, whose intuition served her +as a sixth sense. She knew that sometime he would ask her to marry him; +and in that region where her answer should lie she found only a vast +indecision. He was not her ideal, but the all-seeing inner self told +her that she would never find the ideal. There comes to every woman, +sooner or later, the conviction that if she would marry she must take +men as they are, weighing the good against the evil, choosing as she may +the man whose vices may be condoned or whose virtues are great enough to +overshadow them. Ardea knew that Vincent Farley was not great in either +field; but the little virtues were not to be despised. If he were not, +in the best sense of the word, well-bred, he had at least been well +nurtured, well schooled in the conventions. Ardea sighed. It was in her +to be something more than the conventional wife, yet she saw no reason +to believe that she would ever be called on to be anything else. By +which it will be apparent that the sacred flame of love had not yet been +kindled in her maiden heart. + +As for Vincent Farley, the real man, Ardea's appraisal of him was not +greatly at fault. He was tall, like his father, but there the +resemblance paused. The promoter's shifty blue eyes were always at the +point of lighting up with enthusiasm; the son's, of precisely the same +hue, were cold and calmly calculating. The human polyhedron has as many +facets as a curiously-cut gem, and Vincent Farley's gift lay in the +ability always to present the same side to the same person. His attitude +toward Ardea had always been a pose; but it was a pose maintained so +faithfully that it had become one of the facets of the polyhedron. Such +men do not love, as a woman defines love; they merely have the mating +instinct. And even lust finds a cold hearth in such hearts, though on +occasion it will rake the embers together and make shift to blow them +into some brief, fierce flame. At times, Farley's thought of Ardea was +libertine; but oftener she figured as the woman who would grace the home +of affluence, giving it charm and tone. Also, he had an affection for +the Dabney manorial acres, and especially for that portion of them +overlying the coal measures. + +The pose-facet was at the precisely effective angle when he came to +Paris as his sister's messenger and pictured, with what warmth there was +in him, the delights in the prospect of a Neapolitan winter. But Ardea, +shrinking from a six months' guesting with any one, said no, and told +her grandfather she was ready to go home. + +The start was from Havre, and Vincent, with time on his hands, was her +companion on the railway journey, her _courrier du place_ in the +embarkation, and her faithful shadow up to the instant when the warning +cry for the shore-goers rang through the ship. It was scarcely a moment +for sentimental passages, and under the most favoring conditions, +Vincent Farley was something less than sentimental. Yet he found time to +declare himself in conventional fashion, modestly asking only for the +right to hope. + +Ardea was not ready to give an answer, even to the tentative question; +yet she did it--was, in a manner, surprised into doing it. For the young +woman who has not loved, it is easy to doubt the existence of the +seventh Heaven, or at least to reckon without its possibilities. At the +very crucial moment the clear-sighted inner self was assuring her that +this cold-eyed young man, who walked in the paths of righteousness +because he found them easier and pleasanter than the way of the +transgressor, was at best only a mildly exciting apotheosis of the +negative virtues. But the negative virtues, failing to score +brilliantly, nevertheless have the advantage of continuous innings. +Ardea was turned twenty in the year of the European holiday, and she +had--or believed she had--her heritage of the Dabney impetuosity well in +hand. Vincent's self-restraint was admirable, and his gentle deference, +conventional as it was, rose almost to the height of sentiment. So she +gave him his answer; gave him her hand at parting, and stood dutifully +fluttering her handkerchief for him while the liner drew out of its slip +and pointed its prow toward the headlands. + +With rough weather on the homeward passage, she had space and +opportunity to consider the consequences. Being the only good sailor in +the trio, she had her own self-communings for company during the greater +part of the six days, and the incident sentimental took on an aspect of +finality which was rather dismaying. It was quite in vain that she +sought comfort in the reflection that she was committed to nothing +conclusive. Vincent Farley had not taken that view of it. True, he had +asked for nothing more than a favorable attitude on her part; but she +thought he would be less than a man if he had not seen his final answer +foreshadowed in her acquiescence. + +The finality admitted, a query arose. Was Vincent Farley the man who, +giving her his best, could call out the best there was in her? It +annoyed her to admit the query, or rather the doubt which fathered it; +it distressed her when the doubt appeared to grow with the lengthening +leagues of distance. + +Now vacillation was not a Dabney failing; and the aftermath of these +storm-tossed musings made for Vincent Farley's cause. Romance also, in +the eternal feminine, is a constant quantity, and if it be denied the +Romeo-and-Juliet form of expression, will find another. Vincent Farley, +as man or as lover, presented obstacles to any idealizing process, but +Ardea set herself resolutely to overcome them. Distance and time have +other potentialities besides the obliterative: they may breed halos. +When the French liner reached its New York slip, Ardea was remembering +only the studied kindnesses, the conventional refinements, the +correctnesses which, if they did seem artificial at times, were so many +guarantees of self-respect: when the Great Southwestern train had roared +around the cliffs of Lebanon with the returning exiles, and the +locomotive whistle was sounding for Gordonia, some other of the negative +virtues had become definitely positive, and the halo was beginning to be +distinctly visible. + +How Tom Gordon had informed himself of the precise day and train of +their home-coming, Ardea did not think to inquire. But he was on the +platform when the train drew in, and was the first to welcome them. + +She was quick to see and appreciate the changes wrought in him, by time, +by the Boston sojourn, by the summer's struggle with adverse men and +things--though of this last she knew nothing as yet. It seemed scarcely +credible that the big, handsome young fellow who was shaking hands with +her grandfather, helping Miss Euphrasia with her multifarious +belongings, and making himself generally useful and hospitable, could be +a later reincarnation of the abashed school-boy who had sweated through +the trying luncheon at Crestcliffe Inn. + +"Not a word for me, Tom?" she said, when the last of Cousin Euphrasia's +treasures had been rescued from the impatient train porter and added to +the heap on the platform. + +"All the words are for you--or they shall be presently," he laughed. +"Just let me get your luggage out of pawn and started Deer-Traceward, +and I'll talk you to a finish." + +She stood by and looked on while he did it. Surely, he had grown and +matured in the three broadening years! There was conscious manhood, +effectiveness, in every movement; in the very bigness of him. She had a +little attack of patriotism, saying to herself that they did not fashion +such young men in the Old World--could not, perhaps. + +Mammy Juliet's grandson, Pete, was down with the family carriage, and he +took his orders from Tom touching the bestowal of the luggage as he +would have taken them from Major Dabney. Ardea marked this, too, and +being Southern bred, wrote the Gordon name still a little higher on the +scroll of esteem. Pete's respectful obedience was, in its way, a patent +of nobility. The negro house-servant, to the manner born, draws the line +sharply between gentle and simple and is swift to resent interlopings. + +When Pete had done his office with the European gatherings of the party +the ancient carriage looked like a van, and there was scant room inside +for three passengers. + +"That means us for old Longfellow and the buggy," said Tom to Ardea. +"Do you mind? Longfellow is fearfully and wonderfully slow, same as +ever, but he's reasonably sure." + +"Any way," said Ardea; so he put her into the buggy and they drew in +behind the carriage. Before they were half-way to the iron-works they +had the pike to themselves, and Tom was not urging the leisurely horse. + +"My land! but it's good for tired eyes to have another sight of you!" he +declared, applying the remedy till she laughed and blushed a little. +Then: "It has been a full month of Sundays. Do you realize that?" + +"Since we saw each other? It has been much longer than that, hasn't it?" + +"Not so very much. I saw you in New York the day you sailed." + +"You did! Where was I?" + +"You had just come down in the elevator at the hotel with your +grandfather and Miss Euphrasia." + +"And you wouldn't stop to speak to us? I think that was simply +barbarous!" + +"Wasn't it?" he laughed. "But the time was horribly unpropitious." + +"Why?" + +He looked at her quizzically. + +"I'm wondering whether I'd better lie out of it; say I knew you were on +your way to breakfast, and that I hoped to have a later opportunity, and +all that. Shall I do it?" + +She did not reply at once. The undeceived inner self was telling her +that here lay the parting of the ways; that on her answer would be built +the structure, formal or confidential, of their future intercourse. +Loyalty to the halo demanded self-restraint; but every other fiber of +her was reaching out for a reestablishment of the old boy-and-girl +openness of heart and mind. Her hesitation was only momentary. + +"You are just as rude and Gothic as you used to be, aren't you, Tom? +Don't you know, I'm childishly glad of it; I was afraid you might be +changed in that way, too,--and I don't want to find anything changed. +You needn't be polite at the expense of truth--not with me." + +He looked at her with love in his eyes. + +"This time, you mean--or all the time." + +"All the time, if you like." + +"I do like; there has got to be some one person in this world to whom I +can talk straight, Ardea." + +She laughed a little laugh of half-constraint. + +"You speak as if there had been a vacancy." + +"There has been--for just about three years. I remember you told me once +that I'd find two kinds of friends: those who would refuse to believe +anything bad of me, and those who would size me up and still stick to +me. You are the only one of that second lot I have discovered thus far." + +"We are getting miles away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel," she reminded +him. + +"No; we are just now approaching it from the proper direction. I had my +war paint on that morning, and I wasn't fit to talk to you." + +"Business?" she queried. + +"Yes. Didn't the Major tell you about it?" + +"Not a word. I hope you didn't quarrel with him, too?" + +He marked the adverb of addition and wondered if Vincent Farley had +been less reticent than Major Dabney. + +"No; I didn't quarrel with your grandfather." + +"But you did quarrel with Mr. Farley?--or was it with Vincent?" + +He smiled and shook his head. + +"We can't do it, Ardea--go back to the old way, you know. You see +there's a stump in the road, the very first thing." + +"I shan't admit it," she said half-defiantly. "I am going to make you +like the Farleys." + +He shook his head again. "You'll have to make a Christian of me first, +and teach me how to love my enemies." + +"Don't you do that now?" + +"No; not unless you are my enemy; I love you." + +She looked up at him appealingly. + +"Don't make fun of such things, Tom. Love is sacred." + +"I was never further from making fun of things in my life. I mean it +with every drop of blood in me. You said you didn't want to find me +changed; I'm not changed in that, at least." + +"You ridiculous boy!" she said; but that was only a stop-gap, and +Longfellow added another by coming to a stand opposite a vast +obstruction of building material half damming the white road. "What are +you doing here--building more additions?" she asked. + +"No," said Tom. "It is a new plant--a pipe foundry." + +"Don't tell me we are going to have more neighbors in Paradise," she +said in mock concern. + +"I'll tell you something that may shock you worse than that: the owner +of this new plant has camped down right next door to Deer Trace." + +"How dreadful! You don't mean that!" + +"Oh, but I do. He's a young man, of poor but honest parentage, with a +large eye for the main chance. I shouldn't be surprised if he took every +opportunity to make love to you." + +"How absurd you can be, Tom! Who is he?" + +"He is Mr. Caleb Gordon's son. I think you think you know him, but you +don't; nobody does." + +"Really, Tom? Have you gone into business for yourself? I thought you +had another year at Boston." + +"I have another year coming to me, but I don't know when I shall get it. +And I am in business for myself; though perhaps I should be modest and +call it a firm--Gordon and Gordon." + +"What does the firm do?" + +"A number of things; among others, it buys the entire iron output of the +Chiawassee Consolidated, just at present." + +"Dear me!" she said; "how fine and large that sounds! If I should say +anything like that you would tell me that Brag was a good dog, but--" + +He grinned ecstatically. It was so like old times--the good old +times--to be bandying good-tempered abuse with her. + +"I do brag a lot, don't I? But have you ever noticed that I 'most always +have something to brag about? This time, for instance. I built this new +firm, and it is all that has kept Chiawassee from going into the +sheriff's hands any time during the past six months." + +Longfellow had picked his way judiciously around the obstructions and +through the gap in the boundary hills, and was jogging in a vertical +trot up the valley pike made clean and hard and stony-white by the +sweeping and hammering of the autumn rains. The mingled clamor of the +industries was left behind, but the throbbing pulsations of the big +blowing-engines hung in the air like the sighings of an imprisoned +giant. They were passing the miniature copy of Morwenstow Church when +Ardea spoke again. + +"You have been home all summer?" she asked. + +"At home and on the road, trying to hypnotize somebody into buying +something--anything--made out of cast-iron. Ah, girl! it's been a bitter +fight!" + +She was instantly sympathetic; more, there was a little thrill of +vicarious triumph to go with the sympathy. She was sure he had won, or +was winning, the battle. + +"We read something about the hard times in the American papers," she +said. "You don't know how far away anything like that seems when there +is an ocean between. And I was hoping all the time that our homeland +down here was escaping." + +"Escaping? You came through South Tredegar a little while ago; it is +dead--too dead to bury. You hear the sob of those blowing-engines?--you +will travel two hundred miles in the iron belt before you will hear it +again. When I came home in June we were smashed, like all the other +furnaces in the South--only worse." + +"How worse, Tom?" + +He forgot the tacit truce for the moment. + +"Duxbury Farley and his son had deliberately wrecked the company." + +She laid a restraining hand on his arm. + +"Let us understand each other," she said gently. "You must not say such +things of Mr. Farley and--and his son to me. If you do, I can't listen." + +"You don't believe what I say?" + +"I believe you have convinced yourself. But you are vindictive; you know +you are. And I mean to be fair and just." + +He let the plodding horse measure a full half-mile before he turned and +looked at her with anger and despair glooming in his eyes. + +"Tell me one thing, Ardea, and maybe it will shut my mouth. What is +Vincent Parley to you--anything more than Eva's brother?" + +Another young woman might have claimed her undoubted right to evade such +a pointed question. But Ardea saw safety only in instant frankness. + +"He has asked me to be his wife, Tom." + +"And you have consented?" + +"I wonder if I have," she said half-musingly. + +"Don't you _know_?" he demanded. And then, "Ardea, I'd rather see you +dead and in your coffin!" + +"Just why--apart from your prejudice?" + +"It's Beauty and the Beast over again. You don't know Vint Farley." + +"Don't I? My opportunities have been very much better than yours," she +retorted. + +"That may be, but I say you don't know him. He is a whited sepulcher." + +"But you can not particularize," she insisted. "And the evidence is all +the other way." + +Tom was silent. During the summer of strugglings he had gone pretty +deeply into the history of Chiawassee Consolidated, and there was +commercial sharp practice in plenty, with some nice balancings on the +edge of criminality. Once, indeed, the balance had been quite lost, but +it was Dyckman who had been thrust into the breach, or who had been +induced to enter it by falsifying his books. Yet these were mere +business matters, without standing in the present court. + +"The evidence isn't all one-sided," he asserted. "If you were a man, I +could convince you in two minutes that both of the Farleys are rascals +and hypocrites." + +"Yet they are your father's business associates," she reminded him. + +He saw the hopelessness of any argument on that side, and was silent +again, this time until they had passed the Deer Trace gates and he had +cut the buggy before the great Greek-pillared portico of the +manor-house. When he had helped her out, she thanked him and gave him +her hand quite in the old way; and he held it while he asked a single +blunt question. + +"Tell me one thing more, Ardea: do you love Vincent Farley?" + +Her swift blush answered him, and he did not wait for her word. + +"That settles it; you needn't say it in so many words. Isn't it a hell +of a world, Ardea? I love you--love you as this man never will, never +could. And with half his chance, I could have made you love me. I--" + +"Don't, Tom! please don't," she begged, trying to free her hand. + +"I must, for this once; then we'll quit and go back to the former +things. You said a while ago that I was vindictive; I'll show you that +I am not. When the time comes for me to put my foot on Vint Farley's +neck, I'm going to spare him for your sake. Then you'll know what it +means to have a man's love. Good-by; I'm coming over for a few minutes +this evening if you'll let me." + + + + +XXIII + +TARRED ROPES + + +"Now jest you listen at me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't goin' to make out to +find no better hawss 'n that this side o' the Blue Grass. Sound as a +dollar in lung _and_ leg, highstepper--my Land! jest look at the way he +holds his head--rides like a baby's cradle; why, that hawss is a perfect +gentleman, Tom-Jeff." + +Since her return from Europe Miss Ardea Dabney had taken to horseback +riding, a five-mile canter before breakfast in the fine brisk air of the +autumn mornings; and Tom had discovered that he needed a saddle animal. +Wherefore Brother Japheth was parading a handsome bay up and down before +the door of the small office building of the new foundry, descanting +glowingly on its merits, while Tom lounged on the step and pretended to +make difficulties. + +"You think he's a pretty good horse, do you, Japhe--worth the money?" he +queried, with the air of one who is about to surrender, not to the fact, +but to the presentation of it. + +"If you cayn't stable him this winter and then get your money back on +him in ary hawss market this side o' the Ohio River, I'll eat hawss for +the rest o' my bawn days. Now that's fair, ain't it?" + +"It's more than fair; it's generous. But let me ask you: is this +protracted-meeting talk you're giving me, or just plain, every-day horse +lies?" + +Brother Japheth halted the parade and there was aggrieved +reproachfulness in every line of his long, lantern-jawed face. + +"Now lookee here; I didn't 'low to find _you_ a-sittin' in the seat of +the scornful, Tom-Jeff; I shore didn't. Ain't the good cause precious to +your soul no mo' sence you to'd loose f'om your mammy's apron-string?" + +Tom's shrewd overlooking of the horse-trader spoke eloquently of the +spiritual landmarks past and left behind. + +"I don't know about you, Japhe. A fair half of the time you have me +cornered; and the other half I'm wondering if you are just ordinary, +canting hypocrite, like the majority of 'the brethren.'" + +"Now see here, Tom-Jeff, you know a heap better'n that! First and +fo'most, the majority ain't the majority, not by three sights and a +horn-blow. Hit don't take more'n one good, perseverin' hypocrite in the +chu'ch to spile the name o' chu'ch-member as fur as ye can holler it. +You been on a railroad train and seen the con-duc-tor havin' a furss +with the feller 'at pays for one seat and tries to hog four, and you've +set back and said, 'My gosh! what a lot o' swine the human race is when +hit gits away f'om home!' And right at that ve'y minute, mebbe, ther' +was forty-five 'r fifty other people in that cyar goin' erlong, mindin' +their own business, and not hoggin' any more 'n they paid for." + +Tom smiled. "And you think that's the way it is in the church, do you?" + +"I don't think nare' thing about hit; I know sufferin' well that's the +how of it. Lord forgive me! didn't I let one scribe-an'-Pharisee keep me +out o' the Isra'l o' God for nigh on to twenty year?" + +"Who was it?" asked Tom, tranquilly curious. + +"That ther' Jim Bledsoe, Brother Bill Layne's brother-in-law. He kep' +Brother Bill out, too, for a right smart spell." + +Tom was turning the memory pages half-absently. + +"Let me see," he said. "Didn't I hear something about your whaling the +everlasting daylights out of Bledsoe sometime last winter?" + +Japheth hung his head after the manner of one who has spoiled a good +argument by overstating it. + +"That ther's jest like me," he said disgustedly. "I nev' do know enough +to quit when I git thoo. Ain't it somewher's in the Bible 'at it says +some folks is bawn troublesome, and some goes round huntin' for trouble, +and some has trouble jammed up ag'inst 'em?" + +"You can't prove it by me," Tom laughed. "I believe Shakespeare said +something like that about greatness." + +"Well, nev' mind; whoa, Saladin, boy, we'll git round to you ag'in, +bime-by. As I was sayin', this here furss with Jim Bledsoe jest +natchelly couldn't be holped, nohow. Hit was thisaway: 'long late in the +fall I swapped Jim a piebald that was jest erbout the no-accountest +hawss 'at ever had a bit in his mouth. I done told Jim all his meanness; +but Jim, he 'lowed I was lyin' and made the trade anyhow. Inside of a +week he was back here, callin' me names. I turned him first one cheek +and then t'other, like the Good Book says, till they was jest plum' wo' +out; and then I says, says I: 'Lookee here, Jim, you've done smack' me +on both sides o' the jaw, and that ther's your priv'lege--me bein' a +chu'ch-member in good and reg'lar standin', and no low-down, +in-fergotten, turkey-trodden hypocrite like you. But right here the +torections erbout what I'm bounden to do sort o' peter out. I got as +many cheeks to turn as any of 'em, but that ain't sayin' that the +stock's immortil' With that he ups and allows a heap mo' things about my +morils; and me havin' turned both cheeks till my neck ached, and not +havin' any mo' _toe_ turn, what-all could I do--what-all would you 'a' +done, Tom-Jeff?" + +"Don't ask me. I'm one of the hair-hung and breeze-shaken majority. I +should most probably have punched his head." + +"Well, that's jest what I did. I says, says I, 'Jim, whom the Lord +loveth He chasteneth, and jest at this time present, I'm the +instru_ment_.' And when the dust got settled down, Jim he druv' home +with that ther' piebald, allowin' he wasn't such an all-fired bad hawss +after all. But lookee here, Tom-Jeff, this ain't sellin' you the finest +saddle-hawss in the valley. What do ye say about Saladin?" + +"Oh, I don't know," said Tom. "I don't love horses very much. You know +what the Bible says: _A horse is a vain thing for safety_. Is this bay +going to make me lose my temper and knock his pinhead brains out the +first time I put a leg over him?" + +"No-o-o, suh! Why, he's as kind and gentle and lovin as a woman. You +jest natchelly _couldn't_ whup this here bay, Tom-Jeff!" + +"All right, Japhe; I was only deviling you a little. Take him up to the +Woodlawn stables and tell William Henry Harrison to give him the box +stall. I'll try him to-morrow morning, if the weather is good." + +Brother Japheth's business was concluded, and the architect who was +building the latest extension to the pipe-pit floor was heading across +the yard to consult the young boss. Pettigrass paused with his foot in +the stirrup to say, "Old Tike Bryerson's on the rampage ag'in; folks up +at the valley head say he's a-lookin' for you, Tom-Jeff." + +"For me?" said Tom; then he laughed easily. "I don't owe him anything, +and I'm not very hard to find. What's the matter?" + +He thought it a little singular at the time that Japheth gave him a +curious look and mounted and rode away without answering his question. +But the building activities were clamoring for time and attention, and +his father was waiting to consult him about a run of iron that was not +quite up to the pipe-making test requirements. So he forgot Japheth's +half-accusing glance at parting, and the implied warning that had +preceded it, until an incident at the day's end reminded him of both. + +The incident turned on the fact of his walking home. Ordinarily he +struck work when the furnace whistle blew, riding home with his father +behind old Longfellow; but on this particular evening Kinderling, the +architect, missed his South Tredegar train, and Tom spent an extra hour +with him, discussing further and future possibilities of expansion. +Kinderling got away on a later train, and Tom closed his office and took +the long mile up the pike afoot in the dusk of the autumn evening, +thinking pointedly of many things mechanical and industrial, and never +by any chance forereaching to the epoch-marking event that was awaiting +him at the Woodlawn gate. + +His hand was upon the latch of the ornamental side wicket opening on the +home foot-path when a woman, crouching in the shadow of the great-gate +pillar, rose suddenly and stood before him. He did not recognize her at +first; it was nearly dark, and her head was snooded in a shawl. Then she +spoke, and he saw that it was Nancy Bryerson--a Nan sadly and terribly +changed, but with much of the wild-creature beauty of face and form +still remaining. + +"You done forgot me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked; and then, at his start of +recognition: "I allow I have changed some." + +"Surely I haven't forgotten you, Nan. But you took me by surprise; and I +can't see in the dark any better than most people. What are you doing +down here in the valley so late in the evening?" He tried to say it +superiorly, paternally, as an older man might have said it--and was not +altogether successful. The mere sight of her set his blood aswing in the +old throbbing ebb and flow, though, if he had known it, it was pity now +rather than passion that gave the impetus. + +"You allow it ain't fittin' for me to be out alone after night?" she +said, with a hard little laugh. "I reckon it ain't goin' to hurt me +none; anyways, I had to come. Paw's been red-eyed for a week, and he's +huntin' for you, Tom-Jeff." + +Then Tom recalled Japheth's word of the morning. + +"Hunting for me? Well, I'm not very hard to find," he said, +unconsciously repeating the answer he had made to the horse-trader's +warning. + +"Couldn't you make out to go off somewheres for a little spell?" she +asked half-pleadingly. + +"Run away, you mean? Hardly; I'm too busy just at present. Besides, I +haven't any quarrel with your father. What's he making trouble about +now?" + +She put her face in her hands, and though she was silent, he could see +that sobs were shaking her. Being neither more nor less than a man, her +tears made him foolish. He put his arm around her and was trying to find +the comforting word, when the heavens fell. + +How Ardea and Miss Euphrasia, going the round-about way from one house +to the other to avoid the dew-wet grass of the lawns, came fairly within +arm's-reach before he saw or heard them, remained a thing inexplicable. +But when he looked up they were there, Miss Euphrasia straightening +herself aloof in virtuous disapproval, and Ardea looking as if some one +had suddenly shown her the head of Medusa. + +Tom separated himself from Nan in hot-hearted confusion and stood as a +culprit taken in the act. Nan hid her face again and turned away. It was +Miss Dabney the younger who found words to break the smarting silence. + +"Don't mind us, Mr. Gordon," she said icily. "We were going to Woodlawn +to see if your father and mother could come over after dinner." + +Tom smote himself alive and made haste to open the foot-path gate for +them. There was nothing more said, or to be said; but when they were +gone and he was once more alone with Nan, he was fighting desperately +with a very manlike desire to smash something; to relieve the wrathful +pressure by hurting somebody. Let it be written down to his credit +that he did not wreak his vengeance on the defenseless. Thomas +Jefferson, the boy, would not have hesitated. + +[Illustration: Tom made haste to open the foot-path gate for them.] + +"You were going to tell me about your father," he said, striving to hold +the interruption as if it had not been, and yet tingling in every nerve +to be free. "Did you come all the way down the mountain to warn me?" + +She nodded, adding: "But that didn't make no differ'; I had to come +anyway. He run me out, paw did." + +"Heavens!" ejaculated Tom, prickling now with a new sensation. "And you +haven't any place to stay?" + +She shook her head. + +"No. I was allowin' maybe your paw'd let me sleep where you-uns keep the +hawsses--jest for a little spell till I could make out what-all I'm +goin' to do." + +He was too rageful to be quite clear-sighted. Yet he conceived that he +had a duty laid on him. Once in the foolish, infatuated long-ago he had +told her he would take care of her; he remembered it; doubtless she was +remembering it, too. But her suggestion was not to be considered for a +moment. + +"I can't let you go to the stables," he objected. "The horse-boys sleep +there. But I'll put a roof over you, some way. Wait here a minute till I +come back." + +His thought was to go to his mother and ask her help; but half-way to +the house his courage failed him. Since the breach in spiritual +confidence he had been better able to see the lovable side of his +mother's faith; but he could not be blind to that quality of hardness in +it which, even in such chastened souls as Martha Gordon's, finds +expression in woman's inhumanity to woman. Besides, Ardea and her cousin +were still in the way. + +He swung on his heel undecided. On the hillside back of the new foundry +there was a one-roomed cabin built on the Gordon land years before by a +hermit watchman of the Chiawassee plant. It was vacant, and Tom +remembered that the few bits of furniture had not been removed when the +old watchman died. Would the miserable shack do for a temporary refuge +for the outcast? He concluded it would have to do; and, making a wide +circuit of the house, he went around to the stables to harness +Longfellow to the buggy. Luckily, the negroes were all in the detached +kitchen, eating their supper, so he was able to go and come undetected. + +When he drove down to the gate he found Nan waiting where he had left +her; but now she had a bundle in her arms. As he got out to swing the +driveway grille, the house door opened; a flood of light from the hall +lamp banded the lawn, and there were voices and footsteps on the +veranda. He flung a nervous glance over his shoulder; Ardea and her +cousin were returning down the foot-path. Wherefore he made haste, +meaning not to be caught again, if he could help it. But the fates were +against him. Longfellow, snatched ruthlessly from his half-emptied oat +box, made equine protest, yawing and veering and earning himself a +savage cut of the whip before he consented to place the buggy at the +stone mounting-step. + +"Quick!" said Tom, flinging the reins on the dashboard. "Chuck your +bundle under the seat and climb in!" + +But Nan was provokingly slow, and when she tried to get in with the +bundle still in her arms, the buggy hood was in the way. Tom had to help +her, was in the act of lifting her to the step, when the wicket latch, +clicked and Ardea and Miss Euphrasia came out. They passed on without +comment, but Tom could feel the electric shock of righteous scorn +through the back of his head. That was why he drove half-way to the +lower end of the pike before he turned on Nan to say: + +"What's in that