SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY
On the morning after the episode in the barroom which Banks had
described to Milly, Ordway found Baxter awaiting him in a condition
which in a smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter of
excitement.
"So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, I hear, Smith?"
"Well, hardly that," returned Ordway, smiling as he saw the other's
embarrassment break out in drops of perspiration upon his forehead. "I
was in it, I admit, but I can't exactly say that I was 'mixed up.'"
"You got Kit Berry out, eh?--and took him home."
"Nothing short of a sober man could have done it. He lives on the other
side of the town in Bullfinch's Hollow."
"Oh, I've been there," said Baxter, "I've taken him home myself."
The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway's eyes which appeared in the
animation of the moment to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As
Baxter looked at him he felt something of the charm which had touched
the drunken crowd in the saloon.
"His mother was at my house before breakfast," he said, in a tone that
softened as he went on until it sounded as if his whole perspiring
person had melted into it. "She was in a great state, poor creature, for
it seemed that when Kit woke up this morning he promised her never to
touch another drop."
"Well, I hope he'll keep his word, but I doubt it," responded Ordway. He
thought of the bare little room he had seen last night, of the patched
garments drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon the
table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman who had received his burden
from him.
"He may--for a week," commented Baxter, and he added with a big, shaking
laugh, "they tell me you gave 'em a sermon that was as good as a
preacher's."
"Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all."
"Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear
Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton
went home without falling once, he said."
"There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information
Cotton wanted."
"I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis
while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the
younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him
out of a scrape as well as a lawyer could have done."
"I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all."
"Have you ever practised law in Virginia?"
"I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when--" he was going
to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped
short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I
read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory."
"I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively
uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly
indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled
at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and
gaiety in his look?
"Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he
said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the
reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to
have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all
the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like
you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in
blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be
worth as good as a hundred a month to me."
There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his
cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination
during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the man--the
unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely
fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to
emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his
failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man.
One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal
proportions--as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of
the lavish generosity of his heart.
"To tell the truth, I'd hoped for that all along," said Ordway,
withdrawing his gaze with an effort from the soiled cravat. "Do you want
me to start in at the books to-day?"
For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed and went on as if he
found difficulty in selecting the words that would convey his meaning.
"Well, if you don't mind there's a delicate little matter I'd like you
to attend to first. Being a stranger I thought it would be easier for
you than for me--have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly Brooke?"
The interest quickened in Ordway's face.
"Why, yes. I came along the road one day with a farmer who gave me his
whole story--Adam Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name."
Baxter whistled. "Oh, I reckon, he hardly told you the whole story--for
I don't believe there's anybody living except myself who knows what a
darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done an honest piece of
work in his life; he's spent every red cent of his wife's money, and his
sister's too, in some wild goose kind of speculation--and yet, bless my
soul, he has the face to strut in here any day and lord it over me just
as if he were his grandfather's ghost or George Washington. It's queer
about those old families, now ain't it? When they begin to peter out it
ain't just an ordinary petering, but a sort of mortal rottenness that
takes 'em root and branch."
"And so I am to interview this interesting example of degeneration?"
asked Ordway, smiling.
"You've got to make him understand that he can't ship me any more of his
worthless tobacco," exclaimed Baxter in an outburst of indignation. "Do
you know what he does, sir?--Well, he raises a lazy, shiftless,
worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field--plants it too late, tops it
too late, cuts it too late, cures it too late, and then lets it lie
around in some leaky smokehouse until it isn't fit for a hog to chew.
After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers the stuff up on
the first pleasant day in spring and gets an old nigger to cart it to me
in an open wagon. The next day he lounges in here with his palavering
ways, and demands the highest price in the market--and I give it to him!
That's the damned outrage of it, I give it to him!" concluded Baxter
with an excitement in which his huge person heaved like a shaken
mountain. "I've bought his trash for twenty years and ground it into
snuff because I was afraid to refuse a Brooke--but Brooke or no Brooke
there's an end to it now," he turned and waved his hand furiously to a
pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse floor, "there's his trash and it
ain't fit even for snuff!"
