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--"