bundle you're so careful of? Why don't you put it under +the seat?" + +She looked around at him, and dark as it was, he saw that the great +black eyes were shining with a strange light--strange to him. + +"I reckon you wouldn't want me to do that, Tom-Jeff," she answered +simply. "Hit's my baby--my little Tom." + +He was struck dumb. It often happens that in the fiercest storm of +gossip the one most nearly concerned goes his way without so much as +suspecting that the sun is hidden. But Tom had not been exposed to the +violence of the storm. Nan's shame was old, and the gossip tongues had +wagged themselves weary two years before, when the child was born. So +Tom was quite free to think only of his companion. A great anger rose +and swelled in his heart. What scoundrel had taken advantage of an +ignorance so profound as to be the blood sister of innocence? He would +have given much to know; and yet the true delicacy of a manly soul made +him hold his peace. + +Thus it befell that they drove in silence to the deserted cabin on the +hillside; and Tom went down to the foundry office and brought a lamp for +light. The cabin was a mere shelter; but when he would have made +excuses, Nan stopped him. + +"Hit's as good as I been usen to, as you know mighty well, Tom-Jeff. I +on'y wisht--" + +He was on his knees at the hearth, kindling a fire, and he looked up to +see why she did not finish. She was sitting on the edge of the old +watchman's rude bed, bowed low over the sleeping child, and again sobs +were shaking her like an ague fit. There was something heartrending in +this silent, wordless anguish; but there was nothing to be said, and Tom +went on making the fire. After a little she sat up and continued +monotonously: + +"_He_ was liken to me thataway, too; the Man 'at I heard your Uncle +Silas tellin' about one night when I sot on the doorstep at Little +Zoar--He hadn't no place to lay His'n head; not so much as the red foxes +'r the birds ... and I hain't." + +The blaze was racing up the chimney now with a cheerful roar, and Tom +rose to his feet, every good emotion in him stirring to its awakening. + +"Such as it is, Nan, this place is yours, for as long as you want to +stay," he said soberly. And then: "You straighten things around here to +suit you, and I'll be back in a little while." + +He was gone less than half an hour, but in that short interval he +lighted another fire: a blaze of curiosity and comment to tingle the +ears and loosen the tongues of the circle of loungers in Hargis's store +in Gordonia. He ignored the stove-hugging contingent pointedly while he +was giving his curt orders to the storekeeper; and the contingent +avenged itself when he was out of hearing. + +"Te-he!" chuckled Simeon Cantrell the elder, pursing his lips around the +stem of his corn-cob pipe; "looks like Tom-Jeff was goin' to +house-keepin' right late in the evenin'." + +"By gol, I wonder what's doin'?" said another. "Reckon he's done tuk up +with Nan Bryerson, afte' all's been said an' done?" + +Bastrop Clegg, whose distinction was that of being the oldest loafer in +the circle, spat accurately into the drafthole of the stove, sat back +and tilted his hat over his eyes. + +"Well, boys, I reckon hit's erbout time, ain't hit?" he moralized. +"Leetle Tom must be a-goin' awn two year old; and I don't recommember ez +Tom 'r his pappy has ever done a livin' thing for Nan." + +Whereupon one member of the group got up and addressed himself to the +door. It was Japheth Pettigrass; and what he said was said to the +starlit night outside. + +"My Lord! that ther' boy _was_ lyin' to me, after all! I didn't believe +hit that night when he r'ared and took on so to me and 'lowed to chunk +me with a rock, and I don't want to believe hit now. But Lordy gracious! +hit do look mighty bad, with him a-buyin' all that outfit and loadin' +hit in his pappy's buggy; hit do, for shore!" + +A half-hour later, Brother Japheth, trudging back to Deer Trace on the +pike, saw the light in the long-deserted cabin back of the new foundry +plant; saw this and was overtaken at the Woodlawn gates by Thomas +Jefferson with Longfellow and the buggy. And he could not well help +observing that the buggy had been lightened of its burden of household +supplies. + +Tom turned the horse over to William Henry Harrison and went in to his +belated dinner somberly reflective. He was not sorry to find that his +mother and father had gone over to the manor-house. Solitude was +grateful at the moment; he was glad of the chance to try to think +himself uninterruptedly out of the snarl of misunderstanding in which +his impulsiveness had entangled him. + +The pointing of the thought was to see Ardea and have it out with her at +once. Reconsidered, it appeared the part of prudence to wait a little. +The muddiest pool will settle if time and freedom from ill-judged +disturbance be given it. But we, who have known Thomas Jefferson from +his beginnings, may be sure that it was the action-thought that +triumphed. _They also serve who only stand and wait_, was meaningless +comfort to him; and when he had finished his solitary dinner and had +changed his clothes, he strode across the double lawns and rang the +manor-house bell. + + + + +XXIV + +THE UNDER-DEPTHS + +The Deer Trace family and the two guests from Woodlawn were in the +music-room when Tom was admitted, with Ardea at the piano playing war +songs for the pleasuring of her grandfather and the ex-artilleryman. +Under cover of the music, Tom slipped into the circle of listeners and +went to sit beside his mother. There was a courteous hand-wave of +welcome from Major Dabney, but Miss Euphrasia seemed not to see him. He +saw and understood, and was obstinately impervious to the chilling east +wind in that quarter. It was with Ardea that he must make his peace, and +he settled himself to wait for his opportunity. + +It bade fair to be a long time coming. Ardea's repertoire was apparently +inexhaustible, and at the end of an added hour he began to suspect that +she knew what was in store for her and was willing to postpone the +afflictive moment. From the battle hymns of the Confederacy to the +militant revival melodies best loved by Martha Gordon the transition was +easy; and from these she drifted through a Beethoven sonata to Mozart, +and from Mozart to Chopin. + +Thomas Jefferson knew music as the barbarian knows it, which is to say +that it lighted strange fires in him; stirred and thrilled him in +certain heart or soul labyrinths locked against all other influences. As +Ardea's fingers sought the changing chords he felt vaguely that she was +speaking to him, now scorning, now rebuking, now pleading, but always in +a tongue that he only half comprehended. He stole a glance at his watch, +impatient to come to hand-grips with her and have it over. The suspense +could not last much longer. It was past ten; the Major was dozing +peacefully in his great arm-chair, and Miss Euphrasia yawned decorously +behind her hand. + +Ardea lingered lovingly on the closing harmonies of the nocturne, and +when the final chord was struck her hands lingered on the keys until the +sweet voices of the strings had sung themselves afar into the higher +sound heaven. Then she turned quickly and surprised her anesthetized +audience. + +"You poor things!" she laughed. "In another five minutes the last one of +you would have succumbed. Why didn't somebody stop me?" + +The iron-master said something about the heavy work of the day, and +helped his wife to her feet. The Major came awake with a start and +bestirred himself hospitably, and Miss Euphrasia rose to speed the +parting guests--or rather the two of them who had been invited. In the +drift down the wide hall Ardea fell behind with Tom, whom Cousin +Euphrasia continued to ignore. + +"I came to tell you," he said in a low tone, snatching his opportunity. +"I can't sleep until I have fought it out with you." + +"You don't deserve a hearing, even from your best friend," was her +discouraging reply; but when they were at the door she gave him a +formal reprieve. "I shall walk for a few minutes on the portico to rest +my nerves," she said. "If you want to come back--" + +He thanked her gravely, and went obediently when his mother called to +him from the steps. But on the Woodlawn veranda he excused himself to +smoke a cigar in the open; and when the door closed behind the two +in-going, he swiftly recrossed the lawns to pay the penalty. + +The front door of the manor-house was shut and the broad, pillared +portico was untenanted. He sat down in one of the rustic chairs and +searched absently in his pockets for a cigar. Before he could find it +the door opened and closed and Ardea stood before him. She had thrown a +wrap over her shoulders, and the light from the music-room windows +illuminated her. There was cool scorn in the slate-blue eyes, but in +Tom's thought she had never appeared more unutterably beautiful and +desirable--and unattainable. + +"I have come," she said, in a tone that cut him to the heart for its +very indifference. "What have you to say for yourself?" + +He rose quickly and offered her the chair; and when she would not take +it, he put his back to the wall and stood with her. + +"I'm afraid I haven't left myself much to say," he began penitently. "I +was born foolish, and it seems that I haven't outgrown it. But, really, +if you could know--" + +"Unhappily, I do know," she interrupted. "If I did not, I might listen +to you with better patience." + +"It did look pretty bad," he confessed. "And that's what I wanted to +say; it looked a great deal worse than it was, you know." + +"I _don't_ know," she retorted. + +"You are tangling me," he said, gaining something in self-possession +under the flick of the whip. "First you say you know, and then you say +you don't know. Which is which?" + +"If you are flippant I shall go in," she threatened. "There are things +that not even the most loyal friendship can condone." + +"That's the difference between friendship and love," he asserted. "I +believe I'd enjoy a little more real confidence and a little less of the +dutiful kind of loyalty." + +"You ask too much," she said, quite coolly. "Forgiveness implies +penitence and continued good behavior." + +"No, it doesn't, anything of the kind," he denied, matching her tone. +"That is the purely pagan point of view, and you are barred from taking +it. You are bound to consider the motive." + +"I am bound to believe what I see with my own eyes," she rejoined. +"Perhaps you can make it appear that seeing is not believing." + +"Of course I can't, if you take that attitude," he complained. And then +he said irritably: "You talk about friendship! You don't know the +meaning of the word!" + +"If I didn't, I should hardly be here at this moment," she suggested. +"You don't seem to apprehend to what degrading depths you have sunk." + +His sins in the business field rose before him accusingly and prompted +his reply. + +"Yes, I do; but that is another matter. We were speaking of what you +saw this evening. Will you let me try to explain?" + +"Yes, if you will tell the plain truth." + +"Lacking imagination, I can't do anything else. Nan has had a +falling-out with the old scamp of a moonshiner who calls himself her +father. She came to me for help, and broke down in the midst of telling +me about it. I can't stand a woman's crying any better than other men." + +The slate-blue eyes were transfixing him. + +"And that was all--absolutely all, Tom?" + +"I don't lie--to you," he said briefly. + +She gave him her hand with an impulsive return to the old comradeship. +"I believe you, Tom, in the face of all the--the unlikelinesses. But +please don't try me again. After what has happened--" she stopped in +deference to something in his eyes, half anger, half bewilderment, or a +most skilful simulation of both. + +"Go on," he said; "tell me what has happened. I seem to have missed +something." + +"No," she said, with sudden gravity. "I don't want to be your accuser or +your confessor; and if you should try to prevaricate, I should hate +you!" + +"There is nothing for me to confess to you, Ardea," he said soberly, +still holding the hand she had given him. "You have known the worst of +me, always and all along, I think." + +"Yes, I _have_ known," she replied, freeing the imprisoned hand and +turning from him. "And I have been sorry, sorry; not less for you than +for poor Nancy Bryerson. You know now what I thought--what I _had_ to +think--when I saw you with her this evening." + +It was slowly beating its way into his brain. Little things, atoms of +suggestion, were separating themselves from the mass of things +disregarded to cluster thickly on this nucleus of revealment: the old +story of his companying with Nan on the mountain; his uncle's and +Japheth's accusation at the time; and now the old moonshiner's enmity, +Japheth's meaning look and distrustful silence, Nan's appearance with a +child bearing his own name, the glances askance in Hargis's store when +he was buying the little stock of necessaries for the poor outcast. It +was all plain enough. For reasons best known to herself, Nan had not +revealed the name of her betrayer, and all Gordonia, and all Paradise, +believed him to be the man. Even Ardea ... + +She had moved aside out of the square of window light, and he followed +her. + +"Tell me," he said thickly; "you heard this: you have believed it. Have +I been misjudging you?" + +"Not more than I misjudged you, perhaps. But that is all over, now: I am +trusting you again, Tom. Only, as I said before, you mustn't try me too +hard." + +"Let me understand," he went on, still in the same strained tone. +"Knowing this, or believing it, you could still find a place in your +heart for me--you could still forgive me, Ardea?" + +"I could still be your friend; yes," she replied. "I believed--others +believed--that your punishment would be great enough; there are all the +coming years for you to be sorry in, Tom. But in the fullness of time I +meant to remind you of your duty. The time has come; you must play the +man's part now. What have you done with her?" + +"Wait a moment. I must know one other thing," he insisted. "You heard +this before you went to Europe?" + +"Long before." + +"And it didn't make any difference in the way you felt toward me?" + +"It did; it made the vastest difference." They were pacing slowly up and +down the portico, and she waited until they had made the turn at the +Woodlawn end before she went on. "I thought I knew you when we were boy +and girl together, and, girl-like, I suppose I had idealized you in some +ways. I thought I knew your wickednesses, and that they were not +weaknesses; so--so it was a miserable shock. But it was not for me to +judge you--only as you might rise or sink from that desperate starting +point. When I came home I was sure that you had risen; I have been sure +of it ever since until--until these few wretched hours to-night. They +are past, and now I'm going to be sure of it some more, Tom." + +It was his turn to be silent, and they had measured twice the length of +the pillared floor when at last he said: + +"What if I should tell you that you are mistaken--that all of them are +mistaken?" + +"Don't," she said softly. "That would only be smashing what is left of +the ideal. I think I couldn't bear that." + +"God in Heaven!" he said, under his breath. "And you've been calling +this friendship! Ardea, girl, it's _love_!" + +She shook her head slowly. + +"No," she rejoined gravely. "At one time I thought--I was afraid--that +it might be. But now I know it isn't." + +"How do you know it?" + +"Because love, as I think of it, is stronger than the traditions, +stronger than anything else in the world. And the traditions are still +with me. I admit the existence of the social pale, and as long as I live +within it I have a right to demand certain things of the man who marries +me." + +"And love doesn't demand anything," he said, putting the remainder of +the thought into words for her. "You are right. If I could clear myself +with a word, I should not say it." + +"Why?" + +"Because your--loyalty, let us call it, is too precious to be exchanged +for anything else you could give me in place of it--esteem, respect, and +all the other well-behaved and virtuous bestowals." + +"But the loyalty is based on the belief that you are trying to earn the +well-behaved approvals," she continued. + +"No, it isn't. It exists 'in spite of' everything, and not 'because of' +anything. The traditions may try to make you stand it on the other leg, +it's a way they have; but the fact remains." + +She shook her head in deprecation. + +"The 'traditions,' are about to send me into the house, and the +principal problem is yet untouched. What have you done with Nancy?" + +He told her briefly and exactly, adding nothing and omitting nothing; +and her word for it was "impossible." + +"Don't you understand?" she objected. "I may choose to believe that +this home making for poor Nan and her waif is merely a bit of tardy +justice on your part and honor you for it. But nobody else will take +that view of it. If you keep her in that little cabin of yours, Mountain +View Avenue will have a fit--and very properly." + +"I don't see why it should," he protested densely. + +"Don't you? That's because you are still so hopelessly primeval. People +won't give you credit for the good motive; they will quote that +Scripture about the dog and the sow. You must think of some other way." + +"Supposing I say I don't care a hang?" + +"Oh, but you do. You have your father and mother and--and me to +consider, however reckless you may be for yourself and Nancy. You +mustn't leave her where she is for a single day." + +"I can leave her there if I like. I've told her she may stay as long as +she wants to." + +They had paused in front of the great door, and Ardea's hand was on the +knob. + +"No," she said decisively, "you will have a perfect hornets' nest about +your ears. Every move you make will be watched and commented on. Don't +you see that you are playing the part of the headstrong, obstinate boy +again?" + +"Yet you think I ought to provide for Nan, in some way; how am I going +to do it unless I ignore the hornets?" + +"Now you are more reasonable," she said approvingly. "I shall ride +to-morrow morning, and if you should happen to overtake me, we might +think up something." + +The door was opening gently under the pressure of her hand, but he was +loath to go. + +"I wouldn't take five added years of life for what I've learned +to-night, Ardea;" he said passionately. And then: "Have you fully made +up your mind to marry Vincent Farley?" + +In the twinkling of an eye she was another woman--cold, unapproachable, +with pride kindling as if she had received a mortal affront. + +"Sometimes--and they are bad times for you, Mr. Gordon--I am tempted to +forget the boy-and-girl anchorings in the past. Have you no sense of the +fitness of things--no shame?" + +"Not very much of either, I guess," he said quite calmly. "Love hasn't +any shame; and it doesn't concern itself much about the fitness of +anything but its object." + +And then he bade her good night and went his way with a lilting song of +triumph in his heart which not even the chilling rebuff of the +leave-taking was sufficient to silence. + +"She loves me! She would still love me if she were ten times Vincent +Farley's wife!" he said, over and over to himself; the words were on his +lips when he fell asleep, and they were still ringing in his ears the +next morning at dawn-break when he rose and made ready to go to ride +with her. + + + + +XXV + +THE PLOW IN THE FURROW + + +One of Miss Ardea Dabney's illuminating graces was the ability to return +easily and amicably to the _status quo ante bellum_; to "kiss and be +friends," in the unfettered phrase of Margaret Catherwood, her chum and +room-mate at Carroll College. + +Wherefore, when Tom, mounted on Saladin, overtook her on the morning +next after the night of offenses, she greeted him quite as if nothing +had happened, challenging him gaily to a gallop with the valley head for +its goal, and refusing to be drawn into anything more serious than +joyous persiflage until they were returning at a walk down a +boulder-strewn wood road at the back of the Dabney horse pasture. Then, +and not till then, was the question of Nancy Bryerson's future suffered +to present itself. + +For Miss Dabney the question was settled before it came up for +discussion. In the Major's young manhood Deer Trace had maintained a +pack of foxhounds, and it was the Major's bride, a city-bred Charleston +belle, who first objected to the dooryard kennels and the clamor of the +dogs. Back of the horse pasture, and a hundred yards vertical above the +road Ardea and Tom were traversing, a pocket-like glen indented the +mountain side, and in this glen the kennels had been established, with +a substantial log cabin for the convenience of the dog-keeper. + +Dogs and dog-keeper had long since gone the way of most of the old-time +Southern manorial largenesses; but the cabin still stood solidly planted +in the midst of its overgrown garden patch, with a dense thicket of +mountain laurel backgrounding it, and a giant tulip-tree standing +sentinel over a gate hanging by one rusted hinge. + +This was what Tom saw when he had followed Ardea's lead up the steep bit +of path climbing from the road and the pasture wall, and it evoked +memories. Often in the boyhood days, when the Nazarite fit was on, he +had climbed to the deserted solitude of the glen to sit on the broad +door-stone of the dog-keeper's cabin as a hermit at large,--monarch for +the monastic moment of a kingdom as remote as that of John the Baptist +in the Wilderness of Sin. + +"I thought of it last night," said Ardea, nodding toward the cabin. "It +is just the place for Nancy, if she can not, or will not, go back to her +father. After breakfast, I shall send Dinah and a man up to set things +in order, and she can come as soon as she likes. She won't mind the +loneliness?" + +Tom shook his head. "I should think not; she has never been used to +anything else. I'll bring her and the youngster over in the buggy any +time you telephone." He had quite forgotten his lesson of the previous +evening. + +"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind," was the quick reply. "Japheth +will go after her when we are ready; and if you are prudently wise you +will have business in South Tredegar for the next few days." + +The blue-grass, seeded once in the dog-keeper's dooryard, had spread to +the farthest limits of the glen, and the autumn rains had given it a +spring-like start. Tom let Saladin crop a dozen mouthfuls unchecked +before he said: + +"That looks like dodging; and I don't like to dodge." + +"You will have to do many things you don't like before you say your _ave +atque vale_," she remarked. "But you shall be permitted to carry your +full share of the burden. I mean to let you give me some money, if you +can afford it, and I'll spend it for you." + +"Charity itself couldn't be kinder," he asseverated. "And, luckily, I +can afford it. But--" + +He was looking at her wistfully, and the old longing for sympathy, for +the sympathy which has been quite to the bottom of the well where truth +lies, was about to cry out against this riveting of the fetters of +misunderstanding and false accusation. + +"But you would rather spend it yourself?" she broke in, fancying she had +divined his thought. "That cannot be. The one condition on which I shall +consent to help is the completest isolation for Nan. You must promise me +you will not try to see her. I am hoping against hope that none of the +Mountain View Avenue people will find out what you did last night." + +"Oh, confound their gossiping tongues!" he railed; adding hastily: "Not +that I care so very much what they say, either." + +Ardea let her horse pick his way down to the wood road, and when they +were approaching the Deer Trace gate: "You haven't promised yet, Tom; +and you must, you know." + +"Not to see Nan? That's easy. I'll keep out of her way, if you can keep +her out of mine. All I care is to know that she is comfortably provided +for." + +This he said, thinking only of the boy-time obligation voluntarily +assumed; but it was quite inevitable that Ardea should mistake the +motive. + +"It is right and proper that you should care about that," she said +judicially. And a little farther along she added: "But I don't like your +attitude." + +"I don't like it myself," he rejoined heartily. "I never wanted so badly +to say things in all my life! But you've nailed the lid on and I can't." + +"They are better unsaid," she returned quickly. "Will you take that for +your cue in the future?" + +"Certainly; it is for you to command," he said lightly, swinging from +his saddle to open the pasture gate for her; and so the morning ride +came to its end. + +Since provincialism is by no means the exclusive distinction of the +landward bred, there was an immediate restirring of the gossip pool when +the story of Tom's befriending of Nancy Bryerson and her child got +abroad in Gordonia and among the country colonists. + +In the comment of the simpler-minded Gordonia folk, the iron-master's +son had finally "made it up" with Nancy, and here the note of approval +was not wholly lacking. There were good-hearted souls to say that boys +will be boys, and to express the hope that Tom would go on from this +beginning and make an honest woman of Nancy by marrying her. + +Quite naturally, the point of view of the country-house people was +different; more critical, if not less charitable. Though the social +acceptance of the Gordons, as an ancient family, as friends of the +Dabneys, and as land-holding neighbors was fairly complete, it still +lacked somewhat of the class kinship which breeds leniency and the +closed eye to the sins of its own household. But for Tom, personally, as +a distinct social improvement on honest Caleb, the welcome into the +charmed circle of Mountain View Avenue had been warm enough to make his +sudden apparent relapse into the primitive figure as an affront to the +colony. Hence, there were rods laid in pickle for the sinner, as when +Mrs. Vancourt Henniker gave the footman at Rook Hill a hint that for the +present the Misses Henniker were not at home to Mr. Thomas Gordon; and +if Tom had known it, there were other and similar chastenings lying in +wait for him behind more of the colonial doors. + +But Tom did not know it. He was in the crucial month of the panic year, +striving desperately to maintain the foothold given to him by the +pipe-casting invention, and he had little time for the amenities. So it +came about that he escaped for the moment; or, which was quite the same, +he did not know he was pursued. Another Northern city, with its full +complement of grafting officials, was in the market for some train-loads +of water-mains, and again Thomas Jefferson was fighting the old battle +of conscience against expediency, this time in the evil-smelling ditches +where the dead and wounded lie. + +"You are sure you went into it thoroughly, Norman?" he demanded of his +lieutenant, when the latter returned from a personal reconnaissance of +the field. "The break they are making at us seems almost too rank to be +taken at its face value." + +"Oh, yes; I dug it up from the bottom," said the henchman. "It's rotten +and riotous. The political machine runs the town, and the bosses own the +machine. So much to this one, so much to that, so much to half a dozen +others, and we get the contract. Otherwise, most emphatically _nit_." + +"That comes straight, does it?" + +"As straight as a shot out of a gun. They got together on it, eight of +the big bosses, called me in and told me flat-footed what we had to do," +said the salesman. "Oh, I tell you, those fellows are on to their job." + +"No chance to go behind the returns and stir up popular indignation, as +we did in Indiana?" suggested Tom. + +"No show on top of earth. The ring owns or controls two of the dailies, +and has the other two scared. Besides, they've just had their municipal +election." + +The Gordon-and-Gordon manager was absently jabbing holes in the desk +blotter with the paper-knife. + +"Well, we can do what we have to, I suppose," he said, after a hesitant +pause. "Say nothing to my father, but make your arrangements to take the +train for the North again to-night. I'll meet you in town at the +Marlboro at four o'clock." + +To prepare for the new exigency, Tom took the afternoon local for South +Tredegar. The lump sum required for the bribery was considerably in +excess of his balance in bank. Notwithstanding the stringency of the +times, he made sure he could borrow; but it was in some vague hope that +the moral chasm might be widened to impassibility, or decently bridged +for him, that he was moved to state the case in detail to President +Henniker of the Iron City National. Mr. Vancourt Henniker could dig +ditches, on occasion, making them too vast for the boldest borrower to +cross; but Tom's credit was gilt-edged, and in the present instance the +president chose rather to build bridges. + +"We have to shut our eyes to a good many disagreeable things in +business, Mr. Gordon," he said, genially didactic. "Our problem in this +day and generation is so to draw the line of distinction that these +necessary concessions to human frailty will not debauch us; may be made +without prejudice to that high sense of personal honor and integrity +which must be the corner-stone of any successful business career. This +state of affairs which you describe is deplorable--most deplorable; +but--well, we may think of such obstacles as we do of toll-gates on the +highway. The road is a public utility, and it should be free; but we pay +the toll, under protest, and pass on." + +Mr. Henniker was a large man, benign and full-favored, not to say +unctuous; and his manner in delivering an opinion was blandly +impressive, and convincing to many. Yet Tom was not convinced. + +"Of course, I came to ask for the loan, and not specially to justify +it," he said, in mild irony which was quite lost on the philosopher in +the president's chair. "I wasn't sure just how you would regard it if +you should know the object for which we are borrowing, and this high +sense of personal honor you speak of impelled me to be altogether frank +with you." + +"Quite right; you were quite right, Mr. Gordon," said the banker +urbanely. "You are young in business, but you have learned the first +lesson in the book of success--to be perfectly open and outspoken with +your banker. As I have said, the venality of these men with whom you are +dealing is most deplorable, but...." + +There was some further glozing over of the putrid fact, a good bit of +it, and Tom sat back in his chair and listened, outwardly respectful, +inwardly hot-hearted and contemptuous. Was this smooth-spoken, oracular +prince of the market-place a predetermined hypocrite, shaping his words +to fit the money-gathering end without regard to their demoralizing +effect? Or was he only a subconscious Pharisee, self-deceived and +complacent? Tom's thought ran lightning-like over the long list of the +Vancourt Hennikers: men of the business world successful to the Croesus +mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and +hospitals, gift-givers to their fellow men, irreproachable in private +life, and yet apparently stone blind on the side of the larger equities. +Could it be possible that such men deliberately admitted and accepted +the double standard in morals? It seemed fairly incredible, and yet +their lives appeared to proclaim it. + +When the president had finished his apology for those who bow the head +in the house of Rimmon, Tom rose to take his bit of approved paper +around to the cashier's window. The bridge was built, and he meant to +cross it; but he was honest enough, or blunt enough, to give his own +point of view in a crisp sentence or two. + +"I wish I could look at it in some such way as you do, Mr. Henniker, but +I can't," he objected. "To me it is just plain bribery; the corrupting +of officials who have sworn, among other things, to administer their +offices honestly. I'm immoral, or unmoral, enough to yield to the +apparent necessity, but it is quite without prejudice to a firm +conviction that I am no better than the men I am going to purchase." + +Having obtained the sinews of war, he kept the appointment with Norman, +and their joint discussion of the business situation made him too late +for the early dinner at Woodlawn. To complete the delay, the evening +train lost half an hour with a hot box at a point a mile short of +Gordonia. Two things came of these combined time-killings: a man in a +slouched hat and the brown jeans of the mountaineers, who had been +watching the Woodlawn gates since dusk from his hiding-place behind the +field wall across the pike, got up stiffly and went away; and Tom +reached home just in time to intercept Ardea on the steps of the +picturesque veranda. + +"Been visiting the little mother?" he asked, when she paused on the step +above him. + +"Yes--no; I ran over to tell you that we moved Nancy to-day." + +"Oh! Well, that's comfortable. She was willing?" + +"Y-es: almost, at