He led Ordway back into the building, picked up several leaves from the
pile, smelt them, and threw them down with a contemptuous oath.
"Worm-eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out to Cedar Hill
and tell the man that his stuff ain't fit for anything but fertiliser,"
he went on. "If he wants it he'd better come for it and haul it away."
"And if he refuses?"
"He most likely will--then tell him I'll throw it into the ditch."
"Oh, I'll tell him," responded Ordway, and he was aware of a peculiar
excitement in the prospect of an encounter with the redoubtable Mr.
Beverly. "I'll do my best," he added, going through the archway, while
Baxter followed him with a few last words of instruction and advice. The
big man's courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as Ordway passed into
the street, he hurried after him to suggest that he should approach the
subject with as much delicacy as he possessed. "I wouldn't butt at Mr.
Beverly, if I were you," he cautioned, "just edge around and work in
slowly when you get the chance."
But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he had started out in an
impatience not unmixed with anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he
wondered, and what power did he possess that kept Tappahannock in a
state of slavery? He was glad that Baxter had sent him on the errand,
and the next minute he laughed aloud because the big man had been too
timid to come in person.
He had reached the top of the hill, and was about to turn into the road
he had taken his first night in Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a
shawl, hurried across the street from one of the smaller houses fronting
upon the green.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that helped William
Cotton?"
Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into notice. At the thought
Ordway looked down upon his questioner with a sensation that was almost
one of pleasure.
"He needed business advice and I gave it, that was all," he answered.
"But you wrote down the whole case for him so that he could understand
it and speak for himself," she said, catching her breath in a sob, as
she pulled her thin shawl together. "You got him out of his troubles and
asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing to do as much by me. I am
a widow with five little children, and though I've paid every penny I
could scrape together for the mortgage, the farm is to be sold over our
heads and we have nowhere to go."
Again the glow that was like the glow of pleasure illuminated Ordway's
mind.
"There's not one chance in a hundred that I can help you," he said; "in
the case of William Cotton it was a mere accident. Still if you will
tell me where you live, I will come to you this evening and talk
matters over. If I can help you, I promise you I will with pleasure."
"And for nothing? I am very poor."
He shook his head with a laugh. "Oh, I get more fun out of it than you
could understand!"
After writing down the woman's name in his notebook, he passed into the
country road and bent his thoughts again upon the approaching visit to
Mr. Beverly.
When he reached Cedar Hill, which lay a sombre shadow against the young
green of the landscape, he saw that the dead cedars still lay where they
had fallen across the avenue. Evidently the family temper had assumed an
opposite, though equally stubborn form, in the person of the girl in the
red cape, and she had, he surmised, refused to allow Beverly to profit
by his desecration even to the extent of selling the trees he had
already cut down. Was it from a sentiment, or as a warning, he wondered,
that she left the great cedars barring the single approach to the house?
In either case the magnificent insolence of her revenge moved him to an
acknowledgment of her spirit and her justice.
In the avenue a brood of young turkeys were scratching in the fragrant
dust shed by the trees; and at his approach they scattered and fled
before him. It was long evidently since a stranger had penetrated into
the melancholy twilight of the cedars; for the flutter of the turkeys,
he discovered presently, was repeated in an excited movement he felt
rather than saw as he ascended the stone steps and knocked at the door.
The old hound he had seen the first night rose from under a bench on the
porch, and came up to lick his hand; a window somewhere in the right
wing shut with a loud noise; and through the bare old hall, which he
could see from the half open door, a breeze blew dispersing an odour of
hot soapsuds. The hall was dim and empty except for a dilapidated sofa
in one corner, on which a brown and white setter lay asleep, and a rusty
sword which clanked against the wall with a regular, swinging motion. In
response to his repeated knocks there was a sound of slow steps on the
staircase, and a handsome, shabbily dressed man, holding a box of
dominoes, came to the door and held out his hand with an apologetic
murmur.
