MARCHING ORDERS
Sam saw nothing now of the inviting homes and their lovely gardens as he
rode back to the station. The world seemed black shot through with
little darts of scarlet. They kept teasing him—these darting flecks of
red, sharp-pointed and angry. At the station he found that it was an
hour and a half before train time, so he sat down stolidly to wait. He
had missed his luncheon, and it was now near dinner time, but it did not
occur to him to get anything to eat.
The time, too, raced by, keeping pace with those swift-speeding thoughts
of his, on which he could not have drawn the reins had he tried. And
presently he was on the train again, going homeward. He soon would see
his father, who would not, Sam had to confess with biting shame, look him
in the eye nor answer any question frankly. Moreover, it would be his
fate to add to his mother’s misery; he would see Hannah turning away from
him even more than she had. And all the town would be looking at him
with the eyes of suspicion. He would read: “Son of a thief! Son of a
thief!” in their averted glances.
Of course his father might not be guilty. And yet, somehow, shamefully,
heart-breakingly, it was borne in upon him that he was. And why should
he, Sam, who had done no harm to anyone, go back to face it? Why should
Annie Laurie and her friends see his shame? He could disappear now—slip
off the train at the next station—and walk and walk till he reached some
place where nobody knew him, and then he could go to work and care for
himself, and win an honorable name. That was what America was for, he
had heard Mr. Carson say, to give a chance to the individual. A man had
a right to prove himself, and to be judged by himself, apart from and
regardless of his family.
Yet, to run away from a thing like that, to let the old neighbors think
him a poor wretch, to lose the regard of—of all those he cared about, was
out of the question. And moreover, he couldn’t let his father go on
keeping back the fortune that belonged to others. He’d have to go back
and make him right himself.
His thoughts came clashing together as a returning wave meets and breaks
against an advancing one upon the seashore. And the tumult and raging
was too much for him. He found himself incapable of going on just then.
The train stopped for a moment at some woodland siding—the track was but
a single one and such stops were occasionally necessary—and almost
without thinking, Sam leaped from the platform and slipped away into the
twilight.
He walked along, hardly knowing where he was going. His suit case was
not much of a handicap, for there was little enough in it. He could not
have told, if any one had asked him, why he kept on pounding along the
road, nor why, when he came to a heavily wooded hill, he should have gone
in through an opening in the trees and begun to climb its gentle slope.
He only knew that he was grateful to have the trees closing around him
like that, hiding him from the sight of men.
He went on, stumbling over roots, half-starting at deep shadows, and
reached the summit. Here the trees had been cut away, and though the
songs of those beneath him surged up to his ears, he presently found
himself standing beneath the clear sky, perfectly sheltered from view.
There was a scythe-like young moon, well toward the zenith, and a few
pale stars. The weather had softened and warmed and spring was sending
her sweet messages abroad. He stood for a moment looking upward; then he
cast himself on the ground, with his face to the earth, and in the
solitude his sharp suffering gave vent to itself in sobs.
Nor was it alone for the shame and sorrow of the present that he wept.
It seemed as if all the tears he had held back during his lonely and
baffled boyhood had their way now and streamed from his eyes. He cried
blindly, passionately. He emptied his soul of grief. And then he sat up
weakly and looked around him. The whippoorwills were calling to each
other. Distant hounds were barking. The delicate little moon was
running her fragile skiff over the sky-sea toward its western port. It
was night, and the world was asleep. What was it Annie Laurie sang?
“All are sleeping, weary heart.
Thou, thou only sleepless art.”
He hoped she was sleeping—that poor Annie Laurie, who was having so much
trouble, and none of it in any way her fault. And had she, too, been
suspecting him? Had she held this terrible idea of his father and kept
it to herself? Had she come to his house that day she had been so kind
and good, to see what they were like—the Disbrows? He seemed to be on
fire from head to foot with shame. Back and forth, like wild beasts
pacing, raged his thoughts. He had no idea of the passage of time. Only
the stars kept moving on, beautifully, in their wonderful order, and the
wind, growing chillier now, blew upon him, and still the whippoorwills
called. By and by the color of the world began to change. Something
strange happened to the night—it grew pale, thin, transparent. The birds
began stirring about, making soft noises. The cattle lowed in the
near-by fields. Then a kind of milky lightness, delicate as one of
Carin’s scarfs, drifted up into the sky. Presently it turned a soft
pink; then rosy red; then it was edged with orange and embroidered with
saffron. It was sunup, and Sam Disbrow faced the most important day of
his life.
He had to make up his mind whether he was a coward or a brave man—whether
he was going to run away or stay and fight. And he didn’t know. As he
got dizzily to his feet, he hadn’t an idea which he was. But the colors
in the sky seemed to be cheering him on like trumpets. Something wild,
strange and splendid swept into his spirit—something that made him feel
as if he were about to set out on a march with brave men—men who could
die for an idea. It was as if he had swung into the ranks, and his
leader had shouted “Forward, march!”
Sam went down the hill, and struck a road on the far side of it. He
followed it to a farmhouse and asked if he might have some breakfast.