first; and altogether willing when I told her that +I--that she--" There was an embarrassed moment and then the truth came +out. "Perhaps I should have asked you first: but she was quite satisfied +when I told her that she owed her changed condition to the person whose +duty it was to provide for her. You don't mind, do you?" + +The question was almost a beseechment; but Tom was thinking of something +else. + +"No, I don't mind," he said absently, and the under-thought dealt +savagely with Nan--with a woman who, for the sake of the loaves and the +fishes, and the shielding of the real offender, would suffer an innocent +man to go to the social gallows for lack of the word which would have +cleared him. He laughed rather bitterly and added, out of the heart of +the under-thought: "I'm glad I'm not naturally inclined to be +pessimistic." + +"What makes you say that?" + +"Because, after hearing"--he changed his mind suddenly, and transferred +the hard word from Nan to Mr. Vancourt Henniker--"after what I've been +hearing this afternoon I find myself more in the notion of weeping with +the angels than of laughing with the devils." + +"What has happened?" she asked, sympathetically alive to his need in one +breath, and keenly apprehensive for her own peace of mind in the next. + +"An exceedingly small thing, as the world's measurements go. I was in +town, and made a business call on Mr. Henniker. He's a member of your +church, isn't he?" + +"Of St. Michael's in the city," she corrected. "You know I claim +membership here at home in St. John's." + +"Well, it's all the same. He is what you would call a Christian man, I +take it?" + +"Why not?" she demanded. "What has he done to make you doubt it?" + +"Oh, nothing worth mentioning, perhaps. I needed some money to bribe a +lot of political grafters in a Pennsylvania city where I'm trying to +sell a bill of water-pipe. I went to Mr. Henniker to borrow it." + +"And, of course, he wouldn't let you have it for any such wretched +purpose!" she flamed out. + +"No, you are mistaken; it's just the other way around. I told him what +it was for, hoping rather vaguely, I think, that he'd sit on me and make +the crime impossible. But he didn't." + +"You don't mean that he lent you the money after you had told him what +you purposed doing with it?" It was too dark for him to see her face, +but there was something like a breath-catching of horror in her voice. + +"I'm sorry it shocks you, but he did. More than that, he took the +trouble to try to explain away my scruples; made it seem quite a +virtuous thing before he got through. You wouldn't believe it now, would +you?" + +"But, Tom! you didn't take the money?" + +"How could I refuse so good a man? Norman is on his way to Pennsylvania +at this present moment, with a letter of credit in his pocket big enough +to make the mouth of even a professional grafter water. At least, I hope +it is big enough." + +She was hurt, shocked, horrified, and he knew it and found pleasure of a +certain sort in the knowledge. When a man has done violence to his own +best impulses, the thing that comes nearest to the holy joy of penitence +is the unholy joy of making somebody else sorry for him. There were +unmistakable tears in her voice when she said: + +"Tom, why have you told me this--this unspeakable thing?" + +"Why--I guess it was because I wanted to ask you how you supposed the +Mr. Henniker kind of men square such things with their conscience; or +don't they have any conscience?" + +"That is _not_ the reason," she faltered. + +"You are right," he rejoined quickly. "It was diabolism pure and +unstrained. I had hurt myself, and I wanted to pass it along--to hurt +some one else. But it is too cold to keep you standing here. Won't you +come in again?" + +"No; I must go home." And she went down the broad steps. + +He drew her arm through his and walked with her, down one grassy slope +and up the other. At the manor-house steps he found at last sufficient +grace to say: "It was a currish thing to do; will you forgive me, +Ardea?" + +"I don't know," she said, in a tone that thrilled him curiously. "Such +things are hard to forgive. I don't mean your slapping me in the face +with it, that is nothing. But to know that you have gone so far aside +... that you have sunk your manhood and all the promise of it...." + +He nodded perfect intelligence. "I know; it's hell, Ardea. I've been +frizzling in it for the past six months, more or less; ever since I came +home with the one sole, single determination to climb out of the panic +ditch if I had to make steps of dead bodies or lost souls. I'm doing it, +and I'm paying the price. Sometimes I can find it in my heart to curse +the mistaken mother-love that gave me to eat of the fruit of the tree of +the knowledge of good and evil. I'm pagan in all else, but I can't sin +like a pagan. Why is it? Why can't I be a smug, peaceful, sound-sleeping +scoundrel like other men?" + +She was standing on the step above him, as she had stood on the other +side of the two dew-wet lawns. + +"I have a theory," she rejoined, "but you wouldn't accept it. You'll +never be able to do wrong without paying for it. Is it worth while to +try?" + +"Nothing is worth while--nothing at all. I don't mean that I'm going to +quit; I shall doubtless go on trampling and grinding the face of the +poor, and the rich, if they come in my way. But at the end of the ends I +shall curse God and die, as Job's wife wanted him to." + +She put her hands on his shoulders impulsively, and again the tears were +in her voice. + +"What can I say to help you, Tom? God knows I would do anything that a +true friend may do!" + +He freed himself of the touch of her hands, but very gently. + +"There might have been a thing; but you have made it impossible. No, +don't freeze me again--it's the last time. If I could have won your love +... but what is the use of trying to put it in words; you know--you have +always known. And now it is too late." + +For a single instant Vincent Farley's chance of marrying the Deer Trace +coal lands trembled in the balance. Ardea forgot him, forgot Nan, +thought of nothing but the passionate yearning that was drawing her like +gripping hands toward the man who had bared his inmost heart to her. +Again she leaned on him with a touch so light that he scarcely felt it, +and her lips brushed his forehead. + +"It is not too late for you to be a man, noble, upright, honorable. Let +the world find that for which it is looking, my friend--my brother: the +strong man armed who can stand where others faint and fall. Oh, I wish I +knew how to say the word that would make you the man you were meant to +be!" + +When it was said, she was gone and the sound of the closing door was in +his ears when he turned and went slowly down the driveway and out on the +white pike, lying like a snowy ribbon under the December stars. On the +highway he hung undecided for a moment; but an hour later, William +Layne, driving homeward from South Tredegar, overtook him plodding +slowly southward far beyond the head of Paradise; and it was nearing +midnight when he won back, pacing steadily past the Deer Trace and +Woodlawn gates and holding his way down the pike to Gordonia. + +The railway station was his goal; and when he had aroused the sleepy +night operator and gained admittance, he sat at the telegraph table to +write a message. It was to Norman, addressed to intercept the salesman +at the breakfast stop. + +"Cancel Pennsylvania date and come in at once to take managership of +plant," was the wording of it; and at the breakfast-table the following +morning Tom announced his intention of leaving the industrial plow in +the furrow while he should go to Boston to complete his course in the +technical school. + + + + +XXVI + +AS WITH A MANTLE + + +The month of March in the great, southward-reaching bight of the +Tennessee River is the pattern and form of fickleness climatic. Normally +it is the time of starting sap and swelling buds and steaming leaf beds +odorous of spring; the month when the migratory crows wing their flight +northward, and Nature, lightest of winter sleepers in the azurine +latitudes, stirs to her vernal awakening. None the less, in the +Tennessee March the orchardist, watching the high-blown clouds in skies +of the softest blue, is glad if the peach buds are slow in responding to +the touch of the wooing airs, or, chewing a black birch twig as he makes +the leisurely round of his line fence, warns his gardening neighbor that +it is too early to plant beans. True, the poplars may be showing a tinge +of green, and the buds of the hickory may have lighted their tiny candle +flames on the winter-bared boughs; but the "blackberry winter" is yet to +come, and there are rigorous possibilities still lingering in the +high-flying clouds and the sudden-shifting winds. + +It was on the fourth Sunday in the month that Ardea rose early and went +fasting to the communion service at St. John's-in-Paradise. Primarily, +St. John's was merely the religious factor in Mr. Duxbury Farley's +scheme of country-colony promotion, and for the greater part of the year +its silver-toned bell was silent and its appeal was mainly to the +artistic eye. But latterly St. Michael's, the mother church in South +Tredegar, had attained a new assistant rector whose zeal was not yet +dulled by apathetic unresponsiveness on the part of the to-be-helped. +Hence St. Michael's various missions flourished for the time, and once a +month, if not oftener, the bell of St. John's sent its note abroad on +the still morning air of Paradise. + +On this particular Sunday morning Ardea was early at the church, and she +was glad she had decided to wear her cloth gown. It had turned cooler in +the night and the azure March sky was hidden behind a gray cloud mass +which hung low on the slopes of the mountain. There was no fire in the +church heater; and the few worshipers--the Vancourt Henniker girls, the +two Misses Harrison, John Young-Dickson, of The Dell, dragged out at the +chilly hour by his new wife, and Mrs. Schuyler Farnsworth and her +daughter, all of the country-house colony beyond the creek--sat or +knelt, and shivered through the service in decorous discomfort. + +Miss Dabney was not looking quite as well as usual, as Miss Betsy +Harrison remarked to her sister, Miss Willie, in a church whisper. She +had grown thinner during the winter, and though the slate-blue eyes were +as clear and steadfast as before, there was a strained look in them like +that in the eyes of the spent runner. Mountain View Avenue, rurally +alert for something to talk about, decided it was trouble rather than +ill health. Miss Eva Farley corresponded with Jessica Farnsworth, and +there had been European hints of an understanding between Vincent and +Ardea. Coupling this with young Gordon's ostentatious devotion, Nan's +appearance, and Tom's sudden determination to go back to college, there +was the groundwork for a very pretty story which sufficiently accounted +for Miss Dabney's changed looks and for her growing reluctance to be +included in the country colony's social divagations. She was engaged to +one man and in love with another, who was clearly ineligible--this was +the Mountain View Avenue summing-up of the matter; and some condemned +and some pitied, and all were careful not to step within the barrier of +aloofness with which Miss Dabney had of late surrounded herself. + +On this Sunday morning of weather portents it chanced to be Ardea's turn +to entertain the young minister, or rather to give him his breakfast +after the service; and she waited for him in the vestibule after the +others had gone. The outer doors were open, and she could see the gray +cloud mass feathering on its under side and creeping lower on the slopes +of Lebanon in every stormy gust of the chill wind. + +"It was prudent to bring your overcoat this morning, Mr. Morelock," she +said, when her guest emerged from the vesting-room with his cassock in a +neat bundle under his arm. "If I'd had any idea it would turn cold so +fast, I should have had the carriage come for us." + +"Indeed, my dear Miss Dabney, if you could walk to church, I'm sure I +can walk home with you," was the ready response; nevertheless, the +rather fragile-looking young man shuddered a little in sympathy with the +rawness of the wind. He was from well-sheltered New England, and he had +not yet acquired the native Southron's indifference to weather +discomforts; would never acquire them this side of a consumptive's +grave, it was to be feared. + +"The attendance was pretty good for such a disagreeable morning, don't +you think?" Ardea ventured, trying to make talk as they breasted the +gusts together on the Deer Trace side of the pike. + +The young missioner shook his head rather despondently. "There are +English churchmen among the English and Welsh miners at Gordonia,--quite +a number of them," he rejoined. "Not one of them was present." + +It was the clear-sighted inner Ardea that smiled. There was little in +the stately service and luxurious appointments of the country colony's +church to attract the working-men, and much to repel them. She wondered +that Mr. Morelock, young as he was, did not understand this. + +"The mission of St. John's is hardly to the working people of Gordonia, +is it?" she said, more in exculpation than in criticism. + +"Oh, my dear young lady! the church knows no class distinctions!" +protested the zealous one warmly. "Her call is to rich and poor, gentle +and simple, young and old alike; and it is imperative. I must make a +round of visitation among these miners at the very first opportunity." + +Ardea bent low to the buffet of a stronger blast and fought for a moment +with her clinging skirts. When she had breath to say it, she said: "Will +you really do that? Then let me tell you how. Come out here some +week-day in your roughest clothes, and make your round among the men +while they are at work in the mine. They will listen to you then." + +"Bless me! what an idea!" he gasped. + +"It is not original with me," was the gentle reply. "You will remember +that the example was set a good many hundred years ago among the +fishermen of Galilee. And, after all, Mr. Morelock, it is the only way. +You can not reach down to a living soul on this earth--that is worth +saving." + +It had begun to rain in spiteful little dashes and squalls, and the +clergyman was turning up the collar of his overcoat and buttoning it +about his throat. Moreover, the wind had risen to half a gale, and +talking was difficult when it was not wholly impossible. But when they +reached the Deer Trace gates and the shelter of the driveway evergreens, +he had a defensive word ready. + +"I can't fully agree with you, you know, Miss Ardea," he said. "Of +course, we must not reach down in the Pharisaical sense. But neither +must we lower the dignity of the sacred calling." + +Her smile was neither disloyal nor cynical; it was merely pitying. She +was thinking in her heart of hearts how much this zealous young apostle +had yet to learn. + +"Do you call it undignified to be a man among men?" she asked; adding +quickly: "But I know you don't. And what other way is open to the true +brother-helper?" + +"There is the church and its ministrations," he began, but she broke in. + +"To get the drowning man ashore you have first to go down into the water +and lay hold of him, Mr. Morelock. That means personal contact, personal +association." + +The young man was clearly bewildered. His experience thus far had not +been enriched by many intimacies with clear-eyed young women who calmly +defined the larger humanities for him. + +"I'm afraid I don't quite understand your point of view," he demurred. + +"Don't you? I'm not sure that I can explain just what I mean. But it +seems to me that really to help any one, you must know that one; not +superficially, as people meet in ordinary ways, but intimately. And you +can't hope to do that if you hold aloof; if you--if you--pose as a +minister all the time." The word was not flattering, but she could lay +hold of no other. + +"Oh, I hope I don't do that!" he laughed. "But to creep around +underground in a sooty coal-mine, a laughing-stock to those who know how +to do it--er--professionally--" + +"The men have to do it as breadwinners, Mr. Morelock, and the most +ribald one of them wouldn't laugh at you. I wouldn't be afraid to +promise that you could fill St. John's, forbidding as its atmosphere is +to the average working-man, the very next Sunday after such a +visitation." + +Now this young zealot was a man of imagination, hidebound only in his +traditions. Also, he was not above taking ideas where he found them. + +"Really, Miss Dabney, I'm not sure but you have hold of the matter at +the practical end," he conceded. "I--I'd like to talk with you further +about it, when we have time. Do you suppose I could get permission to go +into the mines during working-hours?" + +"Certainly you could--for the mere asking. We can speak to Mr. Caleb +Gordon about it after breakfast, if you wish. My! doesn't that rain +sting! I'm glad we are at home." + +"Yes; and it is freezing as it falls. At home in New England we should +say it was too cold to rain." + +"It is never too cold or too anything to rain here," she said; and she +let him take her arm to help her up the slippery stone steps to the +stately portico. + +A moment later the hospitable door of the manor house yawned for them, +and the warmth of the Major's welcome, the light and glow of the +crackling wood fires, and the solid comfort of surrounding stone walls +soon banished the memory of the small struggle with the elements. + +"Oh, my deah suh! you are not going back to town this mo'ning!" +protested the warm-hearted Major Caspar, as the quartet was rising from +the breakfast-table an hour later. "Why, bless youh soul! I wouldn't +think of letting you go from undeh my roof in such weatheh as this! Tell +him it's his duty to stay, Ardea, my deah; persuade him that he'll neveh +have a betteh oppo'tunity to wrestle with the wickedest old sinner in +Paradise Valley." + +Young Mr. Morelock objected, zealously at first, but less strenuously +when Ardea drew the sash curtain and showed him the ice crust already an +inch thick, coating tree trunk and twig, grass blade and graveled +driveway. + +"I doubt very much if the horses could keep their footing; and it is +quite out of the question for you to walk to Gordonia," she decided. "We +have the long-distance, and you can explain matters to Doctor Channing." + +The young man called up St. Michael's rectory and explained first, and +smoked companionably with the Major in the library afterward. Further +along, there was a one-sided discussion polemical, it being meat and +drink to Major Caspar to ensnare a young theologian to his discomfiture +in the unaxiomatic field of religion. Ardea was in and out of the +library frequently while the discussion was in progress, but she had +little to say; indeed, there was scant room for a third when the Major +was once well warmed to his favorite relaxation. But Morelock remarked +as he might, in the few breathing-spaces allowed him by his host, that +Miss Dabney seemed restless and anxious about something, and that she +spent much of the time at the windows watching the steady growth of the +ice sheet. + +After luncheon they all gathered in the deep-recessed window of the +music-room which commanded a view of the groved pasture with its +background of mountain slope and precipice. The rain was still falling, +and the temperature remained at the freezing-point, but the wind had +gone down and the slow, measured swaying of the trees under the weight +of the thickening armor of ice was portentous of disaster, if the +weather conditions should continue unchanged. + +But as yet the storm was only in the magnificent stage. Far and near, +the outdoor world was a world of cold, white crystal, gleaming pure and +unsullied under the gray skies. Even the blackened tree trunks had their +shining panoply of silver; and from the eaves of the projecting window a +fringe of huge icicles was lengthening drop by drop. + +Miss Euphrasia thought of her roses, already in leaf, and refused to be +enthusiastic over the supernal beauty of the crystalline stage settings. +Major Caspar was anxious about the pasturing stock, and was relieved +when Japheth Pettigrass came in sight, leading a slipping, sliding +cavalcade of terrified horses to shelter in the great stables. The young +clergyman's thoughts were with the ill-housed poor of the South Tredegar +parish; and Ardea's--? + +Young Mr. Morelock put his private anxieties aside in deference to the +growing terror in the eyes of his young hostess. He had known her but a +short time, meeting her only as his St. John's-in-Paradise duties gave +him opportunity; but from the first she had stood to him as a type of +womanly serenity and fortitude. Yet now she was visibly terrified and +distressed, and the clergyman wondered. She had never before given him +the impression that she belonged to the storm-fearing group of women. + +"Can't we have a little music, Miss Ardea?" he asked, after a while, +hoping to suggest a comforting diversion. + +"You will have to excuse me," she said, in a low voice. "I--I think I am +not quite well." + +Cousin Euphrasia overheard the admission and recommended the quiet of up +stairs, drawn curtains and possets. But Ardea let the suggestion fall to +the ground, and a little while afterward Morelock surprised her at her +forenoon occupation of going from window to window, with the look of +distress rising to sharp agony when the overladen trees began to groan +and crack under the crushing ice burden. + +"What is it, Miss Dabney?" he said, out of the heart of sympathy, when +he came on her alone in the library. "Is there anything I can do?" + +"Yes," she rejoined quickly. "The moment the storm subsides even a +little, I must go out. My excuse will be a desire to see, a thirst for +fresh air--anything; and you must abet me if there is any opposition." + +"But I thought you were afraid of the storm," he interposed. + +"I? I should be out in it this minute if I thought grandfather wouldn't +be tempted to lock me in my room for proposing such a thing. And I +_must_ go before dark, whatever happens." + +The young man from New England was a gentleman born. He neither asked +questions nor raised objections. + +"Of course, you may command me utterly," he said warmly. "I'll help; and +I'll go with you, if you will let me." + +"That is what I want," she said frankly. "Will you propose it? I--I +can't explain, even to my cousin." + +"Certainly," he agreed; and a little later, when the temperature dropped +the necessary three degrees and the rain stopped, he calmly announced +his intention of taking Miss Ardea out to see the devastation which, by +this time, was beginning to be apparent on all sides. + +There was a protest, as a matter of course, quite shrill on the part of +Miss Euphrasia, but not absolutely prohibitory on the Major's. Morelock +saw to it that his charge was well wrapped; in her haste and agitation +Ardea would have overlooked the common precautions. They used the side +door for a sally-port, and were soon slipping and sliding almost +helplessly across the lawn. Walking was next to impossible, and the +crashes of falling branches and trees came like the detonations of +quick-firing guns. The minister locked arms with the determined young +woman at his side and picked the way for her as he could. + +"This is something awful for you," he said, when they had covered half +the distance to the nearest pasture wall. "Does the necessity warrant +it?" + +"It does," she rejoined; and they pressed on in awe-inspired silence to +the gate which opened on the pasture grove. + +The quarter of a mile intervening between the gate and that side of the +inclosure bounded by the lower slope of the mountain was truly a passage +perilous. A dozen times in the crossing Ardea fell, and so far from +being able to save her, Morelock could do no more than fall with her. +Once a great limb of a spreading oak split off with a clashing of ice +and came sweeping down to give them the narrowest of escapes; and after +that they kept the open where they might. + +At a rude rock stile over the limestone boundary wall at the mountain's +foot they paused to take breath. + +"Is there much more of it?" asked the escort, regretting for the first +time in his life, perhaps, that he had so studiously ignored the +athletic side of his seminary training. + +"The distance is nothing," she panted. "But we must take the path for a +little way up the mountain. No, don't tell me it can't be done; it +_must_ be done,"--this in answer to his dubious scanning of the glassy +ascent. + +Again his good breeding asserted itself. + +"Certainly it can be done, if you so desire." And he picked up a stone +and patiently hammered the ice from the steps of the stile so she could +cross in safety. + +It was no more than a three-hundred-yard dash up the slope to the +dog-keeper's cabin in the little glen, but it was a fight for inches. +Every stone, every hand-hold of bush or shrub or tuft of dried grass was +an icy treachery. Ardea knew the mountain and the path, and was less +helpless than she would otherwise have been; yet she was willing to +confess that she could never have done it alone. With all their care and +caution they were exhausted and breathless when they topped the +acclivity and Morelock saw the cabin in the pocket cove, with the great +tulip-tree in the dooryard bending and distorted and groaning like a +living thing in agony. + +"Isn't it terrible!" he said; but Ardea's glance had gone beyond the +tortured tree to the shuttered windows and smokeless chimney of the +cabin. + +"Oh, let us hurry!" she gasped; but at the gate of the tiny dooryard she +stopped in sudden embarrassment. "I can't take you into the house, Mr. +Morelock. Will you wait for me here--just a moment?" + +He said "Certainly," as he had been saying it from the first. But it was +quite without prejudice to a healthy and growing curiosity. The small +adventure was taking on an air of mystery which thickened momently, +demanding insistently a complete rearrangement of his preconceived +notions of Miss Ardea Dabney. + +She left him at once and made her way cautiously to the ice-encrusted +door-stone. What she saw, when she lifted the wooden latch and entered, +was what she had been praying she might not see. + +On the small hearth was a heap of white ashes, dead and cold, and the +tomb-like chill of the tightly-closed room was benumbing. Asleep in the +fireplace corner, his little knees drawn up to his chin and his face +streaked with the dried tears, was the three-year-old baby who bore Tom +Gordon's name. And on the bed in the recess at the back of the room, her +hands clenched and her passionate face a mask of long-continued agony, +lay the mother. + +Ardea was white to the lips and trembling when she retreated to the +door-stone and beckoned to her companion. + +"Can you find the way back to Deer Trace alone?" she faltered. "There is +trouble here, as I feared there might be--terrible trouble and +suffering. Say to my cousin that I must have Aunt Eliza, if she has to +crawl here on her hands and knees. Then telephone for Doctor Williams, +at Gordonia. He'll come if you tell him the message is from me. Oh, +please go, quickly!" + +[Illustration: "Oh, please go quickly!"] + +He was waiting only for her to finish. + +"Is it quite safe for you here?" he asked. + +"Quite; but I shall die of impatience if you don't hurry!" Then her good +blood made its protest heard. "Oh, please forgive me! I don't forget +that you are my guest, but--" + +"Not a word, Miss Dabney. Shall I come back here with the woman or the +doctor?" + +"No; I'll send for you if--if there is no hope. Otherwise you could do +nothing." + +He lifted his hat and was gone, and she turned and reentered the house +of trouble, bravely facing that which had to be faced. + +An hour later, when Doctor Williams, with Mammy Juliet's Pete chopping +the way for him up the hazardous path, reached the end of his journey of +mercy, there was a bright fire crackling on the hearth, and Miss Dabney +was sitting before it, holding little Tom, who was still sleeping. Aunt +Eliza, a deft middle-aged negress who had succeeded Mammy Juliet as +housekeeper at Deer Trace, was bending over the bed, and the physician +went quickly to stand beside her, shaking his head dubiously. A moment +afterward he turned short on Ardea. + +"You must go home, my dear--at once--and take the child with you. Pete +is outside to help you, and my buggy is just at the foot of the path. I +can't have you here." + +"Can't I be of some use if I stay?" she pleaded. + +"No; you'd only hinder. You are much too sympathetic. Don't delay; the +minutes may count for lives," and the physician began to unbuckle the +straps of the canvas-covered case he had brought with him. + +Ardea wrapped the child hastily and gave him to Pete to carry, following +as quickly as she could down the path made possible by the coachman's +choppings. Happily, the doctor's horse was freshly shod, and the +quarter-mile to the manor-house was measured in safety. Ardea left +little Tom with Mammy Juliet at her cabin in the old quarters, and went +up to the great house to wait anxiously for news. It was drawing on to +the early dusk of the cloudy evening when she saw from the window of the +music-room the muffled figure of Pete opening the pasture gate for the +doctor to drive through. Instantly she flew to the door and out on the +steps. + +"Go in, child; go in," was the fatherly command. "I've got to stop to +take Morelock in. I promised to carry him to the station." + +"But Nancy?" she questioned anxiously. + +"She will live," said the doctor briefly. And then he added with a +frown: "But the child may not--which would doubtless be the best thing +possible for all concerned. I'm afraid the woman is incorrigible." Then +the professional part of him came to its own again: "You'll have to send +somebody up there to relieve Eliza. Care is all that is needed now, but +it mustn't be stinted." + +There were tears standing in the slate-blue eyes of the listener, but +Doctor Williams did not see them. If he had, he would not have +understood; neither would he have plumbed the depths of misery in that +whispered saying of Ardea's as she turned and fled to her room: "O Tom! +how could you! how could you!" + + + + +XXVII + +SWEPT AND GARNISHED + + +Thomas Jefferson Gordon, Bachelor of Science, and one of the six +prize-men in his class, was expected home on the first day of July; and +it was remarked as a coincidence by the curious that Deer Trace +manor-house was closed for the summer no more than a week before the +return of the Gordon black sheep. + +That Tom was a black sheep, a hopeless and incorrigible social +iconoclast, was no longer a matter of doubt in the minds of any. +Something may be forgiven a promising young man who has been unhappy +enough, or imprudent enough, to begin to make history for himself in the +irresponsible 'teens; but also the act of oblivion may be repealed. When +it became noised about that there were two children instead of one in +the old dog-keeper's cabin in the glen, Mountain View Avenue was justly +indignant, and even the lenient Gordonians scowled and shook their heads +at the mention of the young boss's name. All the world loves a lover, as +in just measure it despises a libertine; and there were fathers of +daughters among the miner and foundry folk of the town. + +On the lips of the transplanted urbanites of the hill houses comment was +less elemental, but no less condemnatory. It was no wonder the Dabneys +had closed their house and had gone to Crestcliffe Inn to save Ardea the +humiliation of having to meet Tom before she was safely married to +Vincent Farley. It was what any self-respecting young woman would wish +under like trying conditions. The country colony approved; likewise, it +commended Miss Dabney's foresight and prudence in causing the Bryerson +woman and her two children to disappear from the cabin in the glen; +though Mrs. Vancourt Henniker, in secret session over the tea-cups with +the elder Miss Harrison, voiced her surprise that Ardea could continue +to be charitable in that quarter. + +"It is quite beyond me," was the matron's thin-lipped phrasing of it. +"When one remembers that this wretched mountain girl has been Ardea's +understudy from the very beginning--faugh! it is simply disgusting! I +should think Ardea would never want to see or hear of her again." + +To such an atmosphere of potential social ostracism Tom returned after +the final scholastic triumph in Boston; and for the first few days he +escaped asphyxiation chiefly because the affairs of Gordon and Gordon +and the Chiawassee Consolidated gave him no time to test its quality. + +But after the first week he began to breathe it unmistakably. One +evening he called on the Farnsworths; the ladies were not at home to +him. The next night he saddled Saladin and rode over to Fairmont; the +Misses Harrison were also unable to see him, and the butler conveyed a +deftly-worded intimation pointing to future invisibilities on the part +of his mistresses. The evening being still young, Tom tried Rockwood +and the Dell, suspicion settling into conviction when the trim +maidservant at the Stanley villa went near to shutting the door in his +face. At the Dell he fared a little better. The Young-Dicksons were +going out for an after-dinner call on one of the neighbors, and Tom met +them at the gate as he was dismounting. There were regrets apparently +hearty; but in recasting the incident later, Tom remembered that it was +the husband who did the talking, and that Mrs. Young-Dickson stood in +the shadow of the gate tree, frigidly silent and with her face averted. + +"Once more, old boy, and then we'll quit," he said to Saladin at the +remounting, and the final rein-drawing was at the stone-pillared gates +of Rook Hill. Again the ladies were not at home, but Mr. Vancourt +Henniker came out and smoked a cigar with his customer on the piazza. +The talk was pointedly of business, and the banker was urbanely +gracious--and mildly inquisitive. Would there be a consolidation of the +allied iron industries of Gordonia when the Farleys should return? Mr. +Henniker thought it would be undeniably profitable to all concerned, and +offered his services as financiering promoter and intermediary. Would +Mr. Gordon come and talk it over with him--at the bank? + +Tom found his father smoking a bedtime pipe on the picturesque veranda +at Woodlawn when he reached home. Whistling for William Henry Harrison +to come and take his horse, he drew up one of the porch chairs and +filled and lighted his own pipe. For a time there was such silence as +stands for communion between men of one blood, and it was the father who +first broke it. + +"Been out callin', son?" he asked, marking the Tuxedo and the white +expanse of shirt front. + +"No, I reckon not," was the reply, punctuated by a short laugh. "The +Avenue seems to be depopulated." + +"So? I hadn't heard of anybody goin' away," said Caleb the literal. + +"Nor I," said Tom curtly; and the conversation paused until the +iron-master had deliberately refilled and lighted his corn-cob. + +"It's a-plenty onprofitable, Buddy, don't you reckon?" he ventured, +referring to the social diversion. + +There was a picric quality in Tom's tone when he replied: "The calling +act?