"I beg your pardon, but the wind makes such a noise I did not hear your
knock. Will you come inside or do you prefer to sit on the porch where
we can get the view?"
As he spoke he edged his way courteously across the threshold and with a
hospitable wave of his hand, sat down upon one of the pine benches
against the decaying railing. In spite of the shabbiness of his clothes
he presented a singularly attractive, even picturesque appearance, from
the abundant white hair above his forehead to his small, shapely feet
encased now in an ancient pair of carpet slippers. His figure was
graceful and well built, his brown eyes soft and melancholy, and the
dark moustache drooping over his mouth had been trained evidently into
an immaculate precision. His moustache, however, was the one immaculate
feature of his person, for even his carpet slippers were dirty and worn
threadbare in places. Yet his beauty, which was obscured in the first
view by what in a famous portrait might have been called "the tone of
time," produced, after a closer and more sympathetic study, an effect
which, upon Ordway at least, fell little short of the romantic. In his
youth Beverly had been, probably, one of the handsomest men of his time,
and this distinction, it was easy to conjecture, must have been the
occasion, if not the cause, of his ruin. Even now, pompous and slovenly
as he appeared, it was difficult to resist a certain mysterious
fascination which he still possessed. When he left Tappahannock Ordway
had felt only a humorous contempt for the owner of Cedar Hill, but
sitting now beside him on the hard pine bench, he found himself yielding
against his will to an impulse of admiration. Was there not a certain
spiritual kinship in the fact that they were both failures in life?
"You are visiting Tappahannock, then?" asked Beverly with his engaging
smile; "I go in seldom or I should perhaps have seen you. When a man
gets as old and as much of an invalid as I am, he usually prefers to
spend his days by the fireside in the bosom of his family."
The bloom of health was in his cheeks, yet as he spoke he pressed his
hand to his chest with the habitual gesture of an invalid. "A chronic
trouble which has prevented my taking an active part in the world's
affairs," he explained, with a sad, yet cheerful dignity as of one who
could enliven tragedy with a comic sparkle. "I had my ambitions once,
sir," he added, "but we will not speak of them for they are over, and at
this time of my life I can do little more than try to amuse myself with
a box of dominoes."
As he spoke he placed the box on the bench between them and began
patiently matching the little ivory blocks. Ordway expressed a casual
sympathy, and then, forgetting Baxter's warning, he attempted to bring
the conversation to a practical level.
"I am employed now at Baxter's warehouse," he began, "and the object of
my call is to speak with you about your last load of tobacco."
"Ah!" said Beverly, with warming interest, "it is a sufficient
recommendation to have come from Robert Baxter--for that man has been
the best, almost the only, friend I have had in life. It is impossible
to overestimate either his character or my admiration. He has come to my
assistance, sir, when I hardly knew where to turn for help. If you are
employed by him, you are indeed to be envied."
"I am entirely of your opinion," observed Ordway, "but the point this
morning----"
"Well, we'll let that rest a while now," interrupted Beverly, pushing
the dominoes away, and turning his beautiful, serious face upon his
companion. "When there is an opportunity for me to speak of Baxter's
generosity, I feel that I cannot let it escape me. Something tells me
that you will understand and pardon my enthusiasm. There is no boy like
an old boy, sir."
His voice broke, and drawing a ragged handkerchief from the pocket of
his corduroy coat, he blew his nose and wiped away two large teardrops
from his eyes. After such an outburst of sentiment it seemed a positive
indecency to inform him that Baxter had threatened to throw his tobacco
into a ditch.
"He regrets very much that your crop was a failure this year," said
Ordway, after what he felt to be a respectable pause.
