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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34419-8.txt b/34419-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6a4caf --- /dev/null +++ b/34419-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13528 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ancient Law, by Ellen Glasgow + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ancient Law + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: November 23, 2010 [EBook #34419] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIENT LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + +THE ANCIENT LAW + + +BY + +THE SAME AUTHOR + + THE WHEEL OF LIFE + THE DELIVERANCE + THE BATTLE-GROUND + THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS + THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE + PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET + THE DESCENDANT + + + + +The Ancient Law + +By + +ELLEN GLASGOW + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company +1908 + +COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY +PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1908 + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED +INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES +INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN + +TO +MY GOOD FRIEND EFFENDI + + + + +CONTENTS + + +BOOK FIRST--THE NEW LIFE + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. The Road 3 + + II. The Night 15 + + III. The Return to Tappahannock 31 + + IV. The Dream of Daniel Smith 42 + + V. At Tappahannock 54 + + VI. The Pretty Daughter of the Mayor 62 + + VII. Shows the Graces of Adversity 72 + +VIII. "Ten Commandment Smith" 90 + + IX. The Old and the New 101 + + X. His Neighbour's Garden 111 + + XI. Bullfinch's Hollow 123 + + XII. A String of Coral 135 + +BOOK SECOND--THE DAY OF RECKONING + + I. In Which a Stranger Appears 147 + + II. Ordway Compromises With the Past 162 + + III. A Change of Lodging 174 + + IV. Shows That a Laugh Does not Heal a Heartache 185 + + V. Treats of a Great Passion in a Simple Soul 196 + + VI. In Which Baxter Plots 209 + + VII. Shows That Politeness, Like Charity, Is an Elastic Mantle 222 + +VIII. The Turn of the Wheel 234 + + IX. At the Cross-roads 248 + + X. Between Man and Man 256 + + XI. Between Man and Woman 268 + +BOOK THIRD--THE LARGER PRISON + + I. The Return to Life 281 + + II. His Own Place 290 + + III. The Outward Pattern 303 + + IV. The Letter and the Spirit 317 + + V. The Will of Alice 329 + + VI. The Iron Bars 341 + + VII. The Vision and the Fact 353 + +VIII. The Weakness in Strength 363 + +BOOK FOURTH--LIBERATION + + I. The Inward Light 379 + + II. At Tappahannock Again 392 + + III. Alice's Marriage 409 + + IV. The Power of the Blood 420 + + V. The House of Dreams 434 + + VI. The Ultimate Choice 443 + + VII. Flight 454 + +VIII. The End of the Road 469 + + IX. The Light Beyond 482 + + + + +BOOK FIRST + +THE NEW LIFE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE ROAD + + +Though it was six days since Daniel Ordway had come out of prison, he +was aware, when he reached the brow of the hill, and stopped to look +back over the sunny Virginia road, that he drank in the wind as if it +were his first breath of freedom. At his feet the road dropped between +two low hills beyond which swept a high, rolling sea of broomsedge; and +farther still--where the distance melted gradually into the blue sky--he +could see not less plainly the New York streets through which he had +gone from his trial and the walls of the prison where he had served five +years. Between this memory and the deserted look of the red clay road +there was the abrupt division which separates actual experience from the +objects in a dream. He felt that he was awake, yet it seemed that the +country through which he walked must vanish presently at a touch. Even +the rough March wind blowing among the broomsedge heightened rather than +diminished the effect of the visionary meeting of earth and sky. + +As he stood there in his ill-fitting clothes, with his head bared in the +sun and the red clay ground to fine dust on his coarse boots, it would +have been difficult at a casual glance to have grouped him +appropriately in any division of class. He might have been either a +gentleman who had turned tramp or a tramp who had been born to look a +gentleman. Though he was barely above medium height, his figure produced +even in repose an impression of great muscular strength, and this +impression was repeated in his large, regular, and singularly expressive +features. His face was square with a powerful and rather prominent mouth +and chin; the brows were heavily marked and the eyes were of so bright a +blue that they lent an effect which was almost one of gaiety to his +smile. In his dark and slightly coarsened face the colour of his eyes +was intensified until they appeared to flash at times like blue lights +under his thick black brows. His age was, perhaps, forty years, though +at fifty there would probably be but little change recorded in his +appearance. At thirty one might have found, doubtless, the same lines of +suffering upon his forehead and about his mouth. + +As he went on over some rotting planks which spanned a stream that had +gone dry, the road he followed was visible as a faded scar in a stretch +of impoverished, neutral-toned country--the least distinctive and most +isolated part of what is known in Virginia as "the Southside." A +bleached monotony was the one noticeable characteristic of the +landscape--the pale clay road, the dried broomsedge, and even the +brownish, circular-shaped cloud of smoke, which hung over the little +town in the distance, each contributing a depressing feature to a face +which presented at best an unrelieved flatness of colour. The single +high note in the dull perspective was struck by a clump of sassafras, +which, mistaking the mild weather for a genial April, had flowered +tremulously in gorgeous yellow. + +The sound of a wagon jolting over the rough road, reached him presently +from the top of the hill, and as he glanced back, he heard a drawling +curse thrown to the panting horses. A moment later he was overtaken by +an open spring wagon filled with dried tobacco plants of the last +season's crop. In the centre of the load, which gave out a stale, +pungent odour, sat a small middle-aged countryman, who swore mild oaths +in a pleasant, jesting tone. From time to time, as the stalks beneath +him were jostled out of place, he would shift his seat and spread out +his short legs clad in overalls of blue jean. Behind him in the road the +wind tossed scattered and damaged leaves of tobacco. + +When the wagon reached Ordway, he glanced over his shoulder at the +driver, while he turned into the small grass-grown path amid the clumps +of sassafras. + +"Is that Bernardsville over there?" he asked, pointing in the direction +of the cloud of smoke. + +The wagon drew up quickly and the driver--who showed at nearer view to +be a dirty, red-bearded farmer of the poorer class--stared at him with +an expression which settled into suspicion before it had time to denote +surprise. + +"Bernardsville! Why, you've come a good forty miles out of your road. +That thar's Tappahannock." + +"Tappahannock? I hadn't heard of it." + +"Mebbe you ain't, but it never knowed it." + +"Anything going on there? Work, I mean?" + +"The biggest shippin' of tobaccy this side o' Danville is goin' on thar. +Ever heard o' Danville?" + +"I know the name, but the tobacco market is about closed now, isn't it? +The season's over." + +The man's laugh startled the waiting horses, and lifting their heads +from a budding bush by the roadside, they moved patiently toward +Tappahannock. + +"Closed? Bless you, it never closes--Whoa! thar, won't you, darn you? To +be sure sales ain't so brisk to-day as they war a month back, but I'm +jest carryin' in my leetle crop to Baxter's warehouse." + +"It isn't manufactured, then--only bought and sold?" + +"Oh, it's sold quick enough and bought, too. Baxter auctions the leaf +off in lots and it's shipped to the factories in Richmond an' in +Danville. You ain't a native of these parts, I reckon?" + +"A native--no? I'm looking for work." + +"What sort of work? Thar's work an' work. I saw a man once settin' out +in an old field doin' a picture of a pine tree, an' he called it work. +Wall, wall, if you're goin' all the way to Tappahannock, I reckon I kin +give you a lift along. Mebbe you kin pick up an odd job in Baxter's +warehouse--thar's a sayin' that he feeds all the crows in Tappahannock." + +He drove on with a chuckle, for Ordway had declined the proffered +"lift," and the little cloud of dust raised by the wagon drifted slowly +in the direction of the town. + +A mile farther on Ordway found that as the road approached Tappahannock, +the country lost gradually its aspect of loneliness, and the colourless +fields were dotted here and there with small Negro cabins, built for the +most part of unbarked pine logs laid roughly cross-wise to form square +enclosures. Before one of these primitive dwellings a large black woman, +with a strip of checked blue and white gingham bound about her head, was +emptying a pail of buttermilk into a wooden trough. When she saw Ordway +she nodded to him from the end of the little path, bordered by rocks, +which led from the roadside to the single stone step before her cabin +door. + +As he watched the buttermilk splash into the trough, Ordway remembered, +with a spasm of faintness, that he had eaten nothing since the day +before, and turning out of the road, he asked the woman for a share of +the supper that she gave the pigs. + +"Go 'way, honey, dis yer ain' fit'n fur you," she replied, resting the +pail under her arm against her rolling hip, "I'se des' thowin' hit ter +de hawgs." + +But when he had repeated his request, she motioned to a wooden bench +beside a scrubby lilac bush on which a coloured shirt hung drying, and +going into the single room inside, brought him a glass of buttermilk and +a piece of corn bread on a tin plate. While he ate hungrily of the +coarse food a half-naked Negro baby, covered with wood ashes, rolled +across the threshold and lay sprawling in the path at his feet. + +After a little rambling talk the woman went back into the cabin, where +she whipped up cornmeal dough in an earthenware bowl, turning at +intervals to toss a scrap or two to a red and white cock that hovered, +expectant, about the doorway. In the road a covered wagon crawled by, +and the shadow it threw stretched along the path to the lilac bush where +the coloured shirt hung drying. The pigs drank the buttermilk from the +trough with loud grunts; the red and white cock ventured, alert and +wary, across the threshold; and the Negro baby, after sprawling on its +stomach in the warm earth, rolled over and lay staring in silence at the +blue sky overhead. + +There was little beauty in the scene except the beauty which belongs to +all things under the open sky. Road and landscape and cabin were bare +even of any chance effect of light and shadow. Yet there was life--the +raw, primal life of nature--and after his forty years of wasted +experience, Ordway was filled with a passionate desire for life. In his +careless pursuit of happiness he had often found weariness instead, but +sitting now homeless and penniless, before the negro's cabin, he +discovered that each object at which he looked--the long road that led +somewhere, the smoke hanging above the distant town, the deep-bosomed +negro mother and the half-naked negro baby--that each of these possessed +an interest to which he awakened almost with a start of wonder. And +yielding to the influence of his thought, his features appeared to lose +gradually their surface coarseness of line. It was as if his mouth grew +vague, enveloped in shadow, while the eyes dominated the entire face and +softened its expression to one of sweetness, gaiety and youth. The child +that is in every man big enough to contain it looked out suddenly from +his altered face. + +He was thinking now of a day in his boyhood--of an early autumn morning +when the frost was white on the grass and the chestnuts dropped heavily +from the spreading boughs and the cider smelt strong and sweet as it +oozed from the crushed winesaps. On that morning, after dressing by +candlelight, he had gone into town with his maiden aunt, a lady whom he +remembered chiefly by her false gray curls which she wore as if they had +been a halo. At the wayside station, while they had waited for the train +to the little city of Botetourt, he had seen a convict brought in, +handcuffed, on his way to the penitentiary, and in response to the boy's +persistent questioning, his aunt had told him that the man was wicked, +though he appeared to the child's eyes to be only miserable--a thin, +dirty, poorly clad labourer with a red cotton handkerchief bound tightly +about his jaw. A severe toothache had evidently attacked him, for while +he had stared sullenly at the bare planks of the floor, he had made from +time to time a suffering, irritable movement with his head. At each +gesture the guard had called out sharply: "Keep still there, won't you?" +to which the convict had responded by a savage lowering of his heavy +brows. + +For the first time it had occurred to the child that day that there must +be a strange contradiction--a fundamental injustice in the universal +scheme of nature. He had always been what his father had called +impatiently "a boy with ideas," and it had seemed to him then that this +last "idea" of his was far the most wonderful of them all--more +wonderful than any he had found in books or in his own head at night. At +the moment he had felt it swell so large in his heart that a glow of +happiness had spread through his body to his trembling hands. Slipping +from his aunt's hold he had crossed the room to where the convict sat +sullenly beside his guard. + +"I'll give you all my money," he had cried out joyously, "because I am +so much happier than you." + +The convict had started and looked up with an angry flash in his eyes; +the guard had burst into a loud laugh while he spat tobacco juice +through the window; the silver had scattered and rolled under the +benches on the plank floor; and the child's aunt, rustling over in her +stiff brocade, had seized his arm and dragged him, weeping loudly, into +the train. So his first mission had failed, yet at this day he could +remember the joy with which he had stretched out his little hand and the +humiliation in which he had drawn it back. That was thirty years ago, +but he wondered now if the child's way had been God's way, after all? + +For there had come an hour in his life when the convict of his boyhood +had stood in closer relationship to his misery than the people whom he +had touched in the street. His childish memories scattered like mist, +and the three great milestones of his past showed bare and white, as his +success, his temptation and his fall. He remembered the careless +ambition of his early youth, the brilliant promise of his college years, +and the day on which he had entered as a younger member the great +banking house of Amos, Bonner, and Amos. Between this day and the slow +minutes when he had stood in his wife's sitting-room awaiting his +arrest, he could find in his thoughts no gradation of years to mark the +terrible swiftness of his descent. In that time which he could not +divide Wall Street had reached out and sucked him in; the fever of +speculation had consumed like disease the hereditary instincts, the +sentiments of honour, which had barred its way. One minute he had stood +a rich man on the floor of the Stock Exchange--and was it an instant or +a century afterwards that he had gone out into the street and had known +himself to be a beggar and a criminal? Other men had made millions with +the use of money which they held in trust; but the star of the gambler +had deserted him at the critical hour; and where other men had won and +triumphed, he had gone down, he told himself, dishonoured by a stroke of +luck. In his office that day a mirror over the mantel had showed him his +face as he entered, and he had stopped to look at it almost with +curiosity--as if it were the face of a stranger which repelled him +because it bore some sinister likeness to his own. After this there had +come days, weeks, months, when at each sudden word, at each opening of +the door, he had started, half sickened, by fear of the discovery which +he knew must come. His nerves had quivered and given way under the +pressure; he had grown morose, irritable, silent; and in some +half-insane frenzy, he had imagined that his friends, his family, his +wife, even his young children, had begun to regard him with terror and +suspicion. But at last the hour had come, and in the strength with which +he had risen to meet it, he had won back almost his old self--for +courage, not patience, was the particular virtue of his temperament. He +had stood his trial bravely, had heard his sentence without a tremor, +and had borne his punishment without complaint. The world and he were +quits now, and he felt that it owed him at least the room for a fair +fight. + +The prison, he had said once, had squared him with his destiny, yet +to-day each act of his past appeared to rivet, not itself, but its +result upon his life. Though he told himself that he was free, he knew +that, in the reality of things, he was still a prisoner. From the lowest +depths that he had touched he was reached even now by the agony of his +most terrible moment when, at the end of his first hopeless month, he +had found awaiting him one day a letter from his wife. It was her final +good-bye, she had written; on the morrow she would leave with her two +children for his father's home in Virginia; and the single condition +upon which the old man had consented to provide for them was that she +should separate herself entirely from her husband. "The condition is +hard," she had added, "made harder, too, by the fact that you are his +son and my only real claim upon him is through you--yet when you +consider the failure of our life together, and that the children's +education even is unprovided for, you will, I feel sure, admit that my +decision has been a wise one." + +The words had dissolved and vanished before his eyes, and turning away +he had flung himself on his prison bed, while the hard, dry sobs had +quivered like blows in his chest. Yet she was right! His judgment had +acquitted her in the first agony of his reproach, and the unerring +justice in her decision had convicted him with each smooth, calm +sentence in her letter. As he lay there he had lost consciousness of the +bare walls and the hot sunshine that fell through the grating, for the +ultimate desolation had closed over him like black waters. + +A little later he had gone from his cell and taken up his life again; +but all that he remembered of it now was a voice that had called to him +in the prison yard. + +"You look so darn sunk in the mouth I'll let you have my last +smoke--damn you!" + +Turning sullenly he had accepted the stranger's tobacco, unaware at the +moment that he was partaking of the nature of a sacrament--for while he +had smoked there in his dogged misery, he had felt revive in his heart a +stir of sympathy for the convict he had seen at the wayside station in +Virginia. As if revealed by an inner illumination the impressions of +that morning had started, clear as light, into his brain. The frost on +the grass, the dropping chestnuts, the strong sweet smell of the crushed +winesaps--these things surrounded in his memory the wretched figure of +the man with the red cotton handkerchief bound tightly about his swollen +jaw. But the figure had ceased now to stand for itself and for its own +degradation alone--haunting, tragic, colossal, it had become in his +thoughts the image of all those who suffer and are oppressed. So through +his sin and his remorse, Ordway had travelled slowly toward the vision +of service. + +With a word of thanks to the woman, he rose from the bench and went down +the little path and out into the road. The wind had changed suddenly, +and as he emerged from the shelter of a thicket, it struck against his +face with a biting edge. Where the sun had declined in the western sky, +heavy clouds were driving close above the broken line of the horizon. +The night promised to be cold, and he pushed on rapidly, urged by a +feeling that the little town before him held rest and comfort and the +new life beneath its smoking chimneys. Walking was less difficult now, +for the road showed signs of travel as it approached the scattered +houses, which appeared thrust into community by the surrounding +isolation of the fields. At last, as he ascended a slight elevation, he +found that the village, screened by a small grove of pines, lay +immediately beneath the spot upon which he stood. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NIGHT + + +The scattered houses closed together in groups, the road descended +gradually into a hollow, and emerging on the opposite side, became a +street, and the street slouched lazily downhill to where a railroad +track ran straight as a seam across the bare country. Quickening his +steps, Ordway came presently to the station--a small wooden building +newly painted a brilliant yellow--and pushed his way with difficulty +through a crowd of Negroes that had gathered closely beside the waiting +train. + +"Thar's a good three hundred of the critters going to a factory in the +North," remarked a man behind him, "an' yit they don't leave more'n a +speck of white in the county. Between the crows an' the darkies I'll be +blamed if you can see the colour of the soil." + +The air was heavy with hot, close smells--a mingling of smoke, tobacco, +dust and humanity. A wailing sound issued from the windows of the cars +where the dark faces were packed tightly together, and a tall Negro, +black as ebony, in a red shirt open at the throat, began strumming +excitedly upon a banjo. Near him a mulatto woman lifted a shrill soprano +voice, while she stood beating the air distractedly with her open +palms. On the other side of the station a dog howled, and the engine +uttered an angry whistle as if impatient of the delay. + +After five years of prison discipline, the ugly little town appeared to +Ordway to contain an alluring promise of freedom. At the instant the +animation in the scene spoke to his blood as if it had been beauty, and +movement seemed to him to possess some peculiar ęsthetic quality apart +from form or colour. The brightly dyed calicos on the Negro women; the +shining black faces of the men, smooth as ebony; the tragic primitive +voices, like voices imprisoned in the soil; the strumming of the rude +banjo; the whistling engine and the howling dog; the odours of smoke and +dust and fertilisers--all these things blended in his senses to form an +intoxicating impression of life. Nothing that could move or utter sounds +or lend a spot of colour appeared common or insignificant to his +awakened brain. It was all life, and for five years he had been starved +in every sense and instinct. + +The main street--Warehouse Street, as he found later that it was +called--appeared in the distance as a broad river of dust which ran from +the little station to where the warehouses and small shops gave place to +the larger dwellings which presided pleasantly over the neighbouring +fields. As Ordway followed the board sidewalk, he began idly reading the +signs over the shops he passed, until "Kelly's Saloon," and "Baker's +General Store" brought him suddenly upon a dark oblong building which +ran back, under a faded brick archway. Before the entrance several men +were seated in cane chairs, which they had tilted conveniently against +the wall, and at Ordway's approach they edged slightly away and sat +regarding him over their pipes with an expression of curiosity which +differed so little in the different faces that it appeared to result +from some internal automatic spring. + +"I beg your pardon," he began after a moment's hesitation, "but I was +told that I might find work in Baxter's warehouse." + +"Well, it's a first-rate habit not to believe everything you're told," +responded an enormous man, in half-soiled clothes, who sat smoking in +the middle of the archway. "I can't find work myself in Baxter's +warehouse at this season. Ain't that so, boys?" he enquired with a +good-natured chuckle of his neighbours. + +"Are you Mr. Baxter?" asked Ordway shortly. + +"I'm not sure about the Mister, but I'm Baxter all right." He had +shifted his pipe to the extreme corner of his mouth as he spoke, and now +removing it with what seemed an effort, he sat prodding the ashes with +his stubby thumb. His face, as he glanced down, was overspread by a +flabbiness which appeared to belong to expression rather than to +feature. + +"Then there's no chance for me?" enquired Ordway. + +"You might try the cotton mills--they's just down the next street. If +there's a job to be had in town you'll most likely run up against it +there." + +"It's no better than a wild goose chase you're sending him on, Baxter," +remarked a smaller member of the group, whose head protruded +unexpectedly above Baxter's enormous shoulder; "I was talking to Jasper +Trend this morning and he told me he was turning away men every day. +Whew! but this wind is getting too bitter for me, boys." + +"Oh, there's no harm can come of trying," insisted the cheerful giant, +pushing back his chair as the others retreated out of the wind, "if hope +doesn't fill the stomach it keeps the heart up, and that's something." + +His great laugh rolled out, following Ordway along the street as he went +in pursuit of the fugitive opportunity which disported itself now in the +cotton factory at the foot of the hill. When he reached the doors the +work of the day was already over, and a crowd of operatives surged +through the entrance and overflowed into the two roads which led by +opposite ways into the town. Drawing to one side of the swinging doors, +he stood watching the throng a moment before he could summon courage to +enter the building and inquire for the office of the manager. When he +did so at last it was with an almost boyish feeling of hesitation. + +The manager--a small, wiry man with a wart on the end of his long +nose--was hurriedly piling papers into his desk before closing the +factory and going home to supper. His hands moved impatiently, almost +angrily, for he remembered that he had already worked overtime and that +the muffins his wife had promised him for supper would be cold. At any +other hour of the day he would have received Ordway with politeness--for +he was at heart a well-disposed and even a charitable person--but it +happened that his dinner had been unsatisfactory (his mutton had been +served half raw by a new maid of all-work) and he had particularly set +his hopes upon the delicious light muffins in which his wife excelled. +So when he saw Ordway standing between him and his release, his face +grew black and the movements of his hands passed to jerks of frantic +irritation. + +"What do you want? Say it quick--I've no time to talk," he began, as he +pushed the last heap of papers inside, and let the lid of his desk fall +with a bang. + +"I'm looking for work," said Ordway, "and I was told at Baxter's +warehouse----" + +"Darn Baxter. What kind of work do you want?" + +"I'll take anything--I can do bookkeeping or----" + +"Well, I don't want a bookkeeper." + +He locked his desk, and turning to take down his hat, was incensed +further by discovering that it was not on the hook where he had placed +it when he came in. Finding it at last on a heap of reports in the +corner, he put it on his head and stared at Ordway, with his angry eyes. + +"You must have come a long way--haven't you? Mostly on foot?" + +"A good distance." + +"Why did you select Tappahannock? Was there any reason?" + +"I wanted to try the town, that was all." + +"Well, I tell you what, my man," concluded the manager, while his rage +boiled over in the added instants of his delay; "there have been a +blamed sight too many of your kind trying Tappahannock of late--and the +best thing you can do is to move on to a less particular place. When we +want bookkeepers here we don't pick 'em up out of the road." + +Ordway swallowed hard, and his hands clinched in a return of one of his +boyish spasms of temper. His vision of the new life was for an instant +defaced and clouded; then as he met the angry little eyes of the man +before him, he felt that his rage went out of him as suddenly as it had +come. Turning without a word, he passed through the entrance and out +into the road, which led back, by groups of negro hovels, into the main +street of the town. + +His anger gave place to helplessness; and it seemed to him, when he +reached presently the larger dwellings upon the hill, and walked slowly +past the squares of light that shone through the unshuttered windows, +that he was more absolutely alone than if he had stood miles away from +any human habitation. The outward nearness had become in his thoughts +the measure of the inner distance. He felt himself to be detached from +humanity, yet he knew that in his heart there existed a stronger bond +than he had ever admitted in the years of his prosperity. The generous +impulses of his youth were still there, but had not sorrow winnowed them +from all that was base or merely selfish? Was the lesson that he had +learned in prison to be wholly lost? Did the knowledge he had found +there count for nothing in his life--the bitterness of shame, the agony +of remorse, the companionship with misery? He remembered a Sunday in the +prison when he had listened to a sermon from a misshapen little +preacher, whose face was drawn sideways by a burn which he had suffered +during an epileptic seizure in his childhood. In spite of his grotesque +features the man had drawn Ordway by some invisible power which he had +felt even then to be the power of faith. Crippled, distorted, poorly +clad, the little preacher, he felt, had found the great possession which +he was still seeking--this man believed with a belief that was larger +than the external things which he had lost. When he shut his eyes now he +could still see the rows of convicts in the chapel, the pale, greenish +light in which each face resembled the face of a corpse, the open Bible +in its black leather binding, and beside it the grotesque figure of the +little preacher who had come, like his Master, to call not the righteous +but sinners to repentance. + +The sun had dropped like a ball below the gray horizon, and the raw +March wind, when it struck him now, brought no longer the exhilaration +of the afternoon. A man passed him, comfortable, well-fed, wheezing +slightly, with his fat neck wrapped in a woollen muffler, and as he +stopped before a whitewashed gate, which opened into the garden +surrounding a large, freshly painted house, Ordway touched his arm and +spoke to him in a voice that had fallen almost to a whisper. + +At his words, which were ordinary enough, the man turned on him a face +which had paled slightly from surprise or fear. In the twilight Ordway +could see his jaw drop while he fumbled awkwardly with his gloved hands +at the latch of the gate. + +"I don't know what you mean--I don't know" he repeated in a wheezing +voice, "I'm sorry, but I really don't know," he insisted again as if in +a helpless effort to be understood. Once inside the garden, he closed +the gate with a bang behind him, and went rapidly up the gravelled walk +to the long piazza where the light of a lamp under a red shade streamed +through the open door. + +Turning away Ordway followed the street to the end of the town, where it +passed without distinct change of character into the country road. On +this side the colour of the soil had paled until it looked almost +blanched under the rising moon. Though the twilight was already in +possession of the fields a thin red line was still visible low in the +west, and beneath this the scattered lights in negro cabins shone like +obscure, greenish glow-worms, hidden among clumps of sassafras or in +stretches of dried broomsedge. As Ordway looked at these humble +dwellings, it seemed to him that they might afford a hospitality denied +him by the more imposing houses of the town. He had already eaten of the +Negro's charity, and it was possible that before dawn he might be +compelled to eat of it again. + +Beneath his feet the long road called to him as it wound a curving white +line drawn through the vague darkness of the landscape. Somewhere in a +distant pasture a bull bellowed, and the sound came to him like the +plaintive voice of the abandoned fields. While he listened the response +of his tired feet to the road appeared to him as madness, and stopping +short, he turned quickly and looked back in the direction of +Tappahannock. But from the spot on which he stood the lights of the town +offered little promise of hospitality, so after an uncertain glance, he +moved on again to a bare, open place where two roads met and crossed at +the foot of a blasted pine. A few steps farther he discovered that a +ruined gate stood immediately on his right, and beyond the crumbling +brick pillars, he made out dimly the outlines of several fallen bodies, +which proved upon nearer view to be the prostrate forms of giant cedars. +An avenue had once led, he gathered, from the gate to a house situated +somewhere at the end of the long curve, for the great trees lying across +the road must have stood once as the guardians of an estate of no little +value. Whether the cedars had succumbed at last to age or to the axe of +the destroyer, it was too dark at the moment for him to ascertain; but +the earth had claimed them now, magnificent even in their ruin, while +under the dim tent of sky beyond, he could still discern their living +companions of a hundred years. So impressive was the past splendour of +this approach that the house seemed, when he reached it, almost an +affront to the mansion which his imagination had reared. Broad, low, +built of brick, with two long irregular wings embedded in English ivy, +and a rotting shingled roof that sloped over dormered windows, its most +striking characteristic as he first perceived it under the moonlight was +the sentiment which is inevitably associated with age and decay. Never +imposing, the dwelling was now barely habitable, for the roof was +sagging in places over the long wings, a chimney had fallen upon one of +the moss-covered eaves, the stone steps of the porch were hollowed into +dangerous channels, and the ground before the door was strewn with +scattered chips from a neighbouring wood pile. + +The air of desolation was so complete that at first Ordway supposed the +place to be uninhabited, but discovering a light presently in one of the +upper windows, he ascended the steps and beat with the rusted knocker on +the panel of the door. For several minutes there was no answer to his +knock. Then the sound of shuffling footsteps reached him from the +distance, drawing gradually nearer until they stopped immediately beyond +the threshold. + +"I ain' gwine open dis yer do' ef'n hits oner dem ole hants," said a +voice within, while a sharp point of light pierced through the keyhole. + +An instant later, in response to Ordway's assurance of his bodily +reality, the bolt creaked back with an effort and the door opened far +enough to admit the slovenly head and shoulders of an aged negress. + +"Miss Meely she's laid up en she cyar'n see ner comp'ny, Marster," she +announced with the evident intention of retreating as soon as her +message was delivered. + +Her purpose, however, was defeated, for, slipping his heavy boot into +the crack of the door, Ordway faced her under the lamp which she held +high above her head. In the shadows beyond he could see dimly the bare +old hall and the great winding staircase which led to the painted +railing of the gallery above. + +"Can you give me shelter for the night?" he asked, "I am a stranger in +the county, and I've walked thirty miles to-day." + +"Miss Meely don' wan'ner comp'ny," replied the negress, while her head, +in its faded cotton handkerchief, appeared to swing like a pendulum +before his exhausted eyes. + +"Who is Miss Meely?" he demanded, laying his hand upon her apron as she +made a sudden terrified motion of flight. + +"Miss Meely Brooke--Marse Edward's daughter. He's daid." + +"Well, go and ask her. I'll wait here on the porch until you return." + +Her eyelids flickered in the lamplight, and he saw the whites of her +eyes leap suddenly into prominence. Then the door closed again, the bolt +shot back into place, and the shuffling sound grew fainter as it passed +over the bare floor. A cold nose touched Ordway's hand, and looking down +he saw that an old fox-hound had crept into the porch and was fawning +with pleasure at his feet. He was conscious of a thrill of gratitude +for the first demonstrative welcome he had received at Tappahannock; and +while he stood there with the hound leaping upon his chest, he felt +that, in spite of "Miss Meely," hidden somewhere behind the closed door, +the old house had not lost utterly the spirit of hospitality. His hand +was still on the dog's head when the bolt creaked again and the negress +reappeared upon the threshold. + +"Miss Meely she sez she's moughty sorry, suh, but she cyarn' hev ner +strange gent'mun spendin' de night in de house. She reckons you mought +sleep in de barn ef'n you wanter." + +As the door opened wider, her whole person, clad in a faded woollen +dress, patched brightly in many colours, emerged timidly and followed +him to the topmost step. + +"You des go roun' ter de back en den thoo' de hole whar de gate used ter +be, en dar's de barn. Nuttin' ain' gwine hu't you lessen hits dat ar ole +ram 'Lejab." + +"Well, he shall not find me unprepared," responded Ordway, with a kind +of desperate gaiety, and while the old hound still leaped at his side, +he found his way into a little path which led around the corner of the +house, and through the tangled garden to the barn just beyond the fallen +gateposts. Here the dog deserted him, running back to the porch, where a +woman's voice called; and stumbling over a broken ploughshare or two, he +finally reached the poor shelter which Miss Meely's hospitality +afforded. + +It was very dark inside, but after closing the door to shut out the +wind, he groped his way through the blackness to a pile of straw in one +corner. The place smelt of cattle, and opposite to the spot on which he +lay, he distinguished presently a soft, regular sound which he concluded +to be caused by the breathing of a cow. Evidently the barn was used as a +cattleshed also, though his observation of the mansion did not lead him +to suppose that "Miss Meely" possessed anything approaching a herd. He +remembered the old negress's warning allusion to the ram, but so far at +least the darkness had revealed nothing that could prove hostile to his +company. His head ached and his will seemed suddenly benumbed, so +stretching himself at full length in the straw he fell, after a few +troubled moments, into the deep and dreamless sleep of complete physical +exhaustion. + +An instant afterwards, it seemed to him, he was aroused by a light which +flashed into his face from the opening door. A cold wind blew over him, +and as he struggled almost blindly back into consciousness, he saw that +a girl in a red cape stood holding a lantern above her head in the +centre of the barn. At his first look the red cape warmed him as if it +had been flame; then he became aware that a voice was speaking to him in +a peculiar tone of cheerful authority. And it seemed to him that the red +cape and the rich voice expressed the same dominant quality of +personality. + +"I thought you must be hungry," said the voice with energy, "so I've +brought your supper." + +Even while he instinctively grasped the tray she held out, he observed +with quickened attention that the hands which offered him the food had +toiled out of doors in good and bad weather--though small and shapely +they were chapped from cold and roughened by marks of labour. + +"You'd better drink your coffee while it's hot," said the voice again. + +The practical nature of her advice put him immediately at his ease. + +"It's the first hot thing I've had for a week," he responded. + +"Then it will be all the better for you," replied the girl, while she +reached up to hang the lantern from a rusted nail in the wall. + +As the light fell over her, the red cape slipped a little from her +shoulder and she put up her hand to catch it together on her bosom. The +movement, slight as it was, gave Ordway a chance to observe that she +possessed a kind of vigorous grace, which showed in the roundness of her +limbs and in the rebellious freedom of her thick brown hair. The airy +little curls on her temples stood out, he noticed, as if she had been +walking bareheaded in the wind. At his first look it did not occur to +him that she was beautiful; what impressed him most was the quality of +radiant energy which revealed itself in every line of her face and +figure--now sparkling in her eyes, now dimpling in her cheek, now +quickening her brisk steps across the floor, and now touching her eyes +and mouth like an edge of light. It may have been merely the effect of +the red cape on a cold night, but as she moved back and forth into the +dark corners of the barn, she appeared to him to gather both warmth and +animation out of the gloom. + +As she did not speak again during her work, he found himself forced to +observe the same friendly silence. The ravenous hunger of the afternoon +had returned to him with the odour of the food, and he ate rapidly, +sitting up on his straw bed, while she took up a bucket and a piece of +wood sharpened at one end and prepared a bran mash for the cow quartered +in a stall in one corner. When a little later she gathered up an armful +of straw to replenish the animal's bed, Ordway pushed the tray aside and +made a movement as if to assist her; but stopping an instant in her +task, she waved him aside with the easy dignity of perfect capability. + +"I can do it myself, thank you," she said, smiling; and then, glancing +at his emptied plate, she added carelessly, "I'll send back presently +for the tray and lantern--good-night!" + +Her tone had changed perceptibly on the last word, for its businesslike +authority had given place to the musical Southern drawl so familiar to +his ears in childhood. In that simple phrase, accompanied by the +gracious bend of her whole person, she had put unconsciously generations +of social courtesy--of racial breeding. + +"Thank you--good-night," he answered, rising, and drawing back with his +hand on the heavy latch. + +Then before she could reach the door and pass through, a second lantern +flashed there out of the blackness beyond, and the terrified face of a +Negro urchin was thrust into the full glare of light. + +"Fo' de good Lawd, Miss Em'ly, dat ar ole ram done butt Sis Mehitable +clean inter de smoke 'us." + +Perfectly unruffled by the news the girl looked at Ordway, and then held +out her small, strong hand for the lantern. + +"Very well, I'll come and shut him up," she responded quietly, and +holding the red cape together on her bosom, she stepped over the +threshold and followed the Negro urchin out into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK + + +At sunrise he came out of the barn, and washed his face and hands at the +well, where he found a coarse towel on the moss-covered trough. The day +was breaking clear, but in the fine golden light the house and lawn +appeared even more desolate than they had done under the full moon. +Before the war the place had been probably a comfortable, unpretentious +country mansion. Some simple dignity still attached to its bowers of ivy +and its ancient cedars, but it was easy to imagine that for thirty years +no shingle had been added to its crumbling roof, and hardly a ship +gathered from the littered walk before the door. At the end of the +avenue six great trees had fallen a sacrifice, he saw now, to the mere +lust for timber--for freshly cut and still odorous with sap, the huge +trunks lay directly across the approach over which they had presided +through the tragic history of the house. Judged by what it must have +been in a fairly prosperous past, the scene was sad enough even to the +eyes of a stranger; and as Ordway walked slowly down the dim, fragrant +curve of the avenue, he found it difficult to place against so sombre a +background, a figure as full of life and animation as that of the girl +he had seen in the barn on the evening before. She appeared to his +imagination as the embodiment of youth amid surroundings whose only +remaining beauties were those of age. + +Though he had resolved yesterday not to return to Tappahannock, he found +himself presently retracing, almost without an effort of will, the road +which he had travelled so heavily in the night. Something between +sunrise and sunset had renewed his courage and altered his +determination. Was it only the wasted strength which had returned to him +in his sleep? Or was it--he hesitated at the thought--the flush of shame +which had burned his face when the girl's lantern had flashed over him +out of the darkness? In that pitiless illumination it was as if not only +his roughened surface, but his secret sin was laid bare; and he had felt +again all the hideous publicity that had touched him and put him as one +apart in the court-room. Though he had outgrown the sin, he knew now +that he must carry the scar of it until his death; and he knew, also, +that the reality of his punishment had been in the spirit and not in the +law. + +For a while he walked rapidly in the direction of Tappahannock; then +sitting down in the sunshine upon the roadside, he ate the piece of +cornbread he had saved last night from his supper. It would be several +hours at least before he might hope to find the warehouses open for the +day, so he sat patiently eating his bread under the bared boughs of a +young peach-tree, while he watched the surface of the long white road +which appeared to hold for him as much despondency as freedom. A farmer +driving a spotted cow to market spoke to him presently in a friendly +voice; and rising to his feet, he overtook the man and fell into the +jogging pace which was rendered necessary by the reluctance of the +animal to proceed. + +"I declar' the sense in them thar critters do beat all," remarked the +farmer, after an ineffectual tug at the rope he held. "She won't be +drove no more 'n a woman will--her head is what she wants no matter whar +it leads her." + +"Can you tell me," inquired Ordway, when they had started again upon the +advance, "the name of the old house I passed a mile or so along the +road?" + +"Oh, you mean Cedar Hill, I reckon!--thar now, Betsey, that thar toad +ain't a turnip!" + +"Cedar Hill, is it? Well, they appear to be doing their level best to +get rid of the cedars." + +"Mr. Beverly did that--not Miss Em'ly. Miss Em'ly dotes on them trees +jest the same as if they were made of flesh and blood." + +"But the place belongs to Mr. Beverly, I presume?" + +"If thar's a shingle of it that ain't mortgaged, I reckon it +does--though for that matter Miss Em'ly is overseer and manager, besides +teachin' every day in the public school of Tappahannock. Mr. Beverly's +got a soft heart in his body--all the Brookes had that they say--but the +Lord who made him knows that he ain't overblessed with brains. He used +to speculate with most of the family money, but as luck would have it he +always speculated wrong. Then he took to farmin', but he's got such a +slow gentlemanly way about him that nothin' he puts in the ground ever +has spirit enough to come up agin. His wife's just like him--she was +Miss Amelia Meadows, his second cousin from the up-country, and when the +children kept on comin' so thick and fast, as is the Lord's way with po' +folks, people said thar warn't nothin' ahead of 'em but starvation. But +Miss Em'ly she come back from teachin' somewhar down South an' undertook +to run the whole place single-handed. Things are pickin' up a little +now, they say--she's got a will of her own, has Miss Em'ly, but thar +ain't anybody in these parts that wouldn't work for her till they +dropped. She sent for me last Monday to help her mend her henhouse, and +though I was puttin' a new roof over my wife's head, I dropped +everything I had and went. That was the day Mr. Beverly cut down the +cedars." + +"So Miss Emily didn't know of it?" + +"She was in school, suh--you see she teaches in Tappahannock from nine +till three, so Mr. Beverly chose that time to sell the avenue to young +Tom Myers. He's a sly man, is Mr. Beverly, for all his soft, slow ways, +and if Young Tom had been on time he'd have had half the avenue belted +before Miss Em'ly got back from school. But he got in some mess or other +at the store, and he was jest hewin' like thunder at his sixth cedar, +when up come Miss Em'ly on that old white horse she rides. Good Lord! I +hope I'll never see anybody turn so white agin as she did when her eyes +lighted on them fallen trees. 'Beverly,' she called out in a loud, high +voice, 'have you dared to sell the cedars?' Mr. Beverly looked a little +sick as if his stomach had gone aginst him of a sudden, but he stood +right up on the trunk of a tree, and mumbled something about presarvin' +useless timber when the children had no shoes an' stockings to thar +feet. Then Miss Em'ly gave him a look that scorched like fire, and she +rode straight up to Myers on her old horse and said as quiet as death: +'Put up your axe, Tom, I'll give you back your money. How much have you +paid him down?' When Young Tom looked kind of sheepish and said: 'a +hundred dollars,' I saw her eyelids flicker, but she didn't hesitate an +instant. 'You shall have it within an hour on my word of honour,' she +answered, 'can you wait?' 'I reckon I can wait all day, Miss,' said +Young Tom--and then she jumped down from her horse, and givin' me the +bridle, caught up her skirt and ran indoors. In a minute she came flying +out agin and before we had time to catch our breath she was ridin' for +dear life back to town. 'You'd better go on with yo' work,' said Mr. +Beverly in his soft way, but Young Tom picked up his axe, and sat down +on the big stump behind him. 'I reckon I can take her word better 'n +yours, Mr. Beverly,' he answered, 'an' 'I reckon you can, too, Young +Tom,' said I----." + +"But how did she raise the money?" inquired Ordway. + +"That's what nobody knows, suh, except her and one other. Some say she +sold a piece of her mother's old jewelry--a locket or something she had +put by--and some believe still that she borrowed it from Robert Baxter +or Jasper Trend. Whichever way it was, she came ridin' up within the +hour on her old white horse with the notes twisted tight in her +handkerchief. She was mighty quiet, then, but when it was over, great +Lord, what a temper she was in. I declar' she would have struck Mr. +Beverly with the sour gum twig she used for a whip if I hadn't slipped +in between 'em an' caught her arm. Then she lashed him with her tongue +till he seemed to wither and shrink all over." + +"And served him right, God bless her!" said Ordway. + +"That's so, suh, but Mr. Beverly ain't a bad man--he's jest soft." + +"Yet your Miss Emily still sticks to him, it seems?" + +"If she didn't the farm wouldn't hold together a week. What she makes +from teachin' is about all they have to live on in my opinion. Last +summer, too, she started raisin' garden things an' poultry, an' she'd +have got quite a thrivin' business if she had had any kind of help. Then +in July she tried her hand at puttin' up preserves and jellies to send +to them big stores in the North." + +Ordway remembered the cheerful authority in her voice, the little cold +red hands that had offered him his supper; and his heart contracted as +it did at the memory of his daughter Alice. Yet it was not pity alone +that moved him, for mingled with the appeal to his sympathy there was +something which awoke in him the bitter agony of remorse. So the girl +in the red cape could endure poverty such as this with honour! At the +thought his past sin and his present disgrace appeared to him not only +as crime but as cowardliness. He recalled the angry manager of the +cotton mills, but there was no longer resentment in his mind either +against the individual or against society. Instead it seemed to him that +all smaller emotions dissolved in a tenderness which placed this girl +and Alice apart with the other good and inspiring memories of his life. +As he walked on in silence a little incident of ten years before +returned to his thoughts, and he remembered the day he had found his +child weeping beside a crippled beggar on his front steps. + +When, a little later, they reached Tappahannock, the farmer turned with +his reluctant cow into one of the smaller paths which led across the +common on the edge of the town. As it was still too early to apply for +work, Ordway sat down on a flat stone before an iron gate and watched +the windows along the street for any signs of movement or life within. +At length several frowsy Negro maids leaned out while the wooden +shutters swung slowly back against the walls; then a milk wagon driven +by a small boy clattered noisily round the corner, and in response to +the shrill whistle of the driver, the doors opened hurriedly and the +Negro maids rushed, with outstretched pitchers, down the gravelled walks +to the iron gates. Presently an appetising odour of bacon reached +Ordway's nostrils; and in the house across the street a woman with her +hair done up on pins, came to the window and began grinding coffee in a +wooden mill. Not until eight o'clock did the town open its gates and +settle itself to the day's work. + +When the doors of the warehouses were fastened back, Ordway turned into +the main street again, and walked slowly downhill until he came to the +faded brick archway where the group of men had sat smoking the evening +before. Now there was an air of movement in the long building which had +appeared as mere dim vacancy at the hour of sunset. Men were passing in +and out of the brick entrance, from which a thin coat of whitewash was +peeling in splotches; covered wagons half filled with tobacco were +standing, unhitched, along the walls; huge bags of fresh fertilisers +were thrown carelessly in corners; and in the centre of the great floor, +an old Negro, with a birch broom tied together with coloured string, was +sweeping into piles the dried stems left after yesterday's sales. As he +swept, a little cloud of pungent dust rose before the strokes of his +broom and floated through the brick archway out into the street. + +This morning there was even less attention paid to Ordway's presence +than there had been at the closing hour. Planters hurried back and forth +preparing lots for the opening sale; a wagon drove into the building, +and the driver got down over the muddy wheel and lifted out several +willow crates through which Ordway could catch a glimpse of the yellow +sun-cured leaf. The old Negro swept briskly, piling the trash into heaps +which would finally be ground into snuff or used as a cheap grade of +fertiliser. Lean hounds wandered to and fro, following the covered +wagons and sniffing suspiciously at the loose plants arranged in +separate lots in the centre of the floor. + +"Is Baxter here this morning?" Ordway asked presently of a countryman +who lounged on a pile of bags near the archway. + +"I reckon you'll find him in his office," replied the man, as he spat +lazily out into the street; "that thar's his door," he added, pointing +to a little room on the right of the entrance--"I seed him go in an' I +ain't seed him come out." + +Nodding his thanks for the information, Ordway crossed the building and +rapped lightly on the door. In response to a loud "come in," he turned +the knob and stood next instant face to face with the genial giant of +the evening before. + +"Good-morning, Mr. Baxter, I've come back again," he said. + +"Good-morning!" responded Baxter, "I see you have." + +In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not +in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in +the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent +impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the +expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, +half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow +men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. To meet his +glance was to become suddenly intimate; to hear him speak was to feel +that he had shaken you by the hand. + +"I hoped you might have come to see things differently this morning," +said Ordway. + +Baxter looked him over with his soft yet penetrating eyes, his gaze +travelling slowly from the coarse boots covered with red clay to the +boyish smile on the dark, weather-beaten face. + +"You did not tell me what kind of work you were looking for," he +observed at last. "Do you want to sweep out the warehouse or to keep the +books?" + +Ordway laughed. "I prefer to keep the books, but I can sweep out the +warehouse," he replied. + +"You can--can you?" said Baxter. His pipe, which was never out of his +hand except when it was in his mouth, began to turn gray, and putting it +between his teeth, he sucked hard at the stem for a minute. + +"You're an educated man, then?" + +"I've been to college--do you mean that?" + +"You're fit for a clerk's position?" + +"I am sure of it." + +"Where did you work last?" + +Ordway's hesitation was barely perceptible. + +"I've been in business," he answered. + +"On your own hook?" inquired Baxter. + +"Yes, on my own hook." + +"But you couldn't make a living at it?" + +"No; I gave it up for several reasons." + +"Well, I don't know your reasons, my man," observed Baxter, drily, "but +I like your face." + +"Thank you," said Ordway, and he laughed again with the sparkling gaiety +which leaped first to his blue eyes. + +"And so you expect me to take you without knowing a darn thing about +you?" demanded Baxter. + +Ordway nodded gravely. + +"Yes, I hope that is what you will do," he answered. + +"I may ask your name, I reckon, mayn't I?--if you have no particular +objection." + +"I don't mind telling you it's Smith," said Ordway, with his gaze on a +huge pamphlet entitled "Smith's Almanac" lying on Baxter's desk. "Daniel +Smith." + +"Smith," repeated Baxter. "Well, it ain't hard to remember. If I warn't +a blamed fool, I'd let you go," he added thoughtfully, "but there ain't +much doubt, I reckon, about my being a blamed fool." + +He rose from his chair with difficulty, and steadying his huge body, +moved to the door, which he flung open with a jerk. + +"If you've made up your mind dead sure to butt in, you might as well +begin with the next sale," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH + + +He had been recommended for lodging to a certain Mrs. Twine, and at five +o'clock, when the day's work at Baxter's was over, he started up the +street in a bewildered search for her house, which he had been told was +situated immediately beyond the first turn on the brow of the hill. When +he reached the corner there was no one in sight except a small boy who +sat, crying loudly, astride a little whitewashed wooden gate. Beyond the +boy there was a narrow yard filled with partly dried garments hung on +clothes lines, which stretched from a young locust tree near the +sidewalk to the front porch, where a man with a red nose was reading the +local newspaper. As the man with the red nose paid no attention to the +loud lamentations of the child, Ordway stopped by the gate and inquired +sympathetically if he could be of help. + +"Oh, he ain't hurt," remarked the man, throwing a side glance over his +paper, "he al'ays yells like that when his Ma's done scrubbed him." + +"She's washed me so clean that I feel naked," howled the boy. + +"Well, you'll get over that in a year's time," observed Ordway +cheerfully, "so suppose you leave off a minute now and show me the way +to Mrs. Twine's." + +At his request the boy stopped crying instantly, and stared up at him +while the dirty tearmarks dried slowly on his cheeks. + +"Thar ain't no way," he replied solemnly, "'cause she's my ma." + +"Then jump down quickly and run indoors and tell her I'd like to see +her." + +"'T ain't no use. She won't come." + +"Well, go and ask her. I was told to come here to look for board and +lodging." + +He glanced inquiringly at the man on the porch, who, engrossed in the +local paper, was apparently oblivious of the conversation at the gate. + +"She won't come 'cause she's washin' the rest of us," returned the boy, +as he swung himself to the ground, "thar're six of us an' she ain't done +but two. That's Lemmy she's got hold of now. Can't you hear him holler?" + +He planted his feet squarely on the board walk, looked back at Ordway +over his shoulder, and departed reluctantly with the message for his +mother. At the end of a quarter of an hour, when Ordway had entered the +gate and sat down in the cold wind on the front steps, the door behind +him opened with a jar, and a large, crimson, untidy woman, splashed with +soapsuds, appeared like an embodied tempest upon the threshold. + +"Canty says you've come to look at the dead gentleman's room, suh," she +began in a high voice, approaching her point with a directness which +lost none of its force because of the panting vehemence with which she +spoke. + +"Baxter told me I might find board with you," explained Ordway in her +first breathless pause. + +"To be sure he may have the dead gentleman's room, Mag," put in the man +on the porch, folding his newspaper, with a shiver, as he rose to his +feet. + +"I warn't thinkin' about lettin' that room agin'," said Mrs. Twine, +crushing her husband's budding interference by the completeness with +which she ignored his presence. "But it's jest as well, I reckon, for a +defenceless married woman to have a stranger in the house. Though for +the matter of that," she concluded in a burst of domestic confidence, +"the woman that ain't a match for her own husband without outside help +ain't deservin' of the pleasure an' the blessin' of one." Then as the +man with the red nose slunk shamefacedly into the passage, she added in +an undertone to Ordway, "and now if you'll jest step inside, I'll show +you the spare room that I've got to let." + +She led the way indoors, scolding shrilly as she passed through the +hall, and up the little staircase, where several half-dressed children +were riding, with shrieks of delight, down the balustrade. "You needn't +think you've missed a scrubbing because company's come," she remarked +angrily, as she stooped to box the ears of a small girl lying flat on +her stomach upon the landing. "Such is my taste for cleanness," she +explained to Ordway, "that when my hands once tech the soap it's as +much as I can do to keep 'em back from rubbin' the skin off. Thar 're +times even when the taste is so ragin' in my breast that I can hardly +wait for Saturday night to come around. Yet I ain't no friend to license +whether it be in whiskey or in soap an' water. Temperance is my passion +and that's why, I suppose, I came to marry a drunkard." + +With this tragic confession, uttered in a matter of fact manner, she +produced a key from the pocket of her blue gingham apron, and ushered +Ordway into a small, poorly furnished room, which overlooked the front +street and the two bared locust trees in the yard. + +"I kin let you have this at three dollars a week," she said, "provided +you're content to do yo' own reachin' at the table. Thar ain't any +servant now except a twelve year old darkey." + +"Yes, I'll take it," returned Ordway, almost cheerfully; and when he had +agreed definitely as to the amount of service he was to receive, he +closed the creaking door behind her, and looked about the crudely +furnished apartment with a sense of ownership such as he had not felt +since the afternoon upon which he had stood in his wife's sitting-room +awaiting his arrest. He thought of the Florentine gilding, the rich +curtains, the long mirrors, the famous bronze Mercury and the Corot +landscape with the sunlight upon it--and then of the terrible oppression +in which these familiar objects had seemed closing in upon him and +smothering him into unconsciousness. The weight was lifted now, and he +breathed freely while his gaze rested on the common pine bedstead, the +scarred washstand, with the broken pitcher, the whitewashed walls, the +cane chairs, the rusted scuttle, filled with cheap coal, and the +unpainted table holding a glass lamp with a smoked chimney. From the +hall below he could hear the scolding voice of Mrs. Twine, but neither +the shrill sound nor the poor room produced in him the smothered anguish +he felt even to-day at the memory of the Corot landscape bathed in +sunlight. + +An hour later, when he came upstairs again as an escape from the +disorder of Mrs. Twine's supper table, he started a feeble blaze in the +grate, which was half full of ashes, and after lighting the glass lamp, +sat watching the shadows flicker to and fro on the whitewashed wall. His +single possession, a photograph of his wife taken with her two children, +rested against the brick chimney piece, and as he looked at it now it +seemed to stand in no closer relationship to his life than did one of +the brilliant chromos he had observed ornamenting the walls of Mrs. +Twine's dining-room. His old life, indeed, appeared remote, artificial, +conjured from unrealities--it was as if he had moved lightly upon the +painted surface of things, until at last a false step had broken through +the thin covering and he had plunged in a single instant against the +concrete actuality. The shock had stunned him, yet he realised now that +he could never return to his old sheltered outlook--to his pleasant +fiction--for he had come too close to experience ever to be satisfied +again with falsehood. + +The photograph upon the mantel was the single remaining link which held +him to-day to his past life--to his forfeited identity. In the +exquisite, still virgin face of his wife, draped for effect in a scarf +of Italian lace--he saw embodied the one sacred memory to which as +Daniel Smith he might still cling with honour. The face was perfect, the +expression of motherhood which bent, flamelike, over the small boy and +girl, was perfect also; and the pure soul of the woman seemed to him to +have formed both face and expression after its own divine image. In the +photograph, as in his memory, her beauty was touched always by some rare +quality of remoteness, as if no merely human conditions could ever +entirely compass so ethereal a spirit. The passion which had rocked his +soul had left her serenity unshaken, and even sorrow had been powerless +to leave its impress or disfigurement upon her features. + +As the shadows flickered out on the walls, the room grew suddenly +colder. Rising, he replenished the fire, and then going over to the bed, +he flung himself, still dressed, under the patchwork quilt from which +the wool was protruding in places. He was thinking of the morning +eighteen years ago when he had first seen her as she came, with several +girl companions, out of the old church in the little town of Botetourt. +It was a Christmas during his last year at Harvard, when moved by a +sudden interest in his Southern associations, he had gone down for two +days to his childhood's home in Virginia. Though the place was falling +gradually to ruin, his maiden great-aunt still lived there in a kind of +luxurious poverty; and at the sight of her false halo of gray curls, he +had remembered, almost with a start of surprise, the morning when he had +seen the convict at the little wayside station. The station, the +country, the muddy roads, and even the town of Botetourt were unchanged, +but he himself belonged now to another and what he felt to be a larger +world. Everything had appeared provincial and amusing to his eyes--until +as he passed on Christmas morning by the quaint old churchyard, he had +seen Lydia Preston standing in the sunshine amid the crumbling +tombstones of several hundred years. Under the long black feather in her +hat, her charming eyes had dwelt on him kindly for a minute, and in that +minute it had seemed to him that the racial ideal slumbering in his +brain had responded quickly to his startled blood. Afterward they had +told him that she was only nineteen, a Southern beauty of great promise, +and the daughter of old Adam Preston, who had made and lost a fortune in +the last ten years. But these details seemed to him to have no relation +to the face he had seen under the black feather against the ivy-covered +walls of the old church. The next evening they had danced together at a +ball; he had carried her fan, a trivial affair of lace and satin, away +in his pocket, and ten days later he had returned, flushed with passion, +to finish his course at Harvard. Love had put wings to his ambition; the +following year he had stood at the head of his class, and before the +summer was over he had married her and started brilliantly in his +career. There had been only success in the beginning. When had the tide +turned so suddenly? he wondered, and when had he begun to drift into the +great waters where men are washed down and lost? + +Lying on the bed now in the firelight, he shivered and drew the quilt +closer about his knees. She had loved beauty, riches, dignity, +religion--she had loved her children when they came; but had she ever +really loved him--the Daniel Ordway whom she had married? Were all pure +women as passionless--as utterly detached--as she had shown herself to +him from the beginning? And was her coldness, as he had always believed, +but the outward body of that spiritual grace for which he had loved her? +He had lavished abundantly out of his stormy nature; he had spent his +immortal soul upon her in desperate determination to possess her utterly +at her own price; and yet had she ever belonged to him, he questioned +now, even in the supreme hours of their deepest union? Had her very +innocence shut him out from her soul forever? + +In the end the little world had closed over them both; he had felt +himself slipping further--further--had made frantic efforts to regain +his footing; and had gone down hopelessly at last. Those terrible years +before his arrest crowded like minutes into his brain, and he knew now +that there had been relief--comfort--almost tranquillity in his life in +prison. The strain was lifted at last, and the days when he had moved +in dull hope or acute despair through the crowd in Wall Street were over +forever. To hold a place in the little world one needed great wealth; +and it had seemed to him in the time of temptation that this wealth was +not a fugitive possession, but an inherent necessity--a thing which +belonged to the inner structure of Lydia's nature. + +A shudder ran over him, while he drew a convulsive breath like one in +physical pain. The slow minutes in which he had waited for a rise in the +market were still ticking in agony somewhere in his brain. Time moved +on, yet those minutes never passed--his memory had become like the face +of a clock where the hands pointed, motionless, day or night, to the +same hour. Then hours, days, weeks, months, years, when he lived with +ruin in his thoughts and the sound of merriment, which was like the pipe +of hollow flutes, in his ears. At the end it came almost suddenly--the +blow for which he had waited, the blow which brought something akin to +relief because it ended the quivering torture of his suspense, and +compelled, for the hour at least, decisive action. He had known that +before evening he would be under arrest, and yet he had walked slowly +along Fifth Avenue from his office to his home; he recalled now that he +had even joked with a club wit, who had stopped him at the corner to +divulge the latest bit of gossip. At the very instant when he felt +himself to be approaching ruin in his house, he remembered that he had +complained a little irritably of the breaking wrapper of his cigar. Yet +he was thinking then that he must reach his home in time to prevent his +wife from keeping a luncheon engagement, of which she had spoken to him +at breakfast; and ten minutes later it was with a sensation of relief +that he met the blank face of his butler in the hall. On the staircase +his daughter ran after him, her short white, beruffled skirts standing +out stiffly like the skirts of a ballet dancer. She was taking her music +lesson, she cried out, and she called to him to come into the music room +and hear how wonderfully she could run her scales! Her blue eyes, which +were his eyes in a child's face, looked joyously up at him from under +the thatch of dark curls which she had inherited from him, not from her +blond mother. + +"Not now, Alice," he answered, almost impatiently, "not now--I will come +a little later." + +Then she darted back, and the stumbling music preceded him up the +staircase to the door of his wife's dressing-room. When he entered Lydia +was standing before her mirror, fastening a spotted veil with a diamond +butterfly at the back of her blond head; and as she turned smilingly +toward him, he put out his hand with a gesture of irritation. + +"Take that veil off, Lydia, I can't see you for the spots," he said. + +Complaisant always, she unfastened the diamond butterfly without a word, +and taking off the veil, flung it carelessly across the golden-topped +bottles upon her dressing-table. + +"You look ill," she said with her charming smile; "shall I ring for +Marie to bring you whiskey?" + +At her words he turned from her, driven by a torment of pity which +caused his voice to sound harsh and constrained in his own ears. + +"No--no--don't put that on again," he protested, for while she waited +she had taken up the spotted veil and the diamond pin. + +Something in his tone startled her into attention, and moving a step +forward, she stood before him on a white bearskin rug. Her face had +hardly changed, yet in some way she seemed to have put him at a +distance, and he felt all at once that he had never known her. + +From the room downstairs he heard Alice's music lesson go on at broken +intervals, the uncertain scales she ran now stopping, now beginning +violently again. The sound wrought suddenly on his nerves like anger, +and he felt that his voice was querulous in spite of the torment of pity +at his heart. + +"There's no use putting on your veil," he said, "a warrant is out for my +arrest and I must wait here till it comes." + + * * * * * + +His memory stopped now, as if it had snapped suddenly beneath the +strain. After this there was a mere blank of existence upon which people +and objects moved without visible impression. From that minute to this +one appeared so short a time that he started up half expecting to hear +Alice's scales filling Mrs. Twine's empty lodgings. Then his eyes fell +on the whitewashed walls, the smoking lamp, the bare table, and the +little square window with the branches of the locust tree frosted +against the pane. + +Rising from the bed, he fell on his knees and pressed his quivering face +to the patchwork quilt. + +"Give me a new life, O God--give me a new life!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT TAPPAHANNOCK + + +After a sleepless night, he rose as soon as the dawn had broken, and +sitting down before the pine table wrote a letter to Lydia, on a sheet +of paper which had evidently been left in the drawer by the former +lodger. "It isn't likely that you'll ever want me," he added at the end, +"but if you should happen to, remember that I am yours, as I have always +been, for whatever I am worth." When he had sealed the envelope and +written her name above that of the town of Botetourt, he put it into his +pocket and went down to the dining-room, where he found Mrs. Twine +pouring steaming coffee into a row of broken cups. A little mulatto +girl, with her hair plaited in a dozen fine braids, was placing a dish +of fried bacon at one end of the walnut-coloured oil-cloth on the table, +around which the six children, already clothed and hungry, were beating +an impatient tattoo with pewter spoons. Bill Twine, the father of the +family, was evidently sleeping off a drunken headache--a weakness which +appeared to afford his wife endless material for admonition and +philosophy. + +"Thar now, Canty," she was remarking to her son, "yo' po' daddy may not +be anything to be proud of as a man, but I reckon he's as big an example +as you'll ever see. He's had sermons p'inted at him from the pulpit; +they've took him up twice to the police court, an' if you'll believe me, +suh," she added with a kind of outraged pride to Ordway, "thar's been a +time when they've had out the whole fire department to protect me." + +The coffee though poor was hot, and while Ordway drank it, he listened +with an attention not unmixed with sympathy to Mrs. Twine's continuous +flow of speech. She was coarse and shrewish and unshapely, but his +judgment was softened by the marks of anxious thought on her forehead +and the disfigurements of honest labour on her hands. Any toil appeared +to him now to be invested with peculiar dignity; and he felt, sitting +there at her slovenly breakfast table, that he was closer to the +enduring heart of humanity than he had been among the shallow +refinements of his past life. Mrs. Twine was unpleasant, but at her +worst he felt her to be the real thing. + +"Not that I'm blamin' Bill, suh, as much as some folks," she proceeded +charitably, while she helped her youngest child to gravy, "for it made +me downright sick myself to hear them carryin' on over his beatin' his +own wife jest as much as if he'd been beatin' somebody else's. An' I +ain't one, when it comes to that, to put up with a white-livered, +knock-kneed, pulin' sort of a critter, as I told the Jedge a-settin' +upon his bench. When a woman is obleeged to take a strappin' thar's some +real satisfaction in her feelin' that she takes it from a man--an' the +kind that would lay on softly with never a broken head to show for +it--well, he ain't the kind, suh, that I could have helt in any respect +an' honour. And as to that, as I said to 'em right then an' thar, take +the manly health an' spirit out o' Bill, an' he's jest about as decent +an' law abidin' as the rest. Why, when he was laid up with malaria, he +never so much as rized his hand agin me, an' it'll be my belief untwel +my dyin' day that chills an' fever will keep a man moral when all the +sermons sence Moses will leave him unteched. Feed him low an' work him +hard, an' you kin make a saint out of most any male critter, that's my +way of thinkin'." + +While she talked she was busily selecting the choicest bit of bacon for +Bill's plate, and as Ordway left the house a little later, he saw her +toiling up the staircase with her husband's breakfast on a tin tray in +her hands. + +"If you think I'm goin' to set an' wait all day for you to get out o' +bed, you've jest about clean lost yo' wits, Bill Twine," she remarked in +furious tones, as she flung open a door on the landing above. + +Out of doors Ordway found that the wind had died down, though a sharp +edge of frost was still in the air. The movement of the day had already +begun; and as he passed the big house on the brow of the hill he saw a +pretty girl, with her hair tied back with a velvet ribbon, run along the +gravelled walk to meet the postman at the gate. A little farther, when +he had reached the corner, he turned back to hand his letter to the +postman, and found to his surprise that the pretty girl was still gazing +after him. No possible interest could attach to her in his thoughts; +and with a careless acknowledgment of her beauty, she faded from his +consciousness as rapidly as if she had been a ray of sunshine which he +had admired as he passed along. Then as he turned into the main street +at the corner, he saw that Emily Brooke was riding slowly up the hill on +her old white horse. She still wore her red cape, which fell over the +saddle on one side, and completely hid the short riding-skirt beneath. +On her head there was a small knitted Tam-o'-shanter cap, and this, with +the easy freedom of her seat in the saddle, gave her an air which was +gallant rather than graceful. The more feminine adjective hardly seemed +to apply to her at the moment; she looked brave, strong, buoyant, a +creature that had not as yet become aware of its sex. Yet she was older, +he discovered now, than he had at first imagined her to be. In the barn +he had supposed her age to be not more than twenty years; seen in the +morning light it was impossible to decide whether she was a year younger +or ten years older than he had believed. The radiant energy in her look +belonged, after all, less to the accident of youth than to some enduring +quality of spirit. + +As she neared him, she looked up from her horse's neck, rested her eyes +upon him for an instant, and smiled brightly, much as a charming boy +might have done. Then, just as she was about to pass on, the girth of +her saddle slipped under her, and she was thrown lightly to the ground, +while the old horse stopped and stood perfectly motionless above her. + +"My skirt has caught in the stirrup," she said to Ordway, and while he +bent to release her, he noticed that she clung, not to his arm, but to +the neck of the horse for support. + +To his surprise there was neither embarrassment nor amusement in her +voice. She spoke with the cool authority which had impressed him during +the incident of the ram's attack upon "Sis Mehitable." + +"I don't think it is quite safe yet," he said, after he had drawn the +rotten girth as tight as he dared. "It looks as if it wouldn't last, you +see." + +"Well, I dare say, it may be excused after forty years of service," she +returned, smiling. + +"What? this saddle? It does look a little quaint when one examines it." + +"Oh, it's been repaired, but even then one must forgive an old servant +for growing decrepit." + +"Then you'll ride it again?" he asked, seeing that she was about to +mount. + +"Of course--this isn't my first tumble--but Major expects them now and +he knows how to behave. So do I," she added, laughing, "you see it +doesn't take me by surprise." + +"Yes, I see it doesn't," he answered gaily. + +"Then if you chance to be about the next time it happens, I hope it +won't disturb you either," she remarked, as she rode up the hill. + +The meeting lingered in Ordway's mind with a freshness which was +associated less with the incident itself than with some vivid quality in +the appearance of the girl. Her face, her voice, her carriage--even the +little brown curls blowing on her temples, all united in his thoughts to +form a memory in which Alice appeared to hold a place. Why should this +country girl, he wondered, bring back to him so clearly the figure of +his daughter? + +But there was no room for a memory in his life just now, and by the time +he reached Baxter's Warehouse, he had forgotten the interest aroused in +him a moment before. Baxter had not yet appeared in his office, but two +men, belonging evidently to the labouring class, were talking together +under the brick archway. When Ordway joined them they did not interrupt +their conversation, which he found, after a minute, to concern the +domestic and financial troubles of the one whom he judged to be the +poorer of the two. He was a meanly clad, wretched looking workman, with +a shock of uncombed sandy hair, a cowed manner, and the expression of +one who has been beaten into apathy rather than into submission. A +sordid pathos in his voice and figure brought Ordway a step closer to +his side, and after a moment's careless attention, he found his mind +adjusting itself to the small financial problems in which the man had +become entangled. The workman had been forced to borrow upon his +pathetic personal securities; and in meeting from year to year the +exorbitant rate of interest, he had paid back several times the sum of +the original debt. Now his wife was ill, with an incurable cancer; he +had no hope, as he advanced beyond middle age, of any increase in his +earning capacity, and the debt under which he had struggled so long had +become at the end an intolerable burden. His wife had begged him to +consult a lawyer--but who, he questioned doggedly, would take an +interest in him since he had no money for a fee? He was afraid of +lawyers anyway, for he could give you a hundred cases where they had +stood banded together against the poor. + +As Ordway listened to the story, he felt for an instant a return of his +youthful enthusiasm, and standing there amid the tobacco stems in +Baxter's warehouse, he remembered a great flour trust from which he had +withdrawn because it seemed to him to bear unjustly upon the small, +isolated farmers. Beyond this he went back still further to his college +days, when during his vacation, he had read Virginia law in the office +of his uncle, Richard Ordway, in the town of Botetourt. He could see the +shining rows of legal volumes in the walnut bookcases, the engraving of +Latane's Burial, framed in black wood above the mantel, and against this +background the silent, gray haired, self-righteous old man so like his +father. Through the window, he could see still the sparrows that built +in the ivied walls of the old church. + +With a start he came back to the workman, who was unfolding his troubles +in an abandon of misery under the archway. + +"If you'll talk things over with me to-night when we get through work, I +think I may be able to straighten them out for you," he said. + +The man stared at him out of his dogged eyes with a helpless +incredulity. + +"But I ain't got any money," he responded sullenly, as if driven to the +defensive. + +"Well, we'll see," said Ordway, "I don't want your money." + +"You want something, though--my money or my vote, and I ain't got +either." + +Ordway laughed shortly. "I?--oh, I just want the fun," he answered. + +The beginning was trivial enough, the case sordid, and the client only a +dull-witted labourer; but to Ordway it came as the commencement of the +new life for which he had prayed--the life which would find its centre +not in possession, but in surrender, which would seek as its achievement +not personal happiness, but the joy of service. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR + + +The pretty girl whom Ordway had seen on the gravelled walk was Milly +Trend, the only child of the Mayor of Tappahannock. People said of +Jasper Trend that his daughter was the one soft spot in a heart that was +otherwise as small and hard as a silver dollar, and of Milly Trend the +same people said--well, that she was pretty. Her prettiness was +invariably the first and the last thing to be mentioned about her. +Whatever sterner qualities she may have possessed were utterly obscured +by an exterior which made one think of peach blossoms and spring +sunshine. She had a bunch of curls the colour of ripe corn, which she +wore tied back from her neck with a velvet ribbon; her eyes were the +eyes of a baby; and her mouth had an adorable little trick of closing +over her small, though slightly prominent teeth. The one flaw in her +face was this projection of her teeth, and when she looked at herself in +the glass it was her habit to bite her lips closely together until the +irregular ivory line was lost. It was this fault, perhaps, which kept +her prettiness, though it was superlative in its own degree, from ever +rising to the height of beauty. In Milly's opinion it had meant the +difference between the glory of a world-wide reputation and the lesser +honour of reigning as the acknowledged belle of Tappahannock. She +remembered that the magnificent manager of a theatrical company, a +gentleman who wore a fur-lined coat and a top hat all day long, had +almost lost his train while he stopped to look back at her on the +crowded platform of the station. Her heart had beat quickly at the +tribute, yet even in that dazzling minute she had felt a desperate +certainty that her single imperfection would decide her future. But for +her teeth, she was convinced to-day, that he might have returned. + +If a woman cannot be a heroine in reality, perhaps the next best thing +is to look as if she might have been one in the age of romance; and this +was what Milly Trend's appearance suggested to perfection. Her manner of +dressing, the black velvet ribbon on her flaxen curls, her wide white +collars open at her soft throat, her floating sky-blue sashes and the +delicate peach bloom of her cheeks and lips--all these combined to +produce a poetic atmosphere about an exceedingly poetic little figure. +Being plain she would probably have made currant jelly for her pastor, +and have taught sedately in the infant class in Sunday school: being +pretty she read extravagant romances and dreamed strange adventures of +fascinating highwaymen on lonely roads. + +But many a woman who has dreamed of a highwayman at eighteen has +compromised with a bank clerk at twenty-two. Even at Tappahannock--the +veriest prose piece of a town--romance might sometimes bud and blossom, +though it usually brought nothing more dangerous than respectability to +fruit. Milly had read Longfellow and _Lucille_, and her heroic ideal had +been taken bodily from one of Bulwer's novels. She had played the +graceful part of heroine in a hundred imaginary dramas; yet in actual +life she had been engaged for two years to a sandy-haired, freckled face +young fellow, who chewed tobacco, and bought the dry leaf in lots for a +factory in Richmond. From romance to reality is a hard distance, and the +most passionate dreamer is often the patient drudge of domestic service. + +And yet even to-day Milly was not without secret misgivings as to the +wisdom of her choice. She knew he was not her hero, but in her short +visits to larger cities she had met no one who had come nearer her ideal +lover. To be sure she had seen this ideal, in highly coloured glimpses, +upon the stage--though these gallant gentlemen in trunks had never so +much as condescended to glance across the foot-lights to the little girl +in the dark third row of the balcony. Then, too, all the ladies upon the +stage were beautiful enough for any hero, and just here she was apt to +remember dismally the fatal projection of her teeth. + +So, perhaps, after all, Harry Banks was as near Olympus as she could +hope to approach; and there was a mild consolation in the thought that +there was probably more sentiment in the inner than in the outward man. +Whatever came of it, she had learned that in a prose age it is safer to +think only in prose. + +On the morning upon which Ordway had first passed her gate, she had +left the breakfast table at the postman's call, and had run down the +gravelled walk to receive a letter from Mr. Banks, who was off on a +short business trip for his firm. With the letter in her hand she had +turned to find Ordway's blue eyes fixed in careless admiration upon her +figure; and for one breathless instant she had felt her insatiable dream +rise again and clutch at her heart. Some subtle distinction in his +appearance--an unlikeness to the masculine portion of Tappahannock--had +caught her eye in spite of his common and ill-fitting clothes. Though +she had known few men of his class, the sensitive perceptions of the +girl had made her instantly aware of the difference between him and +Harry Banks. For a moment her extravagant fancy dwelt on his figure--on +this distinction which she had noticed, on his square dark face and the +singular effect of his bright blue eyes. Then turning back in the yard, +she went slowly up the gravelled walk, while she read with a vague +feeling of disappointment the love letter written laboriously by Mr. +Banks. It was, doubtless, but the average love letter of the average +plain young man, but to Milly in her rosy world of fiction, it appeared +suddenly as if there had protruded upon her attention one of the great, +ugly, wholesome facts of life. What was the use, she wondered, in being +beautiful if her love letters were to be filled with enthusiastic +accounts of her lover's prowess in the tobacco market? + +At the breakfast table Jasper Trend was pouring maple syrup on the +buckwheat cakes he had piled on his plate, and at the girl's entrance he +spoke without removing his gaze from the plated silver pitcher in his +hand. + +"Any letters, daughter?" he inquired, carefully running his knife along +the mouth of the pitcher to catch the last drop of syrup. + +"One," said Milly, as she sat down beside the coffee pot and looked at +her father with a ripple of annoyance in her babyish eyes. + +"I reckon I can guess about that all right," remarked Jasper with his +cackling chuckle, which was as little related to a sense of humour as +was the beating of a tin plate. He was a long, scraggy man, with drab +hair that grew in scallops on his narrow forehead and a large nose where +the prominent red veins turned purple when he became excited. + +"There's a stranger in town, father," said Milly as she gave him his +second cup of coffee. "I think he is boarding at Mrs. Twine's." + +"A drummer, I reckon--thar're a plenty of 'em about this season." + +"No, I don't believe he is a drummer--he isn't--isn't quite so sparky +looking. But I wish you wouldn't say 'thar,' father. You promised me you +wouldn't do it." + +"Well, it ain't stood in the way of my getting on," returned Jasper +without resentment. Had Milly told him to shave his head, he might have +protested freely, but in the end he would have gone out obediently to +his barber. Yet people outside said that he ground the wages of his +workers in the cotton mills down to starvation point, and that he had +been elected Mayor not through popularity, but through terror. It was +rumoured even that he stood with his wealth behind the syndicate of +saloons which was giving an ugly local character to the town. But +whatever his public vices may have been, his private life was securely +hedged about by the paternal virtues. + +"I can't place him, but I'm sure he isn't a 'buyer,'" repeated Milly, +after a moment's devotion to the sugar bowl. + +"Well, I'll let you know when I see him," responded Jasper as he left +the table and got into his overcoat, while Milly jumped up to wrap his +neck in a blue spotted muffler. + +When he had gone from the house, she took out her lover's letter again, +but it proved, on a second trial, even more unsatisfactory than she had +found it to be at her first reading. As a schoolgirl Milly had known +every attribute of her divinity from the chivalry of his soul to the +shining gloss upon his boots--but to-day there remained to her only the +despairing conviction that he was unlike Banks. Banks appeared to her +suddenly in the hard prosaic light in which he, on his own account, +probably viewed his tobacco. Even her trousseau and the lace of her +wedding gown ceased to afford her the shadow of consolation, since she +remembered that neither of these accessories would occupy in marriage +quite so prominent a place as Banks. + +The next day Ordway passed at the same hour, still on the opposite side +of the street. After this she began to watch regularly for his figure, +looking for it when it appeared on Mrs. Twine's little porch, and +following it wistfully until it was lost beyond the new brick church at +the corner. She was not aware of cultivating a facile sentiment about +the stranger, but place a riotous imagination in an empty house and it +requires little effort to weave a romance from the opposite side of the +street. Distance, that subtle magnifier of attachments, had come to her +aid now as it had failed her in the person of Harry Banks. Even from +across the street it was impossible to invest Mr. Banks with any quality +which might have suggested an historic background or a mysterious past. +He was flagrantly, almost outrageously himself; in no fictitious +circumstances could he have appeared as anything except the unvarnished +fact that he was. No legendary light could have glorified his features +or improved the set of his trousers--which had taken their shape and +substance from the legs within. With these features and in these +trousers, she felt that he must usurp the sacred precincts where her +dream had dwelt. "It would all be so easy if one could only be born +where one belongs," she cried out hopelessly, in the unconscious +utterance of a philosophy larger than her own. + +And so as the week went by, she allowed her rosy fancies to surround the +figure that passed three times daily along the sidewalk across the way. +In the morning he walked by with a swinging stride; at midday he passed +rapidly, absorbed in thought; in the evening he came back slowly, +sometimes stopping to watch the sunset from the brow of the hill. Not +since the first morning had he turned his blue eyes toward Milly's gate. + +At the end of the month Mr. Banks returned to Tappahannock from a +business trip through the tobacco districts. He was an ugly, freckled +face, sandy-haired young fellow--an excellent judge of tobacco--with a +simple soul that attired itself in large checks, usually of a black and +white variety. On the day of his first visit to Milly he wore a crimson +necktie pierced by a scarf-pin bearing a turtle-dove in diamonds. + +"Who's that fellow over there?" he inquired as Ordway came up the hill +to his dinner. "I wonder if he's the chap Hudge was telling me about at +breakfast?" + +"Oh, I don't know," answered Milly, in a voice that sounded flat in her +own ears. "Nobody knows anything about him, father says. But what was +Hudge telling you?" she asked, impelled by a devouring yet timid +curiosity. + +"Well, if he's the man I mean, he seems to be a kind of revivalist out +of a job--or something or other queer. Hudge says he broke up a fight +last Saturday evening in Kelly's saloon--that's the place you've never +heard the name of, I reckon," he added hesitatingly, "it's where all the +factory hands gather after work on Saturday to drink up their week's +wages." + +For once Milly's interest was stronger than her modesty. + +"And did he fight?" she demanded in a suspense that was almost +breathless. + +"He wasn't there, you know--only passing along the street outside, at +least that's what they say--when the rumpus broke out. Then he went in +through the window and----" + +"And?" repeated Milly, with an entrancing vision of heroic blows, for +beneath her soft exterior the blood of the primitive woman flowed. + +"And preached!" finished Banks, with a prodigious burst of merriment. + +"Preached?" gasped Milly, "do you mean a sermon?" + +"Not a regular sermon, but he spoke just like a preacher for a solid +hour. Before he'd finished the men who were drunk were crying like +babies and the men who weren't were breaking their necks to sign the +pledge--at any rate that's something like the tale they tell. There was +never such speaking (Hudge says he was there) heard before in +Tappahannock, and Kelly is as mad as a hornet because he swears the town +is going dry." + +"And he didn't strike a single blow?" asked Milly, with a feeling of +disappointment. + +"Why, he had those drunken fools all blubbering like kids," said Banks, +"and then when it was over he got hold of Kit Berry (he started the row, +you know) and carried him all the way home to the little cottage in the +hollow across the town where Kit lives with his mother. Next Sunday if +it's fine there's going to be an open air meeting in Baxter's field." + +There was a sore little spot in Milly's heart, a vague sentiment of +disenchantment. Her house of dreams, which she had reared so patiently, +stood cold and tenantless once more. + +"Did you ever find out his name?" she asked, with a last courageous +hope. + +"Smith," replied Banks, with luminous simplicity. "The boys have +nick-named him 'Ten Commandment Smith.'" + +"Ten Commandment Smith?" echoed Milly in a lifeless voice. Her house of +dreams had tottered at the blow and fallen from its foundation stone. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY + + +On the morning after the episode in the barroom which Banks had +described to Milly, Ordway found Baxter awaiting him in a condition +which in a smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter of +excitement. + +"So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, I hear, Smith?" + +"Well, hardly that," returned Ordway, smiling as he saw the other's +embarrassment break out in drops of perspiration upon his forehead. "I +was in it, I admit, but I can't exactly say that I was 'mixed up.'" + +"You got Kit Berry out, eh?--and took him home." + +"Nothing short of a sober man could have done it. He lives on the other +side of the town in Bullfinch's Hollow." + +"Oh, I've been there," said Baxter, "I've taken him home myself." + +The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway's eyes which appeared in the +animation of the moment to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As +Baxter looked at him he felt something of the charm which had touched +the drunken crowd in the saloon. + +"His mother was at my house before breakfast," he said, in a tone that +softened as he went on until it sounded as if his whole perspiring +person had melted into it. "She was in a great state, poor creature, for +it seemed that when Kit woke up this morning he promised her never to +touch another drop." + +"Well, I hope he'll keep his word, but I doubt it," responded Ordway. He +thought of the bare little room he had seen last night, of the patched +garments drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon the +table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman who had received his burden +from him. + +"He may--for a week," commented Baxter, and he added with a big, shaking +laugh, "they tell me you gave 'em a sermon that was as good as a +preacher's." + +"Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all." + +"Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear +Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton +went home without falling once, he said." + +"There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information +Cotton wanted." + +"I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis +while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the +younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him +out of a scrape as well as a lawyer could have done." + +"I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all." + +"Have you ever practised law in Virginia?" + +"I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when--" he was going +to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped +short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I +read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory." + +"I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively +uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly +indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled +at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and +gaiety in his look? + +"Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he +said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the +reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to +have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all +the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like +you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in +blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be +worth as good as a hundred a month to me." + +There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his +cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination +during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the man--the +unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely +fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to +emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his +failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man. +One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal +proportions--as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of +the lavish generosity of his heart. + +"To tell the truth, I'd hoped for that all along," said Ordway, +withdrawing his gaze with an effort from the soiled cravat. "Do you want +me to start in at the books to-day?" + +For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed and went on as if he +found difficulty in selecting the words that would convey his meaning. + +"Well, if you don't mind there's a delicate little matter I'd like you +to attend to first. Being a stranger I thought it would be easier for +you than for me--have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly Brooke?" + +The interest quickened in Ordway's face. + +"Why, yes. I came along the road one day with a farmer who gave me his +whole story--Adam Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name." + +Baxter whistled. "Oh, I reckon, he hardly told you the whole story--for +I don't believe there's anybody living except myself who knows what a +darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done an honest piece of +work in his life; he's spent every red cent of his wife's money, and his +sister's too, in some wild goose kind of speculation--and yet, bless my +soul, he has the face to strut in here any day and lord it over me just +as if he were his grandfather's ghost or George Washington. It's queer +about those old families, now ain't it? When they begin to peter out it +ain't just an ordinary petering, but a sort of mortal rottenness that +takes 'em root and branch." + +"And so I am to interview this interesting example of degeneration?" +asked Ordway, smiling. + +"You've got to make him understand that he can't ship me any more of his +worthless tobacco," exclaimed Baxter in an outburst of indignation. "Do +you know what he does, sir?--Well, he raises a lazy, shiftless, +worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field--plants it too late, tops it +too late, cuts it too late, cures it too late, and then lets it lie +around in some leaky smokehouse until it isn't fit for a hog to chew. +After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers the stuff up on +the first pleasant day in spring and gets an old nigger to cart it to me +in an open wagon. The next day he lounges in here with his palavering +ways, and demands the highest price in the market--and I give it to him! +That's the damned outrage of it, I give it to him!" concluded Baxter +with an excitement in which his huge person heaved like a shaken +mountain. "I've bought his trash for twenty years and ground it into +snuff because I was afraid to refuse a Brooke--but Brooke or no Brooke +there's an end to it now," he turned and waved his hand furiously to a +pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse floor, "there's his trash and it +ain't fit even for snuff!" + +He led Ordway back into the building, picked up several leaves from the +pile, smelt them, and threw them down with a contemptuous oath. +"Worm-eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out to Cedar Hill +and tell the man that his stuff ain't fit for anything but fertiliser," +he went on. "If he wants it he'd better come for it and haul it away." + +"And if he refuses?" + +"He most likely will--then tell him I'll throw it into the ditch." + +"Oh, I'll tell him," responded Ordway, and he was aware of a peculiar +excitement in the prospect of an encounter with the redoubtable Mr. +Beverly. "I'll do my best," he added, going through the archway, while +Baxter followed him with a few last words of instruction and advice. The +big man's courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as Ordway passed into +the street, he hurried after him to suggest that he should approach the +subject with as much delicacy as he possessed. "I wouldn't butt at Mr. +Beverly, if I were you," he cautioned, "just edge around and work in +slowly when you get the chance." + +But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he had started out in an +impatience not unmixed with anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he +wondered, and what power did he possess that kept Tappahannock in a +state of slavery? He was glad that Baxter had sent him on the errand, +and the next minute he laughed aloud because the big man had been too +timid to come in person. + +He had reached the top of the hill, and was about to turn into the road +he had taken his first night in Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a +shawl, hurried across the street from one of the smaller houses fronting +upon the green. + +"I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that helped William +Cotton?" + +Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into notice. At the thought +Ordway looked down upon his questioner with a sensation that was almost +one of pleasure. + +"He needed business advice and I gave it, that was all," he answered. + +"But you wrote down the whole case for him so that he could understand +it and speak for himself," she said, catching her breath in a sob, as +she pulled her thin shawl together. "You got him out of his troubles and +asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing to do as much by me. I am +a widow with five little children, and though I've paid every penny I +could scrape together for the mortgage, the farm is to be sold over our +heads and we have nowhere to go." + +Again the glow that was like the glow of pleasure illuminated Ordway's +mind. + +"There's not one chance in a hundred that I can help you," he said; "in +the case of William Cotton it was a mere accident. Still if you will +tell me where you live, I will come to you this evening and talk +matters over. If I can help you, I promise you I will with pleasure." + +"And for nothing? I am very poor." + +He shook his head with a laugh. "Oh, I get more fun out of it than you +could understand!" + +After writing down the woman's name in his notebook, he passed into the +country road and bent his thoughts again upon the approaching visit to +Mr. Beverly. + +When he reached Cedar Hill, which lay a sombre shadow against the young +green of the landscape, he saw that the dead cedars still lay where they +had fallen across the avenue. Evidently the family temper had assumed an +opposite, though equally stubborn form, in the person of the girl in the +red cape, and she had, he surmised, refused to allow Beverly to profit +by his desecration even to the extent of selling the trees he had +already cut down. Was it from a sentiment, or as a warning, he wondered, +that she left the great cedars barring the single approach to the house? +In either case the magnificent insolence of her revenge moved him to an +acknowledgment of her spirit and her justice. + +In the avenue a brood of young turkeys were scratching in the fragrant +dust shed by the trees; and at his approach they scattered and fled +before him. It was long evidently since a stranger had penetrated into +the melancholy twilight of the cedars; for the flutter of the turkeys, +he discovered presently, was repeated in an excited movement he felt +rather than saw as he ascended the stone steps and knocked at the door. +The old hound he had seen the first night rose from under a bench on the +porch, and came up to lick his hand; a window somewhere in the right +wing shut with a loud noise; and through the bare old hall, which he +could see from the half open door, a breeze blew dispersing an odour of +hot soapsuds. The hall was dim and empty except for a dilapidated sofa +in one corner, on which a brown and white setter lay asleep, and a rusty +sword which clanked against the wall with a regular, swinging motion. In +response to his repeated knocks there was a sound of slow steps on the +staircase, and a handsome, shabbily dressed man, holding a box of +dominoes, came to the door and held out his hand with an apologetic +murmur. + +"I beg your pardon, but the wind makes such a noise I did not hear your +knock. Will you come inside or do you prefer to sit on the porch where +we can get the view?" + +As he spoke he edged his way courteously across the threshold and with a +hospitable wave of his hand, sat down upon one of the pine benches +against the decaying railing. In spite of the shabbiness of his clothes +he presented a singularly attractive, even picturesque appearance, from +the abundant white hair above his forehead to his small, shapely feet +encased now in an ancient pair of carpet slippers. His figure was +graceful and well built, his brown eyes soft and melancholy, and the +dark moustache drooping over his mouth had been trained evidently into +an immaculate precision. His moustache, however, was the one immaculate +feature of his person, for even his carpet slippers were dirty and worn +threadbare in places. Yet his beauty, which was obscured in the first +view by what in a famous portrait might have been called "the tone of +time," produced, after a closer and more sympathetic study, an effect +which, upon Ordway at least, fell little short of the romantic. In his +youth Beverly had been, probably, one of the handsomest men of his time, +and this distinction, it was easy to conjecture, must have been the +occasion, if not the cause, of his ruin. Even now, pompous and slovenly +as he appeared, it was difficult to resist a certain mysterious +fascination which he still possessed. When he left Tappahannock Ordway +had felt only a humorous contempt for the owner of Cedar Hill, but +sitting now beside him on the hard pine bench, he found himself yielding +against his will to an impulse of admiration. Was there not a certain +spiritual kinship in the fact that they were both failures in life? + +"You are visiting Tappahannock, then?" asked Beverly with his engaging +smile; "I go in seldom or I should perhaps have seen you. When a man +gets as old and as much of an invalid as I am, he usually prefers to +spend his days by the fireside in the bosom of his family." + +The bloom of health was in his cheeks, yet as he spoke he pressed his +hand to his chest with the habitual gesture of an invalid. "A chronic +trouble which has prevented my taking an active part in the world's +affairs," he explained, with a sad, yet cheerful dignity as of one who +could enliven tragedy with a comic sparkle. "I had my ambitions once, +sir," he added, "but we will not speak of them for they are over, and at +this time of my life I can do little more than try to amuse myself with +a box of dominoes." + +As he spoke he placed the box on the bench between them and began +patiently matching the little ivory blocks. Ordway expressed a casual +sympathy, and then, forgetting Baxter's warning, he attempted to bring +the conversation to a practical level. + +"I am employed now at Baxter's warehouse," he began, "and the object of +my call is to speak with you about your last load of tobacco." + +"Ah!" said Beverly, with warming interest, "it is a sufficient +recommendation to have come from Robert Baxter--for that man has been +the best, almost the only, friend I have had in life. It is impossible +to overestimate either his character or my admiration. He has come to my +assistance, sir, when I hardly knew where to turn for help. If you are +employed by him, you are indeed to be envied." + +"I am entirely of your opinion," observed Ordway, "but the point this +morning----" + +"Well, we'll let that rest a while now," interrupted Beverly, pushing +the dominoes away, and turning his beautiful, serious face upon his +companion. "When there is an opportunity for me to speak of Baxter's +generosity, I feel that I cannot let it escape me. Something tells me +that you will understand and pardon my enthusiasm. There is no boy like +an old boy, sir." + +His voice broke, and drawing a ragged handkerchief from the pocket of +his corduroy coat, he blew his nose and wiped away two large teardrops +from his eyes. After such an outburst of sentiment it seemed a positive +indecency to inform him that Baxter had threatened to throw his tobacco +into a ditch. + +"He regrets very much that your crop was a failure this year," said +Ordway, after what he felt to be a respectable pause. + +"And yet," returned Beverly, with his irrepressible optimism, "if things +had been worse it might even have rotted in the ground. As it was, I +never saw more beautiful seedlings--they were perfect specimens. Had not +the tobacco worms and the frost and the leak in the smokehouse all +combined against me, I should have raised the most splendid crop in +Virginia, sir." The spectacle of this imaginary crop suffused his face +with a glow of ardour. "My health permits me to pay little attention to +the farm," he continued in his eloquent voice, "I see it falling to +rains about me, and I am fortunate in being able to enjoy the beauty of +its decay. Yes, my crop was a failure, I admit," he added, with a +touching cheerfulness, "it lay several months too long in the barn +before I could get it sent to the warehouse--but this was my misfortune, +not my fault, as I am sure Robert Baxter will understand." + +"He will find it easier to understand the case than to sell the tobacco, +I fancy." + +"However that may be, he is aware that I place the utmost confidence in +his judgment. What he does will be the right thing, sir." + +This confession of artless trust was so overpowering that for a moment +Ordway hung back, feeling that any ground would be dangerous ground upon +which to proceed. The very absorption in which Beverly arranged the +dominoes upon the bench added to the childlike simplicity of his +appearance. Then a sudden irritation against the man possessed him, for +he remembered the girl in the red cape and the fallen cedars. From where +he sat now they were hidden by the curve of the avenue, but the +wonderful trees, which shed their rich gloom almost upon the roof of the +house, made him realise afresh the full extent of Beverly's folly. In +the fine spring sunshine whatever beauties were left in the ruined place +showed in an intenser and more vernal aspect. Every spear of grass on +the lawn was tipped with light, and the young green leaves on the lilacs +stood out as if illuminated on a golden background. In one of the +ivy-covered eaves a wren was building, and he could see the flutter of a +bluebird in an ancient cedar. + +"It is a beautiful day," remarked Beverly, pensively, "but the lawn +needs trimming." His gaze wandered gently over the tangled sheep mint, +orchard grass and Ailantus shoots which swept from the front steps to +the fallen fence which had once surrounded the place, and he added with +an outburst of animation, "I must tell Micah to turn in the cattle." + +Remembering the solitary cow he had seen in a sheltered corner of the +barn, Ordway bit back a smile as he rose and held out his hand. + +"After all, I haven't delivered my message," he said, "which was to the +effect that the tobacco is practically unfit for use. Baxter told me to +request you to send for it at your convenience." + +Beverly gathered up his dominoes, and rising with no appearance of +haste, turned upon him an expression of suffering dignity. + +"Such an act upon my part," he said, "would be a reflection upon +Baxter's ability as a merchant, and after thirty years of friendship I +refuse to put an affront upon him. I would rather, sir, lose every penny +my tobacco might bring me." + +His sincerity was so admirable, that for a moment it obscured even in +Ordway's mind the illusion upon which it rested. When a man is honestly +ready to sacrifice his fortune in the cause of friendship, it becomes +the part of mere vulgarity to suggest to him that his affairs are in a +state of penury. + +"Then it must be used for fertilisers or thrown away," said Ordway, +shortly. + +"I trust myself entirely in Baxter's hands," replied Beverly, in sad but +noble tones, "whatever he does will be the best that could be done under +the circumstances. You may assure him of this with my compliments." + +"Well, I fear, there's nothing further to be said," remarked Ordway; and +he was about to make his final good-bye, when a faded lady, wrapped in +a Paisley shawl, appeared in the doorway and came out upon the porch. + +"Amelia," said Beverly, "allow me to present Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, Mrs. +Brooke." + +Mrs. Brooke smiled at him wanly with a pretty, thin-lipped mouth and a +pair of large rather prominent eyes, which had once been gray but were +now washed into a cloudy drab. She was still pretty in a hopeless, +depressed, ineffectual fashion; and though her skirt was frayed about +the edges and her shoes run down at the heel, her pale, fawn-coloured +hair was arranged in elaborate spirals and the hand she held out to +Ordway was still delicately fine and white. She was like a philosopher, +who, having sunk into a universal pessimism of thought, preserves, in +spite of himself, a small belief or so in the minor pleasures of +existence. Out of the general wreck of her appearance she had clung +desperately to the beauties of her hair and hands. + +"I had hoped you would stay to dinner," she remarked in her listless +manner to Ordway. Fate had whipped her into submission, but there was +that in her aspect which never permitted one for an instant to forget +the whipping. If her husband had dominated by his utter incapacity, she +had found a smaller consolation in feeling that though she had been +obliged to drudge she had never learned to do it well. To do it badly, +indeed, had become at last the solitary proof that by right of birth she +was entitled not to do it at all. + +At Ordway's embarrassed excuse she made no effort to insist, but stood, +smiling like a ghost of her own past prettiness, in the doorway. Behind +her the bare hall and the dim staircase appeared more empty, more +gloomy, more forlornly naked than they had done before. + +Again Ordway reached for his hat, and prepared to pick his way carefully +down the sunken steps; but this time he was arrested by the sound of +smothered laughter at the side of the house, which ran back to the +vegetable garden. A moment later the girl in the red cape appeared +running at full speed across the lawn, pursued by several shrieking +children that followed closely at her skirts. Her clear, ringing +laugh--the laugh of youth and buoyant health--held Ordway motionless for +an instant upon the porch; then as she came nearer he saw that she held +an old, earth-covered spade in her hands and that her boots and short +woollen skirt were soiled with stains from the garden beds. But the +smell of the warm earth that clung about her seemed only to increase the +vitality and freshness in her look. Her vivid animation, her sparkling +glance, struck him even more forcibly than they had done in the street +of Tappahannock. + +At sight of Ordway her laugh was held back breathlessly for an instant; +then breaking out again, it began afresh with redoubled merriment, and +sinking with exhaustion on the lowest step, she let the spade fall to +the ground while she buried her wind-blown head in her hands. + +"I beg your pardon," she stammered presently, lifting her radiant brown +eyes, "but I've run so fast that I'm quite out of breath." Stopping with +an effort she sought in vain to extinguish her laughter in the curls of +the smallest child. + +"Emily," said Beverly with dignity, "allow me to present Mr. Smith." + +The girl looked up from the step; and then, rising, smiled brightly upon +Ordway over the spade which she had picked up from the ground. + +"I can't shake hands," she explained, "because I've been spading the +garden." + +If she recognised him for the tramp who had slept in her barn there was +no hint of it in her voice or manner. + +"Do you mean, Emily," asked Beverly, in his plaintive voice, "that you +have been actually digging in the ground?" + +"Actually," repeated Emily, in a manner which made Ordway suspect that +the traditional feminine softness was not included among her virtues, "I +actually stepped on dirt and saw--worms." + +"But where is Micah?" + +"Micah has an attack of old age. He was eighty-two yesterday." + +"Is it possible?" remarked Beverly, and the discovery appeared to afford +him ground for cheerful meditation. + +"No, it isn't possible, but it's true," returned the girl, with +good-humoured merriment. "As there are only two able-bodied persons on +the place, the mare and I, it seemed to me that one of us had better +take a hand at the spade. But I had to leave off after the first +round," she added to Ordway, showing him her right hand, from the palm +of which the skin had been rubbed away. She was so much like a gallant +boy that Ordway felt an impulse to take the hand in his own and examine +it more carefully. + +"Well, I'm very much surprised to hear that Micah is so old," commented +Beverly, dwelling upon the single fact which had riveted his attention. +"I must be making him a little present upon his birthday." + +The girl's eyes flashed under her dark lashes, but remembering Ordway's +presence, she turned to him with a casual remark about the promise of +the spring. He saw at once that she had achieved an indignant detachment +from her thriftless family, and the ardent, almost impatient energy with +which she fell to labour was, in itself, a rebuke to the pleasant +indolence which had hastened, if it had not brought about, the ruin of +the house. Was it some temperamental disgust for the hereditary idleness +which had spurred her on to take issue with the worn-out traditions of +her ancestors and to place herself among the labouring rather than the +leisure class? As she stood there in her freshness and charm, with the +short brown curls blown from her forehead, the edge of light shining in +her eyes and on her lips, and the rich blood kindling in her vivid face, +it seemed to Ordway, looking back at her from the end of his forty +years, that he was brought face to face with the spirit of the future +rising amid the decaying sentiment of the past. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH" + + +When Ordway had disappeared beyond the curve in the avenue, Emily went +slowly up the steps, her spade clanking against the stone as she +ascended. + +"Did he come about the tobacco, Beverly?" she asked. + +Beverly rose languidly from the bench, and stood rubbing his hand across +his forehead with an exhausted air. + +"My head was very painful and he talked so rapidly I could hardly follow +him," he replied; "but is it possible, Emily, that you have been digging +in the garden?" + +"There is nobody else to do it," replied Emily, with an impatient flash +in her eyes; "only half the garden has been spaded. If you disapprove so +heartily, I wish you'd produce someone to do the work." + +Mrs. Brooke, who had produced nothing in her life except nine children, +six of whom had died in infancy, offered at this a feeble and resigned +rebuke. + +"I am sure you could get Salem," she replied. + +"We owe him already three months' wages," returned the girl, "I am still +paying him for last autumn." + +"All I ask of you, Emily, is peace," remarked Beverly, in a gentle +voice, as he prepared to enter the house. "Nothing--no amount of +brilliant argument can take the place of peace in a family circle. My +poor head is almost distracted when you raise your voice." + +The three children flocked out of the dining-room and came, with a rush, +to fling themselves upon him. They adored him--and there was a live +terrapin which they had brought in a box for him to see! In an instant +his depression vanished, and he went off, his beautiful face beaming +with animation, while the children clung rapturously to his corduroy +coat. + +"Amelia," said Emily, lowering her voice, "don't you think it would +improve Beverly's health if he were to try working for an hour every day +in the garden?" + +Mrs. Brooke appeared troubled by the suggestion. "If he could only make +up his mind to it, I've no doubt it would," she answered, "he has had no +exercise since he was obliged to give up his horse. Walking he has +always felt to be ungentlemanly." + +She spoke in a softly tolerant voice, though she herself drudged day and +night in her anxious, tearful, and perfectly ineffectual manner. For +twenty years she had toiled patiently without, so far as one could +perceive, achieving a single definite result--for by some unfortunate +accident of temperament, she was doomed to do badly whatever she +undertook to do at all. Yet her intention was so admirable that she +appeared forever apologising in her heart for the incompetence of her +hands. + +Emily placed the spade in the corner of the porch, and desisting from +her purpose, went upstairs to wash her hands before going in to dinner. +As she ascended the wide, dimly lighted staircase, upon which the sun +shone with a greenish light from the gallery above, she stopped twice to +wonder why Beverly's visitor had slept in the barn like a tramp only six +weeks ago. Before her mirror, a minute later, she put the same question +to herself while she braided her hair. + +The room was large, cool, high-ceiled, with a great brick fireplace, and +windows which looked out on the garden, where purple and white lilacs +were blooming beside the gate. On the southern side the ivy had grown +through the slats of the old green shutters, until they were held back, +crumbling, against the house, and in the space between one of the cedars +brushed always, with a whispering sound, against the discoloured panes. +In Emily's absence a curious melancholy descended on the old mahogany +furniture, the greenish windows and the fireless hearth; but with the +opening of the door and the entrance of her vivid youth, there appeared +also a light and gracious atmosphere in her surroundings. She remembered +the day upon which she had returned after ten years' absence, and how as +she opened the closed shutters, the gloom of the place had resisted the +passage of the sunshine, retreating stubbornly from the ceiling to the +black old furniture and then across the uncarpeted floor to the hall +where it still held control. For months after her return it had seemed +to her that the fight was between her spirit and the spirit of the +past--between hope and melancholy, between growth and decay. The burden +of debt, of poverty, of hopeless impotence had fallen upon her +shoulders, and she had struggled under it with impetuous gusts of anger, +but with an energy that never faltered. To keep the children fed and +clothed, to work the poor farm as far as she was able, to stay clear of +any further debts, and to pay off the yearly mortgage with her small +income, these were the things which had filled her thoughts and absorbed +the gallant fervour of her youth. Her salary at the public school had +seemed to Beverly, though he disapproved of her position, to represent +the possibility of luxury; and in some loose, vague way he was never +able to understand why the same amount could not be made to serve in +several opposite directions at the same time. + +"That fifty dollars will come in very well, indeed, my dear," he would +remark, with cheerfulness, gloating over the unfamiliar sight of the +bank notes, "it's exactly the amount of Wilson's bill which he's been +sending in for the last year, and he refuses to furnish any groceries +until the account is settled. Then there's the roof which must be +repaired--it will help us there--then we must all have a supply of +shoes, and the wages of the hands are due to-morrow, I overlooked that +item." + +"But if you pay it all to Wilson," Emily would ask, as a kind of +elementary lesson in arithmetic, "how is the money going to buy all the +other things?" + +"Ah, to be sure," Beverly would respond, as if struck by the lucidity of +the idea, "that is the question." + +And it was likely to remain the question until the end of Beverly--for +he had grown so accustomed to the weight of poverty upon his shoulders +that he would probably have felt a sense of loss if it had been suddenly +removed. But it was impossible to live in the house with him, to receive +his confidences and meet his charming smile and not to entertain a +sentiment of affection for him in one's heart. His unfailing courtesy +was his defence, though even this at times worked in Emily an +unreasonable resentment. He had ruined his family, and she felt that she +could have forgiven him more easily if he had ruined it with a less +irreproachable demeanour. + +After her question he had said nothing further about the tobacco, but a +chance meeting with Adam Whaley, as she rode into Tappahannock on the +Sunday after Ordway's visit, made clear to her exactly what the purpose +of that visit had been. + +"It's a pity Mr. Beverly let his tobacco spoil, particular' arter his +wheat turned out to be no account," remarked Adam. "I hope you don't +mind my sayin', Miss Em'ly, that Mr. Beverly is about as po' a farmer as +he is a first rate gentleman." + +"Oh, no, I don't mind in the least, Adam," said Emily. "Do you know," +she asked presently, "any hands that I can get to work the garden this +week?" + +Whaley shook his head. "They get better paid at the factories," he +answered; "an' them that ain't got thar little patch to labour in, +usually manage to git a job in town." + +Emily was on her old horse--an animal discarded by Mr. Beverly on +account of age--and she looked down at his hanging neck with a feeling +that was almost one of hopelessness. Beverly, who had never paid his +bills, had seldom paid his servants; and of the old slave generation +that would work for its master for a song, there were only Micah and +poor half-demented Aunt Mehitable now left. + +"The trouble with Mr. Beverly," continued Adam, laying his hand on the +neck of the old horse, "is that he was born loose-fingered jest as some +folks are born loose-moraled. He's never held on to anything sense he +came into the world an' I doubt if he ever will. Why, bless yo' life, +even as a leetle boy he never could git a good grip on his fishin' line. +It was always a-slidin' an' slippin' into the water." + +They had reached Tappahannock in the midst of Adam's philosophic +reflection; and as they were about to pass an open field on the edge of +the town, Emily pointed to a little crowd which had gathered in the +centre of the grass-grown space. + +"Is it a Sunday frolic, do you suppose?" she inquired. + +"That? Oh no--it's 'Ten Commandment Smith,' as they call him now. He +gives a leetle talk out thar every fine Sunday arternoon." + +"A talk? About what?" + +"Wall, I ain't much of a listener, Miss, when it comes to that. My soul +is willin' an' peart enough, but it's my hands an' feet that make the +trouble. I declar' I've only got to set down in a pew for 'em to twitch +untwel you'd think I had the Saint Vitus dance. It don't look well to be +twitchin' the whole time you are in church, so that's the reason I'm +obleeged to stay away. As for 'Ten Commandment Smith,' though, he's got +a voice that's better than the doxology, an' his words jest boom along +like cannon." + +"And do the people like it?" + +"Some, of 'em do, I reckon, bein' as even sermons have thar followers, +but thar're t'others that go jest out of the sperit to be obleegin', an' +it seems to them that a man's got a pretty fair licence to preach who +gives away about two-thirds of what he gits a month. Good Lord, he could +drum up a respectable sized congregation jest from those whose back +mortgages he's helped pay up." + +While he spoke Emily had turned her horse's head into the field, and +riding slowly toward the group, she stopped again upon discovering that +it was composed entirely of men. Then going a little nearer, she drew +rein just beyond the outside circle, and paused for a moment with her +eyes fixed intently upon the speaker's face. + +In the distance a forest, still young in leaf, lent a radiant, +springlike background to the field, which rose in soft green swells that +changed to golden as they melted gradually into the landscape. Ordway's +head was bare, and she saw now that the thick locks upon his forehead +were powdered heavily with gray. She could not catch his words, but his +voice reached her beyond the crowd; and she found herself presently +straining her ears lest she miss the sound which seemed to pass with a +peculiar richness into the atmosphere about the speaker. The religious +significance of the scene moved her but little--for she came of a race +that scorned emotional conversions or any faith, for that matter, which +did not confine itself within four well-built walls. Yet, in spite of +her convictions, something in the voice whose words she could not +distinguish, held her there, as if she were rooted on her old horse to +the spot of ground. The unconventional preacher, in his cheap clothes, +aroused in her an interest which seemed in some vague way to have its +beginning in a mystery that she could not solve. The man was neither a +professional revivalist nor a member of the Salvation Army, yet he +appeared to hold the attention of his listeners as if either their money +or their faith was in his words. And it was no uncultured oratory--"Ten +Commandment Smith," for all his rough clothes, his muddy boots and his +hardened hands, was beneath all a gentleman, no matter what his work--no +matter even what his class. Though she had lived far out of the world in +which he had had his place, she felt instinctively that the voice she +heard had been trained to reach another audience than the one before him +in the old field. His words might be simple and straight from the +heart--doubtless they were--but the voice of the preacher--the vibrant, +musical, exquisitely modulated voice--was not merely a personal gift, +but the result of generations of culture. The atmosphere of a larger +world was around him as he stood there, bare-headed in the sunshine, +speaking to a breathless crowd of factory workers as if his heart went +out to them in the words he uttered. Perfectly motionless on the grass +at his feet his congregation sat in circles with their pathetic dumb +eyes fixed on his face. + +"What is it about, Adam? Can't you find out?" asked Emily, stirred by an +impulsive desire to be one of the attentive group of listeners--to come +under the spell of personality which drew its magic circle in the centre +of the green field. + +Adam crossed the space slowly, and returned after what was to Emily an +impatient interval. + +"It's one of his talks on the Ten Commandments--that's why they gave him +his nickname. I didn't stay to find out whether 'twas the top or the +bottom of 'em, Miss, as I thought you might be in a hurry." + +"But they can get that in church. What makes them come out here?" + +"Oh, he tells 'em things," said Adam, "about people and places, and how +to get on in life. Then he's al'ays so ready to listen to anybody's +troubles arterward; and he's taken over Martha Frayley's mortgage--you +know she's the widow of Mike Frayley who was a fireman and lost his life +last January in the fire at Bingham's Wall--I reckon, a man's got a +right to talk big when he lives big, too." + +"Yes, I suppose he has," said Emily. "Well, I must be going now, so I'll +ride on ahead of you." + +Touching the neck of the horse with her bare hand, she passed at a +gentle amble into one of the smaller streets of Tappahannock. Her +purpose was to call upon one of her pupils who had been absent from +school for several days, but upon reaching the house she found that the +child, after a slight illness, had recovered sufficiently to be out of +doors. This was a relief rather than a disappointment, and mounting +again, she started slowly back in the direction of Cedar Hill. A crowd +of men, walking in groups along the roadside, made her aware that the +gathering in the field had dispersed, and as she rode by she glanced +curiously among them in the hope of discovering the face of the speaker. +He was walking slightly behind the crowd, listening with an expression +of interest, to a man in faded blue overalls, who kept a timid yet +determined hold upon his arm. His face, which had appeared grave to +Emily when she saw it at Cedar Hill, wore now a look which seemed a +mixture of spiritual passion and boyish amusement. He impressed her as +both sad and gay, both bitter and sympathetic, and she was struck again +by the contrast between his hard mouth and his gentle eyes. As she met +his glance, he bowed without a smile, while he stepped back into the +little wayside path among the dusty thistles. + +Unconsciously, she had searched his face as Milly Trend had done before +her, and like her, she had found there only an impersonal kindliness. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE OLD AND THE NEW + + +When she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in +the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which +constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had +always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so +he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing +beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in +great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was +littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made +of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the +six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already +laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared +ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma. +A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick +fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red +and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one +of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a +loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each +passage of the hands. + +"Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered, +for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an +insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip. + +"I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I +pour the coffee?" + +She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an +ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the +hickory log. + +"I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her +mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed. + +Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed +in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone +to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper. +The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the +room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but +observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down +again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake +more rapidly. + +"The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl +called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and +slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses +for its supper?" + +"Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair. +"They eat flies--I've seen 'em." + +"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl. + +"It ain't your terrapin!" + +"It is." + +"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?" + +Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with +the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn +for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face +in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene +domesticity. + +"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could +once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered +whimsically from his wife to the terrapin. + +Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat +now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow +against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to +survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity. + +"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to +achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows +in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped +this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer." + +"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his +coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you +ask it." + +She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question, +so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian +purposes. + +"Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too +late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice. + +"I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's +nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I +remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told +me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from +which he had been saved. As a small child I was taken to see him once +when he had just come to absolute ruin and had been obliged to sell his +horses and his house and even his wife's jewellery for debt. A red flag +was flying at the gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking port +wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 'Yes, I've lost +everything, my boy,' he cried, 'but it doesn't worry me a bit!' At that +instant I remember noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had +ever seen." + +"But his wife had to take in dressmaking," commented Emily, "and his +children grew up without a particle of education." + +"Ah, so they did," admitted Beverly, with sadness, "the details had +escaped me." + +As they had escaped him with equal success all his life, the fact seemed +to Emily hardly deserving of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she +went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a cold room, with her +head swathed in camphor bandages. In answer to Emily's inquiries, she +moaned plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring and that she +must get up at daybreak and begin the work. "I've just remembered lying +here that I planned to clean them last week," she said excitedly, "and +will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get up that Beverly's old brown +velveteen coat needs a patch at the elbow?" + +"Don't think of such things now, Amelia, there's plenty of time. You are +shivering all over--I'll start the fire in a moment. It has turned quite +cool again." + +"But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly came up," sighed Mrs. +Brooke, "he is so fond of them." + +Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily knelt on the hearth and +kindled a blaze which leaped rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of +the two family failings with which she was obliged to contend, she had +long ago decided that Beverly's selfishness was less harmful in its +results than Amelia's self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed +positively violent during her severe attacks of headache, and between +two spasms of pain her feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small +self-denials which served to increase her discomfort while they +conferred no possible benefit upon either her husband or her children. +Her temperament had fitted her for immolation; but the character of the +age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace a domestic rather +than a religious martyrdom. The rack would have been to her morally a +bed of roses, and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny that +she had missed was visible at times in her faded gray eyes and impassive +features. + +"Mehitable brought me an egg," she groaned presently, growing more +comfortable in spite of her resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated +into the chill gloom where she lay, "but I sent it down to Blair--I +heard him coughing." + +"He didn't want it. There was plenty of batter-bread." + +"Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so seldom has one. It is +very sad. Emily, have you noticed how inert and lifeless Mr. Brooke has +grown?" + +"It's nothing new, Amelia, he has always been that way. Can't you sleep +now?" + +"Oh, but if you could have seen him when we became engaged, Emily--such +life! such spirits! I remember the first time I dined at your +father's--that was before Beverly's mother died, so, of course, your +mother wasn't even thought of in the family. I suppose second marriages +are quite proper, since the Lord permits them, but they always seem to +me like trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal fervour. +Well, I was going to say that when your father asked me what part of the +fowl I preferred and I answered 'dark meat, sir,' he fairly rapped the +table in his delight: 'Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife you'll make for +Beverly,' he cried, 'if you will only continue to prefer dark meat!'" + +She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, and then began to +moan softly with pain. Emily swept the hearth, and after putting on a +fresh log, went out, closing the door after her. There was no light in +her room, but she reflected with a kind of desperation that there was no +Beverly and no Amelia. The weight of the family had left her bruised and +helpless, yet she knew that she must go downstairs again, remove the +supper things, and send the three resisting children off to bed. She was +quite equal to the task she had undertaken, yet there were moments when, +because of her youth and her vitality, she found it harder to control +her temper than to accomplish her work. + +At ten o'clock, when she had coaxed the children to sleep, and persuaded +Amelia to drink a cup of gruel, she came to her room again and began to +undress slowly by the full moonlight which streamed through the window. +Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she could see the tangled garden, with +the dried stubble of last year's corn protruding from the unspaded rows. +This was the last sight upon which her eyes turned before she climbed +into the high tester bed and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep +of youth. + +Awaking at six o'clock she went again to the window, and at the first +glance it seemed to her that she must have slipped back into some +orderly and quiet dream--for the corn rows which had presented a +blighted aspect under the moonlight were now spaded and harrowed into +furrows ready for planting. The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a +surprise for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed this the +next instant and thought of Adam, Micah, even of the demented Aunt +Mehitable. The memory of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a +laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran downstairs to the +garden gate, she half expected to see the pumpkin chariot disappearing +down the weed-grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac blossoms +shed a delicious perfume into her face, and leaning against the rotting +posts of the gate, she looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the +freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in the sunshine. A +heavy dew lay over the landscape and as the sun rose slowly higher the +mist was drawn back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that is +gathered up. + +"Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?" each name was a question she put to +herself, and after each she answered decisively, "No, it is impossible." +Micah, who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind and wholly +rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly in response to her eager +inquiries. There was clearly no help to be had from him except the +bewildered assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following on her +footsteps with a split basket while she dropped the grains of corn into +the opened furrows. His help in this case even was hardly more than a +hindrance, for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell over a +trailing brier in the path, and Emily was obliged to stop her work and +gather up the grain which he had scattered. + +"Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin' out fur you," he muttered as he sat +on the ground rubbing the variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When +the planting was over he went grumbling back to his cabin, while Emily +walked slowly up and down the garden path and dreamed of the vegetables +which would ripen for the market. In the midst of her business +calculations she remembered the little congregation in the green field +on Sunday afternoon and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face of +the man who passed her in the road. Why had she thought of him? she +wondered idly, and why should that group of listeners gathered out of +doors in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment which was +associated with some religious emotion of which she had been half +unconscious? + +The next night she awoke from a profound sleep with the same memory in +her mind, and turning on her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight, +which brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew outside. On the +ivy the light shone almost like dawn, and as she could not fall asleep +again, she rose presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing-gown, +crossed to the window and looked out upon the shining fields, the garden +and the blossoming lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay +thick and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were resting upon +them, when it seemed to her that a portion of the darkness detached +itself and melted out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only +the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was outlined on the bare rows +of the garden, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw +that the figure had assumed a human shape, though it was still followed +so closely by its semblance upon the ground that it was impossible at a +distance to distinguish the living worker from his airy double. Yet she +realised instantly that her mysterious gardener was at work before her +eyes, and hastening into her clothes, she caught up her cape from a +chair, and started toward the door with an impulsive determination to +discover his identity. With her hand on the knob, she hesitated and +stopped, full of perplexity, upon the threshold. Since he had wished to +remain undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust recognition +upon his kindness? On the other hand was it not more than unfair--was it +not positively ungrateful--to allow his work to pass without any sign of +acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white moonlight outside she +could see the pointed tops of the cedars rising like silver spires. As +the boughs moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours of cedar +berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For an instant longer her +hesitation lasted; then throwing aside her cape, she undressed quickly, +without glancing again down into the garden. When she fell asleep now it +was to dream of the shadowy gardener spading in the moonlight among the +lilacs. