II

Sixty miles southeast of the mountain drowsed the town of Jackson, sinew

of the old South as surely as Adamsville was brawn of the new.

Gettysburg and even Appomattox had said their words before the earliest

Ross had squared the logs for the first shanty over Ross Creek, from

which the iron city grew; and at that time Jackson had already counted

its half century.

It lay in the crotch where the river forked. Protected by water on two

sides, and by open barrens on the third, its location had attracted

wandering Cherokees into building here their huts and log stockades,

until guarded Tallulah became the Indian heart of the region. The

persistent seeping of pioneer migration from the eastern seaboard eddied

around it; the white interloper treated here with the native, coveted

the prosperous red fortress, and made it his own. Its name was changed

later to that of the popular hero who drove back the redcoats from the

rich levees of New Orleans, and scattered before him the redskins of the

palmettoed peninsula at the southeast land's end. When the young

nineteenth century brought statehood, bustling Jackson became the

capital. It is hard for those who remember Jackson, or Charleston, or

Richmond, in the sleepy glamor of their later years, to think of these

as uncouth pioneer clearings: but such was their beginning. The first

town hall in Jackson was a blockhouse, and more than once the straggly

strings of huts at the split of the river, which constituted the

settlement, had seen marauding Indians repelled from its main street.

Political dignity transfigured the village out of its buckskin and

bowie-knife existence, into a leisurely civic siesta. Governors and

legislators peopled its walks; pillared mansions grew at the heads of

long avenues of water oak. The hilly barrens and sedgy river-fields were

combed into ordered rows of large-bladed corn and stocky cotton bushes.

Slavery came early, and the slave quarters stretched behind the mansions

and in the parched treeless opens. The anomalous shanties of the poor

whites sprang like fungoids on outlying poor lands, and bunched near the

river pier, where the fussy side-wheelers, the _Tallulah_ and the

_Southern Star_, churned the muddy water, eager to paddle away past

swampland and sandy waste to the gulf. Idling negroes sprawled along the

pier, and on the bales before gin and compress; vehement orators in the

Capitol fisted their defiance to the dastardly Liberty Men coiled like

vipers in the arid North. The heavy pour of the sun, and the formal

courtesy of the lords of the dark soil and the dark soul, mellowed the

manner of the place, shaped it into that unhealthy beauty and charm men

call the Old South.

One of the earliest white settlers had been a Potomac planter, Derrell

Judson. His vigorous descendants had grown up with the town, and left

their touch upon the whole somnolent section. There was a disused

Judson's Landing three miles up stream, and a ramshackle Judsontown on

the Greenville Road to the southwest. Two of the family had been mayors

of the village; there had been a wartime lieutenant-governor, and at

least one congressman, with a proud host of lesser officials. None of

the family had meant more to Judson eyes than a grandson of the early

settler, Judge Tom Judson, whose flashing spirit had broken from his

last year at college, in the troubled early spring of '61, to enter the

gray cavalry. A year later, a captain now, he had hurled himself in

daily desperate charges against the imperturbable Army of the Potomac,

following his beloved Stonewall. At last an exploding shell carried off

an arm, and with it his military usefulness to the Confederacy. When he

walked weakly out of the hospital, two years later, the cause had become

too hopeless for his capable direction to be of value.

With the war's end came the order, signed by his own governor, calling

for emancipation. In front of the weather-etched pillars of the portico,

Judge Judson lined up his slaves, and dismissed them from servile

happiness into precarious freedom. Close beside him were his three sons,

Derrell, Pratt, and Paul, the eldest only six; their young minds were

black with tearful rage against the "damn Yankees" who were causing the

exile of the loved negroes. The black faces were grimed with tears; this

changed social condition seemed nothing but a calamity to the

well-tended household.

Many of the slaves could not be persuaded to leave. Old Isaac, the

coachman, hung onto the reins until he dropped dead at the cemetery, one

broiling Decoration Day. Aunt Jane, who superintended the cooking, dared

"them Bureau-ers" to meddle around her kitchen. The younger negroes

gradually straggled away; but their places were filled with servants as

well known to the family. The masters' attitude toward them, as might

have been expected, remained almost the same as during "slavery times."

The judge built out of the empty days an enviable practice of law, and

trained one son to aid him in this. The three brothers gradually took

their father's place in Jackson living; and at the beginning of the last

decade of the century, they were essential to the well-ordered

existence of the community. The Jackson Hotel, where the present Derrell

Judson had succeeded an uncle, had been the center of the town's

visiting life for fifty years. The time-specked shingle, "Judson &

Judson, Practitioners in All Courts of Law and Equity," still hung above

a run-down office entrance, where Pratt Judson kept the firm name in

use, although there had been no partner for more than fifteen years. The

youngest brother, Paul, had graduated from the State University at

Greenville the year of his father's death. With an initiative tendency

unpromised by his blood, he determined to lead off into a new line,

deciding upon real estate, through a belief in the physical expansion of

the river town.

Two doors from the Judson house was the Barbour "city" place. It was

during the solemn painfulness of his father's funeral that Mary Barbour

first impressed herself upon the sorrowing youngest son's imagination.

They had been boy and girl together; in those days they had decocted

frequent mud confections with Pratt, and Jack Lamar and Cherokee Ryland.

But the girl had grasped a rare chance to attend an art school in

Philadelphia, just after Paul started to college; and now, after the

absence, he found her grown into a new and surprising grace of person.

There was a hint of shy primitive beauty in her irregular features. The

hair was chestnut, and as straight as an Indian's; the eyes possessed

that quality of sympathetic comprehension that spoke the mother-soul.

His heart, emptied by the gap of his father's absence, needed a new

object to cling to; and she was attractive, obvious, and near.