They gave him good bacon and corn bread, butter and milk. He ate like
one famished, and then, having learned the schedule of the trains, and
that he had barely time to catch the next one bound toward Lee, he ran as
hard as he could to the distant station. The train drew in while he was
yet a block away, but he sent out a shout that startled the engineer in
his cab. Good-naturedly, they held the train for him. He swung on the
rear platform. And, though he could not forget for a moment all that he
was going back to, still he was indefinably happy.
“Forward, march,” his invisible leader had commanded. Sam did not stop
to find a name for this leader—to call him God. He obeyed, and having
placed himself under marching orders, he fell asleep, and when the
conductor called him at Lee, arose refreshed, and went out to fight his
battle.
There were not many persons on the street. A mid-forenoon quietude
rested over the little town. A few neighbors Sam did meet, but they had
no chance to turn the cold shoulder to him this morning for he hardly saw
them. He was bent for home, and he strode forward with no thought of
anything but meeting his father face to face and hurling at him the
question:
“Did you take Simeon Pace’s money?”
He forgot that he was a son, and must pay a son’s deference, or that
Hector Disbrow, suspected of being a thief, was his father. He felt as
if his soul must put that inquiry to the soul of the man. And on his
answer depended honor, happiness, everything.
As he drew near the house, he saw that there was something unusual about
it. With a sick feeling, he realized that it looked even more vacant and
dejected than ordinarily. He tried the front door; found it locked; sped
to the rear; was unable to enter; and then, rushing to the stable,
realized the whole truth. His family had gone. They had run away in the
night. The whole thing was true. His father was a thief—and now he was
making of himself a fugitive.
But the feeling of having come back to fight a battle as a brave man
would fight it, did not desert him. The black despair of the night
before had been routed by all the better angels of his nature. He was in
the thick of the battle now, beyond question. He turned his back on the
house and went toward the town.
On his way, he met Hi Kitchell, who had been excused from school because
of a toothache, and who was running along, his hand to his face, quite
willing to talk about his misery to anyone. Sam called him.
“Hello, Hi. Toothache?”
“You bet!”
“What you going home for? Why don’t you go to a dentist?”
“Naw. I’m going home.”
“No use in that. Turn around the other way. Come on down to the
dentist’s.”
Hi wriggled. “I’m afraid.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Will yeh?”
“You bet I will. And Hi, I’ve got a trouble that’s much worse than
toothache.”
“Have you, Sam—for sure?”
“For sure I have, Hi. Now if you had a terrible trouble what would you
do? I’ve told you where to go to get a toothache cured, but where would
you go if—if everything you cared for seemed tumbling to pieces?”
Hi came up close to Sam. He had forgotten about his toothache, and he
looked at Sam with his ferret eyes, in which the tears had now gathered.
“Sam,” he said under his breath, “I know about your trouble. I’ve heard
of it. And—and you know your people have gone away. They’ve gone over
the mountain, I reckon. Why, Sam, if I was in trouble like that I’d go
straight to Mr. Summers.”
“But he’s the Methodist preacher, you know, and my folks are Baptists.”
“What’s the difference?” cried Hi defiantly. “I don’t see no difference.
Anyway, if Mr. Summers was a Populist I’d go to him just the same.”
Sam was surprised to hear himself laughing.
“I will,” he declared, and he and Hi tramped on toward town. At the
dentist’s office Sam started to turn in with Hi, but Hi stopped him.
“You don’t need to come,” he said. “I reckon I can stand a little
tooth-tinkering. You get on to Mr. Summers. And—and, Sam—”
“Yes?”
“If you don’t want to stay up there to the house alone, you come down to
our place. My ma, she’d love to have you. Sam—”
“Yes.”
“We know what trouble is, ma and me, see? Don’t nobody around these
parts know better than we do. Mr. Carson, he set us on our feet, and now
we can hold up our heads and look people in the face. My, but it feels
good! But we know what trouble is—all kinds, pretty near. You come to
us.”
Sam held out a tense hand.
“Put it there, Hi.”
Hi “put it there” and turned valorously up the dentist’s terrible stairs.
As for Sam, he kept vigorously on his way. He thought of those
automobiles he had seen the day before, and he felt as if he were all
cranked up, with a good spark on, and was ready for a long hard run. So
he turned up Burchard Avenue, and in at the gate of the little Methodist
parsonage.
The first person he saw was Mrs. Summers, who had just got baby Jonathan
asleep and was setting him out of doors in his carriage, to grow. She
held up a small brown finger to warn Sam that conversation was not to be
permitted in the vicinity of the sleeping prince, and led the way into
the living room. Then she went in search of her husband, who, it
appeared, was shut up in the cell-like room he called his study. He came
striding out of his retreat and grasped Sam by the hand.
“Thought you were off to Rutherford, son.”
“So I was, sir, but—I came back.”
“So I see. Why?”
“I—I heard what they were saying about my father, sir. Dick Heller told
me.”