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +HIS NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN + + +In his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first +by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in +whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the +beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the +fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next +night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure +pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still +digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less +than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before +Sunday put a stop to his work. + +On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking +almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path +powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken +fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his +freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. +While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty +of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense +which was keener than the sense of touch. + +As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened +himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair +back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the +moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields, +and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the +hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and +moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw +that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the +purple and white lilacs. + +"It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say +'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her +voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her +hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the +pillow. + +"It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for +doing the thing that I enjoyed." + +Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and +his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in +the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She +felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she +had at first believed. + +"And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and +sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot +understand why you have done it." + +"Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a +whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it +justified that explanation of my behaviour?" + +"The explanation, yes--but not you," she answered, smiling. + +"Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't +I?" + +"It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but +even your success doesn't explain your motive." + +"Well, the truth is--if you will have it--I needed exercise." + +"You might have walked." + +"That doesn't reach the shoulders--there's the trouble." + +She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to +her gallant manner. + +"Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to +you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a +farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes +and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured +population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it +isn't mine. It looks too shiny." + +"I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs +it every night." + +"In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's +gardens." + +"She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke, "but you see I am a very +useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me." + +"Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her." + +"You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went." + +Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a +feeling of good fellowship. + +"So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily. + +"Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case." + +For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she +turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought. + +"After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to +Tappahannock," she observed. + +Her friendliness--which impressed him as that of a creature who had met +no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous, +almost childlike, appeal to his confidence. + +"Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly. + +She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac. + +"Yes, I remember." + +"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night--I was beaten down, +desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and--yes, and in your +courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back +to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road." + +"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her +frank, almost boyish way. + +"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I _was_ +hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my +fault, you understand--I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to +begin again low down--at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell +her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had +returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist +the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words +with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon +the handle, stood waiting for her to speak. + +"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she +asked. + +"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered. + +"And you are making a new foundation now?" + +"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't +they?" he added cheerfully. + +"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should +like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I +think, to see New York." + +"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?" + +"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school +once in Georgia." + +The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her +suddenly as if he had taken her in for the first time. Perfectly +unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would +have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes. +Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now, +than to some inherited ideal of manner--of social values; and it seemed +to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect +which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries. + +"You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked. + +"A great many--oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still +have the entire south wall in the library--the English classics are +there." + +"I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that +the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of +Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, +its red clay roads. + +She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and +bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that +first night in the barn. + +"Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said. + +"Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered. + +As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he +passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to +Tappahannock. + +When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him +that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from +Bullfinch's Hollow. + +"Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued +impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit +Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease, +that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is +in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if +you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't +seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two +weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low +lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that +Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for +respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr. +Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how +the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I +reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up +then tight as a keg--I'd wish you'd have seen him." + +"In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as +he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. +Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill. + +"Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs. +Twine, turning from the table to pick up a pair of Canty's little +breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I +reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the +weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk +of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's +an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could +manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to +step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have +thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a +man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin' +any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an' +honour a whale." + +"But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway, +picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and +be charitable to the rest of us." + +Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped +them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of +their infant wearer. + +"As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs +from another only in the set of his breeches--for the best an' the worst +of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all +pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon +that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A +weak woman would have kept a widow after my marriage with Bob Cotton, +the brother of William, suh--but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be +said for me--so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier, +I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage--whether +you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret +for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a +feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an' +when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my +determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most +likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now +that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin'--for thar's +got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I +reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the +worst." + +A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she +looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped +by to walk downtown with him. + +With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops, +Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his +hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon +which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached +himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At +his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his +youthful struggles, and the following day he had unburdened himself +with rapture of his passion for Milly. + +"I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I +might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco +now, isn't there?" + +"Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the +way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants +me to come over." + +"I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?" + +"He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the +afternoon." + +They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself +standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks +came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not +Milly held out her hand. + +"Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith," +she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember +to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity +afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr. +Banks will be here." + +"Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the +heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to +Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon." + +"Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's +look of bewilderment. "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying +to sick people." + +"Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway, +drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and +pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if +Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the +girl before him. + +As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion, +a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper. + +"After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want +to meet her when you got the chance." + +Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man, +and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance--that's the +best excuse I have." + +"All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care." + +"Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have +supported a comparison with your turtle-dove." + +Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a +conscious laugh. + +"Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's +something about you--I don't know what it is--that takes the place of +them." + +"The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway +with good-humoured raillery. + +"You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them--Milly says so." + +"I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's +right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved +by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you." + +"But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air." + +"My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to +the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are--well, you're a +downright trump!" + +He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an +instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the +luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he +"would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +BULLFINCH'S HOLLOW + + +At five o'clock Ordway followed the uneven board walk to the end of the +main street, and then turning into a little footpath which skirted the +railroad track, he came presently to the abandoned field known in +Tappahannock as Bullfinch's Hollow. Beyond a disorderly row of negro +hovels, he found a small frame cottage, which he recognised as the house +to which he had brought Kit Berry on the night when he had dragged him +bodily from Kelly's saloon. In response to his knock the door was opened +by the same weeping woman--a small withered person, with snapping black +eyes and sparse gray hair brushed fiercely against her scalp, where it +clung so closely that it outlined the bones beneath. At sight of Ordway +a smile curved her sunken mouth; and she led the way through the kitchen +to the door of a dimly lighted room at the back, where a boy of eighteen +years tossed deliriously on a pallet in one corner. It was poverty in +its direst, its most abject, results, Ordway saw at once as his eyes +travelled around the smoke stained, unplastered walls and rested upon +the few sticks of furniture and the scant remains of a meal on the +kitchen table. Then he looked into Mrs. Berry's face and saw that she +must have lived once amid surroundings far less wretched than these. + +"Kit was taken bad with fever three days ago," she said, "an' the doctor +told me this mornin' that the po' boy's in for a long spell of typhoid. +He's clean out of his head most of the time, but whenever he comes to +himself he begs and prays me to send for you. Something's on his mind, +but I can't make out what it is." + +"May I see him now?" asked Ordway. + +"I think he's wanderin', but I'll find out in a minute." + +She went to the pallet and bending over the young man, whispered a few +words in his ear, while her knotted hand stroked back the hair from his +forehead. As Ordway's eyes rested on her thin shoulders under the +ragged, half soiled calico dress she wore, he forgot the son in the +presence of the older and more poignant tragedy of the mother's life. +Yet all that he knew of her history was that she had married a drunkard +and had brought a second drunkard into the world. + +"He wants to speak to you, sir--he's come to," she said, returning to +the doorway, and fixing her small black eyes upon Ordway's face. "You +are the gentleman, ain't you, who got him to sign the pledge?" + +Ordway nodded. "Did he keep it?" + +Her sharp eyes filled with tears. + +"He hasn't touched a drop for going on six weeks, sir, but he hadn't the +strength to hold up without it, so the fever came on and wore him down." +Swallowing a sob with a gulp, she wiped her eyes fiercely on the back +of her hand. "He ain't much to look at now," she finished, divided +between her present grief and her reminiscent pride, "but, oh, Mr. +Smith, if you could have seen him as a baby! When he was a week old he +was far and away the prettiest thing you ever laid your eyes on--not +red, sir, like other children, but white as milk, with dimples at his +knees and elbows. I've still got some of his little things--a dress he +wore and a pair of knitted shoes--and it's them that make me cry, sir. I +ain't grievin' for the po' boy in there that's drunk himself to death, +but for that baby that used to be." + +Still crying softly, she slunk out into the kitchen, while Ordway, +crossing to the bed, stood looking down upon the dissipated features of +the boy who lay there, with his matted hair tossed over his flushed +forehead. + +"I'm sorry to see you down, Kit. Can I do anything to help you?" he +asked. + +Kit opened his eyes with a start of recognition, and reaching out, +gripped Ordway's wrist with his burning hand, while he threw off the +ragged patchwork quilt upon the bed. + +"I've something on my mind, and I want to get it off," he answered. +"When it's once off I'll be better and get back my wits." + +"Then get it off. I'm waiting." + +"Do you remember the night in the bar-room?" demanded the boy in a +whisper, "the time you came in through the window and took me home?" + +"Go on," said Ordway. + +"Well, I'd walked up the street behind you that afternoon when you left +Baxter's, and I got drunk that night on a dollar I stole from you." + +"But I didn't speak to you. I didn't even see you." + +"Of course you didn't. If you had I couldn't have stolen it, but Baxter +had just paid you and when you put your hand into your pocket to get out +something, a dollar bill dropped on the walk." + +"Go on." + +"I picked it up and got drunk on it, there's nothing else. It was a +pretty hard drunk, but before I got through you came in and dragged me +home. Twenty cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the money and +bought a fish for breakfast. + +"Well, I did that much good at least," observed Ordway with a smile, +"have you finished, Kit?" + +"It's been on my mind," repeated Kit deliriously, "and I wanted to get +it off." + +"It's off now, my boy," said Ordway, picking up the ragged quilt from +the floor and laying it across the other's feet, "and on the whole I'm +glad you told me. You've done the straight thing, Kit, and I am proud of +you." + +"Proud of me?" repeated Kit, and fell to crying like a baby. + +In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, after bathing the boy's +face and hands from a basin of water on a chair at the bedside, went +into the kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found weeping over a +pair of baby's knitted shoes. The pathos of her grief bordered so +closely upon the ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back +the laugh upon his lips. + +"Kit is worse again," he said. "Do you give him any medicine?" + +Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, while her sobs changed +into a low whimpering sound. + +"Did you sit up with him last night?" asked Ordway, following her to the +door. + +"I've been up for three nights, sir. He has to have his face and hands +bathed every hour." + +"What about medicine and food?" + +"The doctor gives him his medicine free, every drop of it, an' they let +me have a can of milk every day from Cedar Hill. I used to live there as +a girl, you know, my father was overseer in old Mr. Brooke's +time--before he married Miss Emily's mother----" + +Ordway cut short her reminiscences. + +"Well, you must sleep to-night," he said authoritatively, "I'll come +back in an hour and sit up with Kit. Where is your room?" + +She pointed to a rickety flight of stairs which led to the attic above. + +"Kit slept up there until he was taken ill," she answered. "He's been a +hard son to me, sir, as his father was a hard husband because of drink, +but to save the life of me I can't forgit how good he used to be when he +warn't more'n a week old. Never fretted or got into tempers like other +babies----" + +Again Ordway broke in drily upon her wandering recollections. + +"Now I'll go for an hour," he said abruptly, "and by the way, have you +had supper or shall I bring you some groceries when I come?" + +"There was a little milk left in the pitcher and I had a piece of +cornbread, but--oh, Mr. Smith," her small black eyes snapped fiercely +into his, "there are times when my mouth waters for a cup of coffee jest +as po' Kit's does for whiskey." + +"Then put the kettle on," returned Ordway, smiling, as he left the room. + +It was past sunset when he returned, and he found Kit sleeping quietly +under the effect of the medicine the doctor had just given him. Mrs. +Berry had recovered sufficient spirit, not only to put the kettle on the +stove, but to draw the kitchen table into the square of faint light +which entered over the doorstep. The preparations for her supper had +been made, he saw, with evident eagerness, and as he placed his packages +upon the table, she fell upon them with an excited, childish curiosity. +A few moments later the aroma of boiling coffee floated past him where +he sat on the doorstep smoking his last pipe before going into the +sick-room for the night. Turning presently he watched the old woman in +amazement while she sat smacking her thin lips and jerking her +shrivelled little hands over her fried bacon; and as he looked into her +ecstatic face, he realised something of the intensity which enters into +the scant enjoyments of the poor. The memory of his night in the +Brookes' barn returned to him with the aroma of the coffee, and he +understood for the first time that it is possible to associate a rapture +with meat and drink. Then, in spite of his resolve to keep his face +turned toward his future, he found himself contrasting the squalid +shanty at his back with the luxurious surroundings amid which he had +last watched all night by a sick-bed. He could see the rich +amber-coloured curtains, the bowls of violets on the inlaid table +between the open windows, the exquisite embroidered coverlet upon the +bed, and the long pale braid of Lydia's hair lying across the lace +ruffles upon her nightgown. Before his eyes was the sunken field filled +with Negro hovels and refuse heaps in which lean dogs prowled snarling +in search of bones; but his inward vision dwelt, in a luminous mist, on +the bright room, scented with violets, where Lydia had slept with her +baby cradled within her arm. He could see her arm still under the +falling lace, round and lovely, with delicate blue veins showing beneath +the inside curve. + +In the midst of his radiant memory the acrid voice of Mrs. Berry broke +with a shock, and turning quickly he found that his dream took instant +flight before the aggressive actuality which she presented. + +"I declare I believe I'd clean forgot how good things tasted," she +remarked in the cheerful tones of one who is full again after having +been empty. + +Picking up a chip from the ground, Ordway began scraping carelessly at +the red clay on his boots. "It smells rather nice anyway," he rejoined +good-humouredly, and rising from the doorstep, he crossed the kitchen +and sat down in the sagging split-bottomed chair beside the pallet. + +At sunrise he left Kit, sleeping peacefully after a delirious night, and +going out of doors for a breath of fresh air, stood looking wearily on +the dismal prospect of Bullfinch's Hollow. The disorderly road, the +dried herbage of the field, the Negro hovels, with pig pens for +backyards, and the refuse heaps piled with tin cans, old rags and +vegetable rinds, appeared to him now to possess a sordid horror which +had escaped him under the merciful obscurity of the twilight. Even the +sun, he thought, looked lean and shrunken, as it rose over the slovenly +landscape. + +With the first long breath he drew there was only dejection in his +mental outlook; then he remembered the enraptured face of Mrs. Berry as +she poured out her coffee, and he told himself that there were pleasures +hardy enough to thrive and expand even in the atmosphere of Bullfinch's +Hollow. + +As there was no wood in the kitchen, he shouldered an old axe which he +found leaning in one corner, and going to a wood-pile beyond the +doorstep, split up the single rotting log lying upon a heap of mould. +Returning with his armful of wood, he knelt on the hearth and attempted +to kindle a blaze before the old woman should make her appearance from +the attic. The sticks had just caught fire, when a shadow falling over +him from the open door caused him to start suddenly to his feet. + +"I beg your pardon," said a voice, "but I've brought some milk for Mrs. +Berry." + +At the words his face reddened as if from shame, and drawing himself to +his full height, he stood, embarrassed and silent, in the centre of the +room, while Emily Brooke crossed the floor and placed the can of milk +she had brought upon the table. + +"I didn't mean to interrupt you," she added cheerfully, "but there was +no one else to come, so I had to ride over before breakfast. Is Kit +better?" + +"Yes," said Ordway, and to his annoyance he felt himself flush painfully +at the sound of his own voice. + +"You spent last night with him?" she inquired in her energetic tones. + +"Yes." + +As he stood there in his cheap clothes, with his dishevelled hair and +his unwashed hands, she was struck by some distinction of personality, +before which these surface roughnesses appeared as mere incidental +things. Was it in his spare, weather-beaten face? Or was it in the +peculiar contrast between his gray hair and his young blue eyes? Then +her gaze fell on his badly made working clothes, worn threadbare in +places, on his clean striped shirt, frayed slightly at the collar and +cuffs, on his broken fingernails, and on the red clay still adhering to +his country boots. + +"I wonder why you do these things?" she asked so softly that the words +hardly reached him. "I wonder why?" + +Though she had expected no response to her question, to her surprise he +answered almost impulsively as he stooped to pick up a bit of charred +wood from the floor. + +"Well, one must fill one's life, you know," he said. "I tried the other +thing once but it didn't count--it was hardly better than this, when all +is said." + +"What 'other thing' do you mean?" + +"When I spoke I was thinking of what people have got to call +'pleasure,'" he responded, "getting what one wants in life, or trying to +get it and failing in the end." + +"And did you fail?" she asked, with a simplicity which saved the blunt +directness of the question. + +He laughed. "Do you think if I had succeeded, I'd be splitting wood in +Bullfinch's Hollow?" + +"And you care nothing for Kit Berry?" + +"Oh, I like him--he's an under dog." + +"Then you are for the under dog, right or wrong, as I am?" she responded +with a radiant look. + +"Well, I don't know about that," he answered, "but I have at least a +fellow feeling for him. I'm an under dog myself, you see." + +"But you won't stay one long?" + +"That's the danger. When I come out on top I'll doubtless stop splitting +wood and do something worse." + +"I don't believe it," she rejoined decisively. "You have never had a +chance at the real thing before." + +"You're right there," he admitted, "I had never seen the real thing in +my life until I came to Tappahannock." + +"Do you mind telling me," she asked, after an instant's hesitation, "why +you came to Tappahannock? I can't understand why anyone should ever come +here." + +"I don't know about the others, but I came because my road led here. I +followed my road." + +"Not knowing where it would end?" + +He laughed again. "Not _caring_ where it would end." + +Her charming boyish smile rippled across her lips. + +"It isn't necessary that I should understand to be glad that you kept +straight on," she said. + +"But the end isn't yet," he replied, with a gaiety beneath which she saw +the seriousness in his face. "It may lead me off again." + +"To a better place I hope." + +"Well, I suppose that would be easy to find," he admitted, as he glanced +beyond the doorway, "but I like Tappahannock. It has taken me in, you +know, and there's human nature even in Bullfinch's Hollow." + +"Oh, I suppose it's hideous," she remarked, following his look in the +direction of the town, "but I can't judge. I've seen so little else, you +know--and yet my City Beautiful is laid out in my mind." + +"Then you carry it with you, and that is best." + +As she was about to answer the door creaked above them and Mrs. Berry +came down the short flight of steps, hastily fastening her calico dress +as she descended. + +"Well, I declare, who'd have thought to see you at this hour, Miss +Emily," she exclaimed effusively. + +"I thought you might need the milk early," replied the girl, "and as +Micah had an attack of rheumatism I brought it over on horseback." + +While the old woman emptied the contents of the can into a cracked +china pitcher, Emily held out her hand to Ordway with an impulsive +gesture. + +"We shall have a flourishing kitchen garden," she said, "thanks to you." + +Then taking the empty can from Mrs. Berry, she crossed the threshold, +and remounted from the doorstep. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A STRING OF CORAL + + +As Emily rode slowly up from Bullfinch's Hollow, it seemed to her that +the abandoned fields had borrowed an aspect which was almost one of +sentiment. In the golden light of the sunrise even the Negro hovels, the +refuse heaps and the dead thistles by the roadside, were transfigured +until they appeared to lose their ordinary daytime ugliness; and the +same golden light was shining inwardly on the swift impressions which +crowded her thoughts. This strange inner illumination surrounded, she +discovered now, each common fact which presented itself to her mind, and +though the outward form of life was not changed, her mental vision had +become suddenly enraptured. She did not stop to ask herself why the +familiar events of every day appear so full of vivid interests--why the +external objects at which she looked swam before her gaze in an +atmosphere that was like a rainbow mist? It was sufficient to be alive +to the finger tips, and to realise that everything in the great universe +was alive around one--the air, the sky, the thistles along the roadside +and the dust blowing before the wind, all moved, she felt, in harmony +with the elemental pulse of life. On that morning she entered for the +first time into the secret of immortality. + +And yet--was it only the early morning hour? she asked herself, as she +rode back between the stretches of dried broomsedge. Or was it, she +questioned a moment later, the natural gratification she had felt in a +charity so generous, so unassuming as that of the man she had seen at +Mrs. Berry's? + +"It's a pity he isn't a gentleman and that his clothes are so rough," +she thought, and blushed the next instant with shame because she was +"only a wretched snob." + +"Whatever his class he _is_ a gentleman," she began again, "and he would +be quite--even very--good-looking if his face were not so drawn and +thin. What strange eyes he has--they are as blue as Blair's and as +young. No, he isn't exactly good-looking--not in Beverly's way, at +least--but I should know his face again if I didn't see it for twenty +years. It's odd that there are people one hardly knows whom one never +forgets." + +Her bare hands were on Major's neck, and as she looked at them a +displeased frown gathered her brows. She wondered why she had never +noticed before that they were ugly and unwomanly, and it occurred to her +that Aunt Mehitable had once told her that "ole Miss" washed her hands +in buttermilk to keep them soft and white. "They're almost as rough as +Mr. Smith's," she thought, "perhaps he noticed them." The idea worried +her for a minute, for she hated, she told herself, that people should +not think her "nice"--but the golden light was still flooding her +thoughts and these trivial disturbances scattered almost before they +had managed to take shape. Nothing worried her long to-day, and as she +dismounted at the steps, and ran hurriedly into the dining-room, she +remembered Beverly and Amelia with an affection which she had not felt +for years. It was as if the mere external friction of personalities had +dissolved before the fundamental relation of soul to soul; even poor +half-demented Aunt Mehitable wore in her eyes, at the minute, an +immortal aspect. + +A little later when she rode in to the public school at Tappahannock, +she discovered that the golden light irradiated even the questions in +geography and arithmetic upon the blackboard; and coming out again, she +found that it lay like sunshine on the newly turned vegetable rows in +the garden. That afternoon for the first time she planted in a discarded +pair of buck-skin gloves, and as soon as her work was over, she went +upstairs to her bedroom, and regarded herself wistfully by the light +from a branched candlestick which she held against the old greenish +mirror. Her forehead was too high, she admitted regretfully, her mouth +was too wide, her skin certainly was too brown. The blue cotton dress +she wore appeared to her suddenly common and old-fashioned, and she +began looking eagerly through her limited wardrobe in the hopeless quest +for a gown that was softened by so much as a fall of lace about the +throat. Then remembering the few precious trinkets saved from the +bartered heirlooms of her dead mother, she got out the old black leather +jewel case and went patiently over the family possessions. Among the +mourning brooches and hair bracelets that the box contained there was a +necklace of rare pink coral, which she had meant to give Bella upon her +birthday--but as her gaze was arrested now by the cheerful colour, she +sat for a moment wondering if she might not honestly keep the beads for +her own. Still undecided she went to the bureau again and fastened the +string of coral around her firm brown throat. + +"I may wear it for a week or two at least," she thought. "Why not?" It +seemed to her foolish, almost unfeminine that she had never cared or +thought about her clothes until to-day. "I've gone just like a boy--I +ought to be ashamed to show my hands," she said; and at the same instant +she was conscious of the vivid interest, of the excitement even, which +attached to this new discovery of the importance of one's appearance. +Before going downstairs she brushed the tangles out of her thick brown +hair, and spent a half hour arranging it in a becoming fashion upon her +neck. + +The next day Micah was well enough to carry the milk to Mrs. Berry's, +but three mornings afterward, when she came from the dairy with the can, +the old negro was not waiting for her on the porch, and she found, upon +going to his cabin, that the attack of rheumatism had returned with +violence. There was nothing for her to do but carry the milk herself, so +after leading Major from his stall, she mounted and rode, almost with a +feeling of shyness, in the direction of Bullfinch's Hollow. + +The door was closed this morning, and in answer to her knock, Mrs. Berry +appeared, rubbing her eyes, beyond the threshold. + +"I declare, Miss Emily, you don't look like yourself at all," she +exclaimed at the girl's entrance, "it must be them coral beads you've +got on, I reckon. They always was becomin' things--I had a string once +myself that I used to wear when my po' dead husband was courtin' me. +Lord! Lord!" she added, bursting into sobs, "who'd have thought when I +wore those beads that I'd ever have come to this? My po' ma gave 'em to +me herself--they were her weddin' present from her first husband, and +when she made up her mind to marry again, she kind of thought it warn't +modest to go aroun' wearin' what she'd got from her first marriage. She +was always powerful sensitive to decency, was po' ma. I've seen her +scent vulgarity in the most harmless soundin' speech you ever +heard--such as when my husband asked her one day if she was afflicted +with the budges in her knee, and she told me afterward that he had made +a sneakin' allusion to her leg. Ten years from that time, when all my +trouble came upon me, she held that over me as a kind of warnin'. 'If +you'd listened to me, Sarindy,' she used to say, 'you'd never have got +into this scrape of marryin' a man who talked free befo' women. For a +man who is indecent in his language can't be decent in his life,' she +said." + +As she talked she was pouring the milk into the cracked pitcher, and +Emily breaking in at the first pause, sought to hasten the washing of +the can, by bringing the old woman's rambling attention back to Kit. + +"Has he had a quiet night?" she asked. + +"Well, yes, miss, in a way, but then he always was what you might call a +quiet sleeper from the very hour that he was born. I remember old Aunt +Jemima, his monthly nurse, tellin' me that she had never in all her +experience brought a more reliable sleeper into the world. He never used +to stir, except to whimper now and then for his sugar rag when it +slipped out of his mouth." + +Hurriedly seizing the half-washed can, Emily caught up her skirt and +moved toward the door. + +"Did you sit up with him last night?" she asked, turning upon the step. + +"That was Mr. Smith's night, miss--he's taken such a fancy to Kit that +he comes every other night to watch by him--but he gets up and leaves +now a little before daybreak. I heard him choppin' wood before the sun +was up." + +"He has been very kind about it, hasn't he?" + +"Lord, miss, he's been a son and a brother as far as work goes, but I +declare I can't help wishin' he wasn't quite so shut mouthed. Every +blessed sound he utters I have to drag out of him like a fox out of a +burrow. He's a little cranky, too, I reckon, for he is so absent-minded +that sometimes when you call his name he never even turns aroun'. But +the Lord will overlook his unsociable ways, I s'pose, for he reads his +Bible half the night when he sets up, jest as hard as if he was paid to +do it. That's as good a recommendation, I reckon, as I need to have." + +"I should think his charity would be a better one," rejoined Emily, with +severity. + +"Well, that's as it may be, Miss," returned Mrs. Berry, "I'm not +ungrateful, I hope, and I'm much obliged for what he gives +me--particularly for the coffee, which ain't as thin as it might be +seein' it's a present. But when all's said I ain't so apt to jedge by +things like that because charity is jest a kind of Saint Vitus dance +with some folks--it's all in the muscles. Thank you, miss, yes, Kit is +doin' very well." + +Mounting from the step, Emily turned back into the Tappahannock road, +aware as she passed through the deserted fields that her exaltation of +the morning had given way before a despondency which seemed to change +the face of nature. The day was oppressive, the road ugly, Mrs. Berry +more tiresome than usual--each of these things suggested itself as a +possible reason for the dissatisfaction which she could not explain. Not +once during her troubled mood did the name or the face of Ordway appear +as the visible cause of her disturbance. So far, indeed, was his +individual aspect from her reflections, that some hours later, when she +rode back to school, it was with a shock of surprise that she saw him +turn the corner by the new brick church, and come rapidly toward her +from the brow of the long hill. That he had not at first seen her was +evident, for he walked in an abstracted reverie with his eyes on the +ground, and when he looked up at last, she had drawn almost within +speaking distance. At sight of his face her heart beat so quickly that +she dropped the reins on Major's neck, and raised her free hand to her +bosom, while she felt the blood mount joyously to her cheeks; but, to +her amazement, in the first instant of recognition, he turned abruptly +away and entered the shop of a harness maker which happened to be +immediately on his right. The action was so sudden that even as she +quickened her horse's pace, there flashed into her mind the humiliating +conviction that he had sought purposely to avoid her. The throbs of her +heart grew faster and then seemed to die utterly away, yet even as the +warm blood turned cold in her cheeks, she told herself with spirit that +it was all because she "could not bear to be disliked." "Why should he +dislike me?" she questioned presently; "it is very foolish of him, and +what have I done?" She searched her memory for some past rudeness of +which she had been guilty, but there was nothing she could recall which +would justify, however slightly, his open avoidance of a chance meeting. +"Perhaps he doesn't like the colour of my hair. I've heard men were like +that," she thought, "or the freckles on my face? Or the roughness of my +hands?" But the instant afterward she saw how ridiculous were her +surmises, and she felt angry with herself for having permitted them to +appear in her mind. She remembered his blue eyes with the moonlight upon +them, and she wondered why he had seemed to her more masculine than any +man that she had ever known. With the memory of his eyes and his smile +she smelt again the odour of the warm earth that had clung about him, +and she was conscious that this and everything about him was strange and +new as if she had never looked into a pair of blue eyes or smelt the +odour of the soil before. + +After this meeting she did not see Ordway again for several weeks, and +then it was only to pass him in the road one Sunday afternoon when he +had finished his sermon in the old field. As he drew back among the +thistles, he spoke to her gravely, with a deference, she noticed, which +had the effect of placing him apart from her as a member of the working +class. Since Kit Berry's recovery she had not gone again to Bullfinch's +Hollow; and she could not fail to observe that even when an opportunity +appeared, Ordway made no further effort to bridge the mere casual +acquaintance which divided rather than united them. If it were possible +to avoid conversation with her he did so by retiring into the +background; if the event forced him into notice, he addressed her with a +reserve which seemed at each meeting to widen the distance between them. + +Though she hardly confessed it to herself, her heart was wounded for a +month or two by his frank indifference to her presence. Then one bright +afternoon in May, when she had observed him turn out of his path as she +rode up the hill, she saved the situation in her mind by the final +triumph of her buoyant humour. + +"Everybody is privileged to be a little fool," she said with a laugh, +"but when there's the danger of becoming a great big one, it's time to +stop short and turn round. Now, Emily, my dear, you're to stop short +from this minute. I hope you understand me." + +That the Emily she addressed understood her very clearly was proved a +little later in the afternoon, when going upstairs to her bedroom, she +unfastened the coral beads and laid them away again among the mourning +brooches and the hair bracelets in the leather case. + + + + +BOOK SECOND + +THE DAY OF RECKONING + + + + +CHAPTER I + +IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS + + +On a bright June morning, when Ordway had been more than two years at +Tappahannock, he came out upon Mrs. Twine's little porch as soon as +breakfast was over, and looked down the board walk for Harry Banks, who +had fallen into the habit of accompanying him to the warehouse. From +where he stood, under the hanging blossoms of the locust trees, he could +see the painted tin roofs and the huddled chimneys of the town, flanked +by the brazen sweep of the cornfields along the country roads. As his +eyes rested on the familiar scene, they softened unconsciously with an +affection which was almost paternal--for in the last two years +Tappahannock had become a different place from the Tappahannock he had +entered as a tramp on that windy afternoon in March. The town as it +stood to-day was the town which he had helped to make, and behind each +roll of progress there had been the informing purpose of his mind, as +well as the strength of his shoulder at the wheel. Behind the law which +had closed the disreputable barrooms; behind the sentiment for decency +which had purified the filthy hollows; behind the spirit of charity +which had organised and opened, not only a reading room for the factory +workers, but an industrial home for the poorer classes--behind each of +these separate movements there had been a single energy to plan and act. +In two years he had watched the little town cover the stretch of ten +years' improvement; in two years he had aroused and vitalised the +community into which he had come a stranger. Tappahannock was the child +of his brain--the life that was in her to-day he had given her out of +himself, and the love he felt for her was the love that one bestows upon +one's own. Standing there his eyes followed the street to the ugly brick +church at the corner, and then as his mental vision travelled down the +long, hot hill which led to the railroad, he could tell himself, with a +kind of exultation, that there was hardly a dwelling along the way which +had not some great or little reason to bless his name. Even Kelly, whose +saloon he had closed, had been put upon his feet again and started, with +a fair chance, in the tobacco market. Yes, a new life had been given +him, and he had made good his promise to himself. The clothes he wore +to-day were as rough as those in which he had chopped wood in +Bullfinch's Hollow; the room he lived in was the same small, bare +lodging of Mrs. Twine's; for though his position at Baxter's now assured +him a comfortable income, he had kept to his cramped manner of life in +order that he might contribute the more generously to the lives of +others. Out of his little he had given abundantly, and he had gained in +return the happiness which he had ceased to make the object of his +search. In looking back over his whole life, he could honestly tell +himself that his happiest years since childhood were the ones that he +had spent in Tappahannock. + +The gate closed with a slam, and Banks came up the short brick walk +inside, mopping his heated face with a pink bordered handkerchief. + +"I'm a minute late," he said, "but it doesn't matter, does it? The +Trends asked me to breakfast." + +"It doesn't matter in the least if you spent that minute with Milly," +replied Ordway, with a laugh, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe +and descended the steps. "The hot weather has come early, hasn't it?" + +"Oh, we're going in for a scorcher," responded Banks, indifferently. +There was a heavy gloom in his manner which was hardly to be accounted +for by the temperature in which he moved, and as they closed the gate +behind them and passed under the shade of the locust trees on the board +walk, he turned to Ordway in an outburst which was little short of +desperation. + +"I don't know how it is--or whether it's just a woman's way," he said, +"but I never can be sure of Milly for ten minutes at a time. A month ago +I was positive that she meant to marry me in the autumn, but now I'm in +a kind of blue funk about her doing it at all. She's never been the same +since she went North in April." + +"My dear chap, these things will vary, I suppose--though, mind you, I +make no claim to exact knowledge of the sex." + +"It isn't the sex," said Banks, "it's Milly." + +"Well, I certainly can't claim any particular knowledge of Milly. It +would be rather presumptuous if I did, considering I've only seen her +about a dozen times--mostly at a distance." + +"I wish you knew her better, perhaps you could help me," returned Banks +in a voice of melancholy. "To save the life of me I don't see how it +is--I've done my best--I swear I've done my best--yet nothing somehow +seems to suit her. She wants to make me over from the skin and even that +doesn't satisfy her. When my hair is short she wants it long, and when +it's long she says she wants it short. She can't stand me in coloured +cravats and when I put on a black tie she calls me an undertaker. I had +to leave off my turtle-dove scarf-pin and this morning," he rolled his +innocent blue eyes, like pale marbles, in the direction of Ordway, "she +actually got into a temper about my stockings." + +"It seems to be a case for sympathy," commented Ordway seriously, "but +hardly, I should say, for marriage. Imagine, my dear Banks, what a hell +you'd make out of your domesticity. Suppose you give her up and bear it +like a man?" + +"Give her up? to what?" + +"Well, to her own amiability, we'll say." + +"I can't," said Banks, waving his pink bordered handkerchief before his +face in an effort either to disperse the swarming blue flies or to +conceal the working of his emotion. "I'd die--I'd kill myself--that's +the awful part of it. The more she bangs me over the head, the more I +feel that I can't live without her. Is that natural, do you s'pose?" he +inquired uneasily, "or have I gone clean crazy?" + +Checking his smile severely, Ordway turned and slipped his left arm +affectionately through his companion's. + +"I've heard of similar cases," he remarked, "though I confess, they +sounded a little strained." + +"Do you think I'd better see a doctor? I will if you say so." + +"By no means. Go off on a trip." + +"And leave Milly here? I'd jump out of the train--and, I reckon, she'd +bang my head off for doing it." + +"But if it's as bad as that, you couldn't be much more miserable without +her." + +"I know it," replied Banks obstinately, "but it would be a different +sort of miserableness, and that happens to be the sort that I can't +stand." + +"Then I give it up," said Ordway, cheerfully, "there's no hope but +marriage." + +With his words they turned under the archway of Baxter's warehouse, and +Banks's passionate confidences were extinguished in the odour of +tobacco. + +A group of men stood talking loudly in the centre of the building, and +as Ordway approached, Baxter broke away, with his great rolling laugh, +and came to join him at the door of his private office. + +"Catesby and Frazier have got into a squabble about that lot of tobacco +they brought in last February," he said, "and they have both agreed to +accept your decision in the matter." + +Ordway nodded, without replying, as he followed the other through the +doorway. Such judicial appeals to him were not uncommon, and his power +of pacification, as his employer had once remarked, was one of his +principal qualifications for the tobacco market. + +"Shall I hear them now? or would it be as well to give them time to cool +off?" he asked presently, while Baxter settled his great person in a +desk chair that seemed a size too small to contain it. + +"If they can cool off on a day like this they're lucky dogs," returned +Baxter, with a groan, "however, I reckon you might as well get it over +and let 'em go home and stew in peace. By the way, Smith, I forgot to +tell you that Major Leary--he's the president of the Southside Bank, you +know, was asking me yesterday if I could tell him anything about you +before you came to work for me." + +"Of the Southside Bank," repeated Ordway, while his hand closed tightly +over a paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, which lay on +Baxter's desk. With the words he was conscious only of the muffled +drumming of his pulses, and above the discord in his ears, the cheerful +tones of Baxter sounded like an echo rather than a real voice. At the +instant he was back again in his room in the great banking house of +Amos, Bonner & Amos, in the midst of the pale brown walls, the black oak +furniture and the shining leather covered volumes behind the glass doors +of the bookcases. With peculiar vividness he remembered the eccentric +little bird on the bronze clock on the mantel, which had hopped from +its swinging perch to strike the hour with its beak; and through the +open windows he could hear still the din of traffic in the street below +and the ceaseless, irregular tread of footsteps upon the pavement. + +"Oh, I didn't mean to raise your hopes too high," remarked Baxter, +rising from his chair to slap him affectionately upon the shoulder, "he +isn't going to make you president of the bank, but of the Citizen's +Improvement League, whose object is to oust Jasper Trend, you know, in +the autumn. The Major told me before he left that you'd done as much for +Tappahannock in two years as any other man had done in a lifetime. I +said I thought he'd hit the nail pretty squarely, which is something he +doesn't generally manage to do." + +"So I'm to fight Jasper Trend, am I?" asked Ordway, with sudden +interest. The sound of his throbbing arteries was no longer in his ears, +and as he spoke, he felt that his past life with his old identity had +departed from him. In the swift renewal of his confidence he had become +again "Ten Commandment Smith" of Tappahannock. + +"Well, you see, Jasper has been a precious bad influence around here," +pursued Baxter, engrossed in the political scheme he was unfolding. "The +only thing on earth he's got to recommend him is his pretty daughter. +Now, I've a soft enough heart, as everybody knows, when the ladies come +about--particularly if they're pretty--but I'm ready to stand up and say +that Jasper Trend can't be allowed to run this town on the platform of +pure chivalry. There's such a thing as fairness, suh, even where women +are concerned, and I'll back my word with my oath that it ain't fair!" + +"And I'll back your word with another that it isn't," rejoined Ordway. + +"There's no doubt, I reckon," continued Baxter, "that Jasper has +connived with those disorderly saloons that you've been trying to shut +up, and for all his money and the men he employs in the cotton mills +there's come a considerable reaction against him in public sentiment. +Now, I ain't afraid to say, Smith," he concluded with an ample flourish +of his dirty hand, "that the fact that there's any public sentiment at +all in Tappahannock is due to you. Until you came here there weren't six +decent men you could count mixed up in the affairs of this town. Jasper +had everything his own way, that's why he hates you." + +"But I wasn't even aware that he did me so much honour." + +"You mean he hasn't told you his feelings to your face. Well, he hasn't +gone so far as to confide them to me either--but even if I ain't a +woman, I can hear some things that ain't spoke out in words. He's made a +dirty town and you're sweepin' it clean--do you think it likely that it +makes him love you?" + +"He's welcome to feel about me anyway he pleases, but do you know, +Baxter," he added with his whimsical gravity, "I've a pretty strong +conviction that I'd make a jolly good street sweeper." + +"I reckon you're right!" roared Baxter, "and when you're done, we'll +shoot off some sky-rockets over the job--so there you are, ain't you?" + +"All right--but there's Jasper Trend also," retorted Ordway. + +"Oh, he can afford to send off his own sky-rockets. We needn't bother +about him. He won't be out of a job like Kelly, you know. Great Scott!" +he added, chuckling, "I can see your face now when you marched in here +the day after you closed Kelly's saloon, and told me you had to start a +man in tobacco because you'd taken him out of whiskey." + +His laugh shook through his figure until Ordway saw his fat chest heave +violently beneath his alpaca coat. Custom had made the younger man +almost indifferent to the external details which had once annoyed him in +his employer, and he hardly noticed now that Baxter's coat was turning +from black to green and that the old ashes from his pipe had lodged in +the crumpled bosom of his shirt. Baxter was--well, Baxter, and tolerance +was a virtue which one acquired sooner or later in Tappahannock. + +"I suppose I might as well get at Catesby and Frazier now," remarked +Ordway, watching the other disinter a tattered palm leaf fan from +beneath a dusty pile of old almanacs and catalogues. + +"Wait a minute first," said Baxter, "there's something I want to say as +soon as I get settled. I ain't made for heat, that's certain," he +pursued, as he pulled off his coat, and hung it from a nail in the wall, +"it sweats all my morals out of me." + +Detaching the collar from his shirt, he placed it above his coat on the +nail, and then rolling up his shirt sleeves, sank, with a panting +breath, back into his chair. + +"If I were you I'd get out of this at night anyway, Smith," he urged. +"Why don't you try boarding for the next few months over at Cedar Hill. +It would be a godsend to the family, now that Miss Emily's school has +stopped." + +"But I don't suppose they'd take me in," replied Ordway, staring out +into the street, where the dust rose like steam in the air, and the +rough-coated country horses toiled patiently up the long hill. Across +the way he saw the six stale currant buns and the three bottles of pale +beer behind the fly-specked window panes of a cheap eating house. In +front of them, a Negro woman, barefooted, with her ragged calico dress +tucked up about her waist, was sousing the steaming board walk with a +pailful of dirty water. From his memory of two years ago there floated +the mingled odours of wild flowers and freshly turned earth in the +garden of Cedar Hill, and Emily appeared in his thoughts only as an +appropriate figure against the pleasant natural background of the lilacs +and the meadows. In the past year he had seen her hardly more than a +dozen times--mere casual glimpses for the most part--and he had almost +forgotten his earlier avoidance of her, which had resulted from an +instinctive delicacy rather than from any premeditated purpose. His +judgment had told him that he had no right to permit a woman to become +his friend in ignorance of his past; and at the same time he was aware +of a terrible shrinking from intruding his old self, however remotely, +into the new life at Tappahannock. When the choice came between +confessing his sin and sacrificing the chance acquaintance, he had found +it easier simply to keep away from her actual presence. Yet his interest +in her had been so closely associated with his larger feeling for +humanity, that he could tell himself with sincerity that it was mere +folly which put her forward as an objection to his boarding for the +summer at Cedar Hill. + +"The truth is," admitted Baxter, after a pause, "that Mrs. Brooke spoke +to me about having to take a boarder or two, when I went out there to +pay Mr. Beverly for that tobacco I couldn't sell." + +"So you bought it in the end," laughed Ordway, "as you did last year +after sending me out there on a mission?" + +"Yes, I bought it," replied Baxter, blushing like a boy under the beads +of perspiration upon his face. "I may as well confess it, though I tried +to keep it secret. But I ask you as man to man," he demanded warmly, +"was there another blessed thing on God's earth for me to do?" + +"Let Mr. Beverly go about his business--that's what I'd have done." + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't," protested Baxter softly, "not when he'd ruin +himself for you to-morrow if you were to walk out and ask him." + +"But he couldn't," insisted Ordway with the brutality of the naked +fact, "he did that little job on his own account too long ago." + +"But that ain't the point, Smith," replied Baxter in an awed and solemn +accent. "The point ain't that he couldn't, but that he _would_. As I +make it out that's the point which has cost me money on him for the last +thirty years." + +"Oh, well, I suppose it's a charity like any other, only the old fool is +so pompous about his poverty that it wears me out." + +"It does at Tappahannock, but it won't when you get out to Cedar Hill, +that's the difference between Mr. Beverly in the air and Mr. Beverly in +the flesh. The one wears you out, the other rests you for all his +darnation foolishness. Now, you can board out there for twenty-five +dollars a month and put a little ready money where it ought to be in +Mrs. Brooke's pocket." + +"Of course I'd like it tremendously," said Ordway, after a moment in +which the perfume of the lilacs filled his memory. "It would be like +stepping into heaven after that stifling little room under the tin roof +at Mrs. Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night +last summer?" + +"You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a +large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick +enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very +day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the +week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. +There's nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had +the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it." + +"Oh, I promise you I'll bear with him," laughed Ordway, as he left the +office and went out into the warehouse. + +The knot of men was still in the centre of the building, and as Ordway +walked down the long floor in search of Catesby and Frazier, he saw that +a stranger had drifted in during his half hour in Baxter's office. With +his first casual glance all that he observed of the man was a sleek fair +head, slightly bald in the centre, and a pair of abnormally flat +shoulders in a light gray coat, which had evidently left a clothing shop +only a day or two before. Then as Frazier--a big, loud voiced +planter--turned toward him with the exclamation, "here's Smith, himself, +now!"--he saw the stranger wheel round abruptly and give vent the next +instant to a sharp whistle of surprise. + +"Well, I'll be damned!" he said. + +For a minute the tobacco dust filled Ordway's throat and nostrils, and +he felt that he was stifling for a breath of air. The dim length of the +warehouse and the familiar shadowy figures of the planters receded +before his eyes, and he saw again the bare walls of the prison chapel, +with the rows of convicts seated in the pale, greenish light. With his +recognition of the man before him, it seemed to him suddenly that the +last year in Tappahannock was all a lie. The prison walls, the grated +windows, and the hard benches of the shoe shop were closer realities +than were the open door of the warehouse and the free, hot streets of +the little town. + +"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Smith," said the stranger, as he held +out his hand with a good-humoured smile. + +"I beg your pardon," returned Ordway quietly, "but I did not catch your +name." + +At the handshake a chill mounted from his finger tips to his shoulder, +but drawing slightly away he stood his ground without so much as the +perceptible flicker of an eyelash. + +"My name is Brown--Horatio Brown, very much at your service," answered +the other, with a manner like that of a successful, yet obsequious +commercial traveller. + +It was on Ordway's tongue to retort: "You lie--it's Gus Wherry!"--but +checking the impulse with a frown, he turned on his heel and asked the +two men for whom he was looking to come with him to settle their +disagreement in Baxter's office. As he moved down the building an +instant later, it was with an effort that he kept his gaze fixed +straight ahead through the archway, for he was aware that every muscle +in his body pricked him to turn back and follow Wherry to the end. That +the man would be forced, in self-defence, to keep his secret for a time +at least, he had caught in the smiling insolence of his glance; but that +it was possible to enter into a permanent association or even a treaty +with Gus Wherry, he knew to be a supposition that was utterly beyond +the question. The crime for which the man had been sentenced he could +not remember; but he had a vague recollection that something morbidly +romantic in his history had combined with his handsome face to give him +an ephemeral notoriety as the Adonis of imaginative shop-girls. Even in +prison Wherry had attained a certain prominence because of his beauty, +which at the time when Ordway first saw him had been conspicuous in +spite of his convict's clothes. In the years since then his athletic +figure had grown a trifle too heavy, and his fair hair had worn a little +thin on the crown of his head; yet these slight changes of time had left +him, Ordway admitted reluctantly, still handsome in the brawny, +full-blooded style, which had generally made fools of women. His lips +were still as red, his features as severely classic, and his manner was +not less vulgar, and quite as debonnair as in the days when the +newspapers had clamoured for his pictures. Even the soft, girlish cleft +in his smooth-shaven chin, Ordway remembered now, with a return of the +instinctive aversion with which it had first inspired him. Yet he was +obliged to confess, as he walked ahead of Catesby and Frazier down the +dusty floor of the warehouse, that if Wherry had been less of an +uncompromising rascal, he would probably have made a particularly +amiable acquaintance. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ORDWAY COMPROMISES WITH THE PAST + + +When Ordway came out of Baxter's office, he found that Gus Wherry had +left the warehouse, but the effect upon him of the man's appearance in +Tappahannock was not to be overcome by the temporary withdrawal of his +visible presence. Not only the town, but existence itself seemed +altered, and in a way polluted, by the obtrusion of Wherry's personality +upon the scene. Though he was not in the building, Ordway felt an angry +conviction that he was in the air. It was impossible to breathe freely +lest he might by accident draw in some insidious poison which would +bring him under the influence of his past life and of Gus Wherry. + +As he went along the street at one o'clock to his dinner at Mrs. +Twine's, he was grateful for the intensity of the sun, which rendered +him, while he walked in it, almost incapable of thought. There was +positive relief in the fact that he must count the uneven lengths of +board walk which it was necessary for him to traverse, and the buzzing +of the blue flies before his face forced his attention, at the minute, +from the inward to the outward disturbance. + +When he reached the house, Mrs. Twine met him at the door and led him, +with an inquiry as to his susceptibility to sunstroke, into the awful +gloom of her tightly shuttered parlour. + +"I declar' you do look well nigh in yo' last gasp," she remarked +cheerfully, bustling into the dining-room for a palm leaf fan. "Thar, +now, come right in an' set down an' eat yo' dinner. Hot or cold, glad or +sorry, I never saw the man yit that could stand goin' without his dinner +at the regular hour. Sech is the habit in some folks that I remember +when old Mat Fawling's second wife died he actually hurried up her +funeral an hour earlier so as to git back in time for dinner. 'It ain't +that I'm meanin' any disrespect to Sary, Mrs. Twine,' he said to me +right whar I was layin' her out, 'but the truth is that I can't even +mourn on an empty stomach. The undertaker put it at twelve,' he said, +'but I reckon we might manage to git out to the cemetery by eleven.'" + +"All the same if you'll give me a slice of bread and a glass of milk, +I'll take it standing," remarked Ordway. "I'm sorry to leave you, Mrs. +Twine, even for a few months," he added, "but I think I'll try to get +board outside the town until the summer is over." + +"Well, I'll hate to lose you, suh, to be sure," responded Mrs. Twine, +dealing out the fried batter with a lavish hand despite his protest, +"for I respect you as a fellow mortal, though I despise you as a sex." + +Her hard eyes softened as she looked at him; but his gaze was on the +walnut coloured oilcloth, where the flies dispersed lazily before the +waving elm branch in the hands of the small Negro, and so he did not +observe the motherly tenderness which almost beautified her shrewish +face. + +"You've been very kind to me," he said, as he put his glass and plate +down, and turned toward the door. "Whatever happens I shall always +remember you and the children with pleasure." + +She choked violently, and looking back at the gasping sound, he saw that +her eyes had filled suddenly with tears. Lifting a corner of her blue +gingham apron, she mopped her face in a furious effort to conceal the +cause of her unaccustomed emotion. + +"I declar' I'm all het up;" she remarked in an indignant voice, "but if +you should ever need a friend in sickness, Mr. Smith," she added, after +a moment in which she choked and coughed under the shelter of her apron, +"you jest send for me an' I'll drop every thing I've got an' go. I'll +leave husband an' children without a thought, suh, an' thar's nothin' I +won't do for you with pleasure, from makin' a mustard plaster to layin' +out yo' corpse. When I'm a friend, I'm a friend, if I do say it, an' +you've had a way with me from the very first minute that I clapped eyes +upon you. 'He may not have sech calves as you've got,' was what I said +to Bill, 'but he's got a manner of his own, an' I reckon it's the manner +an' not the calves that is the man.' Not that I'm meaning any slur on +yo' shape, suh," she hastened to explain. + +"Well, I'll come to see you now and then," said Ordway, smiling, "and I +shan't forget to take the children for a picnic as I promised." But with +the words he remembered Gus Wherry, as he had seen him standing in the +centre of Baxter's warehouse, and it seemed to him that even his promise +to the children was rendered vain and worthless. + +The next day was Sunday, and immediately after dinner he walked over to +Baxter's house, where he learned that Mrs. Brooke had expressed her +willingness to receive him upon the following afternoon. + +"We had to talk Mr. Beverly over," said Baxter, chuckling. "At first he +didn't like the idea because of some notion he'd got out of his +great-grandfather's head about the sacredness of the family circle. +However, he's all right now, though if you take my advice, Smith, you'll +play a game of dominoes with him occasionally just to keep him kind of +soft. The chief thing he has against you is your preachin' in the +fields, for he told me he could never bring himself to countenance +religion out of doors. He seems to think that it ought to be kept shut +up tight." + +"Well, I'm glad he doesn't have to listen to me," responded Ordway. "By +the way, you know I'm speaking in Catlett's grove of pines now. It's +pleasanter away from the glare of the sun." Then as Baxter pressed him +to come back to supper, he declined the oppressive hospitality and went +back to Mrs. Twine's. + +That afternoon at five o'clock he went out to the grove of pines on the +Southern edge of the town, to find his congregation gathered ahead of +him on the rude plank benches which had been placed among the trees. +The sunshine fell in drops through the tent of boughs overhead, and from +the southwest a pleasant breeze had sprung up, blowing the pine needles +in eddies about his feet. At sight of the friendly faces gathered so +closely around him, he felt his foreboding depart as if it had been +blown from him by the pure breeze; and beginning his simple discourse, +he found himself absorbed presently in the religious significance of his +subject, which chanced to be an interpretation of the parable of the +prodigal son. Not until he was midway of his last sentence did he +discover that Gus Wherry was standing just beyond the little wildrose +thicket on the edge of the grove. + +In the instant of recognition the words upon his lips sounded strangely +hollow and meaningless in his ears, and he felt again that the +appearance of the man had given the lie, not only to his identity, but +to his life. He knew himself at the instant to have changed from Daniel +Smith to Daniel Ordway, and the name that he had worn honestly in +Tappahannock showed to him suddenly as a falsehood and a cheat. Even his +inward motive was contemptible in his eyes, and he felt himself dragged +back in a single minute to the level upon which Wherry stood. As he +appeared to Wherry, so he saw himself now by some distorted power of +vision, and even his religion seemed but a convenient mask which he had +picked up and used. When he went on a moment later with his closing +words, he felt that the mockery of his speech must be evident to the +ears of the congregation that knew and loved him. + +The gathering broke up slowly, but after speaking to several men who +stood near him, Ordway turned away and went out into the road which led +from Tappahannock in the direction of Cedar Hill. Only after he had +walked rapidly for a mile, did the sound of footsteps, following close +behind him, cause him to wheel round abruptly with an impatient +exclamation. As he did so, he saw that Wherry had stopped short in the +road before him. + +"I wanted to tell you how much obliged I am for your talk, Mr. Smith," +he said, with a smile which appeared to flash at the same instant from +his eyes and his teeth. "I declare you came pretty near converting +me--by Jove, you did. It wouldn't be convenient to listen to you too +often." + +Whatever might be said of the effusive manner of his compliments, his +good humour was so evident in his voice, in his laugh, and even in his +conspicuously flashing teeth, that Ordway, who had been prepared for a +quarrel, was rendered almost helpless by so peaceable an encounter. +Turning out of the road, he stepped back among the tall weeds growing in +the corner of the old "worm" fence, and rested his tightly clinched hand +on the topmost rail. + +"If you have anything to say to me, you will do me a favour by getting +it over as soon as possible," he rejoined shortly. + +Wherry had taken off his hat and the red disc of the setting sun made an +appropriate frame for his handsome head, upon which his fair hair grew, +Ordway noticed, in the peculiar waving circle which is found on the +heads of ancient statues. + +"Well, I can't say that I've anything to remark except that I +congratulate you on your eloquence," he replied, with a kind of infernal +amiability. "If this is your little game, you are doing it with a +success which I envy from my boots up." + +"Since this is your business with me, there is no need for us to discuss +it further," returned Ordway, at white heat. + +"Oh, but I say, don't hurry--what's the use? You're afraid I'm going to +squeeze you, now, isn't that it?" + +"You'll get nothing out of me if you try." + +"That's as much as I want, I guess. Have I asked you for as much as a +darned cent? Haven't I played the gentleman from the first minute that I +spotted you?" + +Ordway nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've been as fair as you knew how," he +answered, "I'll do you the justice to admit that." + +"Well, I tell you now," said Wherry, growing confidential as he +approached, "my object isn't blackmail, it's human intercourse. I want a +decent word or two, that's all, on my honour." + +"But I won't talk to you. I've nothing further to say, that's to be +understood." + +"You're a confounded bully, that's what you are," observed Wherry, in +the playful tones which he might have used to a child or an animal. +"Now, I don't want a blooming cent out of you, that's flat--all I ask +for is a pleasant word or two just as from man to man." + +"Then why did you follow me? And what are you after in Tappahannock?" + +Wherry laughed hilariously, while his remarkably fine teeth became the +most prominent feature in his face. + +"The reply to your question, Smith," he answered pleasantly, "is that I +followed you to say that you're an all-fired, first rate sort of a +preacher--there's not harm in that much, is there? If you don't want me +to chaff you about it, I'll swear to be as dead serious on the subject +as if it were my wife's funeral. What I want is your hand down, I +say--no matter what is trumps!" + +"My hand down for what?" demanded Ordway. + +"Just for plain decency, nothing more, I swear. You've started on your +road, and I've started on mine, and the square thing is to live and let +live, that's as I see it. Leave room for honest repentance to go to +work, but don't begin to pull back before it's had a chance to begin. +Ain't we all prodigals, when it comes to that, and the only difference +is that some of us don't get a bite at the fatted calf." + +For a moment Ordway stared in silence to where the other stood with his +face turned toward the red light of the sunset. + +"We're all prodigals," repeated Wherry, as if impressed by the ethical +problem he had uttered unawares, "you and me and the President and +every man. We've all fallen from grace, ain't we?--and it's neither +here nor there that you and I have got the swine husks while the +President has stuffed and eaten the fatted calf." + +"If you've honestly meant to begin again, I have certainly no wish to +interfere," remarked Ordway, ignoring the other's excursion into the +field of philosophy. As he spoke, however, it occurred to him that +Wherry's reformation might have had better chance of success if it had +been associated with fewer physical advantages. + +"Well, I'm much obliged to you," said Wherry, "and I'll say the same by +you, here's my hand on it. Rise or fall, we'll play fair." + +"You haven't told me yet why you came to Tappahannock," rejoined Ordway, +shortly. + +"Oh, a little matter of business. Are you settled here now?" + +"At the moment you can answer that question better than I." + +"You mean when I come, you quit?" + +Ordway nodded. "That's something like it." + +"Well, I shan't drive you out if I can help it--I hate to play the +sneak. The truth is if you'd only get to believe it, there's not a more +peaceable fellow alive if I don't get backed up into a place where +there's no way out. When it comes to that I like the clean, straight +road best, and I always have. From first to last, though, it's the women +that have been dead against me, and I may say that a woman--one or more +of 'em--has been back of every single scrape I ever got into in my +life. If I'd had ten thousand a year and a fine looking wife, I'd have +been a pillar in the Church and the father of a family. My tastes all +lean that way," he added sentimentally. "I've always had a weakness for +babies, and I've got it to this day." + +As he could think of nothing to reply to this touching confession, +Ordway picked up a bit of wood from the ground, and taking out his +knife, began whittling carelessly while he waited. + +"I suppose you think I want to work you for that fat old codger in the +warehouse," observed Wherry suddenly, passing lightly from the pathetic +to the facetious point of view, "but I'll give you my word I haven't +thought of it a minute." + +"I'm glad you haven't," returned Ordway, quietly, "for you would be +disappointed." + +"You mean you wouldn't trust me?" + +"I mean there's no place there. Whether I trust you or not is another +question--and I don't." + +"Do you think I'd turn sneak?" + +"I think if you stay in Tappahannock that I'll clear out." + +"Well, you're a darn disagreeable chap," said Wherry, indignantly, +"particularly after all you've had to say about the prodigal. But, all +the same," he added, as his natural amiability got the better of his +temper, "it isn't likely that I'll pitch my tent here, so you needn't +begin to pack for a day or two at least." + +"Do you expect to go shortly?" + +"How about to-morrow? Would that suit you?" + +"Yes," said Ordway, gravely, "better than the day afterward." He threw +the bit of wood away and looked steadily into the other's face. "If I +can help you live honestly, I am ready to do it," he added. + +"Ready? How?" + +"However I can." + +"Well, you can't--not now," returned Wherry, laughing, "because I've +worked that little scheme already without your backing. Honesty is going +to be my policy from yesterday on. Did you, by the way," he added +abruptly, "ever happen to run up against Jasper Trend?" + +"Jasper Trend?" exclaimed Ordway, "why, yes, he owns the cotton mills." + +"He makes a handsome little pile out of 'em too, I guess?" + +"I believe he does. Are you looking for a job with him?" + +At this Wherry burst again into his hilarious humour. "If I am," he +asked jokingly, "will you promise to stand off and not spoil the game?" + +"I have nothing to do with Trend," replied Ordway, "but the day you come +here is my last in Tappahannock." + +"Well, I'm sorry for that," remarked Wherry, pleasantly, "for it appears +to be a dull enough place even with the addition of your presence." He +put on his hat and held out his hand with a friendly gesture. "Are you +ready to walk back now?" he inquired. + +"When I am," answered Ordway, "I shall walk back alone." + +Even this rebuff Wherry accepted with his invincible good temper. + +"Every man to his company, of course," he responded, "but as to my +coming to Tappahannock, if it is any comfort to you to know it, you +needn't begin to pack." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A CHANGE OF LODGING + + +When Ordway awoke the next morning, it seemed to him that Wherry had +taken his place among the other nightmares, which, combined with the +reflected heat from the tin roof, had rendered his sleep broken and +distracted. With the sunrise his evil dreams and his recollections of +Wherry had scattered together, and when, after the early closing at +Baxter's warehouse, he drove out to Cedar Hill, with the leather bag +containing his few possessions at his feet, he felt that there had been +something morbid, almost inhuman, in the loathing aroused in him by the +handsome face of his fellow prisoner. In any case, for good or for evil, +he determined to banish the man utterly from his thoughts. + +The vehicle in which he sat was an ancient gig driven by a decrepit +Negro, and as it drew up before the steps at Cedar Hill, he was +conscious almost of a sensation of shame because he had not approached +the ruined mansion on foot. Then descending over the dusty wheel, he +lifted out his bag, and rapped twice upon the open door with the +greenish knocker which he supposed had once been shining brass. Through +the hall a sleepy breeze blew from the honeysuckle arbour over the back +porch, and at his right hand the swinging sword still clanked against +the discoloured plaster. So quiet was the house that it seemed as if the +movement of life within had been suspended, and when at last the figure +of Mrs. Brooke floated down the great staircase under the pallid light +from the window above, she appeared to him as the disembodied spirit of +one of the historic belles who had tripped up and down in trailing +brocades and satin shoes. Instead of coming toward him, she completed +her ghostly impression by vanishing suddenly into the gloom beyond the +staircase, and a moment afterward his knock was answered by a small, +embarrassed darky in purple calico. Entering the dining-room by her +invitation, he stumbled upon Beverly stretched fast asleep, and snoring +slightly, upon a horsehair sofa, with the brown and white setter dozing +on a mat at his feet. At the approach of footsteps, the dog, without +lifting its head, began rapping the floor heavily with its tail, and +aroused by the sound, Beverly opened one eye and struggled confusedly +into an upright position. + +"I was entirely overcome by the heat," he remarked apologetically, as he +rose from the sofa and held out his hand, "but it is a pleasure to see +you, Mr. Smith. I hope you did not find the sun oppressive on your drive +out. Amelia, my dear," he remarked courteously, as Mrs. Brooke entered +in a freshly starched print gown, "I feel a return of that strange +dizziness I spoke of, so if it will not inconvenience you, may I beg for +another of your refreshing lemonades?" + +Mrs. Brooke, who had just completed the hasty ironing of her dress, +which she had put on while it was still warm, met his request with an +amiable but exhausted smile. + +"Don't you think six lemonades in one day too many?" she asked +anxiously, when she had shaken hands with Ordway. + +"But this strange dizziness, my dear? An iced drink, I find far more +effective than a bandage." + +"Very well, I'll make it of course, if it gives you any relief," replied +his wife, wondering if she would be able to bake the bread by the time +Beverly demanded supper. "If you'll come up stairs now, Mr. Smith," she +added, "Malviny will show you to the blue room." + +Malviny, who proved upon further acquaintance to be the eldest +great-grandchild of Aunt Mehitable, descended like a hawk upon his +waiting property, while Mrs. Brooke led the procession up the staircase +to an apartment upon the second floor. + +The blue room, as he discovered presently, contained a few rather fine +pieces of old mahogany, a grandfather's chair, with a freshly laundered +chintz cover, and a rag carpet made after the "log cabin" pattern. Of +the colour from which it had taken its name, there was visible only a +faded sampler worked elaborately in peacock blue worsteds, by one +"Margaret, aged nine." Beyond this the walls were bare of decoration, +though an oblong streak upon the plaster suggested to Ordway that a +family portrait had probably been removed in the hurried preparations +for his arrival. + +After remarking that she hoped he would "make himself quite at home," +Mrs. Brooke was glancing inquiringly about the room with her large, +pale, rather prominent eyes, when a flash of purple in the doorway +preceded the announcement that "Marse Beverly done turn right green wid +de dizziness, en wus axin' kinder faintlike fur his lemonade." + +"My poor husband," explained the exhausted wife, "contracted a chronic +heart trouble in the War, and he suffers so patiently that at times we +are in danger of forgetting it." + +Pressing her aching head, she hurried downstairs to prepare Beverly's +drink, while Ordway, after closing the broken latch of the door, walked +slowly up and down the large, cool, barely furnished room. After his +cramped chamber at Mrs. Twine's his eyes rested with contentment upon +the high white ceiling overhead, and then descended leisurely to the +stately bedstead, with its old French canopy above, and to the broad, +red brick hearth freshly filled with odorous boughs of cedar. The +cleanly quiet of the place restored to him at once the peace which he +had missed in the last few days in Tappahannock, and his nerves, which +had revolted from Mrs. Twine's scolding voice and slovenly table, became +composed again in the ample space of these high white walls. Even +"Margaret, aged nine," delivered a soothing message to him in the faded +blues of her crewel work. + +When he had unpacked his bag, he drew the chintz-covered chair to the +window, and leaning his elbow on the sill, looked out gratefully upon +the overgrown lawn filled with sheepmint and clover. Though it was +already twilight under the cedars, the lawn was still bright with +sunshine, and beyond the dwindling clump of cabbage roses in the centre, +he saw that the solitary cow had not yet finished her evening meal. As +he watched her, his ears caught the sound of light footsteps on the +porch below, and a moment afterward, he saw Emily pass from the avenue +to the edge of the lawn, where she called the cow by name in a caressing +voice. Lifting her head, the animal started at a slow walk through the +tangled weeds, stopping from time to time to bite a particularly +tempting head of purple clover. As the setting sun was in Emily's eyes, +she raised her bared arm while she waited, to shield her forehead, and +Ordway was struck afresh by the vigorous grace which showed itself in +her slightest movement. The blue cotton dress she wore, which had shrunk +from repeated washings until it had grown scant in the waist and skirt, +revealed the firm rounded curve of her bosom and her slender hips. +Standing there in the faint sunshine against the blue-black cedars, he +felt her charm in some mysterious way to be akin to the beauty of the +hour and the scene. The sight of her blue gown was associated in his +mind with a peculiar freshness of feeling--an intensified enjoyment of +life. + +When the cow reached her side, the girl turned back toward the barnyard, +and the two passed out of sight together beyond the avenue. As he +followed them with his gaze, Ordway had no longer any thought of Gus +Wherry, or of his possible presence in Tappahannock upon the morrow. +The evil association was withdrawn now from his consciousness, and in +its place he found the tranquil pleasure which he had felt while he +watched the sunshine upon the sheepmint and clover--a pleasure not +unlike that he had experienced when Emily's blue cotton dress was +visible against the cedars. The faces of the men who had listened to him +yesterday returned to his memory; and as he saw them again seated on the +rude benches among the pines, his heart expanded in an emotion which was +like the melting of his will into the Divine Will which contained and +enveloped all. + +A knock at the door startled him back to his surroundings, and when he +went to answer it, he found the small frightened servant standing +outside, with an old serving tray clutched desperately to her bosom. +From her excited stutter he gathered that supper awaited him upon the +table, and descending hastily, he found the family already assembled in +the dining-room. Beverly received him graciously, Emily quietly, and the +children assured him enthusiastically that they were glad he had come to +stay because now they might eat ham every night. When they had been +properly suppressed by Emily, her brother took up the conversation which +he carried on in a polite, rambling strain that produced upon Ordway the +effect of a monologue delivered in sleep. + +"I hope the birds won't annoy you at daybreak, Mr. Smith," he remarked, +"the ivy at your windows harbours any number of wrens and sparrows." + +"Oh, I like them," replied Ordway, "I've been sleeping under a tin roof +in Tappahannock which no intelligent bird or human being would +approach." + +"I remember," said Mr. Beverly pensively, "that there was a tin roof on +the hotel at Richmond I stayed at during the War when I first met my +wife. Do you recall how very unpleasant that tin roof was, Amelia? Or +were you too young at the time to notice it? You couldn't have been more +than fifteen, I suppose? Yes, you must have been sixteen, because I +remember when I marched past the door with my regiment, I noticed you +standing on the balcony, in a long white dress, and you couldn't have +worn long dresses before you were sixteen." + +Mrs. Brooke glanced up calmly from the coffee-pot. + +"The roof was slate," she remarked with the rigid adherence to a single +idea, which characterised her devoted temperament. + +"Ah, to be sure, it was slate," admitted Beverly, turning his genial +face upon Ordway, "and I remember now it wasn't the roof that was +unpleasant, but the food--the food was very unpleasant indeed, was it +not, Amelia?" + +"I don't think we ever got enough of it to test its quality," replied +Mrs. Brooke, "poor mama was so reduced at the end of a month that she +had to take up three inches of her bodice." + +"It's quite clear to me now," observed Beverly, delightedly, "it was not +that the food was unpleasant, but that it was scarce--very scarce." + +He had finished his supper; and when he had risen from the table with +his last amiable words, he proceeded to install himself, without +apparent selection, into the only comfortable chair which the room +contained. Drawing out his pipe a moment afterward, he waved Ordway, +with a hospitable gesture, to a stiff wooden seat, and invited him in a +persuasive tone, to join him in a smoke. + +"My tobacco is open to you," he observed, "but I regret to say that I am +unable to offer you a cigar. Yet a cigar, I maintain, is the only form +in which a gentleman should use tobacco." + +Ordway took out the leather case he carried and offered it to him with a +smile. + +"I'm afraid they are not all that they might be," he remarked, as +Beverly supplied himself with a murmured word of thanks. + +Mrs. Brooke brought out her darning, and Emily, after disappearing into +the pantry, sent back the small servant for the dishes. The girl did not +return again before Ordway took his candle from the mantel-piece and +went upstairs; and he remembered after he had reached his bedroom that +she had spoken hardly two words during the entire evening. Had she any +objection, he asked himself now, to his presence in the household? Was +it possible, indeed, that Mrs. Brooke should have taken him in against +her sister-in-law's inclination, or even without her knowledge? In the +supposition there was not only embarrassment, but a sympathetic +resentment; and he resolved that if such proved to be the case, he was +in honour bound to return immediately to Tappahannock. Then he +remembered the stifling little room under the tin roof with a feeling of +thankfulness for at least this one night's escape. + +Awaking at dawn he lay for a while contentedly listening to the flutter +of the sparrows in the ivy, and watching the paling arch of the sky +beyond the pointed tops of the cedars. A great peace seemed to encompass +him at the moment, and he thought with gratitude of the quiet evening he +had spent with Beverly. It was dull enough probably, when one came to +think of it, yet the simple talk, the measured courtesies, returned to +him now as a part of the pleasant homeliness of his surroundings. The +soft starlight on the sheepmint and clover, the chirp of the small +insects in the trees, the refreshing moisture which had crept toward him +with the rising dew, the good-night kisses of the children, delivered +under protest and beneath Mrs. Brooke's eyes--all these trivial +recollections were attended in his thoughts by a train of pensive and +soothing associations. + +Across the hall he heard the soft opening and closing of a door, and +immediately afterward the sound of rapid footsteps growing fainter as +they descended the staircase. Already the room was full of a pale golden +light, and as he could not sleep again because of the broken shutter to +the window which gave on the lawn, he rose and dressed himself with an +eagerness which recalled the early morning risings of his childhood. A +little later when he went downstairs, he found that the front door was +still barred, and removing the heavy iron fastenings, he descended the +steps into the avenue, where the faint sunbeams had not yet penetrated +the thick screen of boughs. Remembering the garden, while he stood +watching the sunrise from the steps, he turned presently into the little +footpath which led by the house, and pushing aside the lilacs, from +which the blossoms had all dropped, he leaned on the swinging gate +before the beds he had spaded on those enchanted nights. Now the rank +weeds were almost strangling the plants, and it occurred to him that +there was still work ready for his hand in the Brooke's garden. He was +telling himself that he would begin clearing the smothered rows as soon +as his morning at the warehouse was over, when the old hound ran +suddenly up to him, and turning quickly he saw Emily coming from the +springhouse with a print of golden butter in her hand. + +"So it was you I heard stirring before sunrise!" he exclaimed +impulsively, as his eyes rested on her radiant face, over which the +early mist had scattered a pearly dew like the fragrant moisture upon a +rose. + +"Yes, it was I. At four o'clock I remembered there was no butter for +breakfast, so I got up and betook myself to the churn." + +"And this is the result?" he asked, glancing down at the delicious +creamy mould she had just worked into shape and crowned with a printed +garland of thistles. "It makes me hungry enough for my muffins upon the +minute." + +"You shall have them shortly," she said, smiling, "but do you prefer +pop-overs or plain?" + +He met the question with serious consideration. + +"Well, if the choice is mine I think I'll have pop-overs," he replied. + +Before his unbroken gravity her quick humour rippled forth. + +"Then I must run to Aunt Mehitable," she responded merrily, "for I +suspect that she has already made them plain." + +With a laughing nod she turned from him, and following the little path +entered the house under the honeysuckle arbour on the back porch. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SHOWS THAT A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL A HEARTACHE + + +When Emily entered the dining-room, she found that Beverly had departed +from his usual custom sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast. + +"I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear," he remarked, "and I +think it was due entirely to the heavy supper you insisted upon giving +us." + +"But, Beverly, we must have hot things now," said Emily, as she arranged +the crocheted centrepiece upon the table. "Mr. Smith is our boarder, you +know, not our guest." + +"The fact that he is a boarder," commented Beverly, with dignity, +"entirely relieves me of any feeling of responsibility upon his account. +If he were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as you do that +hot suppers are a necessity, but when a man pays for the meals he eats, +we are no longer under an obligation to consider his preferences." + +"His presence in the household is a great trial to us all," observed his +wife, whose attitude of general acceptance was modified by the fact that +she accepted everything for the worst. Her sense of tragic values had +been long since obliterated by a gray wash of melancholy that covered +all. + +"Well, I don't see that he is very zealous about interfering with us," +remarked Emily, almost indignantly, "he doesn't appear to be of a +particularly sociable disposition." + +"Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depressing," rejoined Mrs. +Brooke. "It's a pity, perhaps, that we couldn't have secured a blond +person--they are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and I +remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie Colton's, when I called +there once, was exceedingly lively and entertaining. But it's too late, +of course, to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his morals, +at least, are above reproach." + +As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been made by Mrs. Brooke +herself upon the day that Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for +the fifth time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped lightly +upon her tongue; but restraining her words with an effort, she observed +cheerfully an instant later that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no +inconvenience to the family. + +"Well, he seems to be a respectable enough person," admitted Beverly, in +his gracious manner, "but, of course, if he were to become offensively +presuming it would be a very simple matter to drop him a hint." + +"It reminds me of a case I read of in the newspaper a few weeks ago," +said Mrs. Brooke, "where a family in Roanoke took a stranger to board +with them and shortly afterward were all poisoned by a powder in the +soup. No, they weren't all poisoned," she corrected herself +thoughtfully, "for I am positive now that the boarder was the only one +who died. It was the cook who put the poison into the soup and the +boarder who ate all of it. I remember the Coroner remarked at the +inquest that he had saved the lives of the entire family." + +"All the same I hope Mr. Smith won't eat all the soup," observed Emily. + +"It terrifies me at times," murmured Amelia, "to think of the awful +power that we place so carelessly in the hands of cooks." + +"In that case, my dear, it might be quite a safeguard always to have a +boarder at the table," suggested Beverly, with his undaunted optimism. + +"But surely, Amelia," laughed Emily, "you can't suppose that after she +has lived in the family for seventy years, Aunt Mehitable would yield at +last to a passing temptation to destroy us?" + +"I imagine the poor boarder suspected nothing while he ate his soup," +returned Mrs. Brooke. "No, I repeat that in cases like that no one is +safe, and the only sensible attitude is to be prepared for anything." + +"Well, if I'm to be poisoned, I think I'd prefer to take it without +preparation," rejoined Emily. "There is Mr. Smith now in the hall, so we +may as well send Malviny to bring in breakfast." + +When Ordway entered an instant later with his hearty greeting, even Mrs. +Brooke unbent a trifle from her rigid melancholy and joined affably in +the conversation. By a curious emotional paradox she was able to enjoy +him only as an affliction; and his presence in the house had served as +an excuse for a continuous parade of martyrdom. From the hour of his +arrival, she had been perfectly convinced not only that he interfered +with her customary peace of mind, but that he prevented her as surely +from receiving her supply of hot water upon rising and her ordinary +amount of food at dinner. + +But as the days went by he fell so easily into his place in the family +circle that they forgot at last to remark either his presence or his +personal peculiarities. After dinner he would play his game of dominoes +with Beverly in the breezy hall, until the sunlight began to slant +across the cedars, when he would go out into the garden and weed the +overgrown rows. Emily had seen him but seldom alone during the first few +weeks of his stay, though she had found a peculiar pleasure in rendering +him the small domestic services of which he was quite unconscious. How +should he imagine that it was her hand that arranged the flowers upon +his bureau, that placed his favourite chair near the window, and that +smoothed the old-fashioned dimity coverlet upon his bed. Still less +would he have suspected that the elaborate rag carpet upon his floor was +one which she had contributed to his comfort from her own room. Had he +known these things he would probably have been melancholy enough to have +proved congenial company even to Mrs. Brooke, though, in reality, there +was, perhaps, nothing he could have offered Emily which would have +exceeded the pleasure she now found in these simple services. Ignorant +as she was in all worldly matters, in grasping this essential truth, +she had stumbled unawares upon the pure philosophy of love--whose +satisfaction lies, after all, not in possession, but in surrender. + +She was still absorbed in the wonder of this discovery, when going out +into the garden one afternoon to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found +him working among the tall, green corn at the end of the long walk. As +he turned toward her in the late sunshine, which slanted across the +waving yellow tassels, she noticed that there was the same eager, +youthful look in his face that she had seen on the night when she had +come down to find him spading by the moonbeams. + +In response to her smile he came out from among the corn, and went with +her down the narrow space which separated two overgrown hills of tomato +plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton shirt was open at the +throat and wrists. + +"It's delicious in the corn now," he said; "I can almost fancy that I +hear the light rustle along the leaves." + +"You love the country so much that you ought to have been a farmer," she +returned, "then you might have raised tobacco." + +"That reminds me that I worked yesterday in your brother's crop--but +it's too sticky for me. I like the garden better." + +"Then you ought to have a garden of your own. Is all your chopping and +your digging merely for the promotion of the general good?" + +"Isn't it better so?" he asked, smiling, "particularly when I share in +the results as I shall in this case? Who knows but that I shall eat this +wonderful tomato to-night at supper?" + +She took it from his hand and placed it on the lettuce leaves in the +bottom of the basket upon her arm. + +"You make a careful choice, I see," she observed, "it is a particularly +fine one." + +"I suppose your philosophy would insist that after plucking it I should +demand the eating of it also?" + +"I don't know about my philosophy--I haven't any--but my common sense +would." + +"I'm not sure," he returned half seriously, "that I have much opinion of +common sense." + +"But you would have," she commented gravely, "if you had happened to be +born with Beverly for a brother. I used to think that all men were +alike," she added, "but you don't remind me of Beverly in the very +least." + +As she spoke she turned her face slightly toward him, and still leaning +over the luxuriant tomato row, looked up at him joyously with her +sparkling eyes. Her breath came quickly and he saw her bosom rise and +fall under the scant bodice of her blue cotton gown. Almost +unconsciously he had drifted into an association with her which +constituted for him the principal charm of his summer at Cedar Hill. + +"On the other hand I've discovered many points of resemblance," he +retorted in his whimsical tone. + +"Well, you're both easy to live in the house with, I admit that." + +"And we're both perfectly amiable as long as everybody agrees with us +and nobody crosses us," he added. + +"I shouldn't like to cross you," she said, laughing, "but then why +should I? Isn't it very pleasant as it is now?" + +"Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now," he repeated slowly. + +Turning away from her he stood looking in silence over the tall corn to +the amber light that fell beyond the clear outline of a distant hill. +The association was, as she had just said, very pleasant in his +thoughts, and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with the +summer, leaving events to shape themselves as they would in the future. +What harm, he demanded, could come of any relation so healthful, so +simple as this? + +"I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, +laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for +me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow tassels I named Princess +Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess +Fadeaway." + +At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice +of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back +from the sunset into her face. + +"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little--how very little +you know of me? By you I mean all of you, especially your brother and +Mrs. Brooke." + +Her glowing face questioned him for a moment. + +"But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after +all?" + +"I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her +words unanswered. + +Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied +quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth +time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less +conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite +evasion. + +"We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said. + +"What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just +this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded +strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to +you--it doesn't really concern you, of course--that's what I felt--but," +he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's +birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since +I saw her." + +"Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a +ripe tomato. + +"Doubtless I shouldn't know her if I were to pass her in the street," he +pursued, after a minute. "But it's worse than that and it's harder--for +it's as many years since I saw my wife." + +She had not lifted her head from the basket, and he felt suddenly that +her stillness was not the stillness of flesh, but of marble. + +"Perhaps I ought to have told you all this before," he went on again, +"perhaps it wasn't fair to let you take me in in ignorance of this and +of much else?" + +Raising her head, she stood looking into his face with her kind, brown +eyes. + +"But how could these things possibly affect us?" she asked, smiling +slightly. + +"No," he replied slowly, "they didn't affect you, of course--they don't +now. It made no difference to any of you, I thought. How could it make +any?" + +"No, it makes no difference to any of us," she repeated quietly. + +"Then, perhaps, I've been wrong in telling you this to-day?" + +She shook her head. "Not in telling me, but," she drew a long breath, +"it might be as well not to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia--at least +for a while." + +"You mean they would regret their kindness?" + +"It would make them uncomfortable--they are very old-fashioned in their +views. I don't know just how to put it, but it seems to them--oh, a +terrible thing for a husband and wife to live apart." + +"Well, I shan't speak of it, of course--but would it not be better for +me to return immediately to Tappahannock?" + +For an instant she hesitated. "It would be very dreadful at Mrs. +Twine's." + +"I know it," he answered, "but I'm ready to go back, this minute if you +should prefer it." + +"But I shouldn't," she rejoined in her energetic manner. "Why should I, +indeed? It is much wiser for you to stay here until the end of the +summer." + +When she had finished he looked at her a moment without replying. The +light had grown very faint and through the thin mist that floated up +from the fields her features appeared drawn and pallid. + +"What I can't make you understand is that even though it is all my +fault--every bit my fault from the beginning--yet I have never really +wanted to do evil in my heart. Though I've done wrong, I've always +wanted to do right." + +If she heard his words they made little impression upon her, for going +out into the walk, she started, without speaking, in the direction of +the house. Then, when she had moved a few steps from him, she stopped +and looked back as if she had forgotten something that had been in her +thoughts. + +"I meant to tell you that I hope--I pray it will come right again," she +said. + +"I thank you," he answered, and drew back into the corn so that she +might go on alone. + +A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down the garden path, it seemed +to her that the distance between the gate and the house covered an +immeasurable space. Her one hope was that she might go to her room for +at least the single hour before supper, and that there, behind a locked +door with her head buried in the pillows, she might shed the hot tears +which she felt pressing against her eyelids. + +Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the staircase, with the +basket of tomatoes still on her arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by +descending like a phantom from the darkened bend. + +"O Emily, I've been looking for you for twenty minutes," she cried in +despairing tones. "The biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in +a temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen and beat up a few +quick muffins for supper." + +Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon +the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her +eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a +lament upon the universal tragedy of her sex. + +"I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TREATS OF A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL + + +FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and +during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a +number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken +fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. +Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a +mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause +the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When +the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a +watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily +had planted in the bare spots beside the steps. + +"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked +to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or +tired." + +Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him +quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage +her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a +strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or +met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he +had not seen for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as +great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden +he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage +relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that +some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many +years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from +her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered +heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt +features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that +other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I +wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I +almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why +I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, +and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I +suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow +it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she +reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable +beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and +hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am +very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she +could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to +life. + +"I can't help believing that you would tire of it in time," she said +presently aloud. + +"Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon +her. + +"I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone +before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did +there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against +the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?" + +Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation +brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw +Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and +the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table. + +"Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, +I think I'd be content," was all he said. + +She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper +was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires. + +"You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big +thing badly?" she inquired. + +"But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big +thing--it's the very biggest thing of all." + +A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and +go in her cheek. + +"I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted +mockingly. + +"I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire +your courage, also." + +She shook her head. "It's the cheapest of the virtues." + +"Not your kind, my dear child--it's the rarest and the costliest of +achievements." + +"Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's +a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your +bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?" + +"Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits +down in the sand and looks out for a ship." + +Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it +will be time enough to hoist my flag." + +A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned +away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house. + +The next morning Ordway went into Tappahannock, not so much on account +of the little business he found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged +by the necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To furnish Beverly +three times a day with the kind of cigar he considered it "worth while +for a gentleman to smoke"--even though his choice fell, in Ordway's +opinion, upon a quite inferior brand--had become in the end a courtesy +too extravagant for him to contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that +almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was now an +established fact, and that as long as he remained at Cedar Hill he would +continue to supply with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would accept +with affability. + +The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting +experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had +swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's +evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. +Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted +was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, +on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an +hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm. + +After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to +count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his +memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won +over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving +back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told +himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty +October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape. + +Late in September Banks returned from his vacation, and during his first +visit to Cedar Hill, he showed himself painfully nervous and ill at +ease. But coming out for a walk with Ordway one afternoon, he suggested +at the end of their first mile that they should sit down and have a +smoke beneath a young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his pipe +he held the match in his hand until it burned his fingers; then throwing +it into the grass, he turned upon his companion as eloquently +despairing a look as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful +features to assume. + +"Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any +worse to die by your own hand than by disease?" + +"By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out +with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?" + +Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the +branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat. + +"She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan. + +"Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the +mask of scorn." + +"But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks. + +For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared +blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the +life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply. + +"If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at +the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me." + +"But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not +expected to combat the former irrefutable statement. + +"She tried to keep me away from the springs where she went, and when I +would follow her, whether or no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for +the first two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she would say it +was too hot for walking, and if I asked her to drive she'd answer that +she didn't drive with men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a +dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of Tappahannock!" + +"But perhaps the custom of the place was different?" + +"No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a +bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the +same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would +always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the +minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in +somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off +after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And +yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates +together." + +He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and +plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked. + +"And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the +ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed +presently, in an agony of recollection. + +"Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway. + +"You'd have fallen in love with her if you had--you couldn't have helped +it." + +"Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as +it is now." + +"I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the +other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if +she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked +it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well +she treated the other man." + +"Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway. + +"Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring--but +it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem +to have eyes or ears for anybody else." + +"So you're positive she means to marry him?" + +"She swears she doesn't--that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I +believe it is as good as settled between them." + +"Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see +how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling. + +"But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks. + +"If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow +her heart back to you again." + +"I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless +dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any +more heart than--than--I don't know what." + +"In that case I'd drag myself together and let her alone. I'd go back +to my work and resolve never to give her another thought." + +"Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is +in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what +she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. +When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing +on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging +is." + +"I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not +what might be called a successful lover." + +"It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's +because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie +awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her +in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before +the mirror--I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but +I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. +Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell +as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant +speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day +before." + +They were seated under a cherry tree by the side of the road which led +to Tappahannock, and as Banks finished his confessions, a large, dust +covered buggy was seen approaching them from the direction of the town. +As Ordway recognised Baxter through the cloud of dust raised by the +wheels, he waved his hat with a shout of welcome, and a minute later the +buggy reached them and drew up in the patch of briars upon the roadside. + +"I was just on my way to see you, Smith," said Baxter, as he let fall +the reins and held out his great dirty hand, "but I'm too heavy to get +out, and if I once sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more +than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again." + +"Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill," suggested Ordway, "and we'll follow you +at a brisk walk." + +"No, I won't do that. I can say what I have got to say right here over +the wheel, if you'll stand awhile in the dust. Major Leary was in to see +me again this morning, and the notion he's got in his head now is that +you're the man to run for Mayor of Tappahannock." + +"I!" exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as he spoke. "He forgets +that I'm out of the question. I refuse, of course." + +"Well, you see, he says you're the only man we've got strong enough to +defeat Jasper Trend--and he's as sure as shot that you'd have something +like a clean walk-over. He's already drawn up a big red flag with 'The +People's Candidate: Ten Commandment Smith,' upon it. I asked him why he +wouldn't put just plain 'Daniel,' but he said that little Biblical smack +alone was worth as much as a bushel of votes to you. If you drew the +line at 'Ten Commandment' he's going to substitute +'Daniel-in-the-Lions'-Den Smith' or something of that kind." + +"Tell him to stop it," broke in Ordway, with a smothered anger in his +usually quiet voice, "he's said nothing to me about it, and I decline it +absolutely and without consideration!" + +"You mean you won't run?" inquired Baxter, in astonishment. + +"I mean I won't run--I can't run--put it any way you please." + +"I thought you'd put your whole heart and soul into defeating Trend." + +"I have, but not that way--where's Trenton whom we've been talking of +all summer?" + +"He's out of it--consumption, the doctor says--anyway he's going South." + +"Then there's but one other man," said Ordway, decisively, "and that's +Baxter." + +"Me?" said Baxter softly, "you mean me, do you say?" His chuckle shook +the buggy until it creaked upon its rusty wheels. "I can't," he added, +with a burst of humour, "to tell the truth, I'm afraid." + +"Afraid?" repeated Ordway, "you're afraid of Jasper Trend?" + +"No," said Baxter, "it ain't Jasper--it's my wife." + +He winked slowly as he caught Ordway's eyes, and then picking up the +reins, made a movement as if to turn back to Tappahannock. "So you're +dead sure then that you can't be talked over?" he asked. + +"As sure as you are," returned Ordway promptly; then as the buggy +started back in the direction from which it had come, he went over to +Banks, who had risen to his feet and was leaning heavily against the +cherry tree, with the long blade of grass still between his teeth. + +"What do you think of their wanting to make me Mayor, Banks?" he +inquired, with a laugh. + +Banks started from his gloomy reverie. "Mayor!" he exclaimed almost with +animation. "Why, they've shown jolly good sense, that's what I think!" + +"Well, you needn't begin to get excited," responded Ordway, "for I +didn't accept, and you won't have to quarrel either with me or with +Jasper Trend." + +"There's one thing you may be sure of," said Banks with energy, "and +that is that I'd quarrel with Jasper every time." + +"In spite of Milly?" laughed Ordway. + +"In spite of Milly," repeated Banks in an awed but determined voice; +"she may manage my hair and my cravats and my life to come, but I'll be +darned if she's going to manage my vote!" + +"All the same I'm glad you can honestly stick to Jasper," said Ordway, +"he counts on you now, doesn't he?" + +"Oh, I suppose so," returned Banks, without enthusiasm; "at any rate, I +think he'd rather she'd marry me than Brown." + +There was a moment's silence in which the name brought no association +into Ordway's consciousness. Then in a single flashing instant the truth +leaped upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged up to meet +his eyes like the waves of a high sea. + +"Than whom?" he demanded in so loud a tone that Banks fell back a step +and looked at him with blinking eyelids. + +"Than marry whom?" asked Ordway for the second time, dropping his voice +almost to a whisper before the blank surprise in the other's face. + +"Oh, his name's Brown--Horatio Brown--I thought I'd told you," answered +Banks, and he added a moment later, "you've met him, I believe." + +"Yes," said Ordway, with an effort, "he's the handsome chap who came +here last June, isn't he?" + +"Oh, he's handsome enough," admitted Banks, and he groaned out +presently. "You liked him, didn't you?" + +Ordway smiled slightly as he met the desperation in the other's look. + +"I like him," he answered quietly, "as much as I like a toad." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS + + +When Baxter reached the warehouse the following morning, he found Major +Leary pacing restlessly back and forth under the brick archway, with the +regular military step at which, during the four years' war, he had +marched into battle. + +"Come in, sir, come in and sit down," said Baxter, leading the way into +his office, and sweeping a pile of newspapers from an armchair with a +hospitable gesture. + +"Have you seen Smith? and is he all right?" were the Major's first +words, as he placed his hat upon the table and took a quick, impatient +turn about the room before throwing himself into the chair which the +other had emptied. He was a short, erect, nervous man, with a fiery +face, a pair of small gray eyes, like steel points, and a long white +moustache, discoloured where it overhung his mouth by the faint yellow +stain of tobacco. + +"Oh, I've see him," answered Baxter in a soothing voice, "but he won't +run--there's no use talking. He's dead set against it." + +"Won't run?" cried the Major, furiously. "Nonsense, sir, he must run. +There's no help for it. Did you tell him that we'd decided that he +should run?" + +"I told him," returned Baxter, "but, somehow, it didn't look as if he +were impressed. He was so positive that he would not even let me put in +a word more on the subject. 'Are you dead sure, Smith?' I said, and he +answered, 'I'm as dead sure as you are yourself, Baxter.'" + +The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched himself back in his +chair, and began pulling nervously at the ends of his moustache. + +"Well, I'll have to see him myself," he said authoritatively. + +"You may see him as much as you please," replied Baxter, with a soft, +offended dignity, "but I'll be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him +to change his mind." + +"Well, I reckon you're right, Bob," admitted the other, after a moment's +reflection, "what he won't do for you, it isn't likely that he'll do for +the rest of Tappahannock--but the fact remains that somebody has got to +step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now I ask you pointblank--where'll you +get your man?" + +"The Lord knows!" sighed Baxter, and he sucked hard at the stem of his +pipe. + +"Then I tell you if you can't make Smith come out, it's your duty as an +honest citizen to run yourself." + +Baxter relapsed into a depressed silence, in the midst of which his +thoughts were invaded not so much by the political necessity of the +occasion as by the small, but dominant figure of his wife. The big man, +who had feared neither shot nor bayonet, trembled in spirit as he +imagined the outraged authority that could express itself in a person +that measured hardly a fraction more than five feet from her shoes to +the curling gray fringe above her forehead. He remembered that once in +the early days of his marriage, he had allowed himself to be seduced by +the promise of political honours, and that for a whole miserable month +he had gone without griddle cakes and syrup for his breakfast. "No--no, +I could never tell Marthy," he thought, desperately, still seeing in +imagination the pretty, indignant face of Mrs. Baxter. + +"It's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself," repeated the +Major, rapping the arm of his chair to enforce his words. + +"I can't," rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, "I can't sir," and he added an +instant afterward, "you see women have got the idea somehow, that +politics ain't exactly moral." + +"Women!" said the Major, in the dry, contemptuous tone in which he might +have uttered the word, "Pshaw!" + +"I don't mean just 'women,'" replied Baxter, "I mean my wife." + +"Oh!" said the Major, "you mean your wife would be opposed to the whole +thing?" + +"She wouldn't hear of it, sir, she simply wouldn't hear a word of it." + +For a long pause the Major made no answer; then rising from his chair he +began pacing with his military stride up and down the floor of the +little room. At the end of five minutes he turned upon Baxter with an +exclamation of triumph, and threw himself again into the armchair beside +the desk. + +"I have it, Bob!" he said, slapping his knee until the dust flew out of +his striped trousers, "I knew I'd get it in the end and here it is. The +very thing, on my word, sir, I've discovered the very thing." + +"Then I'm out of it," said Baxter, "an' I'm mighty glad of that." + +"Oh, no, you aren't out of it--not just yet," said the Major, "we're to +start you in, Bob, you're to start in as a candidate; and then a week +before the nomination, something will crop up to make you fall out of +the race, and you'll turn over all your votes to Smith. It would be too +late, then, for him to back out--he'd simply have to keep in to save the +day." + +In spite of the roar of delight with which the Major ended his speech, +Baxter sat unconvinced and unmoved, shaking his great head in a +voiceless protest against the plot. + +"It's the only way, I tell you," urged the Major, half pleased, half +angry. "After Smith you're by long odds the most popular man in +Tappahannock, and if it isn't one of you, it's Jasper Trend and his +everlasting barrooms." + +"But suppose Smith still declines," said Baxter remembering his wife. + +"Oh, he won't--he isn't a blamed fool," returned the Major, "and if he +does," he added impressively, "if he does I swear to you I'll go into +the race myself." + +He held out his hand and Baxter grasped it in token of good faith. + +"Then I'll do it," said the big man, "provided--" he hesitated, cleared +his throat, and went on bravely, "provided there's no objection to my +telling my wife the scheme"--bending his ear an instant, he drew back +with an embarrassed and guilty face, "that's Smith's step in the +warehouse. He'll be in here in less than two minutes." + +The Major took up his hat, and flung back the door with a hurried +movement. + +"Well, good-bye, I'll see Smith later about the plans," he returned, +"and meanwhile, we'll go hard to work to whip our friend Jasper." + +Meeting Ordway an instant later upon the threshold, he passed him with a +flourish of his hat, and marched rapidly under the brick archway out +into the street. + +As his bookkeeper entered Baxter appeared to be absorbed in a newspaper +which he had picked up hastily from the pile upon the floor. + +"Good-morning," said Ordway, a little surprised; "it looks as if I'd put +the fiery Major to flight." + +"Smith," said Baxter, dropping his paper, and lifting his big, simple +face to the younger man, "Smith, you've got me into a hole, and I want +you to pull me out again." + +"A hole?" repeated Ordway; then as light broke on him, he laughed aloud +and held out his hand. "Oh, I see, he's going to make you Mayor of +Tappahannock!" + +With a groan Baxter prodded fresh tobacco into his pipe, and applying a +match, sat for several minutes brooding in silence amid the cloud of +smoke. + +"He says it's got to be either you or me," he pursued presently, without +noticing Ordway's ejaculation, "and on my word, Smith, seeing I've got a +wife who's all against it, I think it would be but fair to me to let me +off. You're my friend now, ain't you? Well, I'm asking you, Smith, as +friend to friend." + +A flush passed slowly over Ordway's face, and the unusual colour lent a +peculiar animation to his glance. As Baxter met his eyes, he was +conscious that they pierced through him, bright blue, sparkling, as +incisive as a blade. + +"To tell the truth, the thing is all but impossible," said Ordway, after +a long pause. "You don't know, I suppose, that I've never even touched +politics in Tappahannock." + +"That ain't the point, Smith--it's going on three years since you came +here--am I right?" + +"Yes--three years next March, and it seems a century." + +"Well, anyway, you've as good a right as I to be Mayor, and a long sight +better one than Jasper Trend has. Come, now, Smith, if you don't get me +out of this hole I'm in, heaven knows how I 'm going to face the Major." + +"Give me time," said Ordway, quickly, "give me time--a week from +to-morrow I am to make my first speech in the town hall. May I have till +then?" + +"Till Thursday week? Oh, I say, Smith, you've got to give in in the +end--and a week sooner or later, what's the difference?" + +Without replying, Ordway walked slowly to the window and stood looking +out upon the steep street that crawled up from the railroad track, where +an engine whistled. He had held out till now, but with Baxter's last +words he had heard in his thoughts a question larger and older than any +of which his employer had dreamed. "Why not?" he asked himself again as +he looked out upon the sunshine. "Why should not Daniel Smith, for a +good purpose, resume the rights which Daniel Ordway has forfeited?" And +it appeared to him while he stood there that his decision involved not +himself alone, and that the outcome had ceased to be merely an election +to the highest office in Tappahannock. Infinitely deep and wide, the +problem belonged not only to his individual life, but to the lives of +all those who had sinned and paid the penalty of sin and asked of +humanity the right and the freedom to begin anew. The impulsive daring +which he had almost lived down stirred for an instant in his pulses, and +turning quickly he looked at Baxter with a boyish laugh. + +"If I go in, Baxter, I go in to win!" he cried. + +At the moment it had seemed to him that he was obliging rather than +ambitious in the choice that he had made; but several days later, when +he came out of the warehouse to find the Major's red flag flying in the +street, he felt the thrill of his youthful enthusiasm quicken in his +blood. There was a strangely martial air about the red flag in the +sunshine, and the response in his pulses was not unlike the ardour of +battle. + +"After all the world is no smaller here than it is in New York," he +thought, "only the littleness of the one is different from the +littleness of the other. In either place success would have meant +nothing in itself, but in Tappahannock I can be more than successful, I +can be useful." With the words it seemed to him that his heart dissolved +in happiness, and as he looked now on the people who passed him in the +street--on the old Negro midwife waddling down the board walk; on the +Italian who kept a fruit stand at the corner; on the pretty girl +flirting in the door of the harness shop; and on the rough-coated, +soft-eyed country horses--he felt that one and all of these must +recognise and respond to the goodwill that had overflowed his thoughts. +So detached from personal bitterness, indeed, was even his fight against +Jasper Trend that he went out of his way at the top of the hill to pick +up a small whip which the Mayor had dropped from horseback as he rode +by. The scowling thanks with which Jasper received the courtesy puzzled +him for a moment until he remembered that by the man in the harness shop +they were regarded probably as enemies. At the recollection he stopped +short in his walk and laughed aloud--no, he was not interested in +fighting anything so small, so insignificant as Jasper Trend. It was the +injustice, the social disease he combated and not the man. "I wonder if +he really hates me?" he thought, for it seemed to him absurd and +meaningless that one man should waste his strength in hating another. +"If he'd been five years in prison he would have learned how foolish it +all is," he added; and an instant afterward he asked himself almost with +terror if his punishment had been, in reality, the greatest good that +had come to him in life? Without that terrible atonement would he have +gone on like Jasper Trend from fraud to fraud, from selfishness to +damnation? + +Looking round him in the perfect October weather, he felt that the +emotion in his heart swelled suddenly to rapture. Straight ahead the +sunshine sifted in drops through the red and yellow trees that bordered +the roadside, while in the field on his right the brown cornricks +crowded in even rows to where the arch of the hill was outlined against +the deep blue sky. Here was not only peace, but happiness, and his old +life, as he glanced back upon it, appeared hollow, futile, a corpse +without breath or animation. That was the mere outward form and body of +existence; but standing here in the deserted road, with his eyes on the +brilliant October fields, he could tell himself that he had come at last +into the ways and the understanding of faith. As he had once walked by +sight alone and stumbled, so he moved now blindly like a child that is +led step by step through the dark. + +From the road behind him a happy laugh struck on his ears, and turning +quickly he saw that a dog-cart was rolling rapidly from Tappahannock. As +he stepped back upon the roadside to avoid the dust raised by the +wheels, he lifted his eyes to the face of Milly Trend, who sat, flushed +and smiling, under a pink sunshade. She bowed joyfully; and it was not +until a moment afterward, when the cart had gone by, that Ordway +realised, almost with the force of a blow struck unawares, that he had +acknowledged the obsequious greeting of Gus Wherry. + +After the pink sunshade had vanished, Milly's laugh was still blown back +to him on the rising wind. With the happy sound of it in his ears, he +watched the dust settle again in the road, the tall golden poplars close +like a screen after the passing wheels, and the distance resume its +aspect of radiant loneliness. Nothing was changed at which he looked, +yet he was conscious that the rapture had passed from his thoughts and +the beauty from the October landscape. The release that he had won +appeared to him as an illusion and a cheat, and lifting his face to the +sunshine, he watched, like a prisoner, the flight of the swallows across +the sky. + +At dinner Beverly noticed his abstraction, and recommended a mint julep, +which Emily went out immediately to prepare. + +"The blood is easily chilled at this season," he said, "and care should +be taken to keep it warm by means of a gentle stimulant. I am not a +great drinker, sir, as you may have remarked, but in cases either of +sickness or sorrow, I have observed that few things are more efficacious +than a thimbleful of whiskey taken at the proper time. When I had the +misfortune to break to my uncle Colonel Algernon Brooke the distressing +news of the death of his wife by drowning, I remember that, though he +was one of the most abstemious men alive, his first articulate words +were: 'bring the whiskey jug.'" + +Even with the cheering assistance of the mint julep, however, it was +impossible for Ordway to eat his dinner; and making an excuse presently, +he rose from the table and went out into the avenue, where he walked +slowly up and down in the shadow of the cedars. At the end of his last +restless turn, he went indoors for his hat, and coming out again started +rapidly toward Tappahannock. With his first decisive step he felt that +the larger share of his burden had fallen from him. + + * * * * * + +The Tappahannock Hotel was a low, whitewashed frame building, withdrawn +slightly from the street, where several dejected looking horses, with +saddle-bags attached to them, were usually fastened to the iron rings in +the hitching-rail upon the sidewalk. The place was the resort chiefly of +commercial travellers or of neighbouring farmers, who drove in with +wagon loads of garden produce or of sun-cured tobacco; and the number of +loungers reclining on the newly painted green benches upon the porch +made Ordway aware that the fall trade was already beginning to show +signs of life. + +In answer to his questions, the proprietor an unctuous person, whose +mouth was distorted by a professional habit of welcome--informed him +that a gentleman by the name of Brown had registered there the evening +before, and that he was, to the best of his belief, upstairs in number +eighteen at the present moment. + +"To tell the truth I can't quite size him up," he concluded +confidentially. "He don't seem to hev' come either to sell or to buy an' +thar's precious little else that ever brings a body to Tappahannock." + +"Please add that I wish particularly to see him in private," said +Ordway. + +Without turning his head the proprietor beckoned, by a movement of his +thumb delivered backward over his left shoulder, to a Negro boy, who sat +surreptitiously eating peanuts out of a paper bag in his pocket. + +"Tell the gentleman in number eighteen, Sol, that Mr. Smith, the +people's candidate for Mayor, would like to have a little talk with him +in private. I'm mighty glad to see you out in the race, suh," he added, +turning again to Ordway, as the Negro disappeared up the staircase. + +"Thank you," replied Ordway, with a start, which brought him back from +his approaching interview with Gus Wherry to the recollection that he +was fighting to become the Mayor of Tappahannock. + +"Thar's obleeged to be a scrummage, I reckon," resumed the loquacious +little man, when he had received Ordway's acknowledgments--"but I s'pose +thar ain't any doubt as to who'll come off with the scalps in the end." +His manner changed abruptly, and he looked round with a lurking +curiosity in his watery eyes. "You knew Mr. Brown, didn't you say, +suh?--before you came here?" + +Ordway glanced up quickly. + +"Did you tell me he got here yesterday?" he asked. + +"Last night on the eight-forty-five, which came in two hours after +time." + +"An accident on the road, wasn't it?" + +"Wreck of a freight--now, Mr. Brown, as I was saying----" + +At this instant, to Ordway's relief, the messenger landed with a bound +on the floor of the hall, and picking himself up, announced with a +cheerful grin, that "the gentleman would be powerful pleased to see Mr. +Smith upstairs in his room." + +Nodding to the proprietor, Ordway followed the Negro up to the first +landing, and knocked at a half open door at the end of the long, dark +hall. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SHOWS THAT POLITENESS, LIKE CHARITY, IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE + + +When Ordway entered the room, he turned and closed the door carefully +behind him, before he advanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with +outstretched hand. + +"I can't begin to tell you how I appreciate the honour, Mr. Smith. I +didn't expect it--upon my word, I didn't," exclaimed Wherry, with the +effusive amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger. + +"I don't know that I mean it for an honour, but I hope we can get +straight to business," returned Ordway shortly. + +"Ah, then there's business?" repeated the other, as if in surprise. "I +had hoped that you were paying me merely a friendly call. To tell the +truth I've the very worst head in the world for business, you know, and +I always manage to dodge it whenever I get half a chance." + +"Well, you can't dodge it this time, so we may as well have it out." + +"Then since you insist upon that awful word 'business,' I suppose you +mean that you've come formally to ratify the treaty?" asked Wherry, +smiling. + +"The treaty? I made no treaty," returned Ordway gravely. + +Laughing pleasantly, Wherry invited his visitor to be seated. Then +turning away for an instant, he flung himself into a chair beside a +little marble topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle of rye +whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a metal tray. + +"Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten our conversation in that +beastly road?" he demanded, "and the prodigal? Surely you haven't +forgotten the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my life that +impressed me more." + +"You told me then distinctly that you had no intention of remaining in +Tappahannock." + +"I'll tell you so again if you'd like to hear it. Will you have a +drink?" + +Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture. + +"What I want to know," he insisted bluntly, "is why you are here at +all?" + +Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding a dash of iced water, +tossed it down at a swallow. + +"I thought I told you then," he answered, "that I have a little private +business in the town. As it's purely personal I hope you'll have no +objection to my transacting it." + +"You said that afternoon that your presence was, in some way, connected +with Jasper Trend's cotton mills." + +Wherry gave a low whistle. "Did I?" he asked politely, "well, perhaps, I +did. I can't remember." + +"I was fool enough to believe that you wanted an honest job," said +Ordway; "it did not enter my head that your designs were upon Trend's +daughter." + +"Didn't it?" inquired Wherry with a smile in which his white teeth +flashed brilliantly. "Well, it might have, for I was honest enough about +it. Didn't I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of every mess I was +ever in?" + +"Where is your wife?" asked Ordway. + +"Dead," replied Wherry, in a solemn voice. + +"If I am not mistaken, you had not less than three at the time of your +trial." + +"All dead," rejoined Wherry in the same solemn tone, while he drew out +his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes with a flourish, "there ain't +many men that have supported such a treble affliction on the same day." + +"I may as well inform you that I don't believe a word you utter." + +"It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can +find in town." + +"Your oath? Pshaw!" + +"Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the +slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his +fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second +drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed +carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head. + +"Whether they are dead or alive," responded Ordway, "I want you to +understand plainly that you are to give up your designs upon Milly +Trend or her money." + +"So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare +I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?" + +A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway +suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the +half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon +rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a +bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, +stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned +away with a sensation of disgust. + +"If you'd only warned me in time--hang it--I'd have cut out and given +you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway +resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I +always like to play fair and square when I get the chance." + +"Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it +good." + +"And leave you the open?" + +"And leave me Tappahannock--yes." + +"I don't want Tappahannock. To tell the truth I'm not particularly +struck by its attractions." + +"In that case you've no objection to leaving immediately, I suppose?" + +"I've no objection on earth if you'll allow me a pretty woman to keep me +company. I'm a deuced lonely bird, and I can't get on by myself--it's +not in my nature." + +Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a force which started the +glasses rattling on the metal tray. + +"I repeat for the last time that you are to leave Milly Trend alone," he +said. "Do you understand me?" + +"I'm not sure I do," rejoined Wherry, still pleasantly enough. "Would +you mind saying that over again in a lower tone?" + +"What I want to make plain is that you are not to marry Milly Trend--or +any other women in this town," returned Ordway angrily. + +"So there are others!" commented Wherry jauntily with his eye on the +ceiling. + +The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably effective, that Ordway +felt his rage increased by the mere external advantages of the man. + +"What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahannock for good and all this +very evening," he resumed, drawing a sharp breath. + +The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable amusement. + +"I can't," he responded, after a minute in which he had enjoyed his +humour to the full, "the train leaves at seven-ten and I've an +engagement at eight o'clock." + +"You'll break it, that's all." + +"But it wouldn't be polite--it's with a lady." + +"Then I'll break it for you," returned Ordway, starting toward the +door, "for I may presume, I suppose, that the lady is Miss Trend?" + +"Oh, come back, I say. Hang it all, don't get into a fury," protested +Wherry, clutching the other by the arm, and closing the door which he +had half opened. "Here, hold on a minute and let's talk things over +quietly. I told you, didn't I? that I wanted to be obliging." + +"Then you will go?" asked Ordway, in a milder tone. + +"Well, I'll think about it. I've a quick enough wit for little things, +but on serious matters my brain works slowly. In the first place now +didn't we promise each other that we'd play fair?" + +"But you haven't--that's why I came here." + +"You're dead wrong. I'm doing it this very minute. I'll keep my mouth +shut about you till Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me +back when I'm trying to live honest." + +"Honest!" exclaimed Ordway, and turned on his heel. + +"Well, I'd like to know what you call it, for if it isn't honesty, it +certainly isn't pleasure. My wife's dead, I swear it's a fact, and I +swear again that I don't mean the girl any harm. I was never so much +gone on a woman in my life, though a number of 'em have been pretty soft +on me. So you keep off and manage your election--or whatever it +is--while I go about my business. Great Scott! after all it ain't as if +a woman were a bank note, is it?" + +"The first question was mine. Will you leave to-day or will you not?" + +"And if I will not what are you going to do about it?" + +"As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you know." + +"Well, say I won't. What is your next move then?" + +"In that case I shall go straight to the girl's father after I leave +this room." + +"By Jove you will! And what will you do when you get there?" + +"I shall tell him that to the best of my belief you have a +wife--possibly several--now living." + +"Then you'll lie," said Wherry, dropping for the first time his +persuasive tone. + +"That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he +needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you." + +"And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?" + +"Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want." + +"And suppose he asks you--as he probably will--how in the devil it came +to be any business of yours?" + +For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open +window into the street below. + +"I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I +shall tell him the whole truth as I know it--about myself as well as +about you." + +"The deuce you will!" exclaimed Wherry. "It appears that you want to +take the whole job out of my hands now, doesn't it?" + +The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of +the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry +laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite +of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life +had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one? + +"I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the +question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that +idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you--I'll send you half my +salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job." + +Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink. + +"So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, wouldn't you?" he +inquired. + +Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned toward the door and laid +his hand upon the knob before he spoke. + +"Is it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?" he asked. + +"Well, I wouldn't if I were you," said Wherry, "but that's your affair. +On the whole I think that you'll pay more than your share of the price." + +"It's natural, I suppose, that you should want your revenge," returned +Ordway, without resentment, "but all the same I shall tell him as little +as possible about your past. What I shall say is that I have reason to +believe that your wife is still living." + +"One or more?" enquired Wherry, with a sneer. + +"One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my purpose." + +"Well, go ahead," rejoined Wherry, angrily, "but before you strike you'd +better be pretty sure you see a snake in the grass. I'd advise you for +your own sake to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me." + +"What?" cried Ordway, wheeling round, "do you mean she has refused you?" + +"Oh, ask her--ask her," retorted Wherry airily, as he turned back to the +whiskey bottle. + +In the street, a moment later, Ordway passed under the red flag, which, +inflated by the wind, swelled triumphantly above his head. From the +opposite sidewalk a man spoke to him; and then, turning, waved his +slouch hat enthusiastically toward the flag. "If he only knew," thought +Ordway, looking after him; and the words brought to his imagination what +disgrace in Tappahannock would mean in his life. As he passed the dim +vacancy of the warehouse he threw toward it a look which was almost one +of entreaty. "No, no, it can't be," he insisted, as if to reassure +himself, "it is impossible. How could it happen?" And seized by a sudden +rage against circumstances, he remembered the windy afternoon upon which +he had come for the first time to Tappahannock--the wide stretches of +broomsedge; the pale red road, which appeared to lead nowhere; his +violent hunger; and the Negro woman who had given him the cornbread at +the door of her cabin. A hundred years seemed to have passed since +then--no, not a hundred years as men count them, but a dissolution and +a resurrection. It was as if his personality--his whole inner structure +had dissolved and renewed itself again; and when he thought now of that +March afternoon it was with the visual distinctness that belongs to an +observer rather than to an actor. His point of view was detached, almost +remote. He saw himself from the outside alone--his clothes, his face, +even his gestures; and these things were as vivid to him as were the +Negro cabin, the red clay road, and the covered wagon that threw its +shadow on the path as it crawled by. In no way could he associate his +immediate personality either with the scene or with the man who had sat +on the pine bench ravenously eating the coarse food. At the moment it +seemed to him that he was released, not only from any spiritual bondage +to the past, but even from any physical connection with the man he had +been then. "What have I to do with Gus Wherry or with Daniel Ordway?" he +demanded. "Above all, what in heaven have I to do with Milly Trend?" As +he asked the question he flushed with resentment against the girl for +whom he was about to sacrifice all that he valued in his life. He +thought with disgust of her vanity, her shallowness, her insincerity; +and the course that he had planned showed in this sudden light as +utterly unreasonable. It struck him on the instant that in going to +Wherry he had been a fool. "Yes, I should have thought of that before. I +have been too hasty, for what, after all, have I to do with Milly +Trend?" + +With an effort he put the question aside, and in the emotional reaction +which followed, he felt that his spirit soared into the blue October +sky. Emily, looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never seen +him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly unreserved. When his game +of dominoes with Beverly was over, he followed the children out into the +orchard, where they were gathering apples into great straw hampers; and +as he stood under the fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish +laughter in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, even +his memories had dissolved and vanished into air. An irresponsible +happiness swelled in his heart while he watched the golden orchard grass +blown like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill. + +But when night fell the joy of the sunshine went from him, and it was +almost with a feeling of heaviness that he lit his lamp and sat down in +the chintz-covered chair under the faded sampler worked by Margaret, +aged nine. Without apparent cause or outward disturbance he had passed +from the exhilaration of the afternoon into a pensive, almost a +melancholy mood. The past, which had been so remote for several hours, +had leaped suddenly to life again--not only in his memory, but in every +fibre of his body as well as in every breath he drew. "No, I cannot +escape it, for is it not a part of me--it is I myself," he thought; and +he knew that he could no more free himself from his duty to Milly Trend +than he could tear the knowledge of her existence from his brain. "After +all, it is not Milly Trend," he added, "it is something larger, +stronger, far more vital than she." + +A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and fluttered blindly in the +circle of light which the lamp threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft +whirring of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the sound +entered into his thoughts and became a part of his reflections. "Will +the moth fall into the flame or will it escape?" he asked, feeling +himself powerless to avert the creature's fate. In some strange way his +own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that narrow circle of +light; and in the pitiless illumination that surrounded it, he saw not +only all that was passed, but all that was present as well as all that +was yet to come. At the same instant he saw his mother's face as she lay +dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen upon her lips; and the face +of Lydia when she had lowered a black veil at their last parting; and +the face of Alice, his daughter; and of the girl downstairs as he had +seen her through the gray twilight; and the face of the epileptic little +preacher, who had preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces +looked back at him he knew that the illumination in which his soul had +struggled so blindly was the light of love. "Yes, it is love," he +thought, "and that is the meaning of the circle of light into which I +have come out of the darkness." + +He looked up startled, for the white moth, after one last delirious +whirl of ecstasy, had dropped from the ceiling into the flame of the +lamp. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE TURN OF THE WHEEL + + +At eight o'clock the next morning Ordway entered Jasper Trend's gate, +and passed up the gravelled walk between borders of white and yellow +chrysanthemums. In a window on his right a canary was singing loudly in +a gilt cage; and a moment later, the maid invited him into a room which +seemed, as he entered it, to be filled with a jubilant burst of music. +As he waited here for the man he had come to see, he felt that, in spite +of his terrible purpose, he had found no place in Tappahannock so +cheerful as this long room flooded with sunshine, in the midst of which +the canary swung back and forth in his wire cage. The furniture was +crude enough, the colours of the rugs were unharmonious, the imitation +lace of the curtains was offensive to his eyes. Yet the room was made +almost attractive by the large windows which gave on the piazza, the +borders of chrysanthemums and the smoothly shaven plot of lawn. + +His back was turned toward the door when it opened and shut quickly, and +Jasper Trend came in, hastily swallowing his last mouthful of breakfast. + +"You wanted to see me, Mr. Smith, I understand," he said at once, +showing in his manner a mixture of curiosity and resentment. It was +evident at the first glance that even in his own house he was unable to +overcome the political antagonism of the man of little stature. The +smallest social amenity he would probably have regarded as a kind of +moral subterfuge. + +"I must ask you to overlook the intimate nature of my question," began +Ordway, in a voice which was so repressed that it sounded dull and +lifeless, "but I have heard that your daughter intends to marry Horatio +Brown. Is this true?" + +At the words Jasper, who had prepared himself for a political onslaught, +fell back a step or two and stood in the merciless sunlight, blinking at +his questioner with his little, watery, pale gray eyes. Each dull red +vein in his long nose became suddenly prominent. + +"Horatio Brown?" he repeated, "why, I thought you'd come about nothing +less than the nomination. What in the devil do you want anyway with +Horatio Brown. He can't vote in Tappahannock, can he?" + +"I'll answer that in time," replied Ordway, "my motive is more serious +than you can possibly realise--it is a question which involves your +daughter's happiness--perhaps her life." + +"Good Lord, is that so?" exclaimed Jasper, "I don't reckon you're sweet +on her yourself, are you?" + +Ordway's only reply was an impatient groan which sent the other +stumbling back against a jar of goldfish on the centre table. Though he +had come fully prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, he was unable to +control the repulsion aroused in him by the bleared eyes and sunken +mouth of the man before him. + +"Well, if you ain't," resumed Jasper presently, with a fresh outburst of +hilarity, "you're about the only male critter in Tappahannock that don't +turn his eyes sooner or later toward my door." + +"I've barely a speaking acquaintance with your daughter," returned +Ordway shortly, "but her reputation as a beauty is certainly very well +deserved." + +Mollified by the compliment, Jasper unbent so far as to make an abrupt, +jerky motion in the direction of a chair; but shaking his head, Ordway +put again bluntly the question he had asked upon the other's entrance. + +"Am I to understand seriously that she means to marry Brown?" he +demanded. + +Jasper twisted his scraggy neck nervously in his loose collar. "Lord, +how you do hear things!" he ejaculated. "Now, as far as I can see, thar +ain't a single word of truth in all that talk. Just between you and me I +don't believe my girl has had her mind on that fellow Brown more'n a +minute. I'm dead against it and that'll go a long way with her, you may +be sure. Why, only this morning she told me that if she had to choose +between the two of 'em, she'd stick to young Banks every time." + +With the words it seemed to Ordway that the sunshine became fairly +dazzling as it fell through the windows, while the song of the canary +went up rapturously like a pęan. Only by the relief which flooded his +heart like warmth could he measure the extent of the ruin he had +escaped. Even Jasper Trend's face appeared no longer hideous to him, and +as he held out his hand, the exhilaration of his release lent a note +that was almost one of affection to his voice. + +"Don't let her do it--for God's sake don't let her do it," he said, and +an instant afterward he was out on the gravelled walk between the +borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums. + +At the gate Milly was standing with a letter in her hand, and when he +spoke to her, he watched her face change slowly to the colour of a +flower. Never had she appeared softer, prettier, more enticing in his +eyes, and he felt for the first time an understanding of the hopeless +subjection of Banks. + +"Oh, it's you, Mr. Smith!" she exclaimed, smiling and blushing as she +had smiled and blushed at Wherry the day before, "I was asking Harry +Banks yesterday what had become of you?" + +"What had become of me?" he repeated in surprise, while he drew back +quickly with his hand on the latch of the gate. + +"I hadn't seen you for so long," she answered, with a laugh which bore +less relation to humour than it did to pleasure. "You used to pass by +five times a day, and I got so accustomed to you that I really missed +you when you went away." + +"Well, I've been in the country all summer, though that hardly counts, +for you were out of town yourself." + +"Yes, I was out of town myself." She lingered over the words, and her +voice softened as she went on until it seemed to flow with the sweetness +of liquid honey, "but even when I am here, you never care to see me." + +"Do you think so?" he asked gaily, and the next instant he wondered why +the question had passed his lips before it had entered into his +thoughts, "the truth is that I know a good deal more about you than you +suspect," he added; "I have the honour, you see, to be the confidant of +Harry Banks." + +"Oh, Harry Banks!" she exclaimed indifferently, as she turned from the +gate, while Ordway opened it and passed out into the street. + +For the next day or two it seemed to him that the lightness of his heart +was reflected in the faces of those about him--that Baxter, Mrs. Brooke, +Emily, Beverly each appeared to move in response to some hidden spring +within himself. He felt no longer either Beverly's tediousness or Mrs. +Brooke's melancholy, for these early October mornings contained a +rapture which transfigured the people with whom he lived. + +With this unlooked for renewal of hope he threw himself eagerly into the +political fight for the control of Tappahannock. It was now Tuesday and +on Thursday evening he was to deliver his first speech in the town hall. +Already the preparations were made, already the flags were flying from +the galleries, and already Baxter had been trimmed for his public +appearance upon the platform. + +"By George, I believe the Major's right and it's the Ten Commandment +part that has done it," said the big man, settling his person with a +shake in the new clothes he had purchased for the occasion. "I reckon +this coat's all right, Smith, ain't it? My wife wouldn't let me come +out on the platform in those old clothes I've been wearing." + +"Oh, you're all right," returned Ordway, cheerfully--so cheerfully that +Baxter was struck afresh by the peculiar charm which belonged less to +manner than to temperament, "you're all right, old man, but it isn't +your clothes that make you so." + +"All the same I'll feel better when I get into my old suit again," said +Baxter, "I don't know how it is, but, somehow, I seem to have left +two-thirds of myself behind in those old clothes. I just wore these down +to show 'em off, but I shan't put 'em on again till Thursday." + +It was the closing hour at the warehouse, and after a few eager words on +the subject of the approaching meeting, Ordway left the office and went +out into the deserted building where the old Negro was sweeping the +floor with his twig broom. A moment later he was about to pass under the +archway, when a man, hurrying in from the street, ran straight into his +arms and then staggered back with a laugh of mirthless apology. + +"My God, Smith," said the tragic voice of Banks, "I'm half crazy and I +must have a word with you alone." + +Catching his arm Ordway drew him into the dim light of the warehouse, +until they reached the shelter of an old wagon standing unhitched +against the wall. The only sound which came to them here was the +scratching noise made by the twig broom on the rough planks of the +floor. + +"Speak now," said Ordway, while his heart sank as he looked into the +other's face, "It's quite safe--there's no one about but old Abraham." + +"I can't speak," returned Banks, preserving with an effort a decent +composure of his features, "but it's all up with me--it's worse than I +imagined, and there's nothing ahead of me but death." + +"I suppose it's small consolation to be told that you look unusually +healthy at the minute," replied Ordway, "but don't keep me guessing, +Banks. What's happened now?" + +"All her indifference--all her pretence of flirting was pure deception," +groaned the miserable Banks, "she wanted to throw dust, not only in my +eyes, but in Jasper's, also." + +"Why, he told me with his own lips that his daughter had given him to +understand that she preferred you to Brown." + +"And so she did give him to understand--so she did," affirmed Banks, in +despair, "but it was all a blind so that he wouldn't make trouble +between her and Brown. I tell you, Smith," he concluded, bringing his +clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, from which a shower of +dried mud was scattered into Ordway's face, "I tell you, I don't believe +women think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking a cocktail!" + +"But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? and when did you discover +it?" + +"That's the awful part, I'm coming to it." His voice gave out and he +swallowed a lump in his throat before he could go on. "Oh, Smith, +Smith, I declare, if it's the last word I speak, I believe she means to +run away with Brown this very evening!" + +"What?" cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. A +burning resentment, almost a repulsion swept over him, and he felt that +he could have spurned the girl's silly beauty if she had lain at his +feet. What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she should cost him, +a stranger to her, so great a price? + +"Tell me all," he said sharply, turning again to his companion. "How did +you hear it? Why do you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?" + +Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single large round teardrop +trickled slowly down his freckled nose. + +"I should never have suspected it," he answered, "but for Milly's old +black Mammy Delphy, who has lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt +Delphy came upon her this morning when she was packing her bag, and by +hook or crook, heaven knows how, she managed to get at the truth. Then +she came directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown worse than +the devil." + +"When did she come to you?" + +"A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight to you." + +Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at the face of it with a +wondering frown. + +"That must have been five o'clock," he said, "and it is now half past. +Shall I catch Milly, do you think, if I start at once?" + +"You?" cried Banks, "you mean that you will stop her?" + +"I mean that I must stop her. There is no question." + +As he spoke he had started quickly down the warehouse, scattering as he +walked, a pile of trash which the old Negro had swept together in the +centre of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with which he moved +that Banks, in spite of his frantic haste, could barely keep in step +with him as they passed into the street. Ordway's face had changed as if +from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks looked at it in the +afternoon light he was startled to find that it was the face of an old +man. The brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, and the gray +hair upon the temples had become suddenly more prominent than the dark +locks above. + +"Then you knew Brown before?" asked Banks, with an accession of courage, +as they slackened their pace with the beginning of the hill. + +"I knew him before--yes," replied Ordway, shortly. His reserve had +become not only a mask, but a coffin, and his companion had for a minute +a sensation that was almost uncanny as he walked by his side--as if he +were striving to keep pace uphill with a dead man. Banks had known him +to be silent, gloomy, uncommunicative before now, but he had never until +this instant seen that look of iron resolve which was too cold and still +to approach the heat of passion. Had he been furious Banks might have +shared his fury with him; had he shown bitterness of mood Banks might +have been bitter also; had he given way even to sardonic merriment, +Banks felt that it would have been possible to have feigned a mild +hilarity of manner; but before this swift, implacable pursuit of +something he could not comprehend, the wretched lover lost all +consciousness of the part which he himself must act, well or ill, in the +event to come. + +At Trend's gate Ordway stopped and looked at his companion with a smile +which appeared to throw an artificial light upon his drawn features. + +"Will you let me speak to her alone first," he asked, "for a few +minutes?" + +"I'll take a turn up the street then," returned Banks eagerly, still +panting from his hurried walk up the long hill. "She's in the room on +the right now," he added, "I can see her feeding the canary." + +Ordway nodded indifferently. "I shan't be long," he said, and going +inside the gate, passed deliberately up the walk and into the room where +Milly stood at the window with her mouth close against the wires of the +gilt cage. + +At his step on the threshold the girl turned quickly toward the door +with a fluttering movement. Surprise and disappointment battled for an +instant in her glance, and he gathered from his first look that he had +come at the moment when she was expecting Wherry. He noticed, too, that +in spite of the mild autumn weather, she wore a dark dress which was not +unsuitable for a long journey, and that her sailor hat, from which a +blue veil floated, lay on a chair in one corner. A deeper meaning had +entered into the shallow prettiness of her face, and he felt that she +had passed through some subtle change in which she had left her girlhood +behind her. For the first time it occurred to him that Milly Trend was +deserving not only of passion, but of sympathy. + +At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him his bit of cake, the +canary fluttered from his perch and uttered a sweet, short, questioning +note; and in Milly's face, as she came forward, there was something of +this birdlike, palpitating entreaty. + +"Oh, it is you, Mr. Smith," she said, "I did not hear your ring." + +"I didn't ring," responded Ordway, as he took her trembling outstretched +hand in which she still held the bit of sponge cake, "I saw you at the +window so I came straight in without sending word. What I have to say to +you is so important that I dared not lose a minute." + +"And it is about me?" asked Milly, with a quiver of her eyelids. + +"No, it is about someone else, though it concerns you in a measure. The +thing I have to tell you relates directly to a man whom you know as +Horatio Brown----" + +He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his meaning from his face +rather than from his words. + +"Then you know him?" she questioned, in a frightened whisper. + +"I know more of his life than I can tell you. It is sufficient to say +that to the best of my belief he has a wife now living--that he has been +married before this under different names to at least two living +women----" + +He stopped and put out his hand with an impulsive protecting gesture, +for the wounded vanity in the girl's face had pierced to his heart. +"Will you let me see your father?" he asked gently, "would it not be +better for me to speak to him instead of to you?" + +"No, no!" cried Milly sharply, "don't tell him--don't dare to tell +him--for he would believe it and it is a lie--it is a lie! I tell you it +is a lie!" + +"As God is my witness it is the truth," he answered, without resentment. + +"Then you shall accuse him to his face. He is coming in a little while, +and you shall accuse him before me----" + +She stopped breathlessly and the pity in his look made her wince sharply +and shrink away. With her movement the piece of sponge cake fell from +her loosened fingers and rolled on the floor at her feet. + +"But if it were true how could you know it?" she demanded. "No, it is +not true--I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" she repeated in a +passion of terror. + +At her excited voice the canary, swinging on his perch, broke suddenly +into an ecstasy of song, and Milly's words, when she spoke again, were +drowned in the liquid sweetness that flowed from the cage. For a minute +Ordway stood in silence waiting for the music to end, while he watched +the angry, helpless tremor of the girl's outstretched hands. + +"Will you promise me to wait?" he asked, raising his voice in the +effort to be heard, "will you promise me to wait at least until you find +out the truth or the falsehood of what I tell you?" + +"But I don't believe it," repeated Milly in the stubborn misery of +hopeless innocence. + +"Ask yourself, then, what possible reason I could have in coming to +you--except to save you?" + +"Wait!" cried the girl angrily, "I can't hear--wait!" Picking up a shawl +from a chair, she flung it with an impatient gesture over the cage, and +turning immediately from the extinguished bird, took up his sentence +where he had broken off. + +"To save me?" she repeated, "you mean from marriage?" + +"From a marriage that would be no marriage. Am I right in suspecting +that you meant to go away with him to-night?" + +She bowed her head--all the violent spirit gone out of her. "I was ready +to go to-night," she answered, like a child that has been hurt and is +still afraid of what is to come. + +"And you promise me that you will give it up?" he went on gently. + +"I don't know--I can't tell--I must see him first," she said, and burst +suddenly into tears, hiding her face in her hands with a pathetic, +shamed gesture. + +Turning away for a moment, he stood blankly staring down into the jar of +goldfish. Then, as her sobs grew presently beyond her control, he came +back to the chair into which she had dropped and looked with moist eyes +at her bowed fair head. + +"Before I leave you, will you promise me to give him up?