Mary Barbour had already admired Paul with an artist's aloof gaze; she

saw in him a tall, black-eyed young beau, the best shot in the Jackson

Grays, the invariable cotillion leader. Now she began to know him as

the ardent lover as well. With characteristic determination, he elbowed

all tentative rivals out of the way. The girl found herself escorted

with gallant insistence everywhere by this headstrong and heartstrong

wooer; dances, picnics, gossiping church suppers,--for eleven months his

attendance delighted heart-coupling minds in the little town.

One cool June night he caught her hands within his, in the honey-suckled

dimness of the Barbour side-porch.

"Mary, dearest, dearest,----" His assurance deserted him for a moment,

his throat gulped. He clung to the relaxed fingers. "We--we've

waited----" he paused lamely, then finished assertively, "It's been long

enough!"

A caressing smile went with her answer. "It's not a year, Paul,--mother

was engaged almost four."

"I can take care of you now," he urged with affectionate crispness.

"We've had enough of this, honey. You fix the date--to-night!" His arms

bound her closer.

"Paul--you hurt----"

"Then do as I say," he laughed, triumphantly passionate.

He won her answer.

The wedding helped christen the new Baptist Church. The systematic

sweetness of the honeymoon included a flashed glimpse of Mammoth Cave,

and a short stay at Niagara. Upon the return followed eager days and

nights in which she was allowed to grow into his plans. He discussed his

projects fully with her, taking her to see the houses, lots, and

subdivisions from which their living was chiefly derived. She marveled

at his ceaseless energy. Drive, drive, drive,--in a fading community

dozing in the enervating aroma of decaying days: no wonder he succeeded

so well! The business constantly broadened in importance and scope.

Mary had her plans and dreams too,--intimate visions that left small

room for the old desires toward artistic success; and these she soon

shared with Paul. The husband was anxious that the first baby should be

a boy. He had not tired of his grinding work; but he had begun to

realize that the slowly maturing schemes would inevitably open out

further opportunities; business was a never ending, slowly widening

game. He could, of course, confine his activities to the simple

beginnings. But he realized that this could only mean that some one else

would take advantage of what he had started; and he wanted to keep his

fingers clamped upon the pulse of it all. The time would come when a son

who could fit into his visionings would be an invaluable aid.

The days plodding toward the birth, when Mary walked, more and more

alone, down the narrowing road to the ultimate taut gate of motherhood,

made the warm-eyed bride even dearer to him. It seemed so unfair, this

voluntary tempting of death required of the woman--there were hours when

he hated himself for the summoning of the ancient curse upon woman, and

would have put himself in pledge to recall the irrevocable act. The

dragging schedule of pain should somehow be altered. But the thought of

the tiny son on his insensate way was a consolation.

The elaborate layette, with ample contributions from friends and

relatives, was threaded with tiny blue ribbons; the baby's arrival, like

a human alkali on litmus-paper, changed the significant shade to pink.

Eleanor, his first born, gradually claimed her father's regard; but,

although Paul never referred to it, the perversion of his hopes was a

tremendous disappointment.

The second girl, Susan, followed two short years later. By this time the

father had pushed into the management of the Jackson Street Railway, and

had seen to it that the persistent dummy duly puffed and creaked

through Newtown, a cheap suburb he had plotted out around the cotton

mill to the north. Absorption in this scarcely left him time to regret

the second daughter; he accepted the fact as a matter of course; he did

not waste regret upon a thing he could not change.

Then came Pelham, the first boy. Mary never forgot the days of packed

happiness when she sang over his crinkly head, in the creaky yellow

rocker that had been her mother's. They had been waiting for him so

long,--the father was so boyishly happy and proud of the wrinkled pink

bundle that her mother put in his arms for a precious moment, even

before Mary had seen her son,--somehow making a man child seemed a big

achievement. And he had been her boy from the first; the fourth baby,

fat little Hollis, never touched her strung heart chords as did the

earlier son.

They were indeed lovely children, Mary was fond of telling herself. But

they were a constant drain upon her time and attention, and upon Paul's

bank account. Sheer desire to accomplish had driven him at first; with

the coming of the boys, he had to buckle down for their sakes.

The renewed vigor of his enterprise lengthened the reach of his

dealings. Among the real estate men throughout the state who measured

themselves against him, he found none shrewder or more alert than an

Adamsville operator, old Nathaniel Guild. This man, interested in some

state grants, stopped at the Jackson Hotel while the legislature was in

session, and thus met Paul. The local operator felt the calculating

scrutiny of the other during all of an all-day barbecue and junket taken

by the law-makers at Tallulah Shoals. Evidently satisfied at last, on

the ride in the elder man leaned over, and said with hesitating gravity,

"You've been to Adamsville?"

"Why, yes.... Not only pleasure trips; we handle lots out Hazelton way."

Guild waved this aside. "An excrescence. Have you noticed the

mountain--the one west of the city?"

"Recently I've only been there on business----"

The gray eyes narrowed and sparkled. "I'm talking business. There's land

for sale there, that will quadruple in value in ten years. The

development must be in that direction,--that is, for the first-class

residence section. I've got a little to invest; I want some one to go in

with me. What do you say?"

"I like to watch my money. I'm tied up here----"

"Come to the iron city: it needs iron men." Appraising admiration spoke

in his glance. "I think you'd fit. Why, man, Jackson hasn't added a

thousand people in forty years; Adamsville has fifty thousand now, to

your five."

The idea startled Paul. Leave Jackson! It was one thing for Dr. Ryland

to go away, or the Lamar boys, or even Judge Roscoe Little and Borden

Crenshaw. They were comparative newcomers; the earliest Crenshaw dated

back only sixty years. But the Judsons were a Jackson fixture: his place

was here. His black eyes clouded uncertainly; at that, he might invest a

little....