--I have certainly found it so to-night." Then, more humanely: "But +as a means of relaxation it beats sitting here in the dark and stewing +over to-morrow's furnace run--which is what you've been doing." + +Caleb chuckled. "That's one time you missed the whole side o' the barn, +Buddy. I was settin' here wonderin' if a man ever did get over bein' +surprised at the way his children turn out." + +"Meaning me?" said Tom, knocking the ash from his pipe and feeling in +his pockets for a cigar. + +"Yes, meanin' you, son. You've somehow got away from me again in these +last six months 'r so." + +"I'm older, pappy; and I hope I'm bigger and broader. I was a good bit +of a kid a year ago; tough in some spots and fearfully and wonderfully +raw in others. Do you recollect how I climbed up on the fence the first +dash out of the box and read off the law to you about religion and such +things?" + +"I reckon so," said the iron-master. "And that's one o' the things--I +ain't heard you cuss out the hypocrites once since you got back. Have +you gone back on the Dutchman and his argyment?" + +"Bauer, you mean?--no; only on the nullifying part of it. Bauer's +no-religion doctrine is a doctrine of denial, and it's pure theory. What +we have to deal with in this world is the practical human fact, and a +good half of that is tangled up with some sort of religious belief or +sentiment. At least, that's the way I'm finding it." + +"It's the way it _is_," said Caleb sententiously. And after a pause: "I +allow it helps some, too; greases the wheels some if it don't do +anything more." + +"It does much more," was the quick reply. "When you find it in a woman +like Ardea Dabney, it raises her to the seventh power angelic. It is +only when you find it, or some ghastly imitation of it, in such people +as the Farleys...." He changed the subject abruptly. "You said the +Dabneys had gone up on the mountain for the summer, didn't you?" + +"Yes. I believe they're allowin' to come back in August, in time for the +weddin'." + +The younger man's wince was purely involuntary. He had been trying +latterly to train up to the degree of mental fitness which would enable +him to think calmly of Ardea as another man's wife. The effort commended +itself as a part of the new broadening process, but it was not entirely +successful. + +"You wrote me the Farleys would be back this month, didn't you?" he +asked. + +"The fifteenth," said Caleb; smoking reflectively through another long +pause before he added. "And then come the business fireworks. Have you +made up your mind what-all you're goin' to do, Buddy?" + +"Oh, yes," said Tom, as if this were merely a matter in passing. "We'll +consolidate the two plants and the coal-mine, if it's agreeable all +around." + +The iron-master took a fresh hitch in his chair. Truly, this was a +retransformed Tom; a creature totally and radically different from the +college junior who had sweltered through the industrial battle of the +previous summer, breathing out curses and threatenings. + +"Was you allowin' to let Colonel Duxbury climb into all three o' the +saddles?" he inquired, keeping his emotions out of his voice as he +could. + +"That will be for you and Major Dabney to decide," was the even-toned +response. "I would suggest a three-cornered alliance: a third to you, +another to Farley, and the remaining third to the Major. The pipe +foundry can't run without the furnace and, under present conditions, the +furnace is pretty largely dependent on the pipe foundry for its market; +and neither could run without the Major's coal." + +"Yes, that scheme might carry far enough to hit three of us. But +whereabouts do you figure out the fourth third for yourself, son?" + +"Oh, I'm not in it; or I'm not going to be after the Farleys come back. +I made up my mind to that six months ago," said Tom coolly. + +"Great Peter!" ejaculated Caleb, stirred for once out of his +slow-speaking, reticent habit. But he made amends by remaining silent +for five full minutes before he hazarded the query: "Got something else +on the string, Buddy?" + +"Yes, two or three things," was Tom's immediate and frank rejoinder. "I +can have a place as chemist with the steel people at Bethlehem; and Mr. +Clarkson is anxious to have me to go to the New Arizona iron country for +him." + +It was the brightest of midsummer nights, and a late moon was swinging +clear of the Lebanon sky-line, but the prospect of close-clipped lawn +and stately trees suddenly went dim before the eyes of the old +ex-artillery-man. + +"You're all I got in this world, son, and I reckon it makes me sort o' +narrow. I know in reason it must seem mighty little and pindlin' down +here to you, after what you've seen out in the big road, and I ain't +goin' to say a word. But if you can sort it round somehow in the mix-up +so I can get a few thousand dollars quittin' money out of it--jest +enough to keep your mammy and me from gettin' hongry what few years +we've got to eat, I'd be mighty proud." + +"Oh," said Tom, still unmoved, as it seemed, "we can do better than +that, if you want to pull out. But I made sure you'd rather stay in and +hold your job. I've a notion you'd find 'retiring' pretty hard work +after so many years spent in the furnace yard." + +"You're right about that, son; I sure would," agreed Caleb. Then he went +back to the main proposition. "What-all makes you restless, Buddy? Is it +because Chiawassee and the pipe-makin' ain't big enough for you?" + +Tom answered promptly and without apparent reserve. + +"The job's big enough, but I don't want to stay here and yoke up with +the Farleys; they'd ruin me in a year." + +"Get the better of you in the business--is that what you're aimin' to +say?" + +"Not exactly. I'm still brash enough to believe I could hold my own on +that score. But--oh, well; you know what we found out last summer about +their business methods. I can do business that way, too; as a matter of +fact, I did do a good bit more of it last year than you knew anything +about. But I'm out of it now, and I mean to stay out." + +A longer interval of silence followed, and at the end of it another +query. + +"Is that all that's the matter, Buddy?" + +"No--it isn't," hesitantly. "I'm seventeen other kinds of a fool, too, +pappy." + +"Reckon ye couldn't make out to onload the whole of it on to a pair o' +right old shoulders, could ye, son Tom?" was the gentle invitation. + +"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. I'm foolish about Ardea; been +that way ever since she used to wear frocks and I used to run barefoot. +I don't believe I could stand it to stay here and be her husband's +business partner." + +Caleb was shrouding himself in tobacco smoke and nodding complete +intelligence. + +"How did you ever come to let her get away from you, son?" he asked. + +"That's a large question--too big for me to answer, I'm afraid. I always +knew we were meant for each other, and I guess I took too much for +granted. Then Vint Farley came along, and I helped his case by pitching +into him every time she gave me a chance. Naturally, she leaned the +other way; and the European business settled it." + +Caleb drew a long breath. "Reckon it's everlastin'ly too late now, do +ye, Tom?" + +The young man's smile was wintry. + +"You said the wedding-day was set, didn't you?" + +"Why, yes; _toe_ be sure. Leastwise, your mammy talked like it was. But, +lawzee, son! the Gordon stock don't lie down in the harness. Ardee +thinks a heap o' you, and if you could jest've made out to keep from +gettin' so everlastin'ly tangled with that gal o' Tike--" he stopped +abruptly, but not quite soon enough, and the word was as the flick of a +whip on a wound already made raw by the abrasion of the closed doors. + +"So that miserable story has got around to you at last, has it?" said +Tom, in fine scorn. "I did hope they'd spare you and mother." + +"She's spared yet, so far as I know," said the father, with a backward +nod to indicate the antecedent of the pronoun. Following which, he said +what lay uppermost in his mind. "I been allowin' maybe you'd come back +this time with your head sot on lettin' that gal alone, son." + +Thomas Jefferson was on his feet and a hot anger wave was sweeping him +back over the years to other times when things used to turn red under +the rage blast. But he got some sort of grip on himself before the words +came. + +"You've believed all you've heard, have you?--condemned me before I +could say a word in my own defense? That's what they've all done." + +"I don't say that, son." Then, with a note of fatherly yearning in his +voice: "I'm waitin' to hear that word right now, Buddy--or as much of it +as ye can say honestly." + +"You'll never hear it from me--never in this world or another. Now tell +me who told you!" + +"Why, it's in mighty near ever'body's mouth, son!" said Caleb, in mild +surprise. "You certain'y didn't take any pains to cover it up." + +"Didn't take any pains? Why, in the name of God, should I?" Tom burst +out. After which he tramped heavily to the farther end of the veranda, +refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked furiously for a time, glooming +over at the darkened windows of Deer Trace and letting bitter anger and +disappointment work their will on him. And when he finally turned and +tramped back it was only to say an abrupt "Good night," and to pass into +the house and up to his room. + +He thought he was alone in the moon-lighted dusk of the upper chamber +when he closed the door and began to pace a rageful sentry-beat back and +forth between the windows. But all unknown to him one of the three fell +sisters, she of the implacable front and deep-set, burning eyes, had +entered with him to pace evenly as he paced, and to lay a maddening +finger on his soul. + +Without vowing a vow and confirming it with an oath, he had partly +turned a new life-leaf on the night of heavenly comfort when Ardea had +sent him forth to tramp the pike with her kiss of sisterly love still +caressing him. Beyond the needs of the moment, the recall of Norman and +the determination to turn his back on the world struggle for the time +being, he had not gone in that first fervor of the uplifting impulse. +But later on there had been other steps: a growing hunger for success +with self-respect kept whole; a dulling of the sharp edge of his hatred +for the Farleys; a meliorating of his fierce contempt for all the +hypocrites, conscious and subconscious. + +With the changing point of view had come a corresponding change in the +life. The men of his class had marked it, and there were helping hands +held out, as there always are when one struggles toward the forward +margin of any Slough of Despond. He had even gone to church at long +intervals, having there the good hap to fall under the influence of a +man whose faults were neither of ignorance nor of insincerity. + +In these surface-scratchings of the heart soil there had sprung up a +mixed growth in which the tares of self-righteousness began presently to +overtop the good grain of humility. One must not be too exacting. If the +world were not all good, neither was it all bad; at all events, it was +the part of wisdom to make the magnanimous best of it, and to be +thankful that the day-star of reason had at last arisen for one's self. +At the close of his college course he would go home prepared to deal +firmly but justly with the Farleys, prepared to show Ardea and the small +world of Paradise a pattern of business rectitude, of filial devotion, +of upright, honorable manhood. As Ardea had said, the example was +needed; it should be forthcoming. And perhaps, in the dim and distant +future, Ardea herself would look back to the night when her word and her +kiss had fashioned a man after her own heart, and be--not sorry (true +love was still stronger than prideful Phariseeism here), but a little +regretful, it might be, that her love could not have gone where it was +sent. + +And now.... With Alecto's maddening finger pressed on the soul-hurt, no +man is responsible. After the furious storm of upbubbling curses had +spent itself there was a little calm, not of surcease but of vacuity, +since even the cursing vocabulary has its limitations. Then a grouping +of words long forgotten arrayed itself before him, like the handwriting +on the wall of Belshazzer's banqueting hall. + +_When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry +places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return +into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it +empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself +seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and +dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first._ + +He put his hands before his face to shut out the sight of the words. +Farther on, he felt his way across the room to stand at the window where +he could look across to the gray, shadowy bulk of the manor-house, to +the house and to the window of the upper room which was Ardea's. + +"They've got me down," he whispered, as if the words might reach her +ear. "The devils have come back, Ardea, my love; but you can cast them +out again, if you will. Ah, girl, girl! Vincent Farley will never need +you as I need you this night!" + + + + +XXVIII + +THE BURDEN OF HABAKKUK + + +During the first half of the year 1894, with Norman too busy at the pipe +foundry to worry him, and the iron-master president too deeply engrossed +in matters mechanical, Mr. Henry Dyckman, still bookkeeper and cashier +for Chiawassee Consolidated, had fewer nightmares; and by the time he +had been a month in undisputed command at the general office he had +given over searching for a certain packet of papers which had +mysteriously disappeared from a secret compartment in his desk. + +Later, when the time for the return of the younger Gordon drew near, +there was encouraging news from Europe. Dyckman had not failed to keep +the mails warm with reports of the Gordon and Gordon success; with +urgings for the return of the exiled dynasty; and late in May he had +news of the home-coming intention. From that on there were alternating +chills and fever. If Colonel Duxbury should arrive and resume the reins +of management before Tom Gordon should reappear, all might yet be well. +If not,--the alternative impaired the bookkeeper's appetite, and there +were hot nights in June when he slept badly. + +When Tom's advent preceded the earliest date named by Mr. Farley by a +broad fortnight or more, the bookkeeper missed other of his meals, and +one night fear and a sharp premonition of close-pressing disaster laid +cold hands on him; and nine o'clock found him skulking in the great +train shed at the railway station, a ticket to Canada in his pocket, a +goodly sum of the company's money tightly buckled in a safety-belt next +to his skin--all things ready for flight save one, the courage requisite +to the final step-taking. + +The following morning the premonition became a certainty. In the +Gordonia mail there was a note from the younger Gordon, directing him to +come to the office of the pipe foundry, bringing the cash-book and +ledger for a year whose number was written out in letters of fire in the +bookkeeper's brain. He went, again lacking the courage either to refuse +or to disappear, and found Gordon waiting for him. There were no +preliminaries. + +"Good morning, Dyckman," said the tyrant, pushing aside the papers on +his desk. "You have brought the books? Sit down at that table and open +the ledger at the company's expense account for the year. I wish to make +a few comparisons," and he took a thick packet of papers from a +pigeonhole of the small iron safe behind his chair. + +Dyckman was unbuckling the shawl-strap in which he had carried the two +heavy books, but at the significant command he desisted, went swiftly to +the door opening into the stenographer's room, satisfied himself that +there were no listeners, and resumed his chair. + +"You have cut out some of the preface, Mr. Gordon; I'll cut out the +remainder," he said, moistening his dry lips. "You have the true record +of the expense account in that package. I'm down and out; what is it +you want?" + +The inexorable one at the desk did not keep him in suspense. + +"I want a written confession of just what you did, and what you did it +for," was the direct reply. "You'll find Miss Ackerman's type-writer in +the other room; I'll wait while you put it in type." + +The bookkeeper's lips were dryer than before, and his tongue was like a +stick in his mouth when he said: + +"You're not giving me a show, Mr. Gordon; the poor show a common +murderer would have in any court of law. You are asking me to convict +myself." + +Gordon held up the packet of papers. + +"Here is your conviction, Mr. Dyckman--the original leaves taken from +those books when you had them re-bound. I need your statement of the +facts for quite another purpose." + +"And if I refuse to make it? A cornered rat will fight for his life, Mr. +Gordon." + +"If you refuse I shall be reluctantly compelled to hand these papers +over to our attorneys--reluctantly, I say, because you can serve me +better just now out of jail than in it." + +Dyckman made a final attempt to gain fighting space. + +"It's an unfair advantage you're taking; at the worst, I am only an +accessory. My principals will be here in a few days, and--" + +"Precisely," was the cold rejoinder. "It is because your principals are +coming home, and because they are not yet here, that I want your +statement. Oblige me, if you please; my time is limited this morning." + +There was no help for it, or none apparent to the fear-stricken; and +for the twenty succeeding minutes the type-writer clicked monotonously +in the small ante-room. Dyckman could hear his persecutor pacing the +floor of the private office, and once he found himself looking about him +for a weapon. But at the end of the writing interval he was handing the +freshly-typed sheet to a man who was yet alive and unhurt. + +Gordon sat down at his desk to read it, and again the roving eyes of the +bookkeeper swept the interior of the larger room for the means to an +end; sought and found not. + +The eye-search was not fully concluded when Gordon pressed the electric +button which summoned the young man who kept the local books of the +Chiawassee plant across the way. While he waited he saw the conclusion +of the eye-search and smiled rather grimly. + +"You'll not find it, Dyckman," he said, divining the desperate purpose +of the other; adding, as an afterthought: "and if you should, you +wouldn't have the courage to use it. That is the fatal lack in your +makeup. It is what kept you from taking the train last night with the +money belt which you emptied this morning. You'll never make a +successful criminal; it takes a good deal more nerve than it does to be +an honest man." + +The bookkeeper was sliding lower in his chair. + +"I--I believe you are the devil in human shape," he muttered; and then +he made an addendum which was an unconscious slipping of the +under-thought into words: "It's no crime to kill a devil." + +Gordon smiled again. "None in the least,--only you want to make sure +you have a silver bullet in the gun when you try it." + +Hereupon the young man from the office across the pike came in, and +Gordon handed a pen to Dyckman. + +"I want you to witness Mr. Dyckman's signature to this paper, Dillard," +he said, folding the confession so that it could not be read by the +witness; and when the thing was done, the young man appended his +notarial attestation and went back to his duties. + +"Well?" said Dyckman, when they were once more alone together. + +"That's all," said Gordon curtly. "As long as you are discreet, you +needn't lose any sleep over this. If you don't mind hurrying a little, +you can make the ten-forty back to town." + +Dyckman restrapped his books and made a show of hastening. But before he +closed the office door behind him he had seen Gordon place the +type-written sheet, neatly folded, on top of the thick packet, snapping +an elastic band over the whole and returning it to its pigeonhole in the +small safe. + +Later in the day, Tom crossed the pike to the oak-shingled office of the +Chiawassee Consolidated. His father was deep in the new wage scale +submitted by the miners' union, but he sat up and pushed the papers away +when his son entered. + +"Have you seen this morning's _Tribune_?" asked Tom, taking the paper +from his pocket. + +"No; I don't make out to find much time for it before I get home o' +nights," said Caleb. "Anything doin'?" + +"Yes; they are having a hot time in Chicago and Pullman. The strike is +spreading all over the country on sympathy lines." + +"Reckon it'll get down to us in any way?" queried the iron-master. + +"You can't tell. I'd be a little easy with Ludlow and his outfit on that +wage scale, if I were you." + +"I don't like to be scared into doin' a thing." + +"No; but we don't want a row on our hands just now. Farley might make +capital out of it." + +Caleb nodded. Then he said: "Didn't I see Dyckman comin' out of your +shanty 'long about eleven o'clock?" + +"Yes; he came out to do me a little favor, and it went mighty near to +making him sweat blood. Shall you need me any more to-day?" + +"No, I reckon not. Goin' away?" + +"I'm going to town on the five-ten, and I may not be back till late." + +Tom's business in South Tredegar was unimportant. There was a word or +two to be said personally in the ear of Hanchett, the senior member of +the firm of attorneys intrusted with the legal concernments of Gordon +and Gordon, and afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro. But the +real object of the town trip disclosed itself when he took an electric +car for the foot of Lebanon on the line connecting with the inclined +railway running up the mountain to Crestcliffe Inn. He had not seen +Ardea since the midwinter night of soul-awakenings; and Alecto's finger +was still pressing on the wound inflicted by the closed doors of +Mountain View Avenue and his father's misdirected sympathy. + +He found Major Dabney smoking on the hotel veranda, and his welcome was +not scanted here, at least. There was a vacant chair beside the Major's +and the Major's pocket case of long cheroots was instantly forthcoming. +Would not the returned Bachelor of Science sit and smoke and tell an old +man what was going on in the young and lusty world beyond the +mountain-girt horizons? + +Tom did all three. His boyish awe for the old autocrat of Paradise had +mellowed into an affection that was almost filial, and there was plenty +to talk about: the final dash in the technical school; the outlook in +the broader world; the great strike which was filling all mouths; the +business prospects for Chiawassee Consolidated. + +The moment being auspicious, Tom sounded the master of the Deer Trace +coal lands on the reorganization scheme, and found nothing but +complaisance. Whatever rearrangement commended itself to Tom and his +father, and to Colonel Duxbury Farley, would be acceptable to the Major. + +"I reckon I can trust you, Tom, and my ve'y good friend, youh fatheh, to +watch out for Ardea's little fo'tune," was the way he put it. "I haven't +so ve'y much longeh to stay in Paradise," he went on, with a silent +little chuckle for the grim pun, "and what I've got goes to her, as a +matteh of cou'se." Then he added a word that set Tom to thinking hard. +"I had planned to give her a little suhprise on her wedding-day: suppose +you have the lawyehs make out that block of new stock to Mistress +Vincent Farley instead of to me?" + +Tom's hard thinking crystallized into a guarded query. + +"Of course, Major Dabney, if you say so. But wouldn't it be more +prudent to make it over in trust for her and her children before she +becomes Mrs. Farley?" + +The piercing Dabney eyes were on him, and the fierce white mustaches +took the militant angle. + +"Tell me, Tom, have you had _youh_ suspicions in that qua'teh, too? I'm +speaking in confidence to a family friend, suh." + +"It is just as well to be on the safe side," said Tom evasively. There +was enough of the uplift left to make him reluctant to strike his enemy +in the dark. + +"No, suh, that isn't what I mean. You've had youh suspicions aroused. +Tell me, suh, what they are." + +"Suppose you tell me yours, Major," smiled the younger man. + +Major Dabney became reflectively reminiscent. "I don't know, Tom, and +that's the plain fact. Looking back oveh ouh acquaintance, thah's +nothing in that young man for me to put a fingeh on; but, Tom, I tell +you in confidence, suh, I'd give five yeahs of my old life, if the good +Lord has that many mo' in His book for me, if the blood of the Dabneys +didn't have to be--uh--mingled with that of these heah damned Yankees. I +would, for a fact, suh!" + +Tom rose and flung away the stub of his third cheroot. + +"Then you'll let me place your third of the new stock in trust for her +and her children?" he said. "That will be best, on all accounts. By the +way, where shall I find Miss Ardea?" + +"She's about the place, somewhahs," was the reply; and Tom passed on to +the electric-lighted lobby to send his card in search of her. + +Chance saved him the trouble. Some one was playing in the music-room +and he recognized her touch and turned aside to stand under the looped +portieres. She was alone, and again, as many times before, it came on +him with the sense of discovery that she was radiantly beautiful--that +for him she had no peer among women. + +It was the score of a Bach fugue that stood on the music-rack, and she +was oblivious to everything else until her fingers had found and struck +the final chords. Then she looked up and saw him. + +There was no greeting, no welcoming light in the slate-blue eyes; and +she did not seem to see when he came nearer and offered to shake hands. + +"I've been talking to your grandfather for an hour or more," he began, +"and I was just going to send my card after you. Haven't you a word of +welcome for me, Ardea?" + +Her eyes were holding him at arm's length. + +"Do you think you deserve a welcome from any self-respecting woman?" she +asked in low tones. + +His smile became a scowl--the anger scowl of the Gordons. + +"Why shouldn't I?" he demanded. "What have I done to make every woman I +meet look at me as if I were a leper?" + +She rose from the piano-stool and confronted him bravely. It was now or +never, if their future attitude each to the other was to be succinctly +defined. + +"You know very well what you have done," she said evenly. "If you had a +spark of manhood left in you, you would know what a dastardly thing you +are doing now in coming here to see me." + +"Well, I don't," he returned doggedly. "And another thing: I'm not to +be put off with hard words. I ask you again what has happened? Who has +been lying about me this time?" + +Three other guests of the hotel were entering the music-room and the +quarrel had to pause. Ardea had a nerve-shaking conviction that it would +never do to leave it in the air. He must be made to understand, once for +all, that he had sinned beyond forgiveness. She caught up the light wrap +she had been wearing earlier in the evening and turned to one of the +windows opening on the rear veranda. "Come with me," she whispered; and +he followed obediently. + +But there was no privacy to be had out of doors. There was a goodly +scattering of people in the veranda chairs enjoying the perfect night +and the white moonlight. Ardea stopped suddenly. + +"You were intending to walk down to the valley?" she asked. + +He nodded. + +"I will walk with you to the cliff edge." + +It was a short hundred yards, and there were many abroad in the graveled +walks: lovers in pairs, and groups of young people pensive or +chattering. So it was not until they stood on the very battlements of +the western cliff that they were measurably alone. + +"Has no one told you what happened last March--on the day of the ice +storm?" she asked coldly. + +"No." + +"Don't you know it without being told?" + +"Of course, I don't; why should I?" + +His angry impassiveness shook her resolution. It seemed incredible that +the most accomplished dissembler could rise to such supreme heights of +seeming. + +"I used to think I knew you," she said, faltering, "but I don't. Why +don't you despise hypocrisy and double-dealing as you used to?" + +"I do; more heartily than ever." + +"Yet, in spite of that, you have--oh, it is perfectly unspeakable!" + +"I am taking your word for it," he rejoined gloomily. "You are denying +me what the most wretched criminal is taught to believe is his right--to +know what he is accused of." + +"Have you forgotten that night last winter when you--when I saw you at +the gate with Nancy Bryerson?" + +"I'm not likely to forget it." + +She seized her courage and held it fast, putting maidenly shame to the +wall. + +"Tom, it is a terrible thing to say--and your punishment will be +terrible. _But you must marry Nancy!_" + +"And father another man's child?--not much!" he answered brutally. + +"And father your own children--two of them," she said, with bitter +emphasis. + +"Oh, that's it, is it?" he said, with a deeper scowl. "So there are two +of them, are there? That's why no woman in Mr. Farley's country colony +is at home to me any more, I suppose." And then, still more bitterly: +"Of course, you are all sure of this?