--to forget him +if it be possible?" he asked. + +"But it is not possible," she flashed back, lifting her wet blue eyes to +his. "How dare you come to me with a tale like this? Oh, I hate you! I +shall always hate you! Will you go?" + +Before her helpless fury he felt a compassion stronger even than the +emotion her tears had aroused. + +"It is not fair that I should tell you so much and not tell you all, +Milly," he said. "It is not fair that in accusing the man you love, I +should still try to shield myself. I know that these things are true +because Brown's--Wherry is his name--trial took place immediately before +mine--and we saw each other during the terms which we served in prison." + +Then before she could move or speak he turned from her and went rapidly +from the house and out into the walk. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AT THE CROSS-ROADS + + +At the corner he looked down the street and saw the red flag still +swelling in the wind. A man spoke to him; the face was familiar, but he +could not recall the name, until after a few congratulatory words about +his political prospects, he remembered, with a start, that he was +talking to Major Leary. + +"You may count on a clean sweep of votes, Mr. Smith--there's no doubt of +it," said the Major, beaming with his amiable fiery face. + +"There's no doubt of it?" repeated Ordway, while he regarded the +enthusiastic politician with a perplexed and troubled look. The Major, +the political campaign, the waving red flag and the noisy little town +had receded to a blank distance from the moment in which he stood. He +wondered vaguely what connection he--Daniel Ordway--had ever held with +these things? + +Yet his smile was still bright and cheerful as he turned away, with an +apologetic word, and passed on into the road to Cedar Hill. The impulse +which had driven him breathlessly into Milly's presence had yielded now +to the mere dull apathy of indifference, and it mattered to him no +longer whether the girl was saved or lost in the end. He thought of her +vanity, of her trivial pink and white prettiness with a return of his +old irritation. Well, he had done his part--his temperament had ruled +him at the decisive instant, and the ensuing consequences of his +confession had ceased now to affect or even to interest him. Then, with +something like a pang of thought, he remembered that he had with his own +hand burned his bridges behind him, and that there was no way out for +him except the straight way which led over the body of Daniel Smith. His +existence in Tappahannock was now finished; his victory had ended in +flight; and there was nothing ahead of him except the new beginning and +the old ending. A fresh start and then what? And afterward the few years +of quiet again and at the end the expected, the inevitable recurrence of +the disgrace which he had begun to recognise as some impersonal natural +law that followed upon his footsteps. As the future gradually unrolled +itself in his imagination, he felt that his heart sickened in the clutch +of the terror that had sprung upon him. Was there to be no end anywhere? +Could no place, no name even afford him a permanent shelter? Looking +ahead now he saw himself as an old man wandering from refuge to refuge, +pursued always by the resurrected corpse of his old life, which though +it contained neither his spirit nor his will, still triumphed by the +awful semblance it bore his outward body. Was he to be always alone? Was +there no spot in his future where he could possess himself in reality of +the freedom which was his in name? + +Without seeing, without hearing, he went almost deliriously where his +road led him, for the terror in his thought had become a living presence +before which his spirit rather than his body moved. He walked rapidly, +yet it seemed to him that his feet were inert and lifeless weights which +were dragged forward by the invincible torrent of his will. In the +swiftness of his flight, he felt that he was a conscious soul chained to +a body that was a corpse. + +When he came at last to the place where the two roads crossed before the +ruined gate, he stopped short, while the tumult died gradually in his +brain, and the agony through which he had just passed appeared as a +frenzy to his saner judgment. Looking up a moment later as he was about +to enter the avenue, he saw that Emily Brooke was walking toward him +under the heavy shadow of the cedars. In the first movement of her +surprise the mask which she had always worn in his presence dropped from +her face, and as she stepped from the gloom into the sunlight, he felt +that the sweetness of her look bent over him like protecting wings. For +a single instant, as her eyes gazed wide open into his, he saw reflected +in them the visions from which his soul had shrunk back formerly +abashed. Nothing had changed in her since yesterday; she was outwardly +the same brave and simple woman, with her radiant smile, her blown hair, +and her roughened hands. Yet because of that revealing look she appeared +no longer human in his eyes, but something almost unearthly bright and +distant, like the sunshine he had followed so often through the bars of +his prison cell. + +"You are suffering," she said, when he would have passed on, and he felt +that she had divined without words all that he could not utter. + +"Don't pity me," he answered, smiling at her question, because to smile +had become for him the easier part of habit, "I'm not above liking pity, +but it isn't exactly what I need. And besides, I told you once, you +know, that whatever happened to me would always be the outcome of my own +failure." + +"Yes, I remember you told me so--but does that make it any easier to +bear?" + +"Easier to bear?--no, but I don't think the chief end of things is to be +easy, do you?" + +She shook her head. "But isn't our chief end just to make them easier +for others?" she asked. + +The pity in her face was like an illumination, and her features were +enkindled with a beauty he had never found in them before. It was the +elemental motherhood in her nature that he had touched; and he felt as +he watched her that this ecstasy of tenderness swelled in her bosom and +overflowed her lips. Confession to her would have been for him the +supreme luxury of despair; but because his heart strained toward her, he +drew back and turned his eyes to the road, which stretched solitary and +dim beyond them. + +"Well, I suppose, I've got what I deserved," he said, "the price that a +man pays for being a fool, he pays but once and that is his whole life +long." + +"But it ought not to be so--it is not just," she answered. + +"Just?" he repeated, bitterly, "no, I dare say, it isn't--but the facts +of life don't trouble themselves about justice, do they? Is it just, for +instance, that you should slave your youth away on your brother's farm, +while he sits and plays dominoes on the porch? Is it just that with the +instinct for luxury in your blood you should be condemned to a poverty +so terrible as this?" He reached out and touched the little red hand +hanging at her side. "Is this just?" he questioned with an ironical +smile. + +"There is some reason for it," she answered bravely, "I feel it though I +cannot see it." + +"Some reason--yes, but that reason is not justice--not the little human +justice that we can call by the name. It's something infinitely bigger +than any idea that we have known." + +"I can trust," she said softly, "but I can't reason." + +"Don't reason--don't even attempt to--let God run his world. Do you +think if we didn't believe in the meaning--in the purpose of it all that +you and I could stand together here like this? It's because we believe +that we can be happy even while we suffer." + +"Then you will be happy again--to-morrow?" + +"Surely. Perhaps to-night--who knows? I've had a shock. My brain is +whirling and I can't see straight. In a little while it will be over and +I shall steady down." + +"But I should like to help you now while it lasts," she said. + +"You are helping me--it's a mercy that you stand there and listen to my +wild talk. Do you know I was telling myself as I came along the road +just now that there wasn't a living soul to whom I should dare to say +that I was in a quake of fear." + +"A quake of fear?" She looked at him with swimming eyes, and by that +look he saw that she loved him. If he had stretched out his arms, he +knew that the passion of her sorrow would have swept her to his breast; +and he felt that every fibre of his starved soul and body cried out for +the divine food that she offered. At the moment he did not stop to ask +himself whether it was his flesh or his spirit that hungered after her, +for his whole being had dissolved into the longing which drew him as +with cords to her lips. All he understood at the instant was that in his +terrible loneliness love had been offered him and he must refuse the +gift. A thought passed like a drawn sword between them, and he saw in +his imagination Lydia lowering her black veil at their last parting. + +"It's a kind of cowardliness, I suppose," he went on with his eyes on +the ground, "but I was thinking that minute how greatly I needed help +and how much--how very much--you had given me. If I ever learn really to +live it will be because of you--because of your wonderful courage, your +unfailing sweetness----" + +For the first time he saw in her face the consciousness of her own +unfulfilment. "If you only knew how often I wonder if it is worth +while," she answered. + +At this he made a sudden start forward and then checked himself. "The +chief tragedy in my life," he said, "is that I knew you twenty years too +late." + +Until his words were uttered he did not realise how much of a confession +he had put into them; and with the discovery he watched her face bloom +softly like a flower that opens its closed petals. + +"If I could have helped you then, why cannot I help you now?" she asked, +while the innocence in her look humbled him more than a divine fury +would have done. The larger his ideal of her became, the keener grew his +sense of failure--of bondage to that dead past from which he could never +release his living body. As he looked at her now he realised that the +supreme thing he had missed in life was the control of the power which +lies in simple goodness; and the purity of Lydia appeared to him as a +shining blank--an unwritten surface beside the passionate humanity in +the heart of the girl before him. + +"You will hear things from others which I can't tell you and then you +will understand," he said. + +"I shall hear nothing that will make me cease to believe in you," she +answered. + +"You will hear that I have done wrong in my life and you will understand +that if I have suffered it has been by my own fault." + +She met his gaze without wavering. + +"I shall still believe in you," she responded. + +Her eyes were on his face and she saw that the wan light of the +afterglow revealed the angularities of his brow and chin and filled in +with shadows the deeper hollows in his temples. The smile on his lips +was almost ironical as he answered. + +"Those from whom I might have expected loyalty, fell away from me--my +father, my wife, my children----" + +"To believe against belief is a woman's virtue," she responded, "but at +least it is a virtue." + +"You mean that you would have been my friend through everything?" he +asked quickly, half blinded by the ideal which seemed to flash so +closely to his eyelids. + +There was scorn in her voice as she answered: "If I had been your friend +once--yes, a thousand times." + +Before his inward vision there rose the conception of a love that would +have pardoned, blessed and purified. Bending his head he kissed her +little cold hand once and let it fall. Then without looking again into +her face, he entered the avenue and went on alone. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +BETWEEN MAN AND MAN + + +When he entered Tappahannock the following morning, he saw with surprise +that the red flag was still flying above the street. As he looked into +the face of the first man he met, he felt a sensation of relief, almost +of gratitude because he received merely the usual morning greeting; and +the instant afterward he flinched and hesitated before replying to the +friendly nod of the harness-maker, stretching himself under the hanging +bridles in the door of the little shop. + +Entering the warehouse he glanced nervously down the deserted building, +and when a moment later he opened the door into Baxter's office, he grew +hot at the familiar sight of the local newspaper in his employer's +hands. The years had divided suddenly and he saw again the crowd in +Fifth Avenue as he walked home on the morning of his arrest. He smelt +the smoke of the great city; he heard the sharp street cries around him; +and he pushed aside the fading violets offered him by the crippled +flower seller at the corner. He even remembered, without effort, the +particular bit of scandal retailed to him over a cigar by the club wit +who had joined him. All his sensations to-day were what they had been +then, only now his consciousness was less acute, as if the edge of his +perceptions had been blunted by the force of the former blow. + +"Howdy, Smith, is that you?" remarked Baxter, crushing the top of the +paper beneath the weight of his chin as he looked over it at Ordway. +"Did you meet Banks as you came in? He was in here asking for you not +two minutes ago." + +"Banks? No, I didn't see him. What did he want?" As he put the ordinary +question the dull level of his voice surprised him. + +"Oh, he didn't tell me," returned Baxter, "but it was some love-lorn +whining he had to do, I reckon. Now what I can't understand is how a man +can be so narrow sighted as only to see one woman out of the whole +bouncing sex of 'em. It would take more than a refusal--it would take a +downright football to knock out my heart. Good Lord! in this world of +fine an' middling fine women, the trouble ain't to get the one you want, +but to keep on wanting the one you get. I've done my little share of +observing in my time, and what I've learned from it is that the biggest +trial a man can have is not to want another man's wife, but to _want_ to +want his own." + +A knock at the door called Ordway out into the warehouse, where he +yielded himself immediately to the persuasive voice of Banks. + +"Come back here a minute, will you, out of hearing? I tried to get to +you last night and couldn't." + +"Has anything gone wrong?" inquired Ordway, following the other to a +safe distance from Baxter's office. At first he had hardly had courage +to lift his eyes to Banks' face, but reassured by the quiet opening of +the conversation, he stood now with his sad gaze fixed on the beaming +freckled features of the melancholy lover. + +"I only wanted to tell you that she didn't go," whispered Banks, rolling +his prominent eyes into the dusky recesses of the warehouse, "she's ill +in bed to-day, and Brown left town on the eight-forty-five this +morning." + +"So he's gone for good!" exclaimed Ordway, and drew a long breath as if +he had been released from an emotional tension which had suspended, +while it lasted, the ordinary movement of life. Since he had prepared +himself for the worst was it possible that his terror of yesterday would +scatter to-day like the delusions of an unsettled brain? Had Wherry held +back in mercy or had Milly Trend? Even if he were spared now must he +still live on here unaware how widely--or how pitifully--his secret was +known? Would this ceaseless dread of discovery prove again, as it had +proved in the past, more terrible even than the discovery itself? Would +he be able to look fearlessly at Milly Trend again?--at Baxter? at +Banks? at Emily? + +"Well, I've got to thank you for it, Smith?" said Banks. "How you +stopped it, I don't know for the life of me, but stop it you did." + +The cheerful selfishness in such rejoicing struck Ordway even in the +midst of his own bitter musing. Though Banks adored Milly, soul and +body, he was frankly jubilant over the tragic ending of her short +romance. + +"I hope there's little danger of its beginning anew," Ordway remarked +presently, with less sympathy than he would have shown his friend twelve +hours before. + +"I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me what you said to her?" inquired +Banks, his customary awe of his companion swept away in the momentary +swing of his elation. + +"No, I shouldn't like to tell you," returned Ordway quietly. + +"Then it's all right, of course, and I'll be off to drape the town hall +in bunting for to-morrow night. We're going to make the biggest +political display for you that Tappahannock has ever seen." + +At the instant Ordway was hardly conscious of the immensity of his +relief, but some hours later, after the early closing of the warehouse, +when he walked slowly back along the road to Cedar Hill, it seemed to +him that his life had settled again into its quiet monotonous spaces. +The peaceful fields on either side, with their short crop of +live-ever-lasting, in which a few lonely sheep were browsing, appeared +to him now as a part of the inward breadth and calm of the years that he +had spent in Tappahannock. + +In the loneliness of the road he could tell himself that the fear of Gus +Wherry was gone for a time at least, yet the next day upon going into +town he was aware of the same nervous shrinking from the people he +passed, from the planters hanging about the warehouse, from Baxter +buried behind his local newspaper. + +"They've got a piece as long as your arm about you in the Tappahannock +_Herald_, Smith," cried Baxter, chuckling; and Ordway felt himself +redden painfully with apprehension. Not until the evening, when he came +out upon the platform under the floating buntings in the town hall, did +he regain entirely the self-possession which he had lost in the presence +of Milly Trend. + +In its white and red decorations, with the extravagant glare of its +gas-jets, the hall had assumed almost a festive appearance; and as +Ordway glanced at the crowded benches and doorways, he forgot the +trivial political purpose he was to serve, in the more human relation in +which he stood to the men who had gathered to hear him speak. These men +were his friends, and if they believed in him he felt a triumphant +conviction that they had seen their belief justified day by day, hour by +hour, since he had come among them. In the crowd of faces before him, he +recognised, here and there, workingmen whom he had helped--operatives in +Jasper Trend's cotton mills, or in the smaller factories which combined +with the larger to create the political situation in Tappahannock. +Closer at hand he saw the shining red face of Major Leary; the +affectionate freckled face of Banks; the massive benevolent face of +Baxter. As he looked at them an emotion which was almost one of love +stirred in his breast, and he felt the words he had prepared dissolve +and fade from his memory to reunite in an appeal of which he had not +thought until this minute. There was something, he knew now, for him to +say to-night--something so infinitely large that he could utter it only +because it rose like love or sorrow to his lips. Of all the solemn +moments when he had stood before these men, with his open Bible, in the +green field or in the little grove of pines, there was none so solemn, +he felt, as the approaching instant in which he would speak to them no +longer as a man to children, but as a man to men. + +On the stage before him Baxter was addressing the house, his soft, +persuasive voice mingling with a sympathetic murmur from the floor. The +applause which had broken out at Ordway's entrance had not yet died +away, and with each mention of his name, with each allusion to his +services to Tappahannock, it burst forth again, enthusiastic, +irrepressible, overwhelming. Never before, it seemed to him, sitting +there on the platform with his roughened hands crossed on his knees, had +he felt himself to be so intimately a part of the community in which he +lived. Never before--not even when he had started this man in life, had +bought off that one's mortgage or had helped another to struggle free of +drink, had he come quite so near to the pathetic individual lives that +compose the mass. They loved him, they believed in him, and they were +justified! At the moment it seemed to him nothing--less than +nothing--that they should make him Mayor of Tappahannock. In this one +instant of understanding they had given him more than any office--than +any honour. + +While he sat there outwardly so still, so confident of his success, it +seemed to him that in the exhilaration of the hour he was possessed of a +new and singularly penetrating insight into life. Not only did he see +further and deeper than he had ever seen before, but he looked beyond +the beginning of things into the causes and beyond the ending of them +into the results. He saw himself and why he was himself as clearly as he +saw his sin and why he had sinned. Out of their obscurity his father and +his mother returned to him, and as he met the bitter ironical smile of +the one and the curved black brows and red, half open mouth of the +other, he knew himself to be equally the child of each, for he +understood at last why he was a mixture of strength and weakness, of +gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and compassion. His short, troubled +childhood rushed through his thoughts, and with that swiftness of memory +which comes so often in tragic moments, he lived over again--not +separately and in successive instants--but fully, vitally, and in all +the freshness of experience, the three events which he saw now, in +looking back, as the milestones upon his road. Again he saw his mother +as she lay in her coffin, with her curved black brows and half open +mouth frozen into a joyous look, and in that single fleeting instant he +passed through his meeting with the convict at the wayside station, and +through the long suspended minutes when he had waited in the Stock +Exchange for the rise in the market which did not come. And these things +appeared to him, not as detached and obscure remnants of his past, but +clear and delicate and vivid as if they were projected in living colours +against the illumination of his mind. They were there not to bewilder, +but to make plain; not to accuse, but to vindicate. "Everything is clear +to me now and I see it all," he thought, "and if I can only keep this +penetration of vision nothing will be harder to-morrow than it is +to-night." In his whole life there was not an incident too small for him +to remember it and to feel that it was significant of all the rest; and +he knew that if he could have seen from the beginning as clearly as he +saw to-night, his past would not have been merely different, it would +have been entirely another than his own. + +Baxter had stopped, and turning with an embarrassed upheaval of his +whole body, he spoke to Ordway, who rose at his words and came slowly +forward to the centre of the stage. A hoarse murmur, followed by a +tumult of shouts, greeted him, while he stood for a moment looking +silently among those upturned faces for the faces of the men to whom he +must speak. "That one will listen because I nursed him back to life, and +that one because I brought him out of ruin--and that one and that one--" +He knew them each by name, and as his gaze travelled from man to man he +felt that he was seeking a refuge from some impending evil in the +shelter of the good deeds that he had done. + +Though he held a paper in his hand, he did not look at it, for he had +found his words in that instant of illumination when, seated upon the +stage, he had seen the meaning of his whole life made plain. The present +event and the issue of it no longer concerned him; he had ceased to +fear, even to shrink from the punishment that was yet to come. In the +completeness with which he yielded himself to the moment, he felt that +he was possessed of the calm, almost of the power of necessity; and he +experienced suddenly the sensation of being lifted and swept forward on +one of the high waves of life. He spoke rapidly, without effort, almost +without consciousness of the words he uttered, until it seemed to him +presently that it was the torrent of his speech which carried him +outward and upward with that strange sense of lightness, of security. +And this lightness, this security belonged not to him, but to some +outside current of being. + + * * * * * + +His speech was over, and he had spoken to these factory workers as no +man had spoken before him in Tappahannock. With his last word the +silence had held tight and strained for a minute, and then the grateful +faces pressed round him and the ringing cheers passed through the open +windows out into the street. His body was still trembling, but as he +stood there with his sparkling blue eyes on the house, he looked gay and +boyish. He had made his mark, he had spoken his best speech, and he had +touched not merely the factory toilers in Tappahannock, but that common +pulse of feeling in which all humanity is made one. Then the next +instant, while he still waited, he was aware of a new movement upon the +platform behind him, and a man came forward and stopped short under the +gas jet, which threw a flickering yellow light upon his face. Though he +had seen him but once, he recognized him instantly as the short, +long-nosed, irascible manager of the cotton mills, and with the first +glance into his face he had heard already the unspoken question and the +reply. + +"May I ask you, Mr. Smith," began the little man, suddenly, "if you can +prove your right to vote or to hold office in Virginia?" + +Ordway's gaze passed beyond him to rest upon Baxter and Major Leary, who +sat close together, genial, elated, rather thirsty. At the moment he +felt sorry for Baxter--not for himself. + +"No," he answered with a smile which threw a humorous light upon the +question, "I cannot--can you prove yours?" + +The little man cleared his throat with a sniffling sound, and when he +spoke again it was in a high nasal voice, as if he had become suddenly +very excited or very angry. + +"Is your name Daniel Smith?" he asked, with a short laugh. + +The question was out at last and the silence in which Ordway stood was +like the suspension between thought and thought. All at once he found +himself wondering why he had lived in hourly terror of this instant, +for now that it was upon him, he saw that it was no more tragic, no less +commonplace, than the most ordinary instant of his life. As in the past +his courage had revived in him with the first need of decisive action, +so he felt it revive now, and lifting his head, he looked straight into +the angry, little eyes of the man who waited, under the yellow gaslight, +on the platform before him. + +"My name," he answered, still smiling, "is Daniel Ordway." + +There was no confusion in his mind, no anxiety, no resentment. Instead +the wonderful brightness of a moment ago still shone in his thoughts, +and while he appeared to rest his sparkling gaze on the face of his +questioner, he was seeing, in reality, the road by which he had come to +Tappahannock, and at the beginning of the road the prison, and beyond +the prison the whole of his past life. + +"Did you serve a term in prison before you came here?" + +"Yes." + +"Were you tried and convicted in New York?" + +"Yes." + +"Were you guilty?" + +Looking over the head of the little man, Ordway's gaze travelled slowly +across the upturned faces upon the floor of the house. Hardly a man +passed under his look whom he had not assisted once at least in the hour +of his need. "I saved that one from drink," he thought almost joyfully, +"that one from beggary--I stood side by side with that other in the +hour of his shame----" + +"Were you guilty?" repeated the high nasal voice in his ear. + +His gaze came quickly back, and as it passed over the head of Baxter, he +was conscious again of a throb of pity. + +"Yes," he answered for the last time. Then, while the silence lasted, he +turned from the platform and went out of the hall into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN + + +He walked rapidly to the end of the street, and then slackened his pace +almost unconsciously as he turned into the country road. The night had +closed in a thick black curtain over the landscape, and the windows of +the Negroes' cabins burned like little still red flames along the +horizon. Straight ahead the road was visible as a pale, curving streak +across the darkness. + +A farmer, carrying a lantern, came down the path leading from the +fields, and hearing Ordway's footsteps in the road, flashed the light +suddenly into his face. Upon recognition there followed a cheerful +"good-night!" and the offer of the use of the lantern to Cedar Hill. +"It's a black night and you'll likely have trouble in keeping straight. +I've been to look after a sick cow, but I can feel my way up to the +house in two minutes." + +"Thank you," returned Ordway, smiling as the light shone full in his +face, "but my feet are accustomed to the road." + +He passed on, while the farmer turned at the gate by the roadside, to +shout cheerfully after him: "Well, good-night--Mayor!" + +The gate closed quickly, and the ray of the lantern darted like a pale +yellow moth across the grass. + +As Ordway went on it seemed to him that the darkness became tangible, +enveloping--that he had to fight his way through it presently as through +water. The little red flames danced along the horizon until he wondered +if they were burning only in his imagination. He felt tired and dazed as +if his body had been beaten into insensibility, but the hour through +which he had just passed appeared to have left merely a fading +impression upon his brain. Not only had he ceased to care, he had ceased +to think of it. When he tried now to recall the manager of the cotton +mills, it was to remember, with aversion, his angry little eyes, his +high nasal voice, and the wart upon the end of his long nose. At the +instant these physical details were the only associations which the +man's name presented to his thoughts. The rest was something so +insignificant that it had escaped his memory. He felt in a vague way +that he was sorry for Baxter, yet this very feeling of sympathy bored +and annoyed him. It was plainly ridiculous to be sorry for a person as +rich, as fat, as well fed as his employer. Wherever he looked the little +red flames flickered and waved in the fields, and when he lifted his +eyes to the dark sky, he saw them come and go in short, scintillant +flashes, like fire struck from an anvil. They were in his brain, he +supposed, after all, and so was this tangible darkness, and so, too, was +this indescribable delicacy and lightness with which he moved. +Everything was in his brain, even his ridiculous pity for Baxter and the +angry-eyed little manager with the wart on his long nose. He could see +these things distinctly, though he had forgotten everything that had +been so clear to him while he stood on the stage of the town hall. His +past life and the prison and even the illumination in which he had +remembered them so vividly were obscured now as if they, too, had been +received into the tangible darkness. + +From the road behind him the sound of footsteps reached him suddenly, +and he quickened his pace with an impulse, rather than a determination +of flight. But the faster he walked the faster came the even beat of the +footsteps, now rising, now falling with a rhythmic regularity in the +dust of the road. Once he glanced back, but he could see nothing because +of the encompassing blackness, and in the instant of his delay it seemed +to him that the pursuit gained steadily upon him, still moving with the +regular muffled beat of the footsteps in the thick dust. A horror of +recognition had come over him, and as he walked on breathlessly, now +almost running, it occurred to him, like an inspiration, that he might +drop aside into the fields and so let his pursuer pass on ahead. The +next instant he realised that the darkness could not conceal the abrupt +pause of his flight--that as those approaching footsteps fell on his +ears, so must the sound of his fall on the ears of the man behind him. +Then a voice called his name, and he stopped short, and stood, trembling +from head to foot, by the side of the road. + +"Smith!" cried the voice, "if it's you, Smith, for God's sake stop a +minute!" + +"Yes, it's I," he answered, waiting, and a moment afterward the hand of +Banks reached out of the night and clasped his arm. + +"Hold on," said Banks, breathing hard, "I'm all blown." + +His laboured breath came with a struggling violence that died gradually +away, but while it lasted the strain of the meeting, the awkwardness of +the emotional crisis, seemed suddenly put off--suspended. Now in the +silence the tension became so great that, drawing slightly away from the +detaining hold, Ordway was about to resume his walk. At his first +movement, however, Banks clung the more firmly to his arm. "Oh, damn it, +Smith!" he burst out, and with the exclamation Ordway felt that the +touch of flesh and blood had reached to the terrible loneliness in which +he stood. In a single oath Banks had uttered the unutterable spirit of +prayer. + +"You followed me?" asked Ordway quietly, while the illusions of the +flight, the physical delicacy and lightness, the tangible darkness, the +little red flames in the fields, departed from him. With the first hand +that was laid on his own, his nature swung back into balance, and he +felt that he possessed at the moment a sanity that was almost sublime. + +"As soon as I could get out I came. There was such a crush," said Banks, +"I thought I'd catch up with you at once, but it was so black I couldn't +see my hand before me. In a little while I heard footsteps, so I kept +straight on." + +"I wish you hadn't, Banks." + +"But I had to." His usually cheerful voice sounded hoarse and throaty. +"I ain't much of a chap at words, Smith, you know that, but I want just +to say that you're the best friend I ever had, and I haven't forgot +it--I haven't forgot it," he repeated, and blew his nose. "Nothing that +that darn fool of a manager said to-night can come between you and me," +he went on laboriously after a minute. "If you ever want my help, by +thunder, I'll go to hell and back again for you without a word." + +Stretching out his free hand Ordway laid it upon his friend's shoulder. + +"You're a first-rate chap, Banks," he said cheerfully, at which a loud +sob burst from Banks, who sought to disguise it the instant afterward in +a violent cough. + +"You're a first-rate chap," repeated Ordway gently, "and I'm glad, in +spite of what I said, that you came after me just now. I'm going away +to-morrow, you know, and it's probable that I shan't see you again." + +"But won't you stay on in Tappahannock? In two weeks all this will blow +over and things will be just what they were before." + +Ordway shook his head, a movement which Banks felt, though he did not +see it. + +"No, I'll go away, it's best," he answered, and though his voice had +dropped to a dull level there was still a cheerful sound to it, "I'll go +away and begin again in a new place." + +"Then I'll go, too," said Banks. + +"What! and leave Milly? No, you won't come. Banks, you'll stay here." + +"But I'll see you sometimes, shan't I?" + +"Perhaps?--that's likely, isn't it?" + +"Yes, that's likely," repeated Banks, and fell silent from sheer weight +of sorrow. "At least you'll let me go with you to the station?" he said +at last, after a long pause in which he had been visited by one of those +acute flashes of sympathy which are to the heart what intuition is to +the intellect. + +"Why, of course," responded Ordway, more touched by the simple request +than he had been even by the greater loyalty. "You may do that, Banks, +and I'll thank you for it. And now go back to Tappahannock," he added, +"I must take the midday train and there are a few preparations I've +still to make." + +"But where will you go?" demanded Banks, swinging round again after he +had turned from him. + +"Where?" repeated Ordway blankly, and he added indifferently, "I hadn't +thought." + +"The midday train goes west," said Banks. + +"Then, I'll go west. It doesn't matter." + +Banks had already started off, when turning back suddenly, he caught +Ordway's hand and wrung it in a grip that hurt. Then without speaking +again, he hurried breathlessly in the direction from which he had come. + +A few steps beyond the cross-roads Ordway saw through the heavy foliage +the light in the dining-room at Cedar Hill. Then as he entered the +avenue, he lost sight of it again, until he had rounded the curve that +swept up to the front porch. At his knock Emily opened the door, with a +lamp held in her hand, and he saw her face, surrounded by dim waves of +hair, shining pale and transparent in the glimmering circle of light. As +he followed her into the dining-room, he realised that after the family +had gone upstairs to bed, she had sat at her sewing under the lamp and +waited for his knock. At the knowledge a sense of comfort, of homeliness +came over him, and he felt all at once that his misery was not so great +as he had believed it to be a moment ago. + +"May I get you something?" she asked, placing the lamp upon the table +and lowering the wick that the flame might not shine on his pallid and +haggard face. + +He shook his head; then as she turned from him toward the hearth, he +followed her and stood looking down at the smouldering remains of a wood +fire. Her work-basket and a pile of white ruffles which she had been +hemming were on the table, but moved by a feeling of their utter +triviality in the midst of a tragedy she vaguely understood, she swept +them hurriedly into a chair, and came over to lay her hand upon his arm. + +"What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" she asked. Taking her hand from his +sleeve, he held it for an instant in his grasp, as if the pressure of +her throbbing palm against his revived some living current under the +outer deadness that enveloped him. + +"I am going away from Tappahannock to-morrow, Emily," he said. + +"To-morrow?" she repeated, and laid her free hand upon his shoulder with +a soothing, motherly gesture--a gesture which changed their spiritual +relations to those of a woman and a child. + +"A man asked me three questions to-night," he went on quietly, yet in a +voice which seemed to feel a pang in every word it uttered. "He asked me +if my name was Daniel Smith, and I answered--no." + +As he hesitated, she lifted her face and smiled at him, with a smile +which he knew to be the one expression of love, of comprehension, that +she could offer. It was a smile which a mother might have bent upon a +child that was about to pass under the surgeon's knife, and it differed +from tears only in that it offered courage and not weakness. + +"He asked me if I had been in prison before I came to Tappahannock--and +I answered--yes." + +His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting his gaze from her hands +he looked straight into her wide-open eyes. The smile which she had +turned to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen there in the +cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were the only things about her which +seemed alive, and they appeared to him now not as eyes but as thoughts +made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed the hand which +enclosed her own. + +"I still believe," she said, and looked into his face. + +"But it is true," he replied slowly. + +"But it is not the whole truth," she answered, "and for that reason it +is half a lie." + +"Yes, it is not the whole truth," he repeated, in his effort to catch +something of her bright courage. + +"Why should they judge you by that and by nothing else?" she demanded +with passion. "If that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock true +also?" + +"To you--to you," he answered, "but to-morrow everything will be +forgotten about me except the fact that because I had been in prison, I +have lived a lie." + +"You are wrong--oh, believe me, you are wrong," she said softly, while +her tears broke forth and streamed down her white face. + +"No," he returned patiently, as if weighing her words in his thoughts, +"I am right, and my life here is wasted now from the day I came. All +that I do from this moment will be useless. I must go away." + +"But where?" she questioned passionately, as Banks had questioned before +her. + +"Where?" he echoed, "I don't know--anywhere. The midday train goes +west." + +"And what will you do in the new place?" she asked through her tears. + +He shook his head as if the question hardly concerned him. + +"I shall begin again," he answered indifferently at last. + +She was turning hopelessly from him, when her eyes fell upon a slip of +yellow paper which Beverly had placed under a vase on the mantel, and +drawing it out, she glanced at the address before giving it into +Ordway's hands. + +"This must have come for you in the afternoon," she said, "I did not see +it." + +Taking the telegram from her, he opened it slowly, and read the words +twice over. + + "Your father died last night. Will you come home? + + "RICHARD ORDWAY." + + + + +BOOK THIRD + +THE LARGER PRISON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE RETURN TO LIFE + + +As the train rounded the long curve, Ordway leaned from the window and +saw spread before him the smiling battlefields that encircled Botetourt. +From the shadow and sunlight of the distance a wind blew in his face, +and he felt suddenly younger, fresher, as if the burden of the years had +been lifted from him. The Botetourt to which he was returning was the +place of his happiest memories; and closing his eyes to the landscape, +he saw Lydia standing under the sparrows that flew out from the ivied +walls of the old church. He met her pensive gaze; he watched her faint +smile under the long black feather in her hat. + +"His death was unexpected," said a strange voice in his ear, "but for +the past five years I've seen that he was a failing man." + +The next instant his thoughts had scattered like startled birds, and +without turning his head, he sat straining his ears to follow the +conversation that went on, above the roar of the train, in the seat +behind him. + +"Had a son, didn't he?" inquired the man who had not spoken. "What's +become of him, I'd like to know? I mean the chap who went to smash +somewhere in the North." + +"Oh, he misappropriated trust funds and got found out and sent to +prison. When he came out, he went West, I heard, and struck a gold mine, +but, all the same, he left his wife and children for the old man to look +after. Ever seen his wife? Well, she's a downright saint, if there ever +lived one." + +"And yet he went wrong, the more's the pity." + +"It's a funny thing," commented the first speaker, who was evidently of +a philosophic bent, "but I've often noticed that a good wife is apt to +make a bad husband. It looks somehow as if male human nature, like the +Irish members, is obliged to sit on the Opposition bench. The only +example that ever counts with it, is an example that urges the other +way." + +"Well, what about this particular instance? I hope at least that she has +come into the old man's money?" + +"Nobody can tell, but it's generally believed that the two children will +get the most of it. The son left a boy and a girl when he went to +prison, you know." + +"Ah, that's rather a pity, isn't it?" + +"Well, I can't say--they've got good blood as well as bad, when it comes +to that. My daughter went to school with the girl, and she was said to +be, by long odds, the most popular member of her class. She graduated +last spring, and people tell me that she has turned out to be the +handsomest young woman in Botetourt." + +"Like the mother?" + +"No, dark and tall, with those snapping blue eyes of her +grandmother's----" + + * * * * * + +So Alice was no longer the little girl in short white skirts, +outstanding like a ballet dancer's! There was a pang for him in the +thought, and he tried in vain to accustom himself to the knowledge that +she would meet him to-night as a woman, not as a child. He remembered +the morning when she had run out, as he passed up the staircase, to beg +him to come in to listen to her music lesson; and with the sound of the +stumbling scales in his ears, he felt again that terrible throbbing of +his pulses and the dull weight of anguish which had escaped at last in +an outburst of bitterness. + +With a jolting motion the train drew up into the little station, and +following the crowd that pressed through the door of the car, he emerged +presently into the noisy throng of Negro drivers gathered before the +rusty vehicles which were waiting beside the narrow pavement. Pushing +aside the gaily decorated whips which encircled him at his approach, he +turned, after a moment's hesitation, into one of the heavily shaded +streets, which seemed to his awakened memory to have remained unaltered +since the afternoon upon which he had left the town almost twenty years +ago. The same red and gold maples stirred gently above his head; the +same silent, green-shuttered houses were withdrawn behind glossy +clusters of microphylla rose-creepers. Even the same shafts of sunshine +slanted across the roughly paved streets, which were strewn thickly +with yellowed leaves. It was to Ordway as if a pleasant dream had +descended upon the place, and had kept unchanged the particular golden +stillness of that autumn afternoon when he had last seen it. All at once +he realised that what Tappahannock needed was not progress, but age; and +he saw for the first time that the mellowed charm of Botetourt was +relieved against the splendour of an historic background. Not the +distinction of the present, but the enchantment of the past, produced +this quality of atmosphere into which the thought of Tappahannock +entered like a vulgar discord. The dead, not the living, had built these +walls, had paved these streets, had loved and fought and starved beneath +these maples; and it was the memory of such solemn things that steeped +the little town in its softening haze of sentiment. A thrill of +pleasure, more intense than any he had known for months, shot through +his heart, and the next instant he acknowledged with a sensation of +shame that he was returning, not only to his people, but to his class. +Was this all that experience, that humiliation, could do for one--that +he should still find satisfaction in the refinements of habit, in the +mere external pleasantness of life? As he passed the old church he saw +that the sparrows still fluttered in and out of the ivy, which was full +of twittering cries like a gigantic bird's nest, and he had suddenly a +ghostly feeling as if he were a moving shadow under shadowy trees and +unreal shafts of sunlight. A moment later he almost held his breath +lest the dark old church and the dreamy little town should vanish before +his eyes and leave him alone in the outer space of shadows. + +Coming presently under a row of poplars to the street in which stood his +father's house--a square red brick building with white Doric columns to +the portico--he saw with a shock of surprise that the funeral carriages +were standing in a solemn train for many blocks. Until that moment it +had not occurred to him that he might come in time to look on the dead +face of the man who had not forgiven him while he was alive; and at +first he shivered and shrank back as if hesitating to enter the door +that had been so lately closed against him. An old Negro driver, who sat +on the curbing, wiping the broad black band on his battered silk hat +with a red bandanna handkerchief, turned to speak to him with mingled +sympathy and curiosity. + +"Ef'n you don' hurry up, you'll miss de bes' er hit, marster," he +remarked. "Dey's been gwine on a pow'ful long time, but I'se been +a-lisenin' wid all my years en I ain' hyearn nairy a sh'ut come thoo' de +do'. Lawd! Lawd! dey ain' mo'n like I mo'n, caze w'en dey buried my +Salviny I set up sech a sh'uttin' dat I bu'st two er my spar ribs clean +ter pieces." + +Still muttering to himself he fell to polishing his old top hat more +vigorously, while Ordway quickened his steps with an effort, and +entering the gate, ascended the brick walk to the white steps of the +portico. A wide black streamer hung from the bell handle, so pushing +open the door, which gave noiselessly before him, he entered softly into +the heavy perfume of flowers. From the room on his right, which he +remembered dimly as the formal drawing-room in the days of his earliest +childhood, he heard a low voice speaking as if in prayer; and looking +across the threshold, he saw a group of black robed persons kneeling in +the faint light which fell through the chinks in the green shutters. The +intense odour of lilies awoke in him a sharp anguish, which had no +association in his thoughts with his father's death, and which he could +not explain until the incidents of his mother's funeral crowded, one by +one, into his memory. The scent of lilies was the scent of death in his +nostrils, and he saw again the cool, high-ceiled room in the midst of +which her coffin had stood, and through the open windows the wide green +fields in which spring was just putting forth. That was nearly thirty +years ago, yet the emotion he felt at this instant was less for his +father who had died yesterday than for his mother whom he had lost while +he was still a child. + +At his entrance no one had observed him, and while the low prayer went +on, he stood with bowed head searching among the veiled figures about +the coffin for the figure of his wife. Was that Lydia, he wondered, +kneeling there in her mourning garments with her brow hidden in her +clasped hands? And as he looked at her it seemed to him that she had +never lifted the black veil which she had lowered over her face at +their last parting. Though he was outwardly now among his own people, +though the physical distance which divided him from his wife and +children was barely a dozen steps, the loneliness which oppressed him +was like the loneliness of the prison; and he understood that his real +home was not here, but in Tappahannock--that his true kinship was with +the labourers whose lives he had shared and whose bitter poverty he had +lessened. In the presence of death he was conscious of the space, the +luxury, the costly funeral wreaths that surrounded him; and these +external refinements of living produced in him a sensation of shyness, +as if he had no longer a rightful place in the class in which he had +been born. Against his will he grew ashamed of his coarse clothes and +his roughened hands; and with this burning sense of humiliation a wave +of homesickness for Tappahannock swept over him--for the dusty little +town, with its hot, close smells and for the blue tent of sky which was +visible from his ivied window at Cedar Hill. Then he remembered, with a +pang, that even from Tappahannock he had been cast out. For the second +time since his release from prison, he felt cowed and beaten, like an +animal that is driven to bay. The dead man in his coffin was more +closely woven into his surroundings than was the living son who had +returned to his inheritance. + +As the grave faces looked back at him at the end of the prayer, he +realised that they belonged to branches, near or distant, of the Ordway +connections. With the first glimpse of his figure in the doorway there +came no movement of recognition; then he observed a slight start of +surprise--or was it dismay? He knew that Lydia had seen him at last, +though he did not look at her. It appeared to him suddenly that his +return was an insult to her as well as to the dead man who lay there, +helpless yet majestic, in the centre of the room. Flight seemed to him +at the instant the only amendment in his power, and he had made an +impulsive start back from the threshold, when the strained hush was +broken by a word that left him trembling and white as from a blow. + +"Father!" cried a voice, in the first uncontrollable joy of recognition; +and with an impetuous rush through the crowd that surrounded her, Alice +threw herself into his arms. + +A mist swam before his eyes and he lost the encircling faces in a blur +of tears; but as she clung to his breast and he held her close, he was +conscious of a fierce joy that throbbed, like a physical pain, in his +throat. The word which she had uttered had brought his soul up from the +abyss as surely as if it were lifted by the hands of angels; and with +each sobbing breath of happiness she drew, he felt that her nature was +knit more firmly into his. The repulse he had received the moment before +was forgotten, and while he held her drawn apart in the doorway, the +silence of Lydia, and even the reproach of the dead man, had ceased to +affect him. In that breathless, hysterical rush to his embrace Alice +saved him to-day as Emily's outstretched hand had saved him three years +before. + +"They did not tell me! Oh, why, did they not tell me?" cried the girl, +lifting her head from his breast, and the funeral hush that shrouded the +room could not keep back the ecstasy in her voice. Even when after the +first awkward instant the others gathered around him, nervous, effusive, +friendly, Alice still clung to his hands, kissing first one and then the +other and then both together, with the exquisite joyous abandonment of a +child. + +Lydia had kissed him, weeping softly under her long black veil, and +hiding her pale, lovely face the moment afterwards in her clasped hands. +Dick, his son, had touched his cheek with his fresh young mouth; Richard +Ordway, his father's brother, had shaken him by the hand; and the +others, one and all, kinsmen and kinswomen, had given him their +embarrassed, yet kindly, welcome. But it was on Alice that his eyes +rested, while he felt his whole being impelled toward her in a recovered +rapture that was almost one of worship. In her dark beauty, with her +splendid hair, her blue, flashing Ordway eyes, and her lips which were +too red and too full for perfection, she appeared to him the one vital +thing among the mourning figures in this house of death. Her delight +still ran in little tremors through her limbs, and when a moment later, +she slipped her hand through his arm, and followed Lydia and Richard +Ordway down the steps, and into one of the waiting carriages, he felt +that her bosom quivered with the emotion which the solemn presence of +his father had forced back from her lips. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +HIS OWN PLACE + + +Some hours later when he sat alone in his room, he told himself that he +could never forget the drive home from the cemetery in the closed +carriage. Lydia had raised her veil slightly, as if in a desire for air, +and as she sat with her head resting against the lowered blind, he could +trace the delicate, pale lines of her mouth and chin, and a single wisp +of her ash blond hair which lay heavily upon her forehead. Not once had +she spoken, not once had she met his eyes of her own accord, and he had +discovered that she leaned almost desperately upon the iron presence of +Richard Ordway. Had his sin, indeed, crushed her until she had not power +to lift her head? he asked passionately, with a sharper remorse than he +had ever felt. + +"I am glad that you were able to come in time," Richard Ordway remarked +in his cold, even voice; and after this the rattle of the wheels on the +cobblestones in the street was the only sound which broke the death-like +stillness in which they sat. No, he could never forget it, nor could he +forget the bewildering effect of the sunshine when they opened the +carriage door. Beside the curbing a few idle Negroes were left of the +crowd that had gathered to watch the coffin borne through the gate, and +the pavement was thick with dust, as if many hurrying feet had tramped +by since the funeral had passed. As they entered the house the scent of +lilies struck him afresh with all the agony of its associations. The +shutters were still closed, the chairs were still arranged in their +solemn circle, the streamer of crape, hurriedly untied from the bell +handle, still lay where it had been thrown on the library table; and as +he crossed the threshold, he trod upon some fading lilies which had +fallen, unnoticed, from a funeral wreath. Then, in the dining-room, +Richard Ordway poured out a glass of whiskey, and in the very instant +when he was about to raise it to his lips, he put it hurriedly down and +pushed the decanter aside with an embarrassed and furtive movement. + +"Do you feel the need of a cup of coffee, Daniel?" he asked in a +pleasant, conciliatory tone, "or will you have only a glass of seltzer?" + +"I am not thirsty, thank you," Daniel responded shortly, and the next +moment he asked Alice to show him the room in which he would stay. + +With laughing eagerness she led him up the great staircase to the +chamber in which he had slept as a boy. + +"It's just next to Dick's," she said, "and mother's and mine are +directly across the hall. At first we thought of putting you in the red +guest-room, but that's only for visitors, so we knew you would be sure +to like this better." + +"Yes, I'll like this better," he responded, and then as she would have +moved away, he caught her, with a gesture of anguish, back to his arms. + +"You remember me, Alice, my child? you have not forgotten me?" + +She laughed merrily, biting her full red lips the moment afterward to +check the sound. + +"Why, how funny of you! I was quite a big girl--don't you +remember?--when you went away. It was so dull afterwards that I cried +for days, and that was why I was so overjoyed when mamma told me you +would come back. It was never dull when you lived at home with us, +because you would always take me to the park or the circus whenever I +grew tired of dolls. Nobody did that after you went away and I used to +cry and kick sometimes thinking that they would tell you and bring you +back." + +"And you remembered me chiefly because of the park and the circus?" he +asked, smiling for joy, as he kissed her hand which lay on his sleeve. + +"Oh, I never forget anything, you know. Mamma even says that about me. I +remember my first nurse and the baker's boy with red cheeks who used to +bring me pink cakes when I was three years old. No, I never forget--I +never forget," she repeated with vehemence. + +Animation had kindled her features into a beauty of colour which made +her eyes bluer and brighter and softened the too intense contrast of her +full, red lips. + +"All these years I've hoped that you would come back and that things +would change," she said impulsively, her words tripping rapidly over +one another. "Everything is so dreadfully grave and solemn here. +Grandfather hated noise so that he would hardly let me laugh if he was +in the house. Then mamma's health is wrecked, and she lies always on the +sofa, and never goes out except for a drive sometimes when it is fair." + +"Mamma's health is wrecked?" he repeated inquiringly, as she paused. + +"Oh, that's what everybody says about her--her health is wrecked. And +Uncle Richard is hardly any better, for he has a wife whose health is +wrecked also. And Dick--he isn't sick, but he might as well be, he is so +dull and plodding and over nice----" + +"And you Alice?" + +"I? Oh, I'm not dull, but I'm unhappy--awfully--you'll find that out. I +like fun and pretty clothes and new people and strange places. I want to +marry and have a home of my own and a lot of rings like mamma's, and a +carriage with two men on the box, and to go to Europe to buy things +whenever I please. That's the way Molly Burridge does and she was only +two classes ahead of me. How rough your hands are, papa, and what a +funny kind of shirt you have on. Do people dress like that where you +came from? Well, I don't like it, so you'll have to change." + +She had gone out at last, forgetting to walk properly in her mourning +garments, tripping into a run on the threshold, and then checking +herself with a prim, mocking look over her shoulder. Not until the door +had closed with a slam behind her black skirt, did Ordway's gaze turn +from following her and fix itself on the long mirror between the +windows, in which he could see, as Alice had seen the moment before, his +roughened hands, his carelessly trimmed hair and his common clothes. He +was dressed as the labourers dressed on Sundays in Tappahannock; though, +he remembered now, that in that crude little town he had been +conspicuous for the neatness, almost the jauntiness, of his attire. As +he laid out presently on the bed his few poor belongings, he told +himself, with determination, that for Alice's sake even this must be +changed. He was no longer of the class of Baxter, of Banks, of Mrs. +Twine. All that was over, and he must return now into the world in which +his wife and his children had kept a place. To do Alice honour--at least +not to do her further shame--would become from this day, he realised, +the controlling motive of his life. Then, as he looked down at the +coarse, unshapely garments upon the delicate counterpane, he knew that +Daniel Smith and Daniel Ordway were now parted forever. + +He was still holding one of the rough blue shirts in his hand, when a +servant entered to inquire if there was anything that he might need. The +man, a bright young mulatto, was not one of the old family slaves; and +while he waited, alert and intelligent, upon the threshold, Ordway was +seized by a nervous feeling that he was regarded with curiosity and +suspicion by the black rolling eyes. + +"Where is uncle Boaz? He used to wait upon me," he asked. + +"He's daid, suh. He drapped down daid right on de do' step." + +"And Aunt Mirandy?" + +"She's daid, too, en' I'se her chile." + +"Oh, you are, are you?" said Ordway, and he had again the sensation that +he was watched through inquisitive eyes. "That is all now," he added +presently, "you may go," and it was with a long breath of relief that he +saw the door close after the figure of Aunt Mirandy's son. + +When a little later he dressed himself and went out into the hall, he +found, to his annoyance, that he walked with a cautious and timid step +like that of a labourer who has stumbled by accident into surroundings +of luxury. As he descended the wide curving staircase, with his hand on +the mahogany balustrade, the sound of his footsteps seemed to +reverberate disagreeably through the awful funereal silence in which he +moved. If he could only hear Alice's laugh, Dick's whistle, or even the +garrulous flow of the Negro voices that he had listened to in his +childhood. With a pang he recalled that Uncle Boaz was dead, and his +heart swelled as he remembered how often he had passed up and down this +same staircase on the old servant's shoulder. At that age he had felt no +awe of the shining emptiness and the oppressive silence. Then he had +believed himself to be master of all at which he looked; now he was +conscious of that complete detachment from his surroundings which +produces almost a sense of the actual separation of soul and body. + +Reaching the hall below, he found that some hurried attempt had been +made to banish or to conceal the remaining signs of the funeral. The +doors and windows were open, the shreds of crape had disappeared from +the carpet, and the fading lilies had been swept out upon the graveled +walk in the yard. Upon entering the library, which invited him by its +rows of calf-bound books, he discovered that Richard Ordway was +patiently awaiting him in the large red leather chair which had once +been the favourite seat of his father. + +"Before I go home, I think it better to have a little talk with you, +Daniel," began the old man, as he motioned to a sofa on the opposite +side of the Turkish rug before the open grate. "It has been a peculiar +satisfaction to me to feel that I was able to bring you back in time for +the service." + +"I came," replied Daniel slowly, "as soon as I received your telegram." +He hesitated an instant and then went on in the same quiet tone in which +the other had spoken, "Do you think, though, that he would have wished +me to come at all?" + +After folding the newspaper which he had held in his hand, Richard laid +it, with a courteous gesture upon the table beside him. As he sat there +with his long limbs outstretched and relaxed, and his handsome, severe +profile resting against the leather back of his chair, the younger man +was impressed, as if for the first time, by the curious mixture of +strength and refinement in his features. He was not only a cleverer man +than his brother had been, he was gentler, smoother, more distinguished +on every side. In spite of his reserve, it was evident that he had +wished to be kind--that he wished it still; yet this kindness was so +removed from the ordinary impulse of humanity that it appeared to his +nephew to be in a way as detached and impersonal as an abstract virtue. +The very lines of his face were drawn with the precision, the finality, +of a geometrical figure. To imagine that they could melt into tenderness +was as impossible as to conceive of their finally crumbling into dust. + +"He would have wished it--he did wish it," he said, after a minute. "I +talked with him only a few hours before his death, and he told me then +that it was necessary to send for you--that he felt that he had +neglected his duty in not bringing you home immediately after your +release. He saw at last that it would have been far better to have acted +as I strongly advised at the time." + +"It was his desire, then, that I should return?" asked Daniel, while a +stinging moisture rose to his eyes at the thought that he had not looked +once upon the face of the dead man. "I wish I had known." + +A slight surprise showed in the other's gesture of response, and he +glanced hastily away as he might have done had he chanced to surprise +his nephew while he was still without his boots or his shirt. + +"I think he realised before he died that the individual has no right to +place his personal pride above the family tie," he resumed quietly, +ignoring the indecency of emotion as he would have ignored, probably, +the unclothed body. "I had said much the same thing to him eight years +ago, when I told him that he would realise before his death that he was +not morally free to act as he had done with regard to you. As a matter +of fact," he observed in his trained, legal voice, "the family is, after +all, the social unit, and each member is as closely related as the eye +to the ear or the right arm to the left. It is illogical to speak of +denying one's flesh and blood, for it can't be done." + +So this was why they had received him. He turned his head away, and his +gaze rested upon the boughs of the great golden poplar beyond the +window. + +"It is understood, then," he asked "that I am to come back--back to this +house to live?" + +When he had finished, but not until then, Richard Ordway looked at him +again with his dry, conventional kindness. "If you are free," he began, +altering the word immediately lest it should suggest painful +associations to his companion's mind, "I mean if you have no other +binding engagements, no decided plans for the future." + +"No, I have made no other plans. I was working as a bookkeeper in a +tobacco warehouse in Tappahannock." + +"As a bookkeeper?" repeated Richard, as he glanced down inquiringly at +the other's hands. + +"Oh, I worked sometimes out of doors, but the position I held was that +of confidential clerk." + +The old man nodded amiably, accepting the explanation with a readiness +for which the other was not prepared. "I was about to offer you some +legal work in my office," he remarked. "Dry and musty stuff, I fear it +is, but it's better--isn't it?--for a man to have some kind of +occupation----" + +Though the words were uttered pleasantly enough, it seemed to the +younger man that the concluding and significant phrase was left +unspoken. "Some kind of occupation to keep you out of temptation" was +what Richard had meant to say--what he had withheld, from consideration, +if not from humanity. While the horror of the whole situation closed +over Daniel like a mental darkness, he remembered the sensitive +shrinking of Lydia on the drive home, the prying, inquisitive eyes of +the mulatto servant, the furtive withdrawal of the whiskey by the man +who sat opposite to him. With all its attending humiliation and despair, +there rushed upon him the knowledge that by the people of his own +household he was regarded still as a creature to be restrained and +protected at every instant. Though outwardly they had received him, +instinctively they had repulsed him. The thing which stood between them +and himself was neither of their making nor of his. It belonged to their +very nature and was woven in with their inner fibre. It was a creation, +not of the individual, but of the race, and the law by which it existed +was rooted deep in the racial structure. Tradition, inheritance, +instinct--these were the barriers through which he had broken and which +had closed like the impenetrable sea-gates behind him. Though he were +to live on day by day as a saint among them, they could never forget: +though he were to shed his heart's blood for them, they would never +believe. To convince them of his sincerity was more hopeless, he +understood, than to reanimate their affection. In their very forgiveness +they had not ceased to condemn him, and in the shelter which they +offered him there would be always a hidden restraint. With the thought +it seemed to him that he was stifling in the closeness of the +atmosphere, that he must break away again, that he must find air and +freedom, though it cost him all else besides. The possibility of his own +weakness seemed created in him by their acceptance of it; and he felt +suddenly a terror lest the knowledge of their suspicion should drive him +to justify it by his future in Botetourt. + +"Yes, it is better for me to work," he said aloud. "I hope that I shall +be able to make myself of some small use in your office." + +"There's no doubt of that, I'm sure," responded Richard, in his +friendliest tone. + +"It is taken for granted, then, that I shall live on here with my wife +and children?" + +"We have decided that it is best. But as for your wife, you must +remember that she is very much of an invalid. Do not forget that she has +had a sad--a most tragic life." + +"I promise you that I shall not forget it--make your mind easy." + +After this it seemed to Daniel that there was nothing further to be +said; but before rising from his chair, the old man sat for a moment +with his thin lips tightly folded and a troubled frown ruffling his +forehead. In the dim twilight the profile outlined against the leather +chair appeared to have been ground rather than roughly hewn out of +granite. + +"About the disposition of the estate, there were some changes made +shortly before your father's death," remarked Richard presently. "In the +will itself you were not mentioned; a provision was made for your wife +and the bulk of the property left to your two children. But in a +codicil, which was added the day before your father died, he directed +that you should be given a life interest in the house as well as in +investments to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. +This is to be paid you in the form of a quarterly allowance, which will +yield you a personal income of about six thousand a year." + +"I understand," replied the younger man, without emotion, almost without +surprise. At the moment he was wondering by what name his father had +alluded to him in his will. Had he spoken of him as "my son," or merely +as "Daniel Ordway"? + +"That is all, I think," remarked the other, with a movement which +expressed, in spite of him, a sensation of relief. With a smile which +appeared to be little more than a muscular contraction of his mouth, he +held out his hand and stood for a moment, vainly searching for a phrase +or a word that would fit the delicate requirements of the occasion. + +"Well, I shall never cease to be thankful that you were with us at the +cemetery," he said at last in a tone which was a patent admission that +he had failed. Then, with a kindly inclination of his head, he released +the hand he held and passed at his rapid, yet dignified step out of the +house. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE OUTWARD PATTERN + + +The front door had hardly closed when a breath of freshness blew into +the library with the entrance of Alice, and a moment afterwards the +butler rolled back the mahogany doors of the dining-room and they saw +the lighted candles and the chrysanthemums upon the dinner table. + +"We hardly ever dress," said Alice, slipping her hand through his arm, +"I wish we did." + +"Well, if you'll only pardon these clothes to-night I'll promise to call +on the tailor before breakfast," he returned, smiling, conscious that he +watched in anxiety lest the look of delight in his presence should +vanish from her face. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter now, because we're in the deepest grief--aren't +we?--and mamma isn't coming down. She wants to see you, by the way, just +for a minute when you go upstairs. It is to be just for a minute, I was +to be very particular about that, as she is broken down. I wonder why +they have put so many covers. There is nobody but you and Dick. I asked +Uncle Richard, but he said that he wouldn't stay. It's just as well he +didn't--he's so dreadfully dull, isn't he, papa?" + +"All I wish is that I were dull in Uncle Richard's way," remarked Dick, +with his boyish air of superiority, "I'd be the greatest lawyer in the +state then, when my turn came." + +"And you'd be even more tiresome than you are now," retorted the girl +with a flash of irritation which brought out three fine, nervous +wrinkles on her delicate forehead. + +"Well, I shouldn't have your temper anyway," commented Dick +imperturbably, as he ate his soup. "Do you remember, papa, how Alice +used to bite and scratch as a baby? She'd like to behave exactly that +way now if she weren't so tall." + +"Oh, I know Alice better than you do," said Ordway, in a voice which he +tried to make cheerful. The girl sat on his right, and while she choked +back her anger, he reached out and catching her hand, held it against +his cheek. "We stand together, Alice and I," he said softly--"Alice and +I." + +As he repeated the words a wave of joy rose in his heart, submerging the +disappointment, the bitterness, the hard despair, of the last few hours. +Here also, as well as in Tappahannock, he found awaiting him his +appointed task. + +Dick laughed pleasantly, preserving always the unshakable +self-possession which reminded his father of Richard Ordway. He was a +good boy, Daniel knew, upright, honest, manly, all the things which his +grandfather and his great-grandfather had been before him. + +"Then you'll have to stand with Geoffrey Heath," he said jestingly, +"and, by Jove, I don't think I'd care for his company." + +"Geoffrey Heath?" repeated Ordway inquiringly, with his eyes on his +daughter, who sat silent and angry, biting her lower lip. Her mouth, +which he had soon discovered to be her least perfect feature, was at the +same time her most expressive one. At her slightest change of mood, he +watched it tremble into a smile or a frown, and from a distance it was +plainly the first thing one noticed about her face. Now, as she sat +there, with her eyes on her plate, her vivid lips showed like a splash +of carmine in the lustreless pallor of her skin. + +"Oh, he's one of Alice's chums," returned Dick with his merciless +youthful sneer, "she has a pretty lot of them, too, though he is by long +odds the worst." + +"Well, he's rich enough anyway," protested Alice defiantly, "he keeps +beautiful horses and sends me boxes of candy, and I don't care a bit for +the rest." + +"Who is he, by the way?" asked Daniel. "There was a family of Heaths who +lived near us in the country when I was a boy. Is he one of these?" + +"He's the son of old Rupert Heath, who made a million out of some panic +in stocks. Uncle Richard says the father was all right, but he's tried +his best to break up Alice's craze about Geoffrey. But let her once get +her nose to the wind and nobody can do anything with her." + +"Well, I can, can't I, darling?" asked Ordway, smiling in spite of a +jealous pang. The appeal of the girl to him was like the appeal of the +finer part of his own nature. Her temptations he recognised as the old +familiar temptations of his youth, and the kinship between them seemed +at the moment something deeper and more enduring than the tie of blood. +Yet the thought that she was his daughter awoke in him a gratitude that +was almost as acute as pain. The emptiness of his life was filled +suddenly to over-flowing, and he felt again that he had found here as he +had found at Tappahannock both his mission and his reward. + +When dinner was over he left the boy and girl in the library and went +slowly, and with a nervous hesitation, upstairs to the room in which +Lydia was lying on her couch, with a flower-decked tray upon the little +inlaid table beside her. As he entered the room something in the +luxurious atmosphere--in the amber satin curtains, the white bearskin +rugs, the shining mirrors between the windows--recalled the early years +of his marriage, and as he remembered them, he realised for the first +time the immensity of the change which divided his present existence +from his past. The time had been when he could not separate his inner +life from his surroundings, and with the thought he saw in his memory +the bare cleanliness of the blue guest-room at Cedar Hill--with its +simple white bed, its rag carpet, its faded sampler worked in blue +worsteds. That place had become as a sanctuary to him now, for it was +there that he had known his most perfect peace, his completest +reconciliation with God. + +As he entered the room Lydia raised herself slightly upon her elbow, and +without turning her head, nervously pushed back a white silk shawl which +she had thrown over her knees. A lamp with an amber shade cast its light +on her averted profile, and he noticed that its perfect outline, its +serene loveliness, was untouched by suffering. Already he had discovered +those almost imperceptible furrows between Alice's eyebrows, but when +Lydia looked up at him at last, he saw that her beautiful forehead, +under its parting of ash blond hair, was as smooth as a child's. Was it +merely the Madonna-like arrangement of her hair, after all, he wondered, +not without bitterness, that had bestowed upon her that appealing +expression of injured innocence? + +"You wished to speak to me, Alice said," he began with an awkward +gesture, acutely conscious, as he stood there, of the amber light in the +room, of the shining waves of her hair, of the delicate perfume which +floated from the gold-topped boxes upon her dressing-table. An oval +mirror above the mantel gave back to him the reflection of his own +roughly clad figure, and the violent contrast between himself and his +surroundings stung him into a sense of humiliation that was like a +physical smart. + +"I thought it better to speak to you--Uncle Richard and Dick advised me +to----" she broke off in a gentle confusion, lifting her lovely, pensive +eyes for the first time to his face. + +"Of course it is better, Lydia," he answered gravely. "You must let me +know what you wish--you must tell me quite frankly just what you would +rather that I should do----" + +The look of gratitude in her face gave him a sudden inexplicable pang. + +"I am hardly more than an invalid," she said in a voice that had grown +firm and sweet, "Uncle Richard will tell you----" + +Her reliance upon Richard Ordway aroused in him a passion of resentment, +and for an instant the primitive man in him battled hotly against the +renunciation his lips had made. + +"I know, I understand," he said hurriedly at last. "I appreciate it all +and I shall do whatever is in my power to make it easier for you." As he +looked at her bowed head a wave of remorse rose in his breast and swept +down, one by one, the impulses of anger, of pride, of self-righteousness. +"O my dear, my dear, don't you think I know what I have done to you?" he +asked, and going a step toward her, he fell on his knees beside the +couch and kissed passionately the hand that lay in her lap. "Don't you +think I know that I have ruined your life?" + +For a moment her eyes dwelt thoughtfully upon his, and she let her hand +lie still beneath his remorseful kisses, until her withdrawal of it had +lost any appearance of haste or of discourtesy. + +"Then you will not object to my living on in this way? You will not seek +to change anything? You will----" She hesitated and broke off, not +impulsively, but with the same clear, sweet voice in which she had put +her question. + +Lifting his head, he looked up at her from his knees, and the dumb +loneliness in his eyes caused her at last to drop her own to the rug +upon which he knelt. + +"If you will only let me care for you--serve you--work for you," he +implored brokenly. "If you will only let me make up, however poorly, +something of what you have suffered." + +A vague discomfort, produced in her by the intensity of his gaze, moved +her to draw slightly away from him, while she turned restlessly on her +pillows. At the first shade of perplexity, of annoyance, that showed in +her face, he felt, with a terrible power of intuition, that she was +seeking in vain to estimate each of his heartbroken words at its full +value--to read calmly by the light of experience the passion for +atonement to which his lips had tried hopelessly to give expression. The +wall of personality rose like a visible object between them. He might +beat against it in desperation until his strength was gone, yet he knew +that it would remain forever impenetrable, and through its thickness +there would pass only the loud, unmeaning sound of each other's voice. + +"Have you lost all love for me, Lydia?" he asked. "Have you even +forgotten that I am the father of your children?" + +As soon as his words were uttered, he stumbled to his feet, horrified by +the effect upon her. A change that was like a spasm of physical nausea +had shaken her limbs, and he felt rather than saw that she had shrunk +from him, convulsed and quivering, until she was crushed powerless +against the back of the sofa on which she lay. Her whole attitude, he +realised, was the result, not of a moral judgment, but of a purely +physical antipathy. Her horror of him had become instinctive, and she +was no more responsible for its existence than a child is responsible +for the dread aroused in it by the goblins of nursery rhymes. His life +as a convict had not only unclassed him in her eyes, it had put him +entirely outside and below the ordinary relations of human beings. To +his wife he must remain forever an object of pity, perhaps, but of +intense loathing and fear also. + +The wave of remorse turned to bitterness on his lips, and all the +tenderer emotions he had felt when he knelt by her side--the +self-reproach, the spiritual yearning, the passion for goodness, all +these were extinguished in the sense of desolation which swept over him. + +"Don't be afraid," he said coldly, "I shall not touch you." + +"It was nothing--a moment's pain," she answered, in a wistful, +apologetic voice. + +She was playing nervously with the fringe of the silk shawl, and he +stood for a minute in silence while he watched her long, slender fingers +twine themselves in and out of the tasseled ends. Then turning aside she +pushed away the coffee service on the little table as if its fragrance +annoyed her. + +"Is it in your way? Do you wish it removed?" he inquired, and when she +had nodded in reply, he lifted the tray and carried it in the direction +of the door. "Don't be afraid. It is all right," he repeated as he went +out. + +Back in his own room again, he asked himself desperately if this +existence could be possible? Would it not be better for him to lose +himself a second time--to throw in his lot with a lower class, since his +own had rejected him? Flinging himself on the floor beside the window, +he pressed his forehead against the white painted wood as if the outward +violence could deaden the throbbing agony he felt within. Again he smelt +the delicate, yet intense perfume of Lydia's chamber; again he saw her +shrinking from him until she lay crushed and white against the back of +the sofa; again he watched her features contract with the instinctive +repulsion she could not control. The pitiful deprecating gesture with +which she had murmured: "It is nothing--a moment's pain," was seared +forever like the mark from a burning iron into his memory. + +"No, no--it cannot be--it is impossible," he said suddenly aloud. And +though he had not the strength to frame the rest of his thought into +words, he knew that the impossible thing he meant was this life, this +torture, this slow martyrdom day by day without hope and without end +except in death. After all there was a way of escape, so why should it +be closed to him? What were these people to him beside those others whom +he might yet serve--the miserable, the poor, the afflicted who would +take from him the gifts which his own had rejected? What duty remained? +What obligation? What responsibility? Step by step he retraced the +nineteen years of his marriage, and he understood for the first time, +that Lydia had given him on her wedding day nothing of herself beyond +the gentle, apologetic gesture which had followed that evening her +involuntary repulsion. From the beginning to the end she had presided +always above, not shared in his destiny. She had wanted what he could +give, but not himself, and when he could give nothing more she had shown +that she wanted him no longer. While he knelt there, still pressing his +forehead against the window sill, the image of her part in his life rose +out of the darkness of his mind, which opened and closed over it, and he +saw her fixed, shining and immovable, to receive his offerings, like +some heathen deity above the sacrificial altar. + +The next instant the image faded and was replaced by Emily as she had +looked at him on that last evening with her soft, comforting gaze. The +weakness of self pity came over him, and he asked himself in the +coward's luxury of hopeless questioning, what Emily would have done had +she stood to him in Lydia's place? He saw her parting from him with her +bright courage at the prison doors; he saw her meeting him with her +smile of welcome and of forgiveness when he came out. As once before he +had risen to the vision of service, so now in the agony of his +humiliation he was blessed at last with the understanding of love. + +For many minutes he knelt there motionless by the open window, beyond +which he could see the dimly lighted town on which a few drops of rain +had begun to fall. The faint perfume of lilies came up to him from the +walk below, where the broken sprays swept from the house were fading +under the slow, soft rain. With the fragrance the image of Emily +dissolved as in a mist to reappear the minute afterwards in a more +torturing and human shape. He saw her now with her bright dark hair +blown into little curls on her temples, with her radiant brown eyes that +penetrated him with their soft, yet animated glance. The vigorous grace +of her figure, as he had seen it outlined in her scant blue cotton gown +against the background of cedars, remained motionless in his thoughts, +bathed in a clear golden light that tormented his senses. + +Rising from his knees with an effort, he struck a match and raised the +green shade from the lamp on the table. Then while the little blue flame +flickered out in his hand, he felt that he was seized by a frantic, an +irresistible impulse of flight. Gathering his clothes from the bed in +the darkness, he pushed them hurriedly back into the bag he had emptied, +and with a last glance at the room which had become unendurable to him, +opened the door and went with a rapid step down the great staircase and +into the hall below. The direction of his journey, as well as the +purpose of it, was obscure in his mind. Yesterday he had told himself +that he could not remain in Tappahannock, and to-day he knew that it was +impossible for him to live on in his father's house. To pass the hall +door meant release--escape to him; beyond that there lay only the +distance and the unknown. + +The lights burned dimly on the staircase, and when he reached the bottom +he could see on the carpet the thin reddish stream which issued from the +closed door of the library. As he was about to pass by, a short sob fell +on his ear, arresting him as authoritatively as if it had been the sound +of his own name. While he stood there listening the sobs ceased and then +broke out more loudly, now violent, now smothered, now followed by +quick, furious steps across the floor within. Alice was shut in the room +alone and suffering! With the realisation the bag fell from his hand, +and turning the knob softly, he opened the door and paused for an +instant upon the threshold. + +At the noise of the opening door the girl made a single step forward, +and as she raised her hands to conceal her distorted features, her +handkerchief, torn into shreds, fell to the carpet at her feet. Around +her the room showed other signs of an outbreak of anger--the chairs were +pushed hurriedly out of place, the books from the centre table were +lying with opened backs on the floor, and a vase of dahlias lay +overturned and scattered upon the mantel. + +"I don't care--I don't care," she repeated, convulsively. "Why do they +always interfere with me? What right has Dick or Uncle Richard to say +whom I shall see or whom I shall not? I hate them all. Mamma is always +against me--so is Uncle Richard--so is everybody. They side with +Dick--always--always." + +A single wave of her dark hair had fallen low on her forehead, and this, +with the violent colour of her mouth, gave her a look that was almost +barbaric. The splendid possibilities in her beauty caused him, in the +midst of his pity, a sensation of dread. + +"Alice," he said softly, almost in a whisper, and closing the door after +him, he came to the middle of the room and stood near her, though still +without touching her quivering body. + +"They side with Dick always," she repeated furiously, "and you will side +with him, too--you will side with him, too!" + +For a long pause he looked at her in silence, waiting until the +convulsive tremors of her limbs should cease. + +"I shall never side against my daughter," he said very slowly. "Alice, +my child, my darling, are you not really mine?" + +A last quivering sob shook through her and she grew suddenly still. +"They will tell you things about me and you will believe them," she +answered sternly. + +"Against you, Alice? Against you?" + +"You will blame me as they do." + +"I love you," he returned, almost as sternly as she had spoken. + +An emotional change, so swift that it startled him, broke in her look, +and he saw the bright red of her mouth tremble and open like a flower in +her glowing face. At the sight a sharp joy took possession of him--a +joy that he could measure only by the depth of the agony out of which he +had come. Without moving from his place, he stretched out his arms and +stood waiting. + +"Alice, I love you," he said. + +Then his arms closed over her, for with the straight flight of a bird +she had flown to his breast. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT + + +Awaking before dawn, he realised with his first conscious thought that +his life had been irrevocably settled while he slept. His place was +here; he could not break away from it without leaving a ragged edge; and +while he had believed himself to be deciding his future actions, that +greater Destiny, of which his will was only a part, had arranged them +for him during the dim pause of the night. He could feel still on his +arm, as if it had persisted there through his sleep, the firm, almost +viselike pressure of Alice's hands, and his whole sensitive nature +thrilled in response to this mute appeal to his fatherhood. Yes, his +purpose, his mission, and his happiness were here in his father's house. + +At breakfast he found a white rosebud on his plate, and as he took it +up, Alice rushed in from the garden and threw herself into his arms. + +"I thought you were never, never coming down!" she exclaimed, choking +with laughter, and utterly forgetful of the shadow of death which still +lay over the house. "At first I was afraid you might have gone away in +the night--just as you went that awful day eight years ago. Then I +peeped out and saw your boots, so I went back to bed again and fell +asleep. Oh, I'm so glad you've come! Why did you stay away such an age? +Now, at last, I'll have somebody to take my side against mamma and Dick +and Uncle Richard----" + +"But why against them, Alice? Surely they love you just as I do?" + +Biting her lips sharply, she bent her heavy brows in a stern and +frowning expression. "Oh, they're horrid," she said angrily, "they want +me to live just as mamma does--shut up all day in a hot room on a +hateful sofa. She reads novels all the time, and I despise books. I want +to go away and see things and to have plenty of clothes and all the fun +I choose. They let Dick do just as he pleases because he's a boy, but +they try to make me dull and stupid and foolish all because I'm a girl. +I won't have it like that and it makes them angry----" + +"Oh, well, we'll have fun together, you and I," returned Ordway, with a +sinking heart, "but you must wait a bit till I catch up with you. Don't +be in a precious hurry, if you please." + +"Shall we have a good time, then? Shall we?" she persisted, delighted, +kissing him with her warm mouth until he was dazzled by her beauty, her +fascination, her ardent vitality. "And you will do just what I wish, +won't you?" she whispered in his ear as she hung on his shoulder, "you +will be good and kind always? and you will make them leave me alone +about Geoffrey Heath?" + +"About Geoffrey Heath?" he repeated, and grew suddenly serious. + +"Oh, he's rich and he's fun, too," she responded irritably. "He has +asked me to ride one of his horses--the most beautiful chestnut mare in +the world--but mamma scolds me about it because she says he's not nice +and that he did something once years ago about cards. As if I cared +about cards!" + +By the fear that had gripped him he could judge the strength of her hold +on his heart. "Alice, be careful--promise me to be careful!" he +entreated. + +At his words he felt her arms relax from their embrace, and she seemed +instantly to turn to marble upon his breast. "Oh, you're just like the +others now. I knew you would be!" she exclaimed, as she drew away from +him. + +Before the coldness of her withdrawal he felt that his will went out of +him; and in one despairing flight of imagination he saw what the loss of +her affection would mean now in his life. An emotion which he knew to be +weakness pervaded not only his heart, but his soul and his senses and +the remotest fibre of his physical being. "Whatever comes I shall always +stand by you, Alice," he said. + +Though she appeared to be mollified by his subjection, the thin almost +imperceptible furrows caused by the moment's anger, were still visible +between her eyebrows. There was a certain fascination, he found, in +watching these marks of age or of experience come and go on her fresh, +childlike forehead, with its lustrous pallor, from which her splendid +dark hair rolled back, touched with light, like a moonlit cloud. It was +a singular characteristic of her beauty that its appeal was rather to +the imagination than to the eye, and the moments, perhaps, when she +dazzled least were those in which she conquered most through her +enigmatical charm. + +"You will buy some clothes, first of all, will you not?" she said, when, +having finished his breakfast, he rose from the table and went out into +the hall. + +He met her eyes laughing, filled with happiness at the playful authority +she assumed, and yet fearful still lest some incautious word of his +should bring out those fine nervous wrinkles upon her forehead. + +"Give me a week and I'll promise you a fashion plate," he responded +gaily, kissing his hand to her as he went down the steps, and, under the +trailing rose creepers at the gate, out into the street. + +Rain had fallen in the night, and the ground was covered with shining +puddles beneath which a few autumn leaves showed drenched and beaten. +From the golden and red maples above a damp odour was wafted down into +his face by the October wind, which now rose and now died away with a +gentle sound. In the pale sunshine, which had not yet drained the +moisture from the bricks, a wonderful freshness seemed to emanate from +the sky and the earth and the white-pillared houses. + +As he approached the corner, he heard his name called in a clear +emphatic voice from the opposite sidewalk, and turning his head, he saw +hastening toward him, a little elderly lady in a black silk gown trimmed +heavily with bugles. As she neared him, followed by a young Negro maid +bearing a market basket filled with vegetables, he recognised her as an +intimate friend of his mother's, whom he had known familiarly in his +childhood as "Aunt Lucy." It seemed so long now since his mother's death +that he was attacked by a ghostly sensation, as if he were dreaming over +his past life, while he stood face to face with the old lady's small +soldierly figure and listened to the crisp, emphatic tones in which she +welcomed him back to Botetourt. He remembered his frequent visits to her +solemn old house, which she kept so dark that he had always stumbled +over the two embroidered ottomans on the parlour hearth. He recalled the +smell of spices which had hung about her storeroom, and the raspberry +preserves which she had never failed to give him out of a blue china +jar. + +"Why, my dear, blessed child, it's such a pleasure to have you back!" +she exclaimed now with an effusion which he felt to be the outward veil +of some hidden embarrassment. "You must come sometimes and let me talk +to you about your mother. I knew your mother so well--I was one of her +bridesmaids." + +Seizing his arm in her little firm, clawlike hands, she assured him with +animation of her delight at his return, alluding in a shaking voice to +his mother, and urging him to come to sit with her whenever he could +stand the gloom of her empty house. + +"And you will give me raspberry preserves out of the blue china jar?" he +asked, laughing, "and let me feed crackers to the green parrot?" + +"What a boy! What a boy!" she returned. "You remember everything. The +parrot is dead--my poor Polly!--but there is a second." + +Her effusiveness, her volubility, which seemed to him to be the result +of concealed embarrassment, produced in him presently a feeling of +distrust, almost of resentment, and he remembered the next instant that, +in his childhood, she had been looked upon as a creature of uncontrolled +charitable impulses. Upon the occasion of his last meeting with her was +she not hastening upon some ministering errand to the city gaol? At the +casual recollection an unreasoning bitterness awoke in his mind; her +reiterated raptures fell with a strange effect of irritation upon his +ears; and he knew now that he could never bring himself to enter her +house again, that he could never accept her preserved raspberries out of +the blue china jar. Her reception of him, he saw, was but a part of the +general reception of Botetourt. Like her the town would be voluble, +unnatural, overdone in its kindness, hiding within itself a furtive +constraint as if it addressed its speeches to the sensitive sufferer +from some incurable malady. The very tenderness, the exaggerated +sympathy in its manner would hardly have been different, he understood, +if he had been recently discharged as harmless, yet half-distraught, +from an asylum for the insane. + +As the days went on this idea, instead of dissolving, became unalterably +lodged in his brain. Gradually he retreated further and further into +himself, until the spiritual isolation in which he lived appeared to +him more and more like the isolation of the prison. His figure had +become a familiar one in the streets of Botetourt, yet he lived bodily +among the people without entering into their lives or sharing in any +degree the emotions that moved their hearts. Only in periods of sorrow +did he go willingly into the houses of those of his own class, though he +had found a way from the beginning to reach the poor, the distressed, or +the physically afflicted. His tall, slightly stooping figure, in its +loose black clothes, his dark head, with the thick locks of iron gray +hair upon the temples, his sparkling blue eyes, his bright, almost +boyish smile, and the peculiar, unforgettable charm of his +presence--these were the things which those in sickness or poverty began +to recognise and to look for. In his own home he lived, except for the +fitful tenderness of Alice, as much apart as he felt himself to be in +the little town. They were considerate of him, but their consideration, +he knew, contained an ineradicable suspicion, and in the house as +outside, he was surrounded by the watchful regard that is given to the +infirm or the mentally diseased. He read this in Lydia's gently averted +eyes; he felt it in Richard Ordway's constrained manner; he detected it +even in the silent haste with which the servants fulfilled his slightest +wish. + +His work in his uncle's office, he had soon found to be of the most +mechanical character, a mere pretext to give him daily employment, and +he told himself, in a moment of bitterness that it was convincing proof +of the opinion which the older man must hold of his honesty or of his +mental capacity. It became presently little more than a hopeless round +to him--this morning walk through the sunny streets, past the ivied +walls of the old church, to the clean, varnish scented office, where he +sat, until the luncheon hour, under the hard, though not unkind, eyes of +the man who reminded him at every instant of his dead father. And the +bitterest part of it, after all, was that the closer he came to the +character of Richard Ordway, the profounder grew his respect for his +uncle's unwavering professional honour. The old man would have starved, +he knew, rather than have held back a penny that was not legally his own +or have owed a debt that he felt had begun to weigh, however lightly, +upon his conscience. Yet this lawyer of scrupulous rectitude was the +husband, his nephew suspected, of a neglected, a wretchedly unhappy +wife--a small, nervous creature, whom he had married, shortly after the +death of his first wife, some twenty years ago. The secret of this +unhappiness Daniel had discovered almost by intuition on the day of his +father's funeral, when he had looked up suddenly in the cemetery to find +his uncle's wife regarding him with a pair of wonderful, pathetic eyes, +which seemed to gaze at him sadly out of a blue mist. So full of +sympathy and understanding was her look that the memory of it had +returned to him more than a year later, and had caused him to stop at +her gate one November afternoon as he was returning from his office +work. After an instant's pause, and an uncertain glance at the big +brick house with its clean white columns, he ascended the steps and rang +the bell for the first time since his boyhood. + +The house was one of the most charming in Botetourt, but as he followed +the servant down the hall to the library, it seemed to him that all +these high, imposing walls, with their fine white woodwork, enclosed but +so much empty space to fill with loneliness. His uncle had no children, +and the sad, fair-haired little wife appeared to be always alone and +always suffering. + +She was seated now in a low rocking-chair beside the window, and as she +turned her head at his entrance, he could see, through the lace +curtains, a few pale November leaves, which fluttered down from an elm +tree beside the porch. When she looked at him he noticed that her eyes +were large and beautiful and of a changeable misty colour which appeared +now gray, now violet. + +"It is so good of you, Daniel," she said, in a soft, grateful voice, +removing her work-basket from the chair at her side so that he might +come within the reach of her short-sighted gaze. + +"I've wanted to come ever since I saw you for the first time after my +return," he answered cheerfully. "It is strange, isn't it?--that I +hardly remember you when I lived here. You were always ill, were you +not?" + +"Yes, ill almost always," she replied, smiling as she met his glance. +"When you were married I remember I couldn't go to the wedding because +I had been in bed for three months. But that's all over now," she +added, fearing to produce in him a momentary depression. "I am well +again, you see, so the past doesn't matter." + +"The past doesn't matter," he repeated in a low voice, struck by the +words as if they held more than their surface meaning for his ears. + +She nodded gravely. "How can it matter if one is really happy at last." + +"And you are happy at last?" + +As he watched her it seemed to him that a pale flame burned in her face, +tinging its sallow wanness with a golden light. "I am at peace and is +that not happiness?" she asked. + +"But you were sad once--that day in the cemetery? I felt it." + +"That was while I was still struggling," she answered, "and it always +hurts one to struggle. I wanted happiness--I kept on wanting it even +after I ceased to believe in its existence. I fought very hard--oh, +desperately hard--but now I have learned that the only way to get +anything is to give it up. Happiness is like everything else, it is only +when one gives it back to God that one really possesses it." + +He had never seen a face in which the soul spoke so clearly, and her +look rather than her words came to him like the touch of divine healing. + +"When I saw you standing beside your father's grave, I knew that you +were just where I had been for so many years--that you were still +telling your self that things were too hard, that they were +unendurable. I had been through it all, you see, so I understood." + +"But how could you know the bitterness, the shame of feeling that it was +all the result of my own mistake--of my own sin." + +Taking his hand in hers, she sat for a moment in silence with her +ecstatic gaze fixed on his face. "I know that in spite of your sin you +are better than they are," she said at last, "because your sin was on +the outside--a thing to be sloughed off and left far behind, while their +self-righteousness is of their very souls----" + +"Oh, hush, hush," he interrupted sternly, "they have forgiven me for +what I did, that is enough." + +"Sixteen years ago," she returned, dropping her voice, "my husband +forgave me in the same way, and he has never forgotten it." + +At his start of surprise, he felt that she clung the more closely to the +hand she held. "Oh, it wasn't so big a thing," she went on, "I had been +married to him for five years, and I was very unhappy when I met someone +who seemed to understand and to love me. For a time I was almost insane +with the wonder and delight of it--I might have gone away with him--with +the other--in my first rapture, had not Richard found it all out two +days before. He behaved very generously--he forgave me. I should have +been happier," she added a little wistfully, "if he had not." + +As she broke off trembling, he lifted her hand to his lips, kissing it +with tenderness, almost with passion. "Then that was the beginning of +your unhappiness--of your long illness!" he exclaimed. + +She nodded smiling, while a tear ran slowly down her flushed cheek. "He +forgave me sixteen years ago and he has never allowed me to forget it +one hour--hardly a minute since." + +"Then you understand how bitter--how intolerable it is!" he returned in +an outbreak of anger. + +"I thought I knew," she replied more firmly than he had ever heard her +speak, "but I learned afterwards that it was a mistake. I see now that +they are kind--that they are good in their way, and I love them for it. +It isn't our way, I know, but the essence of charity, after all, is to +learn to appreciate goodness in all its expressions, no matter how +different they may be from our own. Even Richard is kind--he means +everything for the best, and it is only his nature that is +straightened--that is narrow--not his will. I felt bitterly once, but +not now because I am so happy at last." + +Beyond the pale outline of her head, he saw the elm leaves drifting +slowly down, and beyond them the low roofs and the dim church spires of +the quiet town. Was it possible that even here he might find peace in +the heart of the storm? + +"It is only since I have given my happiness back to God that it is +really mine," she said, and it seemed to him again that her soul +gathered brightness and shone in her face. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE WILL OF ALICE + + +When he reached home the servant who helped him out of his overcoat, +informed him at the same time that his uncle awaited him in the library. +With the news a strange chill came over him as if he had left something +warm and bright in the November sunset outside. For an instant it seemed +to him that he must turn back--that he could not go forward. Then with a +gesture of assent, he crossed the hall and entered the library, where he +found Lydia and the children as well as Richard Ordway. + +The lamps were unlit, and the mellow light of the sunset fell through +the interlacing half-bared boughs of the golden poplar beyond the +window. This light, so rich, so vivid, steeped the old mahogany +furniture and the faded family portraits in a glow which seemed to +Daniel to release, for the first time, some latent romantic spirit that +had dwelt in the room. In the midst of this glamor of historic +atmosphere, the four figures, gathered so closely together against the +clear space of the window, with its network of poplar leaves beyond the +panes, borrowed for the moment a strange effectiveness of pose, a +singular intensity of outline. Not only the figures, but the very +objects by which they were surrounded appeared to vibrate in response to +a tragic impulse. + +Richard Ordway was standing upon the hearthrug, his fine head and +profile limned sharply against the pale brown wall at his side. His +right hand was on Lydia's shoulder, who sat motionless, as if she had +fallen there, with her gentle, flower-like head lying upon the arm of +her son. Before them, as before her judges, Alice was drawn to her full +height, her girlish body held tense and quivering, her splendid hair +loosened about her forehead, her trembling mouth making a violent +contrast to the intense pallor of her face. + +Right or wrong Ordway saw only that she was standing alone, and as he +crossed the threshold, he turned toward her and held out his hand. + +"Alice," he said softly, as if the others were not present. Without +raising her eyes, she shrank from him in the direction of Richard +Ordway, as if shielding herself behind the iron fortitude of the man +whom she so bitterly disliked. + +"Alice has been out driving alone with Geoffrey Heath all the +afternoon," said Lydia in her clear, calm voice. "We had forbidden it, +but she says that you knew of it and did not object to her going." + +With the knowledge of the lie, Ordway grew red with humiliation, while +his gaze remained fastened on the figure in the carpet at Alice's feet. +He could not look at her, for he felt that her shame was scorching him +like a hot wind. To look at her at the moment meant to convict her, and +this his heart told him he could never do. He was conscious of the loud +ticking of the clock, of the regular tapping of Richard's fingers upon +the marble mantel-piece, of the fading light on the poplar leaves beyond +the window, and presently of the rapid roll of a carriage that went by +in the street. Each of these sounds produced in him a curious irritation +like a physical smart, and he felt again something of the dumb +resentment with which he had entered his wife's dressing-room on the +morning of his arrest. Then a smothered sob reached his ear, and Alice +began to tremble from head to foot at his side. Lifting his eyes at +last, he made a step forward and drew her into his arms. + +"Was it so very wrong? I am sorry," he said to Lydia over the bowed head +of their child. Until the words were uttered, and he felt Alice's tense +body relax in his arms, he had not realised that in taking sides with +her, he was not only making himself responsible for her fault, he was, +in truth, actually sharing in the lie that she had spoken. The choice +was an unconscious one, yet he knew even in the ensuing moment of his +clearer judgment that it had been inevitable--that from the first +instant, when he had paused speechless upon the threshold, there had +been open to him no other course. + +"I am sorry if it was wrong," he repeated, turning his glance now upon +Richard Ordway. + +"Do you know anything of Geoffrey Heath? Have you heard him spoken of by +decent people since you have been in Botetourt?" asked the old man +sternly. + +"I have heard little of him," answered Daniel, "and that little was far +from good. We are sorry, Alice, are we not? It must not happen again if +we can help it." + +"It has happened before," said Lydia, lifting her head from Dick's arm, +where it had lain. "It was then that I forbade her to see him alone." + +"I did not know," responded Daniel, "but she will do as you wish +hereafter. Will you not, Alice?" + +"How does it concern them? What have they to do with me?" demanded +Alice, turning in his arms to face her mother with a defiant and angry +look, "they have never cared for me--they have always preferred +Dick--always, even when I was a little child." + +He saw Lydia grow white and hide her drooping face again on Dick's +shoulder. "You are unjust to your mother, Alice," he said gravely, "she +has loved you always, and I have loved you." + +"Oh, you are different--I would die for you!" she exclaimed +passionately, as she wept on his breast. + +While he stood there holding her in his arms, it seemed to him that he +could feel like an electric current the wave of feeling which had swept +Alice and himself together. The inheritance which was his had descended +to her also with its keen joys and its sharp anguish. Even the road +which he had travelled so lately in weariness was the one upon which her +brave young feet were now set. Not his alone, but his child's also, was +this mixture of strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of +bitterness and compassion. + +"If you will leave me alone with her, I think I can make her understand +what you wish," he said, lifting his eyes from the dark head on his +breast to Lydia, who had risen and was standing before him with her +pensive, inquiring gaze fixed on his face. "She is like me," he added +abruptly, "in so many ways." + +"Yes, she is like you, I have always thought so," returned Lydia, +quietly. + +"And for that reason, perhaps, you have never quite understood her," he +responded. + +She bowed her head as if too polite or too indifferent to dissent from +his words; and then slipping her hand through Richard Ordway's arm, she +stood waiting patiently while the old man delivered his last bit of +remonstrance. + +"Try to curb her impulses, Daniel, or you will regret it." + +He went out, still holding Lydia's hand, and a moment afterwards, when +Daniel looked up at the sound of the hall door closing quickly, he saw +that Dick also had vanished, and that he was alone in the library with +Alice, who still sobbed on his breast. + +A few moments before it had seemed to him that he needed only to be +alone with her to make all perfectly clear between them. But when the +others had passed out, and the door had closed at last on the empty +silence in which they stood, he found that the words which he had meant +to utter had vanished hopelessly from his mind. He had said to Lydia +that Alice was like himself, but there had never been an hour in his +life when his hatred of a lie had not been as intense, as +uncompromising, as it was to-day. And this lie which she had spoken +appeared to divide them now like a drawn sword. + +"Alice," he said, breaking with an effort through the embarrassment +which had held him speechless, "will you give me your word of honour +that you will never tell me a falsehood again?" + +She stirred slightly in his arms, and he felt her body grow soft and +yielding. "I didn't to you," she answered, "oh, I wouldn't to you." + +"Not to the others then. Will you promise?" + +Her warm young arm tightened about his neck. "I didn't mean to--I didn't +mean to," she protested between her sobs, "but they forced me to do it. +It was more than half their fault--they are so--so hateful! I tried to +think of something else, but there was nothing to say, and I knew you +would stand by me----" + +"You have almost broken my heart," he answered, "for you have lied, +Alice, you have lied." + +She lifted her head and the next instant he felt her mouth on his cheek, +"I wish I were dead! I have hurt you and I wish I were dead!" she cried. + +"It is not hurting me that I mind--you may do that and welcome. It is +hurting yourself, my child, my Alice," he answered; and pressing her +upturned face back on his arm, he bent over her in an ecstasy of +emotion, calling her his daughter, his darling, the one joy of his life. +The iron in his nature had melted beneath her warm touch, and he felt +again the thrill, half agony, half rapture, with which he had received +her into his arms on the day of her birth. That day was nearer to him +now than was the minute in which he stood, and he could trace still the +soft, babyish curves in the face which nestled so penitently on his arm. +His very fear for her moved him into a deeper tenderness, and the appeal +she made to him now was one with the appeal of her infancy, for its +power lay in her weakness, not in her strength. + +"Be truthful with me, Alice," he said, "and remember that nothing can +separate me from you." + +An hour later when he parted from her and went upstairs, he heard +Lydia's voice calling to him through her half open door, and turning +obediently, he entered her bedroom for the first time since the night of +his return. Now as then the luxury, the softness, of his wife's +surroundings produced in him a curious depression, an enervation of +body; and he stood for an instant vainly striving to close his nostrils +against the delicious perfume which floated from her lace-trimmed +dressing-table. + +Lydia, still in her light mourning gown, was standing, when he entered, +before a little marquetry desk in one corner, her eyes on an open letter +which she appeared to have left partially unread. + +"I wanted to tell you, Daniel," she began at once, approaching the point +with a directness which left him no time to wonder as to the purpose of +her summons, "that Alice's intimacy with Geoffrey Heath has already been +commented upon in Botetourt. Cousin Paulina has actually written to me +for an explanation." + +"Cousin Paulina?" he repeated vaguely, and remembered immediately that +the lady in question was his wife's one rich relation--an elderly female +who was greatly respected for her fortune, which she spent entirely in +gratifying her personal passion for trinkets. "Oh, yes," he added +flippantly, "the old lady who used to look like a heathen idol got up +for the sacrifice." + +He felt that his levity was out of place, yet he went on rashly because +he knew that he was doomed forever to appear at a disadvantage in +Lydia's presence. She would never believe in him--his best motives would +wear always to her the covering of hypocrisy; and the very hopelessness +of ever convincing her goaded him at times into the reckless folly of +despair. + +"She writes me that people are talking of it," she resumed, sweetly, as +if his untimely mirth had returned still-born into the vacancy from +which it emerged. + +"Who is this Geoffrey Heath you speak of so incessantly?" he demanded. +"There was a Heath, I remember, who had a place near us in the country, +and kept a barroom or a butcher's shop or something in town." + +"That was the father," replied Lydia, with a shudder which deepened the +slightly scornful curve of her lip. "He was a respectable old man, I +believe, and made his fortune quite honestly, however it was. It was +only after his son began to grow up that he became socially +ambitious----" + +"And is that all you have against him?" + +"Oh, there's nothing against the old man--nothing at least except the +glaring bad taste he showed in that monstrous house he built in Henry +Street. He's dead now, you know." + +"Then the son has all the money and the house, too, hasn't he?" + +"All he hasn't wasted, yes." + +As she spoke she subsided into a chair, with a graceful, eddying motion +of her black chiffon draperies, and continued the conversation with an +expression of smiling weariness. All her attitudes were effective, and +he was struck, while he stood, embarrassed and awkward, before her, by +the plaintive grace that she introduced into her smallest gesture. +Though he was aware that he saw her now too clearly for passion, the +appeal of her delicate fairness went suddenly to his head. + +"Then there's not much to be said for the chap, I suppose?" he asked +abruptly, fearing the prolonged strain of the silence. + +"Very little for him, but a good deal about him, according to Cousin +Paulina. It seems that three years ago he was sent away from the +University for something disgraceful--cheating at cards, I believe; and +since then he has been conspicuous chiefly because of his low +associations. How Alice met him, I could never understand--I can't +understand now." + +"And do you think she cares for him--that she even imagines that she +does?" he demanded, while his terror rose in his throat and choked back +his words. + +"She will not confess it--how could she?" replied Lydia wearily, "I +believe it is only wildness, recklessness, lack of discipline that +prompts her. Yet he is good-looking--in a vulgar way," she added in +disgust, "and Alice has always seemed to like vulgar things." + +Her eyes rested on him, not directly, but as if they merely included him +in their general pensive survey of the world; yet he read the accusation +in her gentle avoidance of his gaze as plainly as she had uttered in it +her clear, flute-like tones. + +"It is very important," she went on, "that she should be curbed in her +impulses, in her extravagance. Already her bills are larger than mine +and yet she is never satisfied with the amount of her allowance. We can +do nothing with her, Uncle Richard and I, but she seems to yield, in a +measure, to your influence, and we thought--we hoped----" + +"I will--I will," he answered. "I will give my life to help her if need +be. But Lydia," he broke out more earnestly, "you must stand by and aid +me for her sake, for the sake of our child, we must work together----" + +Half rising in her chair, she looked at him fixedly a moment, while he +saw her pupils dilate almost as if she were in physical fear. + +"But what can I do? I have done all I could," she protested, with an +injured look. By this look, without so much as a gesture, she put the +space of the whole room between them. The corners of her mouth quivered +and drooped, and he watched the pathos creep back into her light blue +eyes. "I have given up my whole life to the children since--since----" + +She broke off in a frightened whisper, but the unfinished sentence was +more expressive than a volley of reproaches would have been. There was +something in her thoughts too horrible to put into words, and this +something of which she could not bring herself to speak, would have had +no place in her existence except for him. He felt cowed suddenly, as if +he had been physically beaten and thrust aside. + +"You have been very brave--I know--I appreciate it all," he said, and +while he spoke he drew away from her until he stood with his back +against one of the amber satin curtains. Instinctively he put out his +hand for support, and as it closed over the heavy draperies, he felt +that the hard silken texture made his flesh creep. The physical +sensation, brief as it was, recalled in some strange way the effect upon +him of Lydia's smooth and shining surface when he had knelt before her +on the night of his homecoming. Yet it was with difficulty even now that +he could free himself from the conviction that her emotional apathy was +but one aspect of innocence. Would he admit to-day that what he had once +worshipped as purity of soul was but the frost of an unnatural coldness +of nature? All at once, as he looked at her, he found himself reminded +by her calm forehead, her classic features, of the sculptured front of +a marble tomb which he had seen in some foreign gallery. Was there +death, after all, not life hidden for him in her plaintive beauty? The +next instant, as he watched her, he told himself that such questions +belonged to the evil promptings of his own nature. + +"I realise all that you have been, all that you have suffered," he said +at last, aware that his words sounded hysterical in the icy constraint +which surrounded them. + +When his speech was out, his embarrassment became so great that he found +himself presently measuring the distance which divided him from the +closed door. With a last effort of will, he went toward her and +stretched out his hand in a gesture that was almost one of entreaty. + +"Lydia," he asked, "is it too painful for you to have me here? Would it +be any better for you if I went away?" + +As he moved toward her she bent over with a nervous, mechanical movement +to arrange her train, and before replying to his question, she laid each +separate fold in place. "Why, by no means," she answered, looking up +with her conventional smile. "It would only mean--wouldn't it?--that +people would begin to wonder all over again?" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE IRON BARS + + +As the days went on it seemed to him that his nature, repressed in so +many other directions, was concentrated at last in a single channel of +feeling. The one outlet was his passion for Alice, and nothing that +concerned her was too remote or too trivial to engross him--her clothes, +her friendships, the particular chocolate creams for which she had once +expressed a preference. To fill her life with amusements that would +withdraw her erring impulses from Geoffrey Heath became for a time his +absorbing purpose. + +At first he told himself in a kind of rapture that success was apparent +in his earliest and slightest efforts. For weeks Alice appeared to find +interest and animation in his presence. She flattered, scolded, caressed +and tyrannised, but with each day, each hour, she grew nearer his heart +and became more firmly interwoven into his life. + +Then suddenly a change came over her, and one day when she had been +kissing him with "butterfly kisses" on his forehead, he felt her +suddenly grow restless and draw back impatiently as if seeking a fresh +diversion. A bored look had come into her eyes and he saw the three +little wrinkles gather between her eyebrows. + +"Alice," he said, alarmed by the swift alteration, "are you tired of the +house? Shall we ride together?" + +She shook her head, half pettishly, half playfully, "I can't--I've an +engagement," she responded. + +"An engagement?" he repeated inquiringly. "Why, I thought we were always +to ride when it was fair." + +"I promised one of the girls to go to tea with her," she repeated, after +a minute. "It isn't a real tea, but she wanted to talk to me, so I said +I would go." + +"Well, I'm glad you did--don't give up the girls," he answered, relieved +at once by the explanation. + +In the evening when she returned, shortly after dark, "one of the girls" +as she called laughingly from the library, had come home for the night +with her. Ordway heard them chatting gayly together, but, when he went +in for a moment before going upstairs to dress, they lapsed immediately +into an embarrassed silence. Alice's visitor was a pretty, gray-eyed, +flaxen-haired young woman named Jenny Lane, who smiled in a frightened +way and answered "Yes--no," when he spoke to her, as if she offered him +the choice of his favourite monosyllable from her lips. Clearly the +subject which animated them was one in which, even as Alice's father, he +could have no share. + +For weeks after this it seemed to him that a silence fell gradually +between them--that silence of the heart which is so much more oppressive +than the mere outward silence of the lips. It was not, he told himself +again and again, that there had come a perceptible change in her +manner. She still met him at breakfast with her flower and her caress, +still flung herself into his arms at unexpected moments, still coaxed +and upbraided in her passionate, childish voice. Nevertheless, the +difference was there, and he recognised it with a pang even while he +demanded of himself in what breathless suspension of feeling it could +consist? Her caresses were as frequent, but the fervour, the +responsiveness, had gone out of them; and he was brought at last face to +face with the knowledge that her first vivid delight in him had departed +forever. The thing which absorbed her now was a thing in which he had no +share, no recognition; and true to her temperament, her whole impulsive +being had directed itself into this new channel. "She is young and it is +only natural that she should wish to have her school friends about her," +he thought with a smile. + +In the beginning it had been an easy matter to efface his personality +and stand out of the way of Alice's life, but as the weeks drew on into +months and the months into a year, he found that he had been left aside +not only by his daughter, but by the rest of the household as well. In +his home he felt himself to exist presently in an ignored, yet obvious +way like a familiar piece of household furniture, which is neither +commented upon nor wilfully overlooked. It would have occasioned, he +supposed, some vague exclamations of surprise had he failed to appear in +his proper place at the breakfast table, but as long as his accustomed +seat was occupied all further use for his existence seemed at an end. +He was not necessary, he was not even enjoyed, but he was tolerated. + +Before this passive indifference, which was worse to him than direct +hostility, he found that his sympathies, his impulses, and even his +personality, were invaded by an apathy that paralysed the very sources +of his will. He beheld himself as the cause of the gloom, the suspicion, +the sadness, that surrounded him, and as the cause, too, of Alice's +wildness and of the pathetic loneliness in which Lydia lived. But for +him, he told himself, there would have been no shadow upon the +household; and his wife's pensive smile was like a knife in his heart +whenever he looked up from his place at the table and met it unawares. +At Tappahannock he had sometimes believed that his past was a skeleton +which he had left behind; here he had grown, as the years went by, to +think of it as a coffin which had shut over him and from which there was +no escape. And with the realisation of this, a blighting remorse, a +painful humbleness awoke in his soul, and was revealed outwardly in his +face, in his walk, in his embarrassed movements. As he passed up and +down the staircase, he went softly lest the heavy sound of his footsteps +should become an annoyance to Lydia's sensitive ears. His manner lost +its boyish freedom and grew awkward and nervous, and when he gave an +order to the servants it seemed to him that a dreadful timidity sounded +in his voice. He began to grow old suddenly in a year, before middle age +had as yet had time to soften the way. + +Looking in the glass one morning, when he had been less than three years +in Botetourt, he discovered that the dark locks upon his forehead had +turned almost white, and that his shoulders were losing gradually their +youthful erectness of carriage. And it seemed to him that the courage +with which he might have once broken away and begun anew had departed +from him in this new and paralysing humility, which was like the +humility of a helpless and burdensome old age. + +After a day of peculiar loneliness, he was returning from Richard's +office on this same afternoon, when a voice called to him from beneath +the fringed linen cover of a little phaeton which had driven up to the +crossing. Turning in surprise he found Aunt Lucy holding the reins over +a fat pony, while she sat very erect, with her trim, soldierly figure +emerging from a mountain of brown-paper parcels. + +"This is the very chance I've been looking for, Daniel Ordway!" she +exclaimed, in her emphatic voice. "Do you know, sir, that you have not +entered my house once in the last three years?" + +"Yes," he replied, "I know--but the fact is that I have hardly been +anywhere since I came back." + +"And why is that?" she demanded sharply. + +He shook his head, "I don't know. Perhaps you can tell me." + +"Yes, I can tell you," she snapped back, with a rudeness which, in some +singular way, seemed to him kinder than the studied politeness that he +had met. "It's because, in spite of all you've gone through, you are +still more than half a fool, Daniel Ordway." + +"Oh, you're right, I dare say," he acknowledged bitterly. + +With a frown, which struck him curiously as the wrong side of a smile, +she nodded her head while she made room for him among the brown-paper +parcels on the low linen covered seat of the phaeton. "Come in here, I +want to talk to you," she said, "there's a little matter about which I +should like your help." + +"My help?" he repeated in astonishment, as a sensation of pleasure shot +through his heart. It was so seldom that anybody asked his help in +Botetourt. "Is the second green parrot dead, and do you want me to dig +the grave?" he inquired, checking his unseemly derision as he met her +warning glance. + +"Polly is perfectly well," she returned, rapping him smartly upon the +knee with her little tightly closed black fan which she carried as if it +were a baton, "but I do not like Richard Ordway." + +The suddenness of her announcement, following so inappropriately her +comment upon the health of the green parrot, caused him to start from +his seat in the amazement with which he faced her. Then he broke into an +echo of his old boyish merriment. "You don't?" he retorted flippantly. +"Well, Lydia does." + +Her eyes blinked rapidly in the midst of her wrinkled little face, and +bending over she flicked the back of the fat pony gently with the end +of the whip. "Oh, I'm not sure I like Lydia," she responded, "though, of +course, Lydia is a saint." + +"Yes, Lydia is a saint," he affirmed. + +"Well, I'm not talking about Lydia," she resumed presently, "though +there's something I've always had a burning curiosity to find out." For +an instant she held back, and then made her charge with a kind of +desperate courage. "Is she really a saint?" she questioned, "or is it +only the way that she wears her hair?" + +Her question was so like the spoken sound of his own dreadful suspicion +that it took away his breath completely, while he stared at her with a +gasp that was evenly divided between a laugh and a groan. + +"Oh, she's a saint, there's no doubt of that," he insisted loyally. + +"Then I'll let her rest," she replied, "and I'm glad, heaven knows, to +have my doubts at an end. But where do you imagine that I am taking +you?" + +"For a drive, I hope," he answered, smiling. + +"It's not," she rejoined grimly, "it's for a visit." + +"A visit?" he repeated, starting up with the impulse to jump over the +moving wheel, "but I never visit." + +She reached out her wiry little fingers, which clung like a bird's claw, +and drew him by force back upon the seat. + +"I am taking you to see Adam Crowley," she explained, "do you remember +him?" + +"Crowley?" he repeated the name as he searched his memory. "Why, yes, +he was my father's clerk for forty years, wasn't he? I asked when I came +home what had become of him. So he is still living?" + +"He was paralysed in one arm some years ago, and it seems he has lost +all his savings in some investment your father had advised him to make. +Of course, there was no legal question of a debt to him, but until the +day your father died he had always made ample provision for the old +man's support. Crowley had always believed that the allowance would be +continued--that there would be a mention made of him in the will." + +"And there was none?" + +"It was an oversight, Crowley is still convinced, for he says he had a +distinct promise." + +"Then surely my uncle will fulfil the trust? He is an honourable man." + +She shook her head. "I don't know that he is so much 'honourable' as he +is 'lawful.' The written obligation is the one which binds him like +steel, but I don't think he cares whether a thing is right or wrong, +just or unjust, as long as it is the law. The letter holds him, but I +doubt if he has ever even felt the motion of the spirit. If he ever felt +it," she concluded with grim humour, "he would probably try to drive it +out with quinine." + +"Are we going there now--to see Crowley, I mean?" + +"If you don't mind. Of course there may be nothing that you can do--but +I thought that you might, perhaps, speak to Richard about it." + +He shook his head, "No, I can't speak to my uncle, though I think you +are unjust to him," he answered, after a pause in which the full joy of +her appeal had swept through his heart, "but I have an income of my own, +you know, and out of this, I can help Crowley." + +For an instant she did not reply, and he felt her thin, upright little +figure grow rigid at his side. Then turning with a start, she laid her +hand, in its black lace mitten, upon his knee. + +"O my boy, you are your mother all over again!" she said. + +After this they drove on in silence down one of the shaded streets, +where rows of neat little houses, packed together like pasteboard boxes, +were divided from the unpaved sidewalks by low whitewashed fences. At +one of these doors the phaeton presently drew up, and dropping the reins +on the pony's back, Aunt Lucy alighted with a bound between the wheels, +and began with Ordway's help, to remove the paper parcels from the seat. +When their arms were full, she pushed open the gate, and led him up the +short walk to the door where an old man, wearing a knitted shawl, sat in +an invalid's chair beyond the threshold. At the sound of their footsteps +Crowley turned on them a cheerful wrinkled face which was brightened by +a pair of twinkling black eyes that gave him an innocent and merry look. + +"I knew you'd come around," he said, smiling with his toothless mouth +like an amiable infant. "Matildy has been complaining that the coffee +gave out at breakfast, but I said 'twas only a sign that you were +coming. Everything bad is the sign of something good, that's what I +say." + +"I've brought something better than coffee to-day, Adam," replied Aunt +Lucy, seating herself upon the doorstep. "This is Daniel Ordway--do you +remember him?" + +The old man bent forward, without moving his withered hand, which lay +outstretched on the cushioned arm of the chair, and it seemed to Ordway +that the smiling black eyes pierced to his heart. "Oh, I remember him, I +remember him," said Crowley, "poor boy--poor boy." + +"He's come back now," rejoined Aunt Lucy, raising her voice, "and he has +come to see you." + +"He's like his mother," remarked Crowley, almost in a whisper, "and I'm +glad of that, though his father was a good man. But there are some good +people who do more harm than bad ones," he added, "and I always knew +that old Daniel Ordway would ruin his son." A chuckle broke from him, +"but your mother: I can see her now running out bareheaded in the snow +to scold me for not having on my overcoat. She was always seeing with +other people's eyes, bless her, and feeling with other people's bodies." + +Dropping upon the doorstep, Ordway replaced the knitted shawl which had +slipped from the old man's shoulder. "I wonder how it is that you keep +so happy in spite of everything?" he said. + +"Happy?" repeated Crowley with a laugh. "Well, I don't know, but I am +not complaining. I've seen men who hadn't an ache in their bodies, who +were worse off than I am to-day. I tell you it isn't the thing that +comes to you, but the way you look at it that counts, and because you've +got a paralysed arm is no reason that you should have a paralysed heart +as well. I've had a powerful lot of suffering, but I've had a powerful +lot of happiness, too, and the suffering somehow, doesn't seem to come +inside of me to stay as the happiness does. You see, I'm a great +believer in the Lord, sir," he added simply, "and what I can't +understand, I don't bother about, but just take on trust." All the +cheerful wrinkles of his face shone peacefully as he talked. "It's true +there've been times when things have gone so hard I've felt that I'd +just let go and drop down to the bottom, but the wonderful part is that +when you get to the bottom there's still something down below you. It's +when you fall lowest that you feel most the Lord holding you up. It may +be that there ain't any bottom after all but I know if there is one the +Lord is surely waiting down there to catch you when you let go. He ain't +only there, I reckon, but He's in all the particular hard places on +earth much oftener than He's up in His heaven. He knows the poorhouse, +you may be sure, and He'll be there to receive me and tell me it ain't +so bad as it looks. I don't want to get there, but if I do it will come +a bit easier to think that the Lord has been there before me----" + +The look in his smiling, toothless face brought to Ordway, as he +watched him, the memory of the epileptic little preacher who had +preached in the prison chapel. Here, also, was that untranslatable +rapture of the mystic, which cannot be put into words though it passes +silently in its terrible joy from the heart of the speaker to the other +heart that is waiting. Again he felt his whole being dissolve in the +emotion which had overflowed his eyes that Sunday when he was a +prisoner. He remembered the ecstasy with which he had said to himself on +that day: "I have found the key!" and he knew now that this ecstasy was +akin to the light that had shone for him while he sat on the stage of +the town hall in Tappahannock. A chance word from the lips of a doting +old man, who saw the doors of the poorhouse swing open to receive him, +had restored to Ordway, with a miraculous clearness, the vision that he +had lost; and he felt suddenly that the hope with which he had come out +of the prison had never really suffered disappointment or failure. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE VISION AND THE FACT + + +As he walked home along one of the side streets, shaded by an irregular +row of flowering linden trees, it appeared to him that his life in +Botetourt, so unendurable an hour before, had been rendered suddenly +easy by a miracle, not in his surroundings, but in himself. His help had +been asked, and in the act of giving there had flowed back into his +heart the strength by which he might live his daily life. His unrest, +his loneliness, his ineffectiveness, showed to him now as the result of +some fatal weakness in his own nature--some failure in his personal +attitude to the people among whom he lived. + +Straight ahead of him a fine white dust drifted down from the blossoming +lindens, lying like powder on the roughly paved street, where the wind +blew it in soft swirls and eddies against the crumbling stone steps +which led down from the straight doorways of the old-fashioned houses. +The boughs overhead made a green arch through which the light fell, and +it was under this thick tent of leaves, that, looking up presently, he +saw Emily Brooke coming toward him. Not until she was so close to him +that he could hear the rustle of her dress, did she lift her eyes from +the pavement and meet his cry of welcome with a look of joyful +surprise. + +"Emily!" he cried, and at his voice, she stretched out her hand and +stood smiling at him with the soft and animated gaze which, it seemed to +him now, he had but dimly remembered. The thought of her had dwelt as a +vision in his memory, yet he knew, as he looked into her face, that the +ideal figure had lacked the charm, the radiance, the sparkling energy, +of the living substance. + +"So you came to Botetourt and did not send me word," he said. + +"No, I did not send you word," she answered, "and now I am leaving +within an hour." + +"And you would have gone without seeing me?" + +For an instant she hesitated, and he watched the joy in her face melt +into a sorrowful tenderness. "I knew that you were well and I was +satisfied. Would it have been kind to appear to you like an arisen ghost +of Tappahannock?" + +"The greatest kindness," he answered gravely, "that you--or anyone could +do me." + +She shook her head: "Kindness or not, I found that I could not do it." + +"And you go in an hour?" + +"My train leaves at seven o'clock. Is it nearly that?" + +He drew out his watch, a mechanical action which relieved the emotional +tension that stretched like a drawn cord between them. "It is not yet +six. Will you walk a little way with me down this street? There is still +time." + +As she nodded silently, they turned and went back along the side +street, under the irregular rows of lindens, in the direction from which +he had come. + +"One of the girls I used to teach sent for me when she was dying," she +said presently, as if feeling the need of some explanation of her +presence in Botetourt. "That was three days ago and the funeral was +yesterday. It is a great loss to me, for I haven't so many friends that +I can spare the few I love." + +He made no answer to her remark, and in the silence that followed, he +felt, with a strange ache at his heart, that the distance that separated +them was greater than it had been when she was in Tappahannock and he in +Botetourt. Then there had stretched only the luminous dream spaces +between their souls; now they stood divided by miles and miles of an +immovable reality. Was it possible that in making her a part of his +intense inner life, he had lost, in a measure, his consciousness of her +actual existence? Then while the vision still struggled blindly against +the fact, she turned toward him with a smile which lifted her once more +into the shining zone of spirits. + +"If I can feel that you are happy, that you are at peace, I shall ask +nothing more of God," she said. + +"I am happy to-day," he answered, "but if you had come yesterday, I +should have broken down in my weakness. Oh, I have been homesick for +Tappahannock since I came away!" + +"Yet Botetourt is far prettier to my eyes." + +"To mine also--but it isn't beauty, it is usefulness that I need. For +the last two years I have told myself night and day that I had no place +and no purpose--that I was the stone that the builders rejected." + +"And it is different now?" + +"Different? Yes, I feel as if I had been shoved suddenly into a place +where I fitted--as if I were meant, after all, to help hold things +together. And the change came--how do you think?" he asked, smiling. "A +man wanted money of me to keep him out of the poorhouse." + +The old gaiety was in his voice, but as she looked at him a ray of faint +sunshine fell on his face through a parting in the leaves overhead, and +she saw for the first time how much older he had grown since that last +evening in Tappahannock. The dark hair was all gray now, the lines of +the nose were sharper, the cheek bones showed higher above the bluish +hollows beneath. Yet the change which had so greatly aged him had +deepened the peculiar sweetness in the curves of his mouth, and this +sweetness, which was visible also in his rare smile, moved her heart to +a tenderness which was but the keener agony of renouncement. + +"I know how it is," she said slowly, "just as in Tappahannock you found +your happiness in giving yourself to others, so you will find it here." + +"If I can only be of use--perhaps." + +"You can be--you will be. What you were with us you will be again." + +"Yet it was different. There I had your help, hadn't I?" + +"And you shall have it here," she responded, brightly, though he saw +that her eyes were dim with tears. + +"Will you make me a promise?" he asked, stopping suddenly before some +discoloured stone steps "will you promise me that if ever you need a +friend--a strong arm, a brain to think for you--you will send me word?" + +She looked at him smiling, while her tears fell from her eyes. "I will +make no promise that is not for your sake as well as for mine," she +answered. + +"But it is for my sake--it is for my happiness." + +"Then I will promise," she rejoined gravely, "and I will keep it." + +"I thank you," he responded, taking the hand that she held out. + +At his words she had turned back, pausing a moment in her walk, as if +she had caught from his voice or his look a sense of finality in their +parting. "I have but a few minutes left," she said, "so I must walk +rapidly back or I shall be late." + +A sudden clatter of horses' hoofs on the cobblestones in the street +caused them to start away from each other, and turning his head, Ordway +saw Alice gallop furiously past him with Geoffrey Heath at her side. + +"How beautiful!" exclaimed Emily beneath her breath, for Alice as she +rode by had looked back for an instant, her glowing face framed in blown +masses of hair. + +"Yes, she is beautiful," he replied, and added after a moment as they +walked on, "she is my daughter." + +Her face brightened with pleasure. "Then you are happy--you must be +happy," she said. "Why, she looked like Brunhilde." + +For a moment he hesitated. "Yes," he answered at last, "she is very +beautiful--and I am happy." + +After this they did not speak again until they reached the iron gate +before the house in which she was staying. On his side he was caught up +into some ideal realm of feeling, in which he possessed her so utterly +that the meeting could not bring her nearer to him nor the parting take +her farther away. His longing, his unrest, and his failure, were a part +of his earthly nature which he seemed to have left below him in that +other life from which he had escaped. Without doubt he would descend to +it again, as he had descended at moments back into the body of his sin; +but in the immediate exaltation of his mood, his love had passed the +bounds of personality and entered into a larger and freer world. When +they parted, presently, after a casual good-bye, he could persuade +himself, almost without effort, that she went on with him in the soft +May twilight. + +At his door he found Lydia just returning from a drive, and taking her +wraps from her arm, he ascended the steps and entered the house at her +side. She had changed her mourning dress for a gown of pale gray cloth, +and he noticed at once that her beauty had lost in transparency and +become more human. + +"I thought you had gone riding with Alice," she said without looking at +him, as she stooped to gather up the ends of a lace scarf which had +slipped from her arm. + +"No, I was not with her," he answered. "I wanted to go, but she would +not let me." + +"Are you sure, then, that she was not with Geoffrey Heath?" + +"I am sure that she was with him, for they passed me not a half hour ago +as I came up." + +They had entered the library while he spoke, and crossing to the hearth, +where a small fire burned, Lydia looked up at him with her anxious gaze. +"I hoped at first that you would gain some influence over her," she +said, in a distressed voice, "but it seems now that she is estranged +even from you." + +"Not estranged, but there is a difference and I am troubled by it. She +is young, you see, and I am but a dull and sober companion for her." + +She shook her head with the little hopeless gesture which was so +characteristic of her. Only yesterday this absence of resolution, the +discontented droop of her thin, red lips, had worked him into a feeling +of irritation against her. But his vision of her to-day had passed +through some softening lens; and he saw her shallowness, her vanity, her +lack of passion, as spiritual infirmities which were not less to be +pitied than an infirmity of the body. + +"The end is not yet, though," he added cheerfully after a moment, "and +she will come back to me in time when I am able really to help her." + +"Meanwhile is she to be left utterly uncontrolled?" + +"Not if we can do otherwise. Only we must go quietly and not frighten +her too much." + +Again she met his words with the resigned, hopeless movement of her +pretty head in its pearl gray bonnet. "I have done all I can," she said, +"and it has been worse than useless. Now you must try if your method is +better than mine." + +"I am trying," he answered smiling. + +For an instant her gaze fluttered irresolutely over him, as if she were +moved by a passing impulse to a deeper utterance. That this impulse +concerned Alice he was vaguely aware, for when had his wife ever spoken +to him upon a subject more directly personal? Apart from their children +he knew there was no bond between them--no memories, no hopes, no ground +even for the building of a common interest. Lydia adored her children, +he still believed, but when there was nothing further to be said of Dick +or of Alice, their conversation flagged upon the most trivial topics. +Upon the few unfortunate occasions when he had attempted to surmount the +barrier between them, she had appeared to dissolve, rather than to +retreat, before his approach. Yet despite her soft, cloud-like exterior, +he had discovered that the rigour of her repulsion had hardened to a +vein of iron in her nature. What must her life be, he demanded in a +sudden passion of pity, when the strongest emotion she had ever known +was the aversion that she now felt to him? All the bitterness in his +heart melted into compassion at the thought, and he resisted an impulse +to take her into his arms and say: "I know, I understand, and I am +sorry." Yet he was perfectly aware that if he were to do this, she would +only shrink farther away from him, and look up at him with fear and +mystification, as if she suspected him of some hidden meaning, of some +strategic movement against her impregnable reserve. Her whole relation +to him had narrowed into the single instinct of self-defence. If he came +unconsciously a step nearer, if he accidentally touched her hand as he +passed, he had grown to expect the flaring of her uncontrollable +repugnance in the heightened red in her cheeks. "I know that I am +repulsive to her, that when she looks at me she still sees the convict," +he thought, "and yet the knowledge of this only adds to the pity and +tenderness I feel." + +Lydia had moved through the doorway, but turning back in the hall, she +spoke with a return of confidence, as if the fact of the threshold, +which she had put between them, had restored to her, in a measure, the +advantage that she had lost. + +"Then I shall leave Alice in your hands. I can do nothing more," she +said. + +"Give me time and I will do all that you cannot," he answered. + +When she had gone upstairs, he crossed the hall to the closed door of +the library, and stopped short on hearing Alice's voice break out into +song. The girl was still in her riding habit, and the gay French air on +her lips was in accord with the spirited gesture with which she turned +to him as he appeared. Her beauty would have disarmed him even without +the kiss with which she hastened to avert his reproach. + +"Alice, can you kiss me when you know you have broken your promise?" + +"I made no promise," she answered coldly, drawing away. "You told me not +to go riding with Geoffrey, but it was you that said it, not I, and you +said it only because mamma made you. Oh, I knew all the time that it was +she!" + +Her voice broke with anger and before he could restrain her, she ran +from the room and up the staircase. An instant afterward he heard a door +slam violently above his head. Was she really in love with Geoffrey +Heath? he asked in alarm, or was the passion she had shown merely the +outburst of an undisciplined child? