For twenty years the social life of New Damascus had been as an
untended orchard,--shapeless, perfunctory and reminiscent. Its estate
was a memory running back to the old Woolwine Mansion and the days
of Aaron. It had no rallying point. There was youth as a biological
fact without gaiety, sparkle or sweet daring. Quality Street lived on
its income. Young men succeeded their fathers in business. The girls,
after music and finishing at Philadelphia, returned to New Damascus and
married them.
The Gib Mansion might as well have been a mausoleum. Life was never
entertained there. It did not expect to be. Jonet was nobody until Gib
married her. After that she was the community’s commiseration. She died
when Agnes, their only child, was ten. The obsequies were private. At
the grave, besides the sexton and the minister, and Gib holding Agnes
by the hand, there was one other person. That was Gearhard, the father
of Jonet, who stood with his feet crossed and his left forearm resting
on the sexton’s shoulder as on the bellows-sweep, in a contemplative
attitude. People spoke of it literally. There, they said, was another
thing Enoch had broken and cast away. No wonder he wished to bury it
privately.
Agnes was sent off to school. She had lately returned and was now
living at the Gib Mansion alone with her father. Nobody knew her. There
was some mystery about her. A story of unknown origin, and unverified,
was that she had been found out at school in an unchaperoned escapade,
which so enraged old Enoch that he brought her home and deprived her
of liberty. It would be like him to do that. Moreover, in the iron age
such discipline was feasible. Youth had not yet delivered itself from
parental tyranny. That was reserved to be one of the marvels of the
steel age. In 1870 any girl of seventeen was dependent, and one in the
situation of Agnes Gib was helpless.
John’s advent on this iron grey scene produced a magical change. He was
rightful heir to all the social tradition there was in New Damascus.
This would have meant nothing in itself. But he liked it. He was not
then nor did he ever become the kind of man who must renounce life to
reach success. That is a matter partly of temperament and partly of
capacity. Knowledge necessary to his ends he acquired easily, seemingly
without effort, even technical knowledge. His imagination worked with
the ease of fancy and knew no fatigue. Business was a game at which he
played. Therefore it could not devour him. Without a moment’s notice
he could turn from one kind of play to another and back again. He
would dance all night and come with a crystal mind to the day’s work.
Frivolity seemed to stimulate or recharge his mind.
The youth of New Damascus adored him. A group spontaneously formed
around him. He kept large rooms at the inn, where he entertained. More
than half his time was spent away from New Damascus, but the new social
order adjusted itself to his movements. When he was at home there were
parties, dances, suppers, excursions, flirtings and episodes. All this
took place on the plane of Quality Street. But his liking for people
neither began nor ended there. It knew no petty distinctions. There
were two kinds of people in the world,--his kind and others. And his
kind were all the same to him no matter where he found them. He had
friends among the mill workers--big, roystering fellows with whom he
often went revelling to fill out a night. One of these was Alexander
Thane, the splendid puddler who had spoken to him that first night in
the mill. They became fast friends.
He scandalized people without offending them. Whatever he did, that
was John. He did anything he liked and it was forgiven beforehand.
His errancies were extravagant and alarming, such as had been almost
certain to involve a superficial nature in disaster. They were never
wicked or immoral, never hurtful to others and seemed but to innocently
enhance the romantic aspect of his personality. This may be true only
of one whose character is superior to his follies. As his character
came more and more to be realized people began to say, “Well, that’s
one young man Enoch Gib won’t break.”
Enoch regarded him with wonder and misgiving. John’s impact on the
business had been phenomenal. Perhaps no one else could have done it;
certainly no one else wasting so much of himself in ways for which
Gib felt the utmost contempt could at the same time have attended to
business at all. Yet his way with it grew steadily stronger and more
remarkable, no matter what else he did.
Gradually there grew up in Gib a vague baffled sense of recurrence.
As New Damascus had idolized Aaron in the old time so now it idolized
John. Was that because he was Aaron’s son? For a while it had that
aspect. Then it could no longer be so explained. Something that had
been was taking place again. What was it? The old man came to this
question again and again. It tormented him for a year of nights. Then
suddenly he had the answer.
New Damascus idolized this person not because he was Aaron’s son but
_because he was Aaron_!
Once this wild thought had occurred to Enoch it expanded rapidly,
filling his whole mind, and became an obsession. Aaron lived again! He
had returned with youth and strength restored.
The physical resemblance was in fact very striking. Enoch began to
study it surreptitiously. The sight tortured and fascinated him. He
could not let it alone. He decided he had been mistaken about that look
of Esther which at first he had seemed to see in the young man’s eyes.
It was not there. Thank God for that. This youth was Aaron himself.
From the moment of perceiving this thing with hallucinated clarity
Enoch hated John and arranged his thoughts to dwell against him
dangerously. How should he deal with the situation? It had no
tangibility. If he spoke of it people would think he was crazy. Yet
there was the fact. Aaron by foul strategy had entered the business
again. The circumstances of his entering it in the guise of a son
were extraordinary. As the old man reviewed the incident it assumed a
flagrant, preposterous aspect. Aaron had outwitted him.
Yes. Aaron had always been able to do that. But this was an outrageous
act! Nothing like it had ever happened before in the world. And now
it behooved him to act cautiously, think cunningly, and above all
to conceal the fact that he knew. Merely again to put Aaron out of
the business, as he could easily do, would be neither quittance nor
justice.