--Nan has at last confessed that I +am the guilty man?" + +"You know she has not, Tom. Her loyalty is still as strong and true at +it is mistaken. But your duty remains." + +He was standing on the brink of the cliff, looking down on Paradise +Valley, spread like a silver-etched map far below in the moonlight. The +flare and sough of the furnace at the iron-works came and went with +regular intermittency; and just beyond the group of Chiawassee stacks a +tiny orange spot appeared and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp. He +was staring down at the curious spot when he said: + +"If I say that I have no duty toward Nan, you will believe it is a +lie--as you did once before. Have you ever reflected that it is possible +to trample on love until it dies--even such love as I bear you?" + +"It is a shame for you to speak of such things to me, Tom. Consider what +I have endured--what you have made me endure. People said I was standing +by you, condoning a sin that no right-minded young woman should condone. +I bore it because I thought, I believed, you were sorry. And at that +very time you were deceiving me--deceiving every one. You have dragged +me in the very dust of shame!" + +"There is no shame save what we make for ourselves," he retorted. "One +day, according to your creed, we shall stand naked before your God, and +before each other. In that day you will know what you have done to me +to-night. No, don't speak, please; let me finish. The last time we were +together you gave me a strong word, and--and you kissed me. For the sake +of that word and that kiss I went out into the world a different man. +For the little fragment of your love that you gave me then, I have lived +a different man from that day to this. Now you shall see what I shall be +without it." + +Before he had finished she had turned from him gasping, choking, +strangling in the grip of a mighty passion, new-born and yet not new. +With the suddenness of a revealing flash of lightning she understood; +knew that she loved him, that she had been loving him from childhood, +not because, but in spite of everything, as he had once defined love. It +was terrible, heartbreaking, soul-destroying. She called on shame for +help, but shame had fled. She was cold with a horrible fear lest he +should find out and she should be for ever lost in the bottomless pit of +humiliation. + +It was the sight of the little orange-colored spot glowing and growing +beyond the Chiawassee chimneys that saved her. + +"Look!" she cried. "Isn't that a fire down in the valley just across the +pike from the furnace? It _is_ a fire!" + +He made a field-glass of his hands and looked long and steadily. + +"You are quite right," he said coolly. "It's my foundry. Can you get +back to the hotel alone? If you can, I'll take the short cut down +through the woods. Good night, and--good-by." And before she could +reply, he had lowered himself over the cliff's edge and was crashing +through the underbrush on the slopes below. + + + + +XXIX + +AS BRUTES THAT PERISH + + +It was the office building of the pipe foundry that burned on the night +of July fifteenth, and the fire was incendiary. Suspicion, put on the +scent by the night-watchman's story, pointed to Tike Bryerson as the +criminal. The old moonshiner, in the bickering stage of intoxication, +had been seen hanging about the new plant during the day, and had made +vague threats in the hearing of various ears in Gordonia. + +Wherefore the small world of Paradise and its environs looked to see a +warrant sworn out for the mountaineer's arrest; and when nothing was +done, gossip reawakened to say that Tom Gordon did not dare to +prosecute; that Bryerson's crime was a bit of wild justice, so +recognized by the man whose duty it was to invoke the law. + +It was remarked, also, that neither of the Gordons had anything to say, +and that an air of mystery enveloped the little that they did. The small +wooden office building was a total loss, but the night shift at the +Chiawassee had saved most of the contents; everything of value except +the small iron safe which had stood behind the manager's desk in the +private office. The safe, as the onlookers observed, was taken from the +debris and conveyed, unopened, across the road to the Chiawassee +laboratory and yard office. Whether or not its keepings were destroyed +by the fire, was known only to the younger Gordon, who, as the foreman +of the Chiawassee night shift informed a _Tribune_ reporter, had broken +it open himself, deep in the small hours of the night following the +fire, and behind the locked door of the furnace laboratory. + +At another moment South Tredegar newspaperdom might have made something +of the little mystery. But there were more exciting topics to the fore. +The great strike, with Chicago and Pullman as its storm-centers, was +gripping the land in its frenzied fist, and the press despatches were +greedy of space. Hence, young Gordon was suffered to open his safe in +mysterious secrecy; to rebuild his burned office; and to let the +incendiary, sufficiently identified by the watchman, it was believed, go +scot-free. + +With the greater land-wide interest to divert it, even Paradise failed +to note the curious change that had come over the younger of the +Gordons, dating from the night of burnings. But the few who came in +contact with him in the business day saw and felt it. Miss Ackerman, the +pipe-works stenographer, quit when her week was up. It was nothing that +the young manager had said or done; but, as she confided to her sister, +more fortunately situated in town, it was like being caged with a living +threat. Even Norman, the trusted lieutenant, was cut out of his +employer's confidence; and for hours on end in the business day the card +"Not in" would be displayed on the glass-paneled door of the private +room in the rebuilt office. + +Not to make a mystery of it for ourselves, Tom had passed another +milestone in the descent to the valley of lost souls. Or rather, let us +say, he had taken a longer step backward toward the primitive. Daggered +_amour-propre_ is rarely a benign wound. Oftener than not it gangrenes, +and there is loss of sound tissue and the setting-up of strange and +malevolent growth. With the passing of the first healthful shock of +honest resentment, Tom became a man of one idea. Somewhere in the land +of the living dwelt a man who had robbed him, intentionally or +otherwise, indirectly, but none the less effectually, of the ennobling +love of the one woman; to find that man and to deal with him as Joab +dealt with Amasa became the one thing worth living for. + +The first step was taken in secrecy. One day a stranger, purporting to +be a walking delegate for the United Miners, but repudiated as such by +check-weigher Ludlow, took up his residence in Gordonia and began to +interest himself, quite unminer-like, in the various mechanical +appliances of the Chiawassee plant, and particularly in the different +sources of its water supply. + +Divested of his cloakings, this sham walking delegate was a Pinkerton +man, detailed grudgingly from the Chicago storm-center on Tom's +requisition. His task was to scrutinize Nancy Bryerson's past, and to +identify, if possible, one or more of the three men who, in January of +the year 1890, had inspected and repaired the pipe-line running from the +coke-yard tank up to the barrel-spring on high Lebanon. + +To the detective the exclusion card on Tom's door did not apply, and the +conferences between the hired and the hirer were frequent and prolonged. +If we shall overhear one of them--the final one, held on the day of the +Farleys' return to Paradise and Warwick Lodge--it will suffice. + +"It looks easy enough, as you say, Mr. Gordon," the human ferret is +explaining; "but in point of fact there's nothing to work on--less than +nothing. Three years ago you had no regular repair gang, and when a job +of that kind was to be done, any Tom, Dick or Harry picked up a helper +or two and did it. But I think you can bet on one thing: none of the +three men who made that inspection is at present in your employ." + +"In other words, you'd like to get back to your job at Pullman," snaps +Tom. + +"Oh, I ain't in any hurry! That job looks as if it would keep for a +while longer. But I don't like to take a man's good money for nothing; +and that's about what I'm doing here." + +Tom swings around to his desk and writes a check. + +"I suppose you have no further report to make on the woman?" + +"Nothing of any importance. I told you where she is living--in a little +cabin up on the mountain in a settlement called Pine Knob." + +"Yes; but I found that out for myself." + +"So you did. Well, she's living straight, as far as anybody knows; and +if you can believe what you hear, the only follower she ever had was a +young mountaineer named Kincaid. I looked him up; he's been gone from +these parts for something over three years. He is ranching in Indian +Territory, and only came back last week. You can check him off your +list." + +"He was never on, and I have no list," says the manhunter grittingly. +"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Beckham," passing the signed check to +the other, "I shall begin where you leave off, and end by finding my +man." + +"I hope you do, I'm sure," says the Pinkerton, moved by the liberal +figure of the check. "And if there's anything more the Agency can do--" + +In the afternoon of the same day, when the self-dismissed detective was +speeding northward toward Chicago and the car-burners, Tom saddled the +bay and rode long and hard over a bad mountain cart track to the hamlet +of Pine Knob. It was a measure of his abandonment that he was breaking +his promise to Ardea; and another of his reckless singleness of purpose +that he rode brazenly through the little settlement to Nan's door, +dismounted and entered as if he had right. + +The cabin was untenanted, but he found Nan sitting on the slab step of a +rude porch at the back, nursing her child. She greeted him without +rising, and her eyes were downcast. + +"I've come for justice, Nan," he said, without preface, seating himself +on the end of the step and flicking the dust from his leggings with his +riding-crop. "You know what they're saying about us--about you and me. I +want to know who to thank for it: what is the man's name?" + +She did not reply at once, and when she lifted the dark eyes to his they +were full of suffering, like those of an animal under the lash. + +"I nev' said hit was you," she averred, after a time. + +"No; but you might as well. Everybody believes it, and you haven't +denied it. Who is the man?" + +"I cayn't tell," she said simply. + +"You mean you won't tell." + +"No, I cayn't; I'm livin' on his money, Tom-Jeff." + +"No, you are not. What makes you say that?" + +"She told me I was." + +"Who? Miss Dabney?" + +Her nod was affirmative, and he went on: "Tell me just what she said; +word for word, if you can remember." + +The answer came brokenly. + +"I was ashamed--you don't believe hit, but hit's so. I allowed it was +_her_ money. When I made out like I'd run off, she said, 'No; it's his +money 'at's bein' spent for you, and you have a right to it.'" + +Tom was silent for a time; then he said the other necessary word. + +"She believes I am the man who wronged you, Nan. It was my money." + +The woman half rose and then sat down again, rocking the child in her +arms. + +"You're lyin' to me, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Hit's on'y a lie to make me tell!" +she panted. + +"No, it's the truth. I was sorry for you and helped you because--well, +because of the old times. But everybody has misunderstood, even Miss +Dabney." + +Silence again; the silence of the high mountain plateau and the +whispering pines. Then she asked softly: + +"Was you aimin' to marry her, Tom-Jeff?" + +His voice was somber. "I've never had the beginning of a chance; and +besides, she is promised to another man." + +The woman was breathing hard again. "I heerd about that, too--jest the +other day. I don't believe hit!" + +"It is true, just the same. But I didn't come out here to talk about +Miss Dabney. I want to know a name--the name of a man." + +She shook her head again and relapsed into unresponsiveness. + +"I cayn't tell; he'd shore kill me. He's always allowed he'd do hit if I +let on." + +"Tell me his name, and I'll kill him before he ever gets a chance at +you," was the savage rejoinder. + +"D'ye reckon you'd do that, Tom-Jeff--for me?" + +The light of the old allurement was glowing in the dark eyes when she +said it, but there was no answering thrill of passion in his blood. For +one moment, indeed, the bestial demon whispered that here was vengeance +of a sort, freely proffered; but the fiercer devil thrust this one +aside, and Tom found himself looking consciously and deliberately into +the abyss of crime. Once he might have said such a thing in the mere +exuberance of anger, meaning nothing more deadly than the retaliatory +buffet of passion. But now-- + +It was as if the curtain of the civilizing, the humanizing, ages had +been withdrawn a hand's-breadth to give him a clear outlook on +primordial chaos. Once across the mystic threshold, untrammeled by the +hamperings of tradition, unterrified by the threat of the mythical +future, the human atom becomes its own law, the arbiter of its own +momentary destiny. What it wills to do, it may do--if iron-shod chance, +blind and stumbling blindly, does not happen to trample on and efface +it. Who first took it on him to say, _Thou shalt not kill_? What were +any or all of the prohibitions but the frantic shrillings of some of the +atoms to the others? + +In the clear outlook Thomas Gordon saw himself as one whose foot was +already across the threshold. True, he had thus far broken with the +world of time-honored traditions only in part. But why should he scruple +to be wholly free? If the man whose deed of brutality or passion was +disturbing the chanceful equilibrium for two other human dust-grains +should be identified, why should he not be effaced? + +The child at Nan's breast stirred in its sleep and threw up its tiny +hands in the convulsive movement which is the human embryo's first +unconscious protest against the helplessness of which it is born +inheritor. Tom stood up, beating the air softly with the hunting-crop. + +"The man has spoiled your life, Nan; and, incidentally, he has muddied +the spring for me--robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in +the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall +blot him out--like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head +of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little +disorganized mass of black and yellow down and broken wing-filaments. + +The glow in the dark eyes of the woman had died down again, and her +voice was hard and lifeless when she said: + +"But not for me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't wantin' to kill him like my brother +would, if I had one." + +"No; not at all for you, Nan," he said half-absently. And then he +tramped away to the gate, and put a leg over Saladin, and rode down the +straggling street of the little settlement, again in the face and eyes +of all who cared to see. + +The bay had measured less than a mile of the homeward way when there +came a clatter of hoof-beats in the rear. Tom awoke out of the absent +fit, spoke to Saladin and rode the faster. Nevertheless, the pursuing +horseman overtook him, and a drawling voice said: + +"Hit's right smart wicked to shove the bay thataway down-hill, son." + +Tom pulled his horse down to a walk. He was in no mood for +companionship, but he knew Pettigrass would refuse to be shaken off. + +"Where have you been?" he asked sourly. + +"Me? I been over to McLemore's Valley, lookin' at some brood-mares that +old man Mac is tryin' to sell the Major." + +"Did you come through Pine Knob?" + +"Shore, I did. I was a-settin' on Brother Bill Layne's porch whilst you +was talkin' to Nan Bryerson. Seems sort o' pitiful you cayn't let that +pore gal alone, Tom-Jeff." + +"That's enough," said Tom hotly. "I've heard all I'm going to about that +thing, from friends or enemies." + +"I ain't no way shore about that," said the horse-trader easily. "I was +'lottin' to say a few things, m'self." + +Tom pulled the bay up short in the cart track. + +"There's the road," he said, pointing. "You can have the front half or +the back half--whichever you like." + +Japheth's answer was a good-natured laugh and a tacit refusal to take +either. + +"You cayn't rile me thataway, boy," he said. "I've knowed you a heap too +long. Git in the fu'ther rut and take your medicine like a man." + +Since there appeared to be no help for it, Tom set his horse in motion +again, and Japheth gave him a mile of silence in which to cool down. + +"Now you listen at me, son," the horse-trader began again, when he +judged the cooling process was sufficiently advanced. "I ain't goin' to +tell no tales out o' school this here one time. But you got to let Nan +alone, d'ye hear?" + +"Oh, shut up!" was the irritable rejoinder. "I'll go where I please, and +do what I please. You seem to forget that I'm not a boy any longer!" + +"Ya-as, I do; that's the toler'ble straight fact," drawled the other. +"But I ain't so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff." + +Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to +bend all means to the one end, the trivial as well as the potent. + +"Tell me something, Japhe," he said, changing front in the twinkling of +an eye. "Is Nan coming back to the dog-keeper's cabin when the family +leaves the hotel?" + +"'Tain't goin' to make any difference to you if she does," said +Pettigrass, wondering where he was to be hit next. + +"It may, if you'll do me a favor. You'll be where you can see and hear. +I want to know who visits her--besides Miss Ardea." + +Brother Japheth's smile was more severe than the sharpest reproach. + +"Still a-harpin' on that old string, are ye? Say, Tom-Jeff, I been +erbout the best friend you've had, barrin' your daddy, for a right smart +spell o' years. Don't you keep on tryin' to th'ow dust in my eyes." + +"Call it what you please; I don't care what you think or say. But when +you find a man hanging around Nan--" + +"They's one right now," said the horse-trader casually. + +Tom reined up as if he would ride back to Pine Knob forthwith. + +"Who is it?" he demanded. + +"Young fellow named Kincaid--jest back f'om out West, somewheres. +Brother Bill Layne let on to me like maybe he'd overlook what cayn't be +he'ped, and marry Nan anyhow. And that's another reason you got to keep +away." + +"Let up on that," said Tom, stiffening again. "If you had been where you +could have used your ears as you did your eyes back yonder at Pine Knob, +you'd know more than you seem to know now." + +There was silence between them from this on until the horses were +footing it cautiously down the bridle-path connecting the cart track +with the Paradise pike. Then Pettigrass said: + +"Allowin' ther' might be another man, Tom-Jeff, jest for the sake of +argyment, what-all was you aimin' to do if you found him?" + +It was drawing on to dusk, and the electric lights of Mountain View +Avenue and the colonial houses were twinkling starlike in the blue-gray +haze of the valley. They had reach the junction of the steep bridle-path +with the wood road which edged the Dabney horse pasture and led directly +to the Deer Trace paddocks, and when Japheth pulled his horse aside into +the short cut, Tom drew rein to answer. + +"It's nobody's business but mine, Japhe; but I'd just as soon tell you: +it runs in my head that he needs killing mighty badly, and I've thought +about it till I've come to the conclusion that I'm the appointed +instrument. You turn off here? Well, so long." + +Brother Japheth made the gesture of leave-taking with his riding-switch, +and sent his mount at an easy amble down the wood road, apostrophizing +great nature, as his habit was. "Lawzee! _how_ we pore sinners do tempt +the good Lord at every crook and elbow in the big road, _toe_ be shore! +Now ther's Tom-Jeff, braggin' how he'll be the one to kill the pappy o' +Nan's chillern: he's a-ridin' a mighty shore-footed hawss, but hit do +look like he'd be skeered the Lord might take him at his word and make +that hawss stumble. Hit do, for a fact!" + + + + +XXX + +THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY + + +On the night of the fire, Ardea had remained on the cliff's edge until +the blaze died down and disappeared, which was some little time, she +decided, before Tom could possibly have reached the foot of the +mountain. + +When there was nothing more to be seen she went back to the hotel and +called up the Young-Dicksons, whose cottage commanded a short-range view +of the Gordon plant. It was Mrs. Young-Dickson who answered the +telephone. Yes; the fire was one of the foundry buildings--the office, +she believed. Mr. Young-Dickson had gone over, and she would have him +call up when he should return, if Miss Dabney wished. + +Ardea said it did not matter, and having exhausted this small vein of +distraction she returned to the music-room and the Bach fugue, as one, +who has had a fall, rises and tries to go on as before, ignoring the +shock and the bruisings. But the shock had been too severe. Tom Gordon +had proved himself a wretch, beyond the power of speech to portray, +and--she loved him! Not all the majestic harmonies of the inspired +_Kapellmeister_ could drown that terrible discord. + +The next day it was worse. There was a goodly number of South Tredegar +people summering at the Inn, and hence no lack of companionship. But +the social distractions were powerless in the field where Bach and the +piano had failed, and after luncheon Ardea shut herself in her room, +desperately determined to try what solitude would do. + +That failed, too, more pathetically than the other expedients. It was to +no purpose that she went bravely into the torture chamber of opprobrium +and did penance for the sudden lapse into the elemental. It was the +passion of the base-born, she cried bitterly. He was unworthy, unworthy! +Why had he come? Why had she not refused to see him--to speak to him? + +Such agonizing questions flung themselves madly on the spear points of +fact and were slain. He had come; she had spoken. Never would she forget +the look in his eyes when he had said, "Good night, and--good-by;" nor +could she pass over the half-threat in the words that had gone before +the leave-taking. To what deeper depth despicable could he plunge, +having already sounded the deepest of them all--that of unfaith, of +infidelity alike to the woman he had wronged and to the woman he +professed to love? + +At dinner-time she sent word to her grandfather and her cousin that she +was not feeling well, which was a mild paraphrasing of the truth, and +had a piece of toast and a cup of tea sent to her room. The bare thought +of going down to the great dining-room and sitting through the hour-long +dinner was insupportable. She made sure every eye would see the shame in +her face. + +With the toast and tea the servant brought the evening paper, sent up by +a doting Major Caspar, thoughtful always for her comfort. A marked item +in the social gossip transfixed her as if it had been an arrow. The +Farleys had sailed from Southampton, and the house renovators were +already busy at Warwick Lodge. + +After that the toast proved too dry to be eaten and the tea took on the +taste of bitter herbs. Vincent Farley was returning, coming to claim the +fulfilment of her promise. She had never loved him; she knew it as she +had not known it before; and that was dreadful enough. But now there +were a thousand added pangs to go with the conviction. For in the +interval love had been found--found and lost in the same moment--and the +solid earth was still reeling at the shock. + +Ardea of the strong heart and the calm inner vision had always had a +feeling bordering on contempt for women of the hysterical type; yet now +she felt herself trembling and slipping on the brink of the pit she had +derided. + +The third day brought surcease of a certain sort. In the Gallic blood +there is ever a trace of fatalism; the shrug is its expression. It was +generations back to the D'Aubignes, yet now and then some remote +ancestor would reach up out of the shadowy past to lay a compelling +finger on the latest daughter of his race. Her word was passed, beyond +honorable recall. Somewhere and in some way she would find the courage +to tell Vincent that she did not love him as the wife should love the +husband; and if he should still exact the price, she would pay it. After +all, it would be a refuge, of a kind. + +Now it is human nature to assume finalities and to base conduct on the +assumption. Conversely, it is not in human nature to tighten one knot +without loosening another. Having firmly resolved to be unflinchingly +just to a Vincent Farley, one could afford to be humanely interested in +the struggles shoreward or seaward of a poor swimmer in the welter of +the tideway. She did not put it thus baldly, even in her secret thought. +But the thing did itself. + +The opportunities for marking the struggles of the poor swimmer were +limited; but where is the woman who can not find the way when desire +drives? Ardea had something more than a speaking acquaintance with Mr. +Frederic Norman who, as acting-manager of the foundry plant in Tom's +absence, had generously thrown one of the buildings open for a series of +Sunday services for the workmen, promoted by Miss Dabney and the +Reverend Francis Morelock. Since the warm nights had come, Norman had +taken a room at the Inn, climbing the mountain from the Paradise side in +time for dinner, and going down in the cool of the morning after an +early breakfast. + +Being first and last a man of business, he knew, or seemed to know, +nothing of the valley gossip, or of the social sentence passed on his +chief by the Mountain View Avenue court. When Ardea had assured herself +of this, she utilized Norman freely as a source of information. + +"You've known the boss a long time, haven't you, Miss Dabney?" asked the +manager, one evening when Ardea had made room for him in a quiet corner +of the veranda between the Major's chair and her own. + +"Mr. Gordon? Oh, yes; a very long time, indeed. We were children +together, you know." + +"Well, I'd like to ask you one thing," said Frederic, the unfettered. +"Did you ever get to know him well enough to guess what he'd do next? I +thought I'd been pretty close to him, but once in a while he runs me up +a tree so far that I get dizzy." + +"As for example?" prompted Miss Ardea, leaving the personal question in +the air. + +"I mean his way of breaking out in a new spot every now and then. Last +winter was one of the times, when he made up his mind between two +minutes to chuck the pipe-making and go back to college. And now he's +got another streak." + +Miss Dabney made the necessary show of interest. + +"What is it this time--too much business, or not enough?" + +Norman rose and went to the edge of the veranda to flick his cigar ash +into the flower border. When he came back he took a chair on that side +of Miss Dabney farthest from the Major, who was dozing peacefully in a +great flat-armed rocker. + +"I declare I don't know, Miss Dabney; he's got me guessing harder than +ever," he said, lowering his voice. "Since the night when the office +burned he's been miles beyond me. While the carpenters were knocking +together the shack we're in now, he put in the time wandering around the +plant and looking as if he had lost something and forgotten what it was. +Now that we've got into the new office, he shuts himself up for hours on +end; won't see anybody--won't talk--scamps his meals half the time, and +has actually got old Captain Caleb scared stiff." + +"How singular!" said Ardea; but in her heart there was a great pity. +"Do you suppose it was his loss in the fire?" she asked. + +The manager shook his head. + +"No; that was next to nothing, and we're doing a good business. It was +something else; something that happened about the same time. If I can't +find out what it is, I'll have to quit. He's freezing me out." + +Ardea was inconsistent enough to oppose the alternative. + +"No," she objected. "You mustn't do that, Mr. Norman. It is a friend's +part to stand by at such times, don't you think?" + +"Oh, I'm willing," was the generous reply. "Only I'm a little lonesome; +that's all." + +At another time Norman told her of the mysterious walking delegate, who +was admitted to the private office when an anxious and zealous business +manager was excluded. Later still, he made a half-confidence. Caleb, in +despair at the latest transformation in his son, had finally unfolded +his doubts and fears, business-wise, to the manager. The Farleys were +returning; a legal notice of a called meeting of the Chiawassee +Consolidated had been published; and it was evident that Colonel Duxbury +meant to take hold with his hands. And Tom seemed to have forgotten that +there was a battle to be fought. + +Norman's recounting of this to Miss Dabney was the merest unburdening of +an overloaded soul, and he was careful to garble it so that the +prospective daughter-in-law of Colonel Duxbury might not be hurt. But +Ardea read between the lines. Could it be possible that Tom's lifelong +enmity for the Farleys, father and son, had even a little justification +in fact? She put the thought away, resolutely setting herself the task +of disbelieving. Yet, in the conversation which followed, Mr. Frederic +Norman was very thoroughly cross-questioned without his suspecting it. +Ardea meant to cultivate the open mind, and she did not dream that it +was the newly-discovered love which was prompting her to master the +intricacies of the business affair. + +Two days later the Farleys came home, and since Vincent went promptly +into residence at Crestcliffe, the evenings with Norman were +interrupted. But they had served their purpose; and when Vincent began +to press for the naming of an early day in September for the wedding, +Ardea found it quite feasible to be calmly indefinite. You see, she had +still to tell him that it had become purely a matter of promise-keeping +with her--a task easy only for the heartless. + +It was in the third week in August, a full month, earlier than their +original plans contemplated, that the Dabneys returned to Paradise and +Deer Trace. Miss Euphrasia was led to believe that the Major had tired +of the hotel and the mountain; and the Major thought the suggestion came +first from Miss Euphrasia. + +But the real reason for the sudden return lay in a brief note signed +"Norman," and conveyed privately to Ardea's hands by a grimy-faced boy +from the foundry. + +"Mr. Tom was waylaid by two footpads at the Woodlawn gates Saturday +night and half killed," it read. "He is delirious and asks continually +for you. Could you come?" + + + + +XXXI + +THE NET OF THE FOWLER + + +Which of the Cynic Fathers was it who defined virtue as an attitude of +the mind toward externals? One may not always recall a pat quotation on +the spur of the moment, but it sounds like Demonax or another of the +later school, when the philosophy of cynicism had sunk to the level of a +sneer at poor human nature. + +To say that Mr. Duxbury Farley, returning to find Chiawassee +Consolidated in some sense at the mercy of the new pipe plant, regarded +himself as a benefactor whose confidence had been grossly abused, is +only to take him at his word. What, pray tell us, was Caleb Gordon in +the crude beginning of things?