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH + + +At breakfast Alice did not appear, and when he went upstairs to her +room, she returned an answer in a sullen voice through her closed door. +All day his heart was oppressed by the thought of her, but to his +surprise, when he came home to luncheon, she met him on the steps with a +smiling face. It was evident to him at the first glance that she meant +to ignore both the cause and the occasion of last evening's outburst; +and he found himself yielding to her determination before he realised +all that his evasion of the subject must imply. But while she hung upon +his neck, with her cheek pressed to his, it was impossible that he +should speak any word that would revive her anger against him. Anything +was better than the violence with which she had parted from him the +evening before. He could never forget his night of anguish, when he had +strained his ears unceasingly for some stir in her room, hoping that a +poignant realisation of his love for her would bring her sobbing and +penitent to his door before dawn. + +Now when he saw her again for the first time, she had apparently +forgotten the parting which had so tortured his heart. + +"You've been working too hard, papa, and you're tired," she remarked, +rubbing the furrows between his eyebrows in a vain endeavour to smooth +them out. "Are you obliged to go back to that hateful office this +afternoon?" + +"I've some work that will keep me there until dark, I fear," he replied. +"It's a pity because I'd like a ride of all things." + +"It is a pity, poor dear," protested Alice, but he noticed that there +was no alteration in her sparkling gaiety. Was there, indeed, almost a +hint of relief in her tone? and was this demonstrative embrace but a +guarded confession of her gratitude for his absence? Something in her +manner--a veiled excitement in her look, a subtle change in her +voice--caused him to hold her to him in a keener tenderness. It was on +his lips to beg for her confidence, to remind her of his sympathy in +whatever she might feel or think--to assure her even of his tolerance of +Geoffrey Heath. But in the instant when he was about to speak, a sudden +recollection of the look with which she had turned from him last +evening, checked the impulse before it had had time to pass into words. +And so because of his terror of losing her, he let her go at last in +silence from his arms. + +His office work that afternoon was heavier than usual, for in the midst +of his mechanical copying and filing, he was abstracted by the memory of +that strange, unnatural vivacity in Alice's face. Then in the effort to +banish the disturbing recollection, he recalled old Adam Crowley, +wrapped in his knitted shawl, on the doorstep of his cottage. A check of +Richard's contributing six hundred dollars toward the purchase of a new +organ for the church he attended gave Daniel his first opportunity to +mention the old man to his uncle. + +"I saw Crowley the other day," he began abruptly, "the man who was my +father's clerk for forty years, and whose place," he added smiling, "I +seem to have filled." + +"Ah, indeed," remarked Richard quietly. "So he is still living?" + +"His right arm has been paralysed, as you know, and he is very poor. All +his savings were lost in some investments he made by my father's +advice." + +"So I have heard--it was most unfortunate." + +"He had always been led to believe, I understand, that he would be +provided for by my father's will." + +Richard laid down his pen and leaned thoughtfully back in his chair. "He +has told me so," he rejoined, "but we have only his word for it, as +there was no memorandum concerning him among my brother's papers." + +"But surely it was well known that father had given him a pension. Aunt +Lucy was perfectly aware of it--they talked of it together." + +"During his lifetime he did pay Crowley a small monthly allowance in +consideration of his past services. But his will was an extremely +careful document--his bequests are all made in a perfectly legal form." + +"Was not this will made some years ago, however, before the old man +became helpless and lost his money?" + +Richard nodded: "I understood as much from Crowley when he came to me +with his complaint. But, as I reminded him, it would have been a +perfectly simple matter for Daniel to have made such a bequest in a +codicil--as he did in your case," he concluded deliberately. + +The younger man met his gaze without flinching. "The will, I believe, +was written while I was in prison," he observed. + +"Upon the day following your conviction. By a former will, which he then +destroyed, he had bequeathed to you his entire estate. You understand, +of course," he pursued, after a pause in which he had given his nephew +full time to possess himself of the information, as well as of the +multiplied suggestions that he had offered, "that the income you receive +now comes from money that is legally your own. If it should ever appear +advisable for me to do so, I am empowered to make over to you the sum of +one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in securities. The principal is +left in my hands merely because it is to your interest that I should +keep an eye on the investments." + +"Yes, I understand, and I understand, too, that but for your insistence +my father would probably have left me nothing." + +"I felt very strongly that he had no right to disinherit you," returned +Richard. "In my eyes he made a grave mistake in refusing to lend you +support at your trial----" + +"As you did, I acknowledge gratefully," interrupted Daniel, and wondered +why the fact had aroused in him so little appreciation. As far as the +observance of the conventional virtues were concerned, Richard Ordway, +he supposed, was, and had been all his life, a good man, yet something +in his austere excellence froze instantly all the gentler impulses in +his nephew's heart. It was impossible after this to mention again the +subject of Crowley, so going back to his work, he applied himself to his +copying until Richard put down his papers and left the office. Then he +locked his desk wearily and followed his uncle out into the street. + +A soft May afternoon was just closing, and the street lamps glimmered, +here and there, like white moths out of the mist which was fragrant with +honeysuckle and roses. An old lamplighter, who was descending on his +ladder from a tall lamppost at the corner, looked down at Ordway with a +friendly and merry face. + +"The days will soon be so long that you won't be needing us to light you +home," he remarked, as he came down gingerly, his hands grasping the +rungs of the ladder above his head. When he landed at Daniel's side he +began to tell him in a pleasant, garrulous voice about his work, his +rheumatism and the strange sights that he had seen in his rounds for so +many years. "I've seen wonders in my day, you may believe it," he went +on, chuckling, "I've seen babies in carriages that grew up to be brides +in orange blossoms, and then went by me later as corpses in hearses. +I've seen this town when it warn't mo'n a little middlin' village, and +I've seen soldiers dyin' in blood in this very street." A train went by +with a rush along the gleaming track that ran through the town. "An' +I've known the time when a sight like that would have skeered folks to +death," he added. + +For a minute Ordway looked back, almost wistfully, after the flying +train. Then with a friendly "good-bye!" he parted from the lamplighter +and went on his way. + +When he reached home he half expected to find Alice waiting for him in +the twilight on the piazza, but, to his surprise, Lydia met him as he +entered the hall and asked him, in a voice which sounded as if she were +speaking in the presence of servants, to come with her into the library. +There she closed the door upon him and inquired in a guarded tone: + +"Has Alice been with you this afternoon? Have you seen or heard anything +of her?" + +"Not since luncheon. Why, I thought that she was at home with one of the +girls." + +"It seems she left the house immediately after you. She wore her dark +blue travelling dress, and one of the servants saw her at the railway +station at three o'clock." + +For an instant the room swam before his eyes. "You believe, then, that +she has gone off?" he asked in an unnatural voice, "that she has gone +off with Geoffrey Heath?" + +In the midst of his own hideous anguish he was impressed by the perfect +decency of Lydia's grief--by the fact that she wore her anxiety as an +added grace. + +"I have telephoned for Uncle Richard," she said in a subdued tone, "and +he has just sent me word that after making inquiries, he learned that +Geoffrey Heath went to Washington on the afternoon train." + +"And Alice is with him!" + +"If she is not, where is she?" Her eyes filled with tears, and sinking +into a chair she dropped her face in her clasped hands. "Oh, I wish +Uncle Richard would come," she moaned through her fingers. + +Again he felt a smothered resentment at this implicit reliance upon +Richard Ordway. "We must make sure first that she is gone," he said, +"and then it will be time enough to consider ways and means of bringing +her back." + +Turning abruptly away from her, he went out of the library and up the +staircase to Alice's room, which was situated directly across the hall +from his own. At the first glance it seemed to him that nothing was +missing, but when he looked at her dressing-table in the alcove, he +found that it had been stripped of her silver toilet articles, and that +her little red leather bag, which he had filled with banknotes a few +days ago, was not in the top drawer where she kept it. Something in the +girl's chamber, so familiar, so redolent of associations with her bright +presence, tore at his heart with a fresh sense of loss, like a gnawing +pain that fastens into a new wound. On the bed he saw her pink flannel +dressing-gown, with the embroidered collar which had so delighted her +when she had bought it; on the floor at one side lay her pink quilted +slippers, slightly soiled from use; and between the larger pillows was +the delicate, lace-trimmed baby's pillow upon which she slept. The +perfume of her youth, her freshness, was still in the room, as if she +had gone from it for a little while through a still open door. + +At a touch on his arm he looked round startled, to find one of the +servants--the single remaining slave of the past generation--rocking her +aged body as she stood at his side. + +"She ain' gwine come back no mo'--Yes, Lawd, she ain' gwine come back no +mo'. Whut's done hit's done en hit cyarn be undone agin." + +"Why, Aunt Mehaley, what do you mean?" he demanded sternly, oppressed, +in spite of himself by her wailing voice and her African superstition. + +"I'se seen er tur'ble heap done in my day wid dese hyer eyes," resumed +the old negress, "but I ain' never seen none un um undone agin atter +deys wunst been done. You kin cut down er tree, but you cyarn' mek hit +grow back togedder. You kin wring de neck er a rooster, but you cyarn' +mek him crow. Yes, my Lawd, hit's easy to pull down, but hit's hard to +riz up. I'se ole, Marster, en I'se mos' bline wid lookin', but I ain' +never seen whut's done undone agin." + +She tottered out, still wailing in her half-crazed voice, and hastily +shutting the drawers of the dressing-table, he went downstairs again to +where Lydia awaited him in the library. + +"There's no doubt, I fear, that she's gone with Heath," he said, with a +constraint into which he had schooled himself on the staircase. "As he +appears to have stopped at Washington, I shall take the next train +there, which leaves at nine-twenty-five. If they are married----" + +He broke off, struck by the pallor that overspread her face. + +"But they are married! They must be married!" she cried in terror. + +For an instant he stared back at her white face in a horror as great as +hers. Was it the first time in his life, he questioned afterwards, that +he had been brought face to face with the hideous skeletons upon which +living conventions assume a semblance of truth? + +"I hope to heaven that he has _not_ married her!" he exclaimed in a +passion from which she shrank back trembling. "Good God! do you want me +to haggle with a cad like that to make him marry my child?" + +"And if he doesn't? what then?" moaned Lydia, in a voice that seemed to +fade away while she spoke. + +"If he doesn't I shall be almost tempted to bless his name. Haven't you +proved to me that he is a cheat and a brute and a libertine, and yet you +dare to tell me that I must force him to marry Alice. Oh, if he will +only have the mercy to leave her free, I may still save her!" he said. + +She looked at him with dilated eyes as if rooted in fear to the spot +upon which she stood. "But the consequences," she urged weakly at last +in a burst of tears. + +"Oh, I'll take the consequences," he retorted harshly, as he went out. + +An hour later, when he was settled in the rushing train, it seemed to +him that he was able to find comfort in the words with which he had +separated from his wife. Let Alice do what she would, there was always +hope for her in the thought that he might help her to bear, even if he +could not remove from her, the consequences of her actions. Could so +great a force as his love for her fail to avert from her young head at +least a portion of her inevitable disillusionment? The recollection of +her beauty, of her generosity, and of the wreck of her womanhood almost +before it had begun, not only added to his suffering, but seemed in some +inexplicable way to increase his love. The affection he had always felt +for her was strengthened now by that touch of pity which lends a deeper +tenderness to all human relations. + +Upon reaching Washington he found that a shower had come up, and the +pavements were already wet when he left the station. He had brought no +umbrella, but he hardly heeded this in the eagerness which drove him +from street to street in his search for his child. After making vain +inquiries at several of the larger hotels, he had begun to feel almost +hopeless, when going into the newest and most fashionable of them all, +he discovered that "Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Heath" had been assigned an +apartment there an hour before. In answer to his question the clerk +informed him that the lady had ordered her dinner served upstairs, +leaving at the same time explicit instructions that she was "not at +home" to anyone who should call. But in spite of this rebuff, he drew +out his card, and sat down in a chair in the brilliantly lighted lobby. +He had selected a seat near a radiator in the hope of drying his damp +clothes, and presently a little cloud of steam rose from his shoulders +and drifted out into the shining space. As he watched the gorgeous, +over-dressed women who swept by him, he remembered as one remembers a +distant dream, the years when his life had been spent among such crowds +in just such a dazzling glare of electric light. It appeared false and +artificial to him now, but in the meantime, he reflected, while he +looked on, he had been in prison. + +A voice at his elbow interrupted his thoughts, and turning in response +to an invitation from a buttoned sleeve, he entered an elevator and was +borne rapidly aloft among a tightly wedged group of women who were +loudly bewailing their absence from the theatre. It was with difficulty +that he released himself at the given signal from his escort, and +stepped out upon the red velvet carpet which led to Alice's rooms. In +response to a knock from the boy who had accompanied him, the door flew +open with a jerk, and Alice appeared before him in a bewildering effect +of lace and pink satin. + +"O papa, papa, you naughty darling!" she exclaimed, and was in his arms +before he had time to utter the reproach on his lips. + +With her head on his breast, he was conscious at first only of an +irresponsible joy, like the joy of the angels for whom evil no longer +exists. To know that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was in +his arms, seemed sufficient delight, not only unto the day, but unto his +whole future as well. Then the thought of what it meant to find her thus +in her lace and satin came over him, and drawing slightly away he looked +for the first time into her face. + +"Alice, what does it mean?" he asked, as he kissed her. + +Pushing the loosened hair back from her forehead, she met his question +with a protesting pout. + +"It means that you're a wicked boy to run away from home like this and +be all by yourself in a bad city," she responded with a playful shake of +her finger. Then she caught his hand and drew him down on the sofa +beside her in the midst of the filmy train of her tea-gown. "If you +promise never to do it again, I shan't tell mamma on you," she added, +with a burst of light-hearted merriment. + +"Where were you married, Alice? and who did it?" he asked sternly. + +At his tone a ripple of laughter broke from her lips, and reaching for +her little red leather bag on the table, she opened it and tossed a +folded paper upon his knees. "I didn't ask his name," she responded, +"but you can find it all written on that, I suppose." + +"And you cared nothing for me?--nothing for my anxiety, my distress?" + +"I always meant to telegraph you, of course. Geoffrey has gone down now +to do it." + +"But were you obliged to leave home in this way? If you had told me you +loved him, I should have understood--should have sympathised." + +"Oh, but mamma wouldn't, and I had to run off. Of course, I wanted a big +wedding like other girls, and a lot of bridesmaids and a long veil, but +I knew you'd never consent to it, so I made up my mind just to slip away +without saying a word. Geoffrey is so rich that I can make up afterwards +for the things I missed when I was married. This is what he gave me +to-day. Isn't it lovely?" + +Baring her throat she showed him a pearl necklace hidden beneath her +lace collar. "We're sailing day after to-morrow," she went on, +delightedly, "and we shall go straight to Paris because I am dying to +see the shops. I wouldn't run away with him until he promised to take me +there." + +There was no regret in her mind, no misgiving, no disquietude. The +thought of his pain had not marred for an instant the pleasure of her +imaginary shopping. "O papa, I am happy, so happy!" she sang aloud, +springing suddenly to her full height and standing before him in her +almost barbaric beauty--from the splendid hair falling upon her +shoulders to the little feet that could not keep still for sheer joy of +living. He saw her red mouth glow and tremble as she bent toward him. +"To think that I'm really and truly out of Botetourt at last!" she +cried. + +"Then you've no need of me and I may as well go home?" he said a little +wistfully as he rose. + +At this she hung upon his neck for a minute with her first show of +feeling. "I'd rather you wouldn't stay till Geoffrey comes back," she +answered, abruptly releasing him, "because it would be a surprise to him +and he's always so cross when he's surprised. He has a perfectly awful +temper," she confided in a burst of frankness, "but I've learned exactly +how to manage him, so it doesn't matter. Then he's so handsome, too. I +shouldn't have looked at him twice if he hadn't been handsome. Now, go +straight home and take good care of yourself and don't get fat and bald +before I come back." + +She kissed him several times, laughing in little gasps, while she held +him close in her arms. Then putting him from her, she pushed him gently +out into the hall. As the door closed on her figure, he felt that it +shut upon all that was living or warm in his heart. + + + + +BOOK FOURTH + +LIBERATION + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE INWARD LIGHT + + +On the day that he returned to Botetourt, it seemed to Ordway that the +last vestige of his youth dropped from him; and one afternoon six months +later, as he passed some schoolboys who were playing ball in the street, +he heard one of them remark in an audible whisper: "Just wait till that +old fellow over there gets out of the way." Since coming home again his +interests, as well as his power of usefulness, had been taken from him; +and the time that he had spent in prison had aged him less than the +three peaceful years which he had passed in Botetourt. All that +suffering and experience could not destroy had withered and died in the +monotonous daily round which carried him from his home to Richard's +office and back again from Richard's office to his home. + +Outwardly he had grown only more quiet and gentle, as people are apt to +do who approach the middle years in a position of loneliness and +dependence. To Richard and to Lydia, who had never entirely ceased to +watch him, it appeared that he had at last "settled down," that he might +be, perhaps, trusted to walk alone; and it was with a sensation of +relief that his wife observed the intense youthful beam fade from his +blue eyes. When his glance grew dull and lifeless, and his features fell +gradually into the lines of placid repose which mark the body's +contentment rather than the spirit's triumph, it seemed to her that she +might at last lay aside the sleepless anxiety which had been her +marriage portion. + +"He has become quite like other people now," she said one day to +Richard, "do you know that he has grown to take everything exactly as a +matter of course, and I really believe he enjoys what he eats." + +"I'm glad of that," returned Richard, "for I've noticed that he is +looking very far from well. I advised him several weeks ago to take care +of that cough, but he seems to have some difficulty in getting rid of +it." + +"He hasn't been well since Alice's marriage," observed Lydia, a little +troubled. "You know he travelled home from Washington in wet clothes and +had a spell of influenza afterward. He's had a cold ever since, for I +hear him coughing a good deal after he first goes to bed." + +"You'd better make him attend to it, I think, though with his fine chest +there's little danger of anything serious." + +"Do you suppose Alice's marriage could have sobered him? He's grown very +quiet and grave, and I dare say it's a sign that his wildness has gone +out of him, poor fellow. You remember how his laugh used to frighten me? +Well, he never laughs like that now, though he sometimes stares hard at +me as if he were looking directly through me, and didn't even know that +he was doing it." + +As she spoke she glanced out of the window and her eyes fell on Daniel, +who came slowly up the gravelled walk, his head bent over an armful of +old books he carried. + +"He visits a great deal among the poor," remarked Richard, "and I think +that's good for him, provided, of course, that he does it with +discretion." + +"I suppose it is," said Lydia, though she added immediately, "but aren't +the poor often very immoral?" + +A reply was on Richard's lips, but before he could utter it, the door +opened and Daniel entered with the slow, almost timid, step into which +he had schooled himself since his return to Botetourt. As he saw Richard +a smile--his old boyish smile of peculiar sweetness--came to his lips, +but without speaking, he crossed to the table and laid down the books he +carried. + +"If those are old books, won't you remember to take them up to your +room, Daniel?" said Lydia, in her tone of aggrieved sweetness. "They +make such a litter in the library." + +He started slightly, a nervous affection which had increased in the last +months, and looked at her with an apologetic glance. As he stood there +she had again that singular sensation of which she had spoken to +Richard, as if he were gazing through her and not at her. + +"I beg your pardon," he answered, "I remember now that I left some here +yesterday." + +"Oh, it doesn't matter, of course," she responded pleasantly, "it's only +that I like to keep the house tidy, you know." + +"They do make rather a mess," he admitted, and gathering them up again, +he carried them out of the room and up the staircase. + +They watched his bent gray head disappear between the damask curtains in +the doorway, and then listened almost unconsciously for the sound of his +slow gentle tread on the floor above. + +"There was always too much of the dreamer about him, even as a child," +commented Richard, when the door was heard to close over their heads, +"but he seems contented enough now with his old books, doesn't he?" + +"Contented? Yes, I believe he is even happy. I never say much to him +because, you see, there is so very little for us to talk about. It is a +dreadful thing to confess," she concluded resolutely, "but the truth is +I've been always a little afraid of him since--since----" + +"Afraid?" he looked at her in astonishment. + +"Well, not exactly afraid--but nervous with a kind of panic shudder at +times--a dread of his coming close to me, of his touching me, of his +wanting things of me." A shiver ran through her and she bit her lip as +if to hide the expression of horror upon her face. "There's nobody else +on earth that I would say it to, but when he first came back I used to +have nightmares about it. I could never get it out of my mind a minute +and if they left me alone with him, I wanted almost to scream with +nervousness. It's silly I know, and I can't explain it even to you, but +there were times when I shrieked aloud in my sleep because I dreamed +that he had come into my room and touched me. I felt that I was wrong +and foolish, but I couldn't help it, and I tried--tried--oh, so hard to +bear things and to be brave and patient." + +The tears fell from her eyes on her clasped hands, but her attitude of +sorrow only made more appealing the Madonna-like loveliness of her +features. + +"You've been a saint, Lydia," he answered, patting her drooping shoulder +as he rose to his feet. "Poor girl, poor girl! and no daughter of my own +could be dearer to me," he added in his austere sincerity of manner. + +"I have tried to do right," replied Lydia, lifting her pure eyes to his +in an overflow of religious emotion. + +Meanwhile the harmless object of their anxiety sat alone in his room +under a green lamp, with one of the musty books he had bought open upon +his knees. He was not reading, for his gaze was fixed on the opposite +wall, and there was in his eyes something of the abstracted vision which +Lydia dreaded. It was as if his intellect, forced from the outward +experience back into the inner world of thought, had ended by projecting +an image of itself into the space at which he looked. While he sat there +the patient, apologetic smile with which he had answered to his wife +was still on his lips. + +"I suppose it's because I'm getting old that people and things no longer +make me suffer," he said to himself, "it's because I'm getting old that +I can look at Lydia unmoved, that I can feel tenderness for her even +while I see the repulsion creep into her eyes. It isn't her fault, after +all, that she loathes me, nor is it mine. Yes, I'm certainly an old +fellow, the boy was right. At any rate, it's pleasanter, on the whole, +than being young." + +Closing the book, he laid it on the table, and leaned forward with his +chin on his hands. "But if I'd only known when I was young!" he added, +"if I'd only known!" His past life rose before him as a picture that he +had seen, rather than as a road along which he had travelled; and he +found himself regarding it almost as impersonally as he might have +regarded the drawing upon the canvas. The peril of the inner life had +already begun to beset him--that mysterious power of reliving one's +experience with an intensity which makes the objective world appear dull +and colourless by contrast. It was with an effort at times that he was +able to detach his mind from the contemplative habit into which he had +fallen. Between him and his surroundings there existed but a single +bond, and this was the sympathy which went out of him when he was +permitted to reach the poor and the afflicted. To them he could still +speak, with them he could still be mirthful; but from his wife, his +uncle, and the members of his own class, he was divided by that +impenetrable wall of social tradition. In his home he had ceased to +laugh, as Lydia had said; but he could still laugh in the humbler houses +of the poor. They had received him as one of themselves, and for this +reason alone he could remember how to be merry when he was with them. To +the others, to his own people, he felt himself to be always an outsider, +a reclaimed castaway, a philanthropic case instead of an individual; and +he knew that if there was one proof the more to Lydia that he was in the +end a redeemed character, it was the single fact that he no longer +laughed in her presence. It was, he could almost hear her say, +unbecoming, if not positively improper, that a person who had spent five +years in prison should be able to laugh immoderately afterward; and the +gravity of his lips was in her eyes, he understood, the most +satisfactory testimony to the regeneration of his heart. + +And yet Lydia, according to her vision, was a kind, as well as a +conscientious woman. The pity of it was that if he were to die now, +three years after his homecoming, she would probably reconstruct an +imaginary figure of him in her memory, and wear crape for it with +appropriate grace and dignity. The works of the imagination are +manifold, he thought with a grim humour, even in a dull woman. + +But as there was not likely to occur anything so dramatic, in the +immediate present, as his death, he wondered vaguely what particular +form of aversion his wife's attitude would next express. Or could it be +that since he had effaced himself so utterly, he hardly dared to listen +to the sound of his footsteps in the house, she had grown to regard him +with a kind of quiet tolerance, as an object which was unnecessary, +perhaps, yet entirely inoffensive? He remembered now that during those +terrible first years in prison he had pursued the thought of her with a +kind of hopeless violence, yet to-day he could look back upon her +desertion of him in his need with a compassion which forgave the +weakness that it could not comprehend. That, too, he supposed was a part +of the increasing listlessness of middle age. In a little while he would +look forward, it might be, to the coming years without dread--to the +long dinners when he sat opposite to her with the festive bowl of +flowers between them, to the quiet evenings when she lingered for a few +minutes under the lamp before going to her room--those evenings which +are the supreme hours of love or of despair. Oh, well, he would grow +indifferent to the horror of these things, as he had already grown +indifferent to the soft curves of her body. Yes, it was a thrice blessed +thing, this old age to which he was coming! + +Then another memory flooded his heart with the glow of youth, and he saw +Emily, as she had appeared to him that night in the barn more than six +years ago, when she had stood with the lantern held high above her head +and the red cape slipping back from her upraised arm. A sharp pain shot +through him, and he dropped his eyes as if he had met a blow. That was +youth at which he had looked for one longing instant--that was youth and +happiness and inextinguishable desire. + +For a moment he sat with bent head; then with an effort he put the +memory from him, and opened his book at the page where he had left off. +As he did so there was a tap at his door, and when he had spoken, Lydia +came in timidly with a letter in her hand. + +"This was put into Uncle Richard's box by mistake," she said, "and he +has just sent it over." + +He took it from her and seeing that it was addressed in Baxter's +handwriting, laid it, still unopened, upon the table. "Won't you sit +down?" he asked, pushing forward the chair from which he had risen. + +A brief hesitation showed in her face; then as he turned away from her +to pick up some scattered papers from the floor, she sat down with a +tentative, nervous manner. + +"Are you quite sure that you're well, Daniel?" she inquired. "Uncle +Richard noticed to-day that you coughed a good deal in the office. I +wonder if you get exactly the proper kind of food?" + +He nodded, smiling. "Oh, I'm all right," he responded, "I'm as hard as +nails, you know, and always have been." + +"Even hard people break down sometimes. I wish you would take a tonic or +see a doctor." + +Her solicitude surprised him, until he remembered that she had never +failed in sympathy for purely physical ailments. If he had needed +bodily healing instead of mental, she would probably have applied it +with a conscientious devotedness. + +"I am much obliged to you, but I'm really not sick," he insisted, "it is +very good of you, however." + +"It is nothing more than my duty," she rejoined, sweetly. + +"Well, that may be, but there's nothing to prevent my being obliged to +you for doing your duty." + +Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat looking at him with her +gentle, uncomprehending glance. "I wish, all the same," she murmured, +"that you would let me send you a mustard plaster to put on your chest." + +He shook his head without replying in words to her suggestion. + +"Do you know it is three months since we had a letter from Alice," he +said, "and six since she went away?" + +"Oh, it's that then? You have been worrying about Alice?" + +"How can I help it? We hardly know even that she is living." + +"I've thought of her day and night since her marriage, though it's just +as likely, isn't it, that she's taken up with the new countries and her +new clothes?" + +"Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful uncertainty that +kills." + +With a sigh she looked down at her slippered feet. "I was thinking +to-day what a comfort Dick is to me--to us all," she said, "one is so +sure of him and he is doing so splendidly at college." + +"Yes," he agreed, "Dick is a comfort. I wish poor Alice was more like +him." + +"She was always wild, you remember, never like other children, and it +was impossible to make her understand that some things were right and +some wrong. Yet I never thought that she would care for such a loud, +vulgar creature as Geoffrey Heath." + +"Did she care for him?" asked Daniel, almost in a whisper, "or was it +only that she wanted to see Paris?" + +"Well, she may have improved him a little--at least let us hope so," she +remarked as if she had not heard his question. "He has money, at any +rate, and that is what she has always wanted, though I fear even +Geoffrey's income will be strained by her ceaseless extravagance." + +As she finished he thought of her own youth, which she had evidently +forgotten, and it seemed to him that the faults she blamed most in Alice +were those which she had overcome patiently in her own nature. + +"I could stand anything better than this long suspense," he said gently. + +"It does wear one out," she rejoined. "I am very, very sorry for you." + +Some unaccustomed tone in her voice--a more human quality, a deeper +cadence, made him wonder in an impulse of self-reproach if, after all, +the breach between them was in part of his own making? Was it still +possible to save from the ruin, if not love, at least human +companionship? + +"Lydia," he said, "it isn't Alice, it is mostly loneliness, I think." + +Rising from her chair she stood before him with her vague, sweet smile +playing about her lips. + +"It is natural that you should feel depressed with that cough," she +remarked, "I really wish you would let me send you a mustard plaster." + +As the cough broke out again, he strangled it hilariously in a laugh. +"Oh, well, if it's any comfort to you, I don't mind," he responded. + +When she had gone he picked up Baxter's letter from the table and opened +it with trembling fingers. What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, +but as he read the words, written so laboriously in Baxter's big +scrawling writing, he felt that his energy returned to him with the +demand for action--for personal responsibility. + + "I don't know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke's death three + months ago," the letter ran, "but this is to say that Mr. Beverly + dropped down with a paralytic stroke last week; and now since he's + dead and buried, the place is to be sold for debt and the children + sent off to school to a friend of Miss Emily's where they can go + cheap. Miss Emily has a good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, + but she's going North before Christmas to some big boarding school + where they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled + about the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might + take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your + advice, _which is of the best always_. + + "Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present, + + BAXTER." + + +As he folded the letter a flush overspread his face. "I'll go," he said, +with a new energy in his voice, "I'll go to-morrow." + +Then turning in response to a knock, he opened the door and received the +mustard plaster which Lydia had made. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN + + +He had sent a telegram to Banks, and as the train pulled into the +station, he saw the familiar sandy head and freckled face awaiting him +upon the platform. + +"By George, this is a bully sight, Smith," was the first shout that +reached his ears. + +"You're not a bit more pleased than I am," he returned laughing with +pleasure, as he glanced from the station, crowded with noisy Negroes, up +the dusty street into which they were about to turn. "It's like coming +home again, and upon my word, I wish I were never to leave here. But how +are you, Banks? So you are married to Milly and going to live contented +forever afterward." + +"Yes, I'm married," replied Banks, without enthusiasm, "and there's a +baby about which Milly is clean crazy. Milly has got so fat," he added, +"that you'd never believe I could have spanned her waist with my hands +three years ago." + +"Indeed? And is she as captivating as ever?" + +"Well, I reckon she must be," said Banks, "but it doesn't seem so +mysterious, somehow, as it used to." His silly, affectionate smile broke +out as he looked at his companion. "To tell the truth," he confessed, +"I've been missing you mighty hard, Smith, marriage or no marriage. It +ain't anything against Milly, God knows, that she can't take your place, +and it ain't anything against the baby. What I want is somebody I can +sit down and look up to, and I don't seem to be exactly able to look up +to Milly or to the baby." + +"The trouble with you, my dear Banks, is that you are an incorrigible +idealist and always will be. You were born to be a poet and I don't see +to save my life how you escaped." + +"I didn't. I used to write a poem every Sunday of my life when I first +went into tobacco. But after that Milly came and I got used to spending +all my Sundays with her." + +"Well, now that you have her in the week, you might begin all over +again." + +They were walking rapidly up the long hill, and as Ordway passed, he +nodded right and left to the familiar faces that looked out from the +shop doors. They were all friendly, they were all smiling, they were all +ready to welcome him back among them. + +"The queer part is," observed Banks, with that stubborn vein of +philosophy which accorded so oddly with his frivolous features, "that +the thing you get doesn't ever seem to be the same as the thing you +wanted. This Milly is kind to me and the other wasn't, but, somehow, +that hasn't made me stop regretting the other one that I didn't +marry--the Milly that banged and snapped at me about my clothes and +things all day long. I don't know what it means, Smith, I've studied +about it, but I can't understand." + +"The meaning of it is, Banks, that you wanted not the woman, but the +dream." + +"Well, I didn't get it," rejoined Banks, gloomily. + +"Yet Milly's a good wife and you're happy, aren't you?" + +"I should be," replied Banks, "if I could forget how darn fascinating +that other Milly was. Oh, yes, she's a good wife and a doting mother, +and I'm happy enough, but it's a soft, squashy kind of happiness, not +like the way I used to feel when I'd walk home with you after the +preaching in the old field." + +While he spoke they had reached Baxter's warehouse, and as Ordway was +recognized, there was a quiver of excitement in the little crowd about +the doorway. A moment later it had surrounded him with a shout of +welcome. A dozen friendly hands were outstretched, a dozen breathless +lips were calling his name. As the noise passed through the neighbouring +windows, the throng was increased by a number of small storekeepers and +a few straggling operatives from the cotton mills, until at last he +stopped, half laughing, half crying, in their midst. Ten minutes +afterward, when Baxter wedged his big person through the archway, he saw +Ordway standing bareheaded in the street, his face suffused with a glow +which seemed to give back to him a fleeting beam of the youth that he +had lost. + +"Well, I reckon it's my turn now. You can just step inside the office, +Smith," remarked Baxter, while he grasped Ordway's arm and pulled him +back into the warehouse. As they entered the little room, Daniel saw +again the battered chair, the pile of Smith's Almanacs, and the paper +weight, representing a gambolling kitten, upon the desk. + +"I'm glad to see you--we're all glad to see you," said Baxter, shaking +his hand for the third time with a grasp which made Ordway feel that he +was in the clutch of a down cushion. "It isn't the way of Tappahannock +to forget a friend, and she ain't forgotten you." + +"It's like her," returned Ordway, and he added with a sigh, "I only wish +I were coming back for good, Baxter." + +"There now!" exclaimed Baxter, chuckling, "you don't, do you? Well, all +I can say, my boy, is that you've got a powerful soft spot that you left +here, and your old job in the warehouse is still waiting for you when +you care to take it. I tell you what, Smith, you've surely spoiled me +for any other bookkeeper, and I ain't so certain, when it comes to that, +that you haven't spoiled me for myself." + +He was larger, softer, more slovenly than ever, but he was so undeniably +the perfect and inimitable Baxter, that Ordway felt his heart go out to +him in a rush of sentiment. "Oh, Baxter, how is it possible that I've +lived without you?" he asked. + +"I don't know, Smith, but it's a plain fact that after my wife--and +that's nature--there ain't anybody goin' that I set so much store by. +Why, when I was in Botetourt last spring, I went so far as to put my +right foot on your bottom step, but, somehow, the left never picked up +the courage to follow it." + +"Do you dare to tell me that you've been to Botetourt?" demanded Ordway +with indignation. + +"Well, I could have stood the house you live it, though it kind of took +my breath away," replied Baxter, with an embarrassed and guilty air, +"but when it came to facing that fellow at the door, then my courage +gave out and I bolted. I studied him a long while, thinking I might get +my eyes used to the sight of him, but it did no good. I declar', Smith, +I could no more have put a word to him than I could to the undertaker at +my own funeral. Bless my soul, suh, poor Mr. Beverly, when he was alive, +didn't hold a tallow candle to that man." + +"You might have laid in wait for me in the street, then, that would have +been only fair." + +"But how did I know, Smith, that you wan't livin' up to the man at your +door?" + +"It wouldn't have taken you long to find out that I wasn't. So poor Mr. +Beverly is dead and buried, then, is he?" + +Baxter's face adopted instantly a funereal gloom, and his voice, when he +spoke, held a quaver of regret. + +"There wasn't a finer gentleman on earth than Mr. Beverly," he said, +"and he would have given me his last blessed cent if he'd ever had one +to give. I've lost a friend, Smith, there's no doubt of that, I've lost +a friend. And poor Mrs. Brooke, too," he added sadly. "Many and many is +the time I've heard Mr. Beverly grieven' over the way she worked. 'If +things had only come out as I planned them, Baxter,' he'd say to me, 'my +wife should never have raised her finger except to lift food to her +lips.'" + +"And yet I've seen him send her downstairs a dozen times a day to make +him a lemonade," observed Ordway cynically. + +"That wasn't his fault, suh, he was born like that--it was just his way. +He was always obliged to have what he wanted." + +"Well, I can forgive him for killing his wife, but I can't pardon him +for the way he treated his sister. That girl used to work like a farm +hand when I was out there." + +"She was mighty fond of him all the same, was Miss Emily." + +"Everybody was, that's what I'm quarreling about. He didn't deserve it." + +"But he meant well in his heart, Smith, and it's by that that I'm +judgin' him. It wasn't his fault, was it, if things never went just the +way he had planned them out? I don't deny, of course, that he was sort +of flighty at times, as when he made a will the week before he died and +left five hundred dollars to the Tappahannock Orphan Asylum." + +"To the Orphan Asylum? Why, his own children are orphans, and he didn't +have five hundred dollars to his name!" + +"Of course, he didn't, that's just the point," said Baxter with a +placid tolerance which seemed largely the result of physical bulk, "and +so they have had to sell most of the furniture to pay the bequest. You +see, just the night before his stroke, he got himself considerably +worked up over those orphans. So he just couldn't help hopin' he would +have five hundred dollars to leave 'em when he came to die, an' in case +he did have it he thought he might as well be prepared. Then he sat +right down and wrote the bequest out, and the next day there came his +stroke and carried him off." + +"Oh, you're a first-rate advocate, Baxter, but that doesn't alter my +opinion of Mr. Beverly. What about his own orphans now? How are they +going to be provided for?" + +"It seems Miss Emily is to board 'em out at some school she knows of, +and I've settled it with her that she's to borrow enough from me to tide +over any extra expenses until spring." + +"Then we are to wind up the affairs of Cedar Hill, are we? I suppose +it's best for everybody, but it makes me sad enough to think of it." + +"And me, too, Smith," said Baxter, sentimentally. "I can see Mr. Beverly +to the life now playin' with his dominoes on the front porch. But +there's mighty little to wind up, when it comes to that. It's mortgaged +pretty near to the last shingle, and when the bequest to the orphans is +paid out of what's over, there'll be precious few dollars that Miss +Emily can call her own. The reason I sent for you, Smith," he added in a +solemn voice, "was that I thought you might be some comfort to that +poor girl out there in her affliction. If you feel inclined, I hoped +you'd walk out to Cedar Hill and read her a chapter or so in the Bible. +I remembered how consolin' you used to be to people in trouble." + +With a prodigious effort Ordway swallowed his irreverent mirth, while +Baxter's pious tones sounded in his ears. "Of course I shall go out to +Cedar Hill," he returned, "but I was wondering, Baxter," he broke off +for a minute and then went on again with an embarrassed manner, "I was +wondering if there was any way I could help those children without being +found out? It would make me particularly happy to feel that I might +share in giving them an education. Do you think you could smuggle the +money for their school bills into their Christmas stockings?" + +Baxter thought over it a moment. "I might manage it," he replied, +"seein' that the bills are mostly to come through my hands, and I'm to +settle all that I can out of what's left of the estate." + +As he paused Daniel looked hastily away from him, fearful lest Baxter +might be perplexed by the joy that shone in his face. To be connected, +even so remotely, with Emily in the care of Beverly's children, was a +happiness for which, a moment ago, he had not dared to hope. + +"Let me deposit the amount with you twice a year," he said, "that will +be both the easiest and the safest way." + +"Maybe you're right. And now it's settled, ain't it, that you're to come +to my house to stay?" + +"I must go back on the night train, I'm sorry to say, but if you'll let +me I'll drop in to supper. I remember your wife's biscuits of old," he +added, smiling. + +"You don't mean it! Well, it'll tickle her to death, I reckon. It ain't +likely, by the way, that you'll find much to eat out at Cedar Hill, so +you'd better remember to have a snack before you start." + +"Oh, I can fast until supper," returned Daniel, rising. + +"Well, don't forget to give my respects to Miss Emily, and tell her I +say not to worry, but to let the Lord take a turn. You'll find things +pretty topsy-turvy out there, Smith," he added, "but if you don't happen +to have your Bible handy, I'll lend you one and welcome. There's the big +one with gilt clasps the boys gave me last Christmas right on top of my +desk." + +"Oh, they're sure to have one around," replied Ordway gravely, as he +shook hands again before leaving the office. + +From the top of the hill by the brick church, he caught a glimpse of the +locust trees in Mrs. Twine's little yard, and turning in response to a +remembered force of habit, he followed the board sidewalk to the +whitewashed gate, which hung slightly open. In the street a small boy +was busily flinging pebbles at the driver of a coal wagon, and calling +the child to him, Ordway inquired if Mrs. Twine still lived in that +house. + +"Thar ain't no Mrs. Twine," replied the boy, "she's Mrs. Buzzy. She +married my pa, that's why I'm here," he explained with a wink, as the +door behind him flew open, and the lady in question rushed out to +welcome her former lodger. "I hear her now--she's a-comin'. My, an' +she's a tartar, she is!" + +"It's the best sight I've laid eyes on sense I saw po', dear Bill on his +deathbed," exclaimed the tartar, with delight. "Come right in, suh, come +right in an' set down an' let me git a look at you. Thar ain't much +cheer in the house now sence I've lost Bill an' his sprightly ways, but +the welcome's warm if the house ain't." + +She brought him ceremoniously into her closed parlour, and then at his +request led him out of the stagnant air back into her comfortable, +though untidy, kitchen. "I jest had my hand in the dough, suh, when I +heard yo' voice," she observed apologetically, as she wiped off the +bottom of a chair with her blue gingham apron. "I knew you'd be set back +to find out I didn't stay long a widder." + +"I hadn't even heard of Bill's death," he returned, "so it was something +of a surprise to discover that you were no longer Mrs. Twine. Was it +very sudden?" + +"Yes, suh, 'twas tremens--delicious tremens--an' they took him off so +quick we didn't even have the crape in the house to tie on the front do' +knob. You could a heard him holler all the way down to the cotton mills. +He al'ays had powerful fine lungs, had Bill, an' if he'd a-waited for +his lungs to take him, he'd be settin' thar right now, as peart as +life." + +Her eyes filled with tears, but wiping them hastily away with her apron, +she took up a pan of potatoes and began paring them with a handleless +knife. + +"After your former marriages," he remarked doubtful as to whether he +should offer sympathy or congratulations, "I should have thought you +would have rested free for a time at least." + +"It warn't my way, Mr. Smith," she responded, with a mournful shake of +her head. "To be sure I had a few peaceful months arter Bill was gone, +but the queer thing is how powerful soon peace can begin to pall on yo' +taste. Why, I hadn't been in mo'nin' for Bill goin' on to four months, +when Silas Trimmer came along an' axed me, an' I said 'yes' as quick as +that, jest out a the habit of it. I took off my mo'nin' an' kep' comp'ny +with him for quite a while, but we had a quarrel over Bill's tombstone, +suh, for, bein' a close-fisted man, he warn't willin' that I should put +up as big a monument as I'd a mind to. Well, I broke off with him on +that account, for when it comes to choosin' between respect to the dead +an' marriage to the livin' Silas Trimmer, I told him 'I reckon it won't +take long for you to find out which way my morals air set.' He got mad +as a hornet and went off, and I put on mo'nin' agin an' wo' it steddy +twil the year was up." + +"And at the end of that time, I presume, you were wearied of widowhood +and married Buzzy?" + +"It's a queer thing, suh," she observed, as she picked up a fresh potato +and inspected it as attentively as if it had been a new proposal, "it's +a queer thing we ain't never so miserable in this world as when we +ain't got the frazzle of an excuse to be so. Now, arter Bill went from +me, thar was sech a quiet about that it began to git on my nerves, an' +at last it got so that I couldn't sleep at nights because I was no +longer obleeged to keep one ear open to hear if he was comin' upstairs +drunk or sober. Bless yo' heart, thar's not a woman on earth that don't +need some sort of distraction, an Bill was a long sight better at +distractin' you than any circus I've ever seen. Why, I even stopped +goin' to 'em as long as he was livin', for it was a question every +minute as to whether he was goin' to chuck you under the chin or lam you +on the head, an' thar was a mortal lot a sprightliness about it. I +reckon I must have got sort a sp'iled by the excitement, for when 't was +took away, I jest didn't seem to be able to settle down. But thar are +mighty few men with the little ways that Bill had," she reflected sadly. + +"Yet your present husband is kind to you, is he not?" + +"Oh, he's kind enough, suh," she replied, with unutterable contempt, +"but thar ain't nothin' in marriage that palls so soon as kindness. It's +unexpectedness that keeps you from goin' plum crazy with the sameness of +it, an' thar ain't a bit of unexpectedness about Jake. He does +everything so regular that thar're times when I'd like to bust him open +jest to see how he is wound up inside. Naw, suh, it ain't the blows that +wears a woman out, it's the mortal sameness." + +Clearly there was no comfort to be afforded her, and after a few words +of practical advice on the subject of the children's education, he shook +hands with her and started again in the direction of Cedar Hill. + +The road with its November colours brought back to him the many hours +when he had tramped over it in cheerfulness or in despair. The dull +brown stretches of broomsedge, rolling like a high sea, the humble +cabins, nestling so close to the ground, the pale clay road winding +under the half-bared trees, from which the bright leaves were fluttering +downward--these things made the breach of the years close as suddenly as +if the divided scenery upon a stage had rolled together. While he walked +alone here it was impossible to believe in the reality of his life in +Botetourt. + +As he approached Cedar Hill, the long melancholy avenue appeared to him +as an appropriate shelter for Beverly's gentle ghost. He was surprised +to discover with what tenderness he was able to surround the memory of +that poetic figure since he stood again in the atmosphere which had +helped to cultivate his indefinable charm. In Tappahannock Beverly's +life might still be read in the dry lines of prose, but beneath the +historic influences of Cedar Hill it became, even in Ordway's eyes, a +poem of sentiment. + +Beyond the garden, he could see presently, through a gap in the trees, +the silvery blur of life everlasting in the fallow land, which was +steeped in afternoon sunshine. Somewhere from a nearer meadow there +floated a faint call of "Coopee! Coopee! Coopee!" to the turkeys lost in +the sassafras. Then as he reached the house Aunt Mehitable's face looked +down at him from a window in the second story: and in response to her +signs of welcome, he ascended the steps and entered the hall, where he +stopped upon hearing a child's voice through the half open door of the +dining-room. + +"May I wear my coral beads even if I am in mourning, Aunt Emily?" + +"Not yet, Bella," answered Emily's patient yet energetic tones. "Put +them away awhile and they'll be all the prettier when you take them out +again." + +"But can't I mourn for papa and mamma just as well in my beads as I can +without them?" + +"That may be, dear, but we must consider what other people will say." + +"What have other people got to do with my mourning, Aunt Emily?" + +"I don't know, but when you grow up you'll find that they have something +to do with everything that concerns you." + +"Well, then, I shan't mourn at all," replied Bella, defiantly. "If you +won't let me mourn in my coral beads, I shan't mourn a single bit +without them." + +"There, there, Bella, go on with your lesson," said Emily sternly, "you +are a naughty girl." + +At the sound of Ordway's step on the threshold, she rose to her feet, +with a frightened movement, and stood, white and trembling, her hand +pressed to her quivering bosom. + +"You!" she cried out sharply, and there was a sound in her voice that +brought him with a rush to her side. But as he reached her she drew +quickly away, and hiding her face in her hands, broke into passionate +weeping. + +It was the first time that he had seen her lose her habit of +self-command, and while he watched her, he felt that each of her broken +sobs was wrung from his own heart. + +"I was a fool not to prepare you," he said, as he placed a restraining +hand on the awe-struck Bella. "You've had so many shocks I ought to have +known--I ought to have foreseen----" + +At his words she looked up instantly, drying her tears on a child's +dress which she was mending. "You came so suddenly that it startled me, +that is all," she answered. "I thought for a minute that something had +happened to you--that you were an apparition instead of a reality. I've +got into the habit of seeing ghosts of late." + +"It's a bad habit," he replied, as he pushed Bella from the room and +closed the door after her. "But I'm not a ghost, Emily, only a rough and +common mortal. Baxter wrote me of Beverly's death, so I came thinking +that I might be of some little use. Remember what you promised me in +Botetourt." + +As he looked at her now more closely, he saw that the clear brown of her +skin had taken a sallow tinge, as if she were very weary, and that there +were faint violet shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. These outward +signs of her weakness moved him to a passion deeper and tenderer than +he had ever felt before. + +"I have not forgotten," she responded, after a moment in which she had +recovered her usual bright aspect, "but there is really nothing one can +do, it is all so simple. The farm has already been sold for debt, and so +I shall start in the world without burdens, if without wealth." + +"And the children? What of them?" + +"That is arranged, too, very easily. Blair is fifteen now, and he will +be given a scholarship at college. The girls will go to a friend of +mine, who has a boarding school and has made most reasonable terms." + +"And you?" he asked in a voice that expressed something of the longing +he could not keep back. "Is there to be nothing but hard work for you in +the future?" + +"I am not afraid of work," she rejoined, smiling, "I am afraid only of +reaching a place where work does not count." + +As he made no answer, she talked on brightly, telling him of her plans +for the future, of the progress the children had shown at their lessons, +of the arrangements she had made for Aunt Mehitable and Micah, and of +the innumerable changes which had occurred since he went away. So full +of life, of energy, of hopefulness, were her face and voice that but for +her black dress he would not have suspected that she had stood recently +beside a deathbed. Yet as he listened to her, his heart was torn by the +sharp anguish of parting, and when presently she began to question him +about his life in Botetourt, it was with difficulty that he forced +himself to reply in a steady voice. All other memories of her would give +way, he felt, before the picture of her in her black dress against the +burning logs, with the red firelight playing over her white face and +hands. + +An hour later, when he rose to go, he took both of her hands in his, and +bending his head laid his burning forehead against her open palms. + +"Emily," he said, "tell me that you understand." + +For a moment she gazed down on him in silence. Then, as he raised his +eyes, she kissed him so softly that it seemed as if a spirit had touched +his lips. + +"I understand--forever," she answered. + +At her words he straightened himself, as though a burden had fallen from +him, and turning slowly away he went out of the house and back in the +direction of Tappahannock. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ALICE'S MARRIAGE + + +It was after ten o'clock when he returned to Botetourt, and he found +upon reaching home that Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle +of cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, bore mute witness +to the continuance of her solicitude. After so marked a consideration it +seemed to him only decent that he should swallow a portion of the +liquid; and he was in the act of filling the tablespoon she had left, +when a ring at the door caused him to start until the medicine spilled +from his hand. A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, and +as he was aware that the servants had already left the house, he threw +on his coat, and lighting a candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and +down the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating on the panels of +the door quickened his steps almost into a run, and he was hardly +surprised, when he had withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice's face looking +at him from the darkness outside. She was pale and thin, he saw at the +first glance, and there was an angry look in her eyes, which appeared +unnaturally large in their violent circles. + +"I thought you would never open to me, papa," she said fretfully as she +crossed the threshold. "Oh, I am so glad to see you again! Feel how +cold my hands are, I am half frozen." + +Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passionately as it rested +for an instant against his shoulder. + +"Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?" + +Without answering, she raised her head, shivering slightly, and then +turning away, entered the library where a log fire was smouldering to +ashes. As he threw on more wood, she came over to the hearth, and +stretched out her hands to the warmth with a nervous gesture. Then the +flame shot up and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than lost by +the change in her features. She appeared taller, slenderer, more +distinguished, and the vivid black and white of her colouring was +intensified by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown and dark +furs she wore. + +"Oh, he's at home," she answered, breaking the long silence. "I mean +he's in the house in Henry Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we +got back, so I put on my hat again and came away. I'm not going +back--not unless he makes it bearable for me to live with him. He's +such--such a brute that it's as much as one can do to put up with it, +and it's been killing me by inches for the last months. I meant to write +you about it, but somehow I couldn't, and yet I knew that I couldn't +write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he's unbearable!" she +exclaimed, with a tremor of disgust. "You will never know--you will +never be able to imagine all that I've been through!" + +"But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?" + +She bared her arm with a superb disdainful gesture, and he saw three +rapidly discolouring bruises on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him +with loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to him almost +fiercely as if he would hold her not only against Geoffrey Heath, but +against herself. + +"You shall not go back to him," he said, "I will not permit it!" + +"The worst part is," she went on vehemently, as if he had not spoken, +"that it is about money--money--always money. He has millions, his +lawyers told me so, and yet he makes me give an account to him of every +penny that I spend. I married him because I thought I should be rich and +free, but he's been hardly better than a miser since the day of the +wedding. He wants me to dress like a dowdy, for all his wealth, and I +can't buy a ring that he doesn't raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more +and more every day I live, but it makes no difference to him as long as +he has me around to look at whenever he pleases. I have to pay him back +for every dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him and get +cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she exclaimed +wildly, "and it is killing me!" + +"You shan't bear it, Alice. As long as I'm alive you are safe with me." + +"For a time I could endure it because of the travelling and the strange +countries," she resumed, ignoring the tenderness in his voice, "but +Geoffrey was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke to a +man, he immediately flew into a rage. He even made me leave the opera +one night in Paris because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked +at me so hard." + +Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs slip from her shoulders, +and sat staring moodily into the fire. "I've sworn a hundred times that +I'd leave him," she said, "and yet I've never done it until to-night." + +While she talked on feverishly, he untied her veil, which she had tossed +back, and taking off her hat, pressed her gently against the cushions he +had placed in her chair. + +"You look so tired, darling, you must rest," he said. + +"Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!" she exclaimed. Then her tone +altered abruptly, and for the first time, she seemed able to penetrate +beyond her own selfish absorption. "Oh, you poor papa, how very old you +look!" she said. + +Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her bosom and cried +softly for a minute. "It's all my fault--everything is my fault, but I +can't help it. I'm made that way." Then pushing him from her suddenly, +she sprang to her feet and began walking up and down in her restless +excited manner. + +"Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice," he said, "you are trembling all +over." + +She shook her head. "It isn't that--it isn't that. It's the awful--awful +money. If it wasn't for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I'd never +spent a single dollar! I wish I'd always gone in rags!" + +Again he forced her back into her chair and again, after a minute of +quiet, she rose to her feet and broke into hysterical sobs. + +"All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that," he said in the effort +to soothe her, "and, besides, your own property is hardly less than two +hundred thousand." + +"But Uncle Richard won't give it to me," she returned angrily. "I wrote +and begged him on my knees and he still refused to let me have a penny +more than my regular income. It's all tied up, he says, in investments, +and that until I am twenty-one it must remain in his hands." + +With a frantic movement, she reached for her muff, and drew from it a +handful of crumpled papers, which she held out to him. "Geoffrey found +these to-night and they brought on the quarrel," she said. "Yesterday he +gave me this bracelet and he seems to think I could live on it for a +month!" She stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him a +glittering circle of diamonds immediately below the blue finger marks. +"There's a sable coat still that he doesn't know a thing of," she +finished with a moan. + +Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly over the papers she had +given him, and then rose to his feet still holding them in his hand. + +"These alone come to twenty thousand dollars, Alice," he said with a +gentle sternness. + +"And there are others, too," she cried, making no effort to control her +convulsive sobs. "There are others which I didn't dare even to let him +see." + +For a moment he let her weep without seeking to arrest her tears. + +"Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?" he asked at last. "Will you +be careful--very careful from this time?" + +"Oh, I'll never spend a penny again. I'll stay in Botetourt forever," +she promised desperately, eager to retrieve the immediate instant by the +pledge of a more or less uncertain future. + +"Then we must help you," he said. "Among us all--Uncle Richard, your +mother and I--it will surely be possible." + +Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down again and dried her eyes +in her muff. + +"It seems a thousand years since I went away," she observed, glancing +about her for the first time. "Nothing is changed and yet everything +appears to be different." + +"And are you different also?" he asked. + +"Oh, I'm older and I've seen a great deal more," she responded, with a +laugh which came almost as a shock to him after her recent tears, "but I +still want to go everywhere and have everything just as I used to." + +"But I thought you were determined to stay in Botetourt for the future?" +he suggested. + +"Well, so I am, I suppose," she returned dismally, "there's nothing else +for me to do, is there?" + +"Nothing that I see." + +"Then I may as well make up my mind to be miserable forever. It's so +frightfully gloomy in this old house, isn't it? How is mamma?" + +"She's just as you left her, neither very well nor very sick." + +"So it's exactly what it always was, I suppose, and will drive me to +distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick away?" + +"He's at college, and he's doing finely." + +"Of course he is--that's why he's such a bore." + +"Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. So you went to +Europe immediately after I saw you in Washington?" + +"Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and Geoffrey was as +disagreeable as he could be, and made all kinds of horrid jokes about +me." + +"You went straight to Paris, didn't you?" + +"As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me come away in three weeks +because he said I spent so much money." Her face clouded again at the +recollection of her embarrassments. "Oh, we had awful scenes, but I +hadn't even a wedding dress, you know, and French dressmakers are so +frightfully expensive. One of them charged me five thousand dollars for +a gown--but he told me that it was really cheap, because he'd sold one +to another American the day before for twelve thousand. I don't know who +her husband is," she added wistfully, "but I wish I were married to +him." + +The wildness of her extravagance depressed him even more than her +excessive despair had done; and he wondered if the vagueness of her +ideas of wealth was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination +which foresees results? She had lived since her girlhood in a quiet +Virginia town, her surroundings had been comparatively simple, and she +had never been thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting +influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these things, she had +squandered a fortune as carelessly as a child might have strewed pebbles +upon the beach. Her regret at last had come not through realisation of +her fault, but in the face of the immediate punishment which threatened +her. + +"So he got you out of Paris? Well, I'm glad of that," he remarked. + +"He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you could have heard him. Then +we went down into Italy and did nothing for months but look at old +pictures--at least I did, he wouldn't come--and float around in a +gondola until I almost died from the monotony. It was only after I found +a lace shop, where they had the most beautiful things, that he would +take me away, and then he insisted upon going to some little place up in +the Alps because he said he didn't suppose I could possibly pack the +mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful mountains! They were so +glaring I could never go out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey +would go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a horrid little +hotel where there was nobody but a one-eyed German army officer, and a +woman missionary who was bracing herself for South Africa. She wore a +knitted jersey all day and a collar which looked as if it would cut her +head off if she ever forgot herself and bent her neck." Her laughter, +the delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled out: "She +asked me one day if our blacks wore draperies? The ones in South Africa +didn't, and it made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, to +missionary to them. Oh, you can't imagine what I suffered from her, and +Geoffrey was so horrid about it, and insisted that she was just the sort +of companion that I needed. So one day when he happened to be in the +writing-room where she was, I locked the door on the outside and threw +the key down into the gorge. There wasn't any locksmith nearer than +twenty miles, and when they sent for him he was away. Oh, it was simply +too funny for words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break the +heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside was protesting that he +mustn't, and all the time we could hear the missionary begging everybody +please to be patient. She said if it were required of her she was quite +prepared to stay locked up all night, but Geoffrey wasn't, so he swung +himself down by the branches of a tree which grew near the window." + +All her old fascination had come back to her with her change of mood, +and he forgot to listen to her words while he watched the merriment +sparkle in her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny that he +should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, even Geoffrey submitted at +times. + +He was about to make some vague comment upon her story, when her face +changed abruptly into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he saw +that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, and was advancing to meet +her daughter with outstretched arms. + +"Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! When did you come?" + +As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway noticed that there was +an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her body. + +"Only a few minutes ago," she replied, with the characteristic disregard +of time which seemed, in some way, to belong to her inability to +consider figures, "and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are just as +lovely as ever." + +"Well, you are lovelier," said Lydia, kissing her, and adding a moment +afterward, as the result of her quick, woman's glance, "what a charming +gown!" + +Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign gesture which she had +picked up. "Oh, you must see some of my others," she replied, "I wish +that my trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent to the other +house, and I haven't even a nightgown. Will you lend me a nightgown, +mamma? I have some of the loveliest you ever saw which were embroidered +for me by the nuns in a French convent." + +"So, you'll spend the night?" said Lydia, "I'm so glad, dear, and I'll +go up and see if your bed has sheets on it." + +"Oh, it's not only for the night," returned Alice, defiantly, "I've +come back for good. I've left Geoffrey, haven't I, papa?" + +"I hope so, darling," answered Ordway, coming for the first time over to +where they stood. + +"Left Geoffrey?" repeated Lydia. "Do you mean you've separated?" + +"I mean I'm never going back again--that I detest him--that I'd rather +die--that I'll kill myself before I'll do it." + +Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned sweetness that she +presented to an impending crisis. + +"But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible thing!" she wailed. + +"Well, it isn't half so horrible as Geoffrey," retorted Alice. + +Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia spoke, came forward at the +girl's angry words, and caught the hand that she had stretched out as if +to push her mother from her. + +"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, +"while we prepare her bed." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE POWER OF THE BLOOD + + +When he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her +dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room. + +"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?" + +"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a +quarter of an hour ago." + +"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?" + +A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing +instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her +voice. + +"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her +maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him." + +"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would +rather kill herself." + +"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first +time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, +after all, not to himself, but to her. + +"You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent +protestations of last night?" + +"I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them--not a minute +afterward. She can't help being dramatic any more than she can help +being beautiful." + +"Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did +you influence her in any way?" + +"I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for +all--that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some +kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her +see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and +indecent." + +Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself +hopelessly overpowered by its unassailable logic. + +"So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?" + +"For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much +she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?" + +"Sacrifice? Good God, what?" he demanded. + +"Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for +Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents +when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only +settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a +satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it +all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she +made downstairs last night." + +This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently +he would never attain to the critical judgment of her. Well, in any +case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment. + +"I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last. + +"She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is +right." + +"Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why, +there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers." + +Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was +thrust on her notice. + +"Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had +lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very +much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy +she may be able to arrange matters between them." + +"Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!" + +Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance. + +"It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it +with seriousness." + +"I was never more serious in my life. I'm melancholy. I'm abject." + +"Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened to go West and get a +divorce, and this frightened her." + +"But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in +bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?" + +"She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is +impossible, I suppose, for you to realise her complete dependence upon +wealth--the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her +income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last +her a month." + +"I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave +me." + +"Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand +dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand +already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed +to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she +would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet +these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as +much as possible in order to pay those she gave you." + +"I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property," +he said. + +"But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such +matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had +clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should +deem it for your interest to turn it over to you." + +Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered +her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were +confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the +past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow +mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the attitude +of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her +practical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy +glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle +of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to +sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend +its healing insight. + +"But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause. + +"I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all," +she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little +things." + +An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he +found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a +flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny, +like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense. + +"Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition of Alice's +reconciliation with her husband," said the old man, "but I shall +certainly not sacrifice your securities in order to do it. Such an act +would be directly against the terms of your father's will." + +There was no further concession to be had from him, so Daniel turned to +his work, half in disappointment, half in admiration of his uncle's +loyalty to the written word. + +When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him that she had seen Alice, +who had appeared seriously disturbed, though she had shown her, with +evident enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. "She had a sable +coat, also, in her closet, which could not have cost less, I should +have supposed, than forty thousand dollars--the kind of coat that a +Russian Grand Duchess might have worn--but when I spoke of it, she grew +very much depressed and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle +Richard? And was I right?" + +"You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think, +then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?" + +"Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a +very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than +he has been since her marriage." + +"Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?" + +"She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone--and any +way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon." + +"Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out. + +In the evening there was no news beyond a reassuring visit from Richard +Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview +with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than +I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has +some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a +very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will +promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own +income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six +months in order to meet his obligations without touching his +investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the +shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money +recently." + +"I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said +Lydia, sweetly. + +"I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand. + +The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours--the +fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human +connection--had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner, +separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous +chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant +reminder that Dick would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable +silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a +little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when +a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the +hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice, +wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she +entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with +an uncontrollable burst of tears. + +"My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising +from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked +to the butler that he need not serve the dessert. + +"Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there," she said, putting +her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure. + +"O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall +never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties +and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell +him that I will never--never go back." + +"I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he +answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door. + +"But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once." + +"I'll go this very hour--I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean +it." + +"Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested +Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things +rationally." + +"I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know +now--this very instant--that he has gone too far--that I will not stand +it. He told me a minute ago--the beast!--that he'd like to see the man +who would be fool enough to keep me--that if I went he'd find a +handsomer woman within a week!" + +"Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother, +and have a good cry and talk things over." + +As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got +into his overcoat. + +"Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a +warning whisper, coming after him, "she is quite hysterical now and +does not realise what she is saying." + +"Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the +front door behind him. + +On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned +dispassionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that +he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was +possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his +consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a +perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he +concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he +went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that +he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a +step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to +a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the +brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was +opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by +marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again +of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life +in Botetourt. + +Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter +of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his +chair with a lazy shake of his whole person. + +"I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as +he held out his hand, "though I've known you by sight for several +years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair +and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right +hand. + +At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or +drinking heavily--probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at +the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red +and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man +inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical +specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly +built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have +been remarkable for its masculine beauty. + +"No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause. +"What I have to say can be said better standing, I think." + +"Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coarse laugh. "It's about +Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you +with." + +"It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to +forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it +impossible that she should remain in your house." + +"Well, I've treated her a damned sight better than she deserved," +rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he +had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you, +that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months." + +"I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she." + +"Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more +in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid +out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her +away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may +go into court about it and get their money however they can." + +"In the future there will be no question of that." + +"You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's +back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which +side her bread is buttered, and she won't stay in that dull old place, +not for all you're worth." + +"She shall never return to you with my consent." + +"Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing +uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes +precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays." + +"She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he +uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly, +"she shall never do it if I can help it." + +"It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but +she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she +isn't so big a fool as you think her." + +"She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is +very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality." + +Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's +face. + +"I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he +sneered. + +"I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his +daughter." + +"Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting, +righteous airs, aren't you?" + +For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like +physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he +questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had +moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words +Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening. + +"Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been +keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been +running back there again after that Brooke girl----" + +The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had passed his +lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth. + +With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature +was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of +manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant +when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to +be not only triumphant, but immortal. All that his years of +self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive +rush of energy through his arm. + +There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that +Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk, +to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed--the laugh of the boastful +and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went +out of the house and down into the street. + +The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still +tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger, +stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he +reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting +together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step. + +"Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he +do?" + +Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on +Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet. + +"I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off +the floor." + +"You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that +left her breathless. + +"I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the +blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth." + +Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia +looked up at him, while he stood there wiping the blood from his +bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to +Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute, +after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HOUSE OF DREAMS + + +FROM that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an +increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time, +he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change, +which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only +the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute +from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his +patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had +that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing +recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had +treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked +roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she +might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely +regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have +compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally +repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he +was seeking. + +On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and +begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know +how it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had +noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his +replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a +minute. + +"It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that +famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match +to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of +astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of +course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to +live there." + +"It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make +that house a home, dear," was his only comment. + +"But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it +is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and +she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even +if it were a palace!" + +Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed +him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever +play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses. + +For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared +himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her +colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly +that there was nothing for her to do in the house, and that she +couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his +reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her +trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides +nobody could pack them unless she was there to overlook it." + +"If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be +the one," he urged desperately at last. + +"To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty, +papa!"--she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her +laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of +her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious +laces," she protested, half seriously. + +For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked +irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk +dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her +old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house. +When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur +coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold +day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange +calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband. + +"I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her +unerring prescience. + +"Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to put up with Heath for the +sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded. + +"Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air +of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never +settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to +take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow +restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up." + +"But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted. +You could have gone with her." + +"Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this +when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from +Geoffrey." + +"Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?" + +"I encouraged her to behave with decency--and this isn't decent." + +"No, I admit that. It decidedly is not." + +"Yet we have no assurance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner +to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully. + +His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the +sanctity of convention. + +"In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her +mind?" he inquired. + +But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and +she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience. + +"For myself I can bear anything," she answered, "but I feel that for +her it is shocking to make things so public." + +It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it +as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely +akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them +that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation. + +"But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice. + +"We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared +certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is +surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public +scandal." + +They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the +girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life +and spirits. + +"We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're +going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend +too much money, we are going to Egypt in April." + +"If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out +his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology. + +To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for +the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy +and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery +Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for +Richard Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his +sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice. + +As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and +even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the +assembled family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a quiet, +distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle +Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate +mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, +Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude. + +In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the +pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with +her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again +the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible +day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness, +and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a +new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to +him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt +before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound +together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved. + +"There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said +Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else +because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now +shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa, +there's to be really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a +boy--I hope it will be a girl--you'll promise to love it and be good to +it, won't you?" + +"Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke. + +She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which +had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon +her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him. + +"I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like +mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with +dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big +wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out +of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for +years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses, +and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her +clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one +could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's +ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk, +and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest +dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with +bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until +she's five years old, can she?" + +"And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored +no longer?" + +"I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet +to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money +when he hears this?" + +"I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be +extravagant, just at first." + +"But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind +to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?" + +"Are simple things always ugly?" + +"Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine--and I had beautiful +clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them." + +She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood, +dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had +conjured into life. + +It was dark when they returned to town, and when Daniel entered his +door, after leaving Alice in Henry Street, he found that the lamps were +already lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he glanced +into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick were sitting together before +the fire, the boy resting his head on her knees, while her fragile hand +played caressingly with his hair. They did not look up at his footsteps, +and his heart was so warm with happiness that even the picture of mother +and son in the firelit room appeared dim beside it. + +When he opened his door he found a bright fire in his grate, and +throwing off his coat, he sat down in an easy chair with his eyes on the +glowing coals. The beneficent vision that he had brought home with him +was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, and while he gazed on +it, he told himself that the years of his loneliness, and his inner +impoverishment, were ended forever. The path of age showed to him no +longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road along which he +might travel hopefully with young feet to keep him company. With a +longing, which no excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw +Alice's child as she had seen it in her maternal rapture--as something +immortally young and fair and innocent. He thought of the moment so long +ago, when they had first placed Alice in his arms, and it seemed to him +that this unborn child was only a renewal of the one he had held that +day--that he would reach out his arms to it with that same half human, +half mystic passion. Even to-day he could almost feel the soft pressure +of her little body, and he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice +or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the reality faded +from his consciousness and the dream began, for while he sat there he +heard the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt the +little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. Oh, the little hands +that would bring healing and love in their touch! + +And he understood as he looked forward now into the dreaded future, that +the age to which he was travelling was only an immortal youth. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE ULTIMATE CHOICE + + +On Christmas Eve a heavy snowstorm set in, and as there was but little +work in the office that day, he took a long walk into the country before +going home to luncheon. By the time he came back to town the ground was +already covered with snow, which was blown by a high wind into deep +drifts against the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the +poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each branch outlined in a +delicate tracery, and where the skeletons of last spring's flowers still +clung to the boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of frozen +blossoms. + +As he passed Richard's house, the sight of his aunt's fair head at the +window arrested his steps, and going inside, he found her filling yarn +stockings for twenty poor children, to whose homes she went every +Christmas Eve. The toys and the bright tarleton bags of candy scattered +about the room gave it an air that was almost festive; and for a few +minutes he stayed with her, watching the glow of pleasure in her small, +pale face, while he helped stuff the toes of the yarn stockings with +oranges and nuts. As he stood there, surrounded by the little gifts, he +felt, for the first time since his childhood, the full significance of +Christmas--of its cheer, its mirth and its solemnity. + +"I am to have a tree at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Will you come?" she +asked wistfully, and he promised, with a smile, before he left her and +went out again into the storm. + +In the street a crowd of boys were snowballing one another, and as he +passed a ball struck him, knocking his hat into a drift. Turning in +pretended fury, he plunged into the thick of the battle, and when he +retreated some minutes afterward, he was powdered from head to foot with +dry, feathery flakes. When he reached home, he discovered, with dismay, +that he left patches of white on the carpet from the door to the upper +landing. After he had entered his room he shook the snow from his +clothes, and then looking at his watch, saw to his surprise, that +luncheon must have been over for at least an hour. In a little while, he +told himself, he would go downstairs and demand something to eat from +the old butler; but the hearth was so bright and warm that after sinking +into his accustomed chair, he found that it was almost impossible to +make the effort to go out. In a moment a delicious drowsiness crept over +him, and he fell presently asleep, while the cigar he had lighted burned +slowly out in his hand. + +The sound of the opening and closing door brought him suddenly awake +with a throb of pain. The gray light from the windows, beyond which the +snow fell heavily, was obscured by the figure of Lydia, who seemed to +spring upon him out of some dim mist of sleep. At first he saw only her +pale face and white outstretched hands; then as she came rapidly forward +and dropped on her knees in the firelight, he saw that her face was +convulsed with weeping and her eyes red and swollen. For the first time +in his life, it occurred to him with a curious quickness of perception, +he looked upon the naked soul of the woman, with her last rag of +conventionality stripped from her. In the shock of the surprise, he half +rose to his feet, and then sank back helplessly, putting out his hand as +if he would push her away from him. + +"Lydia," he said, "don't keep me waiting. Tell me at once." + +She tried to speak, and he heard her voice strangle like a live thing in +her throat. + +"Is Alice dead?" he asked quietly, "or is Dick?" + +At this she appeared to regain control of herself and he watched the +mask of her impenetrable reserve close over her features. "It is not +that--nobody is dead--it is worse," she answered in a subdued and +lifeless voice. + +"Worse?" The word stunned him, and he stared at her blankly, like a +person whose mind has suddenly given way. + +"Alice is in my room," she went on, when he had paused, "I left her with +Uncle Richard while I came here to look for you. We did not hear you +come in. I thought you were still out." + +Her manner, even more than her words, impressed him only as an evasion +of the thing in her mind, and seizing her hands almost roughly, he drew +her forward until he could look closely into her face. + +"For God's sake--speak!" he commanded. + +But with his grasp all animation appeared to go out of her, and she fell +across his knees in an immovable weight, while her eyes still gazed up +at him. + +"If you can't tell me I must go to Uncle Richard," he added. + +As he attempted to rise she put out her hands to restrain him, and in +the midst of his suspense, he was amazed at the strength there was in a +creature so slight and fragile. + +"Uncle Richard has just come to tell us," she said in a whisper. "A +lawyer--a detective--somebody. I can't remember who it is--has come down +from New York to see Geoffrey about a check signed in his name, which +was returned to the bank there. At the first glance it was seen to +be--to be not in his writing. When it was sent to him, after the bank +had declined to honour it, he declared it to be a forgery and sent it +back to them at once. It is now in their hands----" + +"To whom was it drawn?" he asked so quietly that his voice sounded in +his own ears like the voice of a stranger. + +"To Damon & Hanska, furriers in Fifth Avenue, and it was sent in payment +for a sable coat which Alice had bought. They had already begun a suit, +it seems, to recover the money." + +As she finished he rose slowly to his feet, and stood staring at the +snow which fell heavily beyond the window. The twisted bough of a +poplar tree just outside was rocking back and forth with a creaking +noise, and presently, as his ears grew accustomed to the silence in the +room, he heard the loud monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel, +which seemed to grow more distinct with each minute that the hands +travelled. Lydia had slipped from his grasp as he rose, and lay now with +her face buried in the cushions of the chair. It was a terrible thing +for Lydia, he thought suddenly, as he looked down on her. + +"And Geoffrey Heath?" he asked, repeating the question in a raised voice +when she did not answer. + +"Oh, what can we expect of him? What can we expect?" she demanded, with +a shudder. "Alice is sure that he hates her, that he would seize any +excuse to divorce her, to outrage her publicly. He will do +nothing--nothing--nothing," she said, rising to her feet, "he has +returned the check to the bank, and denied openly all knowledge of it. +After some violent words with Alice in the lawyer's presence, he +declared to them both that he did not care in the least what steps were +taken--that he had washed his hands of her and of the whole affair. She +is half insane with terror of a prosecution, and can hardly speak +coherently. Oh, I wonder why one ever has children?" she exclaimed in +anguish. + +With her last words it seemed to him that the barrier which had +separated him from Lydia had crumbled suddenly to ruins between them. +The space which love could not bridge was spanned by pity; and crossing +to where she stood, he put his arms about her, while she bowed her head +on his breast and wept. + +"Poor girl! poor girl!" he said softly, and then putting her from him, +he went out of the room and closed the door gently upon her grief. + +From across the hall the sound of smothered sobs came to him, and +entering Lydia's room, he saw Alice clinging hysterically to Richard's +arm. As she looked round at his footsteps, her face showed so old and +haggard between the splendid masses of her hair, that he could hardly +believe for a minute that this half distraught creature was really his +daughter. For an instant he was held dumb by the horror of it; then the +silence was broken by the cry with which Alice threw herself into his +arms. Once before she had rushed to his breast with the same word on her +lips, he remembered. + +"O papa, you will help me! You must help me!" she cried. "Oh, make them +tell you all so that you may help me!" + +"They have told me--your mother has told me, Alice," he answered, +seeking in vain to release himself from the frantic grasp of her arms. + +"Then you will make Geoffrey understand," she returned, almost angrily. +"You will make Geoffrey understand that it was not my fault--that I +couldn't help it." + +Richard Ordway turned from the window, through which he had been +looking, and taking her fingers, which were closed in a vice-like +pressure about Daniel's arm, pried them forcibly apart. + +"Look at me, Alice," he said sternly, "and answer the question that I +asked you. What did you say to Geoffrey when he spoke to you in the +lawyer's presence? Did you deny, then, that you had signed the check? +Don't struggle so, I must hear what you told them." + +But she only writhed in his hold, straining her arms and her neck in the +direction of Daniel. + +"He was very cruel," she replied at last, "they were both very cruel. I +don't know what I said, I was so frightened. Geoffrey hurt me +terribly--he hurt me terribly," she whimpered like a child, and as she +turned toward Daniel, he saw her bloodless gum, from which her lower lip +had quivered and dropped. + +"I must know what you told them, Alice," repeated the old man in an +unmoved tone. "I can do nothing to help you, if you will not speak the +truth." Even when her body struggled in his grasp, no muscle altered in +the stern face he bent above her. + +"Let me go," she pleaded passionately, "I want to go to papa! I want +papa!" + +At her cry Daniel made a single step forward, and then fell back because +the situation seemed at the moment in the command of Richard. Again he +felt the curious respect, the confidence, with which his uncle inspired +him in critical moments. + +"I shall let you go when you have told me the truth," said Richard +calmly. + +She grew instantly quiet, and for a minute she appeared to hang a dead +weight on his arm. Then her voice came with the whimpering, childlike +sound. + +"I told them that I had never touched it--that I had asked papa for the +money, and he had given it to me," she said. + +"I thought so," returned Richard grimly, and he released his hold so +quickly that she fell in a limp heap at his feet. + +"I wanted it from her own lips, though Mr. Cummins had already told me," +he added, as he looked at his nephew. + +For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with his eyes on the +gold-topped bottles on Lydia's dressing table. He had heard Alice's +fall, but he did not stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard's words, +but he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent revulsion--a +furious anger against Alice swept over him, and the next he felt +suddenly, as in his dream, the little hands pass over his brow and lips. + +"She is right about it, Uncle Richard," he said, "I gave her the check." + +At the words Richard turned quickly away, but with a shriek of joy, +Alice raised herself to her knees, and looked up with shining eyes. + +"I told you papa would know! I told you papa would help me!" she cried +triumphantly to the old man. + +Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance again to his nephew's +face, and something that was almost a tremor seemed to pass through his +voice. + +"Daniel," he asked, "what is the use?" + +"She has told you the truth," repeated Daniel steadily, "I gave her the +check." + +"You are ready to swear to this?" + +"If it is necessary, I am." + +Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still on her knees, but as she +came nearer him, Daniel retreated instinctively step by step until he +had put the table between them. + +"It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?" he inquired of +Richard. + +The gesture with which Richard responded was almost impatient. "If you +are determined--it will be necessary for a time at least," he replied. +"There's no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, but already +there has been something of a scandal. I have made good the loss to the +bank, but Geoffrey has been very difficult to bring to reason. He wanted +a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way upon Alice." + +"But she is safe now?" asked Daniel, and the coldness in his tone came +as a surprise to him when he spoke. + +"Yes, she is safe," returned Richard, "and you, also, I trust. There is +little danger, I think, under the circumstances, of a prosecution. If at +any time," he added, with a shaking voice, "before your return you +should wish the control of your property, I will turn it over to you at +once." + +"Thank you," said Daniel quietly, and then with an embarrassed movement, +he held out his hand. "I shall go, I think, on the four o'clock train," +he continued, "is that what you would advise?" + +"It is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have an appointment with the +lawyer for the bank at a quarter of five." He put out his hand again for +his nephew's. "Daniel, you are a good man," he added, as he turned away. + +Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, did Ordway remember +that he had left Alice crouched on the floor, and coming back he lifted +her into his arms. "It is all right, Alice, don't cry," he said, as he +kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange dullness of sensation, +he crossed the hall and entered his room, where he found Lydia still +lying with her face hidden in the cushions of the chair. + +At his step she looked up and put out her hand, with an imploring +gesture. + +"Daniel!" she called softly, "Daniel!" + +Before replying to her he went to his bureau and hurriedly packed some +clothes into a bag. Then, with the satchel still in his hand, he came +over and stopped beside her. + +"I can't wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard will tell you," he said. + +"You are going away? Do you mean you are going away?" she questioned. + +"To-morrow you will understand," he answered, "that it is better so." + +For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then she raised herself and +leaned toward him. + +"But Alice? Does Alice go with you?" she asked. + +"No, Alice is safe. Go to her." + +"You will come back again? It is not forever?" + +He shook his head smiling. "Perhaps," he answered. + +She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw presently a look come +into her face like the look with which she had heard of the blow he had +struck Geoffrey Heath. + +"Daniel, you are a brave man," she said, and sobbed as she kissed him. + +Following him to the threshold, she listened, with her face pressed +against the lintel, while she heard him go down the staircase and close +the front door softly behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +FLIGHT + + +NOT until the train had started and the conductor had asked for his +ticket, did Ordway realize that he was on his way to Tappahannock. At +the discovery he was conscious of no surprise--scarcely of any +interest--it seemed to matter to him so little in which direction he +went. A curious numbness of sensation had paralysed both his memory and +his perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry, warm +or cold. In the same way he wondered why he felt no regret at leaving +Botetourt forever--no clinging tenderness for his home, for Lydia, for +Alice. If his children had been strangers to him he could not have +thought of his parting from them with a greater absence of feeling. Was +it possible at last that he was to be delivered from the emotional +intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, which had made him one of +the world's failures? He recalled indifferently Alice's convulsed +features, and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped like a +child's that is hurt. These things left him utterly unmoved when he +remembered them, and he even found himself asking the next instant, with +a vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in front of him +was going home to spend Christmas with his daughter? "But what has this +bald-headed man to do with Alice or with me?" he demanded in perplexity, +"and why is it that I can think of him now with the same interest with +which I think of my own child? I am going away forever and I shall never +see them again," he continued, with emphasis, as if to convince himself +of some fact which he had but half understood. "Yes, I shall never see +them again, and Alice will be quite happy without me, and Alice's child +will grow up probably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for Alice. +No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice's child," he corrected +quickly, with a piercing flash of insight. "It was for something larger, +stronger--something as inevitable as the law. I could not help it, it +was for myself," he added, after a minute. And it seemed to him that +with this inward revelation the outer covering of things was stripped +suddenly from before his eyes. As beneath his sacrifice he recognised +the inexorable law, so beneath Alice's beauty he beheld the skeleton +which her radiant flesh clothed with life, and beneath Lydia's mask of +conventionality her little naked soul, too delicate and shivering to +stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, all illusions, had +shrivelled now in the hard dry, atmosphere through which he looked. +"Yes, I am indifferent to them all and to everything," he concluded; +"Lydia, and Dick and even Alice are no closer to me than is the +bald-headed man on the front seat. Nobody is closer to another when it +comes to that, for each one of us is alone in an illimitable space." + +The swinging lights of the train were reflected in the falling snow +outside, like orbed blue flames against a curtain of white. Through the +crack under the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the +cinders from the sill into his face. It was the common day coach of a +local train, and the passengers were, for the most part, young men or +young women clerks, who were hastening back to their country homes for +Christmas. Once when they reached a station several girls got off, with +their arms filled with packages, and pushed their way through the heavy +drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil lamp outside. For a minute +he followed them idly in his imagination, seeing the merry party +ploughing over the old country roads to the warm farm house, where a +bright log fire and a Christmas tree were prepared for them. The window +panes were frosted over now, and when the train started on its slow +journey he could see only the orbed blue flames dancing in the night +against the whirling snowflakes. + +It was nine o'clock when they pulled into Tappahannock and when he came +out upon the platform he found that the storm had ceased, though the +ground lay white and hard beneath the scattered street lamps. Straight +ahead of him, as he walked up the long hill from the station, he heard +the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The lights were still +burning in the little shops, and through the uncurtained windows he +could see the variegated display of Christmas decorations. Here and +there a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was peering eagerly at +a collection of toys or a wreath of evergreens, but, for the rest, the +shops appeared singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christmas +Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he scarcely noticed this, and he +was conscious of no particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar +warehouse, he saw Baxter's enormous figure loom darkly under the +flickering light above the sidewalk. Behind him the vacant building +yawned like a sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a glistening +fringe of icicles. + +"Is that you, Baxter?" he asked, and stretched out his hand with a +mechanical movement. + +"Why, bless my soul, Smith!" exclaimed Baxter, "who'd ever have believed +it!" + +"I've just got off the train," returned Ordway, feeling vaguely that +some explanation of his presence was needed, "and I'm trying to find a +place where I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at +midnight. It didn't occur to me that you would be in your office. I was +going to Mrs. Buzzy's." + +"You'd better come along with me, for I don't believe you'll find a +living soul at Mag Buzzy's--not even a kid," replied Baxter, "her +husband is one of Jasper Trend's overseers, you know, and they're most +likely down at the cotton mills." + +"At the cotton mills? Why, what's the matter there?" + +"You haven't heard then? I thought it was in all the papers. There's +been a big strike on for a week--Jasper lowered wages the first of the +month--and every operative has turned out and demanded more pay and +shorter hours. The old man's hoppin', of course, and the funny part is, +Smith, that he lays every bit of the trouble at your door. He says that +you started it all by raisin' the ideas of the operatives." + +"But it's a pretty serious business for them, Baxter. How are they going +to live through this weather?" + +"They ain't livin', they're starvin', though I believe the union is +comin' to their help sooner or later. But what's that in such a +blood-curdlin' spell as this?" + +A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising and falling in the +bitter air, came to them from below the slope of the hill, and catching +Ordway's arm, Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp. + +"They're hootin' at the guards Trend has put around the mills," he said, +while his words floated like vapour out of his mouth into the cold, +"he's got policemen stalkin' up an' down before his house, too." + +"You mean he actually fears violence?" + +"Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a +gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the +strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin' +Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker +or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought +to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six +months ago. But he wouldn't do it because he said he made more than the +interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he +didn't catch at it." + +For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the +cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered +sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them +from the foot of the hill. + +Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of +Richard Ordway's parting words. + +"Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand +dollars for his mills to-night." + +Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back +a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big shaggy overcoat. + +"You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief +that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, +there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they +are once caught." + +Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it +seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the +darkness. + +"But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy +the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at +midnight." + +"You mean you'll go away even after you've bought 'em?" + +"I mean I've got to go--to go always from place to place--but I'll leave +you here in my stead." He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in +the sound. "I'll run the mills on the cooperative plan, Baxter, and I'll +leave you in charge of them--you and Banks." Then he caught Baxter's arm +with both hands, and turned his body forcibly in the direction of the +church at the top of the hill. "While we are talking those people down +there are freezing," he said. + +"An' so am I, if you don't mind my mentionin' it," observed Baxter +meekly. + +"Then let's go to Trend's. There's not a minute to lose, if we are to +save the mills. Are you coming, Baxter?" + +"Oh, I'm comin'," replied Baxter, waddling in his shaggy coat like a +great black bear, "but I'd like to git up my wind first," he added, +puffing clouds of steam as he ascended the hill. + +"There's no time for that," returned Ordway, sharply, as he dragged him +along. + +When they reached Jasper Trend's gate, a policeman, who strolled, +beating his hands together, on the board walk, came up and stopped them +as they were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, he apologised and +moved on. A moment later the sound of their footsteps on the porch +brought the head of Banks to the crack of the door. + +"Who are you? and what is your business?" he demanded. + +"Banks!" said Ordway in a whisper, and at his voice the bar, which +Banks had slipped from the door, fell with a loud crash from his hands. + +"Good Lord, it's really you, Smith!" he cried in a delirium of joy. + +"Harry, be careful or you'll wake the baby," called a voice softly from +the top of the staircase. + +"Darn the baby!" growled Banks, lowering his tone obediently. "The next +thing she'll be asking me to put out the mills because the light wakes +the baby. When did you come, Smith? And what on God's earth are you +doing here?" + +"I came to stop the strike," responded Ordway, smiling. "I've brought an +offer to Mr. Trend, I must speak to him at once." + +"He's in the dining-room, but if you've come from the strikers it's no +use. His back's up." + +"Well, it ain't from the strikers," interrupted Baxter, pushing his way +in the direction of the dining-room. "It's from a chap we won't name, +but he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with Jasper." + +"Then he's a darn fool," remarked Jasper Trend from the threshold, "for +if I don't get the ringleaders arrested befo' mornin' thar won't be a +brick left standin' in the buildings." + +"The chap I mean ain't worryin' about that," said Baxter, "provided +you'll sign the agreement in the next ten minutes. He's ready to give +you a hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an' all." + +"Sign the agreement? I ain't got any agreement," protested Jasper, +suspecting a trap, "and how do I know that the strike ain't over befo' +you're making the offer?" + +"Well, if you'll just step over to the window, and stick your head out, +you won't have much uncertainty about that, I reckon," returned Baxter. + +Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, waiting with his hand on +the sash, while the threatening shouts from below the hill floated into +the room. + +"Papa, the baby can't sleep for the noise those men make down at the +mills," called a peremptory voice from the landing above. + +"I told you so!" groaned Banks, closing the window. + +"I ain't got any agreement," repeated Jasper, in helpless irritation, as +he sank back into his chair. + +"Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as well as a lawyer," said +Baxter, while Ordway, sitting down at a little fancy desk of Milly's in +one corner, wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of scented note +paper. + +When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man looked up at him with +blinking eyes. "Is it to hold good if the damned thing burns befo' +mornin'?" he asked. + +"If it burns before morning--yes." + +With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote his name. "How do I know if I'm to +get the money?" he inquired the next instant, moved by a new suspicion. + +"I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in Botetourt," replied +Ordway, as he handed the pen to Baxter, "and you will receive an answer +by twelve o'clock to-morrow. I want your signature, also, Banks," he +continued, turning to the young man. "I've made two copies, you see, one +of which I shall leave with Baxter." + +"Then you're going away?" inquired Banks, gloomily. + +Ordway nodded. "I am leaving on the midnight train," he answered. + +"So you're going West?" + +"Yes, I'm going West, and I've barely time to settle things at the mills +before I start. God bless you, Banks. Good-bye." + +Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling into his overcoat in the +hall, he broke away from the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the +door, ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, where the +policeman called a "Merry Christmas!" to him as he hurried by. + +When he gained the top of the hill, and descended rapidly toward the +broad level beyond, where the brick buildings of the cotton mills stood +in the centre of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more +frequent, and the black mass on the frozen ground divided itself +presently into individual atoms. A few bonfires had started on the +outskirts of the crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged, +reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard faces of the men, the +sharpened ones of the women, and the pinched ones of little children, +all sallow from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan from lack +of nourishing and wholesome food. As he approached one of these fires, +made from a burning barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, and a +baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, turned and spat fiercely +in his direction. "This ain't no place for swells!" she screamed, and +began laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice. + +In the excitement no one noticed her, and her demented shrieks followed +him while he made his way cautiously along the outskirts of the +strikers, until he came to the main building, before which a few men +with muskets had cleared a hollow space. They looked cowed and sullen, +he saw, for their sympathies were evidently with the operatives, and he +realised that the first organised attack would force them from their +dangerous position. + +Approaching one of the guards, whom he remembered, Ordway touched him +upon the arm and asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. "I +have a message to deliver to the men," he said. + +The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, recognising him, +exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "My God, boys, it's 'Ten Commandment +Smith' or it's his ghost!" + +"Let me get through to the steps," said Ordway, "I must speak to them." + +"Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt if they'd listen to an +angel from heaven if he were to talk to them about Jasper Trend. They +are preparing a rush on the doors now, and when they make it they'll go +through." + +Passing him in silence, Ordway mounted the steps, and stood with his +back against the doors of the main building, in which, when he had last +entered it, the great looms had been at work. Before him the dark mass +heaved back and forth, and farther away, amid the bonfires in the waste +of frozen snow, he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the +half-crazed woman. + +"We won't hear any talk," cried a spokesman in the front ranks of the +crowd. "It's too late to haggle now. We'll have nothin' from Jasper +Trend unless he gives us what we ask." + +"And if he says he'll give it who will believe him?" jeered a woman, +farther back, holding a crying child above her head. "He killed the +father and he's starvin' the children." + +"No--no, we'll have no damned words. We'll burn out the scabs!" shouted +a man, lifting a torch he had just lit at a bonfire. As the torch rose +in a splendid blaze, it lighted up the front of the building, and cast a +yellow flame upon Ordway's face. + +"I have nothing to do with Jasper Trend!" he called out, straightening +himself to his full height. "He has no part in the mills from to-night! +I have bought them from him!" + +With the light on his face, he stood there an instant before them, while +the shouts changed in the first shock of recognition from anger to +surprise. The minute afterward the crowd was rocked by a single gigantic +emotion, and it hurled itself forward, bearing down the guards in its +efforts to reach the steps. As it swayed back and forth its individual +members--men, women and children--appeared to float like straws on some +cosmic undercurrent of feeling. + +"From to-night the mills belong to me!" he cried in a voice which rang +over the frozen ground to where the insane woman was laughing beside a +bonfire. "Your grievances after to-night are not against Jasper Trend, +but against me. You shall have fair pay, fair hours and clean rooms, I +promise you----" + +He went on still, but his words were drowned in the oncoming rush of the +crowd, which rolled forward like great waters, surrounding him, +overwhelming him, sweeping him off his feet, and bearing him out again +upon its bosom. The cries so lately growls of anger had changed +suddenly, and above all the din and rush he heard rising always the name +which he had made honoured and beloved in Tappahannock. It was the one +great moment of his life, he knew, when on the tremendous swell of +feeling, he was borne like a straw up the hillside and back into the +main street of Tappahannock. + +An hour later, bruised, aching and half stunned, he entered the station +and telegraphed twice to Richard Ordway before he went out upon the +platform to take the train. He had left his instructions with Baxter, +from whom he had just parted, and now, as he walked up and down in the +icy darkness, broken by the shivering lights of the station, it seemed +to him that he was like a man, who having been condemned to death, +stands looking back a little wistfully at life from the edge of the +grave. He had had his great moment, and ahead of him there was nothing. + +A freight train passed with a grating noise, a station hand, holding a +lantern ran hurriedly along the track, a whistle blew, and then again +there was stillness. His eyes were wearily following the track, when he +felt a touch on his arm, and turning quickly, saw Banks, in a fur-lined +overcoat, looking up at him with an embarrassed air. + +"Smith," he said, strangling a cough, "I've seen Baxter, and neither he +nor I like your going West this way all by yourself and half sick. If +you don't mind, I've arranged to take a little holiday and come along. +To tell the truth, it's just exactly the chance I've been looking for. I +haven't been away from Milly twenty-four hours since I married her, and +a change does anybody good." + +"No, you can't come, Banks, I don't want you. I'd rather be alone," +replied Ordway, almost indignantly. + +"But you ain't well," insisted Banks stubbornly. "We don't like the +looks of you, Baxter and I." + +"Well, you can't come, that's all," retorted Ordway, as the red eyes of +the engine pierced the darkness. "There, go home, Banks," he added, as +he held out his hand, "I'm much obliged to you. You're a first-rate +chap. Good-bye." + +"Then good-bye," returned Banks hastily turning away. + +A minute afterward, as Ordway swung himself on the train, he heard the +bells of a church, ringing cheerfully in the frosty air, and remembered, +with a start, that it was Christmas morning. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE END OF THE ROAD + + +In the morning, after a short sleep on the hard plush seat, he awoke +with a shooting pain in his head. When the drowsiness of exhaustion had +overcome him, he remembered, he had been idly counting the dazzling +electric lights of a town through which they were passing. By the time +he had reached "twenty-one" he had dropped off into unconsciousness, +though it seemed to him that a second self within him, wholly awake, had +gone on through the night counting without pause, "twenty-two, +twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five--" Still in his brain the numbers +went on, and still the great globular lights flashed past his eyes. + +Struggling awake in the gray dawn, he lay without changing his position, +until the mist gave place slowly to the broad daylight. Then he found +that they were approaching another town, which appeared from a distant +view to resemble a single gigantic factory, composed chiefly of a +wilderness of chimneys. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was +eight o'clock; and the conductor passing through the coach at the +instant, informed the passengers generally that they must change cars +for the West. The name of the town Ordway failed to catch, but it made +so little difference to him that he followed the crowd mechanically, +without inquiring where it would lead him. The pain in his head had +extended now to his chest and shoulders, and presently it passed into +his lower limbs, with a racking ache that seemed to take from him the +control of his muscles. Yet all the while he felt a curious drowsiness, +which did not in the least resemble sleep, creeping over him like the +stealthy effect of some powerful drug. After he had breathed the fresh +air outside, he felt it to be impossible that he should return to the +overheated car, and pushing his way through the crowded station, where +men were rushing to the luncheon counter in one corner, he started along +a broad street, which looked as if it led to an open square at the top +of a long incline. On either side there were rows of narrow tenements, +occupied evidently by the operatives in the imposing factories he had +observed from the train. Here and there a holly wreath suspended from a +cheap lace curtain, reminded him again that it was Christmas morning, +and by some eccentricity of memory, he recalled vividly a Christmas +before his mother's death, when he had crept on his bare feet, in the +dawn, to peep into the bulging stocking before her fireplace. + +At the next corner a small eating house had hung out its list of +Christmas dainties, and going inside he sat down at one of the small +deserted tables and asked for a cup of coffee. When it was brought he +swallowed it in the hope that it might drive away the heaviness in his +head, but after a moment of relief the stupor attacked him again more +oppressively than ever. He felt that even the growing agony in his +forehead and shoulders could not keep him awake if he could only find a +spot in which to lie down and rest. + +After he came out into the street again he felt stronger and better, and +it occurred to him that his headache was due probably to the fact that +he had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. He remembered now +that he had missed his luncheon because of his long walk into the +country, and the recollection of this trivial incident seemed to make +plain all the subsequent events. Everything that had been so confused a +moment ago stood out quite clearly now. His emotions, which had been +benumbed when he left Botetourt, revived immediately in the awakening of +his memory; and he was seized with a terrible longing to hold Alice in +his arms and to say to her that he forgave her and loved her still. It +seemed to him impossible that he should have come away after a single +indifferent kiss, without glancing back--and her face rose before him, +not convulsed and haggard as he had last seen it, but glowing and +transfigured, with her sparkling blue eyes and her lips that were too +red and too full for beauty. Then, even while he looked at her with +love, the old numbness crept back, and his feeling for her died utterly +away. "No, I have ceased to care," he thought indifferently. "It does +not matter to me whether I see her again or not. I must eat and lie +down, nothing else is of consequence." + +He had reached the open space at the end of the long graded hill, and as +he stopped to look about him he saw that a small hotel, frequented +probably by travelling salesmen, stood directly across the square, which +was now deep in snow. Following the pavement to the open door of the +lobby, he went inside and asked for a room, after which he passed into +the restaurant and drank a second cup of coffee. Then turning away from +his untasted food, he went upstairs to the large, bare apartment, with a +broken window pane, which they had assigned him, and throwing himself +upon the unmade bed, fell heavily asleep. + +When he awoke the pain was easier, and feeling oppressed by the chill +vacancy of the room, he went downstairs and out into the open square. +Though it was a dull gray afternoon, the square was filled with +children, dragging bright new sleds over the snow. One of them, a little +brown-haired girl, was trundling her Christmas doll and as she passed +him, she turned and smiled into his face with a joyful look. Something +in her smile was vaguely familiar to him, and he remembered, after a +minute, that Emily had looked at him like that on the morning when he +had met her for the first time riding her old white horse up the hill in +Tappahannock. "Yes, it was that look that made me love her," he thought +dispassionately, as if he were reviewing some dimly remembered event in +a former life, "and it is because I loved her that I was able to do +these things. If I had not loved her, I should not have saved Milly +Trend, nor gone back to Botetourt, nor sacrificed myself for Alice. +Yes, all these have come from that," he added, "and will go back, I +suppose, to that in the end." The little girl ran by again, still +trundling her doll, and again he saw Emily in her red cape on the old +horse. + +For several hours he sat there in the frozen square, hardly feeling the +cold wind that blew over him. But when he rose presently to go into the +hotel, he found that his limbs were stiff, and the burning pain had +returned with violence to his head and chest. The snow in the square +seemed to roll toward him as he walked, and it was with difficulty that +he dragged himself step by step along the pavement to the entrance of +the hotel. After he was in his room again he threw himself, still +dressed, upon the bed, and fell back into the stupor out of which he had +come. + +When he opened his eyes after an hour, he was hardly sure, for the first +few minutes, whether he was awake or asleep. The large, bare room in +which he had lost consciousness had given place, when he awoke, to his +prison cell. The hard daylight came to him through the grated windows, +and from a nail in the wall he saw his gray prison coat, with the red +bars, won for good behaviour, upon the sleeve. Then while he looked at +it, the red bars changed quickly to the double stripes of a second term, +and the double stripes became three, and the three became four, until it +seemed to him that he was striped from head to foot so closely that he +knew that he must have gone on serving term after term since the +beginning of the world. "No, no, that is not mine. I am wearing the red +bars!" he cried out, and came back to himself with a convulsive shudder. + +As he looked about him the hallucination vanished, and he felt that he +had come out of an eternity of unconsciousness into which he should +presently sink back again. The day before appeared to belong to some +other life that he had lived while he was still young, yet when he +opened his eyes the same gray light filled the windows, the same draught +blew through the broken pane, the same vague shadows crawled back and +forth on the ceiling. The headache was gone now, but the room had grown +very cold, and from time to time, when he coughed, long shivers ran +through his limbs and his teeth chattered. He had thrown his overcoat +across his chest as a coverlet, but the cold from which he suffered was +an inward chill, which was scarcely increased by the wind that blew +through the broken pane. There was no confusion in his mind now, but a +wonderful lucidity, in which he saw clearly all that had happened to him +last night in Tappahannock. "Yes, that was my good moment," he said "and +after such a moment there is nothing, but death. If I can only die +everything will be made entirely right and simple." As he uttered the +words the weakness of self pity swept over him, and with a sudden sense +of spiritual detachment, he was aware of a feeling of sympathy for that +other "I," who seemed so closely related to him, and yet outside of +himself. The real "I" was somewhere above amid the crawling shadows on +the ceiling, but the other--the false one--lay on the bed under the +overcoat; and he saw, when he looked down that, though he himself was +young, the other "I" was old and haggard and unshaven. "So there are two +of us, after all," he thought, "poor fellows, poor fellows." + +But the minute afterward the perception of his dual nature faded as +rapidly as the hallucination of his prison cell. In its place there +appeared the little girl, who had passed him, trundling her Christmas +doll, in the square below. "I have seen her before--she is vaguely +familiar," he thought, troubled because he could not recall the +resemblance. From this he passed to the memory of Alice when she was +still a child, and she came back to him, fresh and vivid, as on the day +when she had run out to beg him to come in to listen to her music. The +broken scales ran in his head again, but there was no love in his heart. + +His gaze dropped from the ceiling and turned toward the door, for in the +midst of his visions, he had seen it open softly and Banks come into the +room on tiptoe and stop at the foot of the bed, regarding him with his +embarrassed and silly look "What in the devil, am I dreaming about Banks +for?" he demanded aloud, with an impatient movement of his feet, as if +he meant to kick the obtruding dream away from his bed. + +At the kick the dream stopped rolling its prominent pale eyes and spoke. +"I hope you ain't sick, Smith," it said, and with the first words he +knew that it was Banks in the familiar flesh and not the disembodied +spirit. + +"No I'm not sick, but what are you doing here?" he asked. + +"Enjoying myself," replied Banks gloomily. + +"Well, I wish you'd chosen to enjoy yourself somewhere else." + +"I couldn't. If you don't mind I'd like to stuff the curtain into that +window pane." + +"Oh, I don't mind. When did you get here?" + +"I came on the train with you." + +"On the train with me? Where did you get on? I didn't see you." + +"You didn't look," replied Banks, from the window, where he was stuffing +the red velveteen curtain into the broken pane. "I was in the last seat +in the rear coach." + +"So you followed me," said Ordway indignantly. "I told you not to. Why +did you do it?" + +Banks came back and stood again at the foot of the bed, looking at him +with his sincere and kindly smile. + +"Well, the truth is, I wanted an outing," he answered, "it's a good baby +as babies go, but I get dog-tired of playing nurse." + +"You might have gone somewhere else. There are plenty of places." + +"I couldn't think of 'em, and, besides, this seems a nice town. The're a +spanking fine lot of factories. But I hope you ain't sick Smith? What +are you doing in bed?" + +"Oh, I've given up," replied Ordway gruffly. "Every man has a right to +give up some time, hasn't he?" + +"I don't know about every man," returned Banks, stolidly, "but you +haven't, Smith." + +"Well, I've done it anyway," retorted Ordway, and turned his face to the +wall. + +As he lay there with closed eyes, he had an obscure impression that +Banks--Banks, the simple; Banks, the impossible--was in some way +operating the forces of destiny. First he heard the bell ring, then the +door open and close, and a little later, the bleak room was suffused +with a warm rosy light in which the vague shadows melted into a +shimmering background. The crackling of the fire annoyed him because it +suggested the possibility of physical comfort, and he no longer wanted +to be comfortable. + +"Smith," said Banks, coming over to the bed and pulling off the +overcoat, "I've got a good fire here and a chair. I wish you'd get up. +Good Lord, your hands are as hot as a hornet's nest. When did you eat +anything?" + +"I had breakfast in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he rose from the bed +and came over to the chair Banks had prepared. "I can't remember when it +was, but it must have been since the creation of the world, I suppose." +The fire grew suddenly black before him, "I'd rather lie down," he +added, "my head is splitting and I can't see." + +"Oh, you'll see all right in a minute. Wait till I light this candle, so +the electric light won't hurt your eyes. The boy's gone for a little +supper, and as soon as you've swallowed a mouthful you'll begin to feel +better." + +"But I'm not hungry. I won't eat," returned Ordway, with an irritable +feeling that Banks was looming into a responsibility. Anything that +pulled one back to life was what he wanted to escape, and even the +affection of Banks might prove, he thought, tenaciously clinging. One +resolution he had made in the beginning--he would not take up his life +again for the sake of Banks. + +"Yes, you must, Smith," remonstrated the other, with an angelic patience +which gave him, if possible, a more foolish aspect. "It's after six +o'clock and you haven't had a bite since yesterday at eight. That's why +your head's so light and you're in a raging fever." + +"It isn't that, Banks, it's because I've got to die," he answered. "If +they don't hush things up with money, I may have to go back to prison." +As he said the words he saw again the prison coat, with the double +stripes of a second term, as in the instant of his hallucination. + +"I know," said Banks, softly, as he bent over to poke the fire. "There +was a line or two about it in a New York paper. But they'll hush it up, +and besides they said it was just suspicion." + +"You knew all the time and yet you wanted me to go back to +Tappahannock?" + +"Oh, they don't read the papers much there, except the _Tappahannock +Herald_, and it won't get into that. It was just a silly little slip +anyway, and not two dozen people will be likely to know what it meant." + +"And you, Banks? What do you think?" he asked with a mild curiosity. + +Banks shook his head. "Why, what's the use in your asking?" he replied. +"Of course, I know that you didn't do it, and if you had done it, it +would have been just because the other man ought to have written his +name and wouldn't," he concluded, unblushingly. + +For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. "You're a good chap, +Banks," he said at last in a dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened +irritation, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back to life. Was it +impossible, after all, that a man should give up, as long as there +remained a soul alive who believed in him? It wasn't only the love of +women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved both Emily and Alice, +and yet they were of less importance in his life at this hour than was +Banks, whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought the love of Emily +a great thing and that of Banks a small one. + +His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not remove it when a knock +came at the door, and supper was brought in and placed on a little table +before the fire. + +"I ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith," said Banks, crumbling the +bread into it as he spoke, as if he were preparing a meal for a baby, +"and a good stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this +whiskey, won't you." + +"I'm not hungry," returned Ordway, pushing the glass away, after it had +touched his lips. "I won't eat." + +Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and then sat down with his +eyes fastened on the tray. "I haven't had a bite myself since +breakfast," he remarked, "and I'm pretty faintish, but I tell you, +Smith, if it's the last word I speak, that I won't put my knife into +that beefsteak until you've eaten your soup--no, not if I die right here +of starvation." + +"Well, I'm sorry you're such a fool, for I've no intention of eating it. +I left you my whiskey, you can take that." + +"I shouldn't dare to on an empty stomach. I get drunk too quick." + +For a few minutes he sat in silence regarding the supper with a hungry +look; then selecting a thin slice of bread, he stuck it on the end of a +fork, and kneeling upon the hearthrug, held it out to the glowing coals. +As it turned gradually to a delicious crisp brown, the appetising smell +of it floated to Ordway's nostrils. + +"I always had a particular taste for toast," remarked Banks as he +buttered the slice and laid it on a hot plate on the fender. When he +took up a second one, Ordway watched him with an attention of which he +was almost unconscious, and he did not remove his gaze from the fire, +until the last slice, brown and freshly buttered, was laid carefully +upon the others. As he finished Banks threw down his fork, and rising +to his feet, looked wistfully at the beefsteak, keeping hot before the +cheerful flames. + +"It's kind of rare, just as I like it," he observed, "thick and juicy, +with little brown streaks from the broiler, and a few mushrooms +scattered gracefully on top. Tappahannock is a mighty poor place for a +steak," he concluded resignedly, "it ain't often I have a chance at one, +but I thought to-night being Christmas----" + +"Then, for God's sake, eat it!" thundered Ordway, while he made a dash +for his soup. + +But an hour after he had taken it, his fever rose so high that Banks +helped him into bed and rushed out in alarm for the doctor. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE LIGHT BEYOND + + +Out of the obscurity of the next few weeks, he brought, with the memory +of Banks hovering about his bed, the vague impression of a woman's step +across his floor and a woman's touch on his brow and hands. When he +returned to consciousness the woman's step and touch had vanished, but +Banks was still nursing him with his infinite patience and his silly, +good-humoured smile. The rest was a dream, he said to himself, +resignedly, as he turned his face to the wall and slept. + +On a mild January morning, when he came downstairs for the first time, +and went with Banks out into the open square in front of the hotel, he +put almost timidly the question which had been throbbing in his brain +for weeks. + +"Was there anybody else with me, Banks? I thought--I dreamed--I couldn't +get rid of it----" + +"Who else could there have been?" asked Banks, and he stared straight +before him, at the slender spire of the big, gray church in the next +block. So the mystery would remain unsolved, Ordway understood, and he +would go back to life cherishing either a divine memory or a phantasy of +delirium. + +After a little while Banks went off to the chemists' with a +prescription, and Ordway sat alone on a bench in the warm sunshine, +which was rapidly melting the snow. It was Sunday morning, and presently +the congregation streamed slowly past him on its way to the big gray +church just beyond. A bright blue sky was overhead, the sound of bells +was in the air, and under the melting snow he saw that the grass was +still fresh and green. As he sat there in the wonderful Sabbath +stillness, he felt, with a new sense of security, of reconciliation, +that his life had again been taken out of his hands and adjusted without +his knowledge. This time it had been Banks--Banks, the impossible--who +had swayed his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks had +accomplished it through the simple power of the human touch. In the hour +of his need it had been neither religion nor philosophy, but the +outstretched hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened and he saw +that though the body of love is one, the members of it are infinite; and +it was made plain to him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of +Alice, and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of the same +immortality. He had gone down into the deep places, and out of them he +had brought this light, this message. As the people streamed past him to +the big gray church, he felt that if they would only stop and listen, he +could tell them in the open, not in walls, of the thing that they were +seeking. Yet the time had not come, though in the hope of it he could +sit there patiently under the blue sky, with the snow melting over the +grass at his feet. + +At the end of an hour Banks returned, and stood over him with +affectionate anxiety. "In a few days you'll be well enough to travel, +Smith, and I'll take you back with me to Tappahannock." + +Ordway glanced up, smiling, and Banks saw in his face, so thin that the +flesh seemed almost transparent, the rapt and luminous look with which +he had stood over his Bible in the green field or in the little grove of +pines. + +"You will go back to Tappahannock and Baxter will take you in until you +grow strong and well, and then you can start your schools, or your +library, and look after the mills instead of letting Baxter do it." + +"Yes," said Ordway, "yes," but he had hardly heard Banks's words, for +his gaze was on the blue sky, against which the spire of the church rose +like a pointing finger. His face shone as if from an inward flame, and +this flame, burning clearly in his blue eyes, transfigured his look. Ah, +Smith was always a dreamer, thought Banks, with the uncomprehending +simplicity of a child. + +But Ordway was looking beyond Banks, beyond the church spire, beyond the +blue sky. He saw himself, not as Banks pictured him, living quietly in +Tappahannock, but still struggling, still fighting, still falling to +rise and go on again. His message was not for Tappahannock alone, but +for all places where there were men and women working and suffering and +going into prison and coming out. He heard his voice speaking to them in +the square of this town; then in many squares and in many towns---- + +"Come," said Banks softly, "the wind is changing. It is time to go in." + +With an effort Ordway withdrew his gaze from the church spire. Then +leaning upon Banks's arm, he slowly crossed the square to the door of +the hotel. But before going inside, he turned and stood for a moment +looking back at the grass which showed fresh and green under the melting +snow. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ancient Law, by Ellen Glasgow + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIENT LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 34419-8.txt or 34419-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/1/34419/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ancient Law + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: November 23, 2010 [EBook #34419] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIENT LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + +<hr class="full" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;"> +<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="372" height="550" alt="image of book's cover: +The Ancient Law, by Ellen Glasgow" title="image of book's cover: +The Ancient Law, Ellen Glasgow" /></a> +</div> + +<h1>THE ANCIENT LAW</h1> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="" +style="border:1px solid black;padding:2%;"> +<tr><th align="center">BY<br /> +THE SAME AUTHOR</th></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE WHEEL OF LIFE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE DELIVERANCE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE BATTLE-GROUND</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE DESCENDANT</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 337px;"> +<a href="images/front.jpg"> +<img src="images/front_sml.jpg" width="337" height="550" alt="image of title page: +The Ancient Law +By +ELLEN GLASGOW + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company +1908" title="image of title page: +The Ancient Law +By +ELLEN GLASGOW + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company +1908" /></a> +</div> + +<p class="c"><small><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1908, by<br /> +Doubleday, Page & Company<br /> +Published, January, 1908<br /> +<br /> +All Rights Reserved<br /> +Including that of Translation into Foreign Languages<br /> +Including the Scandinavian</span></small><br /> +</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p class="c">TO<br /> +MY GOOD FRIEND EFFENDI<br /> +</p> + +<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h3> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="contents"> + +<tr><td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap"><a href="#BOOK_FIRST">Book First—The New Life</a></span></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-a">I.</a></td><td>The Road </td><td align="right"><a href="#page_003">3</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II-a">II.</a></td><td>The Night</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_015">15</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III-a">III.</a></td><td>The Return to Tappahannock</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_031">31</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-a">IV.</a></td><td>The Dream of Daniel Smith</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_042">42</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V-a">V.</a></td><td>At Tappahannock</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_054">54</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-a">VI.</a></td><td>The Pretty Daughter of the Mayor</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_062">62</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-a">VII.</a></td><td>Shows the Graces of Adversity</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_072">72</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-a">VIII.</a></td><td>"Ten Commandment Smith"</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_090">90</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX-a">IX.</a></td><td>The Old and the New</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_101">101</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X-a">X.</a></td><td>His Neighbour's Garden</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_111">111</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI-a">XI.</a></td><td>Bullfinch's Hollow</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_123">123</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII-a">XII.</a></td><td>A String of Coral</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_135">135</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap"><a href="#BOOK_SECOND">Book Second—The Day of Reckoning</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-b">I.</a></td><td>In Which a Stranger Appears</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_147">147</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II-b">II.</a></td><td>Ordway Compromises With the Past</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III-b">III.</a></td><td>A Change of Lodging</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_174">174</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-b">IV.</a></td><td>Shows That a Laugh Does not Heal a Heartache</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_185">185</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V-b">V.</a></td><td>Treats of a Great Passion in a Simple Soul</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_196">196</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-b">VI.</a></td><td>In Which Baxter Plots</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_209">209</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-b">VII.</a></td><td>Shows That Politeness, Like Charity, Is an Elastic Mantle</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_222">222</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-b">VIII.</a></td><td>The Turn of the Wheel</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_234">234</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX-b">IX.</a></td><td>At the Cross-roads</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_248">248</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X-b">X.</a></td><td>Between Man and Man</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_256">256</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI-b">XI.</a></td><td>Between Man and Woman</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_268">268</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap"><a href="#BOOK_THIRD">Book Third—The Larger Prison</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-c">I.</a></td><td>The Return to Life</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_281">281</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II-c">II.</a></td><td>His Own Place</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_290">290</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III-c">III.</a></td><td>The Outward Pattern</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_303">303</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-c">IV.</a></td><td>The Letter and the Spirit</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_317">317</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V-c">V.</a></td><td>The Will of Alice</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_329">329</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-c">VI.</a></td><td>The Iron Bars</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_341">341</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-c">VII.</a></td><td>The Vision and the Fact</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_353">353</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-c">VIII.</a></td><td>The Weakness in Strength</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_363">363</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap"><a href="#BOOK_FOURTH">Book Fourth—Liberation</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-d">I.</a></td><td>The Inward Light</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_379">379</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II-d">II.</a></td><td>At Tappahannock Again</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_392">392</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III-d">III.</a></td><td>Alice's Marriage</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_409">409</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-d">IV.</a></td><td>The Power of the Blood</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_420">420</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V-d">V.</a></td><td>The House of Dreams</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_434">434</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-d">VI.</a></td><td>The Ultimate Choice</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_443">443</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-d">VII.</a></td><td>Flight</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_454">454</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-d">VIII.</a></td><td>The End of the Road</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_469">469</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX-d">IX.</a></td><td>The Light Beyond</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_482">482</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_FIRST" id="BOOK_FIRST"></a>BOOK FIRST<br /><br /> +THE NEW LIFE</h2> + +<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-a" id="CHAPTER_I-a"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Road</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HOUGH it was six days since Daniel Ordway had come out of prison, he +was aware, when he reached the brow of the hill, and stopped to look +back over the sunny Virginia road, that he drank in the wind as if it +were his first breath of freedom. At his feet the road dropped between +two low hills beyond which swept a high, rolling sea of broomsedge; and +farther still—where the distance melted gradually into the blue sky—he +could see not less plainly the New York streets through which he had +gone from his trial and the walls of the prison where he had served five +years. Between this memory and the deserted look of the red clay road +there was the abrupt division which separates actual experience from the +objects in a dream. He felt that he was awake, yet it seemed that the +country through which he walked must vanish presently at a touch. Even +the rough March wind blowing among the broomsedge heightened rather than +diminished the effect of the visionary meeting of earth and sky.