"And yet," returned Beverly, with his irrepressible optimism, "if things
had been worse it might even have rotted in the ground. As it was, I
never saw more beautiful seedlings--they were perfect specimens. Had not
the tobacco worms and the frost and the leak in the smokehouse all
combined against me, I should have raised the most splendid crop in
Virginia, sir." The spectacle of this imaginary crop suffused his face
with a glow of ardour. "My health permits me to pay little attention to
the farm," he continued in his eloquent voice, "I see it falling to
rains about me, and I am fortunate in being able to enjoy the beauty of
its decay. Yes, my crop was a failure, I admit," he added, with a
touching cheerfulness, "it lay several months too long in the barn
before I could get it sent to the warehouse--but this was my misfortune,
not my fault, as I am sure Robert Baxter will understand."
"He will find it easier to understand the case than to sell the tobacco,
I fancy."
"However that may be, he is aware that I place the utmost confidence in
his judgment. What he does will be the right thing, sir."
This confession of artless trust was so overpowering that for a moment
Ordway hung back, feeling that any ground would be dangerous ground upon
which to proceed. The very absorption in which Beverly arranged the
dominoes upon the bench added to the childlike simplicity of his
appearance. Then a sudden irritation against the man possessed him, for
he remembered the girl in the red cape and the fallen cedars. From where
he sat now they were hidden by the curve of the avenue, but the
wonderful trees, which shed their rich gloom almost upon the roof of the
house, made him realise afresh the full extent of Beverly's folly. In
the fine spring sunshine whatever beauties were left in the ruined place
showed in an intenser and more vernal aspect. Every spear of grass on
the lawn was tipped with light, and the young green leaves on the lilacs
stood out as if illuminated on a golden background. In one of the
ivy-covered eaves a wren was building, and he could see the flutter of a
bluebird in an ancient cedar.
"It is a beautiful day," remarked Beverly, pensively, "but the lawn
needs trimming." His gaze wandered gently over the tangled sheep mint,
orchard grass and Ailantus shoots which swept from the front steps to
the fallen fence which had once surrounded the place, and he added with
an outburst of animation, "I must tell Micah to turn in the cattle."
Remembering the solitary cow he had seen in a sheltered corner of the
barn, Ordway bit back a smile as he rose and held out his hand.
"After all, I haven't delivered my message," he said, "which was to the
effect that the tobacco is practically unfit for use. Baxter told me to
request you to send for it at your convenience."
Beverly gathered up his dominoes, and rising with no appearance of
haste, turned upon him an expression of suffering dignity.
"Such an act upon my part," he said, "would be a reflection upon
Baxter's ability as a merchant, and after thirty years of friendship I
refuse to put an affront upon him. I would rather, sir, lose every penny
my tobacco might bring me."
His sincerity was so admirable, that for a moment it obscured even in
Ordway's mind the illusion upon which it rested. When a man is honestly
ready to sacrifice his fortune in the cause of friendship, it becomes
the part of mere vulgarity to suggest to him that his affairs are in a
state of penury.
"Then it must be used for fertilisers or thrown away," said Ordway,
shortly.
"I trust myself entirely in Baxter's hands," replied Beverly, in sad but
noble tones, "whatever he does will be the best that could be done under
the circumstances. You may assure him of this with my compliments."
"Well, I fear, there's nothing further to be said," remarked Ordway; and
he was about to make his final good-bye, when a faded lady, wrapped in
a Paisley shawl, appeared in the doorway and came out upon the porch.
"Amelia," said Beverly, "allow me to present Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, Mrs.
Brooke."
Mrs. Brooke smiled at him wanly with a pretty, thin-lipped mouth and a
pair of large rather prominent eyes, which had once been gray but were
now washed into a cloudy drab. She was still pretty in a hopeless,
depressed, ineffectual fashion; and though her skirt was frayed about
the edges and her shoes run down at the heel, her pale, fawn-coloured
hair was arranged in elaborate spirals and the hand she held out to
Ordway was still delicately fine and white. She was like a philosopher,
who, having sunk into a universal pessimism of thought, preserves, in
spite of himself, a small belief or so in the minor pleasures of
existence. Out of the general wreck of her appearance she had clung
desperately to the beauties of her hair and hands.