--a village blacksmith or little more, +dabbling childishly in the back-wash of the great wave of industry and +living poverty-stricken between four log walls. To whom did he owe the +brick mansion on the Woodlawn knoll, the comforts and luxuries of +civilized life, the higher education of his son? + +In Mr. Farley's Index Anathema, ingratitude ranked with crime. He had +trusted these Gordons, and in return they had despoiled him; crippled a +great and growing industry by segregating the profitable half of it; +cast doubt on the good name of its founder by reversing his business +methods. Chiawassee had been making iron by the hundreds of tons: where +were the profits? The query answered itself. They were in the credit +account of Gordon and Gordon, every dollar of which justly belonged to +the parent company. Was not the pipe-making invention perfected by a +Chiawassee stock-holder, who was also a Chiawassee employee, on +Chiawassee time, and with Chiawassee materials? Then why, in the name of +justice, was it not to be considered a legitimate Chiawassee asset? + +Mr. Duxbury Farley asked these questions pathetically and insistently; +at the Cupola Club, in the Manufacturers' Association, in season and out +of season, wherever there was a willing ear to hear or the smallest +current of public sentiment to be diverted into the channel so patiently +dug for it. Was his virtuous indignation merely the mental attitude of +all the Duxbury Farleys toward things external? That bubble is too huge +for this pen to prick; besides, its bursting might devastate a world. + +But if we may not probe too deeply into primal causes, we may still be +regardful of the effects. Mr. Farley's bid for public sympathy was not +without results. True, there were those who hinted that the veteran +promoter was only paving the way for a _coup de grace_ which should +obliterate the Gordons, root and branch; but when the days and weeks +passed, and Mr. Farley had done nothing more revolutionary than to +reelect himself president of Chiawassee Consolidated, and to resume, +with Dyckman as his lieutenant, the direction of its affairs, these +prophets of evil were discredited. + +It was observed also that Caleb remained general manager at Gordonia, +and still received the patronizing friendship of former times; and to +Tom the full width of the pike was given--a distance which he kept +scrupulously. But as for the younger Gordon, he knew it was the lull +before the storm, and he was watching the horizon for the signs of its +coming--when he was not searching for clues or brooding behind the +closed door of his private office with the devil of homicide for a +closet companion. + +During this reproachful period Vincent Farley gave himself unreservedly, +as it would seem, to the sentimental requirements, spending much time on +the mountain top and linking his days to Ardea's in a way to give her a +sinking of the heart at the thought that this was an earnest of all time +to come. + +Mountain View Avenue had understood that the wedding was to be in +September; but as late as the final week in August the cards were not +out, and Miss Euphrasia, the source and fountainhead of the Avenue's +information, could only say that she supposed the young people were +making up for the time lost by separation and absence, and were willing +to prolong the delights sentimental of an acknowledged engagement. + +But at the risk of cutting sentiment to the very bone, it must be +admitted that, after the first ardent attempt to commit Ardea to a +certain and early day, the delay was of Vincent's own making; and the +motive was basely commercial. Through Major Dabney, who was not proof +against Colonel Duxbury's blandishments at short range, however much he +might distrust them at a distance, Tom's plan of reorganization, with +the suggestion of the trusteeship for Ardea's third, had become known +to the Farleys. Thereupon ensued a conference of two held in Vincent's +room in the hotel, and sentence of extinction was passed on Tom and +Caleb. + +"The ungrateful cub!" was Colonel Duxbury's indignant comment. "To use +his influence over Major Dabney to sequestrate, absolutely sequestrate, +a full third of our property!" + +"Forewarned is forearmed," said the son coolly. "It's up to us to break +the slate." + +"We'll do it, never fear. Just give me a little more time in which to +win public sentiment over to our side, and don't press Ardea to name the +exact day until I give the word," was the promoter's parting injunction +to his son; and Vincent trimmed his sails accordingly, as we have seen. + +Planting the good seed, which was a little later to yield an abundant +harvest of public approbation sanctioning anything he might see fit to +do to the Gordons, was a congenial task to Mr. Farley; but in the midst +it was rather rudely interrupted by a belated unburdening on the part of +his first lieutenant in the South Tredegar offices. + +Dyckman held his peace as long as he dared; in point of fact he did not +speak until he saw his superiors rushing blindly into the pit digged for +their feet by the astute young tyrant of the pipe foundry. If they could +have fallen without carrying him with them, it is conceivable that the +bookkeeper might have remained dumb. But their immunity was doubly his, +and the end of it was a bad quarter of an hour for him, two of them, to +be precise: the first, in which he told the president and the treasurer +the story of the missing cash-book and ledger pages and the extorted +confession, and the other, during which he sat under a scathing fire of +abuse poured on him by the younger of his two listeners. After it was +over, he escaped to the welcome refuge of his own office while father +and son took counsel together against this new and unsuspected peril. + +"Anybody but an idiot like Dyckman would have found out long ago if +those papers were burned in Gordon's safe," snapped Vincent, when the +danger had been duly weighed and measured. + +The president shook his head mournfully. + +"Anybody but Dyckman would have burned them himself, you'd think. It was +criminally careless in him not to do so." + +"They are the key to the lock," summed up the younger man. "We've got to +have them." + +"Assuredly--if they are in existence." + +"You needn't try to squeeze comfort out of that. I tell you, they went +through the fire all right, and Tom has them." + +"I am afraid you are right, Vincent; afraid, also, that Dyckman so far +forgot himself as to set fire to Gordon's office in the hope of +retrieving his own neglect. But how are we to regain them?" Mr. Farley's +weapons were two, only: first persuasion, and when that failed, +corruption. + +Vincent's cold blue eyes were darkening. The little virtues interpose +but a slight barrier to a sharp attack of the large vices. + +"The fight has fallen into halves," he said briefly. "You go on with +your part as if nothing had happened, and I'll do mine. Has the old +iron-melter been taken in on it, do you think?" + +"No; I don't believe Caleb knows." + +"That's better. Are you going up the mountain to-night?" + +"Yes, I had thought of it. Eva wants me to take her." + +"All right; you go, and get Major Dabney to yourself for a quiet +half-hour. Tell him we are all ready to close the deal, and we're only +waiting on the Gordons. I'll be up to dinner, and if anybody asks for me +later, let it be understood that I have gone to my room to write +letters." + +This bomb-hurling of Dyckman's occurred on the Wednesday. That night, +between the hours of nine and eleven, the new steel safe in Tom Gordon's +private office was broken open and ransacked, though nothing was taken. +On Thursday afternoon, while Martha Gordon was over at Deer Trace +training the new growth on Ardea's roses, Tom's room at Woodlawn was +thoroughly and systematically pillaged: drawers were pulled out and +emptied on the floor, the closets were stripped of their contents, and +even the bed mattresses were ripped open and destroyed. + +Mrs. Martha was terrified, as so bold a daylight housebreaking gave her +a right to be; and Caleb was for sending to the county workhouse for the +bloodhounds. But Tom was apparently unmoved. + +"It won't happen again," he said; and it did not. But on the Saturday +evening, just before the late dinner-hour at Woodlawn, Japheth +Pettigrass, who had been trying to halter a shy filly running loose in +the field across the pike, saw a stirring little drama enacted at the +Woodlawn gates; saw it, and played some small part in it. + +It centered on Tom, who was late getting home. He never rode with his +father now if he could avoid it, and Japheth saw him swinging along up +the pike, with his head down and his hands in the pockets of his short +coat. The Woodlawn entrance was a walled semicircle giving back from the +roadway, with the carriage gates hinged to great stone pillars in the +center, and a light iron grille at the side for foot-passengers. Tom's +hand was on the latch of the little gate when two men darted from the +shadow of the nearest pillar and flung themselves on him. + +Japheth saw them first and gave a great yell of warning. Tom turned at +the cry, and so was not taken entirely unawares. But the two had beaten +him down and were busily searching him when Japheth dashed across the +pike, shouting as he ran. The footpads persisted until the horse-trader +came near enough to see that they were black men, or rather white men +with blackened faces and hands. Then they sprang up and vanished in the +gathering dusk. + +Tom was conscious when Pettigrass got him on his feet and hastily bound +a handkerchief over the ugly wound in his head. He was still conscious +when Japheth walked him slowly up the path to the house, and was sanely +concerned lest his mother should be frightened. + +But after they got him to bed he sank into an inert sleep out of which +he awoke the next morning wildly delirious. Ardea's name was oftenest on +his lips in his ravings, and while his strength remained, his calling +for her was monotonously insistent. He seemed to think she was at the +great house across the lawns, and it took the united efforts of Japheth +and Norman to hold him when he tried to get to the window to shout +across for her. + +Norman stood it until late Monday afternoon. Then, when Caleb had +relieved him at Tom's bedside, he drove down to Gordonia and wrote the +note to Miss Dabney, sending it up the mountain by one of the Helgerson +boys with strict injunctions to give it to Miss Ardea herself. + +The Dabneys came down from the mountain Tuesday morning, and Ardea was +so far from disregarding her summons that she stopped the carriage at +the Woodlawn gates and went directly to comfort Mrs. Martha and to offer +her services in the sick-room. Tom was in one of his stubbornest +paroxysms when she entered, but at the touch of her hand he became +quiet, and a little later fell into a deep sleep, the first since the +Saturday night of coma and stertorous breathings. + +That same afternoon Crestcliffe Inn lost another guest, and the +smoking-room at Warwick Lodge was lighted far into the night. Two men +talked in low tones behind the carefully-shaded windows, one of them, +the younger, lounging in the depths of an easy-chair, and the other +pacing the floor in deepest abstraction. + +"I only know what Ardea tells me," said the lounger, answering the final +question put by the floor pacer. "He's out of his head--and out of the +way, temporarily, at least. Now is your time to strike." + +Mr. Duxbury Farley nodded his head slowly. + +"It was providential for us, Vincent, this assault just at the critical +moment. I have struck. I had an interview with Caleb this evening and +made him an offer for the pipe plant. He is to give us his answer +to-morrow morning." + +Silence fell for a little time, and then the younger man in the wicker +chair smote his palms together. + +"Curse him!" he gritted vengefully, transferring his thought from Caleb +Gordon to Caleb Gordon's son. "I hope he'll die!" + +The elder man paused in his walk. "Why, Vincent, my son! What has come +over you? It is merely a matter of business, and we mustn't be +vindictive." + +"Business be damned!" snarled the younger man. "Can't you see? She has +promised to marry me--and she loves _him_. Are you going to bed? Well, +I'm not. I've got something else to do first." + +A few minutes later he let himself noiselessly out at the side door of +the Lodge, and turned down the avenue in the direction of Deer Trace. +But after crossing the bridge over the creek, he took a diagonal course +through the stubble-fields and bore to the right. And when he finally +reached and climbed the wall into the pike, it was at a point directly +opposite the forking of the rough wood road which led off to the Pine +Knob settlement. + +As he leaped over into the highway, a man carrying a squirrel gun +stepped from behind a tree. + +"I was allowin' you'd done forgot," said the man, yawning sleepily. + +"I never forget," was the short rejoinder. Then: "Come with me, and you +shall hear with your own ears, since you won't take my word for it. +Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it's your own affair." + + + + +XXXII + +WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT + + +If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week +morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight +of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it, +possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the +tired brain to grapple with first. + +For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream +somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness, +stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to +life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this +was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible +presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone +together. + +"Ardea!" he said tremulously. + +She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the +fever fires in his. + +"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother." + +"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his +head. "What happened to me?" + +"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Saturday evening as +you were coming home. One of them struck you." + +"Saturday? And this is--" + +"This is Wednesday." + +The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not +need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for +him, but for his mother. He remembered the Saturday evening quite +clearly now: Japheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant +just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his +assailants and guessed the identity of the other. + +"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It +was the least you could do, since your--" + +She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the +effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him. + +"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same +colorless tone. + +"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that. +But no matter; we have passed the Saturday and have come to the +Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?" + +"He has been with you almost constantly from the first. He was here less +than an hour ago." + +"Where is he now?" + +She hesitated. "There is urgency of some kind in your business affairs. +Your father spent the night in South Tredegar; and a little while ago he +telephoned for Mr. Norman--from the iron-works, I think." She had moved +away again, and her hand was on the door-knob. + +He raised himself on one elbow. + +"You are in a desperate hurry, aren't you?" he gritted; though the +teeth-grinding was from the pain it cost him to move. "Would you mind +handing me that desk telephone before you go?" + +She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to +reach to the bed. + +"If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you," she +suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone. + +His smile was a mere grimace of torture. + +"If you could stretch your good-will to--to my mother--that far," he +said. "Please call my office--number five-twenty-six G--and ask for Mr. +Norman." + +She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the +other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary. "This is +Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn. Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to +say--what did you want to say?" she asked, turning to him. + +"Just ask what's going on; if it's Norman you've got, he'll know," said +Tom, sinking back on the pillows. + +What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea's +color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and +thoughtful as she listened. When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to +the sick man, her tone was kinder. + +"There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace +office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father," she said. "The +stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you +may have, and--" + +She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that was creeping like a +curious mask over the face of the man in the bed. Through all the strain +of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for +him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger. But +there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven. + +"Tom!" she gasped, rising quickly to go to him. + +"Wait," he muttered; "let me pull myself together. The +papers--are--in--" + +He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured +out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and +gave it to him. It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the +pillow and raised his head. It was the nearness of her that revived him. + +"I--I'm weaker than a girl," he whispered. "Vince--I mean the thug, hit +me a lot harder than he needed to. What was I saying?--oh, yes; the +papers. Will you--will you go over there in the corner by the door and +look behind the mopboard? You will find a piece of it sawed so it will +come out. In the wall behind it there ought to be a package." + +She found it readily,--a thick packet securely tied with heavy twine and +a little charred at the corners. + +"That's it," he said weakly. "Now one more last favor; please send Aunt +'Phrony up as you go down. Tell her I want my clothes." + +Miss Dabney became the trained nurse again in the turning of a leaf. + +"You are not going to get up?" she said. + +"Yes, I must; I'm due this minute at that meeting down yonder." + +"Indeed, you shall do no such insane thing!" she cried. "What are you +thinking of!" + +"Listen!" he commanded. "My father has worked hard all his life, and +he's right old now, Ardea. If I should fail him--but I'm not going to. +Please send Aunt 'Phrony." + +"I'm going to call your mother," she said firmly. + +"If you do, you'll regret it the longest day you live." + +"Then let me take the papers down to Mr. Norman for you." + +He considered the alternative for a moment--only a moment. What an +exquisite revenge it would be to make her the messenger! But he found he +did not hate her so bitterly as he had been trying to since that +soul-torturing evening on the cliff's edge. + +"No, I can't quite do that," he objected; and again he besought her to +send the old negro housekeeper. + +She consented finally, and as she was leaving him, she said: + +"I hope your mother is still asleep. She was here with you all night, +and Mr. Norman and I made her go to bed at daybreak. If you must go, get +out of the house as quietly as you can, and I'll have Pete and the buggy +waiting for you at the gate." + +"God bless you!" said Tom fervently; and then he set his teeth hard and +did that which came next. + +The Dabney buggy was waiting for him when, after what seemed like a +pilgrimage of endless miles, he had crept down to the gate. But it was +Miss Dabney, and not Mammy Juliet's Pete, who was holding the reins. + +"I couldn't find Pete, and Japheth has gone to town," she explained. +"Can you get in by yourself?" + +He was holding on by the cut wheel, and the death-look was creeping +over his face again. + +"I can't let you," he panted; and she thought he was thinking of the +disgrace for her. + +"I am my own mistress," she said coldly. "If I choose to drive you when +you are too sick to hold the reins, it is my own affair." + +He shook his head impatiently. + +"I wasn't thinking of that; but you must first know just what you're +doing. My father stands to lose all he has got to--to the Farley's. +That's what the meeting is for. Do you understand?" + +She bit her lip and a far-away look came into her eyes. Then she turned +on him with a little frown of determination gathering between her +straight eyebrows--a frown that reminded him of the Major in his +militant moods. + +"I must take your word for it," she said, and the words seemed to cut +the air like edged things. "Tell me the truth: is your cause entirely +just? Your motive is not revenge?" + +"As God is my witness," he said solemnly. "It is my father's cause, and +none of mine; more than that, it is your grandfather's cause--and +yours." + +She pushed the buggy hood back with a quick arm sweep and gave him her +free hand. "Step carefully," she cautioned; and a minute later they were +speeding swiftly down the pike in a white dust cloud of their own +making. + + * * * * * + +There was a sharp crisis to the fore in the old log-house office at the +furnace. Caleb Gordon, haggard and tremulous, sat at one end of the +trestle-board which served as a table, with Norman at his elbow; and +flanking him on either side were the two Farleys, Dyckman, Trewhitt, +acting general counsel for the company in the Farley interest, and +Hanchett, representing the Gordons. + +Having arranged the preliminaries to his entire satisfaction, Colonel +Duxbury had struck true and hard. The pipe foundry might be taken into +the parent company at a certain nominal figure payable in a new issue of +Chiawassee Limited stock, or three several things were due to happen +simultaneously: the furnace would be shut down indefinitely "for +repairs," thus cutting off the iron supply and making a ruinous +forfeiture of pipe contracts inevitable; suit would be brought to +recover damages for the alleged mismanagement of Chiawassee Consolidated +during the absence of the majority stock-holders; and the validity of +the pipe-pit patents would be contested in the courts. This was the +ultimatum. + +The one-sided battle had been fought to a finish. Hanchett, hewing away +in the dark, had made every double and turn that keen legal acumen and a +sharp wit could suggest to gain time. But Mr. Farley was inexorable. The +business must be concluded at the present sitting; otherwise the papers +in the two suits, which were already prepared, would be filed before +noon. Hanchett took his principal into the laboratory for a private +word. + +"It's for you to decide, Mr. Gordon," he said. "If you want to follow +them into the court, we'll do the best we can. But as a friend I can't +advise you to take that course." + +"If we could only make out to find out what Tom's holdin' over 'em!" +groaned Caleb helplessly. + +"Yes; but we can't," said the lawyer. "And whatever it may be, they are +evidently not afraid of it." + +"We'll never see a dollar's dividend out o' the stock, Cap'n Hanchett. I +might as well give 'em the foundry free and clear." + +"That's the chance you take, of course. But on the other hand, they can +force you to the wall in a month and make you lose everything you have. +I've been over the books with Norman: if you can't fill your pipe +contracts, the forfeitures will ruin you. And you can't fill them unless +you can have Chiawassee iron, and at the present price." + +The old iron-master led the way back to the room of doom and took his +place at the end of the trestle-board table. + +"Give me the papers," he said gloomily; and the Farleys' attorney passed +them across, with his fountain-pen. + +There was a purring of wheels in the air and the staccato clatter of a +horse's hoofs on the hard metaling of the pike. Vincent Farley rose +quietly in his place and tiptoed to the door. He was in the act of +snapping the catch of the spring-latch, when the door flew inward and he +fell back with a smothered exclamation. Thereupon they all looked up, +Caleb, the tremulous, with the pen still suspended over the signatures +upon which the ink was still wet. + +Tom was standing in the doorway, deathly sick and clinging to the jamb +for support. In putting on his hat he had slipped the bandages, and the +wound was bleeding afresh. Dyckman yelped like a stricken dog, +overturning his chair as he leaped up and backed away into a corner. +Only Mr. Duxbury Farley and his attorney were wholly unmoved. The lawyer +had taken his fountain-pen from Caleb's shaking fingers and was +carefully recapping it; and Mr. Farley was pocketing the agreement, by +the terms of which the firm of Gordon and Gordon had ceased to exist. + +Tom lurched into the room and threw himself feebly on the promoter, and +Vincent made as if he would come between. But there was no need for +intervention. Duxbury Farley had only to step aside, and Tom fell +heavily, clutching the air as he went down. + +The dusty office which had once been his mother's sitting-room was +cleared of all save his father when Tom recovered consciousness and sat +up, with Caleb's arm to help. + +"There, now, Buddy; you ortn't to tried to get up and come down here," +said the father soothingly. But Tom's blood was on fire. + +"Tell me!" he raved: "have they got the foundry away from you?" + +Caleb nodded gravely. "But don't you mind none about that, son. What I'm +sweatin' about now is the fix you're in. My God! ain't Fred ever goin' +to get back with Doc Williams!" + +Tom struggled to his feet, tottering. + +"I don't need any doctor, pappy; you couldn't kill me with a bullet--not +till I've cut the heart out of these devils that have robbed you. Give +me the pistol from that drawer, and drive me down to the station before +their train comes. I'll do it, and by God, I'll do it now!" + +But when old Longfellow, jigging vertically between the buggy shafts, +picked his way out of the furnace yard, he was permitted to turn of his +own accord in the homeward direction; and an hour later the sick man was +back in bed, mingling horrible curses with his insistent calls for +Ardea. And this time Miss Dabney did not come. + + + + +XXXIII + +THE WINE-PRESS OF WRATH + + +There was more to that crazy outburst of Tom's about the cutting out of +hearts, and the like, than would appear on the surface of things, to you +who dwell in a land shadowed with wings, where law abides and a man sues +his neighbor for defamation of character, if he is called a liar, I +mean. + +In the land unshadowed, where Polaris makes a somewhat sharper angle +with the horizon, there is law, also, but much of it is unwritten. And +one of the unwritten statutes is that which maintains the inherent right +of a man to avenge his own quarrel with his own hand. + +So, when the younger Gordon was up and about again, and was able to keep +his seat soldierly on the back of the big bay, folk who knew the Gordon +blood and temper looked for trouble, not of the plaintiff-and-defendant +sort; and when it did not come, there were a few to lament the +degeneracy of the times, and to say that old Caleb, for example, would +never have so slept on his father's wrongs. + +But Tom was not degenerate, even in the sense of those who thought he +should have called out and shot the younger of the Farleys. It was in +him to kill or be killed, quite in the traditional way: that grim gift +is in the blood as the wine is in the grape--to stay unless you shall +water it to extinction with many base inbreedings. Nor was the spur +lacking. When the sweeping extent of the business _coup de grace_ was +measured, Woodlawn was left, and there were a few thousands in bank; +these and the three hundred and fifty shares of the reorganization stock +which the Farleys might render worthless at will. + +Tom's heart burned within him, and the race thirst--for vengeance that +could be touched and seen and handled--parched his lips and swelled the +veins in his forehead. Vincent Farley had it all: the business, the good +repute, the love of the one woman. At such crises the wild beast in a +man, if any there be, rattles the bars of its cage, and--well, you will +see that the gnashing of teeth and that fierce talk of heart-cutting at +the quickening moment were not inartistic. + +Soberer second thought, less frenzied, was no less vengeful and +vindictive. Tom had lived four formative years in a climate where the +passions are colder--and more comprehensive. Also, he was of his own +generation--which slays its enemy peacefully and without messing in +bloody-angle details. + +Riding up the pike one sun-shot afternoon in the golden September, Tom +saw Ardea entering the open door of the Morwenstow church-copy, drew +rein, flung himself out of the saddle and followed her. She saw him and +stopped in the vestibule, quaking a little as she felt she must always +quake until the impassable chasm of wedlock with another should be +safely opened between them. + +"Just a moment," he said abruptly. "There was a time when I said I +would spare Vincent Farley and his kin for your sake. Do you remember +it?" + +She bowed her head without speaking. Her lips were dry. + +"That was a year ago," he went on roughly. "Things have changed since +then; I have changed. When my father is buried, I shall do my best to +fill the mourners' carriages with those who have killed him." + +"How is your father to-day?" she asked, not daring to trust speech +otherwise. + +"He is the same as he was yesterday and the day before; the same as he +will always be from this on--a broken man." + +"You will strike back?" She said it with infinite sadness in her voice +and an upcasting of eyes that were swimming. "I don't question your +right--but I pity you. The blow may be just--I don't know, but God +knows--yet it will fall hardest on you in the end, Tom." + +His smile was almost boyish in its frank anger. But there was a man's +sneer in his words. + +"Excuse me; I forgot for the moment that we are in a church. But I am +taking consequences, these days." + +She looked out from the cool, dark refuge of the vestibule when he +mounted and rode on, and her heart was full. It was madness, vindictive +madness and fell anger. But it was a generous wrath, large and manlike. +It was not to be a blow in the dark or in the back, as some men struck; +and he would not strike without first giving her warning. Ardea had been +cross-questioning Japheth about the assault at the Woodlawn gates--to +her own hurt. Japheth had evaded as he could, but she had guessed what +he was keeping back--the identity of the two footpads blackened to look +like negroes. It was a weary world, and life had lost much that had made +it worth living. + +After the incident of the church vestibule, Tom spent a week or more +roaming the forests of Lebanon in rough shooting clothes, with the +canvas hat pulled well over his eyes and a fowling-piece under his arm. + +People said harsher things then. With old Caleb failing visibly from day +to day, and his mother keeping her room for the greater part of the +time, it was a shame that a great strong young giant like Tom should go +loitering about on the mountain, deliberately shirking his duty. This +was the elder Miss Harrison's wording of the censure; and it was kinder +than Mrs. Henniker's, since it was the banker's wife who first asked, +with uplifted brows and the accent accusative, if the unspeakable +Bryerson woman were safely beyond tramping distance from Woodlawn. + +They were both mistaken. For all Tom thought of her, Nancy Bryerson was +as safe in her retreat at Pine Knob as were the squirrels he was +supposed to be hunting; and they came and frisked unharmed on the +branches of the tree under which he sat and munched his bit of bread and +meat when the sun was at the meridian. + +And he was not killing time. He was deep in an inventive trance, with +vengeance for the prize to be won, and for the means to the end, +iron-works and pipe plants and forgings--especially the forging of one +particular thunderbolt which should shatter the Farley fortunes beyond +repair. When this bolt was finally hammered into shape he came out of +the wood and out of the inventive trance, had an hour's interview with +Major Dabney, and took a train for New York. + +I am not sure, but I think it was at Bristol, Tennessee, that the +telegram from Norman, begging him to come back to South Tredegar at +speed, overtook him. This is a detail, important only as a marker of +time. For three days a gentleman with shrewd eyes and a hard-bitted jaw, +registering at the Marlboro as "A. Dracott, New York," had been shut up +with Mr. Duxbury Farley in the most private of the company's offices in +the Coosa Building, and on the fourth day Norman had made shift to find +out this gentleman's business. Whereupon the wire to Tom, already on his +way to New York, and the prayer for returning haste. + +Tom caught a slow train back, and was met at a station ten miles out of +town by his energetic ex-lieutenant. + +"Of course, I didn't dare do anything more than give him a hint," was +the conclusion of Norman's exciting report. "I didn't know but he might +give us away to Colonel Duxbury. So, without telling him much of +anything, I got him to agree to meet you at his rooms in the Marlboro +to-night after dinner. Then I was scared crazy for fear my wire to you +would miss." + +"You are a white man, Fred, and a friend to tie to," said Tom; which was +more than he had ever said to Norman by way of praise in the days of +master and man. Then, as the train was slowing into the South Tredegar +station: "If this thing wins out, you'll come in for something bigger +than you had with Gordon and Gordon; you can bet on that." + +It was ordained that Gordon should anticipate his appointment by +meeting his man at the dinner-table in the Marlboro cafe; and it was +accident or design, as you like to believe, that Dyckman should be +sitting two tables away, choking over his food and listening only by the +road of the eye, since he was unhappily out of ear range. When the two +had lighted their cigars and passed out to the elevator, the bookkeeper +rose hastily and made for the nearest telephone. This, at least, was not +accidental. + +The conference in Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight, with Dyckman +painfully shadowing the corridor and sweating like a furnace laborer, +though the night was more than autumn cool. The door was thick, the +transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded nothing but a square of +blank wall opposite in the electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. +Hence the bookkeeper could only guess what we may know. + +"You have let in a flood of light on Mr. Farley's proposition, Mr. +Gordon," said the representative of American Aqueduct, when the ground +had been thoroughly gone over. "I don't mind telling you now that he +made his first overtures to us on his arrival from Europe, giving us to +understand that he owned or controlled the pipe-making patents +absolutely." + +"At that time he controlled nothing, as I have explained," said Tom, +"not even his majority stock in Chiawassee Consolidated. Of course, he +resumed control as soon as he reached home, and his next move was to +have me quietly sandbagged while he froze my father out. But father did +not transfer the patents, for the simple reason that he couldn't. They +are my personal property, made over to me before the firm of Gordon and +Gordon came into existence." + +The pipe-trust promoter nodded. + +"You are the man we'll have to do business with, Mr. Gordon," he said +promptly. "Are you quite sure of your legal status in the case?" + +"I have good advice. Hanchett, Goodloe and Tryson, Richmond Building, +are my attorneys. They will put you in the way of finding out anything +you'd like to know." + +There was a pause while the New Yorker was making a memorandum of the +address. Then he went straight to the point. + +"As I have said, I'm here to do business. We don't need the plant. Will +you sell us your patents?" + +"Yes; on one condition." + +"And