</p> + +<p>As he stood there in his ill-fitting clothes, with his head bared in the +sun and the red clay ground to fine dust on his coarse boots, it would +have been difficult<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> at a casual glance to have grouped him +appropriately in any division of class. He might have been either a +gentleman who had turned tramp or a tramp who had been born to look a +gentleman. Though he was barely above medium height, his figure produced +even in repose an impression of great muscular strength, and this +impression was repeated in his large, regular, and singularly expressive +features. His face was square with a powerful and rather prominent mouth +and chin; the brows were heavily marked and the eyes were of so bright a +blue that they lent an effect which was almost one of gaiety to his +smile. In his dark and slightly coarsened face the colour of his eyes +was intensified until they appeared to flash at times like blue lights +under his thick black brows. His age was, perhaps, forty years, though +at fifty there would probably be but little change recorded in his +appearance. At thirty one might have found, doubtless, the same lines of +suffering upon his forehead and about his mouth.</p> + +<p>As he went on over some rotting planks which spanned a stream that had +gone dry, the road he followed was visible as a faded scar in a stretch +of impoverished, neutral-toned country—the least distinctive and most +isolated part of what is known in Virginia as "the Southside." A +bleached monotony was the one noticeable characteristic of the +landscape—the pale clay road, the dried broomsedge, and even the +brownish, circular-shaped cloud of smoke, which hung over the little +town in the distance, each contributing a depressing feature to a face +which<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> presented at best an unrelieved flatness of colour. The single +high note in the dull perspective was struck by a clump of sassafras, +which, mistaking the mild weather for a genial April, had flowered +tremulously in gorgeous yellow.</p> + +<p>The sound of a wagon jolting over the rough road, reached him presently +from the top of the hill, and as he glanced back, he heard a drawling +curse thrown to the panting horses. A moment later he was overtaken by +an open spring wagon filled with dried tobacco plants of the last +season's crop. In the centre of the load, which gave out a stale, +pungent odour, sat a small middle-aged countryman, who swore mild oaths +in a pleasant, jesting tone. From time to time, as the stalks beneath +him were jostled out of place, he would shift his seat and spread out +his short legs clad in overalls of blue jean. Behind him in the road the +wind tossed scattered and damaged leaves of tobacco.</p> + +<p>When the wagon reached Ordway, he glanced over his shoulder at the +driver, while he turned into the small grass-grown path amid the clumps +of sassafras.</p> + +<p>"Is that Bernardsville over there?" he asked, pointing in the direction +of the cloud of smoke.</p> + +<p>The wagon drew up quickly and the driver—who showed at nearer view to +be a dirty, red-bearded farmer of the poorer class—stared at him with +an expression which settled into suspicion before it had time to denote +surprise.</p> + +<p>"Bernardsville! Why, you've come a good forty miles out of your road. +That thar's Tappahannock."<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a></p> + +<p>"Tappahannock? I hadn't heard of it."</p> + +<p>"Mebbe you ain't, but it never knowed it."</p> + +<p>"Anything going on there? Work, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"The biggest shippin' of tobaccy this side o' Danville is goin' on thar. +Ever heard o' Danville?"</p> + +<p>"I know the name, but the tobacco market is about closed now, isn't it? +The season's over."</p> + +<p>The man's laugh startled the waiting horses, and lifting their heads +from a budding bush by the roadside, they moved patiently toward +Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>"Closed? Bless you, it never closes—Whoa! thar, won't you, darn you? To +be sure sales ain't so brisk to-day as they war a month back, but I'm +jest carryin' in my leetle crop to Baxter's warehouse."</p> + +<p>"It isn't manufactured, then—only bought and sold?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's sold quick enough and bought, too. Baxter auctions the leaf +off in lots and it's shipped to the factories in Richmond an' in +Danville. You ain't a native of these parts, I reckon?"</p> + +<p>"A native—no? I'm looking for work."</p> + +<p>"What sort of work? Thar's work an' work. I saw a man once settin' out +in an old field doin' a picture of a pine tree, an' he called it work. +Wall, wall, if you're goin' all the way to Tappahannock, I reckon I kin +give you a lift along. Mebbe you kin pick up an odd job in Baxter's +warehouse—thar's a sayin' that he feeds all the crows in Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>He drove on with a chuckle, for Ordway had declined the proffered +"lift," and the little cloud of<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> dust raised by the wagon drifted slowly +in the direction of the town.</p> + +<p>A mile farther on Ordway found that as the road approached Tappahannock, +the country lost gradually its aspect of loneliness, and the colourless +fields were dotted here and there with small Negro cabins, built for the +most part of unbarked pine logs laid roughly cross-wise to form square +enclosures. Before one of these primitive dwellings a large black woman, +with a strip of checked blue and white gingham bound about her head, was +emptying a pail of buttermilk into a wooden trough. When she saw Ordway +she nodded to him from the end of the little path, bordered by rocks, +which led from the roadside to the single stone step before her cabin +door.</p> + +<p>As he watched the buttermilk splash into the trough, Ordway remembered, +with a spasm of faintness, that he had eaten nothing since the day +before, and turning out of the road, he asked the woman for a share of +the supper that she gave the pigs.</p> + +<p>"Go 'way, honey, dis yer ain' fit'n fur you," she replied, resting the +pail under her arm against her rolling hip, "I'se des' thowin' hit ter +de hawgs."</p> + +<p>But when he had repeated his request, she motioned to a wooden bench +beside a scrubby lilac bush on which a coloured shirt hung drying, and +going into the single room inside, brought him a glass of buttermilk and +a piece of corn bread on a tin plate. While he ate hungrily of the +coarse food a half-naked Negro baby, covered with wood ashes, rolled<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> +across the threshold and lay sprawling in the path at his feet.</p> + +<p>After a little rambling talk the woman went back into the cabin, where +she whipped up cornmeal dough in an earthenware bowl, turning at +intervals to toss a scrap or two to a red and white cock that hovered, +expectant, about the doorway. In the road a covered wagon crawled by, +and the shadow it threw stretched along the path to the lilac bush where +the coloured shirt hung drying. The pigs drank the buttermilk from the +trough with loud grunts; the red and white cock ventured, alert and +wary, across the threshold; and the Negro baby, after sprawling on its +stomach in the warm earth, rolled over and lay staring in silence at the +blue sky overhead.</p> + +<p>There was little beauty in the scene except the beauty which belongs to +all things under the open sky. Road and landscape and cabin were bare +even of any chance effect of light and shadow. Yet there was life—the +raw, primal life of nature—and after his forty years of wasted +experience, Ordway was filled with a passionate desire for life. In his +careless pursuit of happiness he had often found weariness instead, but +sitting now homeless and penniless, before the negro's cabin, he +discovered that each object at which he looked—the long road that led +somewhere, the smoke hanging above the distant town, the deep-bosomed +negro mother and the half-naked negro baby—that each of these possessed +an interest to which he awakened almost with a start of wonder. And +yielding to the influence of his<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> thought, his features appeared to lose +gradually their surface coarseness of line. It was as if his mouth grew +vague, enveloped in shadow, while the eyes dominated the entire face and +softened its expression to one of sweetness, gaiety and youth. The child +that is in every man big enough to contain it looked out suddenly from +his altered face.</p> + +<p>He was thinking now of a day in his boyhood—of an early autumn morning +when the frost was white on the grass and the chestnuts dropped heavily +from the spreading boughs and the cider smelt strong and sweet as it +oozed from the crushed winesaps. On that morning, after dressing by +candlelight, he had gone into town with his maiden aunt, a lady whom he +remembered chiefly by her false gray curls which she wore as if they had +been a halo. At the wayside station, while they had waited for the train +to the little city of Botetourt, he had seen a convict brought in, +handcuffed, on his way to the penitentiary, and in response to the boy's +persistent questioning, his aunt had told him that the man was wicked, +though he appeared to the child's eyes to be only miserable—a thin, +dirty, poorly clad labourer with a red cotton handkerchief bound tightly +about his jaw. A severe toothache had evidently attacked him, for while +he had stared sullenly at the bare planks of the floor, he had made from +time to time a suffering, irritable movement with his head. At each +gesture the guard had called out sharply: "Keep still there, won't you?" +to which the convict had responded by a savage lowering of his heavy +brows.<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a></p> + +<p>For the first time it had occurred to the child that day that there must +be a strange contradiction—a fundamental injustice in the universal +scheme of nature. He had always been what his father had called +impatiently "a boy with ideas," and it had seemed to him then that this +last "idea" of his was far the most wonderful of them all—more +wonderful than any he had found in books or in his own head at night. At +the moment he had felt it swell so large in his heart that a glow of +happiness had spread through his body to his trembling hands. Slipping +from his aunt's hold he had crossed the room to where the convict sat +sullenly beside his guard.</p> + +<p>"I'll give you all my money," he had cried out joyously, "because I am +so much happier than you."</p> + +<p>The convict had started and looked up with an angry flash in his eyes; +the guard had burst into a loud laugh while he spat tobacco juice +through the window; the silver had scattered and rolled under the +benches on the plank floor; and the child's aunt, rustling over in her +stiff brocade, had seized his arm and dragged him, weeping loudly, into +the train. So his first mission had failed, yet at this day he could +remember the joy with which he had stretched out his little hand and the +humiliation in which he had drawn it back. That was thirty years ago, +but he wondered now if the child's way had been God's way, after all?</p> + +<p>For there had come an hour in his life when the convict of his boyhood +had stood in closer relationship<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> to his misery than the people whom he +had touched in the street. His childish memories scattered like mist, +and the three great milestones of his past showed bare and white, as his +success, his temptation and his fall. He remembered the careless +ambition of his early youth, the brilliant promise of his college years, +and the day on which he had entered as a younger member the great +banking house of Amos, Bonner, and Amos. Between this day and the slow +minutes when he had stood in his wife's sitting-room awaiting his +arrest, he could find in his thoughts no gradation of years to mark the +terrible swiftness of his descent. In that time which he could not +divide Wall Street had reached out and sucked him in; the fever of +speculation had consumed like disease the hereditary instincts, the +sentiments of honour, which had barred its way. One minute he had stood +a rich man on the floor of the Stock Exchange—and was it an instant or +a century afterwards that he had gone out into the street and had known +himself to be a beggar and a criminal? Other men had made millions with +the use of money which they held in trust; but the star of the gambler +had deserted him at the critical hour; and where other men had won and +triumphed, he had gone down, he told himself, dishonoured by a stroke of +luck. In his office that day a mirror over the mantel had showed him his +face as he entered, and he had stopped to look at it almost with +curiosity—as if it were the face of a stranger which repelled him +because it bore some sinister likeness to his own.<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> After this there had +come days, weeks, months, when at each sudden word, at each opening of +the door, he had started, half sickened, by fear of the discovery which +he knew must come. His nerves had quivered and given way under the +pressure; he had grown morose, irritable, silent; and in some +half-insane frenzy, he had imagined that his friends, his family, his +wife, even his young children, had begun to regard him with terror and +suspicion. But at last the hour had come, and in the strength with which +he had risen to meet it, he had won back almost his old self—for +courage, not patience, was the particular virtue of his temperament. He +had stood his trial bravely, had heard his sentence without a tremor, +and had borne his punishment without complaint. The world and he were +quits now, and he felt that it owed him at least the room for a fair +fight.</p> + +<p>The prison, he had said once, had squared him with his destiny, yet +to-day each act of his past appeared to rivet, not itself, but its +result upon his life. Though he told himself that he was free, he knew +that, in the reality of things, he was still a prisoner. From the lowest +depths that he had touched he was reached even now by the agony of his +most terrible moment when, at the end of his first hopeless month, he +had found awaiting him one day a letter from his wife. It was her final +good-bye, she had written; on the morrow she would leave with her two +children for his father's home in Virginia; and the single condition +upon which the old man had consented to provide<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> for them was that she +should separate herself entirely from her husband. "The condition is +hard," she had added, "made harder, too, by the fact that you are his +son and my only real claim upon him is through you—yet when you +consider the failure of our life together, and that the children's +education even is unprovided for, you will, I feel sure, admit that my +decision has been a wise one."</p> + +<p>The words had dissolved and vanished before his eyes, and turning away +he had flung himself on his prison bed, while the hard, dry sobs had +quivered like blows in his chest. Yet she was right! His judgment had +acquitted her in the first agony of his reproach, and the unerring +justice in her decision had convicted him with each smooth, calm +sentence in her letter. As he lay there he had lost consciousness of the +bare walls and the hot sunshine that fell through the grating, for the +ultimate desolation had closed over him like black waters.</p> + +<p>A little later he had gone from his cell and taken up his life again; +but all that he remembered of it now was a voice that had called to him +in the prison yard.</p> + +<p>"You look so darn sunk in the mouth I'll let you have my last +smoke—damn you!"</p> + +<p>Turning sullenly he had accepted the stranger's tobacco, unaware at the +moment that he was partaking of the nature of a sacrament—for while he +had smoked there in his dogged misery, he had felt revive in his heart a +stir of sympathy for the convict he had seen at the wayside station in +Virginia. As if<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> revealed by an inner illumination the impressions of +that morning had started, clear as light, into his brain. The frost on +the grass, the dropping chestnuts, the strong sweet smell of the crushed +winesaps—these things surrounded in his memory the wretched figure of +the man with the red cotton handkerchief bound tightly about his swollen +jaw. But the figure had ceased now to stand for itself and for its own +degradation alone—haunting, tragic, colossal, it had become in his +thoughts the image of all those who suffer and are oppressed. So through +his sin and his remorse, Ordway had travelled slowly toward the vision +of service.</p> + +<p>With a word of thanks to the woman, he rose from the bench and went down +the little path and out into the road. The wind had changed suddenly, +and as he emerged from the shelter of a thicket, it struck against his +face with a biting edge. Where the sun had declined in the western sky, +heavy clouds were driving close above the broken line of the horizon. +The night promised to be cold, and he pushed on rapidly, urged by a +feeling that the little town before him held rest and comfort and the +new life beneath its smoking chimneys. Walking was less difficult now, +for the road showed signs of travel as it approached the scattered +houses, which appeared thrust into community by the surrounding +isolation of the fields. At last, as he ascended a slight elevation, he +found that the village, screened by a small grove of pines, lay +immediately beneath the spot upon which he stood.<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-a" id="CHAPTER_II-a"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Night</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE scattered houses closed together in groups, the road descended +gradually into a hollow, and emerging on the opposite side, became a +street, and the street slouched lazily downhill to where a railroad +track ran straight as a seam across the bare country. Quickening his +steps, Ordway came presently to the station—a small wooden building +newly painted a brilliant yellow—and pushed his way with difficulty +through a crowd of Negroes that had gathered closely beside the waiting +train.</p> + +<p>"Thar's a good three hundred of the critters going to a factory in the +North," remarked a man behind him, "an' yit they don't leave more'n a +speck of white in the county. Between the crows an' the darkies I'll be +blamed if you can see the colour of the soil."</p> + +<p>The air was heavy with hot, close smells—a mingling of smoke, tobacco, +dust and humanity. A wailing sound issued from the windows of the cars +where the dark faces were packed tightly together, and a tall Negro, +black as ebony, in a red shirt open at the throat, began strumming +excitedly upon a banjo. Near him a mulatto woman lifted a shrill soprano +voice, while she stood beating the<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> air distractedly with her open +palms. On the other side of the station a dog howled, and the engine +uttered an angry whistle as if impatient of the delay.</p> + +<p>After five years of prison discipline, the ugly little town appeared to +Ordway to contain an alluring promise of freedom. At the instant the +animation in the scene spoke to his blood as if it had been beauty, and +movement seemed to him to possess some peculiar ęsthetic quality apart +from form or colour. The brightly dyed calicos on the Negro women; the +shining black faces of the men, smooth as ebony; the tragic primitive +voices, like voices imprisoned in the soil; the strumming of the rude +banjo; the whistling engine and the howling dog; the odours of smoke and +dust and fertilisers—all these things blended in his senses to form an +intoxicating impression of life. Nothing that could move or utter sounds +or lend a spot of colour appeared common or insignificant to his +awakened brain. It was all life, and for five years he had been starved +in every sense and instinct.</p> + +<p>The main street—Warehouse Street, as he found later that it was +called—appeared in the distance as a broad river of dust which ran from +the little station to where the warehouses and small shops gave place to +the larger dwellings which presided pleasantly over the neighbouring +fields. As Ordway followed the board sidewalk, he began idly reading the +signs over the shops he passed, until "Kelly's Saloon," and "Baker's +General Store" brought him suddenly upon a dark oblong building which +ran back, under<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> a faded brick archway. Before the entrance several men +were seated in cane chairs, which they had tilted conveniently against +the wall, and at Ordway's approach they edged slightly away and sat +regarding him over their pipes with an expression of curiosity which +differed so little in the different faces that it appeared to result +from some internal automatic spring.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he began after a moment's hesitation, "but I was +told that I might find work in Baxter's warehouse."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a first-rate habit not to believe everything you're told," +responded an enormous man, in half-soiled clothes, who sat smoking in +the middle of the archway. "I can't find work myself in Baxter's +warehouse at this season. Ain't that so, boys?" he enquired with a +good-natured chuckle of his neighbours.</p> + +<p>"Are you Mr. Baxter?" asked Ordway shortly.</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure about the Mister, but I'm Baxter all right." He had +shifted his pipe to the extreme corner of his mouth as he spoke, and now +removing it with what seemed an effort, he sat prodding the ashes with +his stubby thumb. His face, as he glanced down, was overspread by a +flabbiness which appeared to belong to expression rather than to +feature.</p> + +<p>"Then there's no chance for me?" enquired Ordway.</p> + +<p>"You might try the cotton mills—they's just down the next street. If +there's a job to be had in town you'll most likely run up against it +there."<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a></p> + +<p>"It's no better than a wild goose chase you're sending him on, Baxter," +remarked a smaller member of the group, whose head protruded +unexpectedly above Baxter's enormous shoulder; "I was talking to Jasper +Trend this morning and he told me he was turning away men every day. +Whew! but this wind is getting too bitter for me, boys."</p> + +<p>"Oh, there's no harm can come of trying," insisted the cheerful giant, +pushing back his chair as the others retreated out of the wind, "if hope +doesn't fill the stomach it keeps the heart up, and that's something."</p> + +<p>His great laugh rolled out, following Ordway along the street as he went +in pursuit of the fugitive opportunity which disported itself now in the +cotton factory at the foot of the hill. When he reached the doors the +work of the day was already over, and a crowd of operatives surged +through the entrance and overflowed into the two roads which led by +opposite ways into the town. Drawing to one side of the swinging doors, +he stood watching the throng a moment before he could summon courage to +enter the building and inquire for the office of the manager. When he +did so at last it was with an almost boyish feeling of hesitation.</p> + +<p>The manager—a small, wiry man with a wart on the end of his long +nose—was hurriedly piling papers into his desk before closing the +factory and going home to supper. His hands moved impatiently, almost +angrily, for he remembered that he had already worked overtime and that +the muffins<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> his wife had promised him for supper would be cold. At any +other hour of the day he would have received Ordway with politeness—for +he was at heart a well-disposed and even a charitable person—but it +happened that his dinner had been unsatisfactory (his mutton had been +served half raw by a new maid of all-work) and he had particularly set +his hopes upon the delicious light muffins in which his wife excelled. +So when he saw Ordway standing between him and his release, his face +grew black and the movements of his hands passed to jerks of frantic +irritation.</p> + +<p>"What do you want? Say it quick—I've no time to talk," he began, as he +pushed the last heap of papers inside, and let the lid of his desk fall +with a bang.</p> + +<p>"I'm looking for work," said Ordway, "and I was told at Baxter's +warehouse——"</p> + +<p>"Darn Baxter. What kind of work do you want?"</p> + +<p>"I'll take anything—I can do bookkeeping or——"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't want a bookkeeper."</p> + +<p>He locked his desk, and turning to take down his hat, was incensed +further by discovering that it was not on the hook where he had placed +it when he came in. Finding it at last on a heap of reports in the +corner, he put it on his head and stared at Ordway, with his angry eyes.</p> + +<p>"You must have come a long way—haven't you? Mostly on foot?"</p> + +<p>"A good distance."</p> + +<p>"Why did you select Tappahannock? Was there any reason?"<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a></p> + +<p>"I wanted to try the town, that was all."</p> + +<p>"Well, I tell you what, my man," concluded the manager, while his rage +boiled over in the added instants of his delay; "there have been a +blamed sight too many of your kind trying Tappahannock of late—and the +best thing you can do is to move on to a less particular place. When we +want bookkeepers here we don't pick 'em up out of the road."</p> + +<p>Ordway swallowed hard, and his hands clinched in a return of one of his +boyish spasms of temper. His vision of the new life was for an instant +defaced and clouded; then as he met the angry little eyes of the man +before him, he felt that his rage went out of him as suddenly as it had +come. Turning without a word, he passed through the entrance and out +into the road, which led back, by groups of negro hovels, into the main +street of the town.</p> + +<p>His anger gave place to helplessness; and it seemed to him, when he +reached presently the larger dwellings upon the hill, and walked slowly +past the squares of light that shone through the unshuttered windows, +that he was more absolutely alone than if he had stood miles away from +any human habitation. The outward nearness had become in his thoughts +the measure of the inner distance. He felt himself to be detached from +humanity, yet he knew that in his heart there existed a stronger bond +than he had ever admitted in the years of his prosperity. The generous +impulses of his youth were still there, but had not sorrow winnowed them +from all that was base or<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> merely selfish? Was the lesson that he had +learned in prison to be wholly lost? Did the knowledge he had found +there count for nothing in his life—the bitterness of shame, the agony +of remorse, the companionship with misery? He remembered a Sunday in the +prison when he had listened to a sermon from a misshapen little +preacher, whose face was drawn sideways by a burn which he had suffered +during an epileptic seizure in his childhood. In spite of his grotesque +features the man had drawn Ordway by some invisible power which he had +felt even then to be the power of faith. Crippled, distorted, poorly +clad, the little preacher, he felt, had found the great possession which +he was still seeking—this man believed with a belief that was larger +than the external things which he had lost. When he shut his eyes now he +could still see the rows of convicts in the chapel, the pale, greenish +light in which each face resembled the face of a corpse, the open Bible +in its black leather binding, and beside it the grotesque figure of the +little preacher who had come, like his Master, to call not the righteous +but sinners to repentance.</p> + +<p>The sun had dropped like a ball below the gray horizon, and the raw +March wind, when it struck him now, brought no longer the exhilaration +of the afternoon. A man passed him, comfortable, well-fed, wheezing +slightly, with his fat neck wrapped in a woollen muffler, and as he +stopped before a whitewashed gate, which opened into the garden +surrounding a large, freshly painted house, Ordway touched<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> his arm and +spoke to him in a voice that had fallen almost to a whisper.</p> + +<p>At his words, which were ordinary enough, the man turned on him a face +which had paled slightly from surprise or fear. In the twilight Ordway +could see his jaw drop while he fumbled awkwardly with his gloved hands +at the latch of the gate.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean—I don't know" he repeated in a wheezing +voice, "I'm sorry, but I really don't know," he insisted again as if in +a helpless effort to be understood. Once inside the garden, he closed +the gate with a bang behind him, and went rapidly up the gravelled walk +to the long piazza where the light of a lamp under a red shade streamed +through the open door.</p> + +<p>Turning away Ordway followed the street to the end of the town, where it +passed without distinct change of character into the country road. On +this side the colour of the soil had paled until it looked almost +blanched under the rising moon. Though the twilight was already in +possession of the fields a thin red line was still visible low in the +west, and beneath this the scattered lights in negro cabins shone like +obscure, greenish glow-worms, hidden among clumps of sassafras or in +stretches of dried broomsedge. As Ordway looked at these humble +dwellings, it seemed to him that they might afford a hospitality denied +him by the more imposing houses of the town. He had already eaten of the +Negro's charity, and it was possible that before dawn he might be +compelled to eat of it again.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p> + +<p>Beneath his feet the long road called to him as it wound a curving white +line drawn through the vague darkness of the landscape. Somewhere in a +distant pasture a bull bellowed, and the sound came to him like the +plaintive voice of the abandoned fields. While he listened the response +of his tired feet to the road appeared to him as madness, and stopping +short, he turned quickly and looked back in the direction of +Tappahannock. But from the spot on which he stood the lights of the town +offered little promise of hospitality, so after an uncertain glance, he +moved on again to a bare, open place where two roads met and crossed at +the foot of a blasted pine. A few steps farther he discovered that a +ruined gate stood immediately on his right, and beyond the crumbling +brick pillars, he made out dimly the outlines of several fallen bodies, +which proved upon nearer view to be the prostrate forms of giant cedars. +An avenue had once led, he gathered, from the gate to a house situated +somewhere at the end of the long curve, for the great trees lying across +the road must have stood once as the guardians of an estate of no little +value. Whether the cedars had succumbed at last to age or to the axe of +the destroyer, it was too dark at the moment for him to ascertain; but +the earth had claimed them now, magnificent even in their ruin, while +under the dim tent of sky beyond, he could still discern their living +companions of a hundred years. So impressive was the past splendour of +this approach that the house seemed, when he reached it, almost an +affront to the mansion which his imagination had<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> reared. Broad, low, +built of brick, with two long irregular wings embedded in English ivy, +and a rotting shingled roof that sloped over dormered windows, its most +striking characteristic as he first perceived it under the moonlight was +the sentiment which is inevitably associated with age and decay. Never +imposing, the dwelling was now barely habitable, for the roof was +sagging in places over the long wings, a chimney had fallen upon one of +the moss-covered eaves, the stone steps of the porch were hollowed into +dangerous channels, and the ground before the door was strewn with +scattered chips from a neighbouring wood pile.</p> + +<p>The air of desolation was so complete that at first Ordway supposed the +place to be uninhabited, but discovering a light presently in one of the +upper windows, he ascended the steps and beat with the rusted knocker on +the panel of the door. For several minutes there was no answer to his +knock. Then the sound of shuffling footsteps reached him from the +distance, drawing gradually nearer until they stopped immediately beyond +the threshold.</p> + +<p>"I ain' gwine open dis yer do' ef'n hits oner dem ole hants," said a +voice within, while a sharp point of light pierced through the keyhole.</p> + +<p>An instant later, in response to Ordway's assurance of his bodily +reality, the bolt creaked back with an effort and the door opened far +enough to admit the slovenly head and shoulders of an aged negress.</p> + +<p>"Miss Meely she's laid up en she cyar'n see ner comp'ny, Marster," she +announced with the evident<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> intention of retreating as soon as her +message was delivered.</p> + +<p>Her purpose, however, was defeated, for, slipping his heavy boot into +the crack of the door, Ordway faced her under the lamp which she held +high above her head. In the shadows beyond he could see dimly the bare +old hall and the great winding staircase which led to the painted +railing of the gallery above.</p> + +<p>"Can you give me shelter for the night?" he asked, "I am a stranger in +the county, and I've walked thirty miles to-day."</p> + +<p>"Miss Meely don' wan'ner comp'ny," replied the negress, while her head, +in its faded cotton handkerchief, appeared to swing like a pendulum +before his exhausted eyes.</p> + +<p>"Who is Miss Meely?" he demanded, laying his hand upon her apron as she +made a sudden terrified motion of flight.</p> + +<p>"Miss Meely Brooke—Marse Edward's daughter. He's daid."</p> + +<p>"Well, go and ask her. I'll wait here on the porch until you return."</p> + +<p>Her eyelids flickered in the lamplight, and he saw the whites of her +eyes leap suddenly into prominence. Then the door closed again, the bolt +shot back into place, and the shuffling sound grew fainter as it passed +over the bare floor. A cold nose touched Ordway's hand, and looking down +he saw that an old fox-hound had crept into the porch and was fawning +with pleasure at his feet. He was conscious<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> of a thrill of gratitude +for the first demonstrative welcome he had received at Tappahannock; and +while he stood there with the hound leaping upon his chest, he felt +that, in spite of "Miss Meely," hidden somewhere behind the closed door, +the old house had not lost utterly the spirit of hospitality. His hand +was still on the dog's head when the bolt creaked again and the negress +reappeared upon the threshold.</p> + +<p>"Miss Meely she sez she's moughty sorry, suh, but she cyarn' hev ner +strange gent'mun spendin' de night in de house. She reckons you mought +sleep in de barn ef'n you wanter."</p> + +<p>As the door opened wider, her whole person, clad in a faded woollen +dress, patched brightly in many colours, emerged timidly and followed +him to the topmost step.</p> + +<p>"You des go roun' ter de back en den thoo' de hole whar de gate used ter +be, en dar's de barn. Nuttin' ain' gwine hu't you lessen hits dat ar ole +ram 'Lejab."</p> + +<p>"Well, he shall not find me unprepared," responded Ordway, with a kind +of desperate gaiety, and while the old hound still leaped at his side, +he found his way into a little path which led around the corner of the +house, and through the tangled garden to the barn just beyond the fallen +gateposts. Here the dog deserted him, running back to the porch, where a +woman's voice called; and stumbling over a broken ploughshare or two, he +finally reached the poor shelter which Miss Meely's hospitality +afforded.</p> + +<p>It was very dark inside, but after closing the door to shut out the +wind, he groped his way through the<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> blackness to a pile of straw in one +corner. The place smelt of cattle, and opposite to the spot on which he +lay, he distinguished presently a soft, regular sound which he concluded +to be caused by the breathing of a cow. Evidently the barn was used as a +cattleshed also, though his observation of the mansion did not lead him +to suppose that "Miss Meely" possessed anything approaching a herd. He +remembered the old negress's warning allusion to the ram, but so far at +least the darkness had revealed nothing that could prove hostile to his +company. His head ached and his will seemed suddenly benumbed, so +stretching himself at full length in the straw he fell, after a few +troubled moments, into the deep and dreamless sleep of complete physical +exhaustion.</p> + +<p>An instant afterwards, it seemed to him, he was aroused by a light which +flashed into his face from the opening door. A cold wind blew over him, +and as he struggled almost blindly back into consciousness, he saw that +a girl in a red cape stood holding a lantern above her head in the +centre of the barn. At his first look the red cape warmed him as if it +had been flame; then he became aware that a voice was speaking to him in +a peculiar tone of cheerful authority. And it seemed to him that the red +cape and the rich voice expressed the same dominant quality of +personality.</p> + +<p>"I thought you must be hungry," said the voice with energy, "so I've +brought your supper."</p> + +<p>Even while he instinctively grasped the tray she<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> held out, he observed +with quickened attention that the hands which offered him the food had +toiled out of doors in good and bad weather—though small and shapely +they were chapped from cold and roughened by marks of labour.</p> + +<p>"You'd better drink your coffee while it's hot," said the voice again.</p> + +<p>The practical nature of her advice put him immediately at his ease.</p> + +<p>"It's the first hot thing I've had for a week," he responded.</p> + +<p>"Then it will be all the better for you," replied the girl, while she +reached up to hang the lantern from a rusted nail in the wall.</p> + +<p>As the light fell over her, the red cape slipped a little from her +shoulder and she put up her hand to catch it together on her bosom. The +movement, slight as it was, gave Ordway a chance to observe that she +possessed a kind of vigorous grace, which showed in the roundness of her +limbs and in the rebellious freedom of her thick brown hair. The airy +little curls on her temples stood out, he noticed, as if she had been +walking bareheaded in the wind. At his first look it did not occur to +him that she was beautiful; what impressed him most was the quality of +radiant energy which revealed itself in every line of her face and +figure—now sparkling in her eyes, now dimpling in her cheek, now +quickening her brisk steps across the floor, and now touching her eyes +and mouth like an edge of light. It may have been merely the effect of +the red cape on a cold night, but as she moved<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> back and forth into the +dark corners of the barn, she appeared to him to gather both warmth and +animation out of the gloom.</p> + +<p>As she did not speak again during her work, he found himself forced to +observe the same friendly silence. The ravenous hunger of the afternoon +had returned to him with the odour of the food, and he ate rapidly, +sitting up on his straw bed, while she took up a bucket and a piece of +wood sharpened at one end and prepared a bran mash for the cow quartered +in a stall in one corner. When a little later she gathered up an armful +of straw to replenish the animal's bed, Ordway pushed the tray aside and +made a movement as if to assist her; but stopping an instant in her +task, she waved him aside with the easy dignity of perfect capability.</p> + +<p>"I can do it myself, thank you," she said, smiling; and then, glancing +at his emptied plate, she added carelessly, "I'll send back presently +for the tray and lantern—good-night!"</p> + +<p>Her tone had changed perceptibly on the last word, for its businesslike +authority had given place to the musical Southern drawl so familiar to +his ears in childhood. In that simple phrase, accompanied by the +gracious bend of her whole person, she had put unconsciously generations +of social courtesy—of racial breeding.</p> + +<p>"Thank you—good-night," he answered, rising, and drawing back with his +hand on the heavy latch.</p> + +<p>Then before she could reach the door and pass through, a second lantern +flashed there out of the<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> blackness beyond, and the terrified face of a +Negro urchin was thrust into the full glare of light.</p> + +<p>"Fo' de good Lawd, Miss Em'ly, dat ar ole ram done butt Sis Mehitable +clean inter de smoke 'us."</p> + +<p>Perfectly unruffled by the news the girl looked at Ordway, and then held +out her small, strong hand for the lantern.</p> + +<p>"Very well, I'll come and shut him up," she responded quietly, and +holding the red cape together on her bosom, she stepped over the +threshold and followed the Negro urchin out into the night.<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-a" id="CHAPTER_III-a"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Return To Tappahannock</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>T sunrise he came out of the barn, and washed his face and hands at the +well, where he found a coarse towel on the moss-covered trough. The day +was breaking clear, but in the fine golden light the house and lawn +appeared even more desolate than they had done under the full moon. +Before the war the place had been probably a comfortable, unpretentious +country mansion. Some simple dignity still attached to its bowers of ivy +and its ancient cedars, but it was easy to imagine that for thirty years +no shingle had been added to its crumbling roof, and hardly a ship +gathered from the littered walk before the door. At the end of the +avenue six great trees had fallen a sacrifice, he saw now, to the mere +lust for timber—for freshly cut and still odorous with sap, the huge +trunks lay directly across the approach over which they had presided +through the tragic history of the house. Judged by what it must have +been in a fairly prosperous past, the scene was sad enough even to the +eyes of a stranger; and as Ordway walked slowly down the dim, fragrant +curve of the avenue, he found it difficult to place against so sombre a +background, a figure as full of life and animation as that of the girl +he had seen in the barn on the evening before.<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> She appeared to his +imagination as the embodiment of youth amid surroundings whose only +remaining beauties were those of age.</p> + +<p>Though he had resolved yesterday not to return to Tappahannock, he found +himself presently retracing, almost without an effort of will, the road +which he had travelled so heavily in the night. Something between +sunrise and sunset had renewed his courage and altered his +determination. Was it only the wasted strength which had returned to him +in his sleep? Or was it—he hesitated at the thought—the flush of shame +which had burned his face when the girl's lantern had flashed over him +out of the darkness? In that pitiless illumination it was as if not only +his roughened surface, but his secret sin was laid bare; and he had felt +again all the hideous publicity that had touched him and put him as one +apart in the court-room. Though he had outgrown the sin, he knew now +that he must carry the scar of it until his death; and he knew, also, +that the reality of his punishment had been in the spirit and not in the +law.</p> + +<p>For a while he walked rapidly in the direction of Tappahannock; then +sitting down in the sunshine upon the roadside, he ate the piece of +cornbread he had saved last night from his supper. It would be several +hours at least before he might hope to find the warehouses open for the +day, so he sat patiently eating his bread under the bared boughs of a +young peach-tree, while he watched the surface of the long white road +which appeared to hold for him as much<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> despondency as freedom. A farmer +driving a spotted cow to market spoke to him presently in a friendly +voice; and rising to his feet, he overtook the man and fell into the +jogging pace which was rendered necessary by the reluctance of the +animal to proceed.</p> + +<p>"I declar' the sense in them thar critters do beat all," remarked the +farmer, after an ineffectual tug at the rope he held. "She won't be +drove no more 'n a woman will—her head is what she wants no matter whar +it leads her."</p> + +<p>"Can you tell me," inquired Ordway, when they had started again upon the +advance, "the name of the old house I passed a mile or so along the +road?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you mean Cedar Hill, I reckon!—thar now, Betsey, that thar toad +ain't a turnip!"</p> + +<p>"Cedar Hill, is it? Well, they appear to be doing their level best to +get rid of the cedars."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Beverly did that—not Miss Em'ly. Miss Em'ly dotes on them trees +jest the same as if they were made of flesh and blood."</p> + +<p>"But the place belongs to Mr. Beverly, I presume?"</p> + +<p>"If thar's a shingle of it that ain't mortgaged, I reckon it +does—though for that matter Miss Em'ly is overseer and manager, besides +teachin' every day in the public school of Tappahannock. Mr. Beverly's +got a soft heart in his body—all the Brookes had that they say—but the +Lord who made him knows that he ain't overblessed with brains. He used +to speculate with most of the family money, but as luck would have it he +always speculated wrong. Then he took to farmin', but he's got such a +slow gentlemanly<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> way about him that nothin' he puts in the ground ever +has spirit enough to come up agin. His wife's just like him—she was +Miss Amelia Meadows, his second cousin from the up-country, and when the +children kept on comin' so thick and fast, as is the Lord's way with po' +folks, people said thar warn't nothin' ahead of 'em but starvation. But +Miss Em'ly she come back from teachin' somewhar down South an' undertook +to run the whole place single-handed. Things are pickin' up a little +now, they say—she's got a will of her own, has Miss Em'ly, but thar +ain't anybody in these parts that wouldn't work for her till they +dropped. She sent for me last Monday to help her mend her henhouse, and +though I was puttin' a new roof over my wife's head, I dropped +everything I had and went. That was the day Mr. Beverly cut down the +cedars."</p> + +<p>"So Miss Emily didn't know of it?"</p> + +<p>"She was in school, suh—you see she teaches in Tappahannock from nine +till three, so Mr. Beverly chose that time to sell the avenue to young +Tom Myers. He's a sly man, is Mr. Beverly, for all his soft, slow ways, +and if Young Tom had been on time he'd have had half the avenue belted +before Miss Em'ly got back from school. But he got in some mess or other +at the store, and he was jest hewin' like thunder at his sixth cedar, +when up come Miss Em'ly on that old white horse she rides. Good Lord! I +hope I'll never see anybody turn so white agin as she did when her eyes +lighted on them fallen trees. 'Beverly,' she called out in a loud, high +voice,<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> 'have you dared to sell the cedars?' Mr. Beverly looked a little +sick as if his stomach had gone aginst him of a sudden, but he stood +right up on the trunk of a tree, and mumbled something about presarvin' +useless timber when the children had no shoes an' stockings to thar +feet. Then Miss Em'ly gave him a look that scorched like fire, and she +rode straight up to Myers on her old horse and said as quiet as death: +'Put up your axe, Tom, I'll give you back your money. How much have you +paid him down?' When Young Tom looked kind of sheepish and said: 'a +hundred dollars,' I saw her eyelids flicker, but she didn't hesitate an +instant. 'You shall have it within an hour on my word of honour,' she +answered, 'can you wait?' 'I reckon I can wait all day, Miss,' said +Young Tom—and then she jumped down from her horse, and givin' me the +bridle, caught up her skirt and ran indoors. In a minute she came flying +out agin and before we had time to catch our breath she was ridin' for +dear life back to town. 'You'd better go on with yo' work,' said Mr. +Beverly in his soft way, but Young Tom picked up his axe, and sat down +on the big stump behind him. 'I reckon I can take her word better 'n +yours, Mr. Beverly,' he answered, 'an' 'I reckon you can, too, Young +Tom,' said I——."</p> + +<p>"But how did she raise the money?" inquired Ordway.</p> + +<p>"That's what nobody knows, suh, except her and one other. Some say she +sold a piece of her mother's old jewelry—a locket or something she had +put by—<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a>and some believe still that she borrowed it from Robert Baxter +or Jasper Trend. Whichever way it was, she came ridin' up within the +hour on her old white horse with the notes twisted tight in her +handkerchief. She was mighty quiet, then, but when it was over, great +Lord, what a temper she was in. I declar' she would have struck Mr. +Beverly with the sour gum twig she used for a whip if I hadn't slipped +in between 'em an' caught her arm. Then she lashed him with her tongue +till he seemed to wither and shrink all over."</p> + +<p>"And served him right, God bless her!" said Ordway.</p> + +<p>"That's so, suh, but Mr. Beverly ain't a bad man—he's jest soft."</p> + +<p>"Yet your Miss Emily still sticks to him, it seems?"</p> + +<p>"If she didn't the farm wouldn't hold together a week. What she makes +from teachin' is about all they have to live on in my opinion. Last +summer, too, she started raisin' garden things an' poultry, an' she'd +have got quite a thrivin' business if she had had any kind of help. Then +in July she tried her hand at puttin' up preserves and jellies to send +to them big stores in the North."</p> + +<p>Ordway remembered the cheerful authority in her voice, the little cold +red hands that had offered him his supper; and his heart contracted as +it did at the memory of his daughter Alice. Yet it was not pity alone +that moved him, for mingled with the appeal to his sympathy there was +something which<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> awoke in him the bitter agony of remorse. So the girl +in the red cape could endure poverty such as this with honour! At the +thought his past sin and his present disgrace appeared to him not only +as crime but as cowardliness. He recalled the angry manager of the +cotton mills, but there was no longer resentment in his mind either +against the individual or against society. Instead it seemed to him that +all smaller emotions dissolved in a tenderness which placed this girl +and Alice apart with the other good and inspiring memories of his life. +As he walked on in silence a little incident of ten years before +returned to his thoughts, and he remembered the day he had found his +child weeping beside a crippled beggar on his front steps.</p> + +<p>When, a little later, they reached Tappahannock, the farmer turned with +his reluctant cow into one of the smaller paths which led across the +common on the edge of the town. As it was still too early to apply for +work, Ordway sat down on a flat stone before an iron gate and watched +the windows along the street for any signs of movement or life within. +At length several frowsy Negro maids leaned out while the wooden +shutters swung slowly back against the walls; then a milk wagon driven +by a small boy clattered noisily round the corner, and in response to +the shrill whistle of the driver, the doors opened hurriedly and the +Negro maids rushed, with outstretched pitchers, down the gravelled walks +to the iron gates. Presently an appetising odour of bacon reached +Ordway's nostrils; and in the house across<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> the street a woman with her +hair done up on pins, came to the window and began grinding coffee in a +wooden mill. Not until eight o'clock did the town open its gates and +settle itself to the day's work.</p> + +<p>When the doors of the warehouses were fastened back, Ordway turned into +the main street again, and walked slowly downhill until he came to the +faded brick archway where the group of men had sat smoking the evening +before. Now there was an air of movement in the long building which had +appeared as mere dim vacancy at the hour of sunset. Men were passing in +and out of the brick entrance, from which a thin coat of whitewash was +peeling in splotches; covered wagons half filled with tobacco were +standing, unhitched, along the walls; huge bags of fresh fertilisers +were thrown carelessly in corners; and in the centre of the great floor, +an old Negro, with a birch broom tied together with coloured string, was +sweeping into piles the dried stems left after yesterday's sales. As he +swept, a little cloud of pungent dust rose before the strokes of his +broom and floated through the brick archway out into the street.</p> + +<p>This morning there was even less attention paid to Ordway's presence +than there had been at the closing hour. Planters hurried back and forth +preparing lots for the opening sale; a wagon drove into the building, +and the driver got down over the muddy wheel and lifted out several +willow crates through which Ordway could catch a glimpse of the yellow +sun-cured leaf. The old Negro swept briskly, piling the trash into heaps +which would finally be ground into snuff or<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> used as a cheap grade of +fertiliser. Lean hounds wandered to and fro, following the covered +wagons and sniffing suspiciously at the loose plants arranged in +separate lots in the centre of the floor.</p> + +<p>"Is Baxter here this morning?" Ordway asked presently of a countryman +who lounged on a pile of bags near the archway.</p> + +<p>"I reckon you'll find him in his office," replied the man, as he spat +lazily out into the street; "that thar's his door," he added, pointing +to a little room on the right of the entrance—"I seed him go in an' I +ain't seed him come out."</p> + +<p>Nodding his thanks for the information, Ordway crossed the building and +rapped lightly on the door. In response to a loud "come in," he turned +the knob and stood next instant face to face with the genial giant of +the evening before.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning, Mr. Baxter, I've come back again," he said.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning!" responded Baxter, "I see you have."</p> + +<p>In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not +in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in +the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent +impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the +expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, +half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow +men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. To meet his +glance was to become suddenly intimate;<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> to hear him speak was to feel +that he had shaken you by the hand.</p> + +<p>"I hoped you might have come to see things differently this morning," +said Ordway.</p> + +<p>Baxter looked him over with his soft yet penetrating eyes, his gaze +travelling slowly from the coarse boots covered with red clay to the +boyish smile on the dark, weather-beaten face.</p> + +<p>"You did not tell me what kind of work you were looking for," he +observed at last. "Do you want to sweep out the warehouse or to keep the +books?"</p> + +<p>Ordway laughed. "I prefer to keep the books, but I can sweep out the +warehouse," he replied.</p> + +<p>"You can—can you?" said Baxter. His pipe, which was never out of his +hand except when it was in his mouth, began to turn gray, and putting it +between his teeth, he sucked hard at the stem for a minute.</p> + +<p>"You're an educated man, then?"</p> + +<p>"I've been to college—do you mean that?"</p> + +<p>"You're fit for a clerk's position?"</p> + +<p>"I am sure of it."</p> + +<p>"Where did you work last?"</p> + +<p>Ordway's hesitation was barely perceptible.</p> + +<p>"I've been in business," he answered.</p> + +<p>"On your own hook?" inquired Baxter.</p> + +<p>"Yes, on my own hook."</p> + +<p>"But you couldn't make a living at it?"</p> + +<p>"No; I gave it up for several reasons."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know your reasons, my man," observed Baxter, drily, "but +I like your face."<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a></p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Ordway, and he laughed again with the sparkling gaiety +which leaped first to his blue eyes.</p> + +<p>"And so you expect me to take you without knowing a darn thing about +you?" demanded Baxter.</p> + +<p>Ordway nodded gravely.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I hope that is what you will do," he answered.</p> + +<p>"I may ask your name, I reckon, mayn't I?—if you have no particular +objection."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind telling you it's Smith," said Ordway, with his gaze on a +huge pamphlet entitled "Smith's Almanac" lying on Baxter's desk. "Daniel +Smith."</p> + +<p>"Smith," repeated Baxter. "Well, it ain't hard to remember. If I warn't +a blamed fool, I'd let you go," he added thoughtfully, "but there ain't +much doubt, I reckon, about my being a blamed fool."</p> + +<p>He rose from his chair with difficulty, and steadying his huge body, +moved to the door, which he flung open with a jerk.</p> + +<p>"If you've made up your mind dead sure to butt in, you might as well +begin with the next sale," he said.<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-a" id="CHAPTER_IV-a"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Dream Of Daniel Smith</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">H</span>E had been recommended for lodging to a certain Mrs. Twine, and at five +o'clock, when the day's work at Baxter's was over, he started up the +street in a bewildered search for her house, which he had been told was +situated immediately beyond the first turn on the brow of the hill. When +he reached the corner there was no one in sight except a small boy who +sat, crying loudly, astride a little whitewashed wooden gate. Beyond the +boy there was a narrow yard filled with partly dried garments hung on +clothes lines, which stretched from a young locust tree near the +sidewalk to the front porch, where a man with a red nose was reading the +local newspaper. As the man with the red nose paid no attention to the +loud lamentations of the child, Ordway stopped by the gate and inquired +sympathetically if he could be of help.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he ain't hurt," remarked the man, throwing a side glance over his +paper, "he al'ays yells like that when his Ma's done scrubbed him."</p> + +<p>"She's washed me so clean that I feel naked," howled the boy.</p> + +<p>"Well, you'll get over that in a year's time," observed Ordway +cheerfully, "so suppose you leave<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> off a minute now and show me the way +to Mrs. Twine's."</p> + +<p>At his request the boy stopped crying instantly, and stared up at him +while the dirty tearmarks dried slowly on his cheeks.</p> + +<p>"Thar ain't no way," he replied solemnly, "'cause she's my ma."</p> + +<p>"Then jump down quickly and run indoors and tell her I'd like to see +her."</p> + +<p>"'T ain't no use. She won't come."</p> + +<p>"Well, go and ask her. I was told to come here to look for board and +lodging."</p> + +<p>He glanced inquiringly at the man on the porch, who, engrossed in the +local paper, was apparently oblivious of the conversation at the gate.</p> + +<p>"She won't come 'cause she's washin' the rest of us," returned the boy, +as he swung himself to the ground, "thar're six of us an' she ain't done +but two. That's Lemmy she's got hold of now. Can't you hear him holler?"</p> + +<p>He planted his feet squarely on the board walk, looked back at Ordway +over his shoulder, and departed reluctantly with the message for his +mother. At the end of a quarter of an hour, when Ordway had entered the +gate and sat down in the cold wind on the front steps, the door behind +him opened with a jar, and a large, crimson, untidy woman, splashed with +soapsuds, appeared like an embodied tempest upon the threshold.</p> + +<p>"Canty says you've come to look at the dead gentleman's room, suh," she +began in a high voice,<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> approaching her point with a directness which +lost none of its force because of the panting vehemence with which she +spoke.</p> + +<p>"Baxter told me I might find board with you," explained Ordway in her +first breathless pause.</p> + +<p>"To be sure he may have the dead gentleman's room, Mag," put in the man +on the porch, folding his newspaper, with a shiver, as he rose to his +feet.</p> + +<p>"I warn't thinkin' about lettin' that room agin'," said Mrs. Twine, +crushing her husband's budding interference by the completeness with +which she ignored his presence. "But it's jest as well, I reckon, for a +defenceless married woman to have a stranger in the house. Though for +the matter of that," she concluded in a burst of domestic confidence, +"the woman that ain't a match for her own husband without outside help +ain't deservin' of the pleasure an' the blessin' of one." Then as the +man with the red nose slunk shamefacedly into the passage, she added in +an undertone to Ordway, "and now if you'll jest step inside, I'll show +you the spare room that I've got to let."</p> + +<p>She led the way indoors, scolding shrilly as she passed through the +hall, and up the little staircase, where several half-dressed children +were riding, with shrieks of delight, down the balustrade. "You needn't +think you've missed a scrubbing because company's come," she remarked +angrily, as she stooped to box the ears of a small girl lying flat on +her stomach upon the landing. "Such is my taste for cleanness," she +explained to Ordway, "that when<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> my hands once tech the soap it's as +much as I can do to keep 'em back from rubbin' the skin off. Thar 're +times even when the taste is so ragin' in my breast that I can hardly +wait for Saturday night to come around. Yet I ain't no friend to license +whether it be in whiskey or in soap an' water. Temperance is my passion +and that's why, I suppose, I came to marry a drunkard."</p> + +<p>With this tragic confession, uttered in a matter of fact manner, she +produced a key from the pocket of her blue gingham apron, and ushered +Ordway into a small, poorly furnished room, which overlooked the front +street and the two bared locust trees in the yard.</p> + +<p>"I kin let you have this at three dollars a week," she said, "provided +you're content to do yo' own reachin' at the table. Thar ain't any +servant now except a twelve year old darkey."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll take it," returned Ordway, almost cheerfully; and when he had +agreed definitely as to the amount of service he was to receive, he +closed the creaking door behind her, and looked about the crudely +furnished apartment with a sense of ownership such as he had not felt +since the afternoon upon which he had stood in his wife's sitting-room +awaiting his arrest. He thought of the Florentine gilding, the rich +curtains, the long mirrors, the famous bronze Mercury and the Corot +landscape with the sunlight upon it—and then of the terrible oppression +in which these familiar objects had seemed closing in upon him and +smothering him into<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> unconsciousness. The weight was lifted now, and he +breathed freely while his gaze rested on the common pine bedstead, the +scarred washstand, with the broken pitcher, the whitewashed walls, the +cane chairs, the rusted scuttle, filled with cheap coal, and the +unpainted table holding a glass lamp with a smoked chimney. From the +hall below he could hear the scolding voice of Mrs. Twine, but neither +the shrill sound nor the poor room produced in him the smothered anguish +he felt even to-day at the memory of the Corot landscape bathed in +sunlight.</p> + +<p>An hour later, when he came upstairs again as an escape from the +disorder of Mrs. Twine's supper table, he started a feeble blaze in the +grate, which was half full of ashes, and after lighting the glass lamp, +sat watching the shadows flicker to and fro on the whitewashed wall. His +single possession, a photograph of his wife taken with her two children, +rested against the brick chimney piece, and as he looked at it now it +seemed to stand in no closer relationship to his life than did one of +the brilliant chromos he had observed ornamenting the walls of Mrs. +Twine's dining-room. His old life, indeed, appeared remote, artificial, +conjured from unrealities—it was as if he had moved lightly upon the +painted surface of things, until at last a false step had broken through +the thin covering and he had plunged in a single instant against the +concrete actuality. The shock had stunned him, yet he realised now that +he could never return to his old sheltered outlook—to<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> his pleasant +fiction—for he had come too close to experience ever to be satisfied +again with falsehood.</p> + +<p>The photograph upon the mantel was the single remaining link which held +him to-day to his past life—to his forfeited identity. In the +exquisite, still virgin face of his wife, draped for effect in a scarf +of Italian lace—he saw embodied the one sacred memory to which as +Daniel Smith he might still cling with honour. The face was perfect, the +expression of motherhood which bent, flamelike, over the small boy and +girl, was perfect also; and the pure soul of the woman seemed to him to +have formed both face and expression after its own divine image. In the +photograph, as in his memory, her beauty was touched always by some rare +quality of remoteness, as if no merely human conditions could ever +entirely compass so ethereal a spirit. The passion which had rocked his +soul had left her serenity unshaken, and even sorrow had been powerless +to leave its impress or disfigurement upon her features.</p> + +<p>As the shadows flickered out on the walls, the room grew suddenly +colder. Rising, he replenished the fire, and then going over to the bed, +he flung himself, still dressed, under the patchwork quilt from which +the wool was protruding in places. He was thinking of the morning +eighteen years ago when he had first seen her as she came, with several +girl companions, out of the old church in the little town of Botetourt. +It was a Christmas during his last year at Harvard, when moved by a +sudden interest in his Southern associations, he had gone down for two +days to his<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> childhood's home in Virginia. Though the place was falling +gradually to ruin, his maiden great-aunt still lived there in a kind of +luxurious poverty; and at the sight of her false halo of gray curls, he +had remembered, almost with a start of surprise, the morning when he had +seen the convict at the little wayside station. The station, the +country, the muddy roads, and even the town of Botetourt were unchanged, +but he himself belonged now to another and what he felt to be a larger +world. Everything had appeared provincial and amusing to his eyes—until +as he passed on Christmas morning by the quaint old churchyard, he had +seen Lydia Preston standing in the sunshine amid the crumbling +tombstones of several hundred years. Under the long black feather in her +hat, her charming eyes had dwelt on him kindly for a minute, and in that +minute it had seemed to him that the racial ideal slumbering in his +brain had responded quickly to his startled blood. Afterward they had +told him that she was only nineteen, a Southern beauty of great promise, +and the daughter of old Adam Preston, who had made and lost a fortune in +the last ten years. But these details seemed to him to have no relation +to the face he had seen under the black feather against the ivy-covered +walls of the old church. The next evening they had danced together at a +ball; he had carried her fan, a trivial affair of lace and satin, away +in his pocket, and ten days later he had returned, flushed with passion, +to finish his course at Harvard. Love had put wings to his ambition; the +following year he had stood at the head of his class, and before<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> the +summer was over he had married her and started brilliantly in his +career. There had been only success in the beginning. When had the tide +turned so suddenly? he wondered, and when had he begun to drift into the +great waters where men are washed down and lost?</p> + +<p>Lying on the bed now in the firelight, he shivered and drew the quilt +closer about his knees. She had loved beauty, riches, dignity, +religion—she had loved her children when they came; but had she ever +really loved him—the Daniel Ordway whom she had married? Were all pure +women as passionless—as utterly detached—as she had shown herself to +him from the beginning? And was her coldness, as he had always believed, +but the outward body of that spiritual grace for which he had loved her? +He had lavished abundantly out of his stormy nature; he had spent his +immortal soul upon her in desperate determination to possess her utterly +at her own price; and yet had she ever belonged to him, he questioned +now, even in the supreme hours of their deepest union? Had her very +innocence shut him out from her soul forever?</p> + +<p>In the end the little world had closed over them both; he had felt +himself slipping further—further—had made frantic efforts to regain +his footing; and had gone down hopelessly at last. Those terrible years +before his arrest crowded like minutes into his brain, and he knew now +that there had been relief—comfort—almost tranquillity in his life in +prison. The strain was lifted at last, and the days when he<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> had moved +in dull hope or acute despair through the crowd in Wall Street were over +forever. To hold a place in the little world one needed great wealth; +and it had seemed to him in the time of temptation that this wealth was +not a fugitive possession, but an inherent necessity—a thing which +belonged to the inner structure of Lydia's nature.</p> + +<p>A shudder ran over him, while he drew a convulsive breath like one in +physical pain. The slow minutes in which he had waited for a rise in the +market were still ticking in agony somewhere in his brain. Time moved +on, yet those minutes never passed—his memory had become like the face +of a clock where the hands pointed, motionless, day or night, to the +same hour. Then hours, days, weeks, months, years, when he lived with +ruin in his thoughts and the sound of merriment, which was like the pipe +of hollow flutes, in his ears. At the end it came almost suddenly—the +blow for which he had waited, the blow which brought something akin to +relief because it ended the quivering torture of his suspense, and +compelled, for the hour at least, decisive action. He had known that +before evening he would be under arrest, and yet he had walked slowly +along Fifth Avenue from his office to his home; he recalled now that he +had even joked with a club wit, who had stopped him at the corner to +divulge the latest bit of gossip. At the very instant when he felt +himself to be approaching ruin in his house, he remembered that he had +complained a little irritably of the breaking wrapper<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> of his cigar. Yet +he was thinking then that he must reach his home in time to prevent his +wife from keeping a luncheon engagement, of which she had spoken to him +at breakfast; and ten minutes later it was with a sensation of relief +that he met the blank face of his butler in the hall. On the staircase +his daughter ran after him, her short white, beruffled skirts standing +out stiffly like the skirts of a ballet dancer. She was taking her music +lesson, she cried out, and she called to him to come into the music room +and hear how wonderfully she could run her scales! Her blue eyes, which +were his eyes in a child's face, looked joyously up at him from under +the thatch of dark curls which she had inherited from him, not from her +blond mother.</p> + +<p>"Not now, Alice," he answered, almost impatiently, "not now—I will come +a little later."</p> + +<p>Then she darted back, and the stumbling music preceded him up the +staircase to the door of his wife's dressing-room. When he entered Lydia +was standing before her mirror, fastening a spotted veil with a diamond +butterfly at the back of her blond head; and as she turned smilingly +toward him, he put out his hand with a gesture of irritation.</p> + +<p>"Take that veil off, Lydia, I can't see you for the spots," he said.</p> + +<p>Complaisant always, she unfastened the diamond butterfly without a word, +and taking off the veil, flung it carelessly across the golden-topped +bottles upon her dressing-table.<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p> + +<p>"You look ill," she said with her charming smile; "shall I ring for +Marie to bring you whiskey?"</p> + +<p>At her words he turned from her, driven by a torment of pity which +caused his voice to sound harsh and constrained in his own ears.</p> + +<p>"No—no—don't put that on again," he protested, for while she waited +she had taken up the spotted veil and the diamond pin.</p> + +<p>Something in his tone startled her into attention, and moving a step +forward, she stood before him on a white bearskin rug. Her face had +hardly changed, yet in some way she seemed to have put him at a +distance, and he felt all at once that he had never known her.</p> + +<p>From the room downstairs he heard Alice's music lesson go on at broken +intervals, the uncertain scales she ran now stopping, now beginning +violently again. The sound wrought suddenly on his nerves like anger, +and he felt that his voice was querulous in spite of the torment of pity +at his heart.</p> + +<p>"There's no use putting on your veil," he said, "a warrant is out for my +arrest and I must wait here till it comes."</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>His memory stopped now, as if it had snapped suddenly beneath the +strain. After this there was a mere blank of existence upon which people +and objects moved without visible impression. From that minute to this +one appeared so short a time that he started up half expecting to hear +Alice's scales filling Mrs.<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> Twine's empty lodgings. Then his eyes fell +on the whitewashed walls, the smoking lamp, the bare table, and the +little square window with the branches of the locust tree frosted +against the pane.</p> + +<p>Rising from the bed, he fell on his knees and pressed his quivering face +to the patchwork quilt.</p> + +<p>"Give me a new life, O God—give me a new life!"<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-a" id="CHAPTER_V-a"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">At Tappahannock</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>FTER a sleepless night, he rose as soon as the dawn had broken, and +sitting down before the pine table wrote a letter to Lydia, on a sheet +of paper which had evidently been left in the drawer by the former +lodger. "It isn't likely that you'll ever want me," he added at the end, +"but if you should happen to, remember that I am yours, as I have always +been, for whatever I am worth." When he had sealed the envelope and +written her name above that of the town of Botetourt, he put it into his +pocket and went down to the dining-room, where he found Mrs. Twine +pouring steaming coffee into a row of broken cups. A little mulatto +girl, with her hair plaited in a dozen fine braids, was placing a dish +of fried bacon at one end of the walnut-coloured oil-cloth on the table, +around which the six children, already clothed and hungry, were beating +an impatient tattoo with pewter spoons. Bill Twine, the father of the +family, was evidently sleeping off a drunken headache—a weakness which +appeared to afford his wife endless material for admonition and +philosophy.</p> + +<p>"Thar now, Canty," she was remarking to her son, "yo' po' daddy may not +be anything to be proud of as a man, but I reckon he's as big an example +as<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> you'll ever see. He's had sermons p'inted at him from the pulpit; +they've took him up twice to the police court, an' if you'll believe me, +suh," she added with a kind of outraged pride to Ordway, "thar's been a +time when they've had out the whole fire department to protect me."</p> + +<p>The coffee though poor was hot, and while Ordway drank it, he listened +with an attention not unmixed with sympathy to Mrs. Twine's continuous +flow of speech. She was coarse and shrewish and unshapely, but his +judgment was softened by the marks of anxious thought on her forehead +and the disfigurements of honest labour on her hands. Any toil appeared +to him now to be invested with peculiar dignity; and he felt, sitting +there at her slovenly breakfast table, that he was closer to the +enduring heart of humanity than he had been among the shallow +refinements of his past life. Mrs. Twine was unpleasant, but at her +worst he felt her to be the real thing.</p> + +<p>"Not that I'm blamin' Bill, suh, as much as some folks," she proceeded +charitably, while she helped her youngest child to gravy, "for it made +me downright sick myself to hear them carryin' on over his beatin' his +own wife jest as much as if he'd been beatin' somebody else's. An' I +ain't one, when it comes to that, to put up with a white-livered, +knock-kneed, pulin' sort of a critter, as I told the Jedge a-settin' +upon his bench. When a woman is obleeged to take a strappin' thar's some +real satisfaction in her feelin' that she takes it from a man—an' the +kind that would lay on softly with never a broken head<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> to show for +it—well, he ain't the kind, suh, that I could have helt in any respect +an' honour. And as to that, as I said to 'em right then an' thar, take +the manly health an' spirit out o' Bill, an' he's jest about as decent +an' law abidin' as the rest. Why, when he was laid up with malaria, he +never so much as rized his hand agin me, an' it'll be my belief untwel +my dyin' day that chills an' fever will keep a man moral when all the +sermons sence Moses will leave him unteched. Feed him low an' work him +hard, an' you kin make a saint out of most any male critter, that's my +way of thinkin'."</p> + +<p>While she talked she was busily selecting the choicest bit of bacon for +Bill's plate, and as Ordway left the house a little later, he saw her +toiling up the staircase with her husband's breakfast on a tin tray in +her hands.</p> + +<p>"If you think I'm goin' to set an' wait all day for you to get out o' +bed, you've jest about clean lost yo' wits, Bill Twine," she remarked in +furious tones, as she flung open a door on the landing above.</p> + +<p>Out of doors Ordway found that the wind had died down, though a sharp +edge of frost was still in the air. The movement of the day had already +begun; and as he passed the big house on the brow of the hill he saw a +pretty girl, with her hair tied back with a velvet ribbon, run along the +gravelled walk to meet the postman at the gate. A little farther, when +he had reached the corner, he turned back to hand his letter to the +postman, and found to his surprise that the pretty girl was still gazing +after him. No possible<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> interest could attach to her in his thoughts; +and with a careless acknowledgment of her beauty, she faded from his +consciousness as rapidly as if she had been a ray of sunshine which he +had admired as he passed along. Then as he turned into the main street +at the corner, he saw that Emily Brooke was riding slowly up the hill on +her old white horse. She still wore her red cape, which fell over the +saddle on one side, and completely hid the short riding-skirt beneath. +On her head there was a small knitted Tam-o'-shanter cap, and this, with +the easy freedom of her seat in the saddle, gave her an air which was +gallant rather than graceful. The more feminine adjective hardly seemed +to apply to her at the moment; she looked brave, strong, buoyant, a +creature that had not as yet become aware of its sex. Yet she was older, +he discovered now, than he had at first imagined her to be. In the barn +he had supposed her age to be not more than twenty years; seen in the +morning light it was impossible to decide whether she was a year younger +or ten years older than he had believed. The radiant energy in her look +belonged, after all, less to the accident of youth than to some enduring +quality of spirit.</p> + +<p>As she neared him, she looked up from her horse's neck, rested her eyes +upon him for an instant, and smiled brightly, much as a charming boy +might have done. Then, just as she was about to pass on, the girth of +her saddle slipped under her, and she was thrown lightly to the ground, +while the old horse stopped and stood perfectly motionless above her.<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p> + +<p>"My skirt has caught in the stirrup," she said to Ordway, and while he +bent to release her, he noticed that she clung, not to his arm, but to +the neck of the horse for support.</p> + +<p>To his surprise there was neither embarrassment nor amusement in her +voice. She spoke with the cool authority which had impressed him during +the incident of the ram's attack upon "Sis Mehitable."</p> + +<p>"I don't think it is quite safe yet," he said, after he had drawn the +rotten girth as tight as he dared. "It looks as if it wouldn't last, you +see."</p> + +<p>"Well, I dare say, it may be excused after forty years of service," she +returned, smiling.</p> + +<p>"What? this saddle? It does look a little quaint when one examines it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's been repaired, but even then one must forgive an old servant +for growing decrepit."</p> + +<p>"Then you'll ride it again?" he asked, seeing that she was about to +mount.</p> + +<p>"Of course—this isn't my first tumble—but Major expects them now and +he knows how to behave. So do I," she added, laughing, "you see it +doesn't take me by surprise."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see it doesn't," he answered gaily.</p> + +<p>"Then if you chance to be about the next time it happens, I hope it +won't disturb you either," she remarked, as she rode up the hill.</p> + +<p>The meeting lingered in Ordway's mind with a freshness which was +associated less with the incident itself than with some vivid quality in +the appearance of the girl. Her face, her voice, her carriage—even<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> the +little brown curls blowing on her temples, all united in his thoughts to +form a memory in which Alice appeared to hold a place. Why should this +country girl, he wondered, bring back to him so clearly the figure of +his daughter?</p> + +<p>But there was no room for a memory in his life just now, and by the time +he reached Baxter's Warehouse, he had forgotten the interest aroused in +him a moment before. Baxter had not yet appeared in his office, but two +men, belonging evidently to the labouring class, were talking together +under the brick archway. When Ordway joined them they did not interrupt +their conversation, which he found, after a minute, to concern the +domestic and financial troubles of the one whom he judged to be the +poorer of the two. He was a meanly clad, wretched looking workman, with +a shock of uncombed sandy hair, a cowed manner, and the expression of +one who has been beaten into apathy rather than into submission. A +sordid pathos in his voice and figure brought Ordway a step closer to +his side, and after a moment's careless attention, he found his mind +adjusting itself to the small financial problems in which the man had +become entangled. The workman had been forced to borrow upon his +pathetic personal securities; and in meeting from year to year the +exorbitant rate of interest, he had paid back several times the sum of +the original debt. Now his wife was ill, with an incurable cancer; he +had no hope, as he advanced beyond middle age, of any increase in his +earning capacity, and the debt under which he had struggled<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> so long had +become at the end an intolerable burden. His wife had begged him to +consult a lawyer—but who, he questioned doggedly, would take an +interest in him since he had no money for a fee? He was afraid of +lawyers anyway, for he could give you a hundred cases where they had +stood banded together against the poor.</p> + +<p>As Ordway listened to the story, he felt for an instant a return of his +youthful enthusiasm, and standing there amid the tobacco stems in +Baxter's warehouse, he remembered a great flour trust from which he had +withdrawn because it seemed to him to bear unjustly upon the small, +isolated farmers. Beyond this he went back still further to his college +days, when during his vacation, he had read Virginia law in the office +of his uncle, Richard Ordway, in the town of Botetourt. He could see the +shining rows of legal volumes in the walnut bookcases, the engraving of +Latane's Burial, framed in black wood above the mantel, and against this +background the silent, gray haired, self-righteous old man so like his +father. Through the window, he could see still the sparrows that built +in the ivied walls of the old church.</p> + +<p>With a start he came back to the workman, who was unfolding his troubles +in an abandon of misery under the archway.</p> + +<p>"If you'll talk things over with me to-night when we get through work, I +think I may be able to straighten them out for you," he said.</p> + +<p>The man stared at him out of his dogged eyes with a helpless +incredulity.<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a></p> + +<p>"But I ain't got any money," he responded sullenly, as if driven to the +defensive.</p> + +<p>"Well, we'll see," said Ordway, "I don't want your money."</p> + +<p>"You want something, though—my money or my vote, and I ain't got +either."</p> + +<p>Ordway laughed shortly. "I?—oh, I just want the fun," he answered.</p> + +<p>The beginning was trivial enough, the case sordid, and the client only a +dull-witted labourer; but to Ordway it came as the commencement of the +new life for which he had prayed—the life which would find its centre +not in possession, but in surrender, which would seek as its achievement +not personal happiness, but the joy of service.<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-a" id="CHAPTER_VI-a"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Pretty Daughter Of The Mayor</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE pretty girl whom Ordway had seen on the gravelled walk was Milly +Trend, the only child of the Mayor of Tappahannock. People said of +Jasper Trend that his daughter was the one soft spot in a heart that was +otherwise as small and hard as a silver dollar, and of Milly Trend the +same people said—well, that she was pretty. Her prettiness was +invariably the first and the last thing to be mentioned about her. +Whatever sterner qualities she may have possessed were utterly obscured +by an exterior which made one think of peach blossoms and spring +sunshine. She had a bunch of curls the colour of ripe corn, which she +wore tied back from her neck with a velvet ribbon; her eyes were the +eyes of a baby; and her mouth had an adorable little trick of closing +over her small, though slightly prominent teeth. The one flaw in her +face was this projection of her teeth, and when she looked at herself in +the glass it was her habit to bite her lips closely together until the +irregular ivory line was lost. It was this fault, perhaps, which kept +her prettiness, though it was superlative in its own degree, from ever +rising to the height of beauty. In Milly's opinion it had meant the +difference between the<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> glory of a world-wide reputation and the lesser +honour of reigning as the acknowledged belle of Tappahannock. She +remembered that the magnificent manager of a theatrical company, a +gentleman who wore a fur-lined coat and a top hat all day long, had +almost lost his train while he stopped to look back at her on the +crowded platform of the station. Her heart had beat quickly at the +tribute, yet even in that dazzling minute she had felt a desperate +certainty that her single imperfection would decide her future. But for +her teeth, she was convinced to-day, that he might have returned.</p> + +<p>If a woman cannot be a heroine in reality, perhaps the next best thing +is to look as if she might have been one in the age of romance; and this +was what Milly Trend's appearance suggested to perfection. Her manner of +dressing, the black velvet ribbon on her flaxen curls, her wide white +collars open at her soft throat, her floating sky-blue sashes and the +delicate peach bloom of her cheeks and lips—all these combined to +produce a poetic atmosphere about an exceedingly poetic little figure. +Being plain she would probably have made currant jelly for her pastor, +and have taught sedately in the infant class in Sunday school: being +pretty she read extravagant romances and dreamed strange adventures of +fascinating highwaymen on lonely roads.</p> + +<p>But many a woman who has dreamed of a highwayman at eighteen has +compromised with a bank clerk at twenty-two. Even at Tappahannock—the +veriest prose piece of a town—romance might sometimes<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> bud and blossom, +though it usually brought nothing more dangerous than respectability to +fruit. Milly had read Longfellow and <i>Lucille</i>, and her heroic ideal had +been taken bodily from one of Bulwer's novels. She had played the +graceful part of heroine in a hundred imaginary dramas; yet in actual +life she had been engaged for two years to a sandy-haired, freckled face +young fellow, who chewed tobacco, and bought the dry leaf in lots for a +factory in Richmond. From romance to reality is a hard distance, and the +most passionate dreamer is often the patient drudge of domestic service.</p> + +<p>And yet even to-day Milly was not without secret misgivings as to the +wisdom of her choice. She knew he was not her hero, but in her short +visits to larger cities she had met no one who had come nearer her ideal +lover. To be sure she had seen this ideal, in highly coloured glimpses, +upon the stage—though these gallant gentlemen in trunks had never so +much as condescended to glance across the foot-lights to the little girl +in the dark third row of the balcony. Then, too, all the ladies upon the +stage were beautiful enough for any hero, and just here she was apt to +remember dismally the fatal projection of her teeth.</p> + +<p>So, perhaps, after all, Harry Banks was as near Olympus as she could +hope to approach; and there was a mild consolation in the thought that +there was probably more sentiment in the inner than in the outward man. +Whatever came of it, she had learned that in a prose age it is safer to +think only in prose.</p> + +<p>On the morning upon which Ordway had first<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> passed her gate, she had +left the breakfast table at the postman's call, and had run down the +gravelled walk to receive a letter from Mr. Banks, who was off on a +short business trip for his firm. With the letter in her hand she had +turned to find Ordway's blue eyes fixed in careless admiration upon her +figure; and for one breathless instant she had felt her insatiable dream +rise again and clutch at her heart. Some subtle distinction in his +appearance—an unlikeness to the masculine portion of Tappahannock—had +caught her eye in spite of his common and ill-fitting clothes. Though +she had known few men of his class, the sensitive perceptions of the +girl had made her instantly aware of the difference between him and +Harry Banks. For a moment her extravagant fancy dwelt on his figure—on +this distinction which she had noticed, on his square dark face and the +singular effect of his bright blue eyes. Then turning back in the yard, +she went slowly up the gravelled walk, while she read with a vague +feeling of disappointment the love letter written laboriously by Mr. +Banks. It was, doubtless, but the average love letter of the average +plain young man, but to Milly in her rosy world of fiction, it appeared +suddenly as if there had protruded upon her attention one of the great, +ugly, wholesome facts of life. What was the use, she wondered, in being +beautiful if her love letters were to be filled with enthusiastic +accounts of her lover's prowess in the tobacco market?</p> + +<p>At the breakfast table Jasper Trend was pouring maple syrup on the +buckwheat cakes he had piled on his plate, and at the girl's entrance he +spoke without<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> removing his gaze from the plated silver pitcher in his +hand.</p> + +<p>"Any letters, daughter?" he inquired, carefully running his knife along +the mouth of the pitcher to catch the last drop of syrup.</p> + +<p>"One," said Milly, as she sat down beside the coffee pot and looked at +her father with a ripple of annoyance in her babyish eyes.</p> + +<p>"I reckon I can guess about that all right," remarked Jasper with his +cackling chuckle, which was as little related to a sense of humour as +was the beating of a tin plate. He was a long, scraggy man, with drab +hair that grew in scallops on his narrow forehead and a large nose where +the prominent red veins turned purple when he became excited.</p> + +<p>"There's a stranger in town, father," said Milly as she gave him his +second cup of coffee. "I think he is boarding at Mrs. Twine's."</p> + +<p>"A drummer, I reckon—thar're a plenty of 'em about this season."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't believe he is a drummer—he isn't—isn't quite so sparky +looking. But I wish you wouldn't say 'thar,' father. You promised me you +wouldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"Well, it ain't stood in the way of my getting on," returned Jasper +without resentment. Had Milly told him to shave his head, he might have +protested freely, but in the end he would have gone out obediently to +his barber. Yet people outside said that he ground the wages of his +workers in the cotton mills down to starvation point, and that he had +been elected Mayor<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> not through popularity, but through terror. It was +rumoured even that he stood with his wealth behind the syndicate of +saloons which was giving an ugly local character to the town. But +whatever his public vices may have been, his private life was securely +hedged about by the paternal virtues.</p> + +<p>"I can't place him, but I'm sure he isn't a 'buyer,'" repeated Milly, +after a moment's devotion to the sugar bowl.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll let you know when I see him," responded Jasper as he left +the table and got into his overcoat, while Milly jumped up to wrap his +neck in a blue spotted muffler.</p> + +<p>When he had gone from the house, she took out her lover's letter again, +but it proved, on a second trial, even more unsatisfactory than she had +found it to be at her first reading. As a schoolgirl Milly had known +every attribute of her divinity from the chivalry of his soul to the +shining gloss upon his boots—but to-day there remained to her only the +despairing conviction that he was unlike Banks. Banks appeared to her +suddenly in the hard prosaic light in which he, on his own account, +probably viewed his tobacco. Even her trousseau and the lace of her +wedding gown ceased to afford her the shadow of consolation, since she +remembered that neither of these accessories would occupy in marriage +quite so prominent a place as Banks.</p> + +<p>The next day Ordway passed at the same hour, still on the opposite side +of the street. After this she began to watch regularly for his figure, +looking for<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> it when it appeared on Mrs. Twine's little porch, and +following it wistfully until it was lost beyond the new brick church at +the corner. She was not aware of cultivating a facile sentiment about +the stranger, but place a riotous imagination in an empty house and it +requires little effort to weave a romance from the opposite side of the +street. Distance, that subtle magnifier of attachments, had come to her +aid now as it had failed her in the person of Harry Banks. Even from +across the street it was impossible to invest Mr. Banks with any quality +which might have suggested an historic background or a mysterious past. +He was flagrantly, almost outrageously himself; in no fictitious +circumstances could he have appeared as anything except the unvarnished +fact that he was. No legendary light could have glorified his features +or improved the set of his trousers—which had taken their shape and +substance from the legs within. With these features and in these +trousers, she felt that he must usurp the sacred precincts where her +dream had dwelt. "It would all be so easy if one could only be born +where one belongs," she cried out hopelessly, in the unconscious +utterance of a philosophy larger than her own.</p> + +<p>And so as the week went by, she allowed her rosy fancies to surround the +figure that passed three times daily along the sidewalk across the way. +In the morning he walked by with a swinging stride; at midday he passed +rapidly, absorbed in thought; in the evening he came back slowly, +sometimes stopping to watch the sunset from the brow of the<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> hill. Not +since the first morning had he turned his blue eyes toward Milly's gate.</p> + +<p>At the end of the month Mr. Banks returned to Tappahannock from a +business trip through the tobacco districts. He was an ugly, freckled +face, sandy-haired young fellow—an excellent judge of tobacco—with a +simple soul that attired itself in large checks, usually of a black and +white variety. On the day of his first visit to Milly he wore a crimson +necktie pierced by a scarf-pin bearing a turtle-dove in diamonds.</p> + +<p>"Who's that fellow over there?" he inquired as Ordway came up the hill +to his dinner. "I wonder if he's the chap Hudge was telling me about at +breakfast?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," answered Milly, in a voice that sounded flat in her +own ears. "Nobody knows anything about him, father says. But what was +Hudge telling you?" she asked, impelled by a devouring yet timid +curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Well, if he's the man I mean, he seems to be a kind of revivalist out +of a job—or something or other queer. Hudge says he broke up a fight +last Saturday evening in Kelly's saloon—that's the place you've never +heard the name of, I reckon," he added hesitatingly, "it's where all the +factory hands gather after work on Saturday to drink up their week's +wages."</p> + +<p>For once Milly's interest was stronger than her modesty.</p> + +<p>"And did he fight?" she demanded in a suspense that was almost +breathless.<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a></p> + +<p>"He wasn't there, you know—only passing along the street outside, at +least that's what they say—when the rumpus broke out. Then he went in +through the window and——"</p> + +<p>"And?" repeated Milly, with an entrancing vision of heroic blows, for +beneath her soft exterior the blood of the primitive woman flowed.</p> + +<p>"And preached!" finished Banks, with a prodigious burst of merriment.</p> + +<p>"Preached?" gasped Milly, "do you mean a sermon?"</p> + +<p>"Not a regular sermon, but he spoke just like a preacher for a solid +hour. Before he'd finished the men who were drunk were crying like +babies and the men who weren't were breaking their necks to sign the +pledge—at any rate that's something like the tale they tell. There was +never such speaking (Hudge says he was there) heard before in +Tappahannock, and Kelly is as mad as a hornet because he swears the town +is going dry."</p> + +<p>"And he didn't strike a single blow?" asked Milly, with a feeling of +disappointment.</p> + +<p>"Why, he had those drunken fools all blubbering like kids," said Banks, +"and then when it was over he got hold of Kit Berry (he started the row, +you know) and carried him all the way home to the little cottage in the +hollow across the town where Kit lives with his mother. Next Sunday if +it's fine there's going to be an open air meeting in Baxter's field."</p> + +<p>There was a sore little spot in Milly's heart, a vague<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> sentiment of +disenchantment. Her house of dreams, which she had reared so patiently, +stood cold and tenantless once more.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever find out his name?" she asked, with a last courageous +hope.</p> + +<p>"Smith," replied Banks, with luminous simplicity. "The boys have +nick-named him 'Ten Commandment Smith.'"</p> + +<p>"Ten Commandment Smith?" echoed Milly in a lifeless voice. Her house of +dreams had tottered at the blow and fallen from its foundation stone.<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-a" id="CHAPTER_VII-a"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Shows The Graces Of Adversity</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>N the morning after the episode in the barroom which Banks had +described to Milly, Ordway found Baxter awaiting him in a condition +which in a smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter of +excitement.</p> + +<p>"So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, I hear, Smith?"</p> + +<p>"Well, hardly that," returned Ordway, smiling as he saw the other's +embarrassment break out in drops of perspiration upon his forehead. "I +was in it, I admit, but I can't exactly say that I was 'mixed up.'"</p> + +<p>"You got Kit Berry out, eh?—and took him home."</p> + +<p>"Nothing short of a sober man could have done it. He lives on the other +side of the town in Bullfinch's Hollow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've been there," said Baxter, "I've taken him home myself."</p> + +<p>The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway's eyes which appeared in the +animation of the moment to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As +Baxter looked at him he felt something of the charm which had touched +the drunken crowd in the saloon.<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a></p> + +<p>"His mother was at my house before breakfast," he said, in a tone that +softened as he went on until it sounded as if his whole perspiring +person had melted into it. "She was in a great state, poor creature, for +it seemed that when Kit woke up this morning he promised her never to +touch another drop."</p> + +<p>"Well, I hope he'll keep his word, but I doubt it," responded Ordway. He +thought of the bare little room he had seen last night, of the patched +garments drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon the +table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman who had received his burden +from him.</p> + +<p>"He may—for a week," commented Baxter, and he added with a big, shaking +laugh, "they tell me you gave 'em a sermon that was as good as a +preacher's."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear +Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton +went home without falling once, he said."</p> + +<p>"There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information +Cotton wanted."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis +while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the +younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him +out of a scrape as well as a lawyer could have done."<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a></p> + +<p>"I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Have you ever practised law in Virginia?"</p> + +<p>"I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when—" he was going +to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped +short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I +read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory."</p> + +<p>"I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively +uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly +indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled +at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and +gaiety in his look?</p> + +<p>"Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he +said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the +reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to +have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all +the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like +you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in +blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be +worth as good as a hundred a month to me."</p> + +<p>There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his +cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination +during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> man—the +unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely +fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to +emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his +failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man. +One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal +proportions—as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of +the lavish generosity of his heart.</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth, I'd hoped for that all along," said Ordway, +withdrawing his gaze with an effort from the soiled cravat. "Do you want +me to start in at the books to-day?"</p> + +<p>For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed and went on as if he +found difficulty in selecting the words that would convey his meaning.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you don't mind there's a delicate little matter I'd like you +to attend to first. Being a stranger I thought it would be easier for +you than for me—have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly Brooke?"</p> + +<p>The interest quickened in Ordway's face.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes. I came along the road one day with a farmer who gave me his +whole story—Adam Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name."</p> + +<p>Baxter whistled. "Oh, I reckon, he hardly told you the whole story—for +I don't believe there's anybody living except myself who knows what a +darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done an honest piece of +work in his life; he's spent every red cent of his wife's money, and his +sister's too, in<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> some wild goose kind of speculation—and yet, bless my +soul, he has the face to strut in here any day and lord it over me just +as if he were his grandfather's ghost or George Washington. It's queer +about those old families, now ain't it? When they begin to peter out it +ain't just an ordinary petering, but a sort of mortal rottenness that +takes 'em root and branch."</p> + +<p>"And so I am to interview this interesting example of degeneration?" +asked Ordway, smiling.</p> + +<p>"You've got to make him understand that he can't ship me any more of his +worthless tobacco," exclaimed Baxter in an outburst of indignation. "Do +you know what he does, sir?—Well, he raises a lazy, shiftless, +worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field—plants it too late, tops it +too late, cuts it too late, cures it too late, and then lets it lie +around in some leaky smokehouse until it isn't fit for a hog to chew. +After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers the stuff up on +the first pleasant day in spring and gets an old nigger to cart it to me +in an open wagon. The next day he lounges in here with his palavering +ways, and demands the highest price in the market—and I give it to him! +That's the damned outrage of it, I give it to him!" concluded Baxter +with an excitement in which his huge person heaved like a shaken +mountain. "I've bought his trash for twenty years and ground it into +snuff because I was afraid to refuse a Brooke—but Brooke or no Brooke +there's an end to it now," he turned and waved his hand furiously to a +pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> floor, "there's his trash and it +ain't fit even for snuff!"</p> + +<p>He led Ordway back into the building, picked up several leaves from the +pile, smelt them, and threw them down with a contemptuous oath. +"Worm-eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out to Cedar Hill +and tell the man that his stuff ain't fit for anything but fertiliser," +he went on. "If he wants it he'd better come for it and haul it away."</p> + +<p>"And if he refuses?"</p> + +<p>"He most likely will—then tell him I'll throw it into the ditch."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll tell him," responded Ordway, and he was aware of a peculiar +excitement in the prospect of an encounter with the redoubtable Mr. +Beverly. "I'll do my best," he added, going through the archway, while +Baxter followed him with a few last words of instruction and advice. The +big man's courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as Ordway passed into +the street, he hurried after him to suggest that he should approach the +subject with as much delicacy as he possessed. "I wouldn't butt at Mr. +Beverly, if I were you," he cautioned, "just edge around and work in +slowly when you get the chance."</p> + +<p>But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he had started out in an +impatience not unmixed with anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he +wondered, and what power did he possess that kept Tappahannock in a +state of slavery? He was glad that Baxter had sent him on the errand, +and the next<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> minute he laughed aloud because the big man had been too +timid to come in person.</p> + +<p>He had reached the top of the hill, and was about to turn into the road +he had taken his first night in Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a +shawl, hurried across the street from one of the smaller houses fronting +upon the green.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that helped William +Cotton?"</p> + +<p>Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into notice. At the thought +Ordway looked down upon his questioner with a sensation that was almost +one of pleasure.</p> + +<p>"He needed business advice and I gave it, that was all," he answered.</p> + +<p>"But you wrote down the whole case for him so that he could understand +it and speak for himself," she said, catching her breath in a sob, as +she pulled her thin shawl together. "You got him out of his troubles and +asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing to do as much by me. I am +a widow with five little children, and though I've paid every penny I +could scrape together for the mortgage, the farm is to be sold over our +heads and we have nowhere to go."</p> + +<p>Again the glow that was like the glow of pleasure illuminated Ordway's +mind.</p> + +<p>"There's not one chance in a hundred that I can help you," he said; "in +the case of William Cotton it was a mere accident. Still if you will +tell me where you live, I will come to you this evening and talk<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> +matters over. If I can help you, I promise you I will with pleasure."</p> + +<p>"And for nothing? I am very poor."</p> + +<p>He shook his head with a laugh. "Oh, I get more fun out of it than you +could understand!"</p> + +<p>After writing down the woman's name in his notebook, he passed into the +country road and bent his thoughts again upon the approaching visit to +Mr. Beverly.</p> + +<p>When he reached Cedar Hill, which lay a sombre shadow against the young +green of the landscape, he saw that the dead cedars still lay where they +had fallen across the avenue. Evidently the family temper had assumed an +opposite, though equally stubborn form, in the person of the girl in the +red cape, and she had, he surmised, refused to allow Beverly to profit +by his desecration even to the extent of selling the trees he had +already cut down. Was it from a sentiment, or as a warning, he wondered, +that she left the great cedars barring the single approach to the house? +In either case the magnificent insolence of her revenge moved him to an +acknowledgment of her spirit and her justice.</p> + +<p>In the avenue a brood of young turkeys were scratching in the fragrant +dust shed by the trees; and at his approach they scattered and fled +before him. It was long evidently since a stranger had penetrated into +the melancholy twilight of the cedars; for the flutter of the turkeys, +he discovered presently, was repeated in an excited movement he felt +rather than saw as he ascended the stone steps and knocked at the door.<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> +The old hound he had seen the first night rose from under a bench on the +porch, and came up to lick his hand; a window somewhere in the right +wing shut with a loud noise; and through the bare old hall, which he +could see from the half open door, a breeze blew dispersing an odour of +hot soapsuds. The hall was dim and empty except for a dilapidated sofa +in one corner, on which a brown and white setter lay asleep, and a rusty +sword which clanked against the wall with a regular, swinging motion. In +response to his repeated knocks there was a sound of slow steps on the +staircase, and a handsome, shabbily dressed man, holding a box of +dominoes, came to the door and held out his hand with an apologetic +murmur.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, but the wind makes such a noise I did not hear your +knock. Will you come inside or do you prefer to sit on the porch where +we can get the view?"</p> + +<p>As he spoke he edged his way courteously across the threshold and with a +hospitable wave of his hand, sat down upon one of the pine benches +against the decaying railing. In spite of the shabbiness of his clothes +he presented a singularly attractive, even picturesque appearance, from +the abundant white hair above his forehead to his small, shapely feet +encased now in an ancient pair of carpet slippers. His figure was +graceful and well built, his brown eyes soft and melancholy, and the +dark moustache drooping over his mouth had been trained evidently into +an immaculate precision. His moustache, however, was the one immaculate +feature of his person, for<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> even his carpet slippers were dirty and worn +threadbare in places. Yet his beauty, which was obscured in the first +view by what in a famous portrait might have been called "the tone of +time," produced, after a closer and more sympathetic study, an effect +which, upon Ordway at least, fell little short of the romantic. In his +youth Beverly had been, probably, one of the handsomest men of his time, +and this distinction, it was easy to conjecture, must have been the +occasion, if not the cause, of his ruin. Even now, pompous and slovenly +as he appeared, it was difficult to resist a certain mysterious +fascination which he still possessed. When he left Tappahannock Ordway +had felt only a humorous contempt for the owner of Cedar Hill, but +sitting now beside him on the hard pine bench, he found himself yielding +against his will to an impulse of admiration. Was there not a certain +spiritual kinship in the fact that they were both failures in life?</p> + +<p>"You are visiting Tappahannock, then?" asked Beverly with his engaging +smile; "I go in seldom or I should perhaps have seen you. When a man +gets as old and as much of an invalid as I am, he usually prefers to +spend his days by the fireside in the bosom of his family."</p> + +<p>The bloom of health was in his cheeks, yet as he spoke he pressed his +hand to his chest with the habitual gesture of an invalid. "A chronic +trouble which has prevented my taking an active part in the world's +affairs," he explained, with a sad, yet cheerful dignity as of one who +could enliven tragedy with a<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> comic sparkle. "I had my ambitions once, +sir," he added, "but we will not speak of them for they are over, and at +this time of my life I can do little more than try to amuse myself with +a box of dominoes."</p> + +<p>As he spoke he placed the box on the bench between them and began +patiently matching the little ivory blocks. Ordway expressed a casual +sympathy, and then, forgetting Baxter's warning, he attempted to bring +the conversation to a practical level.</p> + +<p>"I am employed now at Baxter's warehouse," he began, "and the object of +my call is to speak with you about your last load of tobacco."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said Beverly, with warming interest, "it is a sufficient +recommendation to have come from Robert Baxter—for that man has been +the best, almost the only, friend I have had in life. It is impossible +to overestimate either his character or my admiration. He has come to my +assistance, sir, when I hardly knew where to turn for help. If you are +employed by him, you are indeed to be envied."</p> + +<p>"I am entirely of your opinion," observed Ordway, "but the point this +morning——"</p> + +<p>"Well, we'll let that rest a while now," interrupted Beverly, pushing +the dominoes away, and turning his beautiful, serious face upon his +companion. "When there is an opportunity for me to speak of Baxter's +generosity, I feel that I cannot let it escape me. Something tells me +that you will understand and pardon my enthusiasm. There is no boy like +an old boy, sir."<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a></p> + +<p>His voice broke, and drawing a ragged handkerchief from the pocket of +his corduroy coat, he blew his nose and wiped away two large teardrops +from his eyes. After such an outburst of sentiment it seemed a positive +indecency to inform him that Baxter had threatened to throw his tobacco +into a ditch.</p> + +<p>"He regrets very much that your crop was a failure this year," said +Ordway, after what he felt to be a respectable pause.</p> + +<p>"And yet," returned Beverly, with his irrepressible optimism, "if things +had been worse it might even have rotted in the ground. As it was, I +never saw more beautiful seedlings—they were perfect specimens. Had not +the tobacco worms and the frost and the leak in the smokehouse all +combined against me, I should have raised the most splendid crop in +Virginia, sir." The spectacle of this imaginary crop suffused his face +with a glow of ardour. "My health permits me to pay little attention to +the farm," he continued in his eloquent voice, "I see it falling to +rains about me, and I am fortunate in being able to enjoy the beauty of +its decay. Yes, my crop was a failure, I admit," he added, with a +touching cheerfulness, "it lay several months too long in the barn +before I could get it sent to the warehouse—but this was my misfortune, +not my fault, as I am sure Robert Baxter will understand."</p> + +<p>"He will find it easier to understand the case than to sell the tobacco, +I fancy."</p> + +<p>"However that may be, he is aware that I place the<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> utmost confidence in +his judgment. What he does will be the right thing, sir."</p> + +<p>This confession of artless trust was so overpowering that for a moment +Ordway hung back, feeling that any ground would be dangerous ground upon +which to proceed. The very absorption in which Beverly arranged the +dominoes upon the bench added to the childlike simplicity of his +appearance. Then a sudden irritation against the man possessed him, for +he remembered the girl in the red cape and the fallen cedars. From where +he sat now they were hidden by the curve of the avenue, but the +wonderful trees, which shed their rich gloom almost upon the roof of the +house, made him realise afresh the full extent of Beverly's folly. In +the fine spring sunshine whatever beauties were left in the ruined place +showed in an intenser and more vernal aspect. Every spear of grass on +the lawn was tipped with light, and the young green leaves on the lilacs +stood out as if illuminated on a golden background. In one of the +ivy-covered eaves a wren was building, and he could see the flutter of a +bluebird in an ancient cedar.</p> + +<p>"It is a beautiful day," remarked Beverly, pensively, "but the lawn +needs trimming." His gaze wandered gently over the tangled sheep mint, +orchard grass and Ailantus shoots which swept from the front steps to +the fallen fence which had once surrounded the place, and he added with +an outburst of animation, "I must tell Micah to turn in the cattle."<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a></p> + +<p>Remembering the solitary cow he had seen in a sheltered corner of the +barn, Ordway bit back a smile as he rose and held out his hand.</p> + +<p>"After all, I haven't delivered my message," he said, "which was to the +effect that the tobacco is practically unfit for use. Baxter told me to +request you to send for it at your convenience."</p> + +<p>Beverly gathered up his dominoes, and rising with no appearance of +haste, turned upon him an expression of suffering dignity.</p> + +<p>"Such an act upon my part," he said, "would be a reflection upon +Baxter's ability as a merchant, and after thirty years of friendship I +refuse to put an affront upon him. I would rather, sir, lose every penny +my tobacco might bring me."</p> + +<p>His sincerity was so admirable, that for a moment it obscured even in +Ordway's mind the illusion upon which it rested. When a man is honestly +ready to sacrifice his fortune in the cause of friendship, it becomes +the part of mere vulgarity to suggest to him that his affairs are in a +state of penury.</p> + +<p>"Then it must be used for fertilisers or thrown away," said Ordway, +shortly.</p> + +<p>"I trust myself entirely in Baxter's hands," replied Beverly, in sad but +noble tones, "whatever he does will be the best that could be done under +the circumstances. You may assure him of this with my compliments."</p> + +<p>"Well, I fear, there's nothing further to be said," remarked Ordway; and +he was about to make his<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> final good-bye, when a faded lady, wrapped in +a Paisley shawl, appeared in the doorway and came out upon the porch.</p> + +<p>"Amelia," said Beverly, "allow me to present Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, Mrs. +Brooke."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Brooke smiled at him wanly with a pretty, thin-lipped mouth and a +pair of large rather prominent eyes, which had once been gray but were +now washed into a cloudy drab. She was still pretty in a hopeless, +depressed, ineffectual fashion; and though her skirt was frayed about +the edges and her shoes run down at the heel, her pale, fawn-coloured +hair was arranged in elaborate spirals and the hand she held out to +Ordway was still delicately fine and white. She was like a philosopher, +who, having sunk into a universal pessimism of thought, preserves, in +spite of himself, a small belief or so in the minor pleasures of +existence. Out of the general wreck of her appearance she had clung +desperately to the beauties of her hair and hands.</p> + +<p>"I had hoped you would stay to dinner," she remarked in her listless +manner to Ordway. Fate had whipped her into submission, but there was +that in her aspect which never permitted one for an instant to forget +the whipping. If her husband had dominated by his utter incapacity, she +had found a smaller consolation in feeling that though she had been +obliged to drudge she had never learned to do it well. To do it badly, +indeed, had become at last the solitary proof that by right of birth she +was entitled not to do it at all.<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a></p> + +<p>At Ordway's embarrassed excuse she made no effort to insist, but stood, +smiling like a ghost of her own past prettiness, in the doorway. Behind +her the bare hall and the dim staircase appeared more empty, more +gloomy, more forlornly naked than they had done before.</p> + +<p>Again Ordway reached for his hat, and prepared to pick his way carefully +down the sunken steps; but this time he was arrested by the sound of +smothered laughter at the side of the house, which ran back to the +vegetable garden. A moment later the girl in the red cape appeared +running at full speed across the lawn, pursued by several shrieking +children that followed closely at her skirts. Her clear, ringing +laugh—the laugh of youth and buoyant health—held Ordway motionless for +an instant upon the porch; then as she came nearer he saw that she held +an old, earth-covered spade in her hands and that her boots and short +woollen skirt were soiled with stains from the garden beds. But the +smell of the warm earth that clung about her seemed only to increase the +vitality and freshness in her look. Her vivid animation, her sparkling +glance, struck him even more forcibly than they had done in the street +of Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>At sight of Ordway her laugh was held back breathlessly for an instant; +then breaking out again, it began afresh with redoubled merriment, and +sinking with exhaustion on the lowest step, she let the spade fall to +the ground while she buried her wind-blown head in her hands.<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a></p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," she stammered presently, lifting her radiant brown +eyes, "but I've run so fast that I'm quite out of breath." Stopping with +an effort she sought in vain to extinguish her laughter in the curls of +the smallest child.</p> + +<p>"Emily," said Beverly with dignity, "allow me to present Mr. Smith."</p> + +<p>The girl looked up from the step; and then, rising, smiled brightly upon +Ordway over the spade which she had picked up from the ground.</p> + +<p>"I can't shake hands," she explained, "because I've been spading the +garden."</p> + +<p>If she recognised him for the tramp who had slept in her barn there was +no hint of it in her voice or manner.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean, Emily," asked Beverly, in his plaintive voice, "that you +have been actually digging in the ground?"</p> + +<p>"Actually," repeated Emily, in a manner which made Ordway suspect that +the traditional feminine softness was not included among her virtues, "I +actually stepped on dirt and saw—worms."</p> + +<p>"But where is Micah?"</p> + +<p>"Micah has an attack of old age. He was eighty-two yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Is it possible?" remarked Beverly, and the discovery appeared to afford +him ground for cheerful meditation.</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't possible, but it's true," returned the girl, with +good-humoured merriment. "As there are only two able-bodied persons on +the place, the mare and I, it seemed to me that one of us had better +take<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> a hand at the spade. But I had to leave off after the first +round," she added to Ordway, showing him her right hand, from the palm +of which the skin had been rubbed away. She was so much like a gallant +boy that Ordway felt an impulse to take the hand in his own and examine +it more carefully.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm very much surprised to hear that Micah is so old," commented +Beverly, dwelling upon the single fact which had riveted his attention. +"I must be making him a little present upon his birthday."</p> + +<p>The girl's eyes flashed under her dark lashes, but remembering Ordway's +presence, she turned to him with a casual remark about the promise of +the spring. He saw at once that she had achieved an indignant detachment +from her thriftless family, and the ardent, almost impatient energy with +which she fell to labour was, in itself, a rebuke to the pleasant +indolence which had hastened, if it had not brought about, the ruin of +the house. Was it some temperamental disgust for the hereditary idleness +which had spurred her on to take issue with the worn-out traditions of +her ancestors and to place herself among the labouring rather than the +leisure class? As she stood there in her freshness and charm, with the +short brown curls blown from her forehead, the edge of light shining in +her eyes and on her lips, and the rich blood kindling in her vivid face, +it seemed to Ordway, looking back at her from the end of his forty +years, that he was brought face to face with the spirit of the future +rising amid the decaying sentiment of the past.<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-a" id="CHAPTER_VIII-a"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">"Ten Commandment Smith"</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Ordway had disappeared beyond the curve in the avenue, Emily went +slowly up the steps, her spade clanking against the stone as she +ascended.</p> + +<p>"Did he come about the tobacco, Beverly?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Beverly rose languidly from the bench, and stood rubbing his hand across +his forehead with an exhausted air.</p> + +<p>"My head was very painful and he talked so rapidly I could hardly follow +him," he replied; "but is it possible, Emily, that you have been digging +in the garden?"</p> + +<p>"There is nobody else to do it," replied Emily, with an impatient flash +in her eyes; "only half the garden has been spaded. If you disapprove so +heartily, I wish you'd produce someone to do the work."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Brooke, who had produced nothing in her life except nine children, +six of whom had died in infancy, offered at this a feeble and resigned +rebuke.</p> + +<p>"I am sure you could get Salem," she replied.</p> + +<p>"We owe him already three months' wages," returned the girl, "I am still +paying him for last autumn."</p> + +<p>"All I ask of you, Emily, is peace," remarked<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> Beverly, in a gentle +voice, as he prepared to enter the house. "Nothing—no amount of +brilliant argument can take the place of peace in a family circle. My +poor head is almost distracted when you raise your voice."</p> + +<p>The three children flocked out of the dining-room and came, with a rush, +to fling themselves upon him. They adored him—and there was a live +terrapin which they had brought in a box for him to see! In an instant +his depression vanished, and he went off, his beautiful face beaming +with animation, while the children clung rapturously to his corduroy +coat.</p> + +<p>"Amelia," said Emily, lowering her voice, "don't you think it would +improve Beverly's health if he were to try working for an hour every day +in the garden?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Brooke appeared troubled by the suggestion. "If he could only make +up his mind to it, I've no doubt it would," she answered, "he has had no +exercise since he was obliged to give up his horse. Walking he has +always felt to be ungentlemanly."</p> + +<p>She spoke in a softly tolerant voice, though she herself drudged day and +night in her anxious, tearful, and perfectly ineffectual manner. For +twenty years she had toiled patiently without, so far as one could +perceive, achieving a single definite result—for by some unfortunate +accident of temperament, she was doomed to do badly whatever she +undertook to do at all. Yet her intention was so admirable that she +appeared forever apologising in her heart for the incompetence of her +hands.<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p> + +<p>Emily placed the spade in the corner of the porch, and desisting from +her purpose, went upstairs to wash her hands before going in to dinner. +As she ascended the wide, dimly lighted staircase, upon which the sun +shone with a greenish light from the gallery above, she stopped twice to +wonder why Beverly's visitor had slept in the barn like a tramp only six +weeks ago. Before her mirror, a minute later, she put the same question +to herself while she braided her hair.</p> + +<p>The room was large, cool, high-ceiled, with a great brick fireplace, and +windows which looked out on the garden, where purple and white lilacs +were blooming beside the gate. On the southern side the ivy had grown +through the slats of the old green shutters, until they were held back, +crumbling, against the house, and in the space between one of the cedars +brushed always, with a whispering sound, against the discoloured panes. +In Emily's absence a curious melancholy descended on the old mahogany +furniture, the greenish windows and the fireless hearth; but with the +opening of the door and the entrance of her vivid youth, there appeared +also a light and gracious atmosphere in her surroundings. She remembered +the day upon which she had returned after ten years' absence, and how as +she opened the closed shutters, the gloom of the place had resisted the +passage of the sunshine, retreating stubbornly from the ceiling to the +black old furniture and then across the uncarpeted floor to the hall +where it still held control. For months after her return it had<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> seemed +to her that the fight was between her spirit and the spirit of the +past—between hope and melancholy, between growth and decay. The burden +of debt, of poverty, of hopeless impotence had fallen upon her +shoulders, and she had struggled under it with impetuous gusts of anger, +but with an energy that never faltered. To keep the children fed and +clothed, to work the poor farm as far as she was able, to stay clear of +any further debts, and to pay off the yearly mortgage with her small +income, these were the things which had filled her thoughts and absorbed +the gallant fervour of her youth. Her salary at the public school had +seemed to Beverly, though he disapproved of her position, to represent +the possibility of luxury; and in some loose, vague way he was never +able to understand why the same amount could not be made to serve in +several opposite directions at the same time.</p> + +<p>"That fifty dollars will come in very well, indeed, my dear," he would +remark, with cheerfulness, gloating over the unfamiliar sight of the +bank notes, "it's exactly the amount of Wilson's bill which he's been +sending in for the last year, and he refuses to furnish any groceries +until the account is settled. Then there's the roof which must be +repaired—it will help us there—then we must all have a supply of +shoes, and the wages of the hands are due to-morrow, I overlooked that +item."</p> + +<p>"But if you pay it all to Wilson," Emily would ask, as a kind of +elementary lesson in arithmetic, "how is the money going to buy all the +other things?"<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p> + +<p>"Ah, to be sure," Beverly would respond, as if struck by the lucidity of +the idea, "that is the question."</p> + +<p>And it was likely to remain the question until the end of Beverly—for +he had grown so accustomed to the weight of poverty upon his shoulders +that he would probably have felt a sense of loss if it had been suddenly +removed. But it was impossible to live in the house with him, to receive +his confidences and meet his charming smile and not to entertain a +sentiment of affection for him in one's heart. His unfailing courtesy +was his defence, though even this at times worked in Emily an +unreasonable resentment. He had ruined his family, and she felt that she +could have forgiven him more easily if he had ruined it with a less +irreproachable demeanour.</p> + +<p>After her question he had said nothing further about the tobacco, but a +chance meeting with Adam Whaley, as she rode into Tappahannock on the +Sunday after Ordway's visit, made clear to her exactly what the purpose +of that visit had been.</p> + +<p>"It's a pity Mr. Beverly let his tobacco spoil, particular' arter his +wheat turned out to be no account," remarked Adam. "I hope you don't +mind my sayin', Miss Em'ly, that Mr. Beverly is about as po' a farmer as +he is a first rate gentleman."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, I don't mind in the least, Adam," said Emily. "Do you know," +she asked presently,<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> "any hands that I can get to work the garden this +week?"</p> + +<p>Whaley shook his head. "They get better paid at the factories," he +answered; "an' them that ain't got thar little patch to labour in, +usually manage to git a job in town."</p> + +<p>Emily was on her old horse—an animal discarded by Mr. Beverly on +account of age—and she looked down at his hanging neck with a feeling +that was almost one of hopelessness. Beverly, who had never paid his +bills, had seldom paid his servants; and of the old slave generation +that would work for its master for a song, there were only Micah and +poor half-demented Aunt Mehitable now left.</p> + +<p>"The trouble with Mr. Beverly," continued Adam, laying his hand on the +neck of the old horse, "is that he was born loose-fingered jest as some +folks are born loose-moraled. He's never held on to anything sense he +came into the world an' I doubt if he ever will. Why, bless yo' life, +even as a leetle boy he never could git a good grip on his fishin' line. +It was always a-slidin' an' slippin' into the water."</p> + +<p>They had reached Tappahannock in the midst of Adam's philosophic +reflection; and as they were about to pass an open field on the edge of +the town, Emily pointed to a little crowd which had gathered in the +centre of the grass-grown space.</p> + +<p>"Is it a Sunday frolic, do you suppose?" she inquired.<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a></p> + +<p>"That? Oh no—it's 'Ten Commandment Smith,' as they call him now. He +gives a leetle talk out thar every fine Sunday arternoon."</p> + +<p>"A talk? About what?"</p> + +<p>"Wall, I ain't much of a listener, Miss, when it comes to that. My soul +is willin' an' peart enough, but it's my hands an' feet that make the +trouble. I declar' I've only got to set down in a pew for 'em to twitch +untwel you'd think I had the Saint Vitus dance. It don't look well to be +twitchin' the whole time you are in church, so that's the reason I'm +obleeged to stay away. As for 'Ten Commandment Smith,' though, he's got +a voice that's better than the doxology, an' his words jest boom along +like cannon."</p> + +<p>"And do the people like it?"</p> + +<p>"Some, of 'em do, I reckon, bein' as even sermons have thar followers, +but thar're t'others that go jest out of the sperit to be obleegin', an' +it seems to them that a man's got a pretty fair licence to preach who +gives away about two-thirds of what he gits a month. Good Lord, he could +drum up a respectable sized congregation jest from those whose back +mortgages he's helped pay up."</p> + +<p>While he spoke Emily had turned her horse's head into the field, and +riding slowly toward the group, she stopped again upon discovering that +it was composed entirely of men. Then going a little nearer, she drew +rein just beyond the outside circle, and paused for a moment with her +eyes fixed intently upon the speaker's face.<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a></p> + +<p>In the distance a forest, still young in leaf, lent a radiant, +springlike background to the field, which rose in soft green swells that +changed to golden as they melted gradually into the landscape. Ordway's +head was bare, and she saw now that the thick locks upon his forehead +were powdered heavily with gray. She could not catch his words, but his +voice reached her beyond the crowd; and she found herself presently +straining her ears lest she miss the sound which seemed to pass with a +peculiar richness into the atmosphere about the speaker. The religious +significance of the scene moved her but little—for she came of a race +that scorned emotional conversions or any faith, for that matter, which +did not confine itself within four well-built walls. Yet, in spite of +her convictions, something in the voice whose words she could not +distinguish, held her there, as if she were rooted on her old horse to +the spot of ground. The unconventional preacher, in his cheap clothes, +aroused in her an interest which seemed in some vague way to have its +beginning in a mystery that she could not solve. The man was neither a +professional revivalist nor a member of the Salvation Army, yet he +appeared to hold the attention of his listeners as if either their money +or their faith was in his words. And it was no uncultured oratory—"Ten +Commandment Smith," for all his rough clothes, his muddy boots and his +hardened hands, was beneath all a gentleman, no matter what his work—no +matter even what his class. Though she had lived far out of the world in +which he had had his place, she felt instinctively that<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> the voice she +heard had been trained to reach another audience than the one before him +in the old field. His words might be simple and straight from the +heart—doubtless they were—but the voice of the preacher—the vibrant, +musical, exquisitely modulated voice—was not merely a personal gift, +but the result of generations of culture. The atmosphere of a larger +world was around him as he stood there, bare-headed in the sunshine, +speaking to a breathless crowd of factory workers as if his heart went +out to them in the words he uttered. Perfectly motionless on the grass +at his feet his congregation sat in circles with their pathetic dumb +eyes fixed on his face.</p> + +<p>"What is it about, Adam? Can't you find out?" asked Emily, stirred by an +impulsive desire to be one of the attentive group of listeners—to come +under the spell of personality which drew its magic circle in the centre +of the green field.</p> + +<p>Adam crossed the space slowly, and returned after what was to Emily an +impatient interval.</p> + +<p>"It's one of his talks on the Ten Commandments—that's why they gave him +his nickname. I didn't stay to find out whether 'twas the top or the +bottom of 'em, Miss, as I thought you might be in a hurry."</p> + +<p>"But they can get that in church. What makes them come out here?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he tells 'em things," said Adam, "about people and places, and how +to get on in life. Then he's al'ays so ready to listen to anybody's +troubles<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> arterward; and he's taken over Martha Frayley's mortgage—you +know she's the widow of Mike Frayley who was a fireman and lost his life +last January in the fire at Bingham's Wall—I reckon, a man's got a +right to talk big when he lives big, too."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I suppose he has," said Emily. "Well, I must be going now, so I'll +ride on ahead of you."</p> + +<p>Touching the neck of the horse with her bare hand, she passed at a +gentle amble into one of the smaller streets of Tappahannock. Her +purpose was to call upon one of her pupils who had been absent from +school for several days, but upon reaching the house she found that the +child, after a slight illness, had recovered sufficiently to be out of +doors. This was a relief rather than a disappointment, and mounting +again, she started slowly back in the direction of Cedar Hill. A crowd +of men, walking in groups along the roadside, made her aware that the +gathering in the field had dispersed, and as she rode by she glanced +curiously among them in the hope of discovering the face of the speaker. +He was walking slightly behind the crowd, listening with an expression +of interest, to a man in faded blue overalls, who kept a timid yet +determined hold upon his arm. His face, which had appeared grave to +Emily when she saw it at Cedar Hill, wore now a look which seemed a +mixture of spiritual passion and boyish amusement. He impressed her as +both sad and gay, both bitter and sympathetic, and she was struck again +by the contrast between his hard mouth and his gentle<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> eyes. As she met +his glance, he bowed without a smile, while he stepped back into the +little wayside path among the dusty thistles.</p> + +<p>Unconsciously, she had searched his face as Milly Trend had done before +her, and like her, she had found there only an impersonal kindliness.<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-a" id="CHAPTER_IX-a"></a>CHAPTER IX<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Old And The New</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in +the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which +constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had +always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so +he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing +beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in +great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was +littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made +of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the +six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already +laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared +ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma. +A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick +fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red +and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one +of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a +loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each +passage of the hands.<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a></p> + +<p>"Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered, +for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an +insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip.</p> + +<p>"I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I +pour the coffee?"</p> + +<p>She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an +ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the +hickory log.</p> + +<p>"I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her +mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed.</p> + +<p>Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed +in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone +to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper. +The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the +room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but +observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down +again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake +more rapidly.</p> + +<p>"The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl +called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and +slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses +for its supper?"</p> + +<p>"Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair. +"They eat flies—I've seen 'em."<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a></p> + +<p>"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl.</p> + +<p>"It ain't your terrapin!"</p> + +<p>"It is."</p> + +<p>"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?"</p> + +<p>Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with +the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn +for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face +in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene +domesticity.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could +once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered +whimsically from his wife to the terrapin.</p> + +<p>Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat +now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow +against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to +survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to +achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows +in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped +this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer."</p> + +<p>"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his +coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you +ask it."</p> + +<p>She was surprised herself, the moment after she<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> had put the question, +so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian +purposes.</p> + +<p>"Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too +late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's +nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I +remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told +me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from +which he had been saved. As a small child I was taken to see him once +when he had just come to absolute ruin and had been obliged to sell his +horses and his house and even his wife's jewellery for debt. A red flag +was flying at the gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking port +wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 'Yes, I've lost +everything, my boy,' he cried, 'but it doesn't worry me a bit!' At that +instant I remember noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had +ever seen."</p> + +<p>"But his wife had to take in dressmaking," commented Emily, "and his +children grew up without a particle of education."</p> + +<p>"Ah, so they did," admitted Beverly, with sadness, "the details had +escaped me."</p> + +<p>As they had escaped him with equal success all his life, the fact seemed +to Emily hardly deserving of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she +went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a cold room, with her +head swathed in camphor bandages.<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> In answer to Emily's inquiries, she +moaned plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring and that she +must get up at daybreak and begin the work. "I've just remembered lying +here that I planned to clean them last week," she said excitedly, "and +will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get up that Beverly's old brown +velveteen coat needs a patch at the elbow?"</p> + +<p>"Don't think of such things now, Amelia, there's plenty of time. You are +shivering all over—I'll start the fire in a moment. It has turned quite +cool again."</p> + +<p>"But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly came up," sighed Mrs. +Brooke, "he is so fond of them."</p> + +<p>Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily knelt on the hearth and +kindled a blaze which leaped rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of +the two family failings with which she was obliged to contend, she had +long ago decided that Beverly's selfishness was less harmful in its +results than Amelia's self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed +positively violent during her severe attacks of headache, and between +two spasms of pain her feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small +self-denials which served to increase her discomfort while they +conferred no possible benefit upon either her husband or her children. +Her temperament had fitted her for immolation; but the character of the +age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace a domestic rather +than a religious martyrdom. The rack would have been to her morally a +bed of roses, and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> that +she had missed was visible at times in her faded gray eyes and impassive +features.</p> + +<p>"Mehitable brought me an egg," she groaned presently, growing more +comfortable in spite of her resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated +into the chill gloom where she lay, "but I sent it down to Blair—I +heard him coughing."</p> + +<p>"He didn't want it. There was plenty of batter-bread."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so seldom has one. It is +very sad. Emily, have you noticed how inert and lifeless Mr. Brooke has +grown?"</p> + +<p>"It's nothing new, Amelia, he has always been that way. Can't you sleep +now?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but if you could have seen him when we became engaged, Emily—such +life! such spirits! I remember the first time I dined at your +father's—that was before Beverly's mother died, so, of course, your +mother wasn't even thought of in the family. I suppose second marriages +are quite proper, since the Lord permits them, but they always seem to +me like trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal fervour. +Well, I was going to say that when your father asked me what part of the +fowl I preferred and I answered 'dark meat, sir,' he fairly rapped the +table in his delight: 'Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife you'll make for +Beverly,' he cried, 'if you will only continue to prefer dark meat!'"</p> + +<p>She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, and then began to +moan softly with pain. Emily swept the hearth, and after putting on a +fresh log,<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> went out, closing the door after her. There was no light in +her room, but she reflected with a kind of desperation that there was no +Beverly and no Amelia. The weight of the family had left her bruised and +helpless, yet she knew that she must go downstairs again, remove the +supper things, and send the three resisting children off to bed. She was +quite equal to the task she had undertaken, yet there were moments when, +because of her youth and her vitality, she found it harder to control +her temper than to accomplish her work.</p> + +<p>At ten o'clock, when she had coaxed the children to sleep, and persuaded +Amelia to drink a cup of gruel, she came to her room again and began to +undress slowly by the full moonlight which streamed through the window. +Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she could see the tangled garden, with +the dried stubble of last year's corn protruding from the unspaded rows. +This was the last sight upon which her eyes turned before she climbed +into the high tester bed and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep +of youth.</p> + +<p>Awaking at six o'clock she went again to the window, and at the first +glance it seemed to her that she must have slipped back into some +orderly and quiet dream—for the corn rows which had presented a +blighted aspect under the moonlight were now spaded and harrowed into +furrows ready for planting. The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a +surprise for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed this the +next instant and thought of Adam, Micah,<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> even of the demented Aunt +Mehitable. The memory of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a +laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran downstairs to the +garden gate, she half expected to see the pumpkin chariot disappearing +down the weed-grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac blossoms +shed a delicious perfume into her face, and leaning against the rotting +posts of the gate, she looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the +freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in the sunshine. A +heavy dew lay over the landscape and as the sun rose slowly higher the +mist was drawn back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that is +gathered up.</p> + +<p>"Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?" each name was a question she put to +herself, and after each she answered decisively, "No, it is impossible." +Micah, who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind and wholly +rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly in response to her eager +inquiries. There was clearly no help to be had from him except the +bewildered assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following on her +footsteps with a split basket while she dropped the grains of corn into +the opened furrows. His help in this case even was hardly more than a +hindrance, for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell over a +trailing brier in the path, and Emily was obliged to stop her work and +gather up the grain which he had scattered.</p> + +<p>"Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin' out fur you," he muttered as he sat +on the ground rubbing the<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When +the planting was over he went grumbling back to his cabin, while Emily +walked slowly up and down the garden path and dreamed of the vegetables +which would ripen for the market. In the midst of her business +calculations she remembered the little congregation in the green field +on Sunday afternoon and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face of +the man who passed her in the road. Why had she thought of him? she +wondered idly, and why should that group of listeners gathered out of +doors in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment which was +associated with some religious emotion of which she had been half +unconscious?</p> + +<p>The next night she awoke from a profound sleep with the same memory in +her mind, and turning on her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight, +which brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew outside. On the +ivy the light shone almost like dawn, and as she could not fall asleep +again, she rose presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing-gown, +crossed to the window and looked out upon the shining fields, the garden +and the blossoming lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay +thick and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were resting upon +them, when it seemed to her that a portion of the darkness detached +itself and melted out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only +the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was outlined on the bare rows +of the garden, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw +that the<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> figure had assumed a human shape, though it was still followed +so closely by its semblance upon the ground that it was impossible at a +distance to distinguish the living worker from his airy double. Yet she +realised instantly that her mysterious gardener was at work before her +eyes, and hastening into her clothes, she caught up her cape from a +chair, and started toward the door with an impulsive determination to +discover his identity. With her hand on the knob, she hesitated and +stopped, full of perplexity, upon the threshold. Since he had wished to +remain undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust recognition +upon his kindness? On the other hand was it not more than unfair—was it +not positively ungrateful—to allow his work to pass without any sign of +acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white moonlight outside she +could see the pointed tops of the cedars rising like silver spires. As +the boughs moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours of cedar +berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For an instant longer her +hesitation lasted; then throwing aside her cape, she undressed quickly, +without glancing again down into the garden. When she fell asleep now it +was to dream of the shadowy gardener spading in the moonlight among the +lilacs.<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-a" id="CHAPTER_X-a"></a>CHAPTER X<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">His Neighbour's Garden</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>N his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first +by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in +whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the +beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the +fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next +night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure +pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still +digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less +than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before +Sunday put a stop to his work.</p> + +<p>On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking +almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path +powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken +fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his +freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. +While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty +of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense +which was keener than the sense of touch.<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a></p> + +<p>As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened +himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair +back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the +moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields, +and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the +hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and +moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw +that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the +purple and white lilacs.</p> + +<p>"It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say +'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her +voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her +hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the +pillow.</p> + +<p>"It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for +doing the thing that I enjoyed."</p> + +<p>Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and +his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in +the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She +felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she +had at first believed.</p> + +<p>"And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and +sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot +understand why you have done it."<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a></p> + +<p>"Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a +whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it +justified that explanation of my behaviour?"</p> + +<p>"The explanation, yes—but not you," she answered, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't +I?"</p> + +<p>"It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but +even your success doesn't explain your motive."</p> + +<p>"Well, the truth is—if you will have it—I needed exercise."</p> + +<p>"You might have walked."</p> + +<p>"That doesn't reach the shoulders—there's the trouble."</p> + +<p>She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to +her gallant manner.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to +you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a +farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes +and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured +population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it +isn't mine. It looks too shiny."</p> + +<p>"I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs +it every night."</p> + +<p>"In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's +gardens."</p> + +<p>"She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke,<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> "but you see I am a very +useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her."</p> + +<p>"You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went."</p> + +<p>Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a +feeling of good fellowship.</p> + +<p>"So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily.</p> + +<p>"Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case."</p> + +<p>For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she +turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought.</p> + +<p>"After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to +Tappahannock," she observed.</p> + +<p>Her friendliness—which impressed him as that of a creature who had met +no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous, +almost childlike, appeal to his confidence.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly.</p> + +<p>She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I remember."</p> + +<p>"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night—I was beaten down, +desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and—yes, and in your +courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back +to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road."<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a></p> + +<p>"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her +frank, almost boyish way.</p> + +<p>"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I <i>was</i> +hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my +fault, you understand—I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to +begin again low down—at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell +her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had +returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist +the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words +with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon +the handle, stood waiting for her to speak.</p> + +<p>"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she +asked.</p> + +<p>"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered.</p> + +<p>"And you are making a new foundation now?"</p> + +<p>"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't +they?" he added cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should +like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I +think, to see New York."</p> + +<p>"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?"