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.