that is--?" + +"That you first put us out of business. You'll have to smash Chiawassee +Limited painstakingly and permanently before you can buy my holdings." + +The shrewd-eyed gentleman who had unified practically all of the pipe +foundries in the United States smiled a gentle negative. + +"That would be rather out of our line. If Mr Farley owned the patents, +and was disposed to fight us--as, indeed, he is not--we might try to +convince him. But we are not out for vengeance--another man's vengeance, +at that." + +"Very well, then; you won't get what you've come after. The patents go +with the plant. You can't have one without the other," said Tom, eyeing +his opponent through half-closed lids. + +"But we can buy the plant to-morrow, at a very reasonable figure. +Farley is anxious enough to come in out of the wet." + +"Excuse me, Mr. Dracott, but you can't buy the plant at any price." + +"Eh? Why can't we?" + +"Because the majority of the stock will vote to fight you to a +standstill." + +"But, my dear sir! Mr. Farley controls sixty-five per cent. of the +stock!" + +"That is where you were lied to one more time," said Tom with great +coolness. "The capital stock of Chiawassee Limited is divided into one +thousand shares, all distributed. My father holds three hundred and +fifty shares; Mr. Farley and his son together own four hundred and +fifty; and the remaining two hundred are held in trust for Miss Ardea +Dabney, to become her property in fee simple when she marries. Pending +her marriage, which is currently supposed to be near at hand, the voting +power of these two hundred shares resides in Miss Dabney's grandfather, +_and my father holds his proxy_." + +This was the thunderbolt Tom had been forging during those quiet days +spent on the mountain side; and there was another pause while one might +count ten. After which the man from New York spoke his mind freely. + +"Your row with these people must be pretty bitter, Mr. Gordon. Are you +willing to see your father and these Dabneys go by the board for the +sake of breaking the president and his son?" + +"I know what I am doing," was the quiet reply. "Neither my father nor +Miss Dabney will lose anything that is worth keeping." + +"Have you figured that out, too? The field is too small for you down +here, Mr. Gordon--much too small. You should come to New York." + +Tom rose and took his hat. + +"You will fight us?" he asked. + +The short-circuiter of corporations laughed. + +"We'll put you out of business, if you insist on it. Anything to oblige. +Better light a fresh cigar before you go." + +Tom helped himself from the box on the table. + +"You have it to do, Mr. Dracott. On the day you have hammered Chiawassee +Limited down to a dead proposition, you can have my pipe patents at the +figure named. If you will meet me at the office of Hanchett, Goodloe and +Tryson to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, we will put it in writing. Good +night." + + + + +XXXIV + +THE SMOKE OF THE FURNACE + + +Hoping always for the best, after the manner prescribed for optimistic +gentlemen who successfully exploit their fellows, Mr. Duxbury Farley did +not deem it necessary to confide fully in his son when the +representative of American Aqueduct broke off negotiations abruptly and +went back to New York. + +It is a sad state of affairs, reached by respectably villainous fathers +the world over, when the son demonstrates the mathematical law of +progression by becoming a villain without regard for the +respectabilities. Mr. Farley saw the growing outlaw in his son, was not +a little disturbed thereby, and was beginning to crouch when it menaced. + +Hence, when the comfortable arrangement with the pipe trust threatened +to miscarry, all he did was to urge Vincent to hasten the day when Miss +Dabney's stock could be utilized as a Farley asset. Pressed for +particular reasons, he turned it off lightly. A young man in the fever +of ante-nuptial expectancy was a mere pawn in the business game: let it +be over and done with, so that the nominal treasurer of Chiawassee +Limited could once more become the treasurer in fact. + +Whereupon Vincent, who rode badly at best, bought a new saddle-horse +and took his place at Miss Dabney's whip-hand in the early morning +rides, the place formerly filled by Tom Gordon,--which was not the part +of wisdom, one would say. Contrasts are pitiless things; and the wary +woman-hunter will break new paths rather than traverse those already +broken by his rival. + +Tom, meanwhile, had apparently relapsed into his former condition of +disinterest, and was once more spending his days on the mountain, +seemingly bent on effacing himself socially, as he had been effaced +business-wise by the Farley overturn. + +A week or more after the relapse, as he was crossing the road leading +over the mountain's shoulder, he came on the morning riders walking +their horses toward Paradise, and saw trouble in Miss Dabney's eyes, and +on Farley's impassive face a mask of sullen anger. + +When they were out of sight and hearing, Tom sat on a flat stone by the +roadside with his gun between his knees, thoughtfully speculative. Were +the high gods invoked in the midnight conference at the Marlboro +beginning to point the finger of fate at these two? He was malevolent +enough to hope so, and in the comfort of the hope, walked many miles +that day through the forests of crimson and gold showering with falling +leaves. + +Whatever their influence in the field of sentiment, undeniably in that +of fact the high gods were imposing Sisyphean labors on Mr. Duxbury +Farley. + +With the negotiations for the sale to the trust so abruptly terminated, +the promoter-president set instant and anxious inquiry afoot to +determine the cause. It was soon revealed; and when Mr. Farley found +that the pipe-pit patents had not been transferred with the Gordon +plant, and that Major Dabney had given Caleb Gordon a power of attorney +over Ardea's stock in the company, there were hard words said in the +town offices of Messrs. Trewhitt and Slocumb, Chiawassee attorneys, and +a torrent of persuasive ones poured into the Major's ear--the latter +pointing to the crying necessity for the revocation of the power of +attorney, summarily and at once. + +The Major proved singularly obstinate and non-committal. "Mistah Caleb +Gordon is my friend, suh, and I was mighty proud to do him this small +faveh. What his object is makes no manneh of diffe'ence to me, suh; no +manneh of diffe'ence, whateveh," was all an anxious promoter could get +out of the old autocrat of Deer Trace. But Mr. Farley did not desist; +neither did he fail to keep the telegraph wires to New York heated to +incandescence with his appeals for a renewal of the negotiations for +surrender. + +When the wired appeals brought forth nothing but evasive replies, Mr. +Farley began to look for trouble, and it came: first in a mysterious +closing of the market against Chiawassee pipe, and next in an alarming +advance of freight rates from Gordonia on the Great Southwestern. + +Colonel Duxbury doubled his field force and gave his travelers a free +hand on the price list. Persuasion and diplomacy having failed, a frenzy +like that of one who finds himself slipping into the sharp-staked +pitfall prepared for others seized on him. It was the madness of those +who have seen the clock hands stop and begin to turn steadily backward +on the dial of success. + +Ten days later the freight rates went up another notch, and there began +to be a painful dearth of cars in which to ship the few orders the +salesmen were still able to place. Mr. Farley shut his eyes to the +portents, put himself recklessly into Mr. Vancourt Henniker's hands as a +borrower, and posted a notice of a slashing cut in wages at the works. + +As a matter of course, the cut bred immediate and tumultuous trouble +with the miners, and in the midst of it the president made a flying trip +to New York; to the metropolis and to the offices of American Aqueduct +to make a final appeal in person. + +But the door was shut. Mr. Dracott was not to be seen, though his +assistant was very affable. No; American Aqueduct was not trying to +assimilate the smaller plants, or to crush out all competition, as the +public seemed to believe. With fifty million dollars invested it could +easily control a market for its own product, which was all the +share-holders demanded. Was Mr. Farley in the city for some little time? +and would he not dine with the assistant at the Waldorf-Astoria? + +Mr. Farley took a fast train, south-bound, instead, and on reaching +South Tredegar, wired his New York broker to test the market with a +small block of Chiawassee Limited. There were no takers at the upset +price; and the highest bid was less than half of the asking. Colonel +Duxbury was writing letters at the Cupola when the broker's telegram was +handed him, and he broke a rule which had held good for the better part +of a cautious, self-contained lifetime: he went to the buffet and took a +stiff drink of brandy--alone. The following morning the miners and all +the white men employed in the furnace and foundries and coke yards at +Gordonia went on strike. + +"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad," has a wide +application in the commercial world. Duxbury Farley had resources! a +comfortable fortune as country fortunes go, amassed by far-seeing +shrewdness, a calm contempt for the well-being of his business +associates, and most of all by a crowning gift in the ability to +recognize the psychological moment at which to let go. + +But under pressure of the combined disasters he lost his head, quarreled +with his colder-blooded son, and in spite of Vincent's angry protests, +began the suicidal process of turning his available assets into +ammunition for the fighting of a battle which could have but one +possible outcome. + +Strike-breakers were imported at fabulous expense. Armed guards under +pay swarmed at the valley foot, and around the company's property +elsewhere. By hook or crook the foundries were kept going, turning out +water-pipe for which there was no market, and which, owing to the +disturbances which were promptly made an excuse by the railway company, +could not be moved out of the Chiawassee yard. + +Later, when the striking workmen began to grow hungry, riot, arson and +bloodshed were nightly occurrences. A charging of coal, mined under the +greatest difficulties, was conveyed to the coke yards, only to be +destroyed--and half of the ovens with it--by dynamite cunningly +blackened and dropped into the chargings. For want of fuel, the furnace +went out of blast, but with the small store of coke remaining in the +foundry yards, the pipe pits were kept at work. By this time the +promoter-president was little better than a madman, fighting like a +berserker, and breeding a certain awed respect in the comment of those +who had hitherto held him only as a shrewd schemer. + +And Thomas Jefferson: how did this return to primordial chaos, brought +about in no uncertain sense by his own premeditated act, affect him? +Only a man quite lost to all promptings of the grace that saves and +softens could look unmoved on the burnings and riotings, the cruel +wastings and the bloodlettings, one would say. + +When he was not galloping Saladin afar in the country roads to the +landward side of Paradise, Tom Gordon was idling purposefully in the +Lebanon forests, with the fowling-piece under his arm and Japheth +Pettigrass's dog trotting soberly at heel, as care-free, to all +appearances, as a school-boy home for a holiday. + +The dog, a mongrel, liver-spotted cur with hound's ears, chose to be of +this companionship, and he was always waiting at the orchard gate when +Tom fared forth. For the unsympathetic analyst of dog motives there will +be sufficient reason in expectation, since Tom never failed to share his +noon-time snack of bread and meat with Caesar. Yet Deer Trace set a good +table, and there were bones with meat on them to be had without +following a gunsman who never shot anything, miles on end on the +mountain side. + +Then there were children,--a brood of dusty-haired, barelegged shynesses +at a mountaineer's cabin in a cove far beyond the rock of the shadowing +cedars, where Tom sometimes stopped to beg a drink of water from the +cold spring under the dooryard oaks. They were not afraid of the +strong-limbed, duck-clad stranger, whose manner was the manner of the +town folk, but whose speech was the gentle drawl of the mountain +motherland. Once he had eaten with them in the single room of the +tumble-down cabin; and again he had made a grape-vine swing for the +boys, and had ridden the littlest girl on his shoulder up to the +steep-pitched corn patch where her father was plowing. We may bear this +in mind, since it has been said that there is hope still for the man of +whom children and dogs have no fear. + +In these forest-roaming weeks, business, or the carking thought of it, +seemed furthest from him; it is within belief that he heard the news of +the rapidly succeeding tragedies at Gordonia only through the +dinner-table monologues of his father, since his wanderings never by any +chance took him within eye-or ear-shot of them. + +Caleb's ailment based itself chiefly on broken habit and the lack of +something to do, and in a manner the trouble at Gordonia was a tonic. +What a man beloved of his kind, and loving it, could do toward damping +the fierce fires of passion and hatred and lawlessness alight at the +lower end of Paradise, he was doing daily, going where the armed guards +and the sheriff's deputies dared not go, and striving manfully to do his +duty as he saw it. + +Tom was always a silent listener at the dinner-table recountings of the +day's happenings; attentive, but only filially interested: willing to +encourage his father to talk, but never commenting. + +Why he was so indifferent, so little stirred by the tale of the +tragedies, was the most perplexing of the puzzles he presented, and was +always presenting, to Caleb, the simple-hearted. Thomas Jefferson, the +small boy who had threatened to die if he should not be permitted to be +in and of the struggle with the railway invaders, was completely and +hopelessly lost in this quiet-eyed, reticent young athlete who ate +heartily and slept soundly and went afield with his gun and the borrowed +dog while Rome was burning. So said Caleb in his musings; which proves +nothing more than that a father's sense of perspective may not be quite +perfect. + +But Tom's indifference was only apparent. In reality he was eagerly +absorbing his father's daily report of the progress of the game of +extinction--and triumphing hard-heartedly. + +It was on an evening a fortnight after the furnace had gone out of blast +for lack of fuel that Caleb filled his after-dinner pipe and followed +his son out on the veranda. The Indian summer was still at its best, and +since the first early frosts there had been a return of dry weather and +mild temperatures, with warm, soft nights when the blue haze seemed to +hold all objects in suspension. + +Tom had pushed out a chair for his father and was lighting his own pipe +when he suddenly became aware that the still air was once more thrumming +and murmuring to the familiar sob and sigh of the great furnace +blowing-engines. He started up quickly. + +"What's that?" he demanded. "Surely they haven't blown in again?" + +Caleb nodded assent. + +"I reckon so. Colonel Duxbury allowed to me this mornin' that he was +about out o' the woods--in spite of you, he said; as if you'd been the +one that was doin' him up." + +"But he can't be!" exclaimed Tom, so earnestly and definitely that the +mask fell away and the father was no longer deceived. + +"I'm only tellin' you what he allowed to me, son. I reckoned he was +about all in, quite a spell ago; but you can't tell nothing by what you +see--when it's Colonel Duxbury. He got two car-loads o' new men to-day, +the Lord on'y knows where from; and he's shippin' Pocahontas coke, and +gettin' it here, too." + +Tom sat glooming over it for a time, shrouding himself in tobacco smoke. +Then he said: + +"You feazed me a little at first; but I think I know now what has +happened." + +Caleb took time to let the remark sink in. It carried inferences. + +"Buddy, I been suspectin' for a good while back that you know more about +this sudden smash-up than you've let on. Do you?" + +"I know all about it," was the quiet rejoinder. + +"You do? What on top o' God's green earth--" + +Tom held up his hand for silence. A man had let himself in at the +roadway gate and was walking rapidly up the path to the house. It was +Norman; and after a few hurried words in private with Tom, he went as he +had come, declining Caleb's invitation to stay and smoke a pipe on the +veranda. + +When the gate latch clicked at Norman's outgoing, Tom had risen and was +knocking the ash from his pipe and buttoning his coat. + +"I was admitting that I knew," he said. "I can tell you more now than I +could a moment ago, because the time for which I have been waiting has +come. You remarked that you thought the Farleys were at the end of their +rope. They were not until to-day, but to-day they are. Every piece of +property they have, including Warwick Lodge, is mortgaged to the hilt, +and this afternoon Colonel Duxbury put his Chiawassee stock into +Henniker's hands as security for a final loan--so Norman tells me. +Perhaps it would interest you a trifle to know something about the +figure at which Henniker accepted it." + +"It would, for a fact, Buddy." + +"Well, he took it for less than the annual dividend that it earned the +year we ran the plant; and between us two, he's scared to death, at +that." + +"Heavens and earth! Why, Buddy, son! we're plum' ruined--and so's old +Major Dabney!" + +Tom had finished buttoning his coat and was settling his soft hat on his +head. + +"Don't you worry, pappy," he said, with a touch of the old boyish +assurance. "Our part, since Colonel Duxbury saw fit to freeze us out, is +to say nothing and saw wood. If the Major comes to you, you can tell him +that my word to him holds good: he can have par for Ardea's stock any +time he wants it, and he could have it just the same if Chiawassee were +wiped off of the map--as it's going to be." + +"But Tom; tell me--" + +"Not yet, pappy; be patient just a little while longer and you shall +know all there is to tell. I'm leaving you with a clear conscience to +say to any one who asks that you don't know." + +Caleb had struggled up out of his chair, and now he laid a hand on his +son's shoulder. + +"I ain't askin', Buddy," he said, with a tremulous quaver in his voice; +"I ain't askin' a livin' thing. I'm just a-hopin'--hopin' I'll wake up +bime-by and find it's on'y a bad dream." Then, with sudden and agonizing +emphasis: "My God, son! they been butcherin' one 'nother down yonder for +four long weeks!" + +"I can't help that!" was the savage response. "It's a battle to the +death, and the smoke of it has got into my blood. If I believed in God, +as I used to once, I'd be down on my knees to Him this minute, asking +Him to let me live long enough to see these two hypocritical +thieves,--thugs,--sandbaggers,--hit the bottom!" + +He turned away, walked to the north end of the veranda, where the flare +of the rekindled furnace was redly visible over the knolls, and +presently came back. + +"I said you should know after a little: you may as well know now. I +planned this thing; I set out to break them; and, as it happened, I +wasn't a moment too soon. In another week you and Major Dabney would +have had a chance to sell out for little or nothing, or lose it all. +Farley had it fixed to be swallowed by the trust, and this is how it was +to be done. Farley stipulated that the stock transaction should figure +as a forced sale at next to nothing, in which all the stock-holders +should participate, and that the remainder of the purchase price, which +would have been a fair figure for all the stock, should be paid to him +and his son individually as a bonus!" + +The old iron-master groaned. In spite of the hard teaching of all the +years, he would have clung to some poor shadow of belief in Duxbury +Farley if he could have done so. + +"That's all," Tom went on stridently: "all but the turning of the trick +that put them in the hole they were digging for you and the Major. Vint +Farley had no notion of letting Ardea bring her money into the family of +her own free will: he planned to rob her first and marry her afterward. +Now, by God, I'm going down to tell them both what they're up against! +Don't sit up for me." + +He had taken a dozen strides down the graveled path when he saw some one +coming hurriedly across the lawns from Deer Trace, and heard a +voice--the voice of the woman he loved--calling to him softly in the +stillness: + +"Tom! O Tom!" it said, "please wait--just one minute!" + +But there are lusts mightier, momentarily, than love, and the lust of +vengeance is one. He made as if he did not see or hear; and lest she +should overtake him, left the path to lose himself among the trees and +to vault the low boundary wall into the pike at a point safely out of +sight from the gate. + + + + +XXXV + +A SOUL IN SHACKLES + + +The blue autumn night haze had almost the consistency of a cloud when +Gordon leaped the wall and set his face toward the iron-works. Or rather +it was like the depths of a translucent sea in which the distant +electric lights of Mountain View Avenue shone as blurs of phosphorescent +life on one hand, and the great dark bulk of Lebanon loomed as the +massive foundations of a shadowy island on the other. + +Farther on, the recurring flare from the tall vent of the blast-furnace +lighted the haze depths weirdly, turning the mysterious sea bottom into +fathomless abysses of dull-red incandescence for the few seconds of its +duration--a slow lightning flash submerged and half extinguished. + +Gordon was passing the country colony's church when one of the +torch-like flares reddened on the night, and the glow picked out the +gilt cross at the top of the sham Norman tower. He flung up a hand +involuntarily, as if to put the emblem, and that for which it stood, out +of his life. At the same instant a whiff of the acrid smoke from the +distant furnace fires tingled in his nostrils, and he quickened his +pace. The hour for which all other hours had been waiting had struck. +Love had called, and religion had made its silent protest; but the +smell in his nostrils was the smoky breath of Mammon, the breath which +has maddened a world: he strode on doggedly, thinking only of his +triumph and how he should presently compass it. + +The two great poplar-trees, sentineling what had once been the gate of +the old Gordon homestead, had been spared through all the industrial +changes. When he would have opened the wicket to pass on to the +log-house offices, an armed man stepped from behind one of the trees +with an oath in his mouth and his gun-butt drawn up to strike. Before +the blow could fall, the furnace flare blazed aloft like a mighty torch, +and the man grounded his weapon. + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gordon; I--I took ye for somebody else," he +stammered; and Tom scanned his face sharply by the light of the burning +gases. + +"Whom?--for instance," he queried. + +"Why-e-yeh--I reckon it don't make any diff'rence--my tellin' you; you'd +ought to have it in for him, too. I was layin' for that houn'-dog 'at +walks on his hind legs and calls hisself Vint Farley." + +"Who are you?" Tom demanded. + +"Kincaid's my name, and I'm s'posed to be one o' the strike guards; +leastwise, that's what I hired out for a little spell ago. I couldn't +think of nare' a better way o' gettin' at the damned--" + +Gordon interrupted bruskly. "Cut out the curses and tell me what you owe +Vint Farley. If your debt is bigger than mine, you shall have the first +chance." + +The gas-flash came again. There was black wrath in the man's eyes. + +"You can tote it up for yourself, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Late yeste'day +evening when me and Nan Bryerson drove to town for your Uncle Silas to +marry us, she told me what I'd been mistrustin' for a month back--that +Vint Farley was the daddy o' her chillern. He's done might' nigh +ever'thing short o' killin' her to make her swear 'em on to you; and I +allowed I'd jest put off goin' back West till I'd fixed his lyin' face +so 'at no yuther woman'd ever look at it." + +Gordon staggered and leaned against the fence palings, the red rage of +murder boiling in his veins. Here, at last, was the key to all the +mysteries; the source of all the cruel gossip; the foundation of the +wall of separation that had been built up between his love and Ardea. +When he could trust himself to speak he asked a question. + +"Who knows this, besides yourself?" + +"Your Uncle Silas, for one: he allowed he wouldn't marry us less'n she +told him. I might' nigh b'lieve he had his suspicions, too. He let on +like it was Farley that told him on you, years ago, when you was a boy." + +"He did? Then Farley was one of the three men who saw us up yonder at +the barrel-spring?" + +"Yes; and I was another one of 'em. I was right hot at you that mornin'; +I shore was." + +"Well, who else knows about it?" + +"Brother Bill Layne, and Aunt M'randy, and Japhe Pettigrass. They-all +went in town to stan' up with me and Nan." + +Then Tom remembered the figure coming swiftly across the lawns and the +call of the voice he loved. Had Japheth told her, and was she hastening +to make such reparation as she could? No matter, it was too late now. +The fierce hatred of the wounded savage was astir in his heart and it +would not be denied or silenced. + +"Give me that gun, and you shall have your first chance," he conceded. +"I make but one condition: if you kill him, I'll kill you." + +Kincaid laughed and gave up his weapon. + +"I was only allowin' to sp'ile his face some, and a rock'll do for that. +You can have what's left o' him atter I get thoo--and it'll be enough to +kill, I reckon." + +At the moment of weapon-passing there came sounds audible above the sob +and sigh of the blowing-engines--a clatter of horses' hoofs and the +grinding of carriage wheels on the pike. Gordon signed quickly to +Kincaid and drew back carefully behind the bole of the opposite poplar. + +It was the Warwick Lodge surrey, and it stopped at the gate. Two men got +out and went up the path, and an instant later, Kincaid followed +stealthily. + +Gordon waited for the next gas-flare, and by the light of it he threw +the breech-block of the repeating rifle to make sure the cartridge was +in place. Then he, too, passed through the wicket and went to stand in +the shadow of the slab-floored porch, redolent of memories. He had +forgotten the lesser vengeance in the thirst for the greater,--that he +had come to fling their misfortunes into the faces of the father and the +son, and to tell them that the work was his. He heard only the voice of +the savage in his heart, and that was whispering "Kill! kill!" + + * * * * * + +It was close on midnight when the door giving on the porch opened and +two men stood on the threshold. The younger of the two was speaking. + +"It's quieter than usual to-night. That was a good move--getting Ludlow +and the two Helgersons jailed. I was in hopes we could snaffle old Caleb +with the others. He pretends to be peacemaking, but as long as he is +loose, these fools will hang to the idea that they're fighting his +battle against us." + +"It is already fought," said the older man dejectedly. "My luck has +gone. When Henniker puts us to the wall, we shall be beggars." + +The young man's rejoinder was an exclamation of contempt. + +"You've lost your nerve. What you need most is to go to bed and sleep. +Wait for me till I've made a round of the guards, and we'll go home. +Better ring up the surrey right now." + +He left the porch on the side nearest the furnace, and Gordon saw an +active figure glide from the shelter of a flask-shed and go in pursuit. +He followed at a distance. It was needful only that he should know where +to find Farley when Kincaid should have squared his account. + +The leisurely chase led the round of the great gates first, and thence +through the deserted and ruined coke yard to the foot of the huge slag +dump, cold now from the long shut-down. + +Tom looked to see Farley turn back from the toe of the dump. There were +no gates on that side of the yard, and consequently no guards. + +But the short cut to the office was up the slope of the dump and along +the railway track over which the drawings of molten slag were run out +to be spilled down the face of the declivity. There had been no +slag-drawing since the new "blow-in" earlier in the day; but while he +was watching to keep Farley in sight in the intervals between the +gas-flares, Gordon was conscious of the note of preparation behind him: +the slackening of the blast, the rattle and clank of the dinkey +locomotive pushing the dumping ladle into place under the furnace lip. + +Farley had taken two or three scrambling steps up the rough-seamed +declivity when the workmen tapped the furnace. There was a sputtering +roar and the air was filled with coruscating sparks. + +Then the stream of molten matter began to pour into the great ladle, a +huge eight-foot pot swung on tilting trunnions and mounted on a skeleton +flat-car; and for Gordon, standing at the corner of the ore shed with +his back to the slag drawers, the red glow picked out the man scrambling +up the miniature mountain of cooled scoria,--this man and another man +running swiftly to overtake him. + +He looked on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face +his adversary. Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in +Farley's right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the +roar from the furnace lip. Then the two men closed and rolled together +to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned his back. + +When he looked again the trampling note of the big blast-engines had +quickened to its normal beat, the blow-hole was plugged with its stopper +of damp clay, and a red twilight born of the reflection from the +surface of the great pot of seething slag had succeeded to the blinding +glare. Where there had been two men locked in struggle there was now +only one, and he was lying quietly with one leg doubled under him. +Gordon set his teeth on an angry oath of disappointment. Had Kincaid +broken his compact? + +The first long-drawn exhaust of the dinkey engine moving the slag kettle +out to its spilling place ripped the silence. Gordon heard--and he did +not hear: he was watching the prone figure at the dump's toe. When it +should rise, he meant to fire from where he stood under the eaves of the +ore-shed. The murder-thought contemplated nothing picturesque or +dramatic. It was merely the dry thirst for the blood of a mortal enemy, +as it is wont to be off the stage or out of the pages of the romancers. + +The puffing locomotive had pushed the slag-pot car half-way to the +track-end before Farley sat up as one dazed and seemed to be trying to +get on his feet. Twice and once again he essayed it, falling back each +time upon the bent and doubled leg. Then he looked up and saw the +slag-car coming; saw and cried out as men scream in the death agony. The +end rails of the dumping track were fairly above him. + +Gordon heard the yell of terror and witnessed the frenzied efforts of +the doomed man to rise and get out of the path of the impending torrent. +Whereupon the murder devil whispered in his ear again. Farley's foot was +caught in one of the many scars or seams in the lava bed. It was only +necessary to wait, to withhold the merciful bullet, to go away and leave +the wretched man to his fate. + +That fate was certain, lacking a miracle to avert it. There were no +workmen in that part of the yard; and the two men in charge of the slag +kettle were on the opposite side of the engine where the dumping +mechanism was connected. Farley was screaming again, but now the +safety-valve of the locomotive was blowing off steam with a din to drown +all. + +Gordon tossed the gun aside and turned away. It was better so. Possibly +at the climaxing instant he might have lacked the firmness to aim and +press the trigger. This was simpler, easier, more in keeping with +Vincent Farley's deserts; more satisfying to the thirst for vengeance. + +Was it? Like a bolt from the heavens, into the very midst of the +cold-blooded, murderous triumph, came a long-neglected form of words, +writing itself in flaming letters in his brain: _Thou shall do no +murder._ And after it another: _But I say unto you, love your enemies, +bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you._ + +He put his hands before his eyes, stumbled blindly and fell down, +groveling in the yellow sand of the ore floor, as that one of old whom +the possessing devils tore and rended. Hell and the furies!