</p> + +<p>"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school +once in Georgia."</p> + +<p>The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her +suddenly as if he had taken her in<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> for the first time. Perfectly +unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would +have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes. +Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now, +than to some inherited ideal of manner—of social values; and it seemed +to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect +which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries.</p> + +<p>"You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"A great many—oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still +have the entire south wall in the library—the English classics are +there."</p> + +<p>"I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that +the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of +Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, +its red clay roads.</p> + +<p>She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and +bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that +first night in the barn.</p> + +<p>"Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said.</p> + +<p>"Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered.</p> + +<p>As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he +passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to +Tappahannock.<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a></p> + +<p>When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him +that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from +Bullfinch's Hollow.</p> + +<p>"Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued +impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit +Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease, +that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is +in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if +you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't +seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two +weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low +lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that +Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for +respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr. +Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how +the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I +reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up +then tight as a keg—I'd wish you'd have seen him."</p> + +<p>"In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as +he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. +Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill.</p> + +<p>"Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs. +Twine, turning from the table to pick<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> up a pair of Canty's little +breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I +reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the +weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk +of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's +an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could +manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to +step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have +thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a +man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin' +any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an' +honour a whale."</p> + +<p>"But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway, +picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and +be charitable to the rest of us."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped +them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of +their infant wearer.</p> + +<p>"As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs +from another only in the set of his breeches—for the best an' the worst +of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all +pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon +that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A +weak woman would have kept a widow<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> after my marriage with Bob Cotton, +the brother of William, suh—but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be +said for me—so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier, +I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage—whether +you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret +for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a +feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an' +when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my +determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most +likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now +that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin'—for thar's +got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I +reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the +worst."</p> + +<p>A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she +looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped +by to walk downtown with him.</p> + +<p>With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops, +Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his +hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon +which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached +himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At +his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his +youthful struggles, and the following day he<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> had unburdened himself +with rapture of his passion for Milly.</p> + +<p>"I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I +might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco +now, isn't there?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the +way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants +me to come over."</p> + +<p>"I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?"</p> + +<p>"He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the +afternoon."</p> + +<p>They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself +standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks +came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not +Milly held out her hand.</p> + +<p>"Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith," +she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember +to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity +afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr. +Banks will be here."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the +heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to +Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's +look of bewilderment.<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying +to sick people."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway, +drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and +pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if +Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the +girl before him.</p> + +<p>As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion, +a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper.</p> + +<p>"After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want +to meet her when you got the chance."</p> + +<p>Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man, +and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance—that's the +best excuse I have."</p> + +<p>"All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care."</p> + +<p>"Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have +supported a comparison with your turtle-dove."</p> + +<p>Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a +conscious laugh.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's +something about you—I don't know what it is—that takes the place of +them."</p> + +<p>"The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway +with good-humoured raillery.<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a></p> + +<p>"You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them—Milly says so."</p> + +<p>"I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's +right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved +by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you."</p> + +<p>"But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air."</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to +the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are—well, you're a +downright trump!"</p> + +<p>He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an +instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the +luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he +"would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith."<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-a" id="CHAPTER_XI-a"></a>CHAPTER XI<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Bullfinch's Hollow</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>T five o'clock Ordway followed the uneven board walk to the end of the +main street, and then turning into a little footpath which skirted the +railroad track, he came presently to the abandoned field known in +Tappahannock as Bullfinch's Hollow. Beyond a disorderly row of negro +hovels, he found a small frame cottage, which he recognised as the house +to which he had brought Kit Berry on the night when he had dragged him +bodily from Kelly's saloon. In response to his knock the door was opened +by the same weeping woman—a small withered person, with snapping black +eyes and sparse gray hair brushed fiercely against her scalp, where it +clung so closely that it outlined the bones beneath. At sight of Ordway +a smile curved her sunken mouth; and she led the way through the kitchen +to the door of a dimly lighted room at the back, where a boy of eighteen +years tossed deliriously on a pallet in one corner. It was poverty in +its direst, its most abject, results, Ordway saw at once as his eyes +travelled around the smoke stained, unplastered walls and rested upon +the few sticks of furniture and the scant remains of a meal on the +kitchen table. Then he looked into Mrs. Berry's face and saw that she<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> +must have lived once amid surroundings far less wretched than these.</p> + +<p>"Kit was taken bad with fever three days ago," she said, "an' the doctor +told me this mornin' that the po' boy's in for a long spell of typhoid. +He's clean out of his head most of the time, but whenever he comes to +himself he begs and prays me to send for you. Something's on his mind, +but I can't make out what it is."</p> + +<p>"May I see him now?" asked Ordway.</p> + +<p>"I think he's wanderin', but I'll find out in a minute."</p> + +<p>She went to the pallet and bending over the young man, whispered a few +words in his ear, while her knotted hand stroked back the hair from his +forehead. As Ordway's eyes rested on her thin shoulders under the +ragged, half soiled calico dress she wore, he forgot the son in the +presence of the older and more poignant tragedy of the mother's life. +Yet all that he knew of her history was that she had married a drunkard +and had brought a second drunkard into the world.</p> + +<p>"He wants to speak to you, sir—he's come to," she said, returning to +the doorway, and fixing her small black eyes upon Ordway's face. "You +are the gentleman, ain't you, who got him to sign the pledge?"</p> + +<p>Ordway nodded. "Did he keep it?"</p> + +<p>Her sharp eyes filled with tears.</p> + +<p>"He hasn't touched a drop for going on six weeks, sir, but he hadn't the +strength to hold up without it, so the fever came on and wore him down." +Swallowing<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> a sob with a gulp, she wiped her eyes fiercely on the back +of her hand. "He ain't much to look at now," she finished, divided +between her present grief and her reminiscent pride, "but, oh, Mr. +Smith, if you could have seen him as a baby! When he was a week old he +was far and away the prettiest thing you ever laid your eyes on—not +red, sir, like other children, but white as milk, with dimples at his +knees and elbows. I've still got some of his little things—a dress he +wore and a pair of knitted shoes—and it's them that make me cry, sir. I +ain't grievin' for the po' boy in there that's drunk himself to death, +but for that baby that used to be."</p> + +<p>Still crying softly, she slunk out into the kitchen, while Ordway, +crossing to the bed, stood looking down upon the dissipated features of +the boy who lay there, with his matted hair tossed over his flushed +forehead.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry to see you down, Kit. Can I do anything to help you?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>Kit opened his eyes with a start of recognition, and reaching out, +gripped Ordway's wrist with his burning hand, while he threw off the +ragged patchwork quilt upon the bed.</p> + +<p>"I've something on my mind, and I want to get it off," he answered. +"When it's once off I'll be better and get back my wits."</p> + +<p>"Then get it off. I'm waiting."</p> + +<p>"Do you remember the night in the bar-room?" demanded the boy in a +whisper, "the time you came in through the window and took me home?"</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Ordway.<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, I'd walked up the street behind you that afternoon when you left +Baxter's, and I got drunk that night on a dollar I stole from you."</p> + +<p>"But I didn't speak to you. I didn't even see you."</p> + +<p>"Of course you didn't. If you had I couldn't have stolen it, but Baxter +had just paid you and when you put your hand into your pocket to get out +something, a dollar bill dropped on the walk."</p> + +<p>"Go on."</p> + +<p>"I picked it up and got drunk on it, there's nothing else. It was a +pretty hard drunk, but before I got through you came in and dragged me +home. Twenty cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the money and +bought a fish for breakfast.</p> + +<p>"Well, I did that much good at least," observed Ordway with a smile, +"have you finished, Kit?"</p> + +<p>"It's been on my mind," repeated Kit deliriously, "and I wanted to get +it off."</p> + +<p>"It's off now, my boy," said Ordway, picking up the ragged quilt from +the floor and laying it across the other's feet, "and on the whole I'm +glad you told me. You've done the straight thing, Kit, and I am proud of +you."</p> + +<p>"Proud of me?" repeated Kit, and fell to crying like a baby.</p> + +<p>In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, after bathing the boy's +face and hands from a basin of water on a chair at the bedside, went +into the kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found weeping over a +pair of baby's knitted shoes. The pathos of her grief bordered so +closely upon the<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back +the laugh upon his lips.</p> + +<p>"Kit is worse again," he said. "Do you give him any medicine?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, while her sobs changed +into a low whimpering sound.</p> + +<p>"Did you sit up with him last night?" asked Ordway, following her to the +door.</p> + +<p>"I've been up for three nights, sir. He has to have his face and hands +bathed every hour."</p> + +<p>"What about medicine and food?"</p> + +<p>"The doctor gives him his medicine free, every drop of it, an' they let +me have a can of milk every day from Cedar Hill. I used to live there as +a girl, you know, my father was overseer in old Mr. Brooke's +time—before he married Miss Emily's mother——"</p> + +<p>Ordway cut short her reminiscences.</p> + +<p>"Well, you must sleep to-night," he said authoritatively, "I'll come +back in an hour and sit up with Kit. Where is your room?"</p> + +<p>She pointed to a rickety flight of stairs which led to the attic above.</p> + +<p>"Kit slept up there until he was taken ill," she answered. "He's been a +hard son to me, sir, as his father was a hard husband because of drink, +but to save the life of me I can't forgit how good he used to be when he +warn't more'n a week old. Never fretted or got into tempers like other +babies——"</p> + +<p>Again Ordway broke in drily upon her wandering recollections.</p> + +<p>"Now I'll go for an hour," he said abruptly, "and<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> by the way, have you +had supper or shall I bring you some groceries when I come?"</p> + +<p>"There was a little milk left in the pitcher and I had a piece of +cornbread, but—oh, Mr. Smith," her small black eyes snapped fiercely +into his, "there are times when my mouth waters for a cup of coffee jest +as po' Kit's does for whiskey."</p> + +<p>"Then put the kettle on," returned Ordway, smiling, as he left the room.</p> + +<p>It was past sunset when he returned, and he found Kit sleeping quietly +under the effect of the medicine the doctor had just given him. Mrs. +Berry had recovered sufficient spirit, not only to put the kettle on the +stove, but to draw the kitchen table into the square of faint light +which entered over the doorstep. The preparations for her supper had +been made, he saw, with evident eagerness, and as he placed his packages +upon the table, she fell upon them with an excited, childish curiosity. +A few moments later the aroma of boiling coffee floated past him where +he sat on the doorstep smoking his last pipe before going into the +sick-room for the night. Turning presently he watched the old woman in +amazement while she sat smacking her thin lips and jerking her +shrivelled little hands over her fried bacon; and as he looked into her +ecstatic face, he realised something of the intensity which enters into +the scant enjoyments of the poor. The memory of his night in the +Brookes' barn returned to him with the aroma of the coffee, and he +understood for the first time that it is possible to associate a rapture +with meat<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> and drink. Then, in spite of his resolve to keep his face +turned toward his future, he found himself contrasting the squalid +shanty at his back with the luxurious surroundings amid which he had +last watched all night by a sick-bed. He could see the rich +amber-coloured curtains, the bowls of violets on the inlaid table +between the open windows, the exquisite embroidered coverlet upon the +bed, and the long pale braid of Lydia's hair lying across the lace +ruffles upon her nightgown. Before his eyes was the sunken field filled +with Negro hovels and refuse heaps in which lean dogs prowled snarling +in search of bones; but his inward vision dwelt, in a luminous mist, on +the bright room, scented with violets, where Lydia had slept with her +baby cradled within her arm. He could see her arm still under the +falling lace, round and lovely, with delicate blue veins showing beneath +the inside curve.</p> + +<p>In the midst of his radiant memory the acrid voice of Mrs. Berry broke +with a shock, and turning quickly he found that his dream took instant +flight before the aggressive actuality which she presented.</p> + +<p>"I declare I believe I'd clean forgot how good things tasted," she +remarked in the cheerful tones of one who is full again after having +been empty.</p> + +<p>Picking up a chip from the ground, Ordway began scraping carelessly at +the red clay on his boots. "It smells rather nice anyway," he rejoined +good-humouredly, and rising from the doorstep, he crossed the kitchen +and sat down in the sagging split-bottomed chair beside the pallet.<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a></p> + +<p>At sunrise he left Kit, sleeping peacefully after a delirious night, and +going out of doors for a breath of fresh air, stood looking wearily on +the dismal prospect of Bullfinch's Hollow. The disorderly road, the +dried herbage of the field, the Negro hovels, with pig pens for +backyards, and the refuse heaps piled with tin cans, old rags and +vegetable rinds, appeared to him now to possess a sordid horror which +had escaped him under the merciful obscurity of the twilight. Even the +sun, he thought, looked lean and shrunken, as it rose over the slovenly +landscape.</p> + +<p>With the first long breath he drew there was only dejection in his +mental outlook; then he remembered the enraptured face of Mrs. Berry as +she poured out her coffee, and he told himself that there were pleasures +hardy enough to thrive and expand even in the atmosphere of Bullfinch's +Hollow.</p> + +<p>As there was no wood in the kitchen, he shouldered an old axe which he +found leaning in one corner, and going to a wood-pile beyond the +doorstep, split up the single rotting log lying upon a heap of mould. +Returning with his armful of wood, he knelt on the hearth and attempted +to kindle a blaze before the old woman should make her appearance from +the attic. The sticks had just caught fire, when a shadow falling over +him from the open door caused him to start suddenly to his feet.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," said a voice, "but I've brought some milk for Mrs. +Berry."</p> + +<p>At the words his face reddened as if from shame, and drawing himself to +his full height, he stood,<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> embarrassed and silent, in the centre of the +room, while Emily Brooke crossed the floor and placed the can of milk +she had brought upon the table.</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean to interrupt you," she added cheerfully, "but there was +no one else to come, so I had to ride over before breakfast. Is Kit +better?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ordway, and to his annoyance he felt himself flush painfully +at the sound of his own voice.</p> + +<p>"You spent last night with him?" she inquired in her energetic tones.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>As he stood there in his cheap clothes, with his dishevelled hair and +his unwashed hands, she was struck by some distinction of personality, +before which these surface roughnesses appeared as mere incidental +things. Was it in his spare, weather-beaten face? Or was it in the +peculiar contrast between his gray hair and his young blue eyes? Then +her gaze fell on his badly made working clothes, worn threadbare in +places, on his clean striped shirt, frayed slightly at the collar and +cuffs, on his broken fingernails, and on the red clay still adhering to +his country boots.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why you do these things?" she asked so softly that the words +hardly reached him. "I wonder why?"</p> + +<p>Though she had expected no response to her question, to her surprise he +answered almost impulsively as he stooped to pick up a bit of charred +wood from the floor.</p> + +<p>"Well, one must fill one's life, you know," he said.<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> "I tried the other +thing once but it didn't count—it was hardly better than this, when all +is said."</p> + +<p>"What 'other thing' do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"When I spoke I was thinking of what people have got to call +'pleasure,'" he responded, "getting what one wants in life, or trying to +get it and failing in the end."</p> + +<p>"And did you fail?" she asked, with a simplicity which saved the blunt +directness of the question.</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Do you think if I had succeeded, I'd be splitting wood in +Bullfinch's Hollow?"</p> + +<p>"And you care nothing for Kit Berry?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I like him—he's an under dog."</p> + +<p>"Then you are for the under dog, right or wrong, as I am?" she responded +with a radiant look.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know about that," he answered, "but I have at least a +fellow feeling for him. I'm an under dog myself, you see."</p> + +<p>"But you won't stay one long?"</p> + +<p>"That's the danger. When I come out on top I'll doubtless stop splitting +wood and do something worse."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it," she rejoined decisively. "You have never had a +chance at the real thing before."</p> + +<p>"You're right there," he admitted, "I had never seen the real thing in +my life until I came to Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"Do you mind telling me," she asked, after an instant's hesitation, "why +you came to Tappahannock? I can't understand why anyone should ever come +here."<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a></p> + +<p>"I don't know about the others, but I came because my road led here. I +followed my road."</p> + +<p>"Not knowing where it would end?"</p> + +<p>He laughed again. "Not <i>caring</i> where it would end."</p> + +<p>Her charming boyish smile rippled across her lips.</p> + +<p>"It isn't necessary that I should understand to be glad that you kept +straight on," she said.</p> + +<p>"But the end isn't yet," he replied, with a gaiety beneath which she saw +the seriousness in his face. "It may lead me off again."</p> + +<p>"To a better place I hope."</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose that would be easy to find," he admitted, as he glanced +beyond the doorway, "but I like Tappahannock. It has taken me in, you +know, and there's human nature even in Bullfinch's Hollow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I suppose it's hideous," she remarked, following his look in the +direction of the town, "but I can't judge. I've seen so little else, you +know—and yet my City Beautiful is laid out in my mind."</p> + +<p>"Then you carry it with you, and that is best."</p> + +<p>As she was about to answer the door creaked above them and Mrs. Berry +came down the short flight of steps, hastily fastening her calico dress +as she descended.</p> + +<p>"Well, I declare, who'd have thought to see you at this hour, Miss +Emily," she exclaimed effusively.</p> + +<p>"I thought you might need the milk early," replied the girl, "and as +Micah had an attack of rheumatism I brought it over on horseback."</p> + +<p>While the old woman emptied the contents of the<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> can into a cracked +china pitcher, Emily held out her hand to Ordway with an impulsive +gesture.</p> + +<p>"We shall have a flourishing kitchen garden," she said, "thanks to you."</p> + +<p>Then taking the empty can from Mrs. Berry, she crossed the threshold, +and remounted from the doorstep.<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII-a" id="CHAPTER_XII-a"></a>CHAPTER XII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">A String Of Coral</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>S Emily rode slowly up from Bullfinch's Hollow, it seemed to her that +the abandoned fields had borrowed an aspect which was almost one of +sentiment. In the golden light of the sunrise even the Negro hovels, the +refuse heaps and the dead thistles by the roadside, were transfigured +until they appeared to lose their ordinary daytime ugliness; and the +same golden light was shining inwardly on the swift impressions which +crowded her thoughts. This strange inner illumination surrounded, she +discovered now, each common fact which presented itself to her mind, and +though the outward form of life was not changed, her mental vision had +become suddenly enraptured. She did not stop to ask herself why the +familiar events of every day appear so full of vivid interests—why the +external objects at which she looked swam before her gaze in an +atmosphere that was like a rainbow mist? It was sufficient to be alive +to the finger tips, and to realise that everything in the great universe +was alive around one—the air, the sky, the thistles along the roadside +and the dust blowing before the wind, all moved, she felt, in harmony +with the elemental pulse of life. On that morning she entered for the +first time into the secret of immortality.<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a></p> + +<p>And yet—was it only the early morning hour? she asked herself, as she +rode back between the stretches of dried broomsedge. Or was it, she +questioned a moment later, the natural gratification she had felt in a +charity so generous, so unassuming as that of the man she had seen at +Mrs. Berry's?</p> + +<p>"It's a pity he isn't a gentleman and that his clothes are so rough," +she thought, and blushed the next instant with shame because she was +"only a wretched snob."</p> + +<p>"Whatever his class he <i>is</i> a gentleman," she began again, "and he would +be quite—even very—good-looking if his face were not so drawn and +thin. What strange eyes he has—they are as blue as Blair's and as +young. No, he isn't exactly good-looking—not in Beverly's way, at +least—but I should know his face again if I didn't see it for twenty +years. It's odd that there are people one hardly knows whom one never +forgets."</p> + +<p>Her bare hands were on Major's neck, and as she looked at them a +displeased frown gathered her brows. She wondered why she had never +noticed before that they were ugly and unwomanly, and it occurred to her +that Aunt Mehitable had once told her that "ole Miss" washed her hands +in buttermilk to keep them soft and white. "They're almost as rough as +Mr. Smith's," she thought, "perhaps he noticed them." The idea worried +her for a minute, for she hated, she told herself, that people should +not think her "nice"—but the golden light was still flooding her +thoughts and these trivial disturbances scattered<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> almost before they +had managed to take shape. Nothing worried her long to-day, and as she +dismounted at the steps, and ran hurriedly into the dining-room, she +remembered Beverly and Amelia with an affection which she had not felt +for years. It was as if the mere external friction of personalities had +dissolved before the fundamental relation of soul to soul; even poor +half-demented Aunt Mehitable wore in her eyes, at the minute, an +immortal aspect.</p> + +<p>A little later when she rode in to the public school at Tappahannock, +she discovered that the golden light irradiated even the questions in +geography and arithmetic upon the blackboard; and coming out again, she +found that it lay like sunshine on the newly turned vegetable rows in +the garden. That afternoon for the first time she planted in a discarded +pair of buck-skin gloves, and as soon as her work was over, she went +upstairs to her bedroom, and regarded herself wistfully by the light +from a branched candlestick which she held against the old greenish +mirror. Her forehead was too high, she admitted regretfully, her mouth +was too wide, her skin certainly was too brown. The blue cotton dress +she wore appeared to her suddenly common and old-fashioned, and she +began looking eagerly through her limited wardrobe in the hopeless quest +for a gown that was softened by so much as a fall of lace about the +throat. Then remembering the few precious trinkets saved from the +bartered heirlooms of her dead mother, she got out the old black leather +jewel case and went patiently over the family possessions. Among the<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> +mourning brooches and hair bracelets that the box contained there was a +necklace of rare pink coral, which she had meant to give Bella upon her +birthday—but as her gaze was arrested now by the cheerful colour, she +sat for a moment wondering if she might not honestly keep the beads for +her own. Still undecided she went to the bureau again and fastened the +string of coral around her firm brown throat.</p> + +<p>"I may wear it for a week or two at least," she thought. "Why not?" It +seemed to her foolish, almost unfeminine that she had never cared or +thought about her clothes until to-day. "I've gone just like a boy—I +ought to be ashamed to show my hands," she said; and at the same instant +she was conscious of the vivid interest, of the excitement even, which +attached to this new discovery of the importance of one's appearance. +Before going downstairs she brushed the tangles out of her thick brown +hair, and spent a half hour arranging it in a becoming fashion upon her +neck.</p> + +<p>The next day Micah was well enough to carry the milk to Mrs. Berry's, +but three mornings afterward, when she came from the dairy with the can, +the old negro was not waiting for her on the porch, and she found, upon +going to his cabin, that the attack of rheumatism had returned with +violence. There was nothing for her to do but carry the milk herself, so +after leading Major from his stall, she mounted and rode, almost with a +feeling of shyness, in the direction of Bullfinch's Hollow.<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a></p> + +<p>The door was closed this morning, and in answer to her knock, Mrs. Berry +appeared, rubbing her eyes, beyond the threshold.</p> + +<p>"I declare, Miss Emily, you don't look like yourself at all," she +exclaimed at the girl's entrance, "it must be them coral beads you've +got on, I reckon. They always was becomin' things—I had a string once +myself that I used to wear when my po' dead husband was courtin' me. +Lord! Lord!" she added, bursting into sobs, "who'd have thought when I +wore those beads that I'd ever have come to this? My po' ma gave 'em to +me herself—they were her weddin' present from her first husband, and +when she made up her mind to marry again, she kind of thought it warn't +modest to go aroun' wearin' what she'd got from her first marriage. She +was always powerful sensitive to decency, was po' ma. I've seen her +scent vulgarity in the most harmless soundin' speech you ever +heard—such as when my husband asked her one day if she was afflicted +with the budges in her knee, and she told me afterward that he had made +a sneakin' allusion to her leg. Ten years from that time, when all my +trouble came upon me, she held that over me as a kind of warnin'. 'If +you'd listened to me, Sarindy,' she used to say, 'you'd never have got +into this scrape of marryin' a man who talked free befo' women. For a +man who is indecent in his language can't be decent in his life,' she +said."</p> + +<p>As she talked she was pouring the milk into the cracked pitcher, and +Emily breaking in at the first pause, sought to hasten the washing of +the can, by<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> bringing the old woman's rambling attention back to Kit.</p> + +<p>"Has he had a quiet night?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, yes, miss, in a way, but then he always was what you might call a +quiet sleeper from the very hour that he was born. I remember old Aunt +Jemima, his monthly nurse, tellin' me that she had never in all her +experience brought a more reliable sleeper into the world. He never used +to stir, except to whimper now and then for his sugar rag when it +slipped out of his mouth."</p> + +<p>Hurriedly seizing the half-washed can, Emily caught up her skirt and +moved toward the door.</p> + +<p>"Did you sit up with him last night?" she asked, turning upon the step.</p> + +<p>"That was Mr. Smith's night, miss—he's taken such a fancy to Kit that +he comes every other night to watch by him—but he gets up and leaves +now a little before daybreak. I heard him choppin' wood before the sun +was up."</p> + +<p>"He has been very kind about it, hasn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Lord, miss, he's been a son and a brother as far as work goes, but I +declare I can't help wishin' he wasn't quite so shut mouthed. Every +blessed sound he utters I have to drag out of him like a fox out of a +burrow. He's a little cranky, too, I reckon, for he is so absent-minded +that sometimes when you call his name he never even turns aroun'. But +the Lord will overlook his unsociable ways, I s'pose, for he reads his +Bible half the night when he sets up, jest as hard as if he was paid to +do it. That's<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> as good a recommendation, I reckon, as I need to have."</p> + +<p>"I should think his charity would be a better one," rejoined Emily, with +severity.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's as it may be, Miss," returned Mrs. Berry, "I'm not +ungrateful, I hope, and I'm much obliged for what he gives +me—particularly for the coffee, which ain't as thin as it might be +seein' it's a present. But when all's said I ain't so apt to jedge by +things like that because charity is jest a kind of Saint Vitus dance +with some folks—it's all in the muscles. Thank you, miss, yes, Kit is +doin' very well."</p> + +<p>Mounting from the step, Emily turned back into the Tappahannock road, +aware as she passed through the deserted fields that her exaltation of +the morning had given way before a despondency which seemed to change +the face of nature. The day was oppressive, the road ugly, Mrs. Berry +more tiresome than usual—each of these things suggested itself as a +possible reason for the dissatisfaction which she could not explain. Not +once during her troubled mood did the name or the face of Ordway appear +as the visible cause of her disturbance. So far, indeed, was his +individual aspect from her reflections, that some hours later, when she +rode back to school, it was with a shock of surprise that she saw him +turn the corner by the new brick church, and come rapidly toward her +from the brow of the long hill. That he had not at first seen her was +evident, for he walked in an abstracted reverie with his eyes on the +ground,<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> and when he looked up at last, she had drawn almost within +speaking distance. At sight of his face her heart beat so quickly that +she dropped the reins on Major's neck, and raised her free hand to her +bosom, while she felt the blood mount joyously to her cheeks; but, to +her amazement, in the first instant of recognition, he turned abruptly +away and entered the shop of a harness maker which happened to be +immediately on his right. The action was so sudden that even as she +quickened her horse's pace, there flashed into her mind the humiliating +conviction that he had sought purposely to avoid her. The throbs of her +heart grew faster and then seemed to die utterly away, yet even as the +warm blood turned cold in her cheeks, she told herself with spirit that +it was all because she "could not bear to be disliked." "Why should he +dislike me?" she questioned presently; "it is very foolish of him, and +what have I done?" She searched her memory for some past rudeness of +which she had been guilty, but there was nothing she could recall which +would justify, however slightly, his open avoidance of a chance meeting. +"Perhaps he doesn't like the colour of my hair. I've heard men were like +that," she thought, "or the freckles on my face? Or the roughness of my +hands?" But the instant afterward she saw how ridiculous were her +surmises, and she felt angry with herself for having permitted them to +appear in her mind. She remembered his blue eyes with the moonlight upon +them, and she wondered why he had seemed to her more masculine than any +man that she had ever known.<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> With the memory of his eyes and his smile +she smelt again the odour of the warm earth that had clung about him, +and she was conscious that this and everything about him was strange and +new as if she had never looked into a pair of blue eyes or smelt the +odour of the soil before.</p> + +<p>After this meeting she did not see Ordway again for several weeks, and +then it was only to pass him in the road one Sunday afternoon when he +had finished his sermon in the old field. As he drew back among the +thistles, he spoke to her gravely, with a deference, she noticed, which +had the effect of placing him apart from her as a member of the working +class. Since Kit Berry's recovery she had not gone again to Bullfinch's +Hollow; and she could not fail to observe that even when an opportunity +appeared, Ordway made no further effort to bridge the mere casual +acquaintance which divided rather than united them. If it were possible +to avoid conversation with her he did so by retiring into the +background; if the event forced him into notice, he addressed her with a +reserve which seemed at each meeting to widen the distance between them.</p> + +<p>Though she hardly confessed it to herself, her heart was wounded for a +month or two by his frank indifference to her presence. Then one bright +afternoon in May, when she had observed him turn out of his path as she +rode up the hill, she saved the situation in her mind by the final +triumph of her buoyant humour.</p> + +<p>"Everybody is privileged to be a little fool," she<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> said with a laugh, +"but when there's the danger of becoming a great big one, it's time to +stop short and turn round. Now, Emily, my dear, you're to stop short +from this minute. I hope you understand me."</p> + +<p>That the Emily she addressed understood her very clearly was proved a +little later in the afternoon, when going upstairs to her bedroom, she +unfastened the coral beads and laid them away again among the mourning +brooches and the hair bracelets in the leather case.<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_SECOND" id="BOOK_SECOND"></a>BOOK SECOND<br /><br /> +THE DAY OF RECKONING</h2> + +<p><a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-b" id="CHAPTER_I-b"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">In Which A Stranger Appears</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>N a bright June morning, when Ordway had been more than two years at +Tappahannock, he came out upon Mrs. Twine's little porch as soon as +breakfast was over, and looked down the board walk for Harry Banks, who +had fallen into the habit of accompanying him to the warehouse. From +where he stood, under the hanging blossoms of the locust trees, he could +see the painted tin roofs and the huddled chimneys of the town, flanked +by the brazen sweep of the cornfields along the country roads. As his +eyes rested on the familiar scene, they softened unconsciously with an +affection which was almost paternal—for in the last two years +Tappahannock had become a different place from the Tappahannock he had +entered as a tramp on that windy afternoon in March. The town as it +stood to-day was the town which he had helped to make, and behind each +roll of progress there had been the informing purpose of his mind, as +well as the strength of his shoulder at the wheel. Behind the law which +had closed the disreputable barrooms; behind the sentiment for decency +which had purified the filthy hollows; behind the spirit of charity +which had organised and opened, not only a reading room<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> for the factory +workers, but an industrial home for the poorer classes—behind each of +these separate movements there had been a single energy to plan and act. +In two years he had watched the little town cover the stretch of ten +years' improvement; in two years he had aroused and vitalised the +community into which he had come a stranger. Tappahannock was the child +of his brain—the life that was in her to-day he had given her out of +himself, and the love he felt for her was the love that one bestows upon +one's own. Standing there his eyes followed the street to the ugly brick +church at the corner, and then as his mental vision travelled down the +long, hot hill which led to the railroad, he could tell himself, with a +kind of exultation, that there was hardly a dwelling along the way which +had not some great or little reason to bless his name. Even Kelly, whose +saloon he had closed, had been put upon his feet again and started, with +a fair chance, in the tobacco market. Yes, a new life had been given +him, and he had made good his promise to himself. The clothes he wore +to-day were as rough as those in which he had chopped wood in +Bullfinch's Hollow; the room he lived in was the same small, bare +lodging of Mrs. Twine's; for though his position at Baxter's now assured +him a comfortable income, he had kept to his cramped manner of life in +order that he might contribute the more generously to the lives of +others. Out of his little he had given abundantly, and he had gained in +return the happiness which he had ceased to make the object of his +search. In looking back<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> over his whole life, he could honestly tell +himself that his happiest years since childhood were the ones that he +had spent in Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>The gate closed with a slam, and Banks came up the short brick walk +inside, mopping his heated face with a pink bordered handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"I'm a minute late," he said, "but it doesn't matter, does it? The +Trends asked me to breakfast."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter in the least if you spent that minute with Milly," +replied Ordway, with a laugh, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe +and descended the steps. "The hot weather has come early, hasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, we're going in for a scorcher," responded Banks, indifferently. +There was a heavy gloom in his manner which was hardly to be accounted +for by the temperature in which he moved, and as they closed the gate +behind them and passed under the shade of the locust trees on the board +walk, he turned to Ordway in an outburst which was little short of +desperation.</p> + +<p>"I don't know how it is—or whether it's just a woman's way," he said, +"but I never can be sure of Milly for ten minutes at a time. A month ago +I was positive that she meant to marry me in the autumn, but now I'm in +a kind of blue funk about her doing it at all. She's never been the same +since she went North in April."</p> + +<p>"My dear chap, these things will vary, I suppose—though, mind you, I +make no claim to exact knowledge of the sex."<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a></p> + +<p>"It isn't the sex," said Banks, "it's Milly."</p> + +<p>"Well, I certainly can't claim any particular knowledge of Milly. It +would be rather presumptuous if I did, considering I've only seen her +about a dozen times—mostly at a distance."</p> + +<p>"I wish you knew her better, perhaps you could help me," returned Banks +in a voice of melancholy. "To save the life of me I don't see how it +is—I've done my best—I swear I've done my best—yet nothing somehow +seems to suit her. She wants to make me over from the skin and even that +doesn't satisfy her. When my hair is short she wants it long, and when +it's long she says she wants it short. She can't stand me in coloured +cravats and when I put on a black tie she calls me an undertaker. I had +to leave off my turtle-dove scarf-pin and this morning," he rolled his +innocent blue eyes, like pale marbles, in the direction of Ordway, "she +actually got into a temper about my stockings."</p> + +<p>"It seems to be a case for sympathy," commented Ordway seriously, "but +hardly, I should say, for marriage. Imagine, my dear Banks, what a hell +you'd make out of your domesticity. Suppose you give her up and bear it +like a man?"</p> + +<p>"Give her up? to what?"</p> + +<p>"Well, to her own amiability, we'll say."</p> + +<p>"I can't," said Banks, waving his pink bordered handkerchief before his +face in an effort either to disperse the swarming blue flies or to +conceal the working of his emotion. "I'd die—I'd kill myself—that's +the awful part of it. The more she bangs me<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> over the head, the more I +feel that I can't live without her. Is that natural, do you s'pose?" he +inquired uneasily, "or have I gone clean crazy?"</p> + +<p>Checking his smile severely, Ordway turned and slipped his left arm +affectionately through his companion's.</p> + +<p>"I've heard of similar cases," he remarked, "though I confess, they +sounded a little strained."</p> + +<p>"Do you think I'd better see a doctor? I will if you say so."</p> + +<p>"By no means. Go off on a trip."</p> + +<p>"And leave Milly here? I'd jump out of the train—and, I reckon, she'd +bang my head off for doing it."</p> + +<p>"But if it's as bad as that, you couldn't be much more miserable without +her."</p> + +<p>"I know it," replied Banks obstinately, "but it would be a different +sort of miserableness, and that happens to be the sort that I can't +stand."</p> + +<p>"Then I give it up," said Ordway, cheerfully, "there's no hope but +marriage."</p> + +<p>With his words they turned under the archway of Baxter's warehouse, and +Banks's passionate confidences were extinguished in the odour of +tobacco.</p> + +<p>A group of men stood talking loudly in the centre of the building, and +as Ordway approached, Baxter broke away, with his great rolling laugh, +and came to join him at the door of his private office.</p> + +<p>"Catesby and Frazier have got into a squabble about that lot of tobacco +they brought in last February," he said, "and they have both agreed to +accept your decision in the matter."<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a></p> + +<p>Ordway nodded, without replying, as he followed the other through the +doorway. Such judicial appeals to him were not uncommon, and his power +of pacification, as his employer had once remarked, was one of his +principal qualifications for the tobacco market.</p> + +<p>"Shall I hear them now? or would it be as well to give them time to cool +off?" he asked presently, while Baxter settled his great person in a +desk chair that seemed a size too small to contain it.</p> + +<p>"If they can cool off on a day like this they're lucky dogs," returned +Baxter, with a groan, "however, I reckon you might as well get it over +and let 'em go home and stew in peace. By the way, Smith, I forgot to +tell you that Major Leary—he's the president of the Southside Bank, you +know, was asking me yesterday if I could tell him anything about you +before you came to work for me."</p> + +<p>"Of the Southside Bank," repeated Ordway, while his hand closed tightly +over a paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, which lay on +Baxter's desk. With the words he was conscious only of the muffled +drumming of his pulses, and above the discord in his ears, the cheerful +tones of Baxter sounded like an echo rather than a real voice. At the +instant he was back again in his room in the great banking house of +Amos, Bonner & Amos, in the midst of the pale brown walls, the black oak +furniture and the shining leather covered volumes behind the glass doors +of the bookcases. With peculiar vividness he remembered the eccentric +little bird on the bronze<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> clock on the mantel, which had hopped from +its swinging perch to strike the hour with its beak; and through the +open windows he could hear still the din of traffic in the street below +and the ceaseless, irregular tread of footsteps upon the pavement.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't mean to raise your hopes too high," remarked Baxter, +rising from his chair to slap him affectionately upon the shoulder, "he +isn't going to make you president of the bank, but of the Citizen's +Improvement League, whose object is to oust Jasper Trend, you know, in +the autumn. The Major told me before he left that you'd done as much for +Tappahannock in two years as any other man had done in a lifetime. I +said I thought he'd hit the nail pretty squarely, which is something he +doesn't generally manage to do."</p> + +<p>"So I'm to fight Jasper Trend, am I?" asked Ordway, with sudden +interest. The sound of his throbbing arteries was no longer in his ears, +and as he spoke, he felt that his past life with his old identity had +departed from him. In the swift renewal of his confidence he had become +again "Ten Commandment Smith" of Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, Jasper has been a precious bad influence around here," +pursued Baxter, engrossed in the political scheme he was unfolding. "The +only thing on earth he's got to recommend him is his pretty daughter. +Now, I've a soft enough heart, as everybody knows, when the ladies come +about—particularly if they're pretty—but I'm ready to stand up and say +that Jasper Trend can't be allowed to<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> run this town on the platform of +pure chivalry. There's such a thing as fairness, suh, even where women +are concerned, and I'll back my word with my oath that it ain't fair!"</p> + +<p>"And I'll back your word with another that it isn't," rejoined Ordway.</p> + +<p>"There's no doubt, I reckon," continued Baxter, "that Jasper has +connived with those disorderly saloons that you've been trying to shut +up, and for all his money and the men he employs in the cotton mills +there's come a considerable reaction against him in public sentiment. +Now, I ain't afraid to say, Smith," he concluded with an ample flourish +of his dirty hand, "that the fact that there's any public sentiment at +all in Tappahannock is due to you. Until you came here there weren't six +decent men you could count mixed up in the affairs of this town. Jasper +had everything his own way, that's why he hates you."</p> + +<p>"But I wasn't even aware that he did me so much honour."</p> + +<p>"You mean he hasn't told you his feelings to your face. Well, he hasn't +gone so far as to confide them to me either—but even if I ain't a +woman, I can hear some things that ain't spoke out in words. He's made a +dirty town and you're sweepin' it clean—do you think it likely that it +makes him love you?"</p> + +<p>"He's welcome to feel about me anyway he pleases, but do you know, +Baxter," he added with his whimsical gravity, "I've a pretty strong +conviction that I'd make a jolly good street sweeper."<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a></p> + +<p>"I reckon you're right!" roared Baxter, "and when you're done, we'll +shoot off some sky-rockets over the job—so there you are, ain't you?"</p> + +<p>"All right—but there's Jasper Trend also," retorted Ordway.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he can afford to send off his own sky-rockets. We needn't bother +about him. He won't be out of a job like Kelly, you know. Great Scott!" +he added, chuckling, "I can see your face now when you marched in here +the day after you closed Kelly's saloon, and told me you had to start a +man in tobacco because you'd taken him out of whiskey."</p> + +<p>His laugh shook through his figure until Ordway saw his fat chest heave +violently beneath his alpaca coat. Custom had made the younger man +almost indifferent to the external details which had once annoyed him in +his employer, and he hardly noticed now that Baxter's coat was turning +from black to green and that the old ashes from his pipe had lodged in +the crumpled bosom of his shirt. Baxter was—well, Baxter, and tolerance +was a virtue which one acquired sooner or later in Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I might as well get at Catesby and Frazier now," remarked +Ordway, watching the other disinter a tattered palm leaf fan from +beneath a dusty pile of old almanacs and catalogues.</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute first," said Baxter, "there's something I want to say as +soon as I get settled. I ain't made for heat, that's certain," he +pursued, as he pulled off his coat, and hung it from a nail in the wall, +"it sweats all my morals out of me."<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a></p> + +<p>Detaching the collar from his shirt, he placed it above his coat on the +nail, and then rolling up his shirt sleeves, sank, with a panting +breath, back into his chair.</p> + +<p>"If I were you I'd get out of this at night anyway, Smith," he urged. +"Why don't you try boarding for the next few months over at Cedar Hill. +It would be a godsend to the family, now that Miss Emily's school has +stopped."</p> + +<p>"But I don't suppose they'd take me in," replied Ordway, staring out +into the street, where the dust rose like steam in the air, and the +rough-coated country horses toiled patiently up the long hill. Across +the way he saw the six stale currant buns and the three bottles of pale +beer behind the fly-specked window panes of a cheap eating house. In +front of them, a Negro woman, barefooted, with her ragged calico dress +tucked up about her waist, was sousing the steaming board walk with a +pailful of dirty water. From his memory of two years ago there floated +the mingled odours of wild flowers and freshly turned earth in the +garden of Cedar Hill, and Emily appeared in his thoughts only as an +appropriate figure against the pleasant natural background of the lilacs +and the meadows. In the past year he had seen her hardly more than a +dozen times—mere casual glimpses for the most part—and he had almost +forgotten his earlier avoidance of her, which had resulted from an +instinctive delicacy rather than from any premeditated purpose. His +judgment had told him that he had no right to permit a woman to become +his<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> friend in ignorance of his past; and at the same time he was aware +of a terrible shrinking from intruding his old self, however remotely, +into the new life at Tappahannock. When the choice came between +confessing his sin and sacrificing the chance acquaintance, he had found +it easier simply to keep away from her actual presence. Yet his interest +in her had been so closely associated with his larger feeling for +humanity, that he could tell himself with sincerity that it was mere +folly which put her forward as an objection to his boarding for the +summer at Cedar Hill.</p> + +<p>"The truth is," admitted Baxter, after a pause, "that Mrs. Brooke spoke +to me about having to take a boarder or two, when I went out there to +pay Mr. Beverly for that tobacco I couldn't sell."</p> + +<p>"So you bought it in the end," laughed Ordway, "as you did last year +after sending me out there on a mission?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I bought it," replied Baxter, blushing like a boy under the beads +of perspiration upon his face. "I may as well confess it, though I tried +to keep it secret. But I ask you as man to man," he demanded warmly, +"was there another blessed thing on God's earth for me to do?"</p> + +<p>"Let Mr. Beverly go about his business—that's what I'd have done."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you wouldn't," protested Baxter softly, "not when he'd ruin +himself for you to-morrow if you were to walk out and ask him."</p> + +<p>"But he couldn't," insisted Ordway with the<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> brutality of the naked +fact, "he did that little job on his own account too long ago."</p> + +<p>"But that ain't the point, Smith," replied Baxter in an awed and solemn +accent. "The point ain't that he couldn't, but that he <i>would</i>. As I +make it out that's the point which has cost me money on him for the last +thirty years."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, I suppose it's a charity like any other, only the old fool is +so pompous about his poverty that it wears me out."</p> + +<p>"It does at Tappahannock, but it won't when you get out to Cedar Hill, +that's the difference between Mr. Beverly in the air and Mr. Beverly in +the flesh. The one wears you out, the other rests you for all his +darnation foolishness. Now, you can board out there for twenty-five +dollars a month and put a little ready money where it ought to be in +Mrs. Brooke's pocket."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'd like it tremendously," said Ordway, after a moment in +which the perfume of the lilacs filled his memory. "It would be like +stepping into heaven after that stifling little room under the tin roof +at Mrs. Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night +last summer?"</p> + +<p>"You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a +large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick +enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very +day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the +week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. +There's<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had +the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I promise you I'll bear with him," laughed Ordway, as he left the +office and went out into the warehouse.</p> + +<p>The knot of men was still in the centre of the building, and as Ordway +walked down the long floor in search of Catesby and Frazier, he saw that +a stranger had drifted in during his half hour in Baxter's office. With +his first casual glance all that he observed of the man was a sleek fair +head, slightly bald in the centre, and a pair of abnormally flat +shoulders in a light gray coat, which had evidently left a clothing shop +only a day or two before. Then as Frazier—a big, loud voiced +planter—turned toward him with the exclamation, "here's Smith, himself, +now!"—he saw the stranger wheel round abruptly and give vent the next +instant to a sharp whistle of surprise.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll be damned!" he said.</p> + +<p>For a minute the tobacco dust filled Ordway's throat and nostrils, and +he felt that he was stifling for a breath of air. The dim length of the +warehouse and the familiar shadowy figures of the planters receded +before his eyes, and he saw again the bare walls of the prison chapel, +with the rows of convicts seated in the pale, greenish light. With his +recognition of the man before him, it seemed to him suddenly that the +last year in Tappahannock was all a lie. The prison walls, the grated +windows, and<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> the hard benches of the shoe shop were closer realities +than were the open door of the warehouse and the free, hot streets of +the little town.</p> + +<p>"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Smith," said the stranger, as he held +out his hand with a good-humoured smile.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," returned Ordway quietly, "but I did not catch your +name."</p> + +<p>At the handshake a chill mounted from his finger tips to his shoulder, +but drawing slightly away he stood his ground without so much as the +perceptible flicker of an eyelash.</p> + +<p>"My name is Brown—Horatio Brown, very much at your service," answered +the other, with a manner like that of a successful, yet obsequious +commercial traveller.</p> + +<p>It was on Ordway's tongue to retort: "You lie—it's Gus Wherry!"—but +checking the impulse with a frown, he turned on his heel and asked the +two men for whom he was looking to come with him to settle their +disagreement in Baxter's office. As he moved down the building an +instant later, it was with an effort that he kept his gaze fixed +straight ahead through the archway, for he was aware that every muscle +in his body pricked him to turn back and follow Wherry to the end. That +the man would be forced, in self-defence, to keep his secret for a time +at least, he had caught in the smiling insolence of his glance; but that +it was possible to enter into a permanent association or even a treaty +with Gus Wherry, he knew to be a supposition that<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> was utterly beyond +the question. The crime for which the man had been sentenced he could +not remember; but he had a vague recollection that something morbidly +romantic in his history had combined with his handsome face to give him +an ephemeral notoriety as the Adonis of imaginative shop-girls. Even in +prison Wherry had attained a certain prominence because of his beauty, +which at the time when Ordway first saw him had been conspicuous in +spite of his convict's clothes. In the years since then his athletic +figure had grown a trifle too heavy, and his fair hair had worn a little +thin on the crown of his head; yet these slight changes of time had left +him, Ordway admitted reluctantly, still handsome in the brawny, +full-blooded style, which had generally made fools of women. His lips +were still as red, his features as severely classic, and his manner was +not less vulgar, and quite as debonnair as in the days when the +newspapers had clamoured for his pictures. Even the soft, girlish cleft +in his smooth-shaven chin, Ordway remembered now, with a return of the +instinctive aversion with which it had first inspired him. Yet he was +obliged to confess, as he walked ahead of Catesby and Frazier down the +dusty floor of the warehouse, that if Wherry had been less of an +uncompromising rascal, he would probably have made a particularly +amiable acquaintance.<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-b" id="CHAPTER_II-b"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Ordway Compromises With The Past</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Ordway came out of Baxter's office, he found that Gus Wherry had +left the warehouse, but the effect upon him of the man's appearance in +Tappahannock was not to be overcome by the temporary withdrawal of his +visible presence. Not only the town, but existence itself seemed +altered, and in a way polluted, by the obtrusion of Wherry's personality +upon the scene. Though he was not in the building, Ordway felt an angry +conviction that he was in the air. It was impossible to breathe freely +lest he might by accident draw in some insidious poison which would +bring him under the influence of his past life and of Gus Wherry.</p> + +<p>As he went along the street at one o'clock to his dinner at Mrs. +Twine's, he was grateful for the intensity of the sun, which rendered +him, while he walked in it, almost incapable of thought. There was +positive relief in the fact that he must count the uneven lengths of +board walk which it was necessary for him to traverse, and the buzzing +of the blue flies before his face forced his attention, at the minute, +from the inward to the outward disturbance.</p> + +<p>When he reached the house, Mrs. Twine met him at the door and led him, +with an inquiry as to his<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> susceptibility to sunstroke, into the awful +gloom of her tightly shuttered parlour.</p> + +<p>"I declar' you do look well nigh in yo' last gasp," she remarked +cheerfully, bustling into the dining-room for a palm leaf fan. "Thar, +now, come right in an' set down an' eat yo' dinner. Hot or cold, glad or +sorry, I never saw the man yit that could stand goin' without his dinner +at the regular hour. Sech is the habit in some folks that I remember +when old Mat Fawling's second wife died he actually hurried up her +funeral an hour earlier so as to git back in time for dinner. 'It ain't +that I'm meanin' any disrespect to Sary, Mrs. Twine,' he said to me +right whar I was layin' her out, 'but the truth is that I can't even +mourn on an empty stomach. The undertaker put it at twelve,' he said, +'but I reckon we might manage to git out to the cemetery by eleven.'"</p> + +<p>"All the same if you'll give me a slice of bread and a glass of milk, +I'll take it standing," remarked Ordway. "I'm sorry to leave you, Mrs. +Twine, even for a few months," he added, "but I think I'll try to get +board outside the town until the summer is over."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll hate to lose you, suh, to be sure," responded Mrs. Twine, +dealing out the fried batter with a lavish hand despite his protest, +"for I respect you as a fellow mortal, though I despise you as a sex."</p> + +<p>Her hard eyes softened as she looked at him; but his gaze was on the +walnut coloured oilcloth, where the flies dispersed lazily before the +waving elm branch<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> in the hands of the small Negro, and so he did not +observe the motherly tenderness which almost beautified her shrewish +face.</p> + +<p>"You've been very kind to me," he said, as he put his glass and plate +down, and turned toward the door. "Whatever happens I shall always +remember you and the children with pleasure."</p> + +<p>She choked violently, and looking back at the gasping sound, he saw that +her eyes had filled suddenly with tears. Lifting a corner of her blue +gingham apron, she mopped her face in a furious effort to conceal the +cause of her unaccustomed emotion.</p> + +<p>"I declar' I'm all het up;" she remarked in an indignant voice, "but if +you should ever need a friend in sickness, Mr. Smith," she added, after +a moment in which she choked and coughed under the shelter of her apron, +"you jest send for me an' I'll drop every thing I've got an' go. I'll +leave husband an' children without a thought, suh, an' thar's nothin' I +won't do for you with pleasure, from makin' a mustard plaster to layin' +out yo' corpse. When I'm a friend, I'm a friend, if I do say it, an' +you've had a way with me from the very first minute that I clapped eyes +upon you. 'He may not have sech calves as you've got,' was what I said +to Bill, 'but he's got a manner of his own, an' I reckon it's the manner +an' not the calves that is the man.' Not that I'm meaning any slur on +yo' shape, suh," she hastened to explain.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll come to see you now and then," said<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> Ordway, smiling, "and I +shan't forget to take the children for a picnic as I promised." But with +the words he remembered Gus Wherry, as he had seen him standing in the +centre of Baxter's warehouse, and it seemed to him that even his promise +to the children was rendered vain and worthless.</p> + +<p>The next day was Sunday, and immediately after dinner he walked over to +Baxter's house, where he learned that Mrs. Brooke had expressed her +willingness to receive him upon the following afternoon.</p> + +<p>"We had to talk Mr. Beverly over," said Baxter, chuckling. "At first he +didn't like the idea because of some notion he'd got out of his +great-grandfather's head about the sacredness of the family circle. +However, he's all right now, though if you take my advice, Smith, you'll +play a game of dominoes with him occasionally just to keep him kind of +soft. The chief thing he has against you is your preachin' in the +fields, for he told me he could never bring himself to countenance +religion out of doors. He seems to think that it ought to be kept shut +up tight."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm glad he doesn't have to listen to me," responded Ordway. "By +the way, you know I'm speaking in Catlett's grove of pines now. It's +pleasanter away from the glare of the sun." Then as Baxter pressed him +to come back to supper, he declined the oppressive hospitality and went +back to Mrs. Twine's.</p> + +<p>That afternoon at five o'clock he went out to the grove of pines on the +Southern edge of the town, to find his congregation gathered ahead of +him on the rude<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> plank benches which had been placed among the trees. +The sunshine fell in drops through the tent of boughs overhead, and from +the southwest a pleasant breeze had sprung up, blowing the pine needles +in eddies about his feet. At sight of the friendly faces gathered so +closely around him, he felt his foreboding depart as if it had been +blown from him by the pure breeze; and beginning his simple discourse, +he found himself absorbed presently in the religious significance of his +subject, which chanced to be an interpretation of the parable of the +prodigal son. Not until he was midway of his last sentence did he +discover that Gus Wherry was standing just beyond the little wildrose +thicket on the edge of the grove.</p> + +<p>In the instant of recognition the words upon his lips sounded strangely +hollow and meaningless in his ears, and he felt again that the +appearance of the man had given the lie, not only to his identity, but +to his life. He knew himself at the instant to have changed from Daniel +Smith to Daniel Ordway, and the name that he had worn honestly in +Tappahannock showed to him suddenly as a falsehood and a cheat. Even his +inward motive was contemptible in his eyes, and he felt himself dragged +back in a single minute to the level upon which Wherry stood. As he +appeared to Wherry, so he saw himself now by some distorted power of +vision, and even his religion seemed but a convenient mask which he had +picked up and used. When he went on a moment later with his closing +words, he felt that the mockery of his<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> speech must be evident to the +ears of the congregation that knew and loved him.</p> + +<p>The gathering broke up slowly, but after speaking to several men who +stood near him, Ordway turned away and went out into the road which led +from Tappahannock in the direction of Cedar Hill. Only after he had +walked rapidly for a mile, did the sound of footsteps, following close +behind him, cause him to wheel round abruptly with an impatient +exclamation. As he did so, he saw that Wherry had stopped short in the +road before him.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to tell you how much obliged I am for your talk, Mr. Smith," +he said, with a smile which appeared to flash at the same instant from +his eyes and his teeth. "I declare you came pretty near converting +me—by Jove, you did. It wouldn't be convenient to listen to you too +often."</p> + +<p>Whatever might be said of the effusive manner of his compliments, his +good humour was so evident in his voice, in his laugh, and even in his +conspicuously flashing teeth, that Ordway, who had been prepared for a +quarrel, was rendered almost helpless by so peaceable an encounter. +Turning out of the road, he stepped back among the tall weeds growing in +the corner of the old "worm" fence, and rested his tightly clinched hand +on the topmost rail.</p> + +<p>"If you have anything to say to me, you will do me a favour by getting +it over as soon as possible," he rejoined shortly.</p> + +<p>Wherry had taken off his hat and the red disc of the setting sun made an +appropriate frame for his<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> handsome head, upon which his fair hair grew, +Ordway noticed, in the peculiar waving circle which is found on the +heads of ancient statues.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't say that I've anything to remark except that I +congratulate you on your eloquence," he replied, with a kind of infernal +amiability. "If this is your little game, you are doing it with a +success which I envy from my boots up."</p> + +<p>"Since this is your business with me, there is no need for us to discuss +it further," returned Ordway, at white heat.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I say, don't hurry—what's the use? You're afraid I'm going to +squeeze you, now, isn't that it?"</p> + +<p>"You'll get nothing out of me if you try."</p> + +<p>"That's as much as I want, I guess. Have I asked you for as much as a +darned cent? Haven't I played the gentleman from the first minute that I +spotted you?"</p> + +<p>Ordway nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've been as fair as you knew how," he +answered, "I'll do you the justice to admit that."</p> + +<p>"Well, I tell you now," said Wherry, growing confidential as he +approached, "my object isn't blackmail, it's human intercourse. I want a +decent word or two, that's all, on my honour."</p> + +<p>"But I won't talk to you. I've nothing further to say, that's to be +understood."</p> + +<p>"You're a confounded bully, that's what you are," observed Wherry, in +the playful tones which he might have used to a child or an animal. +"Now, I don't<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> want a blooming cent out of you, that's flat—all I ask +for is a pleasant word or two just as from man to man."</p> + +<p>"Then why did you follow me? And what are you after in Tappahannock?"</p> + +<p>Wherry laughed hilariously, while his remarkably fine teeth became the +most prominent feature in his face.</p> + +<p>"The reply to your question, Smith," he answered pleasantly, "is that I +followed you to say that you're an all-fired, first rate sort of a +preacher—there's not harm in that much, is there? If you don't want me +to chaff you about it, I'll swear to be as dead serious on the subject +as if it were my wife's funeral. What I want is your hand down, I +say—no matter what is trumps!"</p> + +<p>"My hand down for what?" demanded Ordway.</p> + +<p>"Just for plain decency, nothing more, I swear. You've started on your +road, and I've started on mine, and the square thing is to live and let +live, that's as I see it. Leave room for honest repentance to go to +work, but don't begin to pull back before it's had a chance to begin. +Ain't we all prodigals, when it comes to that, and the only difference +is that some of us don't get a bite at the fatted calf."</p> + +<p>For a moment Ordway stared in silence to where the other stood with his +face turned toward the red light of the sunset.</p> + +<p>"We're all prodigals," repeated Wherry, as if impressed by the ethical +problem he had uttered unawares, "you and me and the President and +every<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> man. We've all fallen from grace, ain't we?—and it's neither +here nor there that you and I have got the swine husks while the +President has stuffed and eaten the fatted calf."</p> + +<p>"If you've honestly meant to begin again, I have certainly no wish to +interfere," remarked Ordway, ignoring the other's excursion into the +field of philosophy. As he spoke, however, it occurred to him that +Wherry's reformation might have had better chance of success if it had +been associated with fewer physical advantages.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm much obliged to you," said Wherry, "and I'll say the same by +you, here's my hand on it. Rise or fall, we'll play fair."</p> + +<p>"You haven't told me yet why you came to Tappahannock," rejoined Ordway, +shortly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, a little matter of business. Are you settled here now?"</p> + +<p>"At the moment you can answer that question better than I."</p> + +<p>"You mean when I come, you quit?"</p> + +<p>Ordway nodded. "That's something like it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I shan't drive you out if I can help it—I hate to play the +sneak. The truth is if you'd only get to believe it, there's not a more +peaceable fellow alive if I don't get backed up into a place where +there's no way out. When it comes to that I like the clean, straight +road best, and I always have. From first to last, though, it's the women +that have been dead against me, and I may say that a woman—one or more +of 'em—has been back of every single<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> scrape I ever got into in my +life. If I'd had ten thousand a year and a fine looking wife, I'd have +been a pillar in the Church and the father of a family. My tastes all +lean that way," he added sentimentally. "I've always had a weakness for +babies, and I've got it to this day."</p> + +<p>As he could think of nothing to reply to this touching confession, +Ordway picked up a bit of wood from the ground, and taking out his +knife, began whittling carelessly while he waited.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you think I want to work you for that fat old codger in the +warehouse," observed Wherry suddenly, passing lightly from the pathetic +to the facetious point of view, "but I'll give you my word I haven't +thought of it a minute."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you haven't," returned Ordway, quietly, "for you would be +disappointed."</p> + +<p>"You mean you wouldn't trust me?"</p> + +<p>"I mean there's no place there. Whether I trust you or not is another +question—and I don't."</p> + +<p>"Do you think I'd turn sneak?"</p> + +<p>"I think if you stay in Tappahannock that I'll clear out."</p> + +<p>"Well, you're a darn disagreeable chap," said Wherry, indignantly, +"particularly after all you've had to say about the prodigal. But, all +the same," he added, as his natural amiability got the better of his +temper, "it isn't likely that I'll pitch my tent here, so you needn't +begin to pack for a day or two at least."</p> + +<p>"Do you expect to go shortly?"<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a></p> + +<p>"How about to-morrow? Would that suit you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ordway, gravely, "better than the day afterward." He threw +the bit of wood away and looked steadily into the other's face. "If I +can help you live honestly, I am ready to do it," he added.</p> + +<p>"Ready? How?"</p> + +<p>"However I can."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't—not now," returned Wherry, laughing, "because I've +worked that little scheme already without your backing. Honesty is going +to be my policy from yesterday on. Did you, by the way," he added +abruptly, "ever happen to run up against Jasper Trend?"</p> + +<p>"Jasper Trend?" exclaimed Ordway, "why, yes, he owns the cotton mills."</p> + +<p>"He makes a handsome little pile out of 'em too, I guess?"</p> + +<p>"I believe he does. Are you looking for a job with him?"</p> + +<p>At this Wherry burst again into his hilarious humour. "If I am," he +asked jokingly, "will you promise to stand off and not spoil the game?"</p> + +<p>"I have nothing to do with Trend," replied Ordway, "but the day you come +here is my last in Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry for that," remarked Wherry, pleasantly, "for it appears +to be a dull enough place even with the addition of your presence." He +put on his hat and held out his hand with a friendly gesture. "Are you +ready to walk back now?" he inquired.<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a></p> + +<p>"When I am," answered Ordway, "I shall walk back alone."</p> + +<p>Even this rebuff Wherry accepted with his invincible good temper.</p> + +<p>"Every man to his company, of course," he responded, "but as to my +coming to Tappahannock, if it is any comfort to you to know it, you +needn't begin to pack."<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-b" id="CHAPTER_III-b"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">A Change Of Lodging</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Ordway awoke the next morning, it seemed to him that Wherry had +taken his place among the other nightmares, which, combined with the +reflected heat from the tin roof, had rendered his sleep broken and +distracted. With the sunrise his evil dreams and his recollections of +Wherry had scattered together, and when, after the early closing at +Baxter's warehouse, he drove out to Cedar Hill, with the leather bag +containing his few possessions at his feet, he felt that there had been +something morbid, almost inhuman, in the loathing aroused in him by the +handsome face of his fellow prisoner. In any case, for good or for evil, +he determined to banish the man utterly from his thoughts.</p> + +<p>The vehicle in which he sat was an ancient gig driven by a decrepit +Negro, and as it drew up before the steps at Cedar Hill, he was +conscious almost of a sensation of shame because he had not approached +the ruined mansion on foot. Then descending over the dusty wheel, he +lifted out his bag, and rapped twice upon the open door with the +greenish knocker which he supposed had once been shining brass. Through +the hall a sleepy breeze blew from the honeysuckle arbour over the back<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> +porch, and at his right hand the swinging sword still clanked against +the discoloured plaster. So quiet was the house that it seemed as if the +movement of life within had been suspended, and when at last the figure +of Mrs. Brooke floated down the great staircase under the pallid light +from the window above, she appeared to him as the disembodied spirit of +one of the historic belles who had tripped up and down in trailing +brocades and satin shoes. Instead of coming toward him, she completed +her ghostly impression by vanishing suddenly into the gloom beyond the +staircase, and a moment afterward his knock was answered by a small, +embarrassed darky in purple calico. Entering the dining-room by her +invitation, he stumbled upon Beverly stretched fast asleep, and snoring +slightly, upon a horsehair sofa, with the brown and white setter dozing +on a mat at his feet. At the approach of footsteps, the dog, without +lifting its head, began rapping the floor heavily with its tail, and +aroused by the sound, Beverly opened one eye and struggled confusedly +into an upright position.</p> + +<p>"I was entirely overcome by the heat," he remarked apologetically, as he +rose from the sofa and held out his hand, "but it is a pleasure to see +you, Mr. Smith. I hope you did not find the sun oppressive on your drive +out. Amelia, my dear," he remarked courteously, as Mrs. Brooke entered +in a freshly starched print gown, "I feel a return of that strange +dizziness I spoke of, so if it will not inconvenience you, may I beg for +another of your refreshing lemonades?"<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a></p> + +<p>Mrs. Brooke, who had just completed the hasty ironing of her dress, +which she had put on while it was still warm, met his request with an +amiable but exhausted smile.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think six lemonades in one day too many?" she asked +anxiously, when she had shaken hands with Ordway.</p> + +<p>"But this strange dizziness, my dear? An iced drink, I find far more +effective than a bandage."</p> + +<p>"Very well, I'll make it of course, if it gives you any relief," replied +his wife, wondering if she would be able to bake the bread by the time +Beverly demanded supper. "If you'll come up stairs now, Mr. Smith," she +added, "Malviny will show you to the blue room."</p> + +<p>Malviny, who proved upon further acquaintance to be the eldest +great-grandchild of Aunt Mehitable, descended like a hawk upon his +waiting property, while Mrs. Brooke led the procession up the staircase +to an apartment upon the second floor.</p> + +<p>The blue room, as he discovered presently, contained a few rather fine +pieces of old mahogany, a grandfather's chair, with a freshly laundered +chintz cover, and a rag carpet made after the "log cabin" pattern. Of +the colour from which it had taken its name, there was visible only a +faded sampler worked elaborately in peacock blue worsteds, by one +"Margaret, aged nine." Beyond this the walls were bare of decoration, +though an oblong streak upon the plaster suggested to Ordway that a +family portrait had probably been removed in the hurried preparations +for his arrival.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a></p> + +<p>After remarking that she hoped he would "make himself quite at home," +Mrs. Brooke was glancing inquiringly about the room with her large, +pale, rather prominent eyes, when a flash of purple in the doorway +preceded the announcement that "Marse Beverly done turn right green wid +de dizziness, en wus axin' kinder faintlike fur his lemonade."</p> + +<p>"My poor husband," explained the exhausted wife, "contracted a chronic +heart trouble in the War, and he suffers so patiently that at times we +are in danger of forgetting it."</p> + +<p>Pressing her aching head, she hurried downstairs to prepare Beverly's +drink, while Ordway, after closing the broken latch of the door, walked +slowly up and down the large, cool, barely furnished room. After his +cramped chamber at Mrs. Twine's his eyes rested with contentment upon +the high white ceiling overhead, and then descended leisurely to the +stately bedstead, with its old French canopy above, and to the broad, +red brick hearth freshly filled with odorous boughs of cedar. The +cleanly quiet of the place restored to him at once the peace which he +had missed in the last few days in Tappahannock, and his nerves, which +had revolted from Mrs. Twine's scolding voice and slovenly table, became +composed again in the ample space of these high white walls. Even +"Margaret, aged nine," delivered a soothing message to him in the faded +blues of her crewel work.</p> + +<p>When he had unpacked his bag, he drew the chintz-covered chair to the +window, and leaning his elbow on the sill, looked out gratefully upon +the overgrown<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> lawn filled with sheepmint and clover. Though it was +already twilight under the cedars, the lawn was still bright with +sunshine, and beyond the dwindling clump of cabbage roses in the centre, +he saw that the solitary cow had not yet finished her evening meal. As +he watched her, his ears caught the sound of light footsteps on the +porch below, and a moment afterward, he saw Emily pass from the avenue +to the edge of the lawn, where she called the cow by name in a caressing +voice. Lifting her head, the animal started at a slow walk through the +tangled weeds, stopping from time to time to bite a particularly +tempting head of purple clover. As the setting sun was in Emily's eyes, +she raised her bared arm while she waited, to shield her forehead, and +Ordway was struck afresh by the vigorous grace which showed itself in +her slightest movement. The blue cotton dress she wore, which had shrunk +from repeated washings until it had grown scant in the waist and skirt, +revealed the firm rounded curve of her bosom and her slender hips. +Standing there in the faint sunshine against the blue-black cedars, he +felt her charm in some mysterious way to be akin to the beauty of the +hour and the scene. The sight of her blue gown was associated in his +mind with a peculiar freshness of feeling—an intensified enjoyment of +life.</p> + +<p>When the cow reached her side, the girl turned back toward the barnyard, +and the two passed out of sight together beyond the avenue. As he +followed them with his gaze, Ordway had no longer any thought of Gus +Wherry, or of his possible presence<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> in Tappahannock upon the morrow. +The evil association was withdrawn now from his consciousness, and in +its place he found the tranquil pleasure which he had felt while he +watched the sunshine upon the sheepmint and clover—a pleasure not +unlike that he had experienced when Emily's blue cotton dress was +visible against the cedars. The faces of the men who had listened to him +yesterday returned to his memory; and as he saw them again seated on the +rude benches among the pines, his heart expanded in an emotion which was +like the melting of his will into the Divine Will which contained and +enveloped all.</p> + +<p>A knock at the door startled him back to his surroundings, and when he +went to answer it, he found the small frightened servant standing +outside, with an old serving tray clutched desperately to her bosom. +From her excited stutter he gathered that supper awaited him upon the +table, and descending hastily, he found the family already assembled in +the dining-room. Beverly received him graciously, Emily quietly, and the +children assured him enthusiastically that they were glad he had come to +stay because now they might eat ham every night. When they had been +properly suppressed by Emily, her brother took up the conversation which +he carried on in a polite, rambling strain that produced upon Ordway the +effect of a monologue delivered in sleep.</p> + +<p>"I hope the birds won't annoy you at daybreak, Mr. Smith," he remarked, +"the ivy at your windows harbours any number of wrens and sparrows."<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a></p> + +<p>"Oh, I like them," replied Ordway, "I've been sleeping under a tin roof +in Tappahannock which no intelligent bird or human being would +approach."</p> + +<p>"I remember," said Mr. Beverly pensively, "that there was a tin roof on +the hotel at Richmond I stayed at during the War when I first met my +wife. Do you recall how very unpleasant that tin roof was, Amelia? Or +were you too young at the time to notice it? You couldn't have been more +than fifteen, I suppose? Yes, you must have been sixteen, because I +remember when I marched past the door with my regiment, I noticed you +standing on the balcony, in a long white dress, and you couldn't have +worn long dresses before you were sixteen."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Brooke glanced up calmly from the coffee-pot.</p> + +<p>"The roof was slate," she remarked with the rigid adherence to a single +idea, which characterised her devoted temperament.</p> + +<p>"Ah, to be sure, it was slate," admitted Beverly, turning his genial +face upon Ordway, "and I remember now it wasn't the roof that was +unpleasant, but the food—the food was very unpleasant indeed, was it +not, Amelia?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think we ever got enough of it to test its quality," replied +Mrs. Brooke, "poor mama was so reduced at the end of a month that she +had to take up three inches of her bodice."</p> + +<p>"It's quite clear to me now," observed Beverly, delightedly, "it was not +that the food was unpleasant, but that it was scarce—very scarce."<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a></p> + +<p>He had finished his supper; and when he had risen from the table with +his last amiable words, he proceeded to install himself, without +apparent selection, into the only comfortable chair which the room +contained. Drawing out his pipe a moment afterward, he waved Ordway, +with a hospitable gesture, to a stiff wooden seat, and invited him in a +persuasive tone, to join him in a smoke.</p> + +<p>"My tobacco is open to you," he observed, "but I regret to say that I am +unable to offer you a cigar. Yet a cigar, I maintain, is the only form +in which a gentleman should use tobacco."</p> + +<p>Ordway took out the leather case he carried and offered it to him with a +smile.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid they are not all that they might be," he remarked, as +Beverly supplied himself with a murmured word of thanks.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Brooke brought out her darning, and Emily, after disappearing into +the pantry, sent back the small servant for the dishes. The girl did not +return again before Ordway took his candle from the mantel-piece and +went upstairs; and he remembered after he had reached his bedroom that +she had spoken hardly two words during the entire evening. Had she any +objection, he asked himself now, to his presence in the household? Was +it possible, indeed, that Mrs. Brooke should have taken him in against +her sister-in-law's inclination, or even without her knowledge? In the +supposition there was not only embarrassment, but a sympathetic +resentment; and he resolved that if such proved to be the case, he was<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> +in honour bound to return immediately to Tappahannock. Then he +remembered the stifling little room under the tin roof with a feeling of +thankfulness for at least this one night's escape.</p> + +<p>Awaking at dawn he lay for a while contentedly listening to the flutter +of the sparrows in the ivy, and watching the paling arch of the sky +beyond the pointed tops of the cedars. A great peace seemed to encompass +him at the moment, and he thought with gratitude of the quiet evening he +had spent with Beverly. It was dull enough probably, when one came to +think of it, yet the simple talk, the measured courtesies, returned to +him now as a part of the pleasant homeliness of his surroundings. The +soft starlight on the sheepmint and clover, the chirp of the small +insects in the trees, the refreshing moisture which had crept toward him +with the rising dew, the good-night kisses of the children, delivered +under protest and beneath Mrs. Brooke's eyes—all these trivial +recollections were attended in his thoughts by a train of pensive and +soothing associations.</p> + +<p>Across the hall he heard the soft opening and closing of a door, and +immediately afterward the sound of rapid footsteps growing fainter as +they descended the staircase. Already the room was full of a pale golden +light, and as he could not sleep again because of the broken shutter to +the window which gave on the lawn, he rose and dressed himself with an +eagerness which recalled the early morning risings of his childhood. A +little later when he went downstairs, he found that the front door was +still<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> barred, and removing the heavy iron fastenings, he descended the +steps into the avenue, where the faint sunbeams had not yet penetrated +the thick screen of boughs. Remembering the garden, while he stood +watching the sunrise from the steps, he turned presently into the little +footpath which led by the house, and pushing aside the lilacs, from +which the blossoms had all dropped, he leaned on the swinging gate +before the beds he had spaded on those enchanted nights. Now the rank +weeds were almost strangling the plants, and it occurred to him that +there was still work ready for his hand in the Brooke's garden. He was +telling himself that he would begin clearing the smothered rows as soon +as his morning at the warehouse was over, when the old hound ran +suddenly up to him, and turning quickly he saw Emily coming from the +springhouse with a print of golden butter in her hand.</p> + +<p>"So it was you I heard stirring before sunrise!" he exclaimed +impulsively, as his eyes rested on her radiant face, over which the +early mist had scattered a pearly dew like the fragrant moisture upon a +rose.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was I. At four o'clock I remembered there was no butter for +breakfast, so I got up and betook myself to the churn."</p> + +<p>"And this is the result?" he asked, glancing down at the delicious +creamy mould she had just worked into shape and crowned with a printed +garland of thistles. "It makes me hungry enough for my muffins upon the +minute."<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a></p> + +<p>"You shall have them shortly," she said, smiling, "but do you prefer +pop-overs or plain?"</p> + +<p>He met the question with serious consideration.</p> + +<p>"Well, if the choice is mine I think I'll have pop-overs," he replied.</p> + +<p>Before his unbroken gravity her quick humour rippled forth.</p> + +<p>"Then I must run to Aunt Mehitable," she responded merrily, "for I +suspect that she has already made them plain."</p> + +<p>With a laughing nod she turned from him, and following the little path +entered the house under the honeysuckle arbour on the back porch.<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-b" id="CHAPTER_IV-b"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Shows That A Laugh Does Not Heal A Heartache</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Emily entered the dining-room, she found that Beverly had departed +from his usual custom sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast.</p> + +<p>"I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear," he remarked, "and I +think it was due entirely to the heavy supper you insisted upon giving +us."</p> + +<p>"But, Beverly, we must have hot things now," said Emily, as she arranged +the crocheted centrepiece upon the table. "Mr. Smith is our boarder, you +know, not our guest."</p> + +<p>"The fact that he is a boarder," commented Beverly, with dignity, +"entirely relieves me of any feeling of responsibility upon his account. +If he were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as you do that +hot suppers are a necessity, but when a man pays for the meals he eats, +we are no longer under an obligation to consider his preferences."</p> + +<p>"His presence in the household is a great trial to us all," observed his +wife, whose attitude of general acceptance was modified by the fact that +she accepted everything for the worst. Her sense of tragic values had +been long since obliterated by a gray wash of melancholy that covered +all.<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, I don't see that he is very zealous about interfering with us," +remarked Emily, almost indignantly, "he doesn't appear to be of a +particularly sociable disposition."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depressing," rejoined Mrs. +Brooke. "It's a pity, perhaps, that we couldn't have secured a blond +person—they are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and I +remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie Colton's, when I called +there once, was exceedingly lively and entertaining. But it's too late, +of course, to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his morals, +at least, are above reproach."</p> + +<p>As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been made by Mrs. Brooke +herself upon the day that Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for +the fifth time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped lightly +upon her tongue; but restraining her words with an effort, she observed +cheerfully an instant later that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no +inconvenience to the family.</p> + +<p>"Well, he seems to be a respectable enough person," admitted Beverly, in +his gracious manner, "but, of course, if he were to become offensively +presuming it would be a very simple matter to drop him a hint."</p> + +<p>"It reminds me of a case I read of in the newspaper a few weeks ago," +said Mrs. Brooke, "where a family in Roanoke took a stranger to board +with them and shortly afterward were all poisoned by a powder in the +soup. No, they weren't all poisoned," she<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> corrected herself +thoughtfully, "for I am positive now that the boarder was the only one +who died. It was the cook who put the poison into the soup and the +boarder who ate all of it. I remember the Coroner remarked at the +inquest that he had saved the lives of the entire family."</p> + +<p>"All the same I hope Mr. Smith won't eat all the soup," observed Emily.</p> + +<p>"It terrifies me at times," murmured Amelia, "to think of the awful +power that we place so carelessly in the hands of cooks."</p> + +<p>"In that case, my dear, it might be quite a safeguard always to have a +boarder at the table," suggested Beverly, with his undaunted optimism.</p> + +<p>"But surely, Amelia," laughed Emily, "you can't suppose that after she +has lived in the family for seventy years, Aunt Mehitable would yield at +last to a passing temptation to destroy us?"</p> + +<p>"I imagine the poor boarder suspected nothing while he ate his soup," +returned Mrs. Brooke. "No, I repeat that in cases like that no one is +safe, and the only sensible attitude is to be prepared for anything."</p> + +<p>"Well, if I'm to be poisoned, I think I'd prefer to take it without +preparation," rejoined Emily. "There is Mr. Smith now in the hall, so we +may as well send Malviny to bring in breakfast."</p> + +<p>When Ordway entered an instant later with his hearty greeting, even Mrs. +Brooke unbent a trifle from her rigid melancholy and joined affably in +the conversation. By a curious emotional paradox she was able to enjoy +him only as an affliction; and his<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> presence in the house had served as +an excuse for a continuous parade of martyrdom. From the hour of his +arrival, she had been perfectly convinced not only that he interfered +with her customary peace of mind, but that he prevented her as surely +from receiving her supply of hot water upon rising and her ordinary +amount of food at dinner.</p> + +<p>But as the days went by he fell so easily into his place in the family +circle that they forgot at last to remark either his presence or his +personal peculiarities. After dinner he would play his game of dominoes +with Beverly in the breezy hall, until the sunlight began to slant +across the cedars, when he would go out into the garden and weed the +overgrown rows. Emily had seen him but seldom alone during the first few +weeks of his stay, though she had found a peculiar pleasure in rendering +him the small domestic services of which he was quite unconscious. How +should he imagine that it was her hand that arranged the flowers upon +his bureau, that placed his favourite chair near the window, and that +smoothed the old-fashioned dimity coverlet upon his bed. Still less +would he have suspected that the elaborate rag carpet upon his floor was +one which she had contributed to his comfort from her own room. Had he +known these things he would probably have been melancholy enough to have +proved congenial company even to Mrs. Brooke, though, in reality, there +was, perhaps, nothing he could have offered Emily which would have +exceeded the pleasure she now found in these simple services. Ignorant +as she was in all worldly<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> matters, in grasping this essential truth, +she had stumbled unawares upon the pure philosophy of love—whose +satisfaction lies, after all, not in possession, but in surrender.</p> + +<p>She was still absorbed in the wonder of this discovery, when going out +into the garden one afternoon to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found +him working among the tall, green corn at the end of the long walk. As +he turned toward her in the late sunshine, which slanted across the +waving yellow tassels, she noticed that there was the same eager, +youthful look in his face that she had seen on the night when she had +come down to find him spading by the moonbeams.</p> + +<p>In response to her smile he came out from among the corn, and went with +her down the narrow space which separated two overgrown hills of tomato +plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton shirt was open at the +throat and wrists.</p> + +<p>"It's delicious in the corn now," he said; "I can almost fancy that I +hear the light rustle along the leaves."</p> + +<p>"You love the country so much that you ought to have been a farmer," she +returned, "then you might have raised tobacco."</p> + +<p>"That reminds me that I worked yesterday in your brother's crop—but +it's too sticky for me. I like the garden better."</p> + +<p>"Then you ought to have a garden of your own. Is all your chopping and +your digging merely for the promotion of the general good?"<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a></p> + +<p>"Isn't it better so?" he asked, smiling, "particularly when I share in +the results as I shall in this case? Who knows but that I shall eat this +wonderful tomato to-night at supper?"</p> + +<p>She took it from his hand and placed it on the lettuce leaves in the +bottom of the basket upon her arm.</p> + +<p>"You make a careful choice, I see," she observed, "it is a particularly +fine one."</p> + +<p>"I suppose your philosophy would insist that after plucking it I should +demand the eating of it also?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know about my philosophy—I haven't any—but my common sense +would."</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure," he returned half seriously, "that I have much opinion of +common sense."</p> + +<p>"But you would have," she commented gravely, "if you had happened to be +born with Beverly for a brother. I used to think that all men were +alike," she added, "but you don't remind me of Beverly in the very +least."</p> + +<p>As she spoke she turned her face slightly toward him, and still leaning +over the luxuriant tomato row, looked up at him joyously with her +sparkling eyes. Her breath came quickly and he saw her bosom rise and +fall under the scant bodice of her blue cotton gown. Almost +unconsciously he had drifted into an association with her which +constituted for him the principal charm of his summer at Cedar Hill.</p> + +<p>"On the other hand I've discovered many points of resemblance," he +retorted in his whimsical tone.<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, you're both easy to live in the house with, I admit that."</p> + +<p>"And we're both perfectly amiable as long as everybody agrees with us +and nobody crosses us," he added.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't like to cross you," she said, laughing, "but then why +should I? Isn't it very pleasant as it is now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now," he repeated slowly.</p> + +<p>Turning away from her he stood looking in silence over the tall corn to +the amber light that fell beyond the clear outline of a distant hill. +The association was, as she had just said, very pleasant in his +thoughts, and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with the +summer, leaving events to shape themselves as they would in the future. +What harm, he demanded, could come of any relation so healthful, so +simple as this?</p> + +<p>"I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, +laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for +me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow tassels I named Princess +Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess +Fadeaway."</p> + +<p>At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice +of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back +from the sunset into her face.</p> + +<p>"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little—how very little +you know of me? By you I<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> mean all of you, especially your brother and +Mrs. Brooke."</p> + +<p>Her glowing face questioned him for a moment.</p> + +<p>"But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after +all?"</p> + +<p>"I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her +words unanswered.</p> + +<p>Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied +quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth +time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less +conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite +evasion.</p> + +<p>"We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said.</p> + +<p>"What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just +this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded +strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to +you—it doesn't really concern you, of course—that's what I felt—but," +he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's +birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since +I saw her."</p> + +<p>"Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a +ripe tomato.</p> + +<p>"Doubtless I shouldn't know her if I were to pass her in the street," he +pursued, after a minute. "But it's worse than that and it's harder—for +it's as many years since I saw my wife."</p> + +<p>She had not lifted her head from the basket, and<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> he felt suddenly that +her stillness was not the stillness of flesh, but of marble.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I ought to have told you all this before," he went on again, +"perhaps it wasn't fair to let you take me in in ignorance of this and +of much else?"</p> + +<p>Raising her head, she stood looking into his face with her kind, brown +eyes.</p> + +<p>"But how could these things possibly affect us?" she asked, smiling +slightly.</p> + +<p>"No," he replied slowly, "they didn't affect you, of course—they don't +now. It made no difference to any of you, I thought. How could it make +any?"</p> + +<p>"No, it makes no difference to any of us," she repeated quietly.</p> + +<p>"Then, perhaps, I've been wrong in telling you this to-day?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "Not in telling me, but," she drew a long breath, +"it might be as well not to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia—at least +for a while."</p> + +<p>"You mean they would regret their kindness?"</p> + +<p>"It would make them uncomfortable—they are very old-fashioned in their +views. I don't know just how to put it, but it seems to them—oh, a +terrible thing for a husband and wife to live apart."</p> + +<p>"Well, I shan't speak of it, of course—but would it not be better for +me to return immediately to Tappahannock?"</p> + +<p>For an instant she hesitated. "It would be very dreadful at Mrs. +Twine's."<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p> + +<p>"I know it," he answered, "but I'm ready to go back, this minute if you +should prefer it."</p> + +<p>"But I shouldn't," she rejoined in her energetic manner. "Why should I, +indeed? It is much wiser for you to stay here until the end of the +summer."</p> + +<p>When she had finished he looked at her a moment without replying. The +light had grown very faint and through the thin mist that floated up +from the fields her features appeared drawn and pallid.</p> + +<p>"What I can't make you understand is that even though it is all my +fault—every bit my fault from the beginning—yet I have never really +wanted to do evil in my heart. Though I've done wrong, I've always +wanted to do right."</p> + +<p>If she heard his words they made little impression upon her, for going +out into the walk, she started, without speaking, in the direction of +the house. Then, when she had moved a few steps from him, she stopped +and looked back as if she had forgotten something that had been in her +thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I meant to tell you that I hope—I pray it will come right again," she +said.</p> + +<p>"I thank you," he answered, and drew back into the corn so that she +might go on alone.</p> + +<p>A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down the garden path, it seemed +to her that the distance between the gate and the house covered an +immeasurable space. Her one hope was that she might go to her room for +at least the single hour before supper, and that there, behind a locked +door with her head buried in the pillows, she might shed<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> the hot tears +which she felt pressing against her eyelids.</p> + +<p>Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the staircase, with the +basket of tomatoes still on her arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by +descending like a phantom from the darkened bend.</p> + +<p>"O Emily, I've been looking for you for twenty minutes," she cried in +despairing tones. "The biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in +a temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen and beat up a few +quick muffins for supper."</p> + +<p>Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon +the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her +eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a +lament upon the universal tragedy of her sex.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said.<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-b" id="CHAPTER_V-b"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Treats Of A Great Passion In A Simple Soul</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">F</span>OR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and +during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a +number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken +fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. +Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a +mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause +the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When +the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a +watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily +had planted in the bare spots beside the steps.</p> + +<p>"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked +to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or +tired."</p> + +<p>Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him +quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage +her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a +strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or +met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he +had not seen<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as +great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden +he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage +relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that +some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many +years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from +her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered +heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt +features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that +other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I +wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I +almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why +I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, +and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I +suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow +it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she +reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable +beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and +hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am +very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she +could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to +life.</p> + +<p>"I can't help believing that you would tire of it in time," she said +presently aloud.<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a></p> + +<p>"Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon +her.</p> + +<p>"I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone +before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did +there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against +the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?"</p> + +<p>Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation +brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw +Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and +the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table.</p> + +<p>"Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, +I think I'd be content," was all he said.</p> + +<p>She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper +was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires.</p> + +<p>"You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big +thing badly?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big +thing—it's the very biggest thing of all."</p> + +<p>A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and +go in her cheek.</p> + +<p>"I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted +mockingly.</p> + +<p>"I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire +your courage, also."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "It's the cheapest of the virtues."<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a></p> + +<p>"Not your kind, my dear child—it's the rarest and the costliest of +achievements."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's +a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your +bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits +down in the sand and looks out for a ship."</p> + +<p>Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it +will be time enough to hoist my flag."</p> + +<p>A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned +away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house.</p> + +<p>The next morning Ordway went into Tappahannock, not so much on account +of the little business he found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged +by the necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To furnish Beverly +three times a day with the kind of cigar he considered it "worth while +for a gentleman to smoke"—even though his choice fell, in Ordway's +opinion, upon a quite inferior brand—had become in the end a courtesy +too extravagant for him to contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that +almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was now an +established fact, and that as long as he remained at Cedar Hill he would +continue to supply with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would accept +with affability.<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a></p> + +<p>The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting +experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had +swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's +evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. +Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted +was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, +on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an +hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm.</p> + +<p>After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to +count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his +memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won +over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving +back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told +himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty +October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape.</p> + +<p>Late in September Banks returned from his vacation, and during his first +visit to Cedar Hill, he showed himself painfully nervous and ill at +ease. But coming out for a walk with Ordway one afternoon, he suggested +at the end of their first mile that they should sit down and have a +smoke beneath a young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his pipe +he held the match in his hand until it burned his fingers; then throwing +it into the grass, he turned<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> upon his companion as eloquently +despairing a look as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful +features to assume.</p> + +<p>"Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any +worse to die by your own hand than by disease?"</p> + +<p>"By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out +with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?"</p> + +<p>Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the +branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat.</p> + +<p>"She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the +mask of scorn."</p> + +<p>"But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks.</p> + +<p>For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared +blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the +life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply.</p> + +<p>"If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at +the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me."</p> + +<p>"But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not +expected to combat the former irrefutable statement.</p> + +<p>"She tried to keep me away from the springs where she went, and when I +would follow her, whether or<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for +the first two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she would say it +was too hot for walking, and if I asked her to drive she'd answer that +she didn't drive with men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a +dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of Tappahannock!"</p> + +<p>"But perhaps the custom of the place was different?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a +bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the +same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would +always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the +minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in +somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off +after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And +yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates +together."</p> + +<p>He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and +plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked.</p> + +<p>"And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the +ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed +presently, in an agony of recollection.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway.</p> + +<p>"You'd have fallen in love with her if you had—you couldn't have helped +it."<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a></p> + +<p>"Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as +it is now."</p> + +<p>"I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the +other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if +she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked +it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well +she treated the other man."</p> + +<p>"Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring—but +it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem +to have eyes or ears for anybody else."</p> + +<p>"So you're positive she means to marry him?"</p> + +<p>"She swears she doesn't—that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I +believe it is as good as settled between them."</p> + +<p>"Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see +how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling.</p> + +<p>"But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks.</p> + +<p>"If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow +her heart back to you again."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless +dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any +more heart than—than—I don't know what."</p> + +<p>"In that case I'd drag myself together and let her<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> alone. I'd go back +to my work and resolve never to give her another thought."</p> + +<p>"Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is +in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what +she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. +When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing +on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging +is."</p> + +<p>"I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not +what might be called a successful lover."</p> + +<p>"It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's +because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie +awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her +in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before +the mirror—I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but +I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. +Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell +as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant +speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day +before."</p> + +<p>They were seated under a cherry tree by the side of the road which led +to Tappahannock, and as Banks finished his confessions, a large, dust +covered buggy was seen approaching them from the direction of the town. +As Ordway recognised Baxter through<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> the cloud of dust raised by the +wheels, he waved his hat with a shout of welcome, and a minute later the +buggy reached them and drew up in the patch of briars upon the roadside.</p> + +<p>"I was just on my way to see you, Smith," said Baxter, as he let fall +the reins and held out his great dirty hand, "but I'm too heavy to get +out, and if I once sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more +than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again."</p> + +<p>"Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill," suggested Ordway, "and we'll follow you +at a brisk walk."</p> + +<p>"No, I won't do that. I can say what I have got to say right here over +the wheel, if you'll stand awhile in the dust. Major Leary was in to see +me again this morning, and the notion he's got in his head now is that +you're the man to run for Mayor of Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"I!" exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as he spoke. "He forgets +that I'm out of the question. I refuse, of course."</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, he says you're the only man we've got strong enough to +defeat Jasper Trend—and he's as sure as shot that you'd have something +like a clean walk-over. He's already drawn up a big red flag with 'The +People's Candidate: Ten Commandment Smith,' upon it. I asked him why he +wouldn't put just plain 'Daniel,' but he said that little Biblical smack +alone was worth as much as a bushel of votes to you. If you drew the +line at 'Ten Commandment' he's going to substitute +'Daniel-in-the-Lions'-Den Smith' or something of that kind."<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a></p> + +<p>"Tell him to stop it," broke in Ordway, with a smothered anger in his +usually quiet voice, "he's said nothing to me about it, and I decline it +absolutely and without consideration!"</p> + +<p>"You mean you won't run?" inquired Baxter, in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"I mean I won't run—I can't run—put it any way you please."</p> + +<p>"I thought you'd put your whole heart and soul into defeating Trend."</p> + +<p>"I have, but not that way—where's Trenton whom we've been talking of +all summer?"</p> + +<p>"He's out of it—consumption, the doctor says—anyway he's going South."</p> + +<p>"Then there's but one other man," said Ordway, decisively, "and that's +Baxter."</p> + +<p>"Me?" said Baxter softly, "you mean me, do you say?" His chuckle shook +the buggy until it creaked upon its rusty wheels. "I can't," he added, +with a burst of humour, "to tell the truth, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>"Afraid?" repeated Ordway, "you're afraid of Jasper Trend?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Baxter, "it ain't Jasper—it's my wife."</p> + +<p>He winked slowly as he caught Ordway's eyes, and then picking up the +reins, made a movement as if to turn back to Tappahannock. "So you're +dead sure then that you can't be talked over?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"As sure as you are," returned Ordway promptly; then as the buggy +started back in the direction from which it had come, he went over to +Banks, who had<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> risen to his feet and was leaning heavily against the +cherry tree, with the long blade of grass still between his teeth.</p> + +<p>"What do you think of their wanting to make me Mayor, Banks?" he +inquired, with a laugh.</p> + +<p>Banks started from his gloomy reverie. "Mayor!" he exclaimed almost with +animation. "Why, they've shown jolly good sense, that's what I think!"</p> + +<p>"Well, you needn't begin to get excited," responded Ordway, "for I +didn't accept, and you won't have to quarrel either with me or with +Jasper Trend."</p> + +<p>"There's one thing you may be sure of," said Banks with energy, "and +that is that I'd quarrel with Jasper every time."</p> + +<p>"In spite of Milly?" laughed Ordway.</p> + +<p>"In spite of Milly," repeated Banks in an awed but determined voice; +"she may manage my hair and my cravats and my life to come, but I'll be +darned if she's going to manage my vote!"</p> + +<p>"All the same I'm glad you can honestly stick to Jasper," said Ordway, +"he counts on you now, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I suppose so," returned Banks, without enthusiasm; "at any rate, I +think he'd rather she'd marry me than Brown."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's silence in which the name brought no association +into Ordway's consciousness. Then in a single flashing instant the truth +leaped upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged up to meet +his eyes like the waves of a high sea.</p> + +<p>"Than whom?" he demanded in so loud a tone<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> that Banks fell back a step +and looked at him with blinking eyelids.</p> + +<p>"Than marry whom?" asked Ordway for the second time, dropping his voice +almost to a whisper before the blank surprise in the other's face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, his name's Brown—Horatio Brown—I thought I'd told you," answered +Banks, and he added a moment later, "you've met him, I believe."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ordway, with an effort, "he's the handsome chap who came +here last June, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's handsome enough," admitted Banks, and he groaned out +presently. "You liked him, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>Ordway smiled slightly as he met the desperation in the other's look.</p> + +<p>"I like him," he answered quietly, "as much as I like a toad."<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-b" id="CHAPTER_VI-b"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">In Which Baxter Plots</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Baxter reached the warehouse the following morning, he found Major +Leary pacing restlessly back and forth under the brick archway, with the +regular military step at which, during the four years' war, he had +marched into battle.</p> + +<p>"Come in, sir, come in and sit down," said Baxter, leading the way into +his office, and sweeping a pile of newspapers from an armchair with a +hospitable gesture.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen Smith? and is he all right?" were the Major's first +words, as he placed his hat upon the table and took a quick, impatient +turn about the room before throwing himself into the chair which the +other had emptied. He was a short, erect, nervous man, with a fiery +face, a pair of small gray eyes, like steel points, and a long white +moustache, discoloured where it overhung his mouth by the faint yellow +stain of tobacco.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've see him," answered Baxter in a soothing voice, "but he won't +run—there's no use talking. He's dead set against it."</p> + +<p>"Won't run?" cried the Major, furiously. "Nonsense, sir, he must run. +There's no help for it. Did you tell him that we'd decided that he +should run?"<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a></p> + +<p>"I told him," returned Baxter, "but, somehow, it didn't look as if he +were impressed. He was so positive that he would not even let me put in +a word more on the subject. 'Are you dead sure, Smith?' I said, and he +answered, 'I'm as dead sure as you are yourself, Baxter.'"</p> + +<p>The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched himself back in his +chair, and began pulling nervously at the ends of his moustache.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll have to see him myself," he said authoritatively.</p> + +<p>"You may see him as much as you please," replied Baxter, with a soft, +offended dignity, "but I'll be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him +to change his mind."</p> + +<p>"Well, I reckon you're right, Bob," admitted the other, after a moment's +reflection, "what he won't do for you, it isn't likely that he'll do for +the rest of Tappahannock—but the fact remains that somebody has got to +step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now I ask you pointblank—where'll you +get your man?"</p> + +<p>"The Lord knows!" sighed Baxter, and he sucked hard at the stem of his +pipe.</p> + +<p>"Then I tell you if you can't make Smith come out, it's your duty as an +honest citizen to run yourself."</p> + +<p>Baxter relapsed into a depressed silence, in the midst of which his +thoughts were invaded not so much by the political necessity of the +occasion as by the small, but dominant figure of his wife. The big man, +who had feared neither shot nor bayonet, trembled in spirit as he +imagined the outraged authority<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> that could express itself in a person +that measured hardly a fraction more than five feet from her shoes to +the curling gray fringe above her forehead. He remembered that once in +the early days of his marriage, he had allowed himself to be seduced by +the promise of political honours, and that for a whole miserable month +he had gone without griddle cakes and syrup for his breakfast. "No—no, +I could never tell Marthy," he thought, desperately, still seeing in +imagination the pretty, indignant face of Mrs. Baxter.</p> + +<p>"It's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself," repeated the +Major, rapping the arm of his chair to enforce his words.</p> + +<p>"I can't," rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, "I can't sir," and he added an +instant afterward, "you see women have got the idea somehow, that +politics ain't exactly moral."</p> + +<p>"Women!" said the Major, in the dry, contemptuous tone in which he might +have uttered the word, "Pshaw!"</p> + +<p>"I don't mean just 'women,'" replied Baxter, "I mean my wife."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said the Major, "you mean your wife would be opposed to the whole +thing?"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't hear of it, sir, she simply wouldn't hear a word of it."</p> + +<p>For a long pause the Major made no answer; then rising from his chair he +began pacing with his military stride up and down the floor of the +little room. At the end of five minutes he turned upon Baxter with<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> an +exclamation of triumph, and threw himself again into the armchair beside +the desk.</p> + +<p>"I have it, Bob!" he said, slapping his knee until the dust flew out of +his striped trousers, "I knew I'd get it in the end and here it is. The +very thing, on my word, sir, I've discovered the very thing."</p> + +<p>"Then I'm out of it," said Baxter, "an' I'm mighty glad of that."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you aren't out of it—not just yet," said the Major, "we're to +start you in, Bob, you're to start in as a candidate; and then a week +before the nomination, something will crop up to make you fall out of +the race, and you'll turn over all your votes to Smith. It would be too +late, then, for him to back out—he'd simply have to keep in to save the +day."</p> + +<p>In spite of the roar of delight with which the Major ended his speech, +Baxter sat unconvinced and unmoved, shaking his great head in a +voiceless protest against the plot.</p> + +<p>"It's the only way, I tell you," urged the Major, half pleased, half +angry. "After Smith you're by long odds the most popular man in +Tappahannock, and if it isn't one of you, it's Jasper Trend and his +everlasting barrooms."</p> + +<p>"But suppose Smith still declines," said Baxter remembering his wife.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he won't—he isn't a blamed fool," returned the Major, "and if he +does," he added impressively, "if he does I swear to you I'll go into +the race myself."</p> + +<p>He held out his hand and Baxter grasped it in token of good faith.<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a></p> + +<p>"Then I'll do it," said the big man, "provided—" he hesitated, cleared +his throat, and went on bravely, "provided there's no objection to my +telling my wife the scheme"—bending his ear an instant, he drew back +with an embarrassed and guilty face, "that's Smith's step in the +warehouse. He'll be in here in less than two minutes."</p> + +<p>The Major took up his hat, and flung back the door with a hurried +movement.</p> + +<p>"Well, good-bye, I'll see Smith later about the plans," he returned, +"and meanwhile, we'll go hard to work to whip our friend Jasper."</p> + +<p>Meeting Ordway an instant later upon the threshold, he passed him with a +flourish of his hat, and marched rapidly under the brick archway out +into the street.</p> + +<p>As his bookkeeper entered Baxter appeared to be absorbed in a newspaper +which he had picked up hastily from the pile upon the floor.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning," said Ordway, a little surprised; "it looks as if I'd put +the fiery Major to flight."</p> + +<p>"Smith," said Baxter, dropping his paper, and lifting his big, simple +face to the younger man, "Smith, you've got me into a hole, and I want +you to pull me out again."</p> + +<p>"A hole?" repeated Ordway; then as light broke on him, he laughed aloud +and held out his hand. "Oh, I see, he's going to make you Mayor of +Tappahannock!"</p> + +<p>With a groan Baxter prodded fresh tobacco into his pipe, and applying a +match, sat for several minutes brooding in silence amid the cloud of +smoke.<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a></p> + +<p>"He says it's got to be either you or me," he pursued presently, without +noticing Ordway's ejaculation, "and on my word, Smith, seeing I've got a +wife who's all against it, I think it would be but fair to me to let me +off. You're my friend now, ain't you? Well, I'm asking you, Smith, as +friend to friend."</p> + +<p>A flush passed slowly over Ordway's face, and the unusual colour lent a +peculiar animation to his glance. As Baxter met his eyes, he was +conscious that they pierced through him, bright blue, sparkling, as +incisive as a blade.</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth, the thing is all but impossible," said Ordway, after +a long pause. "You don't know, I suppose, that I've never even touched +politics in Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"That ain't the point, Smith—it's going on three years since you came +here—am I right?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—three years next March, and it seems a century."</p> + +<p>"Well, anyway, you've as good a right as I to be Mayor, and a long sight +better one than Jasper Trend has. Come, now, Smith, if you don't get me +out of this hole I'm in, heaven knows how I 'm going to face the Major."</p> + +<p>"Give me time," said Ordway, quickly, "give me time—a week from +to-morrow I am to make my first speech in the town hall. May I have till +then?"</p> + +<p>"Till Thursday week? Oh, I say, Smith, you've got to give in in the +end—and a week sooner or later, what's the difference?"<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a></p> + +<p>Without replying, Ordway walked slowly to the window and stood looking +out upon the steep street that crawled up from the railroad track, where +an engine whistled. He had held out till now, but with Baxter's last +words he had heard in his thoughts a question larger and older than any +of which his employer had dreamed. "Why not?" he asked himself again as +he looked out upon the sunshine. "Why should not Daniel Smith, for a +good purpose, resume the rights which Daniel Ordway has forfeited?" And +it appeared to him while he stood there that his decision involved not +himself alone, and that the outcome had ceased to be merely an election +to the highest office in Tappahannock. Infinitely deep and wide, the +problem belonged not only to his individual life, but to the lives of +all those who had sinned and paid the penalty of sin and asked of +humanity the right and the freedom to begin anew. The impulsive daring +which he had almost lived down stirred for an instant in his pulses, and +turning quickly he looked at Baxter with a boyish laugh.</p> + +<p>"If I go in, Baxter, I go in to win!" he cried.</p> + +<p>At the moment it had seemed to him that he was obliging rather than +ambitious in the choice that he had made; but several days later, when +he came out of the warehouse to find the Major's red flag flying in the +street, he felt the thrill of his youthful enthusiasm quicken in his +blood. There was a strangely martial air about the red flag in the +sunshine, and the response in his pulses was not unlike the ardour of +battle.<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a></p> + +<p>"After all the world is no smaller here than it is in New York," he +thought, "only the littleness of the one is different from the +littleness of the other. In either place success would have meant +nothing in itself, but in Tappahannock I can be more than successful, I +can be useful." With the words it seemed to him that his heart dissolved +in happiness, and as he looked now on the people who passed him in the +street—on the old Negro midwife waddling down the board walk; on the +Italian who kept a fruit stand at the corner; on the pretty girl +flirting in the door of the harness shop; and on the rough-coated, +soft-eyed country horses—he felt that one and all of these must +recognise and respond to the goodwill that had overflowed his thoughts. +So detached from personal bitterness, indeed, was even his fight against +Jasper Trend that he went out of his way at the top of the hill to pick +up a small whip which the Mayor had dropped from horseback as he rode +by. The scowling thanks with which Jasper received the courtesy puzzled +him for a moment until he remembered that by the man in the harness shop +they were regarded probably as enemies. At the recollection he stopped +short in his walk and laughed aloud—no, he was not interested in +fighting anything so small, so insignificant as Jasper Trend. It was the +injustice, the social disease he combated and not the man. "I wonder if +he really hates me?" he thought, for it seemed to him absurd and +meaningless that one man should waste his strength in hating another. +"If he'd been five years in prison<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> he would have learned how foolish it +all is," he added; and an instant afterward he asked himself almost with +terror if his punishment had been, in reality, the greatest good that +had come to him in life? Without that terrible atonement would he have +gone on like Jasper Trend from fraud to fraud, from selfishness to +damnation?</p> + +<p>Looking round him in the perfect October weather, he felt that the +emotion in his heart swelled suddenly to rapture. Straight ahead the +sunshine sifted in drops through the red and yellow trees that bordered +the roadside, while in the field on his right the brown cornricks +crowded in even rows to where the arch of the hill was outlined against +the deep blue sky. Here was not only peace, but happiness, and his old +life, as he glanced back upon it, appeared hollow, futile, a corpse +without breath or animation. That was the mere outward form and body of +existence; but standing here in the deserted road, with his eyes on the +brilliant October fields, he could tell himself that he had come at last +into the ways and the understanding of faith. As he had once walked by +sight alone and stumbled, so he moved now blindly like a child that is +led step by step through the dark.</p> + +<p>From the road behind him a happy laugh struck on his ears, and turning +quickly he saw that a dog-cart was rolling rapidly from Tappahannock. As +he stepped back upon the roadside to avoid the dust raised by the +wheels, he lifted his eyes to the face of Milly Trend, who sat, flushed +and smiling, under<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> a pink sunshade. She bowed joyfully; and it was not +until a moment afterward, when the cart had gone by, that Ordway +realised, almost with the force of a blow struck unawares, that he had +acknowledged the obsequious greeting of Gus Wherry.</p> + +<p>After the pink sunshade had vanished, Milly's laugh was still blown back +to him on the rising wind. With the happy sound of it in his ears, he +watched the dust settle again in the road, the tall golden poplars close +like a screen after the passing wheels, and the distance resume its +aspect of radiant loneliness. Nothing was changed at which he looked, +yet he was conscious that the rapture had passed from his thoughts and +the beauty from the October landscape. The release that he had won +appeared to him as an illusion and a cheat, and lifting his face to the +sunshine, he watched, like a prisoner, the flight of the swallows across +the sky.</p> + +<p>At dinner Beverly noticed his abstraction, and recommended a mint julep, +which Emily went out immediately to prepare.</p> + +<p>"The blood is easily chilled at this season," he said, "and care should +be taken to keep it warm by means of a gentle stimulant. I am not a +great drinker, sir, as you may have remarked, but in cases either of +sickness or sorrow, I have observed that few things are more efficacious +than a thimbleful of whiskey taken at the proper time. When I had the +misfortune to break to my uncle Colonel Algernon Brooke the distressing +news of the death of his wife by drowning, I remember that, though he +was one<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> of the most abstemious men alive, his first articulate words +were: 'bring the whiskey jug.'"</p> + +<p>Even with the cheering assistance of the mint julep, however, it was +impossible for Ordway to eat his dinner; and making an excuse presently, +he rose from the table and went out into the avenue, where he walked +slowly up and down in the shadow of the cedars. At the end of his last +restless turn, he went indoors for his hat, and coming out again started +rapidly toward Tappahannock. With his first decisive step he felt that +the larger share of his burden had fallen from him.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>The Tappahannock Hotel was a low, whitewashed frame building, withdrawn +slightly from the street, where several dejected looking horses, with +saddle-bags attached to them, were usually fastened to the iron rings in +the hitching-rail upon the sidewalk. The place was the resort chiefly of +commercial travellers or of neighbouring farmers, who drove in with +wagon loads of garden produce or of sun-cured tobacco; and the number of +loungers reclining on the newly painted green benches upon the porch +made Ordway aware that the fall trade was already beginning to show +signs of life.</p> + +<p>In answer to his questions, the proprietor an unctuous person, whose +mouth was distorted by a professional habit of welcome—informed him +that a gentleman by the name of Brown had registered there the evening +before, and that he was, to the<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> best of his belief, upstairs in number +eighteen at the present moment.</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth I can't quite size him up," he concluded +confidentially. "He don't seem to hev' come either to sell or to buy an' +thar's precious little else that ever brings a body to Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"Please add that I wish particularly to see him in private," said +Ordway.</p> + +<p>Without turning his head the proprietor beckoned, by a movement of his +thumb delivered backward over his left shoulder, to a Negro boy, who sat +surreptitiously eating peanuts out of a paper bag in his pocket.</p> + +<p>"Tell the gentleman in number eighteen, Sol, that Mr. Smith, the +people's candidate for Mayor, would like to have a little talk with him +in private. I'm mighty glad to see you out in the race, suh," he added, +turning again to Ordway, as the Negro disappeared up the staircase.</p> + +<p>"Thank you," replied Ordway, with a start, which brought him back from +his approaching interview with Gus Wherry to the recollection that he +was fighting to become the Mayor of Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>"Thar's obleeged to be a scrummage, I reckon," resumed the loquacious +little man, when he had received Ordway's acknowledgments—"but I s'pose +thar ain't any doubt as to who'll come off with the scalps in the end." +His manner changed abruptly, and he looked round with a lurking +curiosity in his watery eyes. "You knew Mr. Brown, didn't you say, +suh?—before you came here?"<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a></p> + +<p>Ordway glanced up quickly.</p> + +<p>"Did you tell me he got here yesterday?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Last night on the eight-forty-five, which came in two hours after +time."</p> + +<p>"An accident on the road, wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Wreck of a freight—now, Mr. Brown, as I was saying——"</p> + +<p>At this instant, to Ordway's relief, the messenger landed with a bound +on the floor of the hall, and picking himself up, announced with a +cheerful grin, that "the gentleman would be powerful pleased to see Mr. +Smith upstairs in his room."</p> + +<p>Nodding to the proprietor, Ordway followed the Negro up to the first +landing, and knocked at a half open door at the end of the long, dark +hall.<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-b" id="CHAPTER_VII-b"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Shows That Politeness, Like Charity, Is An Elastic Mantle</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN Ordway entered the room, he turned and closed the door carefully +behind him, before he advanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with +outstretched hand.</p> + +<p>"I can't begin to tell you how I appreciate the honour, Mr. Smith. I +didn't expect it—upon my word, I didn't," exclaimed Wherry, with the +effusive amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger.</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I mean it for an honour, but I hope we can get +straight to business," returned Ordway shortly.</p> + +<p>"Ah, then there's business?" repeated the other, as if in surprise. "I +had hoped that you were paying me merely a friendly call. To tell the +truth I've the very worst head in the world for business, you know, and +I always manage to dodge it whenever I get half a chance."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't dodge it this time, so we may as well have it out."</p> + +<p>"Then since you insist upon that awful word 'business,' I suppose you +mean that you've come formally to ratify the treaty?" asked Wherry, +smiling.<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a></p> + +<p>"The treaty? I made no treaty," returned Ordway gravely.</p> + +<p>Laughing pleasantly, Wherry invited his visitor to be seated. Then +turning away for an instant, he flung himself into a chair beside a +little marble topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle of rye +whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a metal tray.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten our conversation in that +beastly road?" he demanded, "and the prodigal? Surely you haven't +forgotten the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my life that +impressed me more."</p> + +<p>"You told me then distinctly that you had no intention of remaining in +Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you so again if you'd like to hear it. Will you have a +drink?"</p> + +<p>Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture.</p> + +<p>"What I want to know," he insisted bluntly, "is why you are here at +all?"</p> + +<p>Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding a dash of iced water, +tossed it down at a swallow.</p> + +<p>"I thought I told you then," he answered, "that I have a little private +business in the town. As it's purely personal I hope you'll have no +objection to my transacting it."</p> + +<p>"You said that afternoon that your presence was, in some way, connected +with Jasper Trend's cotton mills."</p> + +<p>Wherry gave a low whistle. "Did I?" he asked politely, "well, perhaps, I +did. I can't remember."<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a></p> + +<p>"I was fool enough to believe that you wanted an honest job," said +Ordway; "it did not enter my head that your designs were upon Trend's +daughter."</p> + +<p>"Didn't it?" inquired Wherry with a smile in which his white teeth +flashed brilliantly. "Well, it might have, for I was honest enough about +it. Didn't I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of every mess I was +ever in?"</p> + +<p>"Where is your wife?" asked Ordway.</p> + +<p>"Dead," replied Wherry, in a solemn voice.</p> + +<p>"If I am not mistaken, you had not less than three at the time of your +trial."</p> + +<p>"All dead," rejoined Wherry in the same solemn tone, while he drew out +his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes with a flourish, "there ain't +many men that have supported such a treble affliction on the same day."</p> + +<p>"I may as well inform you that I don't believe a word you utter."</p> + +<p>"It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can +find in town."</p> + +<p>"Your oath? Pshaw!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the +slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his +fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second +drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed +carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head.</p> + +<p>"Whether they are dead or alive," responded Ordway, "I want you to +understand plainly that you are<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> to give up your designs upon Milly +Trend or her money."</p> + +<p>"So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare +I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?"</p> + +<p>A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway +suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the +half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon +rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a +bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, +stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned +away with a sensation of disgust.</p> + +<p>"If you'd only warned me in time—hang it—I'd have cut out and given +you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway +resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I +always like to play fair and square when I get the chance."</p> + +<p>"Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it +good."</p> + +<p>"And leave you the open?"</p> + +<p>"And leave me Tappahannock—yes."</p> + +<p>"I don't want Tappahannock. To tell the truth I'm not particularly +struck by its attractions."</p> + +<p>"In that case you've no objection to leaving immediately, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"I've no objection on earth if you'll allow me a pretty woman to keep me +company. I'm a deuced<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> lonely bird, and I can't get on by myself—it's +not in my nature."</p> + +<p>Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a force which started the +glasses rattling on the metal tray.</p> + +<p>"I repeat for the last time that you are to leave Milly Trend alone," he +said. "Do you understand me?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure I do," rejoined Wherry, still pleasantly enough. "Would +you mind saying that over again in a lower tone?"</p> + +<p>"What I want to make plain is that you are not to marry Milly Trend—or +any other women in this town," returned Ordway angrily.</p> + +<p>"So there are others!" commented Wherry jauntily with his eye on the +ceiling.</p> + +<p>The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably effective, that Ordway +felt his rage increased by the mere external advantages of the man.</p> + +<p>"What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahannock for good and all this +very evening," he resumed, drawing a sharp breath.</p> + +<p>The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable amusement.</p> + +<p>"I can't," he responded, after a minute in which he had enjoyed his +humour to the full, "the train leaves at seven-ten and I've an +engagement at eight o'clock."</p> + +<p>"You'll break it, that's all."</p> + +<p>"But it wouldn't be polite—it's with a lady."</p> + +<p>"Then I'll break it for you," returned Ordway,<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> starting toward the +door, "for I may presume, I suppose, that the lady is Miss Trend?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, come back, I say. Hang it all, don't get into a fury," protested +Wherry, clutching the other by the arm, and closing the door which he +had half opened. "Here, hold on a minute and let's talk things over +quietly. I told you, didn't I? that I wanted to be obliging."</p> + +<p>"Then you will go?" asked Ordway, in a milder tone.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll think about it. I've a quick enough wit for little things, +but on serious matters my brain works slowly. In the first place now +didn't we promise each other that we'd play fair?"</p> + +<p>"But you haven't—that's why I came here."</p> + +<p>"You're dead wrong. I'm doing it this very minute. I'll keep my mouth +shut about you till Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me +back when I'm trying to live honest."</p> + +<p>"Honest!" exclaimed Ordway, and turned on his heel.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'd like to know what you call it, for if it isn't honesty, it +certainly isn't pleasure. My wife's dead, I swear it's a fact, and I +swear again that I don't mean the girl any harm. I was never so much +gone on a woman in my life, though a number of 'em have been pretty soft +on me. So you keep off and manage your election—or whatever it +is—while I go about my business. Great Scott! after all it ain't as if +a woman were a bank note, is it?"<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a></p> + +<p>"The first question was mine. Will you leave to-day or will you not?"</p> + +<p>"And if I will not what are you going to do about it?"</p> + +<p>"As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you know."</p> + +<p>"Well, say I won't. What is your next move then?"</p> + +<p>"In that case I shall go straight to the girl's father after I leave +this room."</p> + +<p>"By Jove you will! And what will you do when you get there?"</p> + +<p>"I shall tell him that to the best of my belief you have a +wife—possibly several—now living."</p> + +<p>"Then you'll lie," said Wherry, dropping for the first time his +persuasive tone.</p> + +<p>"That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he +needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you."</p> + +<p>"And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?"</p> + +<p>"Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want."</p> + +<p>"And suppose he asks you—as he probably will—how in the devil it came +to be any business of yours?"</p> + +<p>For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open +window into the street below.</p> + +<p>"I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I +shall tell him the whole truth as I know it—about myself as well as +about you."</p> + +<p>"The deuce you will!" exclaimed Wherry. "It<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> appears that you want to +take the whole job out of my hands now, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of +the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry +laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite +of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life +had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one?</p> + +<p>"I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the +question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that +idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you—I'll send you half my +salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job."</p> + +<p>Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink.</p> + +<p>"So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, wouldn't you?" he +inquired.</p> + +<p>Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned toward the door and laid +his hand upon the knob before he spoke.</p> + +<p>"Is it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, I wouldn't if I were you," said Wherry, "but that's your affair. +On the whole I think that you'll pay more than your share of the price."</p> + +<p>"It's natural, I suppose, that you should want your revenge," returned +Ordway, without resentment, "but all the same I shall tell him as little +as possible about your past. What I shall say is that I have reason to +believe that your wife is still living."<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a></p> + +<p>"One or more?" enquired Wherry, with a sneer.</p> + +<p>"One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my purpose."</p> + +<p>"Well, go ahead," rejoined Wherry, angrily, "but before you strike you'd +better be pretty sure you see a snake in the grass. I'd advise you for +your own sake to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me."</p> + +<p>"What?" cried Ordway, wheeling round, "do you mean she has refused you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, ask her—ask her," retorted Wherry airily, as he turned back to the +whiskey bottle.</p> + +<p>In the street, a moment later, Ordway passed under the red flag, which, +inflated by the wind, swelled triumphantly above his head. From the +opposite sidewalk a man spoke to him; and then, turning, waved his +slouch hat enthusiastically toward the flag. "If he only knew," thought +Ordway, looking after him; and the words brought to his imagination what +disgrace in Tappahannock would mean in his life. As he passed the dim +vacancy of the warehouse he threw toward it a look which was almost one +of entreaty. "No, no, it can't be," he insisted, as if to reassure +himself, "it is impossible. How could it happen?" And seized by a sudden +rage against circumstances, he remembered the windy afternoon upon which +he had come for the first time to Tappahannock—the wide stretches of +broomsedge; the pale red road, which appeared to lead nowhere; his +violent hunger; and the Negro woman who had given him the cornbread at +the door of her cabin. A hundred years seemed to have passed since +then—<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a>no, not a hundred years as men count them, but a dissolution and +a resurrection. It was as if his personality—his whole inner structure +had dissolved and renewed itself again; and when he thought now of that +March afternoon it was with the visual distinctness that belongs to an +observer rather than to an actor. His point of view was detached, almost +remote. He saw himself from the outside alone—his clothes, his face, +even his gestures; and these things were as vivid to him as were the +Negro cabin, the red clay road, and the covered wagon that threw its +shadow on the path as it crawled by. In no way could he associate his +immediate personality either with the scene or with the man who had sat +on the pine bench ravenously eating the coarse food. At the moment it +seemed to him that he was released, not only from any spiritual bondage +to the past, but even from any physical connection with the man he had +been then. "What have I to do with Gus Wherry or with Daniel Ordway?" he +demanded. "Above all, what in heaven have I to do with Milly Trend?" As +he asked the question he flushed with resentment against the girl for +whom he was about to sacrifice all that he valued in his life. He +thought with disgust of her vanity, her shallowness, her insincerity; +and the course that he had planned showed in this sudden light as +utterly unreasonable. It struck him on the instant that in going to +Wherry he had been a fool. "Yes, I should have thought of that before. I +have been too hasty, for what, after all, have I to do with Milly +Trend?"