“Well, well, he did, eh? It was better on the whole, I reckon. I had
two minds to tell you myself, and then I just lacked the ginger. But now
you know what you’re up against, don’t you? And your folks left last
night, too. Some of the neighbors wanted to have a posse set out after
them and bring them back, but Mr. Carson said Annie Laurie Pace was dead
set against it. So he forbade it. You don’t mind my speaking right out?
It’s best that way, isn’t it?”
“Best that way,” murmured Sam with dry lips.
“But you’ve come back, son, to face the music. Well, what can I do to
help you?”
“Mr. Summers, do you think my father guilty? Do you think he took the
money?”
“I’ve no more information on the subject than you,” said Mr. Summers.
“What do you think—as man to man?”
[Picture: “But you’ve come back, son, to face the music.”]
They faced each other silently. Each knew that the other gave verdict
and that it was “guilty.”
“And yet,” said Mr. Summers, “circumstantial evidence is a shaky thing.
A very shaky, tricky thing.”
“Yes,” said Sam. But there was no hope in his tone.
“What do you mean to do, Sam?”
“I’ve come to ask you, sir. I’ve a hundred dollars that father gave me.
I’d like to give that to Annie Laurie if it would help her out any. But
what is a hundred dollars? Why, Mr. Pace had thousands and thousands!
And I hear they’re having a terrible hard time altogether—that they can’t
get fit helpers, and that Miss Adnah isn’t turning out so good a boss
after all, and that the accounts are getting all mixed up. It looks as
if the whole thing was going to pieces.”
“It needn’t,” said Mr. Summers rather sharply.
Sam looked up questioningly.
“If they had one good strong, capable helper on the place, say a man who
was willing to work for nothing for the time being, a man with sense
enough to find out the best ways of feeding cattle and caring for them,
and peddling milk, and who wouldn’t mind sitting up after a hard day’s
work to straighten out books, and who’d try to build up instead of
putting in his best licks tearing down—the way those fool hands they have
now seem to be doing—why, there’d be some hope. See?”
Sam got to his feet.
“Do you mean, Mr. Summers, that I—”
Mr. Summers took his pipe from the mantel shelf, deliberately knocked the
tobacco out of it, refilled it from a generous tobacco can and lit a
match. While the match burned he turned toward Sam.
“You can just stake your life I mean it, son,” said he.
“But will Annie Laurie—will the aunts let me?”
The reverend Mr. Summers nodded his long, thin head.
“I’ll tell ’em to,” he said. “Mr. Carson will advise ’em too. You’ll be
making reparation, Samuel. You’ll be squaring yourself and your family.
You’ll get back what belongs to you, the respect of the community, the
regard of your—particular friends. And you’ll live here, in my house,
understand?”
“Oh, Mr. Summers, I couldn’t do that.”
“I say you’ll live here,” roared the tall preacher. “Do you think I’d
let you go back to that forsaken house and sit there with all the
sneaking ghosts of memory putting their miserable noses in the doors and
windows o’ nights, making goblin faces at you? Not much. Barbara!
Barbara, I say!”
Mrs. Barbara came running on her little feet.
“Absalom,” she whispered excitedly, “what’s the use in waking the baby?
Don’t you know any better than that?”
The giant collapsed.
“Willow waly,” he gasped. “Can’t I ever remember about that young-un?
But, Barbara, I suppose you have been listening to our conversation?”
“I have been sitting in the next room,” replied little Mrs. Summers with
dignity. “It would have been impossible for me to avoid hearing parts of
it.”
“Well, then, what do you think? Is this boy going back to that shut-up
house of his, or is he going to stay here at the parsonage? That’s what
I want to know.”
Mrs. Barbara smiled her sidelong smile.
“What’s the use of asking such a silly question as that?” she inquired.
“Of course he’s going to stay here. I was just thinking I’d run up that
rosebud muslin into curtains for his room.”
The Reverend Summers turned a radiant smile on Sam.
“That’s the woman for you!” he cried. “You think you can get ahead of
her, but you can’t! You’d have to be smarter than a possum to get ahead
of her. Rosebud curtains! Now, what do you think of that, Sam? Could
you have got as far as rosebud curtains in that length of time?”
He caught his little wife up in his great arms and tossed her toward the
ceiling as if she had been a baby. Then he kissed her so loud that the
smack must have been heard in the street, and dropped her in his sleepy
hollow chair.
“Where’s my hat?” he demanded. “My nice, six-year-old Panama—the Panama
of many journeys, of my courtship, of my marriage, and probably of my old
age? Why, Sam, you ought to count the rings on that hat. It’s more’n a
hundred, I reckon—if you judge it like you do oaks. Come, sneak out the
back way so as not to shake the royal bed of the slumbering potentate.
Where are we going? To talk with Miss Adnah Pace. Yes, I know she’s
rather a difficult one to manage. But I can manage her. That’s my
specialty, managing women.”
He stopped at the window to throw a kiss to his smiling wife.
“Come on, son,” he commanded; “forward, march!”
Had he heard the words ringing in Sam’s brain?
Perhaps so. Anyway he spoke them. “Forward, march!” he said. He, too,
knew Sam was going into battle.