--was this to +be the end of it? Did the old, time-worn fables planted in the lush and +mellow soil of childhood wait only for the moment of superhuman trial to +assert themselves truth of the very truth? God in Heaven! must he be +flogged back into the ranks he had deserted when every drop of blood in +his veins was crying out for shame? + +Something gripped him and stood him on his feet, and before he realized +what he was doing he was running, gasping, tripping and falling +headlong, only to spring up and run again, with all thoughts trampled +out and beaten down by one: would he still be in time? + +There was something wrong with the dumping machinery of the slag-car, +and two men were working with it on the side away from the spilling +slope. Gordon had not breath wherewith to shout; moreover the +safety-valve was still screeching to gulf all human cries. Farley was +lying face down and motionless, with the twisted foot still held fast in +a wedge-shaped crack in the cooled slag. Tom bent and lifted him; +yelled, swore, tugged, strained, kicked fiercely at the imprisoned +shoe-heel. Still the vise-grip held, and the great kettle on the height +above was creaking and slowly careening under the winching of the engine +crew. If the molten torrent should plunge down the slope now, there +would be two human cinders instead of one. + +Suddenly the frenzy, so alien to the Gordon blood, spent itself, leaving +him cool and determined. Quite methodically he found his pocket-knife, +and he remembered afterward that he had been collected enough to choose +and open the sharper of the two blades. There was a quick, sure slash at +the shoe-lacing and the crippled foot was freed. With another yell, this +time of glad triumph, he snatched up his burden and backed away with it +in the tilting half-second when the deluge of slag, firing the very air +with shriveling heat, was pouring down the slope. + +Then he fell in a heap, with Farley under him, and fainted as a woman +might--when the thing was done. + + + + +XXXVI + +FREE AMONG THE DEAD + + +The skirmish-line rivulets of melted slag had crept to within a few feet +of the two at the toe of the dump when the men of the engine crew ran +with water to drench them. + +Tom recovered consciousness under the dashing of the water, and was one +of the bearers who carried Vincent Farley on a hastily improvised +stretcher to the surrey waiting at the office gate. + +Afterward, he went for Doctor Williams, deriding himself Homerically for +playing the second act in the drama of the Good Samaritan, but playing +it, none the less. And not to quit before he was quite through, he drove +with the physician to Warwick Lodge, and sat in the buggy till the other +Good Samaritan had performed his office. + +"Nothing very serious, is it, Doctor?" he asked, when the old physician +took the reins to drive his horse-holder home. + +"H'm; he'll be rather badly scarred, and there is a chance that he will +lose the sight of one eye," was the reply. Then: "It's none of my +quarrel, Tom, but you hammered him pretty cruelly--with a stone, too, I +should say." + +"Did I?" grinned Tom. He was willing to bear the blame until Kincaid +should have ample time to disappear. + +"Yes; and with all due allowance for your provocation, it was a good bit +beneath you, my boy." + +The younger man laughed grimly. "Wait till you know the full size of the +provocation, Doctor. I'm not half as bad as I might be. Another man +would have left him to burn--here and hereafter." + +The doctor said no more. It was not his province to make or meddle in +the quarrel between the Gordons and the Farleys. And Tom also was +silent, having many things to render him reflective. + +When he was put down at Woodlawn it was after one o'clock. Yet he sat +for an hour or more on the veranda, smoking many pipes and trying as he +could to prefigure the future in the light of the night's happenings. + +What an insufferable animal Farley was, to be sure!--with the love of a +woman like Ardea Dabney failing to keep him on the hither side of common +decency! Would Ardea break with him, now that she knew the truth? Tom +shook his head. Not she; she would stand by him all the more stoutly, if +not for love, then for pride's sake. That was the fine thing in her +loyalty. + +That thought led to another. When they were married, there would have to +be a beginning in a new field. Chiawassee was gone, and the Farley +fortune with it; and the new field would be a bald necessity. Tom +decided that not even Ardea's pride and fortitude could face the looks +askance of the Mountain View Avenue folk. + +He measured the country colonists justly. They might have forgiven the +moral lapse, though that was not the side they had turned toward him. +Yet he fancied that when the business failure should be super-added, the +Farley sins would become too multitudinous for the broadest mantle of +charity to cover. + +"Which brings on more talk," he mused, pulling thoughtfully at the pipe. +"They can't start in the new diggings without money. Anyway, Vincent's +no moneymaker; and if the look on a man's face counts for anything, old +Colonel Duxbury has made his last flight from the promoting perch. O +Lord!"--rising with a cavernous yawn and a mighty stretching of his arms +overhead,--"I reckon it's up to me to go on doing all the things I don't +want to do; that I didn't in the least mean to do. Somebody ought to +write a book and call it _Saints Inveterate_. It would have simplified +things a whole lot if I could have left him to be cremated after all." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Vancourt Henniker was not greatly surprised when Tom Gordon asked +for a private interview on the morning following the final closing down +of all the industries at Gordonia. + +Without being in Gordon's confidence, or in that of American Aqueduct, +the banker had been shrewdly putting two and two together and applying +the result as a healing plaster to the stock he had taken as security +for the final loan to Colonel Duxbury. + +"I thought, perhaps, you might wish to buy this stock, Mr. Gordon," he +said, when Tom had stated his business. "Of course, it can be arranged, +with Mr. Farley's consent to our anticipating the maturity of his notes. +But"--with a genial smile and a glance over his eye-glasses--"I'm not +sure that we care to part with it. Perhaps some of us would like to hold +it and bid it in." + +Tom's smile matched the genial expansiveness of the president's. + +"I reckon you don't want it, Mr. Henniker. You'll understand that it +isn't worth the paper it is printed on when I tell you that I have sold +my pipe-pit patents to American Aqueduct." + +"Heavens and earth! Then the plant doesn't carry the patents? You've +kept this mighty quiet, among you!" + +"Haven't we!" said Tom fatuously. "I know just how you feel--like a man +who has been looking over the edge of the bottomless pit without knowing +it. You'll let me have the stock for the face of the loan, won't you?" + +But the president was already pressing the button of the electric bell +that summoned the cashier. There was no time like the present when the +fate of a considerable bank asset hung on the notion of a smiling young +man whose mind might change in the winking of an eye. + +With the Farley stock in his pocket Tom took a room at the Marlboro and +spent the remainder of that day, and all the days of the fortnight +following, wrestling mightily with the lawyers in winding up the tangled +skein of Chiawassee affairs. Propped in his bed at Warwick Lodge, the +bed he had not left since the night of violence, Duxbury Farley signed +everything that was offered to him, and the obstacles to a settlement +were vanquished, one by one. + +When it was all over, Tom began to draw checks on the small fortune +realized from the sale of the patents. One was to Major Dabney, +redeeming his two hundred shares of Chiawassee Limited at par. Another +was to the order of Ardea Dabney, covering the Farley shares at a +valuation based on the prosperous period before the crash of '93. With +this check in his pocket he went home--for the first time in two weeks. + +It was well beyond the Woodlawn dinner-hour before he could muster up +the courage to cross the lawns to Deer Trace. No word had passed between +him and Ardea since the September afternoon when he had overtaken her at +the church door,--counting as nothing the effort she had made to speak +to him on the night of vengeance. + +How would she receive him? Not too coldly, he hoped. It was known that +Vincent's assailant in the furnace yard was a stranger; a man who had +taken service as a guard: also that Mr. Gordon--they gave him his +courtesy title now--had saved Vincent from a terrible death. Tom thought +the rescue should count for something with Ardea. + +It did. She was sitting at the piano in the otherwise deserted +music-room when he entered; and she broke a chord in the middle to give +him both of her hands, and to say, with eyes shining, as if the rescue +were a thing of yesterday: + +"O Tom! I _knew_ you had it in you! It was fine!" + +"Hold on," he said, a bit unsteadily. "There must be no more +misunderstandings. What happened that night three weeks ago, had to +happen; and five minutes before it happened I was wondering if I could +aim straight enough in the light from the slag-pot to hit him. And I +fully meant to do it." + +She shuddered. + +"I--I was afraid," she faltered. "I knew, you know--Japheth had told +me, in--in justice to you. That was why I ran across the lawn and called +to you." + +The sweet beauty of her laid hold on him and he felt his grip going. +Another word and he would be trespassing again. To keep from saying it +he crossed to the recessed window and sat down in the sleepy-hollow +chair which was the Major's peculiar possession in the music-room. + +After a little he said: "Play something, won't you?--something that will +make me a little less sorry that I didn't kill him." + +"The idea!" she said. But when he settled himself in the big easy-chair +as a listener, lying back with his eyes closed and his hands locked over +one knee, she turned to the piano and humored him. When the final chord +of the _Wanderlied_ had sung itself asleep, he sat up and nodded +approvingly. + +"I wonder if you appreciate your gift as you should?--to be able to make +a man over in the moral part of him with the tips of your fingers? The +devil is exorcised, for the moment, and I can tell you all about it now, +if you care to know." + +"Of course I care," she assented. + +"Well, to begin with, I'm no better than I have been; a little less +despicable than you've been thinking me, perhaps, but more wicked. I've +hated these two men ever since I was old enough to know how; and to get +square with them, I haven't scrupled to sink to their level. The smash +at Gordonia is my smash, I'm responsible for everything that has +happened." + +"I know it," she said. "Mr. Norman has told me." + +"Looking it all over, I don't see that there is much to choose between +me and the men I've been hunting down. They went after the things they +needed, without much compunction for other people; and so did I. On the +night of the--on the night when you called to me and I wouldn't answer, +I was going down to rub it in; to tell them they were in the hole and +that I had put them there. I met a man at the gate who told me what +Japheth told you. It made a devil of me, Ardea. I took the man's gun and +followed Vincent around the yard. I meant to kill him." + +She nodded complete intelligence. + +"The provocation was very great," she said evenly. "Why didn't you do +it, Tom?" + +"Now you've cornered me: I don't know why I didn't. I had only to walk +away and let him alone when the time came. The slag-spilling would have +settled him. But I couldn't do it." + +"Of course you couldn't," she agreed convincingly. "God wouldn't let +you." + +"He lets other men commit murder; one a day, or such a matter." + +"Not one of those who have named His name, Tom--as you have." + +He shook his head slowly. "I wish that appealed to me, as it ought. But +it doesn't. Where is the proof?" + +She rose from the piano seat and went to stand before him. + +"Can you ask that, soberly and in earnest, after the wonderful +experience you have had?" + +"I have asked it," he insisted stubbornly. "You mustn't take anything +for granted. Just at that moment I couldn't kill a man; but that is all +the difference. I've done what I meant to do, or most of it." + +She was holding him steadily with her eyes. "Are you glad, or sorry, +Tom?" + +He frowned up at her. + +"I don't know. Now that it's all over, the taste of it is like sawdust +in the mouth; I'll admit that much. I'm free; 'free among the dead, like +the slain that lie in the grave,' as David put it when he had sounded +all the depths. Is that being sorry?" + +"No--I don't know," she confessed. + +He was smiling now. + +"You think I ought to go back to first principles: get down on my knees +and agonize over it? Sometimes I wish I could be a boy long enough to do +just that thing, Ardea. But I can't. The mill won't grind with the water +that has passed." + +"But the stream isn't dry," she asserted, taking up his figure. "What +will you do now? That is the question: the only one that is ever worth +asking." + +He was frowning thoughtfully again, and the words came as an unconscious +voicing of vague under-depths. + +"They took to the woods, the waste places, the deserts--those men of old +who didn't understand. Some of them went blind and crazy and died there; +and some of them had their eyes opened and came back to make the world a +little better for their having lived in it. I'm minded to try it." + +She caught her breath in a little gasp which she was careful not to let +him see. + +"You are going away?" she asked. + +"Yes; out to the 'beyond' in northern Arizona. There is a new iron +field out there to be prospected, and Mr. Clarkson wants me to go and +report on it. And that brings us back to business. May I talk +business--cold money business--to you for a minute or two?" + +"If you like," she permitted. "Only I think the other kind of talk is +more profitable." + +"Wait till you hear what I have to say in dollars and cents. That ought +to interest you." + +"Why should it--particularly?" + +"Because you are going to marry a poor man, and--" + +She turned away from him quickly and stood facing the window. But he +went on with what he had to say. + +"That's all right; I can say it to your back, just as well. You know, I +suppose, that your--that the Farleys have lost out completely?" + +"Yes,"--to the window-pane. + +"Well, a curious thing has come to pass--quite a miraculous thing, in +fact. Chiawassee will pay the better part of its debts and--and redeem +its stock; or some of it, at least." He rose and stood beside her. +"Isn't it a thousand pities that Colonel Duxbury couldn't have held on +to his shares just a little longer?" + +"Yes; he is an old man and a broken one, now." There was a sob in her +voice, or he thought there was. But it was only the great heart of +compassion that missed no object of pity. + +"True; but the next best thing is to have the young woman who marries +into the family bring it back with her, don't you think? Here is a check +for what Mr. Farley's stock would have sold for before the troubles +began. It's made payable to you because--well, for obvious reasons; as I +have said, he lost out." + +She turned on him, and the blue eyes read him to his innermost depths. + +"You are still the headlong, impulsive boy, aren't you?" she said, not +altogether approvingly. "You are paying this out of your own money." + +"Well, what if I am?" + +"If you are, it is either a just restitution, or it is not. In either +case, I can not be your go-between." + +"Now look here," he argued; "you've got to be sensible about this. +There'll be four of you, and at least two incompetents; and you've got +to have money to live on. I made Colonel Duxbury lose it, and--" + +She stopped him with the imperious little gesture he knew so well. + +"Not another word, if you please. I can't do your errand in this, and I +wouldn't if I could." + +"You think I ought to be generous and give it to him, anyway, do you?" + +"I don't presume to say," was the cool rejoinder. "When you have come +fully to your right mind, you will know what to do, and how to go about +it." + +He crumpled the check, thrusting it into his pocket, and made two turns +about the room before he said: + +"I'll see them both hanged first!" + +"Very well; that is your own affair." + +He fell to walking again, and for a full minute the silence was broken +only by the murmur of men's voices in the library adjoining. The Major +had company, it seemed. + +"This is 'good-by,' Ardea; I'm going to-morrow. Can't we part friends?" +he said, when the silence had begun to rankle unbearably. + +"You've hurt me," she declared, turning again to the window. + +"You've hurt me, more than once," he retorted, raising his voice more +than he meant to; and she faced about quickly, holding up a warning +finger. + +"Mr. Henniker and Mr. Young-Dickson are in the library with grandpa. +They will hear you." + +"I don't care. I came here to-night with a heart full of what few good +things there are left in me, and you--you are so wrapped up in that +beggar that I didn't kill--" + +"Hush!" she commanded imperatively. "Grandfather has not heard: he knows +nothing, and he must nev--" + +The murmur of voices in the adjoining room had suddenly become a storm, +with the smooth tones of Mr. Henniker trying vainly to allay it. In the +thick of it the door of communication flew open and a white-haired, +fierce-mustached figure of wrath appeared on the threshold. For a moment +Tom's boyish awe of the old autocrat of Deer Trace came uppermost and he +was tempted to run away. But the wrath was not directed at him. Indeed, +the Major seemed not to see him. + +"What's all this I'm hearing now for the ve'y first time about these +heah low-down, schemin' scoundrels that want to mix thei-uh white-niggeh +blood with ouhs?" he roared at Ardea, quite beside himself with passion. +"Wasn't it enough that they should use my name and rob my good friend +Caleb? No, by heavens! That snivelin' young houn'-dog must pay his cou't +to you while he was keepin' his--" + +The Major's face had been growing redder, and he choked in sheer +poverty of speech. Moreover, Tom had come between; had taken Ardea in +his arms protectingly and was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man. + +"That's enough, Major," he said definitely. "You mustn't say things +you'll be sorry for after you cool down a bit. Miss Ardea is like the +king: she can do no wrong." + +There was a gasping pause, the sound of a big man breathing hard, +followed by the slamming of the door, and they were alone together +again, Ardea crying softly, with her face hidden on the shoulder of +shielding. + +"Oh, isn't it terrible?" she sobbed; and Tom held her the closer. + +"Never mind," he comforted. "He was crazy-mad, as he had a good right to +be. You know he will be heart-broken when he comes to himself. You are +his one ewe lamb, Ardea." + +"I know," she faltered; "but O Tom! it was so unnecessary; so wretchedly +unnecessary! It's--it's more than two whole months since--since Vincent +Farley broke the engagement, and--" + +He held her at arm's length to look at her, but she hid her face in her +hands. + +"Broke the engagement!" he exclaimed, almost roughly. "Why did he do +that?" + +She stood before him with her hands clasped and the clear-welled eyes +meeting his bravely. + +"Because I told him I could not marry him without first telling him that +I loved you, Tom; that I had been loving you always and in spite of +everything," she said. + +And what more she said I do not know. + + + + +XXXVII + +WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD + + +"Tom, isn't this the same foot-log you made me walk that day when you +were trying to convince me that you were the meanest boy that ever +breathed?" asked Ardea, gathering her skirts preparatory to the stream +crossing. + +"It is. But you didn't walk it, as you may remember: you fell off. Wait +a second and give me those azaleas. I'll go first and take your hand." + +Tom Gordon, lately home from a full half-year spent in the unfettered +solitudes of the Carriso iron fields, to be married first, and afterward +to start up--with Caleb for superintendent--the idle Chiawassee plant as +a test and experimental shop for American Aqueduct, was indemnifying +himself for the long exile. + +On this Saturday evening in the lovers' month of June he had walked +Ardea around and about through the fragrant summer wood of the upper +creek valley, retracing, in part, the footsteps of the boy whose fishing +had been spoiled and the little girl who was to be bullied into +submission; and so rambling they had come at length to the old +moss-grown foot-log which had been a newly-felled tree in the former +time. Tom went first across the rustic bridge, holding the hand of +ecstatic thrillings, and pausing in mid-passage that he might have +excuse for holding it the longer. Ah me! we were all young once; and +some of us are still young,--God grant,--in heart if not in years. + +It was during the mid-passage pause, and while she was looking down on +the swirling waters sometime of terrifying, that Miss Dabney said: + +"How deep is it, Tom? Would I really have drowned if you and Hector had +not pulled me out?" + +He laughed. + +"It's a thankless thing to spoil an idyl, isn't it? But that is the way +with all the little playtime heroics we leave behind in childhood. You +could have waded out." + +She made the adorable little grimace which was one of the survivals of +the yesterdays, and suffered him to lead her across. + +"And I have always believed that I owed my life to you--and Hector!" she +said reproachfully. + +"You owe me much more than that," he affirmed broadly, when they had sat +down to rest--they had often to do this, lest the way should prove +shorter than the happy afternoon--on the end of the bridge log. + +"Money?"--flippantly. + +"No; love. If it hadn't been for me, you might never have known what +love is." + +His saying it was only an upbubbling of love's audacity, but she chose +to take it seriously. She was gazing afar into the depths of the +fresh-green forest darkening softly to the sunset, with her hands +clasped around the tangle of late-blooming white azaleas in her lap. + +"It is a high gift," she said soberly; "the highest of all for a woman. +Once I thought I should live and die without knowing it, as many women +do. I wish I might give you something as great." + +"I am already overpaid," he asserted. "For a man there is nothing so +great, no influence so nearly omnipotent, as the love of a good woman. +It is the lever that moves the world--what little it does move--up the +hill to the high planes." + +"A lever?" she mused; "yes, perhaps. But levers are only links in the +chain binding cause to effect." + +His smile was lovingly tolerant. + +"Is that what your religion has brought you to, Ardea--a full-grown +belief in a Providence that takes cognizance of our little +ant-wanderings up and down the human runways?" + +"Yes, I think so," she said; but she said it without hesitancy or a +shadow of doubt. + +"I'm glad; glad you have attained," he rejoined quite unaffectedly. + +"It was hardly attainment, in my case," she qualified; and, after a +momentary pause, she added: "any more than it was in yours." + +"You think I, too, have attained?" he smiled. "I am not so sure of that. +Sometimes I think I am like my father, who is like Mahomet's coffin; +hanging somewhere between Heaven and earth, unable to climb to one or to +fall to the other. But I'm not as brash as I was a year or so ago; at +least, I'm not so cock-sure that I know it all. That evening in the +music-room at Deer Trace changed me--changed my point of view. You +haven't heard me rail once at the world, or at the hypocrites in it, +since I came home, have you?" + +"No." + +"Well, I don't feel like railing. I reckon the old world is good enough +to live in--to work in; and certainly there are men in it who are +better than I'm ever likely to be. I met one of them last winter out in +the Carriso cow country; a 'Protestant' priest, he called himself, of +your persuasion. He was the most hopeless bigot I've ever known, and by +long odds the nearest masculine approach to true, gritty saintliness. +There was nothing he wouldn't do, no hardship he wouldn't cheerfully +undergo, to brother a man who was down, and the wickedest devil in all +that God-forsaken country swore by him. Yet he would argue with me by +the hour, splitting hairs over Apostolic Succession, or something of +that sort." + +She smiled in her turn. "Did he regard you as a heretic?" she asked. + +"Oh, sure! though he admitted that I might escape at the last by virtue +of my 'invincible ignorance.' Then I would laugh at him, telling him he +was a lot better than his bigotry. But he got the best of me in other +ways. I owned the one buckboard in the northern half of Apache County, +and my broncos were harness-broken and fast. So, when there was a +shoot-up at the Arroyo dance-hall, or any other job of swift brothering +to be done, I had to drive Father Philip." + +She was musing again. "You used to write me that you were on the edge of +things out there: it was a mistake, Tom; you were in the very heart of +them." + +He shook his head. + +"No; the heart of them was back yonder in the music-room. There were +chaos and thick darkness to go before that day of days; and it was your +woman's love that changed the world for me." + +"No," she denied; "that was only an incident. When chaos and darkness +fled away, it was God who said, 'Let there be light.' The dawn had come +for you before our day of days, Tom." + +He stretched himself luxuriously on the sward at her feet. + +"You may put it that way if you please. But I shall go on revering you +as my torch-bearer," he asserted. + +"Tell me," she said quickly; "was it for my sake that you spared Vincent +Farley when all you had to do was to turn your back and go away?" + +He took time to consider, and his answer put love under the foot of +truth. + +"No, it wasn't. If you make me confess the bald fact, I was not thinking +of you at all, just at that one moment." + +"I know it," she rejoined. "And I am big enough to be glad. Neither was +it for my sake that you instructed your lawyers to return good for evil +by redeeming the Farleys' stock just before they left for Colorado, or +that you made restitution to the families of the men at Gordonia for +their losses during the strike." + +But again he was shaking his head dubiously. + +"I'm not so sure about that. It's in any man to play high when the good +opinion of the one woman is the stake. I'm a _poseur_, like all the +others." + +She smiled down on him and the slate-blue eyes were reading him to the +latest-indited heart-line. + +"You are posing now," she asseverated. "Don't I know?--don't I always +and always know?" And, after a reflective moment: "It is a great comfort +to be able to love the poses, and a still greater to be permitted to +discern the true man under them." + +"I am glad to believe that you don't see quite to the bottom of that +well, Ardea, girl," he said with sudden gravity. "I get only occasional +glimpses, myself, and they make me seasick. I don't believe any man +alive could endure it to look long into the inner abysses of himself." + +"'The heart knoweth his own bitterness,'" she quoted, speaking softly; +and then--O rarest of women!--she did not enlarge on it. Instead-- + +Silence while she was gathering the sweet-smelling tangle in her lap +into some more portable arrangement. And afterward, when they were +drifting slowly homeward in the lengthening shadows, a small asking. + +"Mr. Morelock is coming out to-morrow to hold service in St. John's, and +I shall go to play for him. Will you go with me, Tom?" + +He smiled out of the gold and sapphire depths of a lover's reverie. + +"One week from the day after the day after to-morrow--and it will be the +longest week-and-two-days of my life, dearest--your grandfather will +take you to church, and I shall bring you away. Won't that be enough?" + +She took him quite seriously. + +"I shall never be a Felicita Young-Dickson, and drag you," she promised. +"But, O Tom! I wish--" + +"I know," he said gently. "You are thinking of the days to come; when +the paths may diverge--yours and mine--ever so little; when there may be +children to choose between their mother's faith and their father's +indifference. But I am not indifferent. So far from it, I am only +anxious now to prove what I was once so bent on disproving." + +"You yourself are the strongest proof," she interposed. "You will see +it, some day." + +"Shall I? I hope so; and that is an honest hope. And really and truly, I +think I have come up a bit--out of the wilderness, you know. I am +willing to admit that this is the best of all possible worlds; and I +want to do my part in making it a little better because I have lived in +it. Also, I'd like to believe in something bigger and better than +protoplasm." + +Her smile was of the kind which stands half-way in the path to tears, +but she spoke bravely to the doubt in his reply. + +"You do believe, Tom, dear; you have never seen the moment when you did +not. It was the doubt that was unreal. When the supreme test came, it +was God's hand that restrained you; you know it now--you knew it at the +time. And afterward it was His grace that enabled you to do what was +just and right. Haven't you admitted all this to yourself?" + +They had crossed the white pike to the manor-house gates and were +turning aside from the driveway into the winding lawn path when he said: + +"To myself, and to one other." Then, very softly: "I sat at my mother's +knee last night, Ardea, and told her all there was to tell." + +Ardea's eyes were shining. "What did she say, Tom, dear--or is it more +than I should ask?" + +"There is nothing you may not ask. She said--it wasn't altogether true, +I'm afraid--but she put her arms around my neck and cried and said: _For +this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found._" + +She slipped her arm in his, and there was a little sob of pure joy at +the catching of her breath. The moon was just rising above the Lebanon +cliff-line, and the beauty of the glorious night-dawn possessed her +utterly. Ah, it was a good world and a generous, bringing rich gifts to +the steadfast! Instinctively she felt that Tom's little confession did +not require an answer; that he was battling his way to the heights which +must be taken alone. + +So they came in the sacred hush of the young night to a great tulip-tree +on the lawn, and where a curiously water-worn limestone boulder served +as a rustic seat wide enough for two whose hearts are one they sat down +together, still in the companionship that needs no speech. It was Tom +who first broke the silence. + +"I have been trying ever since that night last winter to feel my way +out," he said slowly. "But what is to come of it? I can't go back to the +boyhood yesterdays; in a way I have hopelessly outgrown them. Let us +admit that religion has become real again; but Ardea, girl, it isn't +Uncle Silas's religion, or--or my mother's, or even yours. And I don't +know any other." + +She laid a hand on one of his. + +"It is all right, dear; there is only the one religion in all +Christendom--perhaps in all the world, or in God's part of it. The +difference is in people." + +"But this thing that has been slowly happening to me--this thing I am +trying to call convincement: shall I wake up some day and find it gone, +with all the old doubts in the saddle again?" he asked it almost +wistfully. + +"Who can tell?" she said gently. "But it will make no difference; the +immutable fact will be there just the same, whether you are asleep or +waking. We can't always stand on the Mount of Certainty, any of us; and +to some, perhaps, it is never given. But when one saves his enemy's life +and forgives and forgets--O Tom, dear! don't you understand?" + +But now his eyes are love-blinded, and the white-gowned figure beside +him fills all horizons. + +"I can't see past you, Ardea. Nevertheless, I'm going to believe that I +feel the good old pike solid underfoot ... and they say that the House +Beautiful is somewhere at the mountain end of it. If you will hold my +hand, I believe I can make out to walk in it; blindfolded, if I have +to--and without thinking too much of the yesterdays." + +"Ah, the yesterdays!" she said tenderly. "They are precious, too; for +out of them, out of their hindrances no less than their helpings, comes +to-day. Kiss me, twice, Tom; and then I must go in and read to Major +Grandpa." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quickening, by Francis Lynde + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUICKENING *** + +***** This file should be named 17357.txt or 17357.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/3/5/17357/ + +Produced by Paul Ereaut, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/17357.zip b/17357.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ed6bad --- /dev/null +++ b/17357.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e09f8e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #17357 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17357) |