"I had hoped you would stay to dinner," she remarked in her listless
manner to Ordway. Fate had whipped her into submission, but there was
that in her aspect which never permitted one for an instant to forget
the whipping. If her husband had dominated by his utter incapacity, she
had found a smaller consolation in feeling that though she had been
obliged to drudge she had never learned to do it well. To do it badly,
indeed, had become at last the solitary proof that by right of birth she
was entitled not to do it at all.
At Ordway's embarrassed excuse she made no effort to insist, but stood,
smiling like a ghost of her own past prettiness, in the doorway. Behind
her the bare hall and the dim staircase appeared more empty, more
gloomy, more forlornly naked than they had done before.
Again Ordway reached for his hat, and prepared to pick his way carefully
down the sunken steps; but this time he was arrested by the sound of
smothered laughter at the side of the house, which ran back to the
vegetable garden. A moment later the girl in the red cape appeared
running at full speed across the lawn, pursued by several shrieking
children that followed closely at her skirts. Her clear, ringing
laugh--the laugh of youth and buoyant health--held Ordway motionless for
an instant upon the porch; then as she came nearer he saw that she held
an old, earth-covered spade in her hands and that her boots and short
woollen skirt were soiled with stains from the garden beds. But the
smell of the warm earth that clung about her seemed only to increase the
vitality and freshness in her look. Her vivid animation, her sparkling
glance, struck him even more forcibly than they had done in the street
of Tappahannock.
At sight of Ordway her laugh was held back breathlessly for an instant;
then breaking out again, it began afresh with redoubled merriment, and
sinking with exhaustion on the lowest step, she let the spade fall to
the ground while she buried her wind-blown head in her hands.
"I beg your pardon," she stammered presently, lifting her radiant brown
eyes, "but I've run so fast that I'm quite out of breath." Stopping with
an effort she sought in vain to extinguish her laughter in the curls of
the smallest child.
"Emily," said Beverly with dignity, "allow me to present Mr. Smith."
The girl looked up from the step; and then, rising, smiled brightly upon
Ordway over the spade which she had picked up from the ground.
"I can't shake hands," she explained, "because I've been spading the
garden."
If she recognised him for the tramp who had slept in her barn there was
no hint of it in her voice or manner.
"Do you mean, Emily," asked Beverly, in his plaintive voice, "that you
have been actually digging in the ground?"
"Actually," repeated Emily, in a manner which made Ordway suspect that
the traditional feminine softness was not included among her virtues, "I
actually stepped on dirt and saw--worms."
"But where is Micah?"
"Micah has an attack of old age. He was eighty-two yesterday."
"Is it possible?" remarked Beverly, and the discovery appeared to afford
him ground for cheerful meditation.
"No, it isn't possible, but it's true," returned the girl, with
good-humoured merriment. "As there are only two able-bodied persons on
the place, the mare and I, it seemed to me that one of us had better
take a hand at the spade. But I had to leave off after the first
round," she added to Ordway, showing him her right hand, from the palm
of which the skin had been rubbed away. She was so much like a gallant
boy that Ordway felt an impulse to take the hand in his own and examine
it more carefully.
"Well, I'm very much surprised to hear that Micah is so old," commented
Beverly, dwelling upon the single fact which had riveted his attention.
"I must be making him a little present upon his birthday."
The girl's eyes flashed under her dark lashes, but remembering Ordway's
presence, she turned to him with a casual remark about the promise of
the spring. He saw at once that she had achieved an indignant detachment
from her thriftless family, and the ardent, almost impatient energy with
which she fell to labour was, in itself, a rebuke to the pleasant
indolence which had hastened, if it had not brought about, the ruin of
the house. Was it some temperamental disgust for the hereditary idleness
which had spurred her on to take issue with the worn-out traditions of
her ancestors and to place herself among the labouring rather than the
leisure class? As she stood there in her freshness and charm, with the
short brown curls blown from her forehead, the edge of light shining in
her eyes and on her lips, and the rich blood kindling in her vivid face,
it seemed to Ordway, looking back at her from the end of his forty
years, that he was brought face to face with the spirit of the future
rising amid the decaying sentiment of the past.