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?"