<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a></p> + +<p>With an effort he put the question aside, and in the emotional reaction +which followed, he felt that his spirit soared into the blue October +sky. Emily, looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never seen +him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly unreserved. When his game +of dominoes with Beverly was over, he followed the children out into the +orchard, where they were gathering apples into great straw hampers; and +as he stood under the fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish +laughter in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, even +his memories had dissolved and vanished into air. An irresponsible +happiness swelled in his heart while he watched the golden orchard grass +blown like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill.</p> + +<p>But when night fell the joy of the sunshine went from him, and it was +almost with a feeling of heaviness that he lit his lamp and sat down in +the chintz-covered chair under the faded sampler worked by Margaret, +aged nine. Without apparent cause or outward disturbance he had passed +from the exhilaration of the afternoon into a pensive, almost a +melancholy mood. The past, which had been so remote for several hours, +had leaped suddenly to life again—not only in his memory, but in every +fibre of his body as well as in every breath he drew. "No, I cannot +escape it, for is it not a part of me—it is I myself," he thought; and +he knew that he could no more free himself from his duty to Milly Trend +than he could tear the knowledge of her existence from his brain. "After +all, it is not Milly Trend," he added, "it<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> is something larger, +stronger, far more vital than she."</p> + +<p>A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and fluttered blindly in the +circle of light which the lamp threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft +whirring of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the sound +entered into his thoughts and became a part of his reflections. "Will +the moth fall into the flame or will it escape?" he asked, feeling +himself powerless to avert the creature's fate. In some strange way his +own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that narrow circle of +light; and in the pitiless illumination that surrounded it, he saw not +only all that was passed, but all that was present as well as all that +was yet to come. At the same instant he saw his mother's face as she lay +dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen upon her lips; and the face +of Lydia when she had lowered a black veil at their last parting; and +the face of Alice, his daughter; and of the girl downstairs as he had +seen her through the gray twilight; and the face of the epileptic little +preacher, who had preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces +looked back at him he knew that the illumination in which his soul had +struggled so blindly was the light of love. "Yes, it is love," he +thought, "and that is the meaning of the circle of light into which I +have come out of the darkness."</p> + +<p>He looked up startled, for the white moth, after one last delirious +whirl of ecstasy, had dropped from the ceiling into the flame of the +lamp.<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-b" id="CHAPTER_VIII-b"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Turn Of The Wheel</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>T eight o'clock the next morning Ordway entered Jasper Trend's gate, +and passed up the gravelled walk between borders of white and yellow +chrysanthemums. In a window on his right a canary was singing loudly in +a gilt cage; and a moment later, the maid invited him into a room which +seemed, as he entered it, to be filled with a jubilant burst of music. +As he waited here for the man he had come to see, he felt that, in spite +of his terrible purpose, he had found no place in Tappahannock so +cheerful as this long room flooded with sunshine, in the midst of which +the canary swung back and forth in his wire cage. The furniture was +crude enough, the colours of the rugs were unharmonious, the imitation +lace of the curtains was offensive to his eyes. Yet the room was made +almost attractive by the large windows which gave on the piazza, the +borders of chrysanthemums and the smoothly shaven plot of lawn.</p> + +<p>His back was turned toward the door when it opened and shut quickly, and +Jasper Trend came in, hastily swallowing his last mouthful of breakfast.</p> + +<p>"You wanted to see me, Mr. Smith, I understand," he said at once, +showing in his manner a mixture of curiosity and resentment. It was +evident at the first<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> glance that even in his own house he was unable to +overcome the political antagonism of the man of little stature. The +smallest social amenity he would probably have regarded as a kind of +moral subterfuge.</p> + +<p>"I must ask you to overlook the intimate nature of my question," began +Ordway, in a voice which was so repressed that it sounded dull and +lifeless, "but I have heard that your daughter intends to marry Horatio +Brown. Is this true?"</p> + +<p>At the words Jasper, who had prepared himself for a political onslaught, +fell back a step or two and stood in the merciless sunlight, blinking at +his questioner with his little, watery, pale gray eyes. Each dull red +vein in his long nose became suddenly prominent.</p> + +<p>"Horatio Brown?" he repeated, "why, I thought you'd come about nothing +less than the nomination. What in the devil do you want anyway with +Horatio Brown. He can't vote in Tappahannock, can he?"</p> + +<p>"I'll answer that in time," replied Ordway, "my motive is more serious +than you can possibly realise—it is a question which involves your +daughter's happiness—perhaps her life."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord, is that so?" exclaimed Jasper, "I don't reckon you're sweet +on her yourself, are you?"</p> + +<p>Ordway's only reply was an impatient groan which sent the other +stumbling back against a jar of goldfish on the centre table. Though he +had come fully prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, he was unable to +control the repulsion aroused in him by the bleared eyes and sunken +mouth of the man before him.<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, if you ain't," resumed Jasper presently, with a fresh outburst of +hilarity, "you're about the only male critter in Tappahannock that don't +turn his eyes sooner or later toward my door."</p> + +<p>"I've barely a speaking acquaintance with your daughter," returned +Ordway shortly, "but her reputation as a beauty is certainly very well +deserved."</p> + +<p>Mollified by the compliment, Jasper unbent so far as to make an abrupt, +jerky motion in the direction of a chair; but shaking his head, Ordway +put again bluntly the question he had asked upon the other's entrance.</p> + +<p>"Am I to understand seriously that she means to marry Brown?" he +demanded.</p> + +<p>Jasper twisted his scraggy neck nervously in his loose collar. "Lord, +how you do hear things!" he ejaculated. "Now, as far as I can see, thar +ain't a single word of truth in all that talk. Just between you and me I +don't believe my girl has had her mind on that fellow Brown more'n a +minute. I'm dead against it and that'll go a long way with her, you may +be sure. Why, only this morning she told me that if she had to choose +between the two of 'em, she'd stick to young Banks every time."</p> + +<p>With the words it seemed to Ordway that the sunshine became fairly +dazzling as it fell through the windows, while the song of the canary +went up rapturously like a pęan. Only by the relief which flooded his +heart like warmth could he measure the extent of the ruin he had +escaped. Even Jasper Trend's face appeared no longer hideous to him, and +as he held out his hand, the exhilaration of his release<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> lent a note +that was almost one of affection to his voice.</p> + +<p>"Don't let her do it—for God's sake don't let her do it," he said, and +an instant afterward he was out on the gravelled walk between the +borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums.</p> + +<p>At the gate Milly was standing with a letter in her hand, and when he +spoke to her, he watched her face change slowly to the colour of a +flower. Never had she appeared softer, prettier, more enticing in his +eyes, and he felt for the first time an understanding of the hopeless +subjection of Banks.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's you, Mr. Smith!" she exclaimed, smiling and blushing as she +had smiled and blushed at Wherry the day before, "I was asking Harry +Banks yesterday what had become of you?"</p> + +<p>"What had become of me?" he repeated in surprise, while he drew back +quickly with his hand on the latch of the gate.</p> + +<p>"I hadn't seen you for so long," she answered, with a laugh which bore +less relation to humour than it did to pleasure. "You used to pass by +five times a day, and I got so accustomed to you that I really missed +you when you went away."</p> + +<p>"Well, I've been in the country all summer, though that hardly counts, +for you were out of town yourself."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I was out of town myself." She lingered over the words, and her +voice softened as she went on until it seemed to flow with the sweetness +of liquid honey, "but even when I am here, you never care to see me."<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a></p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" he asked gaily, and the next instant he wondered why +the question had passed his lips before it had entered into his +thoughts, "the truth is that I know a good deal more about you than you +suspect," he added; "I have the honour, you see, to be the confidant of +Harry Banks."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Harry Banks!" she exclaimed indifferently, as she turned from the +gate, while Ordway opened it and passed out into the street.</p> + +<p>For the next day or two it seemed to him that the lightness of his heart +was reflected in the faces of those about him—that Baxter, Mrs. Brooke, +Emily, Beverly each appeared to move in response to some hidden spring +within himself. He felt no longer either Beverly's tediousness or Mrs. +Brooke's melancholy, for these early October mornings contained a +rapture which transfigured the people with whom he lived.</p> + +<p>With this unlooked for renewal of hope he threw himself eagerly into the +political fight for the control of Tappahannock. It was now Tuesday and +on Thursday evening he was to deliver his first speech in the town hall. +Already the preparations were made, already the flags were flying from +the galleries, and already Baxter had been trimmed for his public +appearance upon the platform.</p> + +<p>"By George, I believe the Major's right and it's the Ten Commandment +part that has done it," said the big man, settling his person with a +shake in the new clothes he had purchased for the occasion. "I reckon +this coat's all right, Smith, ain't it? My<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> wife wouldn't let me come +out on the platform in those old clothes I've been wearing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're all right," returned Ordway, cheerfully—so cheerfully that +Baxter was struck afresh by the peculiar charm which belonged less to +manner than to temperament, "you're all right, old man, but it isn't +your clothes that make you so."</p> + +<p>"All the same I'll feel better when I get into my old suit again," said +Baxter, "I don't know how it is, but, somehow, I seem to have left +two-thirds of myself behind in those old clothes. I just wore these down +to show 'em off, but I shan't put 'em on again till Thursday."</p> + +<p>It was the closing hour at the warehouse, and after a few eager words on +the subject of the approaching meeting, Ordway left the office and went +out into the deserted building where the old Negro was sweeping the +floor with his twig broom. A moment later he was about to pass under the +archway, when a man, hurrying in from the street, ran straight into his +arms and then staggered back with a laugh of mirthless apology.</p> + +<p>"My God, Smith," said the tragic voice of Banks, "I'm half crazy and I +must have a word with you alone."</p> + +<p>Catching his arm Ordway drew him into the dim light of the warehouse, +until they reached the shelter of an old wagon standing unhitched +against the wall. The only sound which came to them here was the +scratching noise made by the twig broom on the rough planks of the +floor.<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p> + +<p>"Speak now," said Ordway, while his heart sank as he looked into the +other's face, "It's quite safe—there's no one about but old Abraham."</p> + +<p>"I can't speak," returned Banks, preserving with an effort a decent +composure of his features, "but it's all up with me—it's worse than I +imagined, and there's nothing ahead of me but death."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's small consolation to be told that you look unusually +healthy at the minute," replied Ordway, "but don't keep me guessing, +Banks. What's happened now?"</p> + +<p>"All her indifference—all her pretence of flirting was pure deception," +groaned the miserable Banks, "she wanted to throw dust, not only in my +eyes, but in Jasper's, also."</p> + +<p>"Why, he told me with his own lips that his daughter had given him to +understand that she preferred you to Brown."</p> + +<p>"And so she did give him to understand—so she did," affirmed Banks, in +despair, "but it was all a blind so that he wouldn't make trouble +between her and Brown. I tell you, Smith," he concluded, bringing his +clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, from which a shower of +dried mud was scattered into Ordway's face, "I tell you, I don't believe +women think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking a cocktail!"</p> + +<p>"But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? and when did you discover +it?"</p> + +<p>"That's the awful part, I'm coming to it." His voice gave out and he +swallowed a lump in his throat<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> before he could go on. "Oh, Smith, +Smith, I declare, if it's the last word I speak, I believe she means to +run away with Brown this very evening!"</p> + +<p>"What?" cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. A +burning resentment, almost a repulsion swept over him, and he felt that +he could have spurned the girl's silly beauty if she had lain at his +feet. What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she should cost him, +a stranger to her, so great a price?</p> + +<p>"Tell me all," he said sharply, turning again to his companion. "How did +you hear it? Why do you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?"</p> + +<p>Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single large round teardrop +trickled slowly down his freckled nose.</p> + +<p>"I should never have suspected it," he answered, "but for Milly's old +black Mammy Delphy, who has lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt +Delphy came upon her this morning when she was packing her bag, and by +hook or crook, heaven knows how, she managed to get at the truth. Then +she came directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown worse than +the devil."</p> + +<p>"When did she come to you?"</p> + +<p>"A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight to you."</p> + +<p>Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at the face of it with a +wondering frown.</p> + +<p>"That must have been five o'clock," he said, "and it is now half past. +Shall I catch Milly, do you think, if I start at once?"<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a></p> + +<p>"You?" cried Banks, "you mean that you will stop her?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that I must stop her. There is no question."</p> + +<p>As he spoke he had started quickly down the warehouse, scattering as he +walked, a pile of trash which the old Negro had swept together in the +centre of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with which he moved +that Banks, in spite of his frantic haste, could barely keep in step +with him as they passed into the street. Ordway's face had changed as if +from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks looked at it in the +afternoon light he was startled to find that it was the face of an old +man. The brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, and the gray +hair upon the temples had become suddenly more prominent than the dark +locks above.</p> + +<p>"Then you knew Brown before?" asked Banks, with an accession of courage, +as they slackened their pace with the beginning of the hill.</p> + +<p>"I knew him before—yes," replied Ordway, shortly. His reserve had +become not only a mask, but a coffin, and his companion had for a minute +a sensation that was almost uncanny as he walked by his side—as if he +were striving to keep pace uphill with a dead man. Banks had known him +to be silent, gloomy, uncommunicative before now, but he had never until +this instant seen that look of iron resolve which was too cold and still +to approach the heat of passion. Had he been furious Banks might have +shared his fury with him; had he shown bitterness of mood Banks<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> might +have been bitter also; had he given way even to sardonic merriment, +Banks felt that it would have been possible to have feigned a mild +hilarity of manner; but before this swift, implacable pursuit of +something he could not comprehend, the wretched lover lost all +consciousness of the part which he himself must act, well or ill, in the +event to come.</p> + +<p>At Trend's gate Ordway stopped and looked at his companion with a smile +which appeared to throw an artificial light upon his drawn features.</p> + +<p>"Will you let me speak to her alone first," he asked, "for a few +minutes?"</p> + +<p>"I'll take a turn up the street then," returned Banks eagerly, still +panting from his hurried walk up the long hill. "She's in the room on +the right now," he added, "I can see her feeding the canary."</p> + +<p>Ordway nodded indifferently. "I shan't be long," he said, and going +inside the gate, passed deliberately up the walk and into the room where +Milly stood at the window with her mouth close against the wires of the +gilt cage.</p> + +<p>At his step on the threshold the girl turned quickly toward the door +with a fluttering movement. Surprise and disappointment battled for an +instant in her glance, and he gathered from his first look that he had +come at the moment when she was expecting Wherry. He noticed, too, that +in spite of the mild autumn weather, she wore a dark dress which was not +unsuitable for a long journey, and that her sailor hat, from which a +blue veil floated, lay on a chair in one corner. A deeper meaning had +entered into the<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> shallow prettiness of her face, and he felt that she +had passed through some subtle change in which she had left her girlhood +behind her. For the first time it occurred to him that Milly Trend was +deserving not only of passion, but of sympathy.</p> + +<p>At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him his bit of cake, the +canary fluttered from his perch and uttered a sweet, short, questioning +note; and in Milly's face, as she came forward, there was something of +this birdlike, palpitating entreaty.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is you, Mr. Smith," she said, "I did not hear your ring."</p> + +<p>"I didn't ring," responded Ordway, as he took her trembling outstretched +hand in which she still held the bit of sponge cake, "I saw you at the +window so I came straight in without sending word. What I have to say to +you is so important that I dared not lose a minute."</p> + +<p>"And it is about me?" asked Milly, with a quiver of her eyelids.</p> + +<p>"No, it is about someone else, though it concerns you in a measure. The +thing I have to tell you relates directly to a man whom you know as +Horatio Brown——"</p> + +<p>He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his meaning from his face +rather than from his words.</p> + +<p>"Then you know him?" she questioned, in a frightened whisper.</p> + +<p>"I know more of his life than I can tell you. It is sufficient to say +that to the best of my belief he has a wife now living—that he has been +married before<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> this under different names to at least two living +women——"</p> + +<p>He stopped and put out his hand with an impulsive protecting gesture, +for the wounded vanity in the girl's face had pierced to his heart. +"Will you let me see your father?" he asked gently, "would it not be +better for me to speak to him instead of to you?"</p> + +<p>"No, no!" cried Milly sharply, "don't tell him—don't dare to tell +him—for he would believe it and it is a lie—it is a lie! I tell you it +is a lie!"</p> + +<p>"As God is my witness it is the truth," he answered, without resentment.</p> + +<p>"Then you shall accuse him to his face. He is coming in a little while, +and you shall accuse him before me——"</p> + +<p>She stopped breathlessly and the pity in his look made her wince sharply +and shrink away. With her movement the piece of sponge cake fell from +her loosened fingers and rolled on the floor at her feet.</p> + +<p>"But if it were true how could you know it?" she demanded. "No, it is +not true—I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" she repeated in a +passion of terror.</p> + +<p>At her excited voice the canary, swinging on his perch, broke suddenly +into an ecstasy of song, and Milly's words, when she spoke again, were +drowned in the liquid sweetness that flowed from the cage. For a minute +Ordway stood in silence waiting for the music to end, while he watched +the angry, helpless tremor of the girl's outstretched hands.</p> + +<p>"Will you promise me to wait?" he asked, raising<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> his voice in the +effort to be heard, "will you promise me to wait at least until you find +out the truth or the falsehood of what I tell you?"</p> + +<p>"But I don't believe it," repeated Milly in the stubborn misery of +hopeless innocence.</p> + +<p>"Ask yourself, then, what possible reason I could have in coming to +you—except to save you?"</p> + +<p>"Wait!" cried the girl angrily, "I can't hear—wait!" Picking up a shawl +from a chair, she flung it with an impatient gesture over the cage, and +turning immediately from the extinguished bird, took up his sentence +where he had broken off.</p> + +<p>"To save me?" she repeated, "you mean from marriage?"</p> + +<p>"From a marriage that would be no marriage. Am I right in suspecting +that you meant to go away with him to-night?"</p> + +<p>She bowed her head—all the violent spirit gone out of her. "I was ready +to go to-night," she answered, like a child that has been hurt and is +still afraid of what is to come.</p> + +<p>"And you promise me that you will give it up?" he went on gently.</p> + +<p>"I don't know—I can't tell—I must see him first," she said, and burst +suddenly into tears, hiding her face in her hands with a pathetic, +shamed gesture.</p> + +<p>Turning away for a moment, he stood blankly staring down into the jar of +goldfish. Then, as her sobs grew presently beyond her control, he came +back to the chair into which she had dropped and looked with moist eyes +at her bowed fair head.<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a></p> + +<p>"Before I leave you, will you promise me to give him up?—to forget him +if it be possible?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"But it is not possible," she flashed back, lifting her wet blue eyes to +his. "How dare you come to me with a tale like this? Oh, I hate you! I +shall always hate you! Will you go?"</p> + +<p>Before her helpless fury he felt a compassion stronger even than the +emotion her tears had aroused.</p> + +<p>"It is not fair that I should tell you so much and not tell you all, +Milly," he said. "It is not fair that in accusing the man you love, I +should still try to shield myself. I know that these things are true +because Brown's—Wherry is his name—trial took place immediately before +mine—and we saw each other during the terms which we served in prison."</p> + +<p>Then before she could move or speak he turned from her and went rapidly +from the house and out into the walk.<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-b" id="CHAPTER_IX-b"></a>CHAPTER IX<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">At The Cross-roads</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>T the corner he looked down the street and saw the red flag still +swelling in the wind. A man spoke to him; the face was familiar, but he +could not recall the name, until after a few congratulatory words about +his political prospects, he remembered, with a start, that he was +talking to Major Leary.</p> + +<p>"You may count on a clean sweep of votes, Mr. Smith—there's no doubt of +it," said the Major, beaming with his amiable fiery face.</p> + +<p>"There's no doubt of it?" repeated Ordway, while he regarded the +enthusiastic politician with a perplexed and troubled look. The Major, +the political campaign, the waving red flag and the noisy little town +had receded to a blank distance from the moment in which he stood. He +wondered vaguely what connection he—Daniel Ordway—had ever held with +these things?</p> + +<p>Yet his smile was still bright and cheerful as he turned away, with an +apologetic word, and passed on into the road to Cedar Hill. The impulse +which had driven him breathlessly into Milly's presence had yielded now +to the mere dull apathy of indifference, and it mattered to him no +longer whether the girl was saved or lost in the end. He thought of her<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> +vanity, of her trivial pink and white prettiness with a return of his +old irritation. Well, he had done his part—his temperament had ruled +him at the decisive instant, and the ensuing consequences of his +confession had ceased now to affect or even to interest him. Then, with +something like a pang of thought, he remembered that he had with his own +hand burned his bridges behind him, and that there was no way out for +him except the straight way which led over the body of Daniel Smith. His +existence in Tappahannock was now finished; his victory had ended in +flight; and there was nothing ahead of him except the new beginning and +the old ending. A fresh start and then what? And afterward the few years +of quiet again and at the end the expected, the inevitable recurrence of +the disgrace which he had begun to recognise as some impersonal natural +law that followed upon his footsteps. As the future gradually unrolled +itself in his imagination, he felt that his heart sickened in the clutch +of the terror that had sprung upon him. Was there to be no end anywhere? +Could no place, no name even afford him a permanent shelter? Looking +ahead now he saw himself as an old man wandering from refuge to refuge, +pursued always by the resurrected corpse of his old life, which though +it contained neither his spirit nor his will, still triumphed by the +awful semblance it bore his outward body. Was he to be always alone? Was +there no spot in his future where he could possess himself in reality of +the freedom which was his in name?<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a></p> + +<p>Without seeing, without hearing, he went almost deliriously where his +road led him, for the terror in his thought had become a living presence +before which his spirit rather than his body moved. He walked rapidly, +yet it seemed to him that his feet were inert and lifeless weights which +were dragged forward by the invincible torrent of his will. In the +swiftness of his flight, he felt that he was a conscious soul chained to +a body that was a corpse.</p> + +<p>When he came at last to the place where the two roads crossed before the +ruined gate, he stopped short, while the tumult died gradually in his +brain, and the agony through which he had just passed appeared as a +frenzy to his saner judgment. Looking up a moment later as he was about +to enter the avenue, he saw that Emily Brooke was walking toward him +under the heavy shadow of the cedars. In the first movement of her +surprise the mask which she had always worn in his presence dropped from +her face, and as she stepped from the gloom into the sunlight, he felt +that the sweetness of her look bent over him like protecting wings. For +a single instant, as her eyes gazed wide open into his, he saw reflected +in them the visions from which his soul had shrunk back formerly +abashed. Nothing had changed in her since yesterday; she was outwardly +the same brave and simple woman, with her radiant smile, her blown hair, +and her roughened hands. Yet because of that revealing look she appeared +no longer human in his eyes, but something almost unearthly bright and +distant, like the sunshine he<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> had followed so often through the bars of +his prison cell.</p> + +<p>"You are suffering," she said, when he would have passed on, and he felt +that she had divined without words all that he could not utter.</p> + +<p>"Don't pity me," he answered, smiling at her question, because to smile +had become for him the easier part of habit, "I'm not above liking pity, +but it isn't exactly what I need. And besides, I told you once, you +know, that whatever happened to me would always be the outcome of my own +failure."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I remember you told me so—but does that make it any easier to +bear?"</p> + +<p>"Easier to bear?—no, but I don't think the chief end of things is to be +easy, do you?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "But isn't our chief end just to make them easier +for others?" she asked.</p> + +<p>The pity in her face was like an illumination, and her features were +enkindled with a beauty he had never found in them before. It was the +elemental motherhood in her nature that he had touched; and he felt as +he watched her that this ecstasy of tenderness swelled in her bosom and +overflowed her lips. Confession to her would have been for him the +supreme luxury of despair; but because his heart strained toward her, he +drew back and turned his eyes to the road, which stretched solitary and +dim beyond them.</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose, I've got what I deserved," he said, "the price that a +man pays for being a fool, he pays but once and that is his whole life +long."<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p> + +<p>"But it ought not to be so—it is not just," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Just?" he repeated, bitterly, "no, I dare say, it isn't—but the facts +of life don't trouble themselves about justice, do they? Is it just, for +instance, that you should slave your youth away on your brother's farm, +while he sits and plays dominoes on the porch? Is it just that with the +instinct for luxury in your blood you should be condemned to a poverty +so terrible as this?" He reached out and touched the little red hand +hanging at her side. "Is this just?" he questioned with an ironical +smile.</p> + +<p>"There is some reason for it," she answered bravely, "I feel it though I +cannot see it."</p> + +<p>"Some reason—yes, but that reason is not justice—not the little human +justice that we can call by the name. It's something infinitely bigger +than any idea that we have known."</p> + +<p>"I can trust," she said softly, "but I can't reason."</p> + +<p>"Don't reason—don't even attempt to—let God run his world. Do you +think if we didn't believe in the meaning—in the purpose of it all that +you and I could stand together here like this? It's because we believe +that we can be happy even while we suffer."</p> + +<p>"Then you will be happy again—to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Surely. Perhaps to-night—who knows? I've had a shock. My brain is +whirling and I can't see straight. In a little while it will be over and +I shall steady down."</p> + +<p>"But I should like to help you now while it lasts," she said.<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a></p> + +<p>"You are helping me—it's a mercy that you stand there and listen to my +wild talk. Do you know I was telling myself as I came along the road +just now that there wasn't a living soul to whom I should dare to say +that I was in a quake of fear."</p> + +<p>"A quake of fear?" She looked at him with swimming eyes, and by that +look he saw that she loved him. If he had stretched out his arms, he +knew that the passion of her sorrow would have swept her to his breast; +and he felt that every fibre of his starved soul and body cried out for +the divine food that she offered. At the moment he did not stop to ask +himself whether it was his flesh or his spirit that hungered after her, +for his whole being had dissolved into the longing which drew him as +with cords to her lips. All he understood at the instant was that in his +terrible loneliness love had been offered him and he must refuse the +gift. A thought passed like a drawn sword between them, and he saw in +his imagination Lydia lowering her black veil at their last parting.</p> + +<p>"It's a kind of cowardliness, I suppose," he went on with his eyes on +the ground, "but I was thinking that minute how greatly I needed help +and how much—how very much—you had given me. If I ever learn really to +live it will be because of you—because of your wonderful courage, your +unfailing sweetness——"</p> + +<p>For the first time he saw in her face the consciousness of her own +unfulfilment. "If you only knew how often I wonder if it is worth +while," she answered.<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a></p> + +<p>At this he made a sudden start forward and then checked himself. "The +chief tragedy in my life," he said, "is that I knew you twenty years too +late."</p> + +<p>Until his words were uttered he did not realise how much of a confession +he had put into them; and with the discovery he watched her face bloom +softly like a flower that opens its closed petals.</p> + +<p>"If I could have helped you then, why cannot I help you now?" she asked, +while the innocence in her look humbled him more than a divine fury +would have done. The larger his ideal of her became, the keener grew his +sense of failure—of bondage to that dead past from which he could never +release his living body. As he looked at her now he realised that the +supreme thing he had missed in life was the control of the power which +lies in simple goodness; and the purity of Lydia appeared to him as a +shining blank—an unwritten surface beside the passionate humanity in +the heart of the girl before him.</p> + +<p>"You will hear things from others which I can't tell you and then you +will understand," he said.</p> + +<p>"I shall hear nothing that will make me cease to believe in you," she +answered.</p> + +<p>"You will hear that I have done wrong in my life and you will understand +that if I have suffered it has been by my own fault."</p> + +<p>She met his gaze without wavering.</p> + +<p>"I shall still believe in you," she responded.</p> + +<p>Her eyes were on his face and she saw that the wan light of the +afterglow revealed the angularities of his brow and chin and filled in +with shadows the deeper<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> hollows in his temples. The smile on his lips +was almost ironical as he answered.</p> + +<p>"Those from whom I might have expected loyalty, fell away from me—my +father, my wife, my children——"</p> + +<p>"To believe against belief is a woman's virtue," she responded, "but at +least it is a virtue."</p> + +<p>"You mean that you would have been my friend through everything?" he +asked quickly, half blinded by the ideal which seemed to flash so +closely to his eyelids.</p> + +<p>There was scorn in her voice as she answered: "If I had been your friend +once—yes, a thousand times."</p> + +<p>Before his inward vision there rose the conception of a love that would +have pardoned, blessed and purified. Bending his head he kissed her +little cold hand once and let it fall. Then without looking again into +her face, he entered the avenue and went on alone.<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-b" id="CHAPTER_X-b"></a>CHAPTER X<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Between Man And Man</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN he entered Tappahannock the following morning, he saw with surprise +that the red flag was still flying above the street. As he looked into +the face of the first man he met, he felt a sensation of relief, almost +of gratitude because he received merely the usual morning greeting; and +the instant afterward he flinched and hesitated before replying to the +friendly nod of the harness-maker, stretching himself under the hanging +bridles in the door of the little shop.</p> + +<p>Entering the warehouse he glanced nervously down the deserted building, +and when a moment later he opened the door into Baxter's office, he grew +hot at the familiar sight of the local newspaper in his employer's +hands. The years had divided suddenly and he saw again the crowd in +Fifth Avenue as he walked home on the morning of his arrest. He smelt +the smoke of the great city; he heard the sharp street cries around him; +and he pushed aside the fading violets offered him by the crippled +flower seller at the corner. He even remembered, without effort, the +particular bit of scandal retailed to him over a cigar by the club wit +who had joined him. All his sensations to-day were what they had been<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> +then, only now his consciousness was less acute, as if the edge of his +perceptions had been blunted by the force of the former blow.</p> + +<p>"Howdy, Smith, is that you?" remarked Baxter, crushing the top of the +paper beneath the weight of his chin as he looked over it at Ordway. +"Did you meet Banks as you came in? He was in here asking for you not +two minutes ago."</p> + +<p>"Banks? No, I didn't see him. What did he want?" As he put the ordinary +question the dull level of his voice surprised him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he didn't tell me," returned Baxter, "but it was some love-lorn +whining he had to do, I reckon. Now what I can't understand is how a man +can be so narrow sighted as only to see one woman out of the whole +bouncing sex of 'em. It would take more than a refusal—it would take a +downright football to knock out my heart. Good Lord! in this world of +fine an' middling fine women, the trouble ain't to get the one you want, +but to keep on wanting the one you get. I've done my little share of +observing in my time, and what I've learned from it is that the biggest +trial a man can have is not to want another man's wife, but to <i>want</i> to +want his own."</p> + +<p>A knock at the door called Ordway out into the warehouse, where he +yielded himself immediately to the persuasive voice of Banks.</p> + +<p>"Come back here a minute, will you, out of hearing? I tried to get to +you last night and couldn't."</p> + +<p>"Has anything gone wrong?" inquired Ordway, following the other to a +safe distance from Baxter's<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> office. At first he had hardly had courage +to lift his eyes to Banks' face, but reassured by the quiet opening of +the conversation, he stood now with his sad gaze fixed on the beaming +freckled features of the melancholy lover.</p> + +<p>"I only wanted to tell you that she didn't go," whispered Banks, rolling +his prominent eyes into the dusky recesses of the warehouse, "she's ill +in bed to-day, and Brown left town on the eight-forty-five this +morning."</p> + +<p>"So he's gone for good!" exclaimed Ordway, and drew a long breath as if +he had been released from an emotional tension which had suspended, +while it lasted, the ordinary movement of life. Since he had prepared +himself for the worst was it possible that his terror of yesterday would +scatter to-day like the delusions of an unsettled brain? Had Wherry held +back in mercy or had Milly Trend? Even if he were spared now must he +still live on here unaware how widely—or how pitifully—his secret was +known? Would this ceaseless dread of discovery prove again, as it had +proved in the past, more terrible even than the discovery itself? Would +he be able to look fearlessly at Milly Trend again?—at Baxter? at +Banks? at Emily?</p> + +<p>"Well, I've got to thank you for it, Smith?" said Banks. "How you +stopped it, I don't know for the life of me, but stop it you did."</p> + +<p>The cheerful selfishness in such rejoicing struck Ordway even in the +midst of his own bitter musing. Though Banks adored Milly, soul and +body, he was<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> frankly jubilant over the tragic ending of her short +romance.</p> + +<p>"I hope there's little danger of its beginning anew," Ordway remarked +presently, with less sympathy than he would have shown his friend twelve +hours before.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me what you said to her?" inquired +Banks, his customary awe of his companion swept away in the momentary +swing of his elation.</p> + +<p>"No, I shouldn't like to tell you," returned Ordway quietly.</p> + +<p>"Then it's all right, of course, and I'll be off to drape the town hall +in bunting for to-morrow night. We're going to make the biggest +political display for you that Tappahannock has ever seen."</p> + +<p>At the instant Ordway was hardly conscious of the immensity of his +relief, but some hours later, after the early closing of the warehouse, +when he walked slowly back along the road to Cedar Hill, it seemed to +him that his life had settled again into its quiet monotonous spaces. +The peaceful fields on either side, with their short crop of +live-ever-lasting, in which a few lonely sheep were browsing, appeared +to him now as a part of the inward breadth and calm of the years that he +had spent in Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>In the loneliness of the road he could tell himself that the fear of Gus +Wherry was gone for a time at least, yet the next day upon going into +town he was aware of the same nervous shrinking from the people<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> he +passed, from the planters hanging about the warehouse, from Baxter +buried behind his local newspaper.</p> + +<p>"They've got a piece as long as your arm about you in the Tappahannock +<i>Herald</i>, Smith," cried Baxter, chuckling; and Ordway felt himself +redden painfully with apprehension. Not until the evening, when he came +out upon the platform under the floating buntings in the town hall, did +he regain entirely the self-possession which he had lost in the presence +of Milly Trend.</p> + +<p>In its white and red decorations, with the extravagant glare of its +gas-jets, the hall had assumed almost a festive appearance; and as +Ordway glanced at the crowded benches and doorways, he forgot the +trivial political purpose he was to serve, in the more human relation in +which he stood to the men who had gathered to hear him speak. These men +were his friends, and if they believed in him he felt a triumphant +conviction that they had seen their belief justified day by day, hour by +hour, since he had come among them. In the crowd of faces before him, he +recognised, here and there, workingmen whom he had helped—operatives in +Jasper Trend's cotton mills, or in the smaller factories which combined +with the larger to create the political situation in Tappahannock. +Closer at hand he saw the shining red face of Major Leary; the +affectionate freckled face of Banks; the massive benevolent face of +Baxter. As he looked at them an emotion which was almost one of love +stirred in his breast, and he felt the words<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> he had prepared dissolve +and fade from his memory to reunite in an appeal of which he had not +thought until this minute. There was something, he knew now, for him to +say to-night—something so infinitely large that he could utter it only +because it rose like love or sorrow to his lips. Of all the solemn +moments when he had stood before these men, with his open Bible, in the +green field or in the little grove of pines, there was none so solemn, +he felt, as the approaching instant in which he would speak to them no +longer as a man to children, but as a man to men.</p> + +<p>On the stage before him Baxter was addressing the house, his soft, +persuasive voice mingling with a sympathetic murmur from the floor. The +applause which had broken out at Ordway's entrance had not yet died +away, and with each mention of his name, with each allusion to his +services to Tappahannock, it burst forth again, enthusiastic, +irrepressible, overwhelming. Never before, it seemed to him, sitting +there on the platform with his roughened hands crossed on his knees, had +he felt himself to be so intimately a part of the community in which he +lived. Never before—not even when he had started this man in life, had +bought off that one's mortgage or had helped another to struggle free of +drink, had he come quite so near to the pathetic individual lives that +compose the mass. They loved him, they believed in him, and they were +justified! At the moment it seemed to him nothing—less than +nothing—that they should make him Mayor of Tappahannock.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> In this one +instant of understanding they had given him more than any office—than +any honour.</p> + +<p>While he sat there outwardly so still, so confident of his success, it +seemed to him that in the exhilaration of the hour he was possessed of a +new and singularly penetrating insight into life. Not only did he see +further and deeper than he had ever seen before, but he looked beyond +the beginning of things into the causes and beyond the ending of them +into the results. He saw himself and why he was himself as clearly as he +saw his sin and why he had sinned. Out of their obscurity his father and +his mother returned to him, and as he met the bitter ironical smile of +the one and the curved black brows and red, half open mouth of the +other, he knew himself to be equally the child of each, for he +understood at last why he was a mixture of strength and weakness, of +gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and compassion. His short, troubled +childhood rushed through his thoughts, and with that swiftness of memory +which comes so often in tragic moments, he lived over again—not +separately and in successive instants—but fully, vitally, and in all +the freshness of experience, the three events which he saw now, in +looking back, as the milestones upon his road. Again he saw his mother +as she lay in her coffin, with her curved black brows and half open +mouth frozen into a joyous look, and in that single fleeting instant he +passed through his meeting with the convict at the wayside station, and +through the long<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> suspended minutes when he had waited in the Stock +Exchange for the rise in the market which did not come. And these things +appeared to him, not as detached and obscure remnants of his past, but +clear and delicate and vivid as if they were projected in living colours +against the illumination of his mind. They were there not to bewilder, +but to make plain; not to accuse, but to vindicate. "Everything is clear +to me now and I see it all," he thought, "and if I can only keep this +penetration of vision nothing will be harder to-morrow than it is +to-night." In his whole life there was not an incident too small for him +to remember it and to feel that it was significant of all the rest; and +he knew that if he could have seen from the beginning as clearly as he +saw to-night, his past would not have been merely different, it would +have been entirely another than his own.</p> + +<p>Baxter had stopped, and turning with an embarrassed upheaval of his +whole body, he spoke to Ordway, who rose at his words and came slowly +forward to the centre of the stage. A hoarse murmur, followed by a +tumult of shouts, greeted him, while he stood for a moment looking +silently among those upturned faces for the faces of the men to whom he +must speak. "That one will listen because I nursed him back to life, and +that one because I brought him out of ruin—and that one and that one—" +He knew them each by name, and as his gaze travelled from man to man he +felt that he was seeking a refuge from some impending evil in the +shelter of the good deeds that he had done.<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a></p> + +<p>Though he held a paper in his hand, he did not look at it, for he had +found his words in that instant of illumination when, seated upon the +stage, he had seen the meaning of his whole life made plain. The present +event and the issue of it no longer concerned him; he had ceased to +fear, even to shrink from the punishment that was yet to come. In the +completeness with which he yielded himself to the moment, he felt that +he was possessed of the calm, almost of the power of necessity; and he +experienced suddenly the sensation of being lifted and swept forward on +one of the high waves of life. He spoke rapidly, without effort, almost +without consciousness of the words he uttered, until it seemed to him +presently that it was the torrent of his speech which carried him +outward and upward with that strange sense of lightness, of security. +And this lightness, this security belonged not to him, but to some +outside current of being.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>His speech was over, and he had spoken to these factory workers as no +man had spoken before him in Tappahannock. With his last word the +silence had held tight and strained for a minute, and then the grateful +faces pressed round him and the ringing cheers passed through the open +windows out into the street. His body was still trembling, but as he +stood there with his sparkling blue eyes on the house, he looked gay and +boyish. He had made his mark, he had spoken his best speech, and he had<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> +touched not merely the factory toilers in Tappahannock, but that common +pulse of feeling in which all humanity is made one. Then the next +instant, while he still waited, he was aware of a new movement upon the +platform behind him, and a man came forward and stopped short under the +gas jet, which threw a flickering yellow light upon his face. Though he +had seen him but once, he recognized him instantly as the short, +long-nosed, irascible manager of the cotton mills, and with the first +glance into his face he had heard already the unspoken question and the +reply.</p> + +<p>"May I ask you, Mr. Smith," began the little man, suddenly, "if you can +prove your right to vote or to hold office in Virginia?"</p> + +<p>Ordway's gaze passed beyond him to rest upon Baxter and Major Leary, who +sat close together, genial, elated, rather thirsty. At the moment he +felt sorry for Baxter—not for himself.</p> + +<p>"No," he answered with a smile which threw a humorous light upon the +question, "I cannot—can you prove yours?"</p> + +<p>The little man cleared his throat with a sniffling sound, and when he +spoke again it was in a high nasal voice, as if he had become suddenly +very excited or very angry.</p> + +<p>"Is your name Daniel Smith?" he asked, with a short laugh.</p> + +<p>The question was out at last and the silence in which Ordway stood was +like the suspension between thought and thought. All at once he found +himself<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> wondering why he had lived in hourly terror of this instant, +for now that it was upon him, he saw that it was no more tragic, no less +commonplace, than the most ordinary instant of his life. As in the past +his courage had revived in him with the first need of decisive action, +so he felt it revive now, and lifting his head, he looked straight into +the angry, little eyes of the man who waited, under the yellow gaslight, +on the platform before him.</p> + +<p>"My name," he answered, still smiling, "is Daniel Ordway."</p> + +<p>There was no confusion in his mind, no anxiety, no resentment. Instead +the wonderful brightness of a moment ago still shone in his thoughts, +and while he appeared to rest his sparkling gaze on the face of his +questioner, he was seeing, in reality, the road by which he had come to +Tappahannock, and at the beginning of the road the prison, and beyond +the prison the whole of his past life.</p> + +<p>"Did you serve a term in prison before you came here?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Were you tried and convicted in New York?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Were you guilty?"</p> + +<p>Looking over the head of the little man, Ordway's gaze travelled slowly +across the upturned faces upon the floor of the house. Hardly a man +passed under his look whom he had not assisted once at least in the hour +of his need. "I saved that one from drink," he thought almost joyfully, +"that one from beggary—<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a>I stood side by side with that other in the +hour of his shame——"</p> + +<p>"Were you guilty?" repeated the high nasal voice in his ear.</p> + +<p>His gaze came quickly back, and as it passed over the head of Baxter, he +was conscious again of a throb of pity.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered for the last time. Then, while the silence lasted, he +turned from the platform and went out of the hall into the night.<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-b" id="CHAPTER_XI-b"></a>CHAPTER XI<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Between Man And Woman</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">H</span>E walked rapidly to the end of the street, and then slackened his pace +almost unconsciously as he turned into the country road. The night had +closed in a thick black curtain over the landscape, and the windows of +the Negroes' cabins burned like little still red flames along the +horizon. Straight ahead the road was visible as a pale, curving streak +across the darkness.</p> + +<p>A farmer, carrying a lantern, came down the path leading from the +fields, and hearing Ordway's footsteps in the road, flashed the light +suddenly into his face. Upon recognition there followed a cheerful +"good-night!" and the offer of the use of the lantern to Cedar Hill. +"It's a black night and you'll likely have trouble in keeping straight. +I've been to look after a sick cow, but I can feel my way up to the +house in two minutes."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," returned Ordway, smiling as the light shone full in his +face, "but my feet are accustomed to the road."</p> + +<p>He passed on, while the farmer turned at the gate by the roadside, to +shout cheerfully after him: "Well, good-night—Mayor!"</p> + +<p>The gate closed quickly, and the ray of the lantern darted like a pale +yellow moth across the grass.<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a></p> + +<p>As Ordway went on it seemed to him that the darkness became tangible, +enveloping—that he had to fight his way through it presently as through +water. The little red flames danced along the horizon until he wondered +if they were burning only in his imagination. He felt tired and dazed as +if his body had been beaten into insensibility, but the hour through +which he had just passed appeared to have left merely a fading +impression upon his brain. Not only had he ceased to care, he had ceased +to think of it. When he tried now to recall the manager of the cotton +mills, it was to remember, with aversion, his angry little eyes, his +high nasal voice, and the wart upon the end of his long nose. At the +instant these physical details were the only associations which the +man's name presented to his thoughts. The rest was something so +insignificant that it had escaped his memory. He felt in a vague way +that he was sorry for Baxter, yet this very feeling of sympathy bored +and annoyed him. It was plainly ridiculous to be sorry for a person as +rich, as fat, as well fed as his employer. Wherever he looked the little +red flames flickered and waved in the fields, and when he lifted his +eyes to the dark sky, he saw them come and go in short, scintillant +flashes, like fire struck from an anvil. They were in his brain, he +supposed, after all, and so was this tangible darkness, and so, too, was +this indescribable delicacy and lightness with which he moved. +Everything was in his brain, even his ridiculous pity for Baxter and the +angry-eyed little manager with<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> the wart on his long nose. He could see +these things distinctly, though he had forgotten everything that had +been so clear to him while he stood on the stage of the town hall. His +past life and the prison and even the illumination in which he had +remembered them so vividly were obscured now as if they, too, had been +received into the tangible darkness.</p> + +<p>From the road behind him the sound of footsteps reached him suddenly, +and he quickened his pace with an impulse, rather than a determination +of flight. But the faster he walked the faster came the even beat of the +footsteps, now rising, now falling with a rhythmic regularity in the +dust of the road. Once he glanced back, but he could see nothing because +of the encompassing blackness, and in the instant of his delay it seemed +to him that the pursuit gained steadily upon him, still moving with the +regular muffled beat of the footsteps in the thick dust. A horror of +recognition had come over him, and as he walked on breathlessly, now +almost running, it occurred to him, like an inspiration, that he might +drop aside into the fields and so let his pursuer pass on ahead. The +next instant he realised that the darkness could not conceal the abrupt +pause of his flight—that as those approaching footsteps fell on his +ears, so must the sound of his fall on the ears of the man behind him. +Then a voice called his name, and he stopped short, and stood, trembling +from head to foot, by the side of the road.</p> + +<p>"Smith!" cried the voice, "if it's you, Smith, for God's sake stop a +minute!"<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p> + +<p>"Yes, it's I," he answered, waiting, and a moment afterward the hand of +Banks reached out of the night and clasped his arm.</p> + +<p>"Hold on," said Banks, breathing hard, "I'm all blown."</p> + +<p>His laboured breath came with a struggling violence that died gradually +away, but while it lasted the strain of the meeting, the awkwardness of +the emotional crisis, seemed suddenly put off—suspended. Now in the +silence the tension became so great that, drawing slightly away from the +detaining hold, Ordway was about to resume his walk. At his first +movement, however, Banks clung the more firmly to his arm. "Oh, damn it, +Smith!" he burst out, and with the exclamation Ordway felt that the +touch of flesh and blood had reached to the terrible loneliness in which +he stood. In a single oath Banks had uttered the unutterable spirit of +prayer.</p> + +<p>"You followed me?" asked Ordway quietly, while the illusions of the +flight, the physical delicacy and lightness, the tangible darkness, the +little red flames in the fields, departed from him. With the first hand +that was laid on his own, his nature swung back into balance, and he +felt that he possessed at the moment a sanity that was almost sublime.</p> + +<p>"As soon as I could get out I came. There was such a crush," said Banks, +"I thought I'd catch up with you at once, but it was so black I couldn't +see my hand before me. In a little while I heard footsteps, so I kept +straight on."</p> + +<p>"I wish you hadn't, Banks."<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a></p> + +<p>"But I had to." His usually cheerful voice sounded hoarse and throaty. +"I ain't much of a chap at words, Smith, you know that, but I want just +to say that you're the best friend I ever had, and I haven't forgot +it—I haven't forgot it," he repeated, and blew his nose. "Nothing that +that darn fool of a manager said to-night can come between you and me," +he went on laboriously after a minute. "If you ever want my help, by +thunder, I'll go to hell and back again for you without a word."</p> + +<p>Stretching out his free hand Ordway laid it upon his friend's shoulder.</p> + +<p>"You're a first-rate chap, Banks," he said cheerfully, at which a loud +sob burst from Banks, who sought to disguise it the instant afterward in +a violent cough.</p> + +<p>"You're a first-rate chap," repeated Ordway gently, "and I'm glad, in +spite of what I said, that you came after me just now. I'm going away +to-morrow, you know, and it's probable that I shan't see you again."</p> + +<p>"But won't you stay on in Tappahannock? In two weeks all this will blow +over and things will be just what they were before."</p> + +<p>Ordway shook his head, a movement which Banks felt, though he did not +see it.</p> + +<p>"No, I'll go away, it's best," he answered, and though his voice had +dropped to a dull level there was still a cheerful sound to it, "I'll go +away and begin again in a new place."</p> + +<p>"Then I'll go, too," said Banks.<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a></p> + +<p>"What! and leave Milly? No, you won't come. Banks, you'll stay here."</p> + +<p>"But I'll see you sometimes, shan't I?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps?—that's likely, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's likely," repeated Banks, and fell silent from sheer weight +of sorrow. "At least you'll let me go with you to the station?" he said +at last, after a long pause in which he had been visited by one of those +acute flashes of sympathy which are to the heart what intuition is to +the intellect.</p> + +<p>"Why, of course," responded Ordway, more touched by the simple request +than he had been even by the greater loyalty. "You may do that, Banks, +and I'll thank you for it. And now go back to Tappahannock," he added, +"I must take the midday train and there are a few preparations I've +still to make."</p> + +<p>"But where will you go?" demanded Banks, swinging round again after he +had turned from him.</p> + +<p>"Where?" repeated Ordway blankly, and he added indifferently, "I hadn't +thought."</p> + +<p>"The midday train goes west," said Banks.</p> + +<p>"Then, I'll go west. It doesn't matter."</p> + +<p>Banks had already started off, when turning back suddenly, he caught +Ordway's hand and wrung it in a grip that hurt. Then without speaking +again, he hurried breathlessly in the direction from which he had come.</p> + +<p>A few steps beyond the cross-roads Ordway saw through the heavy foliage +the light in the dining-room at Cedar Hill. Then as he entered the +avenue,<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> he lost sight of it again, until he had rounded the curve that +swept up to the front porch. At his knock Emily opened the door, with a +lamp held in her hand, and he saw her face, surrounded by dim waves of +hair, shining pale and transparent in the glimmering circle of light. As +he followed her into the dining-room, he realised that after the family +had gone upstairs to bed, she had sat at her sewing under the lamp and +waited for his knock. At the knowledge a sense of comfort, of homeliness +came over him, and he felt all at once that his misery was not so great +as he had believed it to be a moment ago.</p> + +<p>"May I get you something?" she asked, placing the lamp upon the table +and lowering the wick that the flame might not shine on his pallid and +haggard face.</p> + +<p>He shook his head; then as she turned from him toward the hearth, he +followed her and stood looking down at the smouldering remains of a wood +fire. Her work-basket and a pile of white ruffles which she had been +hemming were on the table, but moved by a feeling of their utter +triviality in the midst of a tragedy she vaguely understood, she swept +them hurriedly into a chair, and came over to lay her hand upon his arm.</p> + +<p>"What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" she asked. Taking her hand from his +sleeve, he held it for an instant in his grasp, as if the pressure of +her throbbing palm against his revived some living current under the +outer deadness that enveloped him.</p> + +<p>"I am going away from Tappahannock to-morrow, Emily," he said.<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a></p> + +<p>"To-morrow?" she repeated, and laid her free hand upon his shoulder with +a soothing, motherly gesture—a gesture which changed their spiritual +relations to those of a woman and a child.</p> + +<p>"A man asked me three questions to-night," he went on quietly, yet in a +voice which seemed to feel a pang in every word it uttered. "He asked me +if my name was Daniel Smith, and I answered—no."</p> + +<p>As he hesitated, she lifted her face and smiled at him, with a smile +which he knew to be the one expression of love, of comprehension, that +she could offer. It was a smile which a mother might have bent upon a +child that was about to pass under the surgeon's knife, and it differed +from tears only in that it offered courage and not weakness.</p> + +<p>"He asked me if I had been in prison before I came to Tappahannock—and +I answered—yes."</p> + +<p>His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting his gaze from her hands +he looked straight into her wide-open eyes. The smile which she had +turned to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen there in the +cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were the only things about her which +seemed alive, and they appeared to him now not as eyes but as thoughts +made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed the hand which +enclosed her own.</p> + +<p>"I still believe," she said, and looked into his face.</p> + +<p>"But it is true," he replied slowly.</p> + +<p>"But it is not the whole truth," she answered, "and for that reason it +is half a lie."<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a></p> + +<p>"Yes, it is not the whole truth," he repeated, in his effort to catch +something of her bright courage.</p> + +<p>"Why should they judge you by that and by nothing else?" she demanded +with passion. "If that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock true +also?"</p> + +<p>"To you—to you," he answered, "but to-morrow everything will be +forgotten about me except the fact that because I had been in prison, I +have lived a lie."</p> + +<p>"You are wrong—oh, believe me, you are wrong," she said softly, while +her tears broke forth and streamed down her white face.</p> + +<p>"No," he returned patiently, as if weighing her words in his thoughts, +"I am right, and my life here is wasted now from the day I came. All +that I do from this moment will be useless. I must go away."</p> + +<p>"But where?" she questioned passionately, as Banks had questioned before +her.</p> + +<p>"Where?" he echoed, "I don't know—anywhere. The midday train goes +west."</p> + +<p>"And what will you do in the new place?" she asked through her tears.</p> + +<p>He shook his head as if the question hardly concerned him.</p> + +<p>"I shall begin again," he answered indifferently at last.</p> + +<p>She was turning hopelessly from him, when her eyes fell upon a slip of +yellow paper which Beverly had placed under a vase on the mantel, and +drawing<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> it out, she glanced at the address before giving it into +Ordway's hands.</p> + +<p>"This must have come for you in the afternoon," she said, "I did not see +it."</p> + +<p>Taking the telegram from her, he opened it slowly, and read the words +twice over.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p class="c">"Your father died last night. Will you come home?</p> + +<p class="r">"<span class="smcap">Richard Ordway</span>."</p> + +<p><a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_THIRD" id="BOOK_THIRD"></a>BOOK THIRD<br /><br /> +THE LARGER PRISON</h2> + +<p><a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-c" id="CHAPTER_I-c"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Return To Life</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>S the train rounded the long curve, Ordway leaned from the window and +saw spread before him the smiling battlefields that encircled Botetourt. +From the shadow and sunlight of the distance a wind blew in his face, +and he felt suddenly younger, fresher, as if the burden of the years had +been lifted from him. The Botetourt to which he was returning was the +place of his happiest memories; and closing his eyes to the landscape, +he saw Lydia standing under the sparrows that flew out from the ivied +walls of the old church. He met her pensive gaze; he watched her faint +smile under the long black feather in her hat.</p> + +<p>"His death was unexpected," said a strange voice in his ear, "but for +the past five years I've seen that he was a failing man."</p> + +<p>The next instant his thoughts had scattered like startled birds, and +without turning his head, he sat straining his ears to follow the +conversation that went on, above the roar of the train, in the seat +behind him.</p> + +<p>"Had a son, didn't he?" inquired the man who had not spoken. "What's +become of him, I'd like to know? I mean the chap who went to smash +somewhere in the North."<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a></p> + +<p>"Oh, he misappropriated trust funds and got found out and sent to +prison. When he came out, he went West, I heard, and struck a gold mine, +but, all the same, he left his wife and children for the old man to look +after. Ever seen his wife? Well, she's a downright saint, if there ever +lived one."</p> + +<p>"And yet he went wrong, the more's the pity."</p> + +<p>"It's a funny thing," commented the first speaker, who was evidently of +a philosophic bent, "but I've often noticed that a good wife is apt to +make a bad husband. It looks somehow as if male human nature, like the +Irish members, is obliged to sit on the Opposition bench. The only +example that ever counts with it, is an example that urges the other +way."</p> + +<p>"Well, what about this particular instance? I hope at least that she has +come into the old man's money?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody can tell, but it's generally believed that the two children will +get the most of it. The son left a boy and a girl when he went to +prison, you know."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's rather a pity, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't say—they've got good blood as well as bad, when it comes +to that. My daughter went to school with the girl, and she was said to +be, by long odds, the most popular member of her class. She graduated +last spring, and people tell me that she has turned out to be the +handsomest young woman in Botetourt."</p> + +<p>"Like the mother?"<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a></p> + +<p>"No, dark and tall, with those snapping blue eyes of her +grandmother's——"</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>So Alice was no longer the little girl in short white skirts, +outstanding like a ballet dancer's! There was a pang for him in the +thought, and he tried in vain to accustom himself to the knowledge that +she would meet him to-night as a woman, not as a child. He remembered +the morning when she had run out, as he passed up the staircase, to beg +him to come in to listen to her music lesson; and with the sound of the +stumbling scales in his ears, he felt again that terrible throbbing of +his pulses and the dull weight of anguish which had escaped at last in +an outburst of bitterness.</p> + +<p>With a jolting motion the train drew up into the little station, and +following the crowd that pressed through the door of the car, he emerged +presently into the noisy throng of Negro drivers gathered before the +rusty vehicles which were waiting beside the narrow pavement. Pushing +aside the gaily decorated whips which encircled him at his approach, he +turned, after a moment's hesitation, into one of the heavily shaded +streets, which seemed to his awakened memory to have remained unaltered +since the afternoon upon which he had left the town almost twenty years +ago. The same red and gold maples stirred gently above his head; the +same silent, green-shuttered houses were withdrawn behind glossy +clusters of microphylla rose-creepers. Even the same shafts of sunshine +slanted across<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> the roughly paved streets, which were strewn thickly +with yellowed leaves. It was to Ordway as if a pleasant dream had +descended upon the place, and had kept unchanged the particular golden +stillness of that autumn afternoon when he had last seen it. All at once +he realised that what Tappahannock needed was not progress, but age; and +he saw for the first time that the mellowed charm of Botetourt was +relieved against the splendour of an historic background. Not the +distinction of the present, but the enchantment of the past, produced +this quality of atmosphere into which the thought of Tappahannock +entered like a vulgar discord. The dead, not the living, had built these +walls, had paved these streets, had loved and fought and starved beneath +these maples; and it was the memory of such solemn things that steeped +the little town in its softening haze of sentiment. A thrill of +pleasure, more intense than any he had known for months, shot through +his heart, and the next instant he acknowledged with a sensation of +shame that he was returning, not only to his people, but to his class. +Was this all that experience, that humiliation, could do for one—that +he should still find satisfaction in the refinements of habit, in the +mere external pleasantness of life? As he passed the old church he saw +that the sparrows still fluttered in and out of the ivy, which was full +of twittering cries like a gigantic bird's nest, and he had suddenly a +ghostly feeling as if he were a moving shadow under shadowy trees and +unreal shafts of sunlight. A<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> moment later he almost held his breath +lest the dark old church and the dreamy little town should vanish before +his eyes and leave him alone in the outer space of shadows.</p> + +<p>Coming presently under a row of poplars to the street in which stood his +father's house—a square red brick building with white Doric columns to +the portico—he saw with a shock of surprise that the funeral carriages +were standing in a solemn train for many blocks. Until that moment it +had not occurred to him that he might come in time to look on the dead +face of the man who had not forgiven him while he was alive; and at +first he shivered and shrank back as if hesitating to enter the door +that had been so lately closed against him. An old Negro driver, who sat +on the curbing, wiping the broad black band on his battered silk hat +with a red bandanna handkerchief, turned to speak to him with mingled +sympathy and curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Ef'n you don' hurry up, you'll miss de bes' er hit, marster," he +remarked. "Dey's been gwine on a pow'ful long time, but I'se been +a-lisenin' wid all my years en I ain' hyearn nairy a sh'ut come thoo' de +do'. Lawd! Lawd! dey ain' mo'n like I mo'n, caze w'en dey buried my +Salviny I set up sech a sh'uttin' dat I bu'st two er my spar ribs clean +ter pieces."</p> + +<p>Still muttering to himself he fell to polishing his old top hat more +vigorously, while Ordway quickened his steps with an effort, and +entering the gate, ascended the brick walk to the white steps of the +portico.<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> A wide black streamer hung from the bell handle, so pushing +open the door, which gave noiselessly before him, he entered softly into +the heavy perfume of flowers. From the room on his right, which he +remembered dimly as the formal drawing-room in the days of his earliest +childhood, he heard a low voice speaking as if in prayer; and looking +across the threshold, he saw a group of black robed persons kneeling in +the faint light which fell through the chinks in the green shutters. The +intense odour of lilies awoke in him a sharp anguish, which had no +association in his thoughts with his father's death, and which he could +not explain until the incidents of his mother's funeral crowded, one by +one, into his memory. The scent of lilies was the scent of death in his +nostrils, and he saw again the cool, high-ceiled room in the midst of +which her coffin had stood, and through the open windows the wide green +fields in which spring was just putting forth. That was nearly thirty +years ago, yet the emotion he felt at this instant was less for his +father who had died yesterday than for his mother whom he had lost while +he was still a child.</p> + +<p>At his entrance no one had observed him, and while the low prayer went +on, he stood with bowed head searching among the veiled figures about +the coffin for the figure of his wife. Was that Lydia, he wondered, +kneeling there in her mourning garments with her brow hidden in her +clasped hands? And as he looked at her it seemed to him that she had +never lifted the black veil which she had lowered<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a> over her face at +their last parting. Though he was outwardly now among his own people, +though the physical distance which divided him from his wife and +children was barely a dozen steps, the loneliness which oppressed him +was like the loneliness of the prison; and he understood that his real +home was not here, but in Tappahannock—that his true kinship was with +the labourers whose lives he had shared and whose bitter poverty he had +lessened. In the presence of death he was conscious of the space, the +luxury, the costly funeral wreaths that surrounded him; and these +external refinements of living produced in him a sensation of shyness, +as if he had no longer a rightful place in the class in which he had +been born. Against his will he grew ashamed of his coarse clothes and +his roughened hands; and with this burning sense of humiliation a wave +of homesickness for Tappahannock swept over him—for the dusty little +town, with its hot, close smells and for the blue tent of sky which was +visible from his ivied window at Cedar Hill. Then he remembered, with a +pang, that even from Tappahannock he had been cast out. For the second +time since his release from prison, he felt cowed and beaten, like an +animal that is driven to bay. The dead man in his coffin was more +closely woven into his surroundings than was the living son who had +returned to his inheritance.</p> + +<p>As the grave faces looked back at him at the end of the prayer, he +realised that they belonged to branches, near or distant, of the Ordway +connections.<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> With the first glimpse of his figure in the doorway there +came no movement of recognition; then he observed a slight start of +surprise—or was it dismay? He knew that Lydia had seen him at last, +though he did not look at her. It appeared to him suddenly that his +return was an insult to her as well as to the dead man who lay there, +helpless yet majestic, in the centre of the room. Flight seemed to him +at the instant the only amendment in his power, and he had made an +impulsive start back from the threshold, when the strained hush was +broken by a word that left him trembling and white as from a blow.</p> + +<p>"Father!" cried a voice, in the first uncontrollable joy of recognition; +and with an impetuous rush through the crowd that surrounded her, Alice +threw herself into his arms.</p> + +<p>A mist swam before his eyes and he lost the encircling faces in a blur +of tears; but as she clung to his breast and he held her close, he was +conscious of a fierce joy that throbbed, like a physical pain, in his +throat. The word which she had uttered had brought his soul up from the +abyss as surely as if it were lifted by the hands of angels; and with +each sobbing breath of happiness she drew, he felt that her nature was +knit more firmly into his. The repulse he had received the moment before +was forgotten, and while he held her drawn apart in the doorway, the +silence of Lydia, and even the reproach of the dead man, had ceased to +affect him. In that breathless, hysterical rush to his embrace Alice +saved him to-day as Emily's outstretched hand had saved him three years +before.<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a></p> + +<p>"They did not tell me! Oh, why, did they not tell me?" cried the girl, +lifting her head from his breast, and the funeral hush that shrouded the +room could not keep back the ecstasy in her voice. Even when after the +first awkward instant the others gathered around him, nervous, effusive, +friendly, Alice still clung to his hands, kissing first one and then the +other and then both together, with the exquisite joyous abandonment of a +child.</p> + +<p>Lydia had kissed him, weeping softly under her long black veil, and +hiding her pale, lovely face the moment afterwards in her clasped hands. +Dick, his son, had touched his cheek with his fresh young mouth; Richard +Ordway, his father's brother, had shaken him by the hand; and the +others, one and all, kinsmen and kinswomen, had given him their +embarrassed, yet kindly, welcome. But it was on Alice that his eyes +rested, while he felt his whole being impelled toward her in a recovered +rapture that was almost one of worship. In her dark beauty, with her +splendid hair, her blue, flashing Ordway eyes, and her lips which were +too red and too full for perfection, she appeared to him the one vital +thing among the mourning figures in this house of death. Her delight +still ran in little tremors through her limbs, and when a moment later, +she slipped her hand through his arm, and followed Lydia and Richard +Ordway down the steps, and into one of the waiting carriages, he felt +that her bosom quivered with the emotion which the solemn presence of +his father had forced back from her lips.<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-c" id="CHAPTER_II-c"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">His Own Place</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span>OME hours later when he sat alone in his room, he told himself that he +could never forget the drive home from the cemetery in the closed +carriage. Lydia had raised her veil slightly, as if in a desire for air, +and as she sat with her head resting against the lowered blind, he could +trace the delicate, pale lines of her mouth and chin, and a single wisp +of her ash blond hair which lay heavily upon her forehead. Not once had +she spoken, not once had she met his eyes of her own accord, and he had +discovered that she leaned almost desperately upon the iron presence of +Richard Ordway. Had his sin, indeed, crushed her until she had not power +to lift her head? he asked passionately, with a sharper remorse than he +had ever felt.</p> + +<p>"I am glad that you were able to come in time," Richard Ordway remarked +in his cold, even voice; and after this the rattle of the wheels on the +cobblestones in the street was the only sound which broke the death-like +stillness in which they sat. No, he could never forget it, nor could he +forget the bewildering effect of the sunshine when they opened the +carriage door. Beside the curbing a few idle Negroes were left of the +crowd that had gathered to watch<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> the coffin borne through the gate, and +the pavement was thick with dust, as if many hurrying feet had tramped +by since the funeral had passed. As they entered the house the scent of +lilies struck him afresh with all the agony of its associations. The +shutters were still closed, the chairs were still arranged in their +solemn circle, the streamer of crape, hurriedly untied from the bell +handle, still lay where it had been thrown on the library table; and as +he crossed the threshold, he trod upon some fading lilies which had +fallen, unnoticed, from a funeral wreath. Then, in the dining-room, +Richard Ordway poured out a glass of whiskey, and in the very instant +when he was about to raise it to his lips, he put it hurriedly down and +pushed the decanter aside with an embarrassed and furtive movement.</p> + +<p>"Do you feel the need of a cup of coffee, Daniel?" he asked in a +pleasant, conciliatory tone, "or will you have only a glass of seltzer?"</p> + +<p>"I am not thirsty, thank you," Daniel responded shortly, and the next +moment he asked Alice to show him the room in which he would stay.</p> + +<p>With laughing eagerness she led him up the great staircase to the +chamber in which he had slept as a boy.</p> + +<p>"It's just next to Dick's," she said, "and mother's and mine are +directly across the hall. At first we thought of putting you in the red +guest-room, but that's only for visitors, so we knew you would be sure +to like this better."</p> + +<p><a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a>"Yes, I'll like this better," he responded, and then as she would have +moved away, he caught her, with a gesture of anguish, back to his arms.</p> + +<p>"You remember me, Alice, my child? you have not forgotten me?"</p> + +<p>She laughed merrily, biting her full red lips the moment afterward to +check the sound.</p> + +<p>"Why, how funny of you! I was quite a big girl—don't you +remember?—when you went away. It was so dull afterwards that I cried +for days, and that was why I was so overjoyed when mamma told me you +would come back. It was never dull when you lived at home with us, +because you would always take me to the park or the circus whenever I +grew tired of dolls. Nobody did that after you went away and I used to +cry and kick sometimes thinking that they would tell you and bring you +back."</p> + +<p>"And you remembered me chiefly because of the park and the circus?" he +asked, smiling for joy, as he kissed her hand which lay on his sleeve.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I never forget anything, you know. Mamma even says that about me. I +remember my first nurse and the baker's boy with red cheeks who used to +bring me pink cakes when I was three years old. No, I never forget—I +never forget," she repeated with vehemence.</p> + +<p>Animation had kindled her features into a beauty of colour which made +her eyes bluer and brighter and softened the too intense contrast of her +full, red lips.</p> + +<p>"All these years I've hoped that you would come back and that things +would change," she said impulsively,<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> her words tripping rapidly over +one another. "Everything is so dreadfully grave and solemn here. +Grandfather hated noise so that he would hardly let me laugh if he was +in the house. Then mamma's health is wrecked, and she lies always on the +sofa, and never goes out except for a drive sometimes when it is fair."</p> + +<p>"Mamma's health is wrecked?" he repeated inquiringly, as she paused.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's what everybody says about her—her health is wrecked. And +Uncle Richard is hardly any better, for he has a wife whose health is +wrecked also. And Dick—he isn't sick, but he might as well be, he is so +dull and plodding and over nice——"</p> + +<p>"And you Alice?"</p> + +<p>"I? Oh, I'm not dull, but I'm unhappy—awfully—you'll find that out. I +like fun and pretty clothes and new people and strange places. I want to +marry and have a home of my own and a lot of rings like mamma's, and a +carriage with two men on the box, and to go to Europe to buy things +whenever I please. That's the way Molly Burridge does and she was only +two classes ahead of me. How rough your hands are, papa, and what a +funny kind of shirt you have on. Do people dress like that where you +came from? Well, I don't like it, so you'll have to change."</p> + +<p>She had gone out at last, forgetting to walk properly in her mourning +garments, tripping into a run on the threshold, and then checking +herself with a prim, mocking look over her shoulder. Not until the door<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> +had closed with a slam behind her black skirt, did Ordway's gaze turn +from following her and fix itself on the long mirror between the +windows, in which he could see, as Alice had seen the moment before, his +roughened hands, his carelessly trimmed hair and his common clothes. He +was dressed as the labourers dressed on Sundays in Tappahannock; though, +he remembered now, that in that crude little town he had been +conspicuous for the neatness, almost the jauntiness, of his attire. As +he laid out presently on the bed his few poor belongings, he told +himself, with determination, that for Alice's sake even this must be +changed. He was no longer of the class of Baxter, of Banks, of Mrs. +Twine. All that was over, and he must return now into the world in which +his wife and his children had kept a place. To do Alice honour—at least +not to do her further shame—would become from this day, he realised, +the controlling motive of his life. Then, as he looked down at the +coarse, unshapely garments upon the delicate counterpane, he knew that +Daniel Smith and Daniel Ordway were now parted forever.</p> + +<p>He was still holding one of the rough blue shirts in his hand, when a +servant entered to inquire if there was anything that he might need. The +man, a bright young mulatto, was not one of the old family slaves; and +while he waited, alert and intelligent, upon the threshold, Ordway was +seized by a nervous feeling that he was regarded with curiosity and +suspicion by the black rolling eyes.<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p> + +<p>"Where is uncle Boaz? He used to wait upon me," he asked.</p> + +<p>"He's daid, suh. He drapped down daid right on de do' step."</p> + +<p>"And Aunt Mirandy?"</p> + +<p>"She's daid, too, en' I'se her chile."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are, are you?" said Ordway, and he had again the sensation that +he was watched through inquisitive eyes. "That is all now," he added +presently, "you may go," and it was with a long breath of relief that he +saw the door close after the figure of Aunt Mirandy's son.</p> + +<p>When a little later he dressed himself and went out into the hall, he +found, to his annoyance, that he walked with a cautious and timid step +like that of a labourer who has stumbled by accident into surroundings +of luxury. As he descended the wide curving staircase, with his hand on +the mahogany balustrade, the sound of his footsteps seemed to +reverberate disagreeably through the awful funereal silence in which he +moved. If he could only hear Alice's laugh, Dick's whistle, or even the +garrulous flow of the Negro voices that he had listened to in his +childhood. With a pang he recalled that Uncle Boaz was dead, and his +heart swelled as he remembered how often he had passed up and down this +same staircase on the old servant's shoulder. At that age he had felt no +awe of the shining emptiness and the oppressive silence. Then he had +believed himself to be master of all at which he looked; now he was +conscious of that complete detachment from his<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> surroundings which +produces almost a sense of the actual separation of soul and body.</p> + +<p>Reaching the hall below, he found that some hurried attempt had been +made to banish or to conceal the remaining signs of the funeral. The +doors and windows were open, the shreds of crape had disappeared from +the carpet, and the fading lilies had been swept out upon the graveled +walk in the yard. Upon entering the library, which invited him by its +rows of calf-bound books, he discovered that Richard Ordway was +patiently awaiting him in the large red leather chair which had once +been the favourite seat of his father.</p> + +<p>"Before I go home, I think it better to have a little talk with you, +Daniel," began the old man, as he motioned to a sofa on the opposite +side of the Turkish rug before the open grate. "It has been a peculiar +satisfaction to me to feel that I was able to bring you back in time for +the service."</p> + +<p>"I came," replied Daniel slowly, "as soon as I received your telegram." +He hesitated an instant and then went on in the same quiet tone in which +the other had spoken, "Do you think, though, that he would have wished +me to come at all?"</p> + +<p>After folding the newspaper which he had held in his hand, Richard laid +it, with a courteous gesture upon the table beside him. As he sat there +with his long limbs outstretched and relaxed, and his handsome, severe +profile resting against the leather back of his chair, the younger man +was impressed, as if for the first time, by the curious mixture of<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> +strength and refinement in his features. He was not only a cleverer man +than his brother had been, he was gentler, smoother, more distinguished +on every side. In spite of his reserve, it was evident that he had +wished to be kind—that he wished it still; yet this kindness was so +removed from the ordinary impulse of humanity that it appeared to his +nephew to be in a way as detached and impersonal as an abstract virtue. +The very lines of his face were drawn with the precision, the finality, +of a geometrical figure. To imagine that they could melt into tenderness +was as impossible as to conceive of their finally crumbling into dust.</p> + +<p>"He would have wished it—he did wish it," he said, after a minute. "I +talked with him only a few hours before his death, and he told me then +that it was necessary to send for you—that he felt that he had +neglected his duty in not bringing you home immediately after your +release. He saw at last that it would have been far better to have acted +as I strongly advised at the time."</p> + +<p>"It was his desire, then, that I should return?" asked Daniel, while a +stinging moisture rose to his eyes at the thought that he had not looked +once upon the face of the dead man. "I wish I had known."</p> + +<p>A slight surprise showed in the other's gesture of response, and he +glanced hastily away as he might have done had he chanced to surprise +his nephew while he was still without his boots or his shirt.</p> + +<p>"I think he realised before he died that the individual has no right to +place his personal pride above<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> the family tie," he resumed quietly, +ignoring the indecency of emotion as he would have ignored, probably, +the unclothed body. "I had said much the same thing to him eight years +ago, when I told him that he would realise before his death that he was +not morally free to act as he had done with regard to you. As a matter +of fact," he observed in his trained, legal voice, "the family is, after +all, the social unit, and each member is as closely related as the eye +to the ear or the right arm to the left. It is illogical to speak of +denying one's flesh and blood, for it can't be done."</p> + +<p>So this was why they had received him. He turned his head away, and his +gaze rested upon the boughs of the great golden poplar beyond the +window.</p> + +<p>"It is understood, then," he asked "that I am to come back—back to this +house to live?"</p> + +<p>When he had finished, but not until then, Richard Ordway looked at him +again with his dry, conventional kindness. "If you are free," he began, +altering the word immediately lest it should suggest painful +associations to his companion's mind, "I mean if you have no other +binding engagements, no decided plans for the future."</p> + +<p>"No, I have made no other plans. I was working as a bookkeeper in a +tobacco warehouse in Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>"As a bookkeeper?" repeated Richard, as he glanced down inquiringly at +the other's hands.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I worked sometimes out of doors, but the position I held was that +of confidential clerk."<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a></p> + +<p>The old man nodded amiably, accepting the explanation with a readiness +for which the other was not prepared. "I was about to offer you some +legal work in my office," he remarked. "Dry and musty stuff, I fear it +is, but it's better—isn't it?—for a man to have some kind of +occupation——"</p> + +<p>Though the words were uttered pleasantly enough, it seemed to the +younger man that the concluding and significant phrase was left +unspoken. "Some kind of occupation to keep you out of temptation" was +what Richard had meant to say—what he had withheld, from consideration, +if not from humanity. While the horror of the whole situation closed +over Daniel like a mental darkness, he remembered the sensitive +shrinking of Lydia on the drive home, the prying, inquisitive eyes of +the mulatto servant, the furtive withdrawal of the whiskey by the man +who sat opposite to him. With all its attending humiliation and despair, +there rushed upon him the knowledge that by the people of his own +household he was regarded still as a creature to be restrained and +protected at every instant. Though outwardly they had received him, +instinctively they had repulsed him. The thing which stood between them +and himself was neither of their making nor of his. It belonged to their +very nature and was woven in with their inner fibre. It was a creation, +not of the individual, but of the race, and the law by which it existed +was rooted deep in the racial structure. Tradition, inheritance, +instinct—these were the barriers through which he had broken and which +had<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> closed like the impenetrable sea-gates behind him. Though he were +to live on day by day as a saint among them, they could never forget: +though he were to shed his heart's blood for them, they would never +believe. To convince them of his sincerity was more hopeless, he +understood, than to reanimate their affection. In their very forgiveness +they had not ceased to condemn him, and in the shelter which they +offered him there would be always a hidden restraint. With the thought +it seemed to him that he was stifling in the closeness of the +atmosphere, that he must break away again, that he must find air and +freedom, though it cost him all else besides. The possibility of his own +weakness seemed created in him by their acceptance of it; and he felt +suddenly a terror lest the knowledge of their suspicion should drive him +to justify it by his future in Botetourt.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is better for me to work," he said aloud. "I hope that I shall +be able to make myself of some small use in your office."</p> + +<p>"There's no doubt of that, I'm sure," responded Richard, in his +friendliest tone.</p> + +<p>"It is taken for granted, then, that I shall live on here with my wife +and children?"</p> + +<p>"We have decided that it is best. But as for your wife, you must +remember that she is very much of an invalid. Do not forget that she has +had a sad—a most tragic life."</p> + +<p>"I promise you that I shall not forget it—make your mind easy."</p> + +<p>After this it seemed to Daniel that there was<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> nothing further to be +said; but before rising from his chair, the old man sat for a moment +with his thin lips tightly folded and a troubled frown ruffling his +forehead. In the dim twilight the profile outlined against the leather +chair appeared to have been ground rather than roughly hewn out of +granite.</p> + +<p>"About the disposition of the estate, there were some changes made +shortly before your father's death," remarked Richard presently. "In the +will itself you were not mentioned; a provision was made for your wife +and the bulk of the property left to your two children. But in a +codicil, which was added the day before your father died, he directed +that you should be given a life interest in the house as well as in +investments to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. +This is to be paid you in the form of a quarterly allowance, which will +yield you a personal income of about six thousand a year."</p> + +<p>"I understand," replied the younger man, without emotion, almost without +surprise. At the moment he was wondering by what name his father had +alluded to him in his will. Had he spoken of him as "my son," or merely +as "Daniel Ordway"?</p> + +<p>"That is all, I think," remarked the other, with a movement which +expressed, in spite of him, a sensation of relief. With a smile which +appeared to be little more than a muscular contraction of his mouth, he +held out his hand and stood for a moment, vainly searching for a phrase +or a word that would fit the delicate requirements of the occasion.<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, I shall never cease to be thankful that you were with us at the +cemetery," he said at last in a tone which was a patent admission that +he had failed. Then, with a kindly inclination of his head, he released +the hand he held and passed at his rapid, yet dignified step out of the +house.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-c" id="CHAPTER_III-c"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Outward Pattern</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE front door had hardly closed when a breath of freshness blew into +the library with the entrance of Alice, and a moment afterwards the +butler rolled back the mahogany doors of the dining-room and they saw +the lighted candles and the chrysanthemums upon the dinner table.</p> + +<p>"We hardly ever dress," said Alice, slipping her hand through his arm, +"I wish we did."</p> + +<p>"Well, if you'll only pardon these clothes to-night I'll promise to call +on the tailor before breakfast," he returned, smiling, conscious that he +watched in anxiety lest the look of delight in his presence should +vanish from her face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter now, because we're in the deepest grief—aren't +we?—and mamma isn't coming down. She wants to see you, by the way, just +for a minute when you go upstairs. It is to be just for a minute, I was +to be very particular about that, as she is broken down. I wonder why +they have put so many covers. There is nobody but you and Dick. I asked +Uncle Richard, but he said that he wouldn't stay. It's just as well he +didn't—he's so dreadfully dull, isn't he, papa?"</p> + +<p>"All I wish is that I were dull in Uncle Richard's<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a> way," remarked Dick, +with his boyish air of superiority, "I'd be the greatest lawyer in the +state then, when my turn came."</p> + +<p>"And you'd be even more tiresome than you are now," retorted the girl +with a flash of irritation which brought out three fine, nervous +wrinkles on her delicate forehead.</p> + +<p>"Well, I shouldn't have your temper anyway," commented Dick +imperturbably, as he ate his soup. "Do you remember, papa, how Alice +used to bite and scratch as a baby? She'd like to behave exactly that +way now if she weren't so tall."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know Alice better than you do," said Ordway, in a voice which he +tried to make cheerful. The girl sat on his right, and while she choked +back her anger, he reached out and catching her hand, held it against +his cheek. "We stand together, Alice and I," he said softly—"Alice and +I."</p> + +<p>As he repeated the words a wave of joy rose in his heart, submerging the +disappointment, the bitterness, the hard despair, of the last few hours. +Here also, as well as in Tappahannock, he found awaiting him his +appointed task.</p> + +<p>Dick laughed pleasantly, preserving always the unshakable +self-possession which reminded his father of Richard Ordway. He was a +good boy, Daniel knew, upright, honest, manly, all the things which his +grandfather and his great-grandfather had been before him.</p> + +<p>"Then you'll have to stand with Geoffrey Heath,"<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> he said jestingly, +"and, by Jove, I don't think I'd care for his company."</p> + +<p>"Geoffrey Heath?" repeated Ordway inquiringly, with his eyes on his +daughter, who sat silent and angry, biting her lower lip. Her mouth, +which he had soon discovered to be her least perfect feature, was at the +same time her most expressive one. At her slightest change of mood, he +watched it tremble into a smile or a frown, and from a distance it was +plainly the first thing one noticed about her face. Now, as she sat +there, with her eyes on her plate, her vivid lips showed like a splash +of carmine in the lustreless pallor of her skin.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's one of Alice's chums," returned Dick with his merciless +youthful sneer, "she has a pretty lot of them, too, though he is by long +odds the worst."</p> + +<p>"Well, he's rich enough anyway," protested Alice defiantly, "he keeps +beautiful horses and sends me boxes of candy, and I don't care a bit for +the rest."</p> + +<p>"Who is he, by the way?" asked Daniel. "There was a family of Heaths who +lived near us in the country when I was a boy. Is he one of these?"</p> + +<p>"He's the son of old Rupert Heath, who made a million out of some panic +in stocks. Uncle Richard says the father was all right, but he's tried +his best to break up Alice's craze about Geoffrey. But let her once get +her nose to the wind and nobody can do anything with her."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can, can't I, darling?" asked Ordway, smiling in spite of a +jealous pang. The appeal of the<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a> girl to him was like the appeal of the +finer part of his own nature. Her temptations he recognised as the old +familiar temptations of his youth, and the kinship between them seemed +at the moment something deeper and more enduring than the tie of blood. +Yet the thought that she was his daughter awoke in him a gratitude that +was almost as acute as pain. The emptiness of his life was filled +suddenly to over-flowing, and he felt again that he had found here as he +had found at Tappahannock both his mission and his reward.</p> + +<p>When dinner was over he left the boy and girl in the library and went +slowly, and with a nervous hesitation, upstairs to the room in which +Lydia was lying on her couch, with a flower-decked tray upon the little +inlaid table beside her. As he entered the room something in the +luxurious atmosphere—in the amber satin curtains, the white bearskin +rugs, the shining mirrors between the windows—recalled the early years +of his marriage, and as he remembered them, he realised for the first +time the immensity of the change which divided his present existence +from his past. The time had been when he could not separate his inner +life from his surroundings, and with the thought he saw in his memory +the bare cleanliness of the blue guest-room at Cedar Hill—with its +simple white bed, its rag carpet, its faded sampler worked in blue +worsteds. That place had become as a sanctuary to him now, for it was +there that he had known his most perfect peace, his completest +reconciliation with God.<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a></p> + +<p>As he entered the room Lydia raised herself slightly upon her elbow, and +without turning her head, nervously pushed back a white silk shawl which +she had thrown over her knees. A lamp with an amber shade cast its light +on her averted profile, and he noticed that its perfect outline, its +serene loveliness, was untouched by suffering. Already he had discovered +those almost imperceptible furrows between Alice's eyebrows, but when +Lydia looked up at him at last, he saw that her beautiful forehead, +under its parting of ash blond hair, was as smooth as a child's. Was it +merely the Madonna-like arrangement of her hair, after all, he wondered, +not without bitterness, that had bestowed upon her that appealing +expression of injured innocence?</p> + +<p>"You wished to speak to me, Alice said," he began with an awkward +gesture, acutely conscious, as he stood there, of the amber light in the +room, of the shining waves of her hair, of the delicate perfume which +floated from the gold-topped boxes upon her dressing-table. An oval +mirror above the mantel gave back to him the reflection of his own +roughly clad figure, and the violent contrast between himself and his +surroundings stung him into a sense of humiliation that was like a +physical smart.</p> + +<p>"I thought it better to speak to you—Uncle Richard and Dick advised me +to——" she broke off in a gentle confusion, lifting her lovely, pensive +eyes for the first time to his face.</p> + +<p>"Of course it is better, Lydia," he answered gravely. "You must let me +know what you wish—<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a>you must tell me quite frankly just what you would +rather that I should do——"</p> + +<p>The look of gratitude in her face gave him a sudden inexplicable pang.</p> + +<p>"I am hardly more than an invalid," she said in a voice that had grown +firm and sweet, "Uncle Richard will tell you——"</p> + +<p>Her reliance upon Richard Ordway aroused in him a passion of resentment, +and for an instant the primitive man in him battled hotly against the +renunciation his lips had made.</p> + +<p>"I know, I understand," he said hurriedly at last. "I appreciate it all +and I shall do whatever is in my power to make it easier for you." As he +looked at her bowed head a wave of remorse rose in his breast and swept +down, one by one, the impulses of anger, of pride, of +self-righteousness. "O my dear, my dear, don't you think I know what I +have done to you?" he asked, and going a step toward her, he fell on his +knees beside the couch and kissed passionately the hand that lay in her +lap. "Don't you think I know that I have ruined your life?"</p> + +<p>For a moment her eyes dwelt thoughtfully upon his, and she let her hand +lie still beneath his remorseful kisses, until her withdrawal of it had +lost any appearance of haste or of discourtesy.</p> + +<p>"Then you will not object to my living on in this way? You will not seek +to change anything? You will——" She hesitated and broke off, not +impulsively, but with the same clear, sweet voice in which she had put +her question.<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a></p> + +<p>Lifting his head, he looked up at her from his knees, and the dumb +loneliness in his eyes caused her at last to drop her own to the rug +upon which he knelt.</p> + +<p>"If you will only let me care for you—serve you—work for you," he +implored brokenly. "If you will only let me make up, however poorly, +something of what you have suffered."</p> + +<p>A vague discomfort, produced in her by the intensity of his gaze, moved +her to draw slightly away from him, while she turned restlessly on her +pillows. At the first shade of perplexity, of annoyance, that showed in +her face, he felt, with a terrible power of intuition, that she was +seeking in vain to estimate each of his heartbroken words at its full +value—to read calmly by the light of experience the passion for +atonement to which his lips had tried hopelessly to give expression. The +wall of personality rose like a visible object between them. He might +beat against it in desperation until his strength was gone, yet he knew +that it would remain forever impenetrable, and through its thickness +there would pass only the loud, unmeaning sound of each other's voice.</p> + +<p>"Have you lost all love for me, Lydia?" he asked. "Have you even +forgotten that I am the father of your children?"</p> + +<p>As soon as his words were uttered, he stumbled to his feet, horrified by +the effect upon her. A change that was like a spasm of physical nausea +had shaken her limbs, and he felt rather than saw that she had shrunk +from him, convulsed and quivering, until<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> she was crushed powerless +against the back of the sofa on which she lay. Her whole attitude, he +realised, was the result, not of a moral judgment, but of a purely +physical antipathy. Her horror of him had become instinctive, and she +was no more responsible for its existence than a child is responsible +for the dread aroused in it by the goblins of nursery rhymes. His life +as a convict had not only unclassed him in her eyes, it had put him +entirely outside and below the ordinary relations of human beings. To +his wife he must remain forever an object of pity, perhaps, but of +intense loathing and fear also.</p> + +<p>The wave of remorse turned to bitterness on his lips, and all the +tenderer emotions he had felt when he knelt by her side—the +self-reproach, the spiritual yearning, the passion for goodness, all +these were extinguished in the sense of desolation which swept over him.</p> + +<p>"Don't be afraid," he said coldly, "I shall not touch you."</p> + +<p>"It was nothing—a moment's pain," she answered, in a wistful, +apologetic voice.</p> + +<p>She was playing nervously with the fringe of the silk shawl, and he +stood for a minute in silence while he watched her long, slender fingers +twine themselves in and out of the tasseled ends. Then turning aside she +pushed away the coffee service on the little table as if its fragrance +annoyed her.</p> + +<p>"Is it in your way? Do you wish it removed?" he inquired, and when she +had nodded in reply, he<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a> lifted the tray and carried it in the direction +of the door. "Don't be afraid. It is all right," he repeated as he went +out.</p> + +<p>Back in his own room again, he asked himself desperately if this +existence could be possible? Would it not be better for him to lose +himself a second time—to throw in his lot with a lower class, since his +own had rejected him? Flinging himself on the floor beside the window, +he pressed his forehead against the white painted wood as if the outward +violence could deaden the throbbing agony he felt within. Again he smelt +the delicate, yet intense perfume of Lydia's chamber; again he saw her +shrinking from him until she lay crushed and white against the back of +the sofa; again he watched her features contract with the instinctive +repulsion she could not control. The pitiful deprecating gesture with +which she had murmured: "It is nothing—a moment's pain," was seared +forever like the mark from a burning iron into his memory.</p> + +<p>"No, no—it cannot be—it is impossible," he said suddenly aloud. And +though he had not the strength to frame the rest of his thought into +words, he knew that the impossible thing he meant was this life, this +torture, this slow martyrdom day by day without hope and without end +except in death. After all there was a way of escape, so why should it +be closed to him? What were these people to him beside those others whom +he might yet serve—the miserable, the poor, the afflicted who would +take from him the gifts which his own had rejected?<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a> What duty remained? +What obligation? What responsibility? Step by step he retraced the +nineteen years of his marriage, and he understood for the first time, +that Lydia had given him on her wedding day nothing of herself beyond +the gentle, apologetic gesture which had followed that evening her +involuntary repulsion. From the beginning to the end she had presided +always above, not shared in his destiny. She had wanted what he could +give, but not himself, and when he could give nothing more she had shown +that she wanted him no longer. While he knelt there, still pressing his +forehead against the window sill, the image of her part in his life rose +out of the darkness of his mind, which opened and closed over it, and he +saw her fixed, shining and immovable, to receive his offerings, like +some heathen deity above the sacrificial altar.</p> + +<p>The next instant the image faded and was replaced by Emily as she had +looked at him on that last evening with her soft, comforting gaze. The +weakness of self pity came over him, and he asked himself in the +coward's luxury of hopeless questioning, what Emily would have done had +she stood to him in Lydia's place? He saw her parting from him with her +bright courage at the prison doors; he saw her meeting him with her +smile of welcome and of forgiveness when he came out. As once before he +had risen to the vision of service, so now in the agony of his +humiliation he was blessed at last with the understanding of love.</p> + +<p>For many minutes he knelt there motionless by<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> the open window, beyond +which he could see the dimly lighted town on which a few drops of rain +had begun to fall. The faint perfume of lilies came up to him from the +walk below, where the broken sprays swept from the house were fading +under the slow, soft rain. With the fragrance the image of Emily +dissolved as in a mist to reappear the minute afterwards in a more +torturing and human shape. He saw her now with her bright dark hair +blown into little curls on her temples, with her radiant brown eyes that +penetrated him with their soft, yet animated glance. The vigorous grace +of her figure, as he had seen it outlined in her scant blue cotton gown +against the background of cedars, remained motionless in his thoughts, +bathed in a clear golden light that tormented his senses.</p> + +<p>Rising from his knees with an effort, he struck a match and raised the +green shade from the lamp on the table. Then while the little blue flame +flickered out in his hand, he felt that he was seized by a frantic, an +irresistible impulse of flight. Gathering his clothes from the bed in +the darkness, he pushed them hurriedly back into the bag he had emptied, +and with a last glance at the room which had become unendurable to him, +opened the door and went with a rapid step down the great staircase and +into the hall below. The direction of his journey, as well as the +purpose of it, was obscure in his mind. Yesterday he had told himself +that he could not remain in Tappahannock, and to-day he knew that it was +impossible for him to live on in his father's<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> house. To pass the hall +door meant release—escape to him; beyond that there lay only the +distance and the unknown.</p> + +<p>The lights burned dimly on the staircase, and when he reached the bottom +he could see on the carpet the thin reddish stream which issued from the +closed door of the library. As he was about to pass by, a short sob fell +on his ear, arresting him as authoritatively as if it had been the sound +of his own name. While he stood there listening the sobs ceased and then +broke out more loudly, now violent, now smothered, now followed by +quick, furious steps across the floor within. Alice was shut in the room +alone and suffering! With the realisation the bag fell from his hand, +and turning the knob softly, he opened the door and paused for an +instant upon the threshold.</p> + +<p>At the noise of the opening door the girl made a single step forward, +and as she raised her hands to conceal her distorted features, her +handkerchief, torn into shreds, fell to the carpet at her feet. Around +her the room showed other signs of an outbreak of anger—the chairs were +pushed hurriedly out of place, the books from the centre table were +lying with opened backs on the floor, and a vase of dahlias lay +overturned and scattered upon the mantel.</p> + +<p>"I don't care—I don't care," she repeated, convulsively. "Why do they +always interfere with me? What right has Dick or Uncle Richard to say +whom I shall see or whom I shall not? I hate them all. Mamma is always +against me—so is Uncle Richard—<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a>so is everybody. They side with +Dick—always—always."</p> + +<p>A single wave of her dark hair had fallen low on her forehead, and this, +with the violent colour of her mouth, gave her a look that was almost +barbaric. The splendid possibilities in her beauty caused him, in the +midst of his pity, a sensation of dread.</p> + +<p>"Alice," he said softly, almost in a whisper, and closing the door after +him, he came to the middle of the room and stood near her, though still +without touching her quivering body.</p> + +<p>"They side with Dick always," she repeated furiously, "and you will side +with him, too—you will side with him, too!"</p> + +<p>For a long pause he looked at her in silence, waiting until the +convulsive tremors of her limbs should cease.</p> + +<p>"I shall never side against my daughter," he said very slowly. "Alice, +my child, my darling, are you not really mine?"</p> + +<p>A last quivering sob shook through her and she grew suddenly still. +"They will tell you things about me and you will believe them," she +answered sternly.</p> + +<p>"Against you, Alice? Against you?"</p> + +<p>"You will blame me as they do."</p> + +<p>"I love you," he returned, almost as sternly as she had spoken.</p> + +<p>An emotional change, so swift that it startled him, broke in her look, +and he saw the bright red of her mouth tremble and open like a flower in +her glowing face. At the sight a sharp joy took possession<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> of him—a +joy that he could measure only by the depth of the agony out of which he +had come. Without moving from his place, he stretched out his arms and +stood waiting.</p> + +<p>"Alice, I love you," he said.</p> + +<p>Then his arms closed over her, for with the straight flight of a bird +she had flown to his breast.<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-c" id="CHAPTER_IV-c"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Letter and the Spirit</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>WAKING before dawn, he realised with his first conscious thought that +his life had been irrevocably settled while he slept. His place was +here; he could not break away from it without leaving a ragged edge; and +while he had believed himself to be deciding his future actions, that +greater Destiny, of which his will was only a part, had arranged them +for him during the dim pause of the night. He could feel still on his +arm, as if it had persisted there through his sleep, the firm, almost +viselike pressure of Alice's hands, and his whole sensitive nature +thrilled in response to this mute appeal to his fatherhood. Yes, his +purpose, his mission, and his happiness were here in his father's house.</p> + +<p>At breakfast he found a white rosebud on his plate, and as he took it +up, Alice rushed in from the garden and threw herself into his arms.</p> + +<p>"I thought you were never, never coming down!" she exclaimed, choking +with laughter, and utterly forgetful of the shadow of death which still +lay over the house. "At first I was afraid you might have gone away in +the night—just as you went that awful day eight years ago. Then I +peeped out and saw your boots, so I went back to bed again and fell +asleep.<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> Oh, I'm so glad you've come! Why did you stay away such an age? +Now, at last, I'll have somebody to take my side against mamma and Dick +and Uncle Richard——"</p> + +<p>"But why against them, Alice? Surely they love you just as I do?"</p> + +<p>Biting her lips sharply, she bent her heavy brows in a stern and +frowning expression. "Oh, they're horrid," she said angrily, "they want +me to live just as mamma does—shut up all day in a hot room on a +hateful sofa. She reads novels all the time, and I despise books. I want +to go away and see things and to have plenty of clothes and all the fun +I choose. They let Dick do just as he pleases because he's a boy, but +they try to make me dull and stupid and foolish all because I'm a girl. +I won't have it like that and it makes them angry——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, we'll have fun together, you and I," returned Ordway, with a +sinking heart, "but you must wait a bit till I catch up with you. Don't +be in a precious hurry, if you please."</p> + +<p>"Shall we have a good time, then? Shall we?" she persisted, delighted, +kissing him with her warm mouth until he was dazzled by her beauty, her +fascination, her ardent vitality. "And you will do just what I wish, +won't you?" she whispered in his ear as she hung on his shoulder, "you +will be good and kind always? and you will make them leave me alone +about Geoffrey Heath?"</p> + +<p>"About Geoffrey Heath?" he repeated, and grew suddenly serious.<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a></p> + +<p>"Oh, he's rich and he's fun, too," she responded irritably. "He has +asked me to ride one of his horses—the most beautiful chestnut mare in +the world—but mamma scolds me about it because she says he's not nice +and that he did something once years ago about cards. As if I cared +about cards!"</p> + +<p>By the fear that had gripped him he could judge the strength of her hold +on his heart. "Alice, be careful—promise me to be careful!" he +entreated.</p> + +<p>At his words he felt her arms relax from their embrace, and she seemed +instantly to turn to marble upon his breast. "Oh, you're just like the +others now. I knew you would be!" she exclaimed, as she drew away from +him.</p> + +<p>Before the coldness of her withdrawal he felt that his will went out of +him; and in one despairing flight of imagination he saw what the loss of +her affection would mean now in his life. An emotion which he knew to be +weakness pervaded not only his heart, but his soul and his senses and +the remotest fibre of his physical being. "Whatever comes I shall always +stand by you, Alice," he said.</p> + +<p>Though she appeared to be mollified by his subjection, the thin almost +imperceptible furrows caused by the moment's anger, were still visible +between her eyebrows. There was a certain fascination, he found, in +watching these marks of age or of experience come and go on her fresh, +childlike forehead, with its lustrous pallor, from which her splendid +dark hair rolled back, touched with light, like a moonlit cloud. It was +a singular characteristic of her beauty that its<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> appeal was rather to +the imagination than to the eye, and the moments, perhaps, when she +dazzled least were those in which she conquered most through her +enigmatical charm.</p> + +<p>"You will buy some clothes, first of all, will you not?" she said, when, +having finished his breakfast, he rose from the table and went out into +the hall.</p> + +<p>He met her eyes laughing, filled with happiness at the playful authority +she assumed, and yet fearful still lest some incautious word of his +should bring out those fine nervous wrinkles upon her forehead.</p> + +<p>"Give me a week and I'll promise you a fashion plate," he responded +gaily, kissing his hand to her as he went down the steps, and, under the +trailing rose creepers at the gate, out into the street.</p> + +<p>Rain had fallen in the night, and the ground was covered with shining +puddles beneath which a few autumn leaves showed drenched and beaten. +From the golden and red maples above a damp odour was wafted down into +his face by the October wind, which now rose and now died away with a +gentle sound. In the pale sunshine, which had not yet drained the +moisture from the bricks, a wonderful freshness seemed to emanate from +the sky and the earth and the white-pillared houses.</p> + +<p>As he approached the corner, he heard his name called in a clear +emphatic voice from the opposite sidewalk, and turning his head, he saw +hastening toward him, a little elderly lady in a black silk gown trimmed +heavily with bugles. As she neared him, followed by a young Negro maid +bearing a market<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> basket filled with vegetables, he recognised her as an +intimate friend of his mother's, whom he had known familiarly in his +childhood as "Aunt Lucy." It seemed so long now since his mother's death +that he was attacked by a ghostly sensation, as if he were dreaming over +his past life, while he stood face to face with the old lady's small +soldierly figure and listened to the crisp, emphatic tones in which she +welcomed him back to Botetourt. He remembered his frequent visits to her +solemn old house, which she kept so dark that he had always stumbled +over the two embroidered ottomans on the parlour hearth. He recalled the +smell of spices which had hung about her storeroom, and the raspberry +preserves which she had never failed to give him out of a blue china +jar.</p> + +<p>"Why, my dear, blessed child, it's such a pleasure to have you back!" +she exclaimed now with an effusion which he felt to be the outward veil +of some hidden embarrassment. "You must come sometimes and let me talk +to you about your mother. I knew your mother so well—I was one of her +bridesmaids."</p> + +<p>Seizing his arm in her little firm, clawlike hands, she assured him with +animation of her delight at his return, alluding in a shaking voice to +his mother, and urging him to come to sit with her whenever he could +stand the gloom of her empty house.</p> + +<p>"And you will give me raspberry preserves out of the blue china jar?" he +asked, laughing, "and let me feed crackers to the green parrot?"<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a></p> + +<p>"What a boy! What a boy!" she returned. "You remember everything. The +parrot is dead—my poor Polly!—but there is a second."</p> + +<p>Her effusiveness, her volubility, which seemed to him to be the result +of concealed embarrassment, produced in him presently a feeling of +distrust, almost of resentment, and he remembered the next instant that, +in his childhood, she had been looked upon as a creature of uncontrolled +charitable impulses. Upon the occasion of his last meeting with her was +she not hastening upon some ministering errand to the city gaol? At the +casual recollection an unreasoning bitterness awoke in his mind; her +reiterated raptures fell with a strange effect of irritation upon his +ears; and he knew now that he could never bring himself to enter her +house again, that he could never accept her preserved raspberries out of +the blue china jar. Her reception of him, he saw, was but a part of the +general reception of Botetourt. Like her the town would be voluble, +unnatural, overdone in its kindness, hiding within itself a furtive +constraint as if it addressed its speeches to the sensitive sufferer +from some incurable malady. The very tenderness, the exaggerated +sympathy in its manner would hardly have been different, he understood, +if he had been recently discharged as harmless, yet half-distraught, +from an asylum for the insane.</p> + +<p>As the days went on this idea, instead of dissolving, became unalterably +lodged in his brain. Gradually he retreated further and further into +himself, until the spiritual isolation in which he lived appeared to<a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a> +him more and more like the isolation of the prison. His figure had +become a familiar one in the streets of Botetourt, yet he lived bodily +among the people without entering into their lives or sharing in any +degree the emotions that moved their hearts. Only in periods of sorrow +did he go willingly into the houses of those of his own class, though he +had found a way from the beginning to reach the poor, the distressed, or +the physically afflicted. His tall, slightly stooping figure, in its +loose black clothes, his dark head, with the thick locks of iron gray +hair upon the temples, his sparkling blue eyes, his bright, almost +boyish smile, and the peculiar, unforgettable charm of his +presence—these were the things which those in sickness or poverty began +to recognise and to look for. In his own home he lived, except for the +fitful tenderness of Alice, as much apart as he felt himself to be in +the little town. They were considerate of him, but their consideration, +he knew, contained an ineradicable suspicion, and in the house as +outside, he was surrounded by the watchful regard that is given to the +infirm or the mentally diseased. He read this in Lydia's gently averted +eyes; he felt it in Richard Ordway's constrained manner; he detected it +even in the silent haste with which the servants fulfilled his slightest +wish.</p> + +<p>His work in his uncle's office, he had soon found to be of the most +mechanical character, a mere pretext to give him daily employment, and +he told himself, in a moment of bitterness that it was convincing proof +of the opinion which the older man must hold<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a> of his honesty or of his +mental capacity. It became presently little more than a hopeless round +to him—this morning walk through the sunny streets, past the ivied +walls of the old church, to the clean, varnish scented office, where he +sat, until the luncheon hour, under the hard, though not unkind, eyes of +the man who reminded him at every instant of his dead father. And the +bitterest part of it, after all, was that the closer he came to the +character of Richard Ordway, the profounder grew his respect for his +uncle's unwavering professional honour. The old man would have starved, +he knew, rather than have held back a penny that was not legally his own +or have owed a debt that he felt had begun to weigh, however lightly, +upon his conscience. Yet this lawyer of scrupulous rectitude was the +husband, his nephew suspected, of a neglected, a wretchedly unhappy +wife—a small, nervous creature, whom he had married, shortly after the +death of his first wife, some twenty years ago. The secret of this +unhappiness Daniel had discovered almost by intuition on the day of his +father's funeral, when he had looked up suddenly in the cemetery to find +his uncle's wife regarding him with a pair of wonderful, pathetic eyes, +which seemed to gaze at him sadly out of a blue mist. So full of +sympathy and understanding was her look that the memory of it had +returned to him more than a year later, and had caused him to stop at +her gate one November afternoon as he was returning from his office +work. After an instant's pause, and an uncertain glance at the<a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a> big +brick house with its clean white columns, he ascended the steps and rang +the bell for the first time since his boyhood.</p> + +<p>The house was one of the most charming in Botetourt, but as he followed +the servant down the hall to the library, it seemed to him that all +these high, imposing walls, with their fine white woodwork, enclosed but +so much empty space to fill with loneliness. His uncle had no children, +and the sad, fair-haired little wife appeared to be always alone and +always suffering.</p> + +<p>She was seated now in a low rocking-chair beside the window, and as she +turned her head at his entrance, he could see, through the lace +curtains, a few pale November leaves, which fluttered down from an elm +tree beside the porch. When she looked at him he noticed that her eyes +were large and beautiful and of a changeable misty colour which appeared +now gray, now violet.</p> + +<p>"It is so good of you, Daniel," she said, in a soft, grateful voice, +removing her work-basket from the chair at her side so that he might +come within the reach of her short-sighted gaze.</p> + +<p>"I've wanted to come ever since I saw you for the first time after my +return," he answered cheerfully. "It is strange, isn't it?—that I +hardly remember you when I lived here. You were always ill, were you +not?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, ill almost always," she replied, smiling as she met his glance. +"When you were married I remember I couldn't go to the wedding because +I<a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a> had been in bed for three months. But that's all over now," she +added, fearing to produce in him a momentary depression. "I am well +again, you see, so the past doesn't matter."</p> + +<p>"The past doesn't matter," he repeated in a low voice, struck by the +words as if they held more than their surface meaning for his ears.</p> + +<p>She nodded gravely. "How can it matter if one is really happy at last."</p> + +<p>"And you are happy at last?"</p> + +<p>As he watched her it seemed to him that a pale flame burned in her face, +tinging its sallow wanness with a golden light. "I am at peace and is +that not happiness?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"But you were sad once—that day in the cemetery? I felt it."</p> + +<p>"That was while I was still struggling," she answered, "and it always +hurts one to struggle. I wanted happiness—I kept on wanting it even +after I ceased to believe in its existence. I fought very hard—oh, +desperately hard—but now I have learned that the only way to get +anything is to give it up. Happiness is like everything else, it is only +when one gives it back to God that one really possesses it."</p> + +<p>He had never seen a face in which the soul spoke so clearly, and her +look rather than her words came to him like the touch of divine healing.</p> + +<p>"When I saw you standing beside your father's grave, I knew that you +were just where I had been for so many years—that you were still +telling your<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a> self that things were too hard, that they were +unendurable. I had been through it all, you see, so I understood."</p> + +<p>"But how could you know the bitterness, the shame of feeling that it was +all the result of my own mistake—of my own sin."</p> + +<p>Taking his hand in hers, she sat for a moment in silence with her +ecstatic gaze fixed on his face. "I know that in spite of your sin you +are better than they are," she said at last, "because your sin was on +the outside—a thing to be sloughed off and left far behind, while their +self-righteousness is of their very souls——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush, hush," he interrupted sternly, "they have forgiven me for +what I did, that is enough."</p> + +<p>"Sixteen years ago," she returned, dropping her voice, "my husband +forgave me in the same way, and he has never forgotten it."</p> + +<p>At his start of surprise, he felt that she clung the more closely to the +hand she held. "Oh, it wasn't so big a thing," she went on, "I had been +married to him for five years, and I was very unhappy when I met someone +who seemed to understand and to love me. For a time I was almost insane +with the wonder and delight of it—I might have gone away with him—with +the other—in my first rapture, had not Richard found it all out two +days before. He behaved very generously—he forgave me. I should have +been happier," she added a little wistfully, "if he had not."</p> + +<p>As she broke off trembling, he lifted her hand<a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a> to his lips, kissing it +with tenderness, almost with passion. "Then that was the beginning of +your unhappiness—of your long illness!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>She nodded smiling, while a tear ran slowly down her flushed cheek. "He +forgave me sixteen years ago and he has never allowed me to forget it +one hour—hardly a minute since."</p> + +<p>"Then you understand how bitter—how intolerable it is!" he returned in +an outbreak of anger.</p> + +<p>"I thought I knew," she replied more firmly than he had ever heard her +speak, "but I learned afterwards that it was a mistake. I see now that +they are kind—that they are good in their way, and I love them for it. +It isn't our way, I know, but the essence of charity, after all, is to +learn to appreciate goodness in all its expressions, no matter how +different they may be from our own. Even Richard is kind—he means +everything for the best, and it is only his nature that is +straightened—that is narrow—not his will. I felt bitterly once, but +not now because I am so happy at last."</p> + +<p>Beyond the pale outline of her head, he saw the elm leaves drifting +slowly down, and beyond them the low roofs and the dim church spires of +the quiet town. Was it possible that even here he might find peace in +the heart of the storm?</p> + +<p>"It is only since I have given my happiness back to God that it is +really mine," she said, and it seemed to him again that her soul +gathered brightness and shone in her face.<a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-c" id="CHAPTER_V-c"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Will of Alice</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN he reached home the servant who helped him out of his overcoat, +informed him at the same time that his uncle awaited him in the library. +With the news a strange chill came over him as if he had left something +warm and bright in the November sunset outside. For an instant it seemed +to him that he must turn back—that he could not go forward. Then with a +gesture of assent, he crossed the hall and entered the library, where he +found Lydia and the children as well as Richard Ordway.</p> + +<p>The lamps were unlit, and the mellow light of the sunset fell through +the interlacing half-bared boughs of the golden poplar beyond the +window. This light, so rich, so vivid, steeped the old mahogany +furniture and the faded family portraits in a glow which seemed to +Daniel to release, for the first time, some latent romantic spirit that +had dwelt in the room. In the midst of this glamor of historic +atmosphere, the four figures, gathered so closely together against the +clear space of the window, with its network of poplar leaves beyond the +panes, borrowed for the moment a strange effectiveness of pose, a +singular intensity of outline. Not only the figures, but the very +objects by which they were surrounded appeared to vibrate in response to +a tragic impulse.<a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a></p> + +<p>Richard Ordway was standing upon the hearthrug, his fine head and +profile limned sharply against the pale brown wall at his side. His +right hand was on Lydia's shoulder, who sat motionless, as if she had +fallen there, with her gentle, flower-like head lying upon the arm of +her son. Before them, as before her judges, Alice was drawn to her full +height, her girlish body held tense and quivering, her splendid hair +loosened about her forehead, her trembling mouth making a violent +contrast to the intense pallor of her face.</p> + +<p>Right or wrong Ordway saw only that she was standing alone, and as he +crossed the threshold, he turned toward her and held out his hand.</p> + +<p>"Alice," he said softly, as if the others were not present. Without +raising her eyes, she shrank from him in the direction of Richard +Ordway, as if shielding herself behind the iron fortitude of the man +whom she so bitterly disliked.</p> + +<p>"Alice has been out driving alone with Geoffrey Heath all the +afternoon," said Lydia in her clear, calm voice. "We had forbidden it, +but she says that you knew of it and did not object to her going."</p> + +<p>With the knowledge of the lie, Ordway grew red with humiliation, while +his gaze remained fastened on the figure in the carpet at Alice's feet. +He could not look at her, for he felt that her shame was scorching him +like a hot wind. To look at her at the moment meant to convict her, and +this his heart told him he could never do. He was conscious of the loud +ticking of the clock, of the regular tapping<a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a> of Richard's fingers upon +the marble mantel-piece, of the fading light on the poplar leaves beyond +the window, and presently of the rapid roll of a carriage that went by +in the street. Each of these sounds produced in him a curious irritation +like a physical smart, and he felt again something of the dumb +resentment with which he had entered his wife's dressing-room on the +morning of his arrest. Then a smothered sob reached his ear, and Alice +began to tremble from head to foot at his side. Lifting his eyes at +last, he made a step forward and drew her into his arms.</p> + +<p>"Was it so very wrong? I am sorry," he said to Lydia over the bowed head +of their child. Until the words were uttered, and he felt Alice's tense +body relax in his arms, he had not realised that in taking sides with +her, he was not only making himself responsible for her fault, he was, +in truth, actually sharing in the lie that she had spoken. The choice +was an unconscious one, yet he knew even in the ensuing moment of his +clearer judgment that it had been inevitable—that from the first +instant, when he had paused speechless upon the threshold, there had +been open to him no other course.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry if it was wrong," he repeated, turning his glance now upon +Richard Ordway.</p> + +<p>"Do you know anything of Geoffrey Heath? Have you heard him spoken of by +decent people since you have been in Botetourt?" asked the old man +sternly.</p> + +<p>"I have heard little of him," answered Daniel,<a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a> "and that little was far +from good. We are sorry, Alice, are we not? It must not happen again if +we can help it."</p> + +<p>"It has happened before," said Lydia, lifting her head from Dick's arm, +where it had lain. "It was then that I forbade her to see him alone."</p> + +<p>"I did not know," responded Daniel, "but she will do as you wish +hereafter. Will you not, Alice?"</p> + +<p>"How does it concern them? What have they to do with me?" demanded +Alice, turning in his arms to face her mother with a defiant and angry +look, "they have never cared for me—they have always preferred +Dick—always, even when I was a little child."</p> + +<p>He saw Lydia grow white and hide her drooping face again on Dick's +shoulder. "You are unjust to your mother, Alice," he said gravely, "she +has loved you always, and I have loved you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are different—I would die for you!" she exclaimed +passionately, as she wept on his breast.</p> + +<p>While he stood there holding her in his arms, it seemed to him that he +could feel like an electric current the wave of feeling which had swept +Alice and himself together. The inheritance which was his had descended +to her also with its keen joys and its sharp anguish. Even the road +which he had travelled so lately in weariness was the one upon which her +brave young feet were now set. Not his alone, but his child's also, was +this mixture of strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of +bitterness and compassion.<a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a></p> + +<p>"If you will leave me alone with her, I think I can make her understand +what you wish," he said, lifting his eyes from the dark head on his +breast to Lydia, who had risen and was standing before him with her +pensive, inquiring gaze fixed on his face. "She is like me," he added +abruptly, "in so many ways."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is like you, I have always thought so," returned Lydia, +quietly.</p> + +<p>"And for that reason, perhaps, you have never quite understood her," he +responded.</p> + +<p>She bowed her head as if too polite or too indifferent to dissent from +his words; and then slipping her hand through Richard Ordway's arm, she +stood waiting patiently while the old man delivered his last bit of +remonstrance.</p> + +<p>"Try to curb her impulses, Daniel, or you will regret it."</p> + +<p>He went out, still holding Lydia's hand, and a moment afterwards, when +Daniel looked up at the sound of the hall door closing quickly, he saw +that Dick also had vanished, and that he was alone in the library with +Alice, who still sobbed on his breast.</p> + +<p>A few moments before it had seemed to him that he needed only to be +alone with her to make all perfectly clear between them. But when the +others had passed out, and the door had closed at last on the empty +silence in which they stood, he found that the words which he had meant +to utter had vanished hopelessly from his mind. He had said to Lydia +that Alice was like himself, but there had never<a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a> been an hour in his +life when his hatred of a lie had not been as intense, as +uncompromising, as it was to-day. And this lie which she had spoken +appeared to divide them now like a drawn sword.</p> + +<p>"Alice," he said, breaking with an effort through the embarrassment +which had held him speechless, "will you give me your word of honour +that you will never tell me a falsehood again?"</p> + +<p>She stirred slightly in his arms, and he felt her body grow soft and +yielding. "I didn't to you," she answered, "oh, I wouldn't to you."</p> + +<p>"Not to the others then. Will you promise?"</p> + +<p>Her warm young arm tightened about his neck. "I didn't mean to—I didn't +mean to," she protested between her sobs, "but they forced me to do it. +It was more than half their fault—they are so—so hateful! I tried to +think of something else, but there was nothing to say, and I knew you +would stand by me——"</p> + +<p>"You have almost broken my heart," he answered, "for you have lied, +Alice, you have lied."</p> + +<p>She lifted her head and the next instant he felt her mouth on his cheek, +"I wish I were dead! I have hurt you and I wish I were dead!" she cried.</p> + +<p>"It is not hurting me that I mind—you may do that and welcome. It is +hurting yourself, my child, my Alice," he answered; and pressing her +upturned face back on his arm, he bent over her in an ecstasy of +emotion, calling her his daughter, his darling, the one joy of his life. +The iron in his nature had melted beneath her warm touch, and he felt +again<a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a> the thrill, half agony, half rapture, with which he had received +her into his arms on the day of her birth. That day was nearer to him +now than was the minute in which he stood, and he could trace still the +soft, babyish curves in the face which nestled so penitently on his arm. +His very fear for her moved him into a deeper tenderness, and the appeal +she made to him now was one with the appeal of her infancy, for its +power lay in her weakness, not in her strength.</p> + +<p>"Be truthful with me, Alice," he said, "and remember that nothing can +separate me from you."</p> + +<p>An hour later when he parted from her and went upstairs, he heard +Lydia's voice calling to him through her half open door, and turning +obediently, he entered her bedroom for the first time since the night of +his return. Now as then the luxury, the softness, of his wife's +surroundings produced in him a curious depression, an enervation of +body; and he stood for an instant vainly striving to close his nostrils +against the delicious perfume which floated from her lace-trimmed +dressing-table.</p> + +<p>Lydia, still in her light mourning gown, was standing, when he entered, +before a little marquetry desk in one corner, her eyes on an open letter +which she appeared to have left partially unread.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to tell you, Daniel," she began at once, approaching the point +with a directness which left him no time to wonder as to the purpose of +her summons, "that Alice's intimacy with Geoffrey Heath has already been +commented upon in Botetourt.<a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a> Cousin Paulina has actually written to me +for an explanation."</p> + +<p>"Cousin Paulina?" he repeated vaguely, and remembered immediately that +the lady in question was his wife's one rich relation—an elderly female +who was greatly respected for her fortune, which she spent entirely in +gratifying her personal passion for trinkets. "Oh, yes," he added +flippantly, "the old lady who used to look like a heathen idol got up +for the sacrifice."</p> + +<p>He felt that his levity was out of place, yet he went on rashly because +he knew that he was doomed forever to appear at a disadvantage in +Lydia's presence. She would never believe in him—his best motives would +wear always to her the covering of hypocrisy; and the very hopelessness +of ever convincing her goaded him at times into the reckless folly of +despair.</p> + +<p>"She writes me that people are talking of it," she resumed, sweetly, as +if his untimely mirth had returned still-born into the vacancy from +which it emerged.</p> + +<p>"Who is this Geoffrey Heath you speak of so incessantly?" he demanded. +"There was a Heath, I remember, who had a place near us in the country, +and kept a barroom or a butcher's shop or something in town."</p> + +<p>"That was the father," replied Lydia, with a shudder which deepened the +slightly scornful curve of her lip. "He was a respectable old man, I +believe, and made his fortune quite honestly, however<a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a> it was. It was +only after his son began to grow up that he became socially +ambitious——"</p> + +<p>"And is that all you have against him?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, there's nothing against the old man—nothing at least except the +glaring bad taste he showed in that monstrous house he built in Henry +Street. He's dead now, you know."</p> + +<p>"Then the son has all the money and the house, too, hasn't he?"</p> + +<p>"All he hasn't wasted, yes."</p> + +<p>As she spoke she subsided into a chair, with a graceful, eddying motion +of her black chiffon draperies, and continued the conversation with an +expression of smiling weariness. All her attitudes were effective, and +he was struck, while he stood, embarrassed and awkward, before her, by +the plaintive grace that she introduced into her smallest gesture. +Though he was aware that he saw her now too clearly for passion, the +appeal of her delicate fairness went suddenly to his head.</p> + +<p>"Then there's not much to be said for the chap, I suppose?" he asked +abruptly, fearing the prolonged strain of the silence.</p> + +<p>"Very little for him, but a good deal about him, according to Cousin +Paulina. It seems that three years ago he was sent away from the +University for something disgraceful—cheating at cards, I believe; and +since then he has been conspicuous chiefly because of his low +associations. How Alice met him, I could never understand—I can't +understand now."</p> + +<p>"And do you think she cares for him—that she<a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a> even imagines that she +does?" he demanded, while his terror rose in his throat and choked back +his words.</p> + +<p>"She will not confess it—how could she?" replied Lydia wearily, "I +believe it is only wildness, recklessness, lack of discipline that +prompts her. Yet he is good-looking—in a vulgar way," she added in +disgust, "and Alice has always seemed to like vulgar things."</p> + +<p>Her eyes rested on him, not directly, but as if they merely included him +in their general pensive survey of the world; yet he read the accusation +in her gentle avoidance of his gaze as plainly as she had uttered in it +her clear, flute-like tones.</p> + +<p>"It is very important," she went on, "that she should be curbed in her +impulses, in her extravagance. Already her bills are larger than mine +and yet she is never satisfied with the amount of her allowance. We can +do nothing with her, Uncle Richard and I, but she seems to yield, in a +measure, to your influence, and we thought—we hoped——"</p> + +<p>"I will—I will," he answered. "I will give my life to help her if need +be. But Lydia," he broke out more earnestly, "you must stand by and aid +me for her sake, for the sake of our child, we must work together——"</p> + +<p>Half rising in her chair, she looked at him fixedly a moment, while he +saw her pupils dilate almost as if she were in physical fear.</p> + +<p>"But what can I do? I have done all I could," she protested, with an +injured look. By this look,<a name="page_339" id="page_339"></a> without so much as a gesture, she put the +space of the whole room between them. The corners of her mouth quivered +and drooped, and he watched the pathos creep back into her light blue +eyes. "I have given up my whole life to the children since—since——"</p> + +<p>She broke off in a frightened whisper, but the unfinished sentence was +more expressive than a volley of reproaches would have been. There was +something in her thoughts too horrible to put into words, and this +something of which she could not bring herself to speak, would have had +no place in her existence except for him. He felt cowed suddenly, as if +he had been physically beaten and thrust aside.</p> + +<p>"You have been very brave—I know—I appreciate it all," he said, and +while he spoke he drew away from her until he stood with his back +against one of the amber satin curtains. Instinctively he put out his +hand for support, and as it closed over the heavy draperies, he felt +that the hard silken texture made his flesh creep. The physical +sensation, brief as it was, recalled in some strange way the effect upon +him of Lydia's smooth and shining surface when he had knelt before her +on the night of his homecoming. Yet it was with difficulty even now that +he could free himself from the conviction that her emotional apathy was +but one aspect of innocence. Would he admit to-day that what he had once +worshipped as purity of soul was but the frost of an unnatural coldness +of nature? All at once, as he looked at her, he found himself reminded +by her calm<a name="page_340" id="page_340"></a> forehead, her classic features, of the sculptured front of +a marble tomb which he had seen in some foreign gallery. Was there +death, after all, not life hidden for him in her plaintive beauty? The +next instant, as he watched her, he told himself that such questions +belonged to the evil promptings of his own nature.</p> + +<p>"I realise all that you have been, all that you have suffered," he said +at last, aware that his words sounded hysterical in the icy constraint +which surrounded them.</p> + +<p>When his speech was out, his embarrassment became so great that he found +himself presently measuring the distance which divided him from the +closed door. With a last effort of will, he went toward her and +stretched out his hand in a gesture that was almost one of entreaty.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," he asked, "is it too painful for you to have me here? Would it +be any better for you if I went away?"</p> + +<p>As he moved toward her she bent over with a nervous, mechanical movement +to arrange her train, and before replying to his question, she laid each +separate fold in place. "Why, by no means," she answered, looking up +with her conventional smile. "It would only mean—wouldn't it?—that +people would begin to wonder all over again?"<a name="page_341" id="page_341"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-c" id="CHAPTER_VI-c"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Iron Bars</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>S the days went on it seemed to him that his nature, repressed in so +many other directions, was concentrated at last in a single channel of +feeling. The one outlet was his passion for Alice, and nothing that +concerned her was too remote or too trivial to engross him—her clothes, +her friendships, the particular chocolate creams for which she had once +expressed a preference. To fill her life with amusements that would +withdraw her erring impulses from Geoffrey Heath became for a time his +absorbing purpose.</p> + +<p>At first he told himself in a kind of rapture that success was apparent +in his earliest and slightest efforts. For weeks Alice appeared to find +interest and animation in his presence. She flattered, scolded, caressed +and tyrannised, but with each day, each hour, she grew nearer his heart +and became more firmly interwoven into his life.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly a change came over her, and one day when she had been +kissing him with "butterfly kisses" on his forehead, he felt her +suddenly grow restless and draw back impatiently as if seeking a fresh +diversion. A bored look had come into her eyes and he saw the three +little wrinkles gather between her eyebrows.<a name="page_342" id="page_342"></a></p> + +<p>"Alice," he said, alarmed by the swift alteration, "are you tired of the +house? Shall we ride together?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, half pettishly, half playfully, "I can't—I've an +engagement," she responded.</p> + +<p>"An engagement?" he repeated inquiringly. "Why, I thought we were always +to ride when it was fair."</p> + +<p>"I promised one of the girls to go to tea with her," she repeated, after +a minute. "It isn't a real tea, but she wanted to talk to me, so I said +I would go."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm glad you did—don't give up the girls," he answered, relieved +at once by the explanation.</p> + +<p>In the evening when she returned, shortly after dark, "one of the girls" +as she called laughingly from the library, had come home for the night +with her. Ordway heard them chatting gayly together, but, when he went +in for a moment before going upstairs to dress, they lapsed immediately +into an embarrassed silence. Alice's visitor was a pretty, gray-eyed, +flaxen-haired young woman named Jenny Lane, who smiled in a frightened +way and answered "Yes—no," when he spoke to her, as if she offered him +the choice of his favourite monosyllable from her lips. Clearly the +subject which animated them was one in which, even as Alice's father, he +could have no share.</p> + +<p>For weeks after this it seemed to him that a silence fell gradually +between them—that silence of the heart which is so much more oppressive +than the mere outward silence of the lips. It was not, he told himself +again and again, that there had come a perceptible<a name="page_343" id="page_343"></a> change in her +manner. She still met him at breakfast with her flower and her caress, +still flung herself into his arms at unexpected moments, still coaxed +and upbraided in her passionate, childish voice. Nevertheless, the +difference was there, and he recognised it with a pang even while he +demanded of himself in what breathless suspension of feeling it could +consist? Her caresses were as frequent, but the fervour, the +responsiveness, had gone out of them; and he was brought at last face to +face with the knowledge that her first vivid delight in him had departed +forever. The thing which absorbed her now was a thing in which he had no +share, no recognition; and true to her temperament, her whole impulsive +being had directed itself into this new channel. "She is young and it is +only natural that she should wish to have her school friends about her," +he thought with a smile.</p> + +<p>In the beginning it had been an easy matter to efface his personality +and stand out of the way of Alice's life, but as the weeks drew on into +months and the months into a year, he found that he had been left aside +not only by his daughter, but by the rest of the household as well. In +his home he felt himself to exist presently in an ignored, yet obvious +way like a familiar piece of household furniture, which is neither +commented upon nor wilfully overlooked. It would have occasioned, he +supposed, some vague exclamations of surprise had he failed to appear in +his proper place at the breakfast table, but as long as his accustomed +seat was occupied all further use for his existence seemed at an end. +He<a name="page_344" id="page_344"></a> was not necessary, he was not even enjoyed, but he was tolerated.</p> + +<p>Before this passive indifference, which was worse to him than direct +hostility, he found that his sympathies, his impulses, and even his +personality, were invaded by an apathy that paralysed the very sources +of his will. He beheld himself as the cause of the gloom, the suspicion, +the sadness, that surrounded him, and as the cause, too, of Alice's +wildness and of the pathetic loneliness in which Lydia lived. But for +him, he told himself, there would have been no shadow upon the +household; and his wife's pensive smile was like a knife in his heart +whenever he looked up from his place at the table and met it unawares. +At Tappahannock he had sometimes believed that his past was a skeleton +which he had left behind; here he had grown, as the years went by, to +think of it as a coffin which had shut over him and from which there was +no escape. And with the realisation of this, a blighting remorse, a +painful humbleness awoke in his soul, and was revealed outwardly in his +face, in his walk, in his embarrassed movements. As he passed up and +down the staircase, he went softly lest the heavy sound of his footsteps +should become an annoyance to Lydia's sensitive ears. His manner lost +its boyish freedom and grew awkward and nervous, and when he gave an +order to the servants it seemed to him that a dreadful timidity sounded +in his voice. He began to grow old suddenly in a year, before middle age +had as yet had time to soften the way.<a name="page_345" id="page_345"></a></p> + +<p>Looking in the glass one morning, when he had been less than three years +in Botetourt, he discovered that the dark locks upon his forehead had +turned almost white, and that his shoulders were losing gradually their +youthful erectness of carriage. And it seemed to him that the courage +with which he might have once broken away and begun anew had departed +from him in this new and paralysing humility, which was like the +humility of a helpless and burdensome old age.</p> + +<p>After a day of peculiar loneliness, he was returning from Richard's +office on this same afternoon, when a voice called to him from beneath +the fringed linen cover of a little phaeton which had driven up to the +crossing. Turning in surprise he found Aunt Lucy holding the reins over +a fat pony, while she sat very erect, with her trim, soldierly figure +emerging from a mountain of brown-paper parcels.</p> + +<p>"This is the very chance I've been looking for, Daniel Ordway!" she +exclaimed, in her emphatic voice. "Do you know, sir, that you have not +entered my house once in the last three years?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he replied, "I know—but the fact is that I have hardly been +anywhere since I came back."</p> + +<p>"And why is that?" she demanded sharply.</p> + +<p>He shook his head, "I don't know. Perhaps you can tell me."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I can tell you," she snapped back, with a rudeness which, in some +singular way, seemed to him kinder than the studied politeness that he +had met. "It's because, in spite of all you've gone<a name="page_346" id="page_346"></a> through, you are +still more than half a fool, Daniel Ordway."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're right, I dare say," he acknowledged bitterly.</p> + +<p>With a frown, which struck him curiously as the wrong side of a smile, +she nodded her head while she made room for him among the brown-paper +parcels on the low linen covered seat of the phaeton. "Come in here, I +want to talk to you," she said, "there's a little matter about which I +should like your help."</p> + +<p>"My help?" he repeated in astonishment, as a sensation of pleasure shot +through his heart. It was so seldom that anybody asked his help in +Botetourt. "Is the second green parrot dead, and do you want me to dig +the grave?" he inquired, checking his unseemly derision as he met her +warning glance.</p> + +<p>"Polly is perfectly well," she returned, rapping him smartly upon the +knee with her little tightly closed black fan which she carried as if it +were a baton, "but I do not like Richard Ordway."</p> + +<p>The suddenness of her announcement, following so inappropriately her +comment upon the health of the green parrot, caused him to start from +his seat in the amazement with which he faced her. Then he broke into an +echo of his old boyish merriment. "You don't?" he retorted flippantly. +"Well, Lydia does."</p> + +<p>Her eyes blinked rapidly in the midst of her wrinkled little face, and +bending over she flicked<a name="page_347" id="page_347"></a> the back of the fat pony gently with the end +of the whip. "Oh, I'm not sure I like Lydia," she responded, "though, of +course, Lydia is a saint."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Lydia is a saint," he affirmed.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not talking about Lydia," she resumed presently, "though +there's something I've always had a burning curiosity to find out." For +an instant she held back, and then made her charge with a kind of +desperate courage. "Is she really a saint?" she questioned, "or is it +only the way that she wears her hair?"</p> + +<p>Her question was so like the spoken sound of his own dreadful suspicion +that it took away his breath completely, while he stared at her with a +gasp that was evenly divided between a laugh and a groan.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she's a saint, there's no doubt of that," he insisted loyally.</p> + +<p>"Then I'll let her rest," she replied, "and I'm glad, heaven knows, to +have my doubts at an end. But where do you imagine that I am taking +you?"</p> + +<p>"For a drive, I hope," he answered, smiling.</p> + +<p>"It's not," she rejoined grimly, "it's for a visit."</p> + +<p>"A visit?" he repeated, starting up with the impulse to jump over the +moving wheel, "but I never visit."</p> + +<p>She reached out her wiry little fingers, which clung like a bird's claw, +and drew him by force back upon the seat.</p> + +<p>"I am taking you to see Adam Crowley," she explained, "do you remember +him?"</p> + +<p>"Crowley?" he repeated the name as he searched<a name="page_348" id="page_348"></a> his memory. "Why, yes, +he was my father's clerk for forty years, wasn't he? I asked when I came +home what had become of him. So he is still living?"</p> + +<p>"He was paralysed in one arm some years ago, and it seems he has lost +all his savings in some investment your father had advised him to make. +Of course, there was no legal question of a debt to him, but until the +day your father died he had always made ample provision for the old +man's support. Crowley had always believed that the allowance would be +continued—that there would be a mention made of him in the will."</p> + +<p>"And there was none?"</p> + +<p>"It was an oversight, Crowley is still convinced, for he says he had a +distinct promise."</p> + +<p>"Then surely my uncle will fulfil the trust? He is an honourable man."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "I don't know that he is so much 'honourable' as he +is 'lawful.' The written obligation is the one which binds him like +steel, but I don't think he cares whether a thing is right or wrong, +just or unjust, as long as it is the law. The letter holds him, but I +doubt if he has ever even felt the motion of the spirit. If he ever felt +it," she concluded with grim humour, "he would probably try to drive it +out with quinine."</p> + +<p>"Are we going there now—to see Crowley, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"If you don't mind. Of course there may be nothing that you can do—but +I thought that you might, perhaps, speak to Richard about it."<a name="page_349" id="page_349"></a></p> + +<p>He shook his head, "No, I can't speak to my uncle, though I think you +are unjust to him," he answered, after a pause in which the full joy of +her appeal had swept through his heart, "but I have an income of my own, +you know, and out of this, I can help Crowley."</p> + +<p>For an instant she did not reply, and he felt her thin, upright little +figure grow rigid at his side. Then turning with a start, she laid her +hand, in its black lace mitten, upon his knee.</p> + +<p>"O my boy, you are your mother all over again!" she said.</p> + +<p>After this they drove on in silence down one of the shaded streets, +where rows of neat little houses, packed together like pasteboard boxes, +were divided from the unpaved sidewalks by low whitewashed fences. At +one of these doors the phaeton presently drew up, and dropping the reins +on the pony's back, Aunt Lucy alighted with a bound between the wheels, +and began with Ordway's help, to remove the paper parcels from the seat. +When their arms were full, she pushed open the gate, and led him up the +short walk to the door where an old man, wearing a knitted shawl, sat in +an invalid's chair beyond the threshold. At the sound of their footsteps +Crowley turned on them a cheerful wrinkled face which was brightened by +a pair of twinkling black eyes that gave him an innocent and merry look.</p> + +<p>"I knew you'd come around," he said, smiling with his toothless mouth +like an amiable infant.<a name="page_350" id="page_350"></a> "Matildy has been complaining that the coffee +gave out at breakfast, but I said 'twas only a sign that you were +coming. Everything bad is the sign of something good, that's what I +say."</p> + +<p>"I've brought something better than coffee to-day, Adam," replied Aunt +Lucy, seating herself upon the doorstep. "This is Daniel Ordway—do you +remember him?"</p> + +<p>The old man bent forward, without moving his withered hand, which lay +outstretched on the cushioned arm of the chair, and it seemed to Ordway +that the smiling black eyes pierced to his heart. "Oh, I remember him, I +remember him," said Crowley, "poor boy—poor boy."</p> + +<p>"He's come back now," rejoined Aunt Lucy, raising her voice, "and he has +come to see you."</p> + +<p>"He's like his mother," remarked Crowley, almost in a whisper, "and I'm +glad of that, though his father was a good man. But there are some good +people who do more harm than bad ones," he added, "and I always knew +that old Daniel Ordway would ruin his son." A chuckle broke from him, +"but your mother: I can see her now running out bareheaded in the snow +to scold me for not having on my overcoat. She was always seeing with +other people's eyes, bless her, and feeling with other people's bodies."</p> + +<p>Dropping upon the doorstep, Ordway replaced the knitted shawl which had +slipped from the old man's shoulder. "I wonder how it is that you keep +so happy in spite of everything?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Happy?" repeated Crowley with a laugh. "Well,<a name="page_351" id="page_351"></a> I don't know, but I am +not complaining. I've seen men who hadn't an ache in their bodies, who +were worse off than I am to-day. I tell you it isn't the thing that +comes to you, but the way you look at it that counts, and because you've +got a paralysed arm is no reason that you should have a paralysed heart +as well. I've had a powerful lot of suffering, but I've had a powerful +lot of happiness, too, and the suffering somehow, doesn't seem to come +inside of me to stay as the happiness does. You see, I'm a great +believer in the Lord, sir," he added simply, "and what I can't +understand, I don't bother about, but just take on trust." All the +cheerful wrinkles of his face shone peacefully as he talked. "It's true +there've been times when things have gone so hard I've felt that I'd +just let go and drop down to the bottom, but the wonderful part is that +when you get to the bottom there's still something down below you. It's +when you fall lowest that you feel most the Lord holding you up. It may +be that there ain't any bottom after all but I know if there is one the +Lord is surely waiting down there to catch you when you let go. He ain't +only there, I reckon, but He's in all the particular hard places on +earth much oftener than He's up in His heaven. He knows the poorhouse, +you may be sure, and He'll be there to receive me and tell me it ain't +so bad as it looks. I don't want to get there, but if I do it will come +a bit easier to think that the Lord has been there before me——"</p> + +<p>The look in his smiling, toothless face brought to<a name="page_352" id="page_352"></a> Ordway, as he +watched him, the memory of the epileptic little preacher who had +preached in the prison chapel. Here, also, was that untranslatable +rapture of the mystic, which cannot be put into words though it passes +silently in its terrible joy from the heart of the speaker to the other +heart that is waiting. Again he felt his whole being dissolve in the +emotion which had overflowed his eyes that Sunday when he was a +prisoner. He remembered the ecstasy with which he had said to himself on +that day: "I have found the key!" and he knew now that this ecstasy was +akin to the light that had shone for him while he sat on the stage of +the town hall in Tappahannock. A chance word from the lips of a doting +old man, who saw the doors of the poorhouse swing open to receive him, +had restored to Ordway, with a miraculous clearness, the vision that he +had lost; and he felt suddenly that the hope with which he had come out +of the prison had never really suffered disappointment or failure.<a name="page_353" id="page_353"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-c" id="CHAPTER_VII-c"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Vision and the Fact</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>S he walked home along one of the side streets, shaded by an irregular +row of flowering linden trees, it appeared to him that his life in +Botetourt, so unendurable an hour before, had been rendered suddenly +easy by a miracle, not in his surroundings, but in himself. His help had +been asked, and in the act of giving there had flowed back into his +heart the strength by which he might live his daily life. His unrest, +his loneliness, his ineffectiveness, showed to him now as the result of +some fatal weakness in his own nature—some failure in his personal +attitude to the people among whom he lived.</p> + +<p>Straight ahead of him a fine white dust drifted down from the blossoming +lindens, lying like powder on the roughly paved street, where the wind +blew it in soft swirls and eddies against the crumbling stone steps +which led down from the straight doorways of the old-fashioned houses. +The boughs overhead made a green arch through which the light fell, and +it was under this thick tent of leaves, that, looking up presently, he +saw Emily Brooke coming toward him. Not until she was so close to him +that he could hear the rustle of her dress, did she lift her eyes from +the pavement and meet his cry of welcome with a look of joyful +surprise.<a name="page_354" id="page_354"></a></p> + +<p>"Emily!" he cried, and at his voice, she stretched out her hand and +stood smiling at him with the soft and animated gaze which, it seemed to +him now, he had but dimly remembered. The thought of her had dwelt as a +vision in his memory, yet he knew, as he looked into her face, that the +ideal figure had lacked the charm, the radiance, the sparkling energy, +of the living substance.</p> + +<p>"So you came to Botetourt and did not send me word," he said.</p> + +<p>"No, I did not send you word," she answered, "and now I am leaving +within an hour."</p> + +<p>"And you would have gone without seeing me?"</p> + +<p>For an instant she hesitated, and he watched the joy in her face melt +into a sorrowful tenderness. "I knew that you were well and I was +satisfied. Would it have been kind to appear to you like an arisen ghost +of Tappahannock?"</p> + +<p>"The greatest kindness," he answered gravely, "that you—or anyone could +do me."</p> + +<p>She shook her head: "Kindness or not, I found that I could not do it."</p> + +<p>"And you go in an hour?"</p> + +<p>"My train leaves at seven o'clock. Is it nearly that?"</p> + +<p>He drew out his watch, a mechanical action which relieved the emotional +tension that stretched like a drawn cord between them. "It is not yet +six. Will you walk a little way with me down this street? There is still +time."</p> + +<p>As she nodded silently, they turned and went<a name="page_355" id="page_355"></a> back along the side +street, under the irregular rows of lindens, in the direction from which +he had come.</p> + +<p>"One of the girls I used to teach sent for me when she was dying," she +said presently, as if feeling the need of some explanation of her +presence in Botetourt. "That was three days ago and the funeral was +yesterday. It is a great loss to me, for I haven't so many friends that +I can spare the few I love."</p> + +<p>He made no answer to her remark, and in the silence that followed, he +felt, with a strange ache at his heart, that the distance that separated +them was greater than it had been when she was in Tappahannock and he in +Botetourt. Then there had stretched only the luminous dream spaces +between their souls; now they stood divided by miles and miles of an +immovable reality. Was it possible that in making her a part of his +intense inner life, he had lost, in a measure, his consciousness of her +actual existence? Then while the vision still struggled blindly against +the fact, she turned toward him with a smile which lifted her once more +into the shining zone of spirits.</p> + +<p>"If I can feel that you are happy, that you are at peace, I shall ask +nothing more of God," she said.</p> + +<p>"I am happy to-day," he answered, "but if you had come yesterday, I +should have broken down in my weakness. Oh, I have been homesick for +Tappahannock since I came away!"</p> + +<p>"Yet Botetourt is far prettier to my eyes."<a name="page_356" id="page_356"></a></p> + +<p>"To mine also—but it isn't beauty, it is usefulness that I need. For +the last two years I have told myself night and day that I had no place +and no purpose—that I was the stone that the builders rejected."</p> + +<p>"And it is different now?"</p> + +<p>"Different? Yes, I feel as if I had been shoved suddenly into a place +where I fitted—as if I were meant, after all, to help hold things +together. And the change came—how do you think?" he asked, smiling. "A +man wanted money of me to keep him out of the poorhouse."</p> + +<p>The old gaiety was in his voice, but as she looked at him a ray of faint +sunshine fell on his face through a parting in the leaves overhead, and +she saw for the first time how much older he had grown since that last +evening in Tappahannock. The dark hair was all gray now, the lines of +the nose were sharper, the cheek bones showed higher above the bluish +hollows beneath. Yet the change which had so greatly aged him had +deepened the peculiar sweetness in the curves of his mouth, and this +sweetness, which was visible also in his rare smile, moved her heart to +a tenderness which was but the keener agony of renouncement.</p> + +<p>"I know how it is," she said slowly, "just as in Tappahannock you found +your happiness in giving yourself to others, so you will find it here."</p> + +<p>"If I can only be of use—perhaps."</p> + +<p>"You can be—you will be. What you were with us you will be again."<a name="page_357" id="page_357"></a></p> + +<p>"Yet it was different. There I had your help, hadn't I?"</p> + +<p>"And you shall have it here," she responded, brightly, though he saw +that her eyes were dim with tears.</p> + +<p>"Will you make me a promise?" he asked, stopping suddenly before some +discoloured stone steps "will you promise me that if ever you need a +friend—a strong arm, a brain to think for you—you will send me word?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him smiling, while her tears fell from her eyes. "I will +make no promise that is not for your sake as well as for mine," she +answered.</p> + +<p>"But it is for my sake—it is for my happiness."</p> + +<p>"Then I will promise," she rejoined gravely, "and I will keep it."</p> + +<p>"I thank you," he responded, taking the hand that she held out.</p> + +<p>At his words she had turned back, pausing a moment in her walk, as if +she had caught from his voice or his look a sense of finality in their +parting. "I have but a few minutes left," she said, "so I must walk +rapidly back or I shall be late."</p> + +<p>A sudden clatter of horses' hoofs on the cobblestones in the street +caused them to start away from each other, and turning his head, Ordway +saw Alice gallop furiously past him with Geoffrey Heath at her side.</p> + +<p>"How beautiful!" exclaimed Emily beneath her breath, for Alice as she +rode by had looked back for an instant, her glowing face framed in blown +masses of hair.<a name="page_358" id="page_358"></a></p> + +<p>"Yes, she is beautiful," he replied, and added after a moment as they +walked on, "she is my daughter."</p> + +<p>Her face brightened with pleasure. "Then you are happy—you must be +happy," she said. "Why, she looked like Brunhilde."</p> + +<p>For a moment he hesitated. "Yes," he answered at last, "she is very +beautiful—and I am happy."</p> + +<p>After this they did not speak again until they reached the iron gate +before the house in which she was staying. On his side he was caught up +into some ideal realm of feeling, in which he possessed her so utterly +that the meeting could not bring her nearer to him nor the parting take +her farther away. His longing, his unrest, and his failure, were a part +of his earthly nature which he seemed to have left below him in that +other life from which he had escaped. Without doubt he would descend to +it again, as he had descended at moments back into the body of his sin; +but in the immediate exaltation of his mood, his love had passed the +bounds of personality and entered into a larger and freer world. When +they parted, presently, after a casual good-bye, he could persuade +himself, almost without effort, that she went on with him in the soft +May twilight.</p> + +<p>At his door he found Lydia just returning from a drive, and taking her +wraps from her arm, he ascended the steps and entered the house at her +side. She had changed her mourning dress for a gown of pale gray cloth, +and he noticed at once that her beauty had lost in transparency and +become more human.<a name="page_359" id="page_359"></a></p> + +<p>"I thought you had gone riding with Alice," she said without looking at +him, as she stooped to gather up the ends of a lace scarf which had +slipped from her arm.</p> + +<p>"No, I was not with her," he answered. "I wanted to go, but she would +not let me."</p> + +<p>"Are you sure, then, that she was not with Geoffrey Heath?"</p> + +<p>"I am sure that she was with him, for they passed me not a half hour ago +as I came up."</p> + +<p>They had entered the library while he spoke, and crossing to the hearth, +where a small fire burned, Lydia looked up at him with her anxious gaze. +"I hoped at first that you would gain some influence over her," she +said, in a distressed voice, "but it seems now that she is estranged +even from you."</p> + +<p>"Not estranged, but there is a difference and I am troubled by it. She +is young, you see, and I am but a dull and sober companion for her."</p> + +<p>She shook her head with the little hopeless gesture which was so +characteristic of her. Only yesterday this absence of resolution, the +discontented droop of her thin, red lips, had worked him into a feeling +of irritation against her. But his vision of her to-day had passed +through some softening lens; and he saw her shallowness, her vanity, her +lack of passion, as spiritual infirmities which were not less to be +pitied than an infirmity of the body.</p> + +<p>"The end is not yet, though," he added cheerfully after a moment, "and +she will come back to me in time when I am able really to help her."<a name="page_360" id="page_360"></a></p> + +<p>"Meanwhile is she to be left utterly uncontrolled?"</p> + +<p>"Not if we can do otherwise. Only we must go quietly and not frighten +her too much."</p> + +<p>Again she met his words with the resigned, hopeless movement of her +pretty head in its pearl gray bonnet. "I have done all I can," she said, +"and it has been worse than useless. Now you must try if your method is +better than mine."</p> + +<p>"I am trying," he answered smiling.</p> + +<p>For an instant her gaze fluttered irresolutely over him, as if she were +moved by a passing impulse to a deeper utterance. That this impulse +concerned Alice he was vaguely aware, for when had his wife ever spoken +to him upon a subject more directly personal? Apart from their children +he knew there was no bond between them—no memories, no hopes, no ground +even for the building of a common interest. Lydia adored her children, +he still believed, but when there was nothing further to be said of Dick +or of Alice, their conversation flagged upon the most trivial topics. +Upon the few unfortunate occasions when he had attempted to surmount the +barrier between them, she had appeared to dissolve, rather than to +retreat, before his approach. Yet despite her soft, cloud-like exterior, +he had discovered that the rigour of her repulsion had hardened to a +vein of iron in her nature. What must her life be, he demanded in a +sudden passion of pity, when the strongest emotion she had ever known +was the aversion that she now felt to him? All the bitterness in his +heart melted into compassion at the thought, and he resisted an<a name="page_361" id="page_361"></a> impulse +to take her into his arms and say: "I know, I understand, and I am +sorry." Yet he was perfectly aware that if he were to do this, she would +only shrink farther away from him, and look up at him with fear and +mystification, as if she suspected him of some hidden meaning, of some +strategic movement against her impregnable reserve. Her whole relation +to him had narrowed into the single instinct of self-defence. If he came +unconsciously a step nearer, if he accidentally touched her hand as he +passed, he had grown to expect the flaring of her uncontrollable +repugnance in the heightened red in her cheeks. "I know that I am +repulsive to her, that when she looks at me she still sees the convict," +he thought, "and yet the knowledge of this only adds to the pity and +tenderness I feel."</p> + +<p>Lydia had moved through the doorway, but turning back in the hall, she +spoke with a return of confidence, as if the fact of the threshold, +which she had put between them, had restored to her, in a measure, the +advantage that she had lost.</p> + +<p>"Then I shall leave Alice in your hands. I can do nothing more," she +said.</p> + +<p>"Give me time and I will do all that you cannot," he answered.</p> + +<p>When she had gone upstairs, he crossed the hall to the closed door of +the library, and stopped short on hearing Alice's voice break out into +song. The girl was still in her riding habit, and the gay French air on +her lips was in accord with the spirited gesture with which she turned +to him as he appeared. Her<a name="page_362" id="page_362"></a> beauty would have disarmed him even without +the kiss with which she hastened to avert his reproach.</p> + +<p>"Alice, can you kiss me when you know you have broken your promise?"</p> + +<p>"I made no promise," she answered coldly, drawing away. "You told me not +to go riding with Geoffrey, but it was you that said it, not I, and you +said it only because mamma made you. Oh, I knew all the time that it was +she!"</p> + +<p>Her voice broke with anger and before he could restrain her, she ran +from the room and up the staircase. An instant afterward he heard a door +slam violently above his head. Was she really in love with Geoffrey +Heath? he asked in alarm, or was the passion she had shown merely the +outburst of an undisciplined child?<a name="page_363" id="page_363"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-c" id="CHAPTER_VIII-c"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Weakness In Strength</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span>T breakfast Alice did not appear, and when he went upstairs to her +room, she returned an answer in a sullen voice through her closed door. +All day his heart was oppressed by the thought of her, but to his +surprise, when he came home to luncheon, she met him on the steps with a +smiling face. It was evident to him at the first glance that she meant +to ignore both the cause and the occasion of last evening's outburst; +and he found himself yielding to her determination before he realised +all that his evasion of the subject must imply. But while she hung upon +his neck, with her cheek pressed to his, it was impossible that he +should speak any word that would revive her anger against him. Anything +was better than the violence with which she had parted from him the +evening before. He could never forget his night of anguish, when he had +strained his ears unceasingly for some stir in her room, hoping that a +poignant realisation of his love for her would bring her sobbing and +penitent to his door before dawn.</p> + +<p>Now when he saw her again for the first time, she had apparently +forgotten the parting which had so tortured his heart.<a name="page_364" id="page_364"></a></p> + +<p>"You've been working too hard, papa, and you're tired," she remarked, +rubbing the furrows between his eyebrows in a vain endeavour to smooth +them out. "Are you obliged to go back to that hateful office this +afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"I've some work that will keep me there until dark, I fear," he replied. +"It's a pity because I'd like a ride of all things."</p> + +<p>"It is a pity, poor dear," protested Alice, but he noticed that there +was no alteration in her sparkling gaiety. Was there, indeed, almost a +hint of relief in her tone? and was this demonstrative embrace but a +guarded confession of her gratitude for his absence? Something in her +manner—a veiled excitement in her look, a subtle change in her +voice—caused him to hold her to him in a keener tenderness. It was on +his lips to beg for her confidence, to remind her of his sympathy in +whatever she might feel or think—to assure her even of his tolerance of +Geoffrey Heath. But in the instant when he was about to speak, a sudden +recollection of the look with which she had turned from him last +evening, checked the impulse before it had had time to pass into words. +And so because of his terror of losing her, he let her go at last in +silence from his arms.</p> + +<p>His office work that afternoon was heavier than usual, for in the midst +of his mechanical copying and filing, he was abstracted by the memory of +that strange, unnatural vivacity in Alice's face. Then in the effort to +banish the disturbing recollection,<a name="page_365" id="page_365"></a> he recalled old Adam Crowley, +wrapped in his knitted shawl, on the doorstep of his cottage. A check of +Richard's contributing six hundred dollars toward the purchase of a new +organ for the church he attended gave Daniel his first opportunity to +mention the old man to his uncle.</p> + +<p>"I saw Crowley the other day," he began abruptly, "the man who was my +father's clerk for forty years, and whose place," he added smiling, "I +seem to have filled."</p> + +<p>"Ah, indeed," remarked Richard quietly. "So he is still living?"</p> + +<p>"His right arm has been paralysed, as you know, and he is very poor. All +his savings were lost in some investments he made by my father's +advice."</p> + +<p>"So I have heard—it was most unfortunate."</p> + +<p>"He had always been led to believe, I understand, that he would be +provided for by my father's will."</p> + +<p>Richard laid down his pen and leaned thoughtfully back in his chair. "He +has told me so," he rejoined, "but we have only his word for it, as +there was no memorandum concerning him among my brother's papers."</p> + +<p>"But surely it was well known that father had given him a pension. Aunt +Lucy was perfectly aware of it—they talked of it together."</p> + +<p>"During his lifetime he did pay Crowley a small monthly allowance in +consideration of his past services. But his will was an extremely +careful document—his bequests are all made in a perfectly legal form."<a name="page_366" id="page_366"></a></p> + +<p>"Was not this will made some years ago, however, before the old man +became helpless and lost his money?"</p> + +<p>Richard nodded: "I understood as much from Crowley when he came to me +with his complaint. But, as I reminded him, it would have been a +perfectly simple matter for Daniel to have made such a bequest in a +codicil—as he did in your case," he concluded deliberately.</p> + +<p>The younger man met his gaze without flinching. "The will, I believe, +was written while I was in prison," he observed.</p> + +<p>"Upon the day following your conviction. By a former will, which he then +destroyed, he had bequeathed to you his entire estate. You understand, +of course," he pursued, after a pause in which he had given his nephew +full time to possess himself of the information, as well as of the +multiplied suggestions that he had offered, "that the income you receive +now comes from money that is legally your own. If it should ever appear +advisable for me to do so, I am empowered to make over to you the sum of +one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in securities. The principal is +left in my hands merely because it is to your interest that I should +keep an eye on the investments."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I understand, and I understand, too, that but for your insistence +my father would probably have left me nothing."</p> + +<p>"I felt very strongly that he had no right to disinherit you," returned +Richard. "In my eyes<a name="page_367" id="page_367"></a> he made a grave mistake in refusing to lend you +support at your trial——"</p> + +<p>"As you did, I acknowledge gratefully," interrupted Daniel, and wondered +why the fact had aroused in him so little appreciation. As far as the +observance of the conventional virtues were concerned, Richard Ordway, +he supposed, was, and had been all his life, a good man, yet something +in his austere excellence froze instantly all the gentler impulses in +his nephew's heart. It was impossible after this to mention again the +subject of Crowley, so going back to his work, he applied himself to his +copying until Richard put down his papers and left the office. Then he +locked his desk wearily and followed his uncle out into the street.</p> + +<p>A soft May afternoon was just closing, and the street lamps glimmered, +here and there, like white moths out of the mist which was fragrant with +honeysuckle and roses. An old lamplighter, who was descending on his +ladder from a tall lamppost at the corner, looked down at Ordway with a +friendly and merry face.</p> + +<p>"The days will soon be so long that you won't be needing us to light you +home," he remarked, as he came down gingerly, his hands grasping the +rungs of the ladder above his head. When he landed at Daniel's side he +began to tell him in a pleasant, garrulous voice about his work, his +rheumatism and the strange sights that he had seen in his rounds for so +many years. "I've seen wonders in my day, you may believe it," he went +on, chuckling, "I've seen<a name="page_368" id="page_368"></a> babies in carriages that grew up to be brides +in orange blossoms, and then went by me later as corpses in hearses. +I've seen this town when it warn't mo'n a little middlin' village, and +I've seen soldiers dyin' in blood in this very street." A train went by +with a rush along the gleaming track that ran through the town. "An' +I've known the time when a sight like that would have skeered folks to +death," he added.</p> + +<p>For a minute Ordway looked back, almost wistfully, after the flying +train. Then with a friendly "good-bye!" he parted from the lamplighter +and went on his way.</p> + +<p>When he reached home he half expected to find Alice waiting for him in +the twilight on the piazza, but, to his surprise, Lydia met him as he +entered the hall and asked him, in a voice which sounded as if she were +speaking in the presence of servants, to come with her into the library. +There she closed the door upon him and inquired in a guarded tone:</p> + +<p>"Has Alice been with you this afternoon? Have you seen or heard anything +of her?"</p> + +<p>"Not since luncheon. Why, I thought that she was at home with one of the +girls."</p> + +<p>"It seems she left the house immediately after you. She wore her dark +blue travelling dress, and one of the servants saw her at the railway +station at three o'clock."</p> + +<p>For an instant the room swam before his eyes. "You believe, then, that +she has gone off?" he asked in an unnatural voice, "that she has gone +off with Geoffrey Heath?"<a name="page_369" id="page_369"></a></p> + +<p>In the midst of his own hideous anguish he was impressed by the perfect +decency of Lydia's grief—by the fact that she wore her anxiety as an +added grace.</p> + +<p>"I have telephoned for Uncle Richard," she said in a subdued tone, "and +he has just sent me word that after making inquiries, he learned that +Geoffrey Heath went to Washington on the afternoon train."</p> + +<p>"And Alice is with him!"</p> + +<p>"If she is not, where is she?" Her eyes filled with tears, and sinking +into a chair she dropped her face in her clasped hands. "Oh, I wish +Uncle Richard would come," she moaned through her fingers.</p> + +<p>Again he felt a smothered resentment at this implicit reliance upon +Richard Ordway. "We must make sure first that she is gone," he said, +"and then it will be time enough to consider ways and means of bringing +her back."</p> + +<p>Turning abruptly away from her, he went out of the library and up the +staircase to Alice's room, which was situated directly across the hall +from his own. At the first glance it seemed to him that nothing was +missing, but when he looked at her dressing-table in the alcove, he +found that it had been stripped of her silver toilet articles, and that +her little red leather bag, which he had filled with banknotes a few +days ago, was not in the top drawer where she kept it. Something in the +girl's chamber, so familiar, so redolent of associations with her bright +presence, tore at his heart with a fresh sense of<a name="page_370" id="page_370"></a> loss, like a gnawing +pain that fastens into a new wound. On the bed he saw her pink flannel +dressing-gown, with the embroidered collar which had so delighted her +when she had bought it; on the floor at one side lay her pink quilted +slippers, slightly soiled from use; and between the larger pillows was +the delicate, lace-trimmed baby's pillow upon which she slept. The +perfume of her youth, her freshness, was still in the room, as if she +had gone from it for a little while through a still open door.</p> + +<p>At a touch on his arm he looked round startled, to find one of the +servants—the single remaining slave of the past generation—rocking her +aged body as she stood at his side.</p> + +<p>"She ain' gwine come back no mo'—Yes, Lawd, she ain' gwine come back no +mo'. Whut's done hit's done en hit cyarn be undone agin."</p> + +<p>"Why, Aunt Mehaley, what do you mean?" he demanded sternly, oppressed, +in spite of himself by her wailing voice and her African superstition.</p> + +<p>"I'se seen er tur'ble heap done in my day wid dese hyer eyes," resumed +the old negress, "but I ain' never seen none un um undone agin atter +deys wunst been done. You kin cut down er tree, but you cyarn' mek hit +grow back togedder. You kin wring de neck er a rooster, but you cyarn' +mek him crow. Yes, my Lawd, hit's easy to pull down, but hit's hard to +riz up. I'se ole, Marster, en I'se mos' bline wid lookin', but I ain' +never seen whut's done undone agin."</p> + +<p>She tottered out, still wailing in her half-crazed<a name="page_371" id="page_371"></a> voice, and hastily +shutting the drawers of the dressing-table, he went downstairs again to +where Lydia awaited him in the library.</p> + +<p>"There's no doubt, I fear, that she's gone with Heath," he said, with a +constraint into which he had schooled himself on the staircase. "As he +appears to have stopped at Washington, I shall take the next train +there, which leaves at nine-twenty-five. If they are married——"</p> + +<p>He broke off, struck by the pallor that overspread her face.</p> + +<p>"But they are married! They must be married!" she cried in terror.</p> + +<p>For an instant he stared back at her white face in a horror as great as +hers. Was it the first time in his life, he questioned afterwards, that +he had been brought face to face with the hideous skeletons upon which +living conventions assume a semblance of truth?</p> + +<p>"I hope to heaven that he has <i>not</i> married her!" he exclaimed in a +passion from which she shrank back trembling. "Good God! do you want me +to haggle with a cad like that to make him marry my child?"</p> + +<p>"And if he doesn't? what then?" moaned Lydia, in a voice that seemed to +fade away while she spoke.</p> + +<p>"If he doesn't I shall be almost tempted to bless his name. Haven't you +proved to me that he is a cheat and a brute and a libertine, and yet you +dare to tell me that I must force him to marry Alice. Oh, if he will +only have the mercy to leave her free, I may still save her!" he said.<a name="page_372" id="page_372"></a></p> + +<p>She looked at him with dilated eyes as if rooted in fear to the spot +upon which she stood. "But the consequences," she urged weakly at last +in a burst of tears.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll take the consequences," he retorted harshly, as he went out.</p> + +<p>An hour later, when he was settled in the rushing train, it seemed to +him that he was able to find comfort in the words with which he had +separated from his wife. Let Alice do what she would, there was always +hope for her in the thought that he might help her to bear, even if he +could not remove from her, the consequences of her actions. Could so +great a force as his love for her fail to avert from her young head at +least a portion of her inevitable disillusionment? The recollection of +her beauty, of her generosity, and of the wreck of her womanhood almost +before it had begun, not only added to his suffering, but seemed in some +inexplicable way to increase his love. The affection he had always felt +for her was strengthened now by that touch of pity which lends a deeper +tenderness to all human relations.</p> + +<p>Upon reaching Washington he found that a shower had come up, and the +pavements were already wet when he left the station. He had brought no +umbrella, but he hardly heeded this in the eagerness which drove him +from street to street in his search for his child. After making vain +inquiries at several of the larger hotels, he had begun to feel almost +hopeless, when going into the newest and most fashionable of them all, +he discovered that "Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey<a name="page_373" id="page_373"></a> Heath" had been assigned an +apartment there an hour before. In answer to his question the clerk +informed him that the lady had ordered her dinner served upstairs, +leaving at the same time explicit instructions that she was "not at +home" to anyone who should call. But in spite of this rebuff, he drew +out his card, and sat down in a chair in the brilliantly lighted lobby. +He had selected a seat near a radiator in the hope of drying his damp +clothes, and presently a little cloud of steam rose from his shoulders +and drifted out into the shining space. As he watched the gorgeous, +over-dressed women who swept by him, he remembered as one remembers a +distant dream, the years when his life had been spent among such crowds +in just such a dazzling glare of electric light. It appeared false and +artificial to him now, but in the meantime, he reflected, while he +looked on, he had been in prison.</p> + +<p>A voice at his elbow interrupted his thoughts, and turning in response +to an invitation from a buttoned sleeve, he entered an elevator and was +borne rapidly aloft among a tightly wedged group of women who were +loudly bewailing their absence from the theatre. It was with difficulty +that he released himself at the given signal from his escort, and +stepped out upon the red velvet carpet which led to Alice's rooms. In +response to a knock from the boy who had accompanied him, the door flew +open with a jerk, and Alice appeared before him in a bewildering effect +of lace and pink satin.<a name="page_374" id="page_374"></a></p> + +<p>"O papa, papa, you naughty darling!" she exclaimed, and was in his arms +before he had time to utter the reproach on his lips.</p> + +<p>With her head on his breast, he was conscious at first only of an +irresponsible joy, like the joy of the angels for whom evil no longer +exists. To know that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was in +his arms, seemed sufficient delight, not only unto the day, but unto his +whole future as well. Then the thought of what it meant to find her thus +in her lace and satin came over him, and drawing slightly away he looked +for the first time into her face.</p> + +<p>"Alice, what does it mean?" he asked, as he kissed her.</p> + +<p>Pushing the loosened hair back from her forehead, she met his question +with a protesting pout.</p> + +<p>"It means that you're a wicked boy to run away from home like this and +be all by yourself in a bad city," she responded with a playful shake of +her finger. Then she caught his hand and drew him down on the sofa +beside her in the midst of the filmy train of her tea-gown. "If you +promise never to do it again, I shan't tell mamma on you," she added, +with a burst of light-hearted merriment.</p> + +<p>"Where were you married, Alice? and who did it?" he asked sternly.</p> + +<p>At his tone a ripple of laughter broke from her lips, and reaching for +her little red leather bag on the table, she opened it and tossed a +folded paper upon his knees. "I didn't ask his name," she responded, +"but you can find it all written on that, I suppose."<a name="page_375" id="page_375"></a></p> + +<p>"And you cared nothing for me?—nothing for my anxiety, my distress?"</p> + +<p>"I always meant to telegraph you, of course. Geoffrey has gone down now +to do it."</p> + +<p>"But were you obliged to leave home in this way? If you had told me you +loved him, I should have understood—should have sympathised."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but mamma wouldn't, and I had to run off. Of course, I wanted a big +wedding like other girls, and a lot of bridesmaids and a long veil, but +I knew you'd never consent to it, so I made up my mind just to slip away +without saying a word. Geoffrey is so rich that I can make up afterwards +for the things I missed when I was married. This is what he gave me +to-day. Isn't it lovely?"</p> + +<p>Baring her throat she showed him a pearl necklace hidden beneath her +lace collar. "We're sailing day after to-morrow," she went on, +delightedly, "and we shall go straight to Paris because I am dying to +see the shops. I wouldn't run away with him until he promised to take me +there."</p> + +<p>There was no regret in her mind, no misgiving, no disquietude. The +thought of his pain had not marred for an instant the pleasure of her +imaginary shopping. "O papa, I am happy, so happy!" she sang aloud, +springing suddenly to her full height and standing before him in her +almost barbaric beauty—from the splendid hair falling upon her +shoulders to the little feet that could not keep still for sheer joy of +living. He saw her red mouth glow and tremble as she bent toward him. +"To think that<a name="page_376" id="page_376"></a> I'm really and truly out of Botetourt at last!" she +cried.</p> + +<p>"Then you've no need of me and I may as well go home?" he said a little +wistfully as he rose.</p> + +<p>At this she hung upon his neck for a minute with her first show of +feeling. "I'd rather you wouldn't stay till Geoffrey comes back," she +answered, abruptly releasing him, "because it would be a surprise to him +and he's always so cross when he's surprised. He has a perfectly awful +temper," she confided in a burst of frankness, "but I've learned exactly +how to manage him, so it doesn't matter. Then he's so handsome, too. I +shouldn't have looked at him twice if he hadn't been handsome. Now, go +straight home and take good care of yourself and don't get fat and bald +before I come back."</p> + +<p>She kissed him several times, laughing in little gasps, while she held +him close in her arms. Then putting him from her, she pushed him gently +out into the hall. As the door closed on her figure, he felt that it +shut upon all that was living or warm in his heart.<a name="page_377" id="page_377"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_FOURTH" id="BOOK_FOURTH"></a>BOOK FOURTH<br /><br /> +LIBERATION</h2> + +<p><a name="page_378" id="page_378"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_379" id="page_379"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-d" id="CHAPTER_I-d"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Inward Light</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>N the day that he returned to Botetourt, it seemed to Ordway that the +last vestige of his youth dropped from him; and one afternoon six months +later, as he passed some schoolboys who were playing ball in the street, +he heard one of them remark in an audible whisper: "Just wait till that +old fellow over there gets out of the way." Since coming home again his +interests, as well as his power of usefulness, had been taken from him; +and the time that he had spent in prison had aged him less than the +three peaceful years which he had passed in Botetourt. All that +suffering and experience could not destroy had withered and died in the +monotonous daily round which carried him from his home to Richard's +office and back again from Richard's office to his home.</p> + +<p>Outwardly he had grown only more quiet and gentle, as people are apt to +do who approach the middle years in a position of loneliness and +dependence. To Richard and to Lydia, who had never entirely ceased to +watch him, it appeared that he had at last "settled down," that he might +be, perhaps, trusted to walk alone; and it was with a sensation of +relief that his wife observed the intense youthful beam<a name="page_380" id="page_380"></a> fade from his +blue eyes. When his glance grew dull and lifeless, and his features fell +gradually into the lines of placid repose which mark the body's +contentment rather than the spirit's triumph, it seemed to her that she +might at last lay aside the sleepless anxiety which had been her +marriage portion.</p> + +<p>"He has become quite like other people now," she said one day to +Richard, "do you know that he has grown to take everything exactly as a +matter of course, and I really believe he enjoys what he eats."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad of that," returned Richard, "for I've noticed that he is +looking very far from well. I advised him several weeks ago to take care +of that cough, but he seems to have some difficulty in getting rid of +it."</p> + +<p>"He hasn't been well since Alice's marriage," observed Lydia, a little +troubled. "You know he travelled home from Washington in wet clothes and +had a spell of influenza afterward. He's had a cold ever since, for I +hear him coughing a good deal after he first goes to bed."</p> + +<p>"You'd better make him attend to it, I think, though with his fine chest +there's little danger of anything serious."</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose Alice's marriage could have sobered him? He's grown very +quiet and grave, and I dare say it's a sign that his wildness has gone +out of him, poor fellow. You remember how his laugh used to frighten me? +Well, he never laughs<a name="page_381" id="page_381"></a> like that now, though he sometimes stares hard at +me as if he were looking directly through me, and didn't even know that +he was doing it."</p> + +<p>As she spoke she glanced out of the window and her eyes fell on Daniel, +who came slowly up the gravelled walk, his head bent over an armful of +old books he carried.</p> + +<p>"He visits a great deal among the poor," remarked Richard, "and I think +that's good for him, provided, of course, that he does it with +discretion."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it is," said Lydia, though she added immediately, "but aren't +the poor often very immoral?"</p> + +<p>A reply was on Richard's lips, but before he could utter it, the door +opened and Daniel entered with the slow, almost timid, step into which +he had schooled himself since his return to Botetourt. As he saw Richard +a smile—his old boyish smile of peculiar sweetness—came to his lips, +but without speaking, he crossed to the table and laid down the books he +carried.</p> + +<p>"If those are old books, won't you remember to take them up to your +room, Daniel?" said Lydia, in her tone of aggrieved sweetness. "They +make such a litter in the library."</p> + +<p>He started slightly, a nervous affection which had increased in the last +months, and looked at her with an apologetic glance. As he stood there +she had again that singular sensation of which she had spoken to +Richard, as if he were gazing through her and not at her.<a name="page_382" id="page_382"></a></p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he answered, "I remember now that I left some here +yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter, of course," she responded pleasantly, "it's only +that I like to keep the house tidy, you know."</p> + +<p>"They do make rather a mess," he admitted, and gathering them up again, +he carried them out of the room and up the staircase.</p> + +<p>They watched his bent gray head disappear between the damask curtains in +the doorway, and then listened almost unconsciously for the sound of his +slow gentle tread on the floor above.</p> + +<p>"There was always too much of the dreamer about him, even as a child," +commented Richard, when the door was heard to close over their heads, +"but he seems contented enough now with his old books, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Contented? Yes, I believe he is even happy. I never say much to him +because, you see, there is so very little for us to talk about. It is a +dreadful thing to confess," she concluded resolutely, "but the truth is +I've been always a little afraid of him since—since——"</p> + +<p>"Afraid?" he looked at her in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Well, not exactly afraid—but nervous with a kind of panic shudder at +times—a dread of his coming close to me, of his touching me, of his +wanting things of me." A shiver ran through her and she bit her lip as +if to hide the expression of horror upon her face. "There's nobody else +on earth that I would say it to, but when he first came back I used<a name="page_383" id="page_383"></a> to +have nightmares about it. I could never get it out of my mind a minute +and if they left me alone with him, I wanted almost to scream with +nervousness. It's silly I know, and I can't explain it even to you, but +there were times when I shrieked aloud in my sleep because I dreamed +that he had come into my room and touched me. I felt that I was wrong +and foolish, but I couldn't help it, and I tried—tried—oh, so hard to +bear things and to be brave and patient."</p> + +<p>The tears fell from her eyes on her clasped hands, but her attitude of +sorrow only made more appealing the Madonna-like loveliness of her +features.</p> + +<p>"You've been a saint, Lydia," he answered, patting her drooping shoulder +as he rose to his feet. "Poor girl, poor girl! and no daughter of my own +could be dearer to me," he added in his austere sincerity of manner.</p> + +<p>"I have tried to do right," replied Lydia, lifting her pure eyes to his +in an overflow of religious emotion.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the harmless object of their anxiety sat alone in his room +under a green lamp, with one of the musty books he had bought open upon +his knees. He was not reading, for his gaze was fixed on the opposite +wall, and there was in his eyes something of the abstracted vision which +Lydia dreaded. It was as if his intellect, forced from the outward +experience back into the inner world of thought, had ended by projecting +an image of itself into the space at which he looked. While he sat there +the<a name="page_384" id="page_384"></a> patient, apologetic smile with which he had answered to his wife +was still on his lips.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's because I'm getting old that people and things no longer +make me suffer," he said to himself, "it's because I'm getting old that +I can look at Lydia unmoved, that I can feel tenderness for her even +while I see the repulsion creep into her eyes. It isn't her fault, after +all, that she loathes me, nor is it mine. Yes, I'm certainly an old +fellow, the boy was right. At any rate, it's pleasanter, on the whole, +than being young."</p> + +<p>Closing the book, he laid it on the table, and leaned forward with his +chin on his hands. "But if I'd only known when I was young!" he added, +"if I'd only known!" His past life rose before him as a picture that he +had seen, rather than as a road along which he had travelled; and he +found himself regarding it almost as impersonally as he might have +regarded the drawing upon the canvas. The peril of the inner life had +already begun to beset him—that mysterious power of reliving one's +experience with an intensity which makes the objective world appear dull +and colourless by contrast. It was with an effort at times that he was +able to detach his mind from the contemplative habit into which he had +fallen. Between him and his surroundings there existed but a single +bond, and this was the sympathy which went out of him when he was +permitted to reach the poor and the afflicted. To them he could still +speak, with them he could still be mirthful; but from his wife, his +uncle, and<a name="page_385" id="page_385"></a> the members of his own class, he was divided by that +impenetrable wall of social tradition. In his home he had ceased to +laugh, as Lydia had said; but he could still laugh in the humbler houses +of the poor. They had received him as one of themselves, and for this +reason alone he could remember how to be merry when he was with them. To +the others, to his own people, he felt himself to be always an outsider, +a reclaimed castaway, a philanthropic case instead of an individual; and +he knew that if there was one proof the more to Lydia that he was in the +end a redeemed character, it was the single fact that he no longer +laughed in her presence. It was, he could almost hear her say, +unbecoming, if not positively improper, that a person who had spent five +years in prison should be able to laugh immoderately afterward; and the +gravity of his lips was in her eyes, he understood, the most +satisfactory testimony to the regeneration of his heart.</p> + +<p>And yet Lydia, according to her vision, was a kind, as well as a +conscientious woman. The pity of it was that if he were to die now, +three years after his homecoming, she would probably reconstruct an +imaginary figure of him in her memory, and wear crape for it with +appropriate grace and dignity. The works of the imagination are +manifold, he thought with a grim humour, even in a dull woman.</p> + +<p>But as there was not likely to occur anything so dramatic, in the +immediate present, as his death, he wondered vaguely what particular +form of aversion his wife's attitude would next express. Or<a name="page_386" id="page_386"></a> could it be +that since he had effaced himself so utterly, he hardly dared to listen +to the sound of his footsteps in the house, she had grown to regard him +with a kind of quiet tolerance, as an object which was unnecessary, +perhaps, yet entirely inoffensive? He remembered now that during those +terrible first years in prison he had pursued the thought of her with a +kind of hopeless violence, yet to-day he could look back upon her +desertion of him in his need with a compassion which forgave the +weakness that it could not comprehend. That, too, he supposed was a part +of the increasing listlessness of middle age. In a little while he would +look forward, it might be, to the coming years without dread—to the +long dinners when he sat opposite to her with the festive bowl of +flowers between them, to the quiet evenings when she lingered for a few +minutes under the lamp before going to her room—those evenings which +are the supreme hours of love or of despair. Oh, well, he would grow +indifferent to the horror of these things, as he had already grown +indifferent to the soft curves of her body. Yes, it was a thrice blessed +thing, this old age to which he was coming!</p> + +<p>Then another memory flooded his heart with the glow of youth, and he saw +Emily, as she had appeared to him that night in the barn more than six +years ago, when she had stood with the lantern held high above her head +and the red cape slipping back from her upraised arm. A sharp pain shot +through him, and he dropped his eyes as if he had met a blow.<a name="page_387" id="page_387"></a> That was +youth at which he had looked for one longing instant—that was youth and +happiness and inextinguishable desire.</p> + +<p>For a moment he sat with bent head; then with an effort he put the +memory from him, and opened his book at the page where he had left off. +As he did so there was a tap at his door, and when he had spoken, Lydia +came in timidly with a letter in her hand.</p> + +<p>"This was put into Uncle Richard's box by mistake," she said, "and he +has just sent it over."</p> + +<p>He took it from her and seeing that it was addressed in Baxter's +handwriting, laid it, still unopened, upon the table. "Won't you sit +down?" he asked, pushing forward the chair from which he had risen.</p> + +<p>A brief hesitation showed in her face; then as he turned away from her +to pick up some scattered papers from the floor, she sat down with a +tentative, nervous manner.</p> + +<p>"Are you quite sure that you're well, Daniel?" she inquired. "Uncle +Richard noticed to-day that you coughed a good deal in the office. I +wonder if you get exactly the proper kind of food?"</p> + +<p>He nodded, smiling. "Oh, I'm all right," he responded, "I'm as hard as +nails, you know, and always have been."</p> + +<p>"Even hard people break down sometimes. I wish you would take a tonic or +see a doctor."</p> + +<p>Her solicitude surprised him, until he remembered that she had never +failed in sympathy for<a name="page_388" id="page_388"></a> purely physical ailments. If he had needed +bodily healing instead of mental, she would probably have applied it +with a conscientious devotedness.</p> + +<p>"I am much obliged to you, but I'm really not sick," he insisted, "it is +very good of you, however."</p> + +<p>"It is nothing more than my duty," she rejoined, sweetly.</p> + +<p>"Well, that may be, but there's nothing to prevent my being obliged to +you for doing your duty."</p> + +<p>Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat looking at him with her +gentle, uncomprehending glance. "I wish, all the same," she murmured, +"that you would let me send you a mustard plaster to put on your chest."</p> + +<p>He shook his head without replying in words to her suggestion.</p> + +<p>"Do you know it is three months since we had a letter from Alice," he +said, "and six since she went away?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's that then? You have been worrying about Alice?"</p> + +<p>"How can I help it? We hardly know even that she is living."</p> + +<p>"I've thought of her day and night since her marriage, though it's just +as likely, isn't it, that she's taken up with the new countries and her +new clothes?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful uncertainty that +kills."</p> + +<p>With a sigh she looked down at her slippered feet. <a name="page_389" id="page_389"></a>"I was thinking +to-day what a comfort Dick is to me—to us all," she said, "one is so +sure of him and he is doing so splendidly at college."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he agreed, "Dick is a comfort. I wish poor Alice was more like +him."</p> + +<p>"She was always wild, you remember, never like other children, and it +was impossible to make her understand that some things were right and +some wrong. Yet I never thought that she would care for such a loud, +vulgar creature as Geoffrey Heath."</p> + +<p>"Did she care for him?" asked Daniel, almost in a whisper, "or was it +only that she wanted to see Paris?"</p> + +<p>"Well, she may have improved him a little—at least let us hope so," she +remarked as if she had not heard his question. "He has money, at any +rate, and that is what she has always wanted, though I fear even +Geoffrey's income will be strained by her ceaseless extravagance."</p> + +<p>As she finished he thought of her own youth, which she had evidently +forgotten, and it seemed to him that the faults she blamed most in Alice +were those which she had overcome patiently in her own nature.</p> + +<p>"I could stand anything better than this long suspense," he said gently.</p> + +<p>"It does wear one out," she rejoined. "I am very, very sorry for you."</p> + +<p>Some unaccustomed tone in her voice—a more human quality, a deeper +cadence, made him wonder in an impulse of self-reproach if, after all, +the breach between them was in part of his own making?<a name="page_390" id="page_390"></a> Was it still +possible to save from the ruin, if not love, at least human +companionship?</p> + +<p>"Lydia," he said, "it isn't Alice, it is mostly loneliness, I think."</p> + +<p>Rising from her chair she stood before him with her vague, sweet smile +playing about her lips.</p> + +<p>"It is natural that you should feel depressed with that cough," she +remarked, "I really wish you would let me send you a mustard plaster."</p> + +<p>As the cough broke out again, he strangled it hilariously in a laugh. +"Oh, well, if it's any comfort to you, I don't mind," he responded.</p> + +<p>When she had gone he picked up Baxter's letter from the table and opened +it with trembling fingers. What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, +but as he read the words, written so laboriously in Baxter's big +scrawling writing, he felt that his energy returned to him with the +demand for action—for personal responsibility.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I don't know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke's death three +months ago," the letter ran, "but this is to say that Mr. Beverly +dropped down with a paralytic stroke last week; and now since he's +dead and buried, the place is to be sold for debt and the children +sent off to school to a friend of Miss Emily's where they can go +cheap. Miss Emily has a good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, +but she's going North before Christmas to some big boarding school +where they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled +about the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might +take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your +advice, <i>which is of the best always</i>.</p> + +<p>"Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present,</p> + +<p class="r"><span class="smcap">Baxter</span>."</p></div> + +<p>As he folded the letter a flush overspread his face. "I'll go," he said, +with a new energy in his voice, "I'll go to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Then turning in response to a knock, he opened the door and received the +mustard plaster which Lydia had made.<a name="page_392" id="page_392"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-d" id="CHAPTER_II-d"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">At Tappahannock Again</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">H</span>E had sent a telegram to Banks, and as the train pulled into the +station, he saw the familiar sandy head and freckled face awaiting him +upon the platform.</p> + +<p>"By George, this is a bully sight, Smith," was the first shout that +reached his ears.</p> + +<p>"You're not a bit more pleased than I am," he returned laughing with +pleasure, as he glanced from the station, crowded with noisy Negroes, up +the dusty street into which they were about to turn. "It's like coming +home again, and upon my word, I wish I were never to leave here. But how +are you, Banks? So you are married to Milly and going to live contented +forever afterward."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm married," replied Banks, without enthusiasm, "and there's a +baby about which Milly is clean crazy. Milly has got so fat," he added, +"that you'd never believe I could have spanned her waist with my hands +three years ago."</p> + +<p>"Indeed? And is she as captivating as ever?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I reckon she must be," said Banks, "but it doesn't seem so +mysterious, somehow, as it used to." His silly, affectionate smile broke +out as he looked at his companion. "To tell the truth,"<a name="page_393" id="page_393"></a> he confessed, +"I've been missing you mighty hard, Smith, marriage or no marriage. It +ain't anything against Milly, God knows, that she can't take your place, +and it ain't anything against the baby. What I want is somebody I can +sit down and look up to, and I don't seem to be exactly able to look up +to Milly or to the baby."</p> + +<p>"The trouble with you, my dear Banks, is that you are an incorrigible +idealist and always will be. You were born to be a poet and I don't see +to save my life how you escaped."</p> + +<p>"I didn't. I used to write a poem every Sunday of my life when I first +went into tobacco. But after that Milly came and I got used to spending +all my Sundays with her."</p> + +<p>"Well, now that you have her in the week, you might begin all over +again."</p> + +<p>They were walking rapidly up the long hill, and as Ordway passed, he +nodded right and left to the familiar faces that looked out from the +shop doors. They were all friendly, they were all smiling, they were all +ready to welcome him back among them.</p> + +<p>"The queer part is," observed Banks, with that stubborn vein of +philosophy which accorded so oddly with his frivolous features, "that +the thing you get doesn't ever seem to be the same as the thing you +wanted. This Milly is kind to me and the other wasn't, but, somehow, +that hasn't made me stop regretting the other one that I didn't +marry—the Milly that banged and snapped at me about my clothes and +things all day long. I don't know what<a name="page_394" id="page_394"></a> it means, Smith, I've studied +about it, but I can't understand."</p> + +<p>"The meaning of it is, Banks, that you wanted not the woman, but the +dream."</p> + +<p>"Well, I didn't get it," rejoined Banks, gloomily.</p> + +<p>"Yet Milly's a good wife and you're happy, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"I should be," replied Banks, "if I could forget how darn fascinating +that other Milly was. Oh, yes, she's a good wife and a doting mother, +and I'm happy enough, but it's a soft, squashy kind of happiness, not +like the way I used to feel when I'd walk home with you after the +preaching in the old field."</p> + +<p>While he spoke they had reached Baxter's warehouse, and as Ordway was +recognized, there was a quiver of excitement in the little crowd about +the doorway. A moment later it had surrounded him with a shout of +welcome. A dozen friendly hands were outstretched, a dozen breathless +lips were calling his name. As the noise passed through the neighbouring +windows, the throng was increased by a number of small storekeepers and +a few straggling operatives from the cotton mills, until at last he +stopped, half laughing, half crying, in their midst. Ten minutes +afterward, when Baxter wedged his big person through the archway, he saw +Ordway standing bareheaded in the street, his face suffused with a glow +which seemed to give back to him a fleeting beam of the youth that he +had lost.</p> + +<p>"Well, I reckon it's my turn now. You can<a name="page_395" id="page_395"></a> just step inside the office, +Smith," remarked Baxter, while he grasped Ordway's arm and pulled him +back into the warehouse. As they entered the little room, Daniel saw +again the battered chair, the pile of Smith's Almanacs, and the paper +weight, representing a gambolling kitten, upon the desk.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad to see you—we're all glad to see you," said Baxter, shaking +his hand for the third time with a grasp which made Ordway feel that he +was in the clutch of a down cushion. "It isn't the way of Tappahannock +to forget a friend, and she ain't forgotten you."</p> + +<p>"It's like her," returned Ordway, and he added with a sigh, "I only wish +I were coming back for good, Baxter."</p> + +<p>"There now!" exclaimed Baxter, chuckling, "you don't, do you? Well, all +I can say, my boy, is that you've got a powerful soft spot that you left +here, and your old job in the warehouse is still waiting for you when +you care to take it. I tell you what, Smith, you've surely spoiled me +for any other bookkeeper, and I ain't so certain, when it comes to that, +that you haven't spoiled me for myself."</p> + +<p>He was larger, softer, more slovenly than ever, but he was so undeniably +the perfect and inimitable Baxter, that Ordway felt his heart go out to +him in a rush of sentiment. "Oh, Baxter, how is it possible that I've +lived without you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Smith, but it's a plain fact that after my wife—and +that's nature—there ain't anybody goin' that I set so much store by. +Why, when<a name="page_396" id="page_396"></a> I was in Botetourt last spring, I went so far as to put my +right foot on your bottom step, but, somehow, the left never picked up +the courage to follow it."</p> + +<p>"Do you dare to tell me that you've been to Botetourt?" demanded Ordway +with indignation.</p> + +<p>"Well, I could have stood the house you live it, though it kind of took +my breath away," replied Baxter, with an embarrassed and guilty air, +"but when it came to facing that fellow at the door, then my courage +gave out and I bolted. I studied him a long while, thinking I might get +my eyes used to the sight of him, but it did no good. I declar', Smith, +I could no more have put a word to him than I could to the undertaker at +my own funeral. Bless my soul, suh, poor Mr. Beverly, when he was alive, +didn't hold a tallow candle to that man."</p> + +<p>"You might have laid in wait for me in the street, then, that would have +been only fair."</p> + +<p>"But how did I know, Smith, that you wan't livin' up to the man at your +door?"</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't have taken you long to find out that I wasn't. So poor Mr. +Beverly is dead and buried, then, is he?"</p> + +<p>Baxter's face adopted instantly a funereal gloom, and his voice, when he +spoke, held a quaver of regret.</p> + +<p>"There wasn't a finer gentleman on earth than Mr. Beverly," he said, +"and he would have given me his last blessed cent if he'd ever had one +to give. I've lost a friend, Smith, there's no doubt of that, I've lost +a friend. And poor Mrs. Brooke, too,"<a name="page_397" id="page_397"></a> he added sadly. "Many and many is +the time I've heard Mr. Beverly grieven' over the way she worked. 'If +things had only come out as I planned them, Baxter,' he'd say to me, 'my +wife should never have raised her finger except to lift food to her +lips.'"</p> + +<p>"And yet I've seen him send her downstairs a dozen times a day to make +him a lemonade," observed Ordway cynically.</p> + +<p>"That wasn't his fault, suh, he was born like that—it was just his way. +He was always obliged to have what he wanted."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can forgive him for killing his wife, but I can't pardon him +for the way he treated his sister. That girl used to work like a farm +hand when I was out there."</p> + +<p>"She was mighty fond of him all the same, was Miss Emily."</p> + +<p>"Everybody was, that's what I'm quarreling about. He didn't deserve it."</p> + +<p>"But he meant well in his heart, Smith, and it's by that that I'm +judgin' him. It wasn't his fault, was it, if things never went just the +way he had planned them out? I don't deny, of course, that he was sort +of flighty at times, as when he made a will the week before he died and +left five hundred dollars to the Tappahannock Orphan Asylum."</p> + +<p>"To the Orphan Asylum? Why, his own children are orphans, and he didn't +have five hundred dollars to his name!"</p> + +<p>"Of course, he didn't, that's just the point,"<a name="page_398" id="page_398"></a> said Baxter with a +placid tolerance which seemed largely the result of physical bulk, "and +so they have had to sell most of the furniture to pay the bequest. You +see, just the night before his stroke, he got himself considerably +worked up over those orphans. So he just couldn't help hopin' he would +have five hundred dollars to leave 'em when he came to die, an' in case +he did have it he thought he might as well be prepared. Then he sat +right down and wrote the bequest out, and the next day there came his +stroke and carried him off."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're a first-rate advocate, Baxter, but that doesn't alter my +opinion of Mr. Beverly. What about his own orphans now? How are they +going to be provided for?"</p> + +<p>"It seems Miss Emily is to board 'em out at some school she knows of, +and I've settled it with her that she's to borrow enough from me to tide +over any extra expenses until spring."</p> + +<p>"Then we are to wind up the affairs of Cedar Hill, are we? I suppose +it's best for everybody, but it makes me sad enough to think of it."</p> + +<p>"And me, too, Smith," said Baxter, sentimentally. "I can see Mr. Beverly +to the life now playin' with his dominoes on the front porch. But +there's mighty little to wind up, when it comes to that. It's mortgaged +pretty near to the last shingle, and when the bequest to the orphans is +paid out of what's over, there'll be precious few dollars that Miss +Emily can call her own. The reason I sent for you, Smith," he added in a +solemn voice, "was that I thought you<a name="page_399" id="page_399"></a> might be some comfort to that +poor girl out there in her affliction. If you feel inclined, I hoped +you'd walk out to Cedar Hill and read her a chapter or so in the Bible. +I remembered how consolin' you used to be to people in trouble."</p> + +<p>With a prodigious effort Ordway swallowed his irreverent mirth, while +Baxter's pious tones sounded in his ears. "Of course I shall go out to +Cedar Hill," he returned, "but I was wondering, Baxter," he broke off +for a minute and then went on again with an embarrassed manner, "I was +wondering if there was any way I could help those children without being +found out? It would make me particularly happy to feel that I might +share in giving them an education. Do you think you could smuggle the +money for their school bills into their Christmas stockings?"</p> + +<p>Baxter thought over it a moment. "I might manage it," he replied, +"seein' that the bills are mostly to come through my hands, and I'm to +settle all that I can out of what's left of the estate."</p> + +<p>As he paused Daniel looked hastily away from him, fearful lest Baxter +might be perplexed by the joy that shone in his face. To be connected, +even so remotely, with Emily in the care of Beverly's children, was a +happiness for which, a moment ago, he had not dared to hope.</p> + +<p>"Let me deposit the amount with you twice a year," he said, "that will +be both the easiest and the safest way."</p> + +<p>"Maybe you're right. And now it's settled, ain't it, that you're to come +to my house to stay?"<a name="page_400" id="page_400"></a></p> + +<p>"I must go back on the night train, I'm sorry to say, but if you'll let +me I'll drop in to supper. I remember your wife's biscuits of old," he +added, smiling.</p> + +<p>"You don't mean it! Well, it'll tickle her to death, I reckon. It ain't +likely, by the way, that you'll find much to eat out at Cedar Hill, so +you'd better remember to have a snack before you start."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can fast until supper," returned Daniel, rising.</p> + +<p>"Well, don't forget to give my respects to Miss Emily, and tell her I +say not to worry, but to let the Lord take a turn. You'll find things +pretty topsy-turvy out there, Smith," he added, "but if you don't happen +to have your Bible handy, I'll lend you one and welcome. There's the big +one with gilt clasps the boys gave me last Christmas right on top of my +desk."</p> + +<p>"Oh, they're sure to have one around," replied Ordway gravely, as he +shook hands again before leaving the office.</p> + +<p>From the top of the hill by the brick church, he caught a glimpse of the +locust trees in Mrs. Twine's little yard, and turning in response to a +remembered force of habit, he followed the board sidewalk to the +whitewashed gate, which hung slightly open. In the street a small boy +was busily flinging pebbles at the driver of a coal wagon, and calling +the child to him, Ordway inquired if Mrs. Twine still lived in that +house.</p> + +<p>"Thar ain't no Mrs. Twine," replied the boy,<a name="page_401" id="page_401"></a> "she's Mrs. Buzzy. She +married my pa, that's why I'm here," he explained with a wink, as the +door behind him flew open, and the lady in question rushed out to +welcome her former lodger. "I hear her now—she's a-comin'. My, an' +she's a tartar, she is!"</p> + +<p>"It's the best sight I've laid eyes on sense I saw po', dear Bill on his +deathbed," exclaimed the tartar, with delight. "Come right in, suh, come +right in an' set down an' let me git a look at you. Thar ain't much +cheer in the house now sence I've lost Bill an' his sprightly ways, but +the welcome's warm if the house ain't."</p> + +<p>She brought him ceremoniously into her closed parlour, and then at his +request led him out of the stagnant air back into her comfortable, +though untidy, kitchen. "I jest had my hand in the dough, suh, when I +heard yo' voice," she observed apologetically, as she wiped off the +bottom of a chair with her blue gingham apron. "I knew you'd be set back +to find out I didn't stay long a widder."</p> + +<p>"I hadn't even heard of Bill's death," he returned, "so it was something +of a surprise to discover that you were no longer Mrs. Twine. Was it +very sudden?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, suh, 'twas tremens—delicious tremens—an' they took him off so +quick we didn't even have the crape in the house to tie on the front do' +knob. You could a heard him holler all the way down to the cotton mills. +He al'ays had powerful fine lungs, had Bill, an' if he'd a-waited for +his lungs to take him, he'd be settin' thar right now, as peart as +life."<a name="page_402" id="page_402"></a></p> + +<p>Her eyes filled with tears, but wiping them hastily away with her apron, +she took up a pan of potatoes and began paring them with a handleless +knife.</p> + +<p>"After your former marriages," he remarked doubtful as to whether he +should offer sympathy or congratulations, "I should have thought you +would have rested free for a time at least."</p> + +<p>"It warn't my way, Mr. Smith," she responded, with a mournful shake of +her head. "To be sure I had a few peaceful months arter Bill was gone, +but the queer thing is how powerful soon peace can begin to pall on yo' +taste. Why, I hadn't been in mo'nin' for Bill goin' on to four months, +when Silas Trimmer came along an' axed me, an' I said 'yes' as quick as +that, jest out a the habit of it. I took off my mo'nin' an' kep' comp'ny +with him for quite a while, but we had a quarrel over Bill's tombstone, +suh, for, bein' a close-fisted man, he warn't willin' that I should put +up as big a monument as I'd a mind to. Well, I broke off with him on +that account, for when it comes to choosin' between respect to the dead +an' marriage to the livin' Silas Trimmer, I told him 'I reckon it won't +take long for you to find out which way my morals air set.' He got mad +as a hornet and went off, and I put on mo'nin' agin an' wo' it steddy +twil the year was up."</p> + +<p>"And at the end of that time, I presume, you were wearied of widowhood +and married Buzzy?"</p> + +<p>"It's a queer thing, suh," she observed, as she picked up a fresh potato +and inspected it as attentively as if it had been a new proposal, "it's +a queer<a name="page_403" id="page_403"></a> thing we ain't never so miserable in this world as when we +ain't got the frazzle of an excuse to be so. Now, arter Bill went from +me, thar was sech a quiet about that it began to git on my nerves, an' +at last it got so that I couldn't sleep at nights because I was no +longer obleeged to keep one ear open to hear if he was comin' upstairs +drunk or sober. Bless yo' heart, thar's not a woman on earth that don't +need some sort of distraction, an Bill was a long sight better at +distractin' you than any circus I've ever seen. Why, I even stopped +goin' to 'em as long as he was livin', for it was a question every +minute as to whether he was goin' to chuck you under the chin or lam you +on the head, an' thar was a mortal lot a sprightliness about it. I +reckon I must have got sort a sp'iled by the excitement, for when 't was +took away, I jest didn't seem to be able to settle down. But thar are +mighty few men with the little ways that Bill had," she reflected sadly.</p> + +<p>"Yet your present husband is kind to you, is he not?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's kind enough, suh," she replied, with unutterable contempt, +"but thar ain't nothin' in marriage that palls so soon as kindness. It's +unexpectedness that keeps you from goin' plum crazy with the sameness of +it, an' thar ain't a bit of unexpectedness about Jake. He does +everything so regular that thar're times when I'd like to bust him open +jest to see how he is wound up inside. Naw, suh, it ain't the blows that +wears a woman out, it's the mortal sameness."<a name="page_404" id="page_404"></a></p> + +<p>Clearly there was no comfort to be afforded her, and after a few words +of practical advice on the subject of the children's education, he shook +hands with her and started again in the direction of Cedar Hill.</p> + +<p>The road with its November colours brought back to him the many hours +when he had tramped over it in cheerfulness or in despair. The dull +brown stretches of broomsedge, rolling like a high sea, the humble +cabins, nestling so close to the ground, the pale clay road winding +under the half-bared trees, from which the bright leaves were fluttering +downward—these things made the breach of the years close as suddenly as +if the divided scenery upon a stage had rolled together. While he walked +alone here it was impossible to believe in the reality of his life in +Botetourt.</p> + +<p>As he approached Cedar Hill, the long melancholy avenue appeared to him +as an appropriate shelter for Beverly's gentle ghost. He was surprised +to discover with what tenderness he was able to surround the memory of +that poetic figure since he stood again in the atmosphere which had +helped to cultivate his indefinable charm. In Tappahannock Beverly's +life might still be read in the dry lines of prose, but beneath the +historic influences of Cedar Hill it became, even in Ordway's eyes, a +poem of sentiment.</p> + +<p>Beyond the garden, he could see presently, through a gap in the trees, +the silvery blur of life everlasting in the fallow land, which was +steeped in afternoon sunshine. Somewhere from a nearer meadow there<a name="page_405" id="page_405"></a> +floated a faint call of "Coopee! Coopee! Coopee!" to the turkeys lost in +the sassafras. Then as he reached the house Aunt Mehitable's face looked +down at him from a window in the second story: and in response to her +signs of welcome, he ascended the steps and entered the hall, where he +stopped upon hearing a child's voice through the half open door of the +dining-room.</p> + +<p>"May I wear my coral beads even if I am in mourning, Aunt Emily?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet, Bella," answered Emily's patient yet energetic tones. "Put +them away awhile and they'll be all the prettier when you take them out +again."</p> + +<p>"But can't I mourn for papa and mamma just as well in my beads as I can +without them?"</p> + +<p>"That may be, dear, but we must consider what other people will say."</p> + +<p>"What have other people got to do with my mourning, Aunt Emily?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, but when you grow up you'll find that they have something +to do with everything that concerns you."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, I shan't mourn at all," replied Bella, defiantly. "If you +won't let me mourn in my coral beads, I shan't mourn a single bit +without them."</p> + +<p>"There, there, Bella, go on with your lesson," said Emily sternly, "you +are a naughty girl."</p> + +<p>At the sound of Ordway's step on the threshold, she rose to her feet, +with a frightened movement, and stood, white and trembling, her hand +pressed to her quivering bosom.<a name="page_406" id="page_406"></a></p> + +<p>"You!" she cried out sharply, and there was a sound in her voice that +brought him with a rush to her side. But as he reached her she drew +quickly away, and hiding her face in her hands, broke into passionate +weeping.</p> + +<p>It was the first time that he had seen her lose her habit of +self-command, and while he watched her, he felt that each of her broken +sobs was wrung from his own heart.</p> + +<p>"I was a fool not to prepare you," he said, as he placed a restraining +hand on the awe-struck Bella. "You've had so many shocks I ought to have +known—I ought to have foreseen——"</p> + +<p>At his words she looked up instantly, drying her tears on a child's +dress which she was mending. "You came so suddenly that it startled me, +that is all," she answered. "I thought for a minute that something had +happened to you—that you were an apparition instead of a reality. I've +got into the habit of seeing ghosts of late."</p> + +<p>"It's a bad habit," he replied, as he pushed Bella from the room and +closed the door after her. "But I'm not a ghost, Emily, only a rough and +common mortal. Baxter wrote me of Beverly's death, so I came thinking +that I might be of some little use. Remember what you promised me in +Botetourt."</p> + +<p>As he looked at her now more closely, he saw that the clear brown of her +skin had taken a sallow tinge, as if she were very weary, and that there +were faint violet shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. These outward +signs of her weakness moved him to<a name="page_407" id="page_407"></a> a passion deeper and tenderer than +he had ever felt before.</p> + +<p>"I have not forgotten," she responded, after a moment in which she had +recovered her usual bright aspect, "but there is really nothing one can +do, it is all so simple. The farm has already been sold for debt, and so +I shall start in the world without burdens, if without wealth."</p> + +<p>"And the children? What of them?"</p> + +<p>"That is arranged, too, very easily. Blair is fifteen now, and he will +be given a scholarship at college. The girls will go to a friend of +mine, who has a boarding school and has made most reasonable terms."</p> + +<p>"And you?" he asked in a voice that expressed something of the longing +he could not keep back. "Is there to be nothing but hard work for you in +the future?"</p> + +<p>"I am not afraid of work," she rejoined, smiling, "I am afraid only of +reaching a place where work does not count."</p> + +<p>As he made no answer, she talked on brightly, telling him of her plans +for the future, of the progress the children had shown at their lessons, +of the arrangements she had made for Aunt Mehitable and Micah, and of +the innumerable changes which had occurred since he went away. So full +of life, of energy, of hopefulness, were her face and voice that but for +her black dress he would not have suspected that she had stood recently +beside a deathbed. Yet as he listened to her, his heart was torn by the +sharp anguish of parting, and when presently she began to<a name="page_408" id="page_408"></a> question him +about his life in Botetourt, it was with difficulty that he forced +himself to reply in a steady voice. All other memories of her would give +way, he felt, before the picture of her in her black dress against the +burning logs, with the red firelight playing over her white face and +hands.</p> + +<p>An hour later, when he rose to go, he took both of her hands in his, and +bending his head laid his burning forehead against her open palms.</p> + +<p>"Emily," he said, "tell me that you understand."</p> + +<p>For a moment she gazed down on him in silence. Then, as he raised his +eyes, she kissed him so softly that it seemed as if a spirit had touched +his lips.</p> + +<p>"I understand—forever," she answered.</p> + +<p>At her words he straightened himself, as though a burden had fallen from +him, and turning slowly away he went out of the house and back in the +direction of Tappahannock.<a name="page_409" id="page_409"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-d" id="CHAPTER_III-d"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Alice's Marriage</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>T was after ten o'clock when he returned to Botetourt, and he found +upon reaching home that Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle +of cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, bore mute witness +to the continuance of her solicitude. After so marked a consideration it +seemed to him only decent that he should swallow a portion of the +liquid; and he was in the act of filling the tablespoon she had left, +when a ring at the door caused him to start until the medicine spilled +from his hand. A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, and +as he was aware that the servants had already left the house, he threw +on his coat, and lighting a candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and +down the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating on the panels of +the door quickened his steps almost into a run, and he was hardly +surprised, when he had withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice's face looking +at him from the darkness outside. She was pale and thin, he saw at the +first glance, and there was an angry look in her eyes, which appeared +unnaturally large in their violent circles.</p> + +<p>"I thought you would never open to me, papa," she said fretfully as she +crossed the threshold. "Oh,<a name="page_410" id="page_410"></a> I am so glad to see you again! Feel how +cold my hands are, I am half frozen."</p> + +<p>Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passionately as it rested +for an instant against his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?"</p> + +<p>Without answering, she raised her head, shivering slightly, and then +turning away, entered the library where a log fire was smouldering to +ashes. As he threw on more wood, she came over to the hearth, and +stretched out her hands to the warmth with a nervous gesture. Then the +flame shot up and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than lost by +the change in her features. She appeared taller, slenderer, more +distinguished, and the vivid black and white of her colouring was +intensified by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown and dark +furs she wore.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's at home," she answered, breaking the long silence. "I mean +he's in the house in Henry Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we +got back, so I put on my hat again and came away. I'm not going +back—not unless he makes it bearable for me to live with him. He's +such—such a brute that it's as much as one can do to put up with it, +and it's been killing me by inches for the last months. I meant to write +you about it, but somehow I couldn't, and yet I knew that I couldn't +write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he's unbearable!" she +exclaimed, with a tremor of disgust. "You will never know—you will +never be able to imagine all that I've been through!"<a name="page_411" id="page_411"></a></p> + +<p>"But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?"</p> + +<p>She bared her arm with a superb disdainful gesture, and he saw three +rapidly discolouring bruises on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him +with loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to him almost +fiercely as if he would hold her not only against Geoffrey Heath, but +against herself.</p> + +<p>"You shall not go back to him," he said, "I will not permit it!"</p> + +<p>"The worst part is," she went on vehemently, as if he had not spoken, +"that it is about money—money—always money. He has millions, his +lawyers told me so, and yet he makes me give an account to him of every +penny that I spend. I married him because I thought I should be rich and +free, but he's been hardly better than a miser since the day of the +wedding. He wants me to dress like a dowdy, for all his wealth, and I +can't buy a ring that he doesn't raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more +and more every day I live, but it makes no difference to him as long as +he has me around to look at whenever he pleases. I have to pay him back +for every dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him and get +cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she exclaimed +wildly, "and it is killing me!"</p> + +<p>"You shan't bear it, Alice. As long as I'm alive you are safe with me."</p> + +<p>"For a time I could endure it because of the travelling and the strange +countries," she resumed, ignoring the tenderness in his voice, "but +Geoffrey<a name="page_412" id="page_412"></a> was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke to a +man, he immediately flew into a rage. He even made me leave the opera +one night in Paris because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked +at me so hard."</p> + +<p>Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs slip from her shoulders, +and sat staring moodily into the fire. "I've sworn a hundred times that +I'd leave him," she said, "and yet I've never done it until to-night."</p> + +<p>While she talked on feverishly, he untied her veil, which she had tossed +back, and taking off her hat, pressed her gently against the cushions he +had placed in her chair.</p> + +<p>"You look so tired, darling, you must rest," he said.</p> + +<p>"Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!" she exclaimed. Then her tone +altered abruptly, and for the first time, she seemed able to penetrate +beyond her own selfish absorption. "Oh, you poor papa, how very old you +look!" she said.</p> + +<p>Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her bosom and cried +softly for a minute. "It's all my fault—everything is my fault, but I +can't help it. I'm made that way." Then pushing him from her suddenly, +she sprang to her feet and began walking up and down in her restless +excited manner.</p> + +<p>"Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice," he said, "you are trembling all +over."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "It isn't that—it isn't that. It's the awful—awful +money. If it wasn't<a name="page_413" id="page_413"></a> for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I'd never +spent a single dollar! I wish I'd always gone in rags!"</p> + +<p>Again he forced her back into her chair and again, after a minute of +quiet, she rose to her feet and broke into hysterical sobs.</p> + +<p>"All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that," he said in the effort +to soothe her, "and, besides, your own property is hardly less than two +hundred thousand."</p> + +<p>"But Uncle Richard won't give it to me," she returned angrily. "I wrote +and begged him on my knees and he still refused to let me have a penny +more than my regular income. It's all tied up, he says, in investments, +and that until I am twenty-one it must remain in his hands."</p> + +<p>With a frantic movement, she reached for her muff, and drew from it a +handful of crumpled papers, which she held out to him. "Geoffrey found +these to-night and they brought on the quarrel," she said. "Yesterday he +gave me this bracelet and he seems to think I could live on it for a +month!" She stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him a +glittering circle of diamonds immediately below the blue finger marks. +"There's a sable coat still that he doesn't know a thing of," she +finished with a moan.</p> + +<p>Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly over the papers she had +given him, and then rose to his feet still holding them in his hand.</p> + +<p>"These alone come to twenty thousand dollars, Alice," he said with a +gentle sternness.<a name="page_414" id="page_414"></a></p> + +<p>"And there are others, too," she cried, making no effort to control her +convulsive sobs. "There are others which I didn't dare even to let him +see."</p> + +<p>For a moment he let her weep without seeking to arrest her tears.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?" he asked at last. "Will you +be careful—very careful from this time?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll never spend a penny again. I'll stay in Botetourt forever," +she promised desperately, eager to retrieve the immediate instant by the +pledge of a more or less uncertain future.</p> + +<p>"Then we must help you," he said. "Among us all—Uncle Richard, your +mother and I—it will surely be possible."</p> + +<p>Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down again and dried her eyes +in her muff.</p> + +<p>"It seems a thousand years since I went away," she observed, glancing +about her for the first time. "Nothing is changed and yet everything +appears to be different."</p> + +<p>"And are you different also?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm older and I've seen a great deal more," she responded, with a +laugh which came almost as a shock to him after her recent tears, "but I +still want to go everywhere and have everything just as I used to."</p> + +<p>"But I thought you were determined to stay in Botetourt for the future?" +he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, so I am, I suppose," she returned dismally, "there's nothing else +for me to do, is there?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing that I see."<a name="page_415" id="page_415"></a></p> + +<p>"Then I may as well make up my mind to be miserable forever. It's so +frightfully gloomy in this old house, isn't it? How is mamma?"</p> + +<p>"She's just as you left her, neither very well nor very sick."</p> + +<p>"So it's exactly what it always was, I suppose, and will drive me to +distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick away?"</p> + +<p>"He's at college, and he's doing finely."</p> + +<p>"Of course he is—that's why he's such a bore."</p> + +<p>"Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. So you went to +Europe immediately after I saw you in Washington?"</p> + +<p>"Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and Geoffrey was as +disagreeable as he could be, and made all kinds of horrid jokes about +me."</p> + +<p>"You went straight to Paris, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me come away in three weeks +because he said I spent so much money." Her face clouded again at the +recollection of her embarrassments. "Oh, we had awful scenes, but I +hadn't even a wedding dress, you know, and French dressmakers are so +frightfully expensive. One of them charged me five thousand dollars for +a gown—but he told me that it was really cheap, because he'd sold one +to another American the day before for twelve thousand. I don't know who +her husband is," she added wistfully, "but I wish I were married to +him."</p> + +<p>The wildness of her extravagance depressed him even more than her +excessive despair had done; and<a name="page_416" id="page_416"></a> he wondered if the vagueness of her +ideas of wealth was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination +which foresees results? She had lived since her girlhood in a quiet +Virginia town, her surroundings had been comparatively simple, and she +had never been thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting +influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these things, she had +squandered a fortune as carelessly as a child might have strewed pebbles +upon the beach. Her regret at last had come not through realisation of +her fault, but in the face of the immediate punishment which threatened +her.</p> + +<p>"So he got you out of Paris? Well, I'm glad of that," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you could have heard him. Then +we went down into Italy and did nothing for months but look at old +pictures—at least I did, he wouldn't come—and float around in a +gondola until I almost died from the monotony. It was only after I found +a lace shop, where they had the most beautiful things, that he would +take me away, and then he insisted upon going to some little place up in +the Alps because he said he didn't suppose I could possibly pack the +mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful mountains! They were so +glaring I could never go out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey +would go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a horrid little +hotel where there was nobody but a one-eyed German army officer, and a +woman missionary who was bracing herself for South Africa.<a name="page_417" id="page_417"></a> She wore a +knitted jersey all day and a collar which looked as if it would cut her +head off if she ever forgot herself and bent her neck." Her laughter, +the delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled out: "She +asked me one day if our blacks wore draperies? The ones in South Africa +didn't, and it made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, to +missionary to them. Oh, you can't imagine what I suffered from her, and +Geoffrey was so horrid about it, and insisted that she was just the sort +of companion that I needed. So one day when he happened to be in the +writing-room where she was, I locked the door on the outside and threw +the key down into the gorge. There wasn't any locksmith nearer than +twenty miles, and when they sent for him he was away. Oh, it was simply +too funny for words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break the +heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside was protesting that he +mustn't, and all the time we could hear the missionary begging everybody +please to be patient. She said if it were required of her she was quite +prepared to stay locked up all night, but Geoffrey wasn't, so he swung +himself down by the branches of a tree which grew near the window."</p> + +<p>All her old fascination had come back to her with her change of mood, +and he forgot to listen to her words while he watched the merriment +sparkle in her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny that he +should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, even Geoffrey submitted at +times.</p> + +<p>He was about to make some vague comment<a name="page_418" id="page_418"></a> upon her story, when her face +changed abruptly into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he saw +that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, and was advancing to meet +her daughter with outstretched arms.</p> + +<p>"Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! When did you come?"</p> + +<p>As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway noticed that there was +an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her body.</p> + +<p>"Only a few minutes ago," she replied, with the characteristic disregard +of time which seemed, in some way, to belong to her inability to +consider figures, "and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are just as +lovely as ever."</p> + +<p>"Well, you are lovelier," said Lydia, kissing her, and adding a moment +afterward, as the result of her quick, woman's glance, "what a charming +gown!"</p> + +<p>Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign gesture which she had +picked up. "Oh, you must see some of my others," she replied, "I wish +that my trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent to the other +house, and I haven't even a nightgown. Will you lend me a nightgown, +mamma? I have some of the loveliest you ever saw which were embroidered +for me by the nuns in a French convent."</p> + +<p>"So, you'll spend the night?" said Lydia, "I'm so glad, dear, and I'll +go up and see if your bed has sheets on it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's not only for the night," returned Alice,<a name="page_419" id="page_419"></a> defiantly, "I've +come back for good. I've left Geoffrey, haven't I, papa?"</p> + +<p>"I hope so, darling," answered Ordway, coming for the first time over to +where they stood.</p> + +<p>"Left Geoffrey?" repeated Lydia. "Do you mean you've separated?"</p> + +<p>"I mean I'm never going back again—that I detest him—that I'd rather +die—that I'll kill myself before I'll do it."</p> + +<p>Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned sweetness that she +presented to an impending crisis.</p> + +<p>"But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible thing!" she wailed.</p> + +<p>"Well, it isn't half so horrible as Geoffrey," retorted Alice.</p> + +<p>Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia spoke, came forward at the +girl's angry words, and caught the hand that she had stretched out as if +to push her mother from her.</p> + +<p>"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, +"while we prepare her bed."<a name="page_420" id="page_420"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-d" id="CHAPTER_IV-d"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Power of the Blood</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her +dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room.</p> + +<p>"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?"</p> + +<p>"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a +quarter of an hour ago."</p> + +<p>"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?"</p> + +<p>A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing +instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her +voice.</p> + +<p>"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her +maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him."</p> + +<p>"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would +rather kill herself."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first +time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, +after all, not to himself, but to her.</p> + +<p>"You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent +protestations of last night?"</p> + +<p>"I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them—not a minute +afterward. She can't help<a name="page_421" id="page_421"></a> being dramatic any more than she can help +being beautiful."</p> + +<p>"Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did +you influence her in any way?"</p> + +<p>"I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for +all—that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some +kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her +see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and +indecent."</p> + +<p>Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself +hopelessly overpowered by its unassailable logic.</p> + +<p>"So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?"</p> + +<p>"For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much +she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?"</p> + +<p>"Sacrifice? Good God, what?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for +Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents +when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only +settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a +satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it +all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she +made downstairs last night."</p> + +<p>This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently +he would never attain to the<a name="page_422" id="page_422"></a> critical judgment of her. Well, in any +case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last.</p> + +<p>"She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is +right."</p> + +<p>"Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why, +there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers."</p> + +<p>Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was +thrust on her notice.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had +lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very +much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy +she may be able to arrange matters between them."</p> + +<p>"Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!"</p> + +<p>Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance.</p> + +<p>"It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it +with seriousness."</p> + +<p>"I was never more serious in my life. I'm melancholy. I'm abject."</p> + +<p>"Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened to go West and get a +divorce, and this frightened her."</p> + +<p>"But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in +bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?"</p> + +<p>"She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is +impossible, I suppose, for you to<a name="page_423" id="page_423"></a> realise her complete dependence upon +wealth—the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her +income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last +her a month."</p> + +<p>"I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave +me."</p> + +<p>"Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand +dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand +already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed +to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she +would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet +these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as +much as possible in order to pay those she gave you."</p> + +<p>"I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property," +he said.</p> + +<p>"But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such +matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had +clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should +deem it for your interest to turn it over to you."</p> + +<p>Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered +her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were +confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the +past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow +mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the attitude +of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her +practical<a name="page_424" id="page_424"></a> virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy +glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle +of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to +sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend +its healing insight.</p> + +<p>"But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause.</p> + +<p>"I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all," +she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little +things."</p> + +<p>An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he +found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a +flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny, +like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense.</p> + +<p>"Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition of Alice's +reconciliation with her husband," said the old man, "but I shall +certainly not sacrifice your securities in order to do it. Such an act +would be directly against the terms of your father's will."</p> + +<p>There was no further concession to be had from him, so Daniel turned to +his work, half in disappointment, half in admiration of his uncle's +loyalty to the written word.</p> + +<p>When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him that she had seen Alice, +who had appeared seriously disturbed, though she had shown her, with +evident enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. "She had a sable +coat, also, in her closet, which<a name="page_425" id="page_425"></a> could not have cost less, I should +have supposed, than forty thousand dollars—the kind of coat that a +Russian Grand Duchess might have worn—but when I spoke of it, she grew +very much depressed and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle +Richard? And was I right?"</p> + +<p>"You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think, +then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a +very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than +he has been since her marriage."</p> + +<p>"Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?"</p> + +<p>"She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone—and any +way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out.</p> + +<p>In the evening there was no news beyond a reassuring visit from Richard +Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview +with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than +I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has +some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a +very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will +promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own +income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six +months in order to meet his obligations without<a name="page_426" id="page_426"></a> touching his +investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the +shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money +recently."</p> + +<p>"I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said +Lydia, sweetly.</p> + +<p>"I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand.</p> + +<p>The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours—the +fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human +connection—had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner, +separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous +chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant +reminder that Dick would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable +silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a +little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when +a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the +hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice, +wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she +entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with +an uncontrollable burst of tears.</p> + +<p>"My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising +from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked +to the butler that he need not serve the dessert.</p> + +<p>"Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there,"<a name="page_427" id="page_427"></a> she said, putting +her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure.</p> + +<p>"O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall +never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties +and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell +him that I will never—never go back."</p> + +<p>"I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he +answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door.</p> + +<p>"But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once."</p> + +<p>"I'll go this very hour—I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean +it."</p> + +<p>"Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested +Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things +rationally."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know +now—this very instant—that he has gone too far—that I will not stand +it. He told me a minute ago—the beast!—that he'd like to see the man +who would be fool enough to keep me—that if I went he'd find a +handsomer woman within a week!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother, +and have a good cry and talk things over."</p> + +<p>As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got +into his overcoat.</p> + +<p>"Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a +warning whisper, coming<a name="page_428" id="page_428"></a> after him, "she is quite hysterical now and +does not realise what she is saying."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the +front door behind him.</p> + +<p>On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned +dispassionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that +he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was +possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his +consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a +perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he +concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he +went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that +he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a +step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to +a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the +brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was +opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by +marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again +of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life +in Botetourt.</p> + +<p>Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter +of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his +chair with a lazy shake of his whole person.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as +he held out his hand, "though<a name="page_429" id="page_429"></a> I've known you by sight for several +years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair +and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right +hand.</p> + +<p>At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or +drinking heavily—probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at +the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red +and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man +inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical +specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly +built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have +been remarkable for its masculine beauty.</p> + +<p>"No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause. +"What I have to say can be said better standing, I think."</p> + +<p>"Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coarse laugh. "It's about +Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you +with."</p> + +<p>"It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to +forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it +impossible that she should remain in your house."</p> + +<p>"Well, I've treated her a damned sight better than she deserved," +rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he +had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you, +that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months."<a name="page_430" id="page_430"></a></p> + +<p>"I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she."</p> + +<p>"Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more +in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid +out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her +away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may +go into court about it and get their money however they can."</p> + +<p>"In the future there will be no question of that."</p> + +<p>"You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's +back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which +side her bread is buttered, and she won't stay in that dull old place, +not for all you're worth."</p> + +<p>"She shall never return to you with my consent."</p> + +<p>"Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing +uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes +precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays."</p> + +<p>"She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he +uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly, +"she shall never do it if I can help it."</p> + +<p>"It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but +she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she +isn't so big a fool as you think her."</p> + +<p>"She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is +very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality."<a name="page_431" id="page_431"></a></p> + +<p>Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's +face.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he +sneered.</p> + +<p>"I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his +daughter."</p> + +<p>"Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting, +righteous airs, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like +physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he +questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had +moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words +Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening.</p> + +<p>"Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been +keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been +running back there again after that Brooke girl——"</p> + +<p>The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had passed his +lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth.</p> + +<p>With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature +was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of +manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant +when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to +be not only triumphant,<a name="page_432" id="page_432"></a> but immortal. All that his years of +self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive +rush of energy through his arm.</p> + +<p>There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that +Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk, +to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed—the laugh of the boastful +and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went +out of the house and down into the street.</p> + +<p>The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still +tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger, +stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he +reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting +together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step.</p> + +<p>"Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he +do?"</p> + +<p>Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on +Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet.</p> + +<p>"I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off +the floor."</p> + +<p>"You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that +left her breathless.</p> + +<p>"I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the +blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth."</p> + +<p>Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia +looked up at him, while he stood<a name="page_433" id="page_433"></a> there wiping the blood from his +bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to +Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute, +after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her.<a name="page_434" id="page_434"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-d" id="CHAPTER_V-d"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The House of Dreams</span></h3> + +<p><span class="smcap">From</span> that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an +increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time, +he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change, +which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only +the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute +from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his +patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had +that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing +recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had +treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked +roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she +might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely +regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have +compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally +repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he +was seeking.</p> + +<p>On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and +begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know +how<a name="page_435" id="page_435"></a> it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had +noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his +replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a +minute.</p> + +<p>"It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that +famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match +to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of +astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of +course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to +live there."</p> + +<p>"It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make +that house a home, dear," was his only comment.</p> + +<p>"But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it +is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and +she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even +if it were a palace!"</p> + +<p>Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed +him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever +play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses.</p> + +<p>For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared +himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her +colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly +that there was nothing for her to do<a name="page_436" id="page_436"></a> in the house, and that she +couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his +reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her +trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides +nobody could pack them unless she was there to overlook it."</p> + +<p>"If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be +the one," he urged desperately at last.</p> + +<p>"To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty, +papa!"—she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her +laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of +her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious +laces," she protested, half seriously.</p> + +<p>For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked +irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk +dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her +old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house. +When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur +coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold +day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange +calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband.</p> + +<p>"I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her +unerring prescience.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to<a name="page_437" id="page_437"></a> put up with Heath for the +sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air +of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never +settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to +take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow +restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up."</p> + +<p>"But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted. +You could have gone with her."</p> + +<p>"Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this +when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from +Geoffrey."</p> + +<p>"Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?"</p> + +<p>"I encouraged her to behave with decency—and this isn't decent."</p> + +<p>"No, I admit that. It decidedly is not."</p> + +<p>"Yet we have no assurance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner +to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully.</p> + +<p>His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the +sanctity of convention.</p> + +<p>"In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her +mind?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and +she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience.</p> + +<p>"For myself I can bear anything," she answered,<a name="page_438" id="page_438"></a> "but I feel that for +her it is shocking to make things so public."</p> + +<p>It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it +as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely +akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them +that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation.</p> + +<p>"But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice.</p> + +<p>"We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared +certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is +surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public +scandal."</p> + +<p>They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the +girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life +and spirits.</p> + +<p>"We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're +going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend +too much money, we are going to Egypt in April."</p> + +<p>"If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out +his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology.</p> + +<p>To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for +the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy +and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery +Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for +Richard<a name="page_439" id="page_439"></a> Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his +sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice.</p> + +<p>As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and +even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the +assembled family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a quiet, +distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle +Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate +mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, +Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the +pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with +her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again +the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible +day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness, +and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a +new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to +him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt +before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound +together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved.</p> + +<p>"There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said +Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else +because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now +shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa, +there's to be<a name="page_440" id="page_440"></a> really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a +boy—I hope it will be a girl—you'll promise to love it and be good to +it, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke.</p> + +<p>She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which +had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon +her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him.</p> + +<p>"I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like +mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with +dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big +wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out +of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for +years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses, +and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her +clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one +could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's +ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk, +and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest +dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with +bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until +she's five years old, can she?"</p> + +<p>"And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored +no longer?"<a name="page_441" id="page_441"></a></p> + +<p>"I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet +to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money +when he hears this?"</p> + +<p>"I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be +extravagant, just at first."</p> + +<p>"But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind +to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?"</p> + +<p>"Are simple things always ugly?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine—and I had beautiful +clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them."</p> + +<p>She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood, +dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had +conjured into life.</p> + +<p>It was dark when they returned to town, and when Daniel entered his +door, after leaving Alice in Henry Street, he found that the lamps were +already lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he glanced +into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick were sitting together before +the fire, the boy resting his head on her knees, while her fragile hand +played caressingly with his hair. They did not look up at his footsteps, +and his heart was so warm with happiness that even the picture of mother +and son in the firelit room appeared dim beside it.</p> + +<p>When he opened his door he found a bright fire in his grate, and +throwing off his coat, he sat down in an easy chair with his eyes on the +glowing coals. The beneficent vision that he had brought home with<a name="page_442" id="page_442"></a> him +was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, and while he gazed on +it, he told himself that the years of his loneliness, and his inner +impoverishment, were ended forever. The path of age showed to him no +longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road along which he +might travel hopefully with young feet to keep him company. With a +longing, which no excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw +Alice's child as she had seen it in her maternal rapture—as something +immortally young and fair and innocent. He thought of the moment so long +ago, when they had first placed Alice in his arms, and it seemed to him +that this unborn child was only a renewal of the one he had held that +day—that he would reach out his arms to it with that same half human, +half mystic passion. Even to-day he could almost feel the soft pressure +of her little body, and he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice +or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the reality faded +from his consciousness and the dream began, for while he sat there he +heard the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt the +little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. Oh, the little hands +that would bring healing and love in their touch!</p> + +<p>And he understood as he looked forward now into the dreaded future, that +the age to which he was travelling was only an immortal youth.<a name="page_443" id="page_443"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-d" id="CHAPTER_VI-d"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Ultimate Choice</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>N Christmas Eve a heavy snowstorm set in, and as there was but little +work in the office that day, he took a long walk into the country before +going home to luncheon. By the time he came back to town the ground was +already covered with snow, which was blown by a high wind into deep +drifts against the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the +poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each branch outlined in a +delicate tracery, and where the skeletons of last spring's flowers still +clung to the boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of frozen +blossoms.</p> + +<p>As he passed Richard's house, the sight of his aunt's fair head at the +window arrested his steps, and going inside, he found her filling yarn +stockings for twenty poor children, to whose homes she went every +Christmas Eve. The toys and the bright tarleton bags of candy scattered +about the room gave it an air that was almost festive; and for a few +minutes he stayed with her, watching the glow of pleasure in her small, +pale face, while he helped stuff the toes of the yarn stockings with +oranges and nuts. As he stood there, surrounded by the little gifts, he +felt, for the first time since his childhood, the full<a name="page_444" id="page_444"></a> significance of +Christmas—of its cheer, its mirth and its solemnity.</p> + +<p>"I am to have a tree at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Will you come?" she +asked wistfully, and he promised, with a smile, before he left her and +went out again into the storm.</p> + +<p>In the street a crowd of boys were snowballing one another, and as he +passed a ball struck him, knocking his hat into a drift. Turning in +pretended fury, he plunged into the thick of the battle, and when he +retreated some minutes afterward, he was powdered from head to foot with +dry, feathery flakes. When he reached home, he discovered, with dismay, +that he left patches of white on the carpet from the door to the upper +landing. After he had entered his room he shook the snow from his +clothes, and then looking at his watch, saw to his surprise, that +luncheon must have been over for at least an hour. In a little while, he +told himself, he would go downstairs and demand something to eat from +the old butler; but the hearth was so bright and warm that after sinking +into his accustomed chair, he found that it was almost impossible to +make the effort to go out. In a moment a delicious drowsiness crept over +him, and he fell presently asleep, while the cigar he had lighted burned +slowly out in his hand.</p> + +<p>The sound of the opening and closing door brought him suddenly awake +with a throb of pain. The gray light from the windows, beyond which the +snow fell heavily, was obscured by the figure of Lydia,<a name="page_445" id="page_445"></a> who seemed to +spring upon him out of some dim mist of sleep. At first he saw only her +pale face and white outstretched hands; then as she came rapidly forward +and dropped on her knees in the firelight, he saw that her face was +convulsed with weeping and her eyes red and swollen. For the first time +in his life, it occurred to him with a curious quickness of perception, +he looked upon the naked soul of the woman, with her last rag of +conventionality stripped from her. In the shock of the surprise, he half +rose to his feet, and then sank back helplessly, putting out his hand as +if he would push her away from him.</p> + +<p>"Lydia," he said, "don't keep me waiting. Tell me at once."</p> + +<p>She tried to speak, and he heard her voice strangle like a live thing in +her throat.</p> + +<p>"Is Alice dead?" he asked quietly, "or is Dick?"</p> + +<p>At this she appeared to regain control of herself and he watched the +mask of her impenetrable reserve close over her features. "It is not +that—nobody is dead—it is worse," she answered in a subdued and +lifeless voice.</p> + +<p>"Worse?" The word stunned him, and he stared at her blankly, like a +person whose mind has suddenly given way.</p> + +<p>"Alice is in my room," she went on, when he had paused, "I left her with +Uncle Richard while I came here to look for you. We did not hear you +come in. I thought you were still out."</p> + +<p>Her manner, even more than her words, impressed him only as an evasion +of the thing in her mind,<a name="page_446" id="page_446"></a> and seizing her hands almost roughly, he drew +her forward until he could look closely into her face.</p> + +<p>"For God's sake—speak!" he commanded.</p> + +<p>But with his grasp all animation appeared to go out of her, and she fell +across his knees in an immovable weight, while her eyes still gazed up +at him.</p> + +<p>"If you can't tell me I must go to Uncle Richard," he added.</p> + +<p>As he attempted to rise she put out her hands to restrain him, and in +the midst of his suspense, he was amazed at the strength there was in a +creature so slight and fragile.</p> + +<p>"Uncle Richard has just come to tell us," she said in a whisper. "A +lawyer—a detective—somebody. I can't remember who it is—has come down +from New York to see Geoffrey about a check signed in his name, which +was returned to the bank there. At the first glance it was seen to +be—to be not in his writing. When it was sent to him, after the bank +had declined to honour it, he declared it to be a forgery and sent it +back to them at once. It is now in their hands——"</p> + +<p>"To whom was it drawn?" he asked so quietly that his voice sounded in +his own ears like the voice of a stranger.</p> + +<p>"To Damon & Hanska, furriers in Fifth Avenue, and it was sent in payment +for a sable coat which Alice had bought. They had already begun a suit, +it seems, to recover the money."</p> + +<p>As she finished he rose slowly to his feet, and stood staring at the +snow which fell heavily beyond<a name="page_447" id="page_447"></a> the window. The twisted bough of a +poplar tree just outside was rocking back and forth with a creaking +noise, and presently, as his ears grew accustomed to the silence in the +room, he heard the loud monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel, +which seemed to grow more distinct with each minute that the hands +travelled. Lydia had slipped from his grasp as he rose, and lay now with +her face buried in the cushions of the chair. It was a terrible thing +for Lydia, he thought suddenly, as he looked down on her.</p> + +<p>"And Geoffrey Heath?" he asked, repeating the question in a raised voice +when she did not answer.</p> + +<p>"Oh, what can we expect of him? What can we expect?" she demanded, with +a shudder. "Alice is sure that he hates her, that he would seize any +excuse to divorce her, to outrage her publicly. He will do +nothing—nothing—nothing," she said, rising to her feet, "he has +returned the check to the bank, and denied openly all knowledge of it. +After some violent words with Alice in the lawyer's presence, he +declared to them both that he did not care in the least what steps were +taken—that he had washed his hands of her and of the whole affair. She +is half insane with terror of a prosecution, and can hardly speak +coherently. Oh, I wonder why one ever has children?" she exclaimed in +anguish.</p> + +<p>With her last words it seemed to him that the barrier which had +separated him from Lydia had crumbled suddenly to ruins between them. +The space which love could not bridge was spanned by pity; and crossing +to where she stood, he put his arms<a name="page_448" id="page_448"></a> about her, while she bowed her head +on his breast and wept.</p> + +<p>"Poor girl! poor girl!" he said softly, and then putting her from him, +he went out of the room and closed the door gently upon her grief.</p> + +<p>From across the hall the sound of smothered sobs came to him, and +entering Lydia's room, he saw Alice clinging hysterically to Richard's +arm. As she looked round at his footsteps, her face showed so old and +haggard between the splendid masses of her hair, that he could hardly +believe for a minute that this half distraught creature was really his +daughter. For an instant he was held dumb by the horror of it; then the +silence was broken by the cry with which Alice threw herself into his +arms. Once before she had rushed to his breast with the same word on her +lips, he remembered.</p> + +<p>"O papa, you will help me! You must help me!" she cried. "Oh, make them +tell you all so that you may help me!"</p> + +<p>"They have told me—your mother has told me, Alice," he answered, +seeking in vain to release himself from the frantic grasp of her arms.</p> + +<p>"Then you will make Geoffrey understand," she returned, almost angrily. +"You will make Geoffrey understand that it was not my fault—that I +couldn't help it."</p> + +<p>Richard Ordway turned from the window, through which he had been +looking, and taking her fingers, which were closed in a vice-like +pressure about Daniel's arm, pried them forcibly apart.<a name="page_449" id="page_449"></a></p> + +<p>"Look at me, Alice," he said sternly, "and answer the question that I +asked you. What did you say to Geoffrey when he spoke to you in the +lawyer's presence? Did you deny, then, that you had signed the check? +Don't struggle so, I must hear what you told them."</p> + +<p>But she only writhed in his hold, straining her arms and her neck in the +direction of Daniel.</p> + +<p>"He was very cruel," she replied at last, "they were both very cruel. I +don't know what I said, I was so frightened. Geoffrey hurt me +terribly—he hurt me terribly," she whimpered like a child, and as she +turned toward Daniel, he saw her bloodless gum, from which her lower lip +had quivered and dropped.</p> + +<p>"I must know what you told them, Alice," repeated the old man in an +unmoved tone. "I can do nothing to help you, if you will not speak the +truth." Even when her body struggled in his grasp, no muscle altered in +the stern face he bent above her.</p> + +<p>"Let me go," she pleaded passionately, "I want to go to papa! I want +papa!"</p> + +<p>At her cry Daniel made a single step forward, and then fell back because +the situation seemed at the moment in the command of Richard. Again he +felt the curious respect, the confidence, with which his uncle inspired +him in critical moments.</p> + +<p>"I shall let you go when you have told me the truth," said Richard +calmly.</p> + +<p>She grew instantly quiet, and for a minute she<a name="page_450" id="page_450"></a> appeared to hang a dead +weight on his arm. Then her voice came with the whimpering, childlike +sound.</p> + +<p>"I told them that I had never touched it—that I had asked papa for the +money, and he had given it to me," she said.</p> + +<p>"I thought so," returned Richard grimly, and he released his hold so +quickly that she fell in a limp heap at his feet.</p> + +<p>"I wanted it from her own lips, though Mr. Cummins had already told me," +he added, as he looked at his nephew.</p> + +<p>For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with his eyes on the +gold-topped bottles on Lydia's dressing table. He had heard Alice's +fall, but he did not stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard's words, +but he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent revulsion—a +furious anger against Alice swept over him, and the next he felt +suddenly, as in his dream, the little hands pass over his brow and lips.</p> + +<p>"She is right about it, Uncle Richard," he said, "I gave her the check."</p> + +<p>At the words Richard turned quickly away, but with a shriek of joy, +Alice raised herself to her knees, and looked up with shining eyes.</p> + +<p>"I told you papa would know! I told you papa would help me!" she cried +triumphantly to the old man.</p> + +<p>Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance again to his nephew's +face, and something that was almost a tremor seemed to pass through his +voice.</p> + +<p>"Daniel," he asked, "what is the use?"<a name="page_451" id="page_451"></a></p> + +<p>"She has told you the truth," repeated Daniel steadily, "I gave her the +check."</p> + +<p>"You are ready to swear to this?"</p> + +<p>"If it is necessary, I am."</p> + +<p>Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still on her knees, but as she +came nearer him, Daniel retreated instinctively step by step until he +had put the table between them.</p> + +<p>"It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?" he inquired of +Richard.</p> + +<p>The gesture with which Richard responded was almost impatient. "If you +are determined—it will be necessary for a time at least," he replied. +"There's no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, but already +there has been something of a scandal. I have made good the loss to the +bank, but Geoffrey has been very difficult to bring to reason. He wanted +a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way upon Alice."</p> + +<p>"But she is safe now?" asked Daniel, and the coldness in his tone came +as a surprise to him when he spoke.</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is safe," returned Richard, "and you, also, I trust. There is +little danger, I think, under the circumstances, of a prosecution. If at +any time," he added, with a shaking voice, "before your return you +should wish the control of your property, I will turn it over to you at +once."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Daniel quietly, and then with an embarrassed movement, +he held out his hand. "I shall go, I think, on the four o'clock train," +he continued, "is that what you would advise?"<a name="page_452" id="page_452"></a></p> + +<p>"It is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have an appointment with the +lawyer for the bank at a quarter of five." He put out his hand again for +his nephew's. "Daniel, you are a good man," he added, as he turned away.</p> + +<p>Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, did Ordway remember +that he had left Alice crouched on the floor, and coming back he lifted +her into his arms. "It is all right, Alice, don't cry," he said, as he +kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange dullness of sensation, +he crossed the hall and entered his room, where he found Lydia still +lying with her face hidden in the cushions of the chair.</p> + +<p>At his step she looked up and put out her hand, with an imploring +gesture.</p> + +<p>"Daniel!" she called softly, "Daniel!"</p> + +<p>Before replying to her he went to his bureau and hurriedly packed some +clothes into a bag. Then, with the satchel still in his hand, he came +over and stopped beside her.</p> + +<p>"I can't wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard will tell you," he said.</p> + +<p>"You are going away? Do you mean you are going away?" she questioned.</p> + +<p>"To-morrow you will understand," he answered, "that it is better so."</p> + +<p>For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then she raised herself and +leaned toward him.</p> + +<p>"But Alice? Does Alice go with you?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"No, Alice is safe. Go to her."</p> + +<p>"You will come back again? It is not forever?"<a name="page_453" id="page_453"></a></p> + +<p>He shook his head smiling. "Perhaps," he answered.</p> + +<p>She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw presently a look come +into her face like the look with which she had heard of the blow he had +struck Geoffrey Heath.</p> + +<p>"Daniel, you are a brave man," she said, and sobbed as she kissed him.</p> + +<p>Following him to the threshold, she listened, with her face pressed +against the lintel, while she heard him go down the staircase and close +the front door softly behind him.<a name="page_454" id="page_454"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-d" id="CHAPTER_VII-d"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">Flight</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span>OT until the train had started and the conductor had asked for his +ticket, did Ordway realize that he was on his way to Tappahannock. At +the discovery he was conscious of no surprise—scarcely of any +interest—it seemed to matter to him so little in which direction he +went. A curious numbness of sensation had paralysed both his memory and +his perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry, warm +or cold. In the same way he wondered why he felt no regret at leaving +Botetourt forever—no clinging tenderness for his home, for Lydia, for +Alice. If his children had been strangers to him he could not have +thought of his parting from them with a greater absence of feeling. Was +it possible at last that he was to be delivered from the emotional +intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, which had made him one of +the world's failures? He recalled indifferently Alice's convulsed +features, and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped like a +child's that is hurt. These things left him utterly unmoved when he +remembered them, and he even found himself asking the next instant, with +a vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in front of him +was going home to spend Christmas with<a name="page_455" id="page_455"></a> his daughter? "But what has this +bald-headed man to do with Alice or with me?" he demanded in perplexity, +"and why is it that I can think of him now with the same interest with +which I think of my own child? I am going away forever and I shall never +see them again," he continued, with emphasis, as if to convince himself +of some fact which he had but half understood. "Yes, I shall never see +them again, and Alice will be quite happy without me, and Alice's child +will grow up probably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for Alice. +No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice's child," he corrected +quickly, with a piercing flash of insight. "It was for something larger, +stronger—something as inevitable as the law. I could not help it, it +was for myself," he added, after a minute. And it seemed to him that +with this inward revelation the outer covering of things was stripped +suddenly from before his eyes. As beneath his sacrifice he recognised +the inexorable law, so beneath Alice's beauty he beheld the skeleton +which her radiant flesh clothed with life, and beneath Lydia's mask of +conventionality her little naked soul, too delicate and shivering to +stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, all illusions, had +shrivelled now in the hard dry, atmosphere through which he looked. +"Yes, I am indifferent to them all and to everything," he concluded; +"Lydia, and Dick and even Alice are no closer to me than is the +bald-headed man on the front seat. Nobody is closer to another when it +comes to that, for each one of us is alone in an illimitable space."<a name="page_456" id="page_456"></a></p> + +<p>The swinging lights of the train were reflected in the falling snow +outside, like orbed blue flames against a curtain of white. Through the +crack under the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the +cinders from the sill into his face. It was the common day coach of a +local train, and the passengers were, for the most part, young men or +young women clerks, who were hastening back to their country homes for +Christmas. Once when they reached a station several girls got off, with +their arms filled with packages, and pushed their way through the heavy +drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil lamp outside. For a minute +he followed them idly in his imagination, seeing the merry party +ploughing over the old country roads to the warm farm house, where a +bright log fire and a Christmas tree were prepared for them. The window +panes were frosted over now, and when the train started on its slow +journey he could see only the orbed blue flames dancing in the night +against the whirling snowflakes.</p> + +<p>It was nine o'clock when they pulled into Tappahannock and when he came +out upon the platform he found that the storm had ceased, though the +ground lay white and hard beneath the scattered street lamps. Straight +ahead of him, as he walked up the long hill from the station, he heard +the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The lights were still +burning in the little shops, and through the uncurtained windows he +could see the variegated display of Christmas decorations. Here and +there a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was<a name="page_457" id="page_457"></a> peering eagerly at +a collection of toys or a wreath of evergreens, but, for the rest, the +shops appeared singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christmas +Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he scarcely noticed this, and he +was conscious of no particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar +warehouse, he saw Baxter's enormous figure loom darkly under the +flickering light above the sidewalk. Behind him the vacant building +yawned like a sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a glistening +fringe of icicles.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Baxter?" he asked, and stretched out his hand with a +mechanical movement.</p> + +<p>"Why, bless my soul, Smith!" exclaimed Baxter, "who'd ever have believed +it!"</p> + +<p>"I've just got off the train," returned Ordway, feeling vaguely that +some explanation of his presence was needed, "and I'm trying to find a +place where I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at +midnight. It didn't occur to me that you would be in your office. I was +going to Mrs. Buzzy's."</p> + +<p>"You'd better come along with me, for I don't believe you'll find a +living soul at Mag Buzzy's—not even a kid," replied Baxter, "her +husband is one of Jasper Trend's overseers, you know, and they're most +likely down at the cotton mills."</p> + +<p>"At the cotton mills? Why, what's the matter there?"</p> + +<p>"You haven't heard then? I thought it was in all the papers. There's +been a big strike on for a week—Jasper lowered wages the first of the +month—and<a name="page_458" id="page_458"></a> every operative has turned out and demanded more pay and +shorter hours. The old man's hoppin', of course, and the funny part is, +Smith, that he lays every bit of the trouble at your door. He says that +you started it all by raisin' the ideas of the operatives."</p> + +<p>"But it's a pretty serious business for them, Baxter. How are they going +to live through this weather?"</p> + +<p>"They ain't livin', they're starvin', though I believe the union is +comin' to their help sooner or later. But what's that in such a +blood-curdlin' spell as this?"</p> + +<p>A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising and falling in the +bitter air, came to them from below the slope of the hill, and catching +Ordway's arm, Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp.</p> + +<p>"They're hootin' at the guards Trend has put around the mills," he said, +while his words floated like vapour out of his mouth into the cold, +"he's got policemen stalkin' up an' down before his house, too."</p> + +<p>"You mean he actually fears violence?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a +gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the +strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin' +Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker +or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought +to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six +months ago. But he wouldn't<a name="page_459" id="page_459"></a> do it because he said he made more than the +interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he +didn't catch at it."</p> + +<p>For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the +cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered +sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them +from the foot of the hill.</p> + +<p>Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of +Richard Ordway's parting words.</p> + +<p>"Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand +dollars for his mills to-night."</p> + +<p>Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back +a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big shaggy overcoat.</p> + +<p>"You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief +that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, +there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they +are once caught."</p> + +<p>Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it +seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the +darkness.</p> + +<p>"But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy +the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at +midnight."</p> + +<p>"You mean you'll go away even after you've bought 'em?"<a name="page_460" id="page_460"></a></p> + +<p>"I mean I've got to go—to go always from place to place—but I'll leave +you here in my stead." He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in +the sound. "I'll run the mills on the cooperative plan, Baxter, and I'll +leave you in charge of them—you and Banks." Then he caught Baxter's arm +with both hands, and turned his body forcibly in the direction of the +church at the top of the hill. "While we are talking those people down +there are freezing," he said.</p> + +<p>"An' so am I, if you don't mind my mentionin' it," observed Baxter +meekly.</p> + +<p>"Then let's go to Trend's. There's not a minute to lose, if we are to +save the mills. Are you coming, Baxter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm comin'," replied Baxter, waddling in his shaggy coat like a +great black bear, "but I'd like to git up my wind first," he added, +puffing clouds of steam as he ascended the hill.</p> + +<p>"There's no time for that," returned Ordway, sharply, as he dragged him +along.</p> + +<p>When they reached Jasper Trend's gate, a policeman, who strolled, +beating his hands together, on the board walk, came up and stopped them +as they were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, he apologised and +moved on. A moment later the sound of their footsteps on the porch +brought the head of Banks to the crack of the door.</p> + +<p>"Who are you? and what is your business?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Banks!" said Ordway in a whisper, and at his<a name="page_461" id="page_461"></a> voice the bar, which +Banks had slipped from the door, fell with a loud crash from his hands.</p> + +<p>"Good Lord, it's really you, Smith!" he cried in a delirium of joy.</p> + +<p>"Harry, be careful or you'll wake the baby," called a voice softly from +the top of the staircase.</p> + +<p>"Darn the baby!" growled Banks, lowering his tone obediently. "The next +thing she'll be asking me to put out the mills because the light wakes +the baby. When did you come, Smith? And what on God's earth are you +doing here?"</p> + +<p>"I came to stop the strike," responded Ordway, smiling. "I've brought an +offer to Mr. Trend, I must speak to him at once."</p> + +<p>"He's in the dining-room, but if you've come from the strikers it's no +use. His back's up."</p> + +<p>"Well, it ain't from the strikers," interrupted Baxter, pushing his way +in the direction of the dining-room. "It's from a chap we won't name, +but he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with Jasper."</p> + +<p>"Then he's a darn fool," remarked Jasper Trend from the threshold, "for +if I don't get the ringleaders arrested befo' mornin' thar won't be a +brick left standin' in the buildings."</p> + +<p>"The chap I mean ain't worryin' about that," said Baxter, "provided +you'll sign the agreement in the next ten minutes. He's ready to give +you a hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an' all."</p> + +<p>"Sign the agreement? I ain't got any agreement," protested Jasper, +suspecting a trap, "and how do I<a name="page_462" id="page_462"></a> know that the strike ain't over befo' +you're making the offer?"</p> + +<p>"Well, if you'll just step over to the window, and stick your head out, +you won't have much uncertainty about that, I reckon," returned Baxter.</p> + +<p>Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, waiting with his hand on +the sash, while the threatening shouts from below the hill floated into +the room.</p> + +<p>"Papa, the baby can't sleep for the noise those men make down at the +mills," called a peremptory voice from the landing above.</p> + +<p>"I told you so!" groaned Banks, closing the window.</p> + +<p>"I ain't got any agreement," repeated Jasper, in helpless irritation, as +he sank back into his chair.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as well as a lawyer," said +Baxter, while Ordway, sitting down at a little fancy desk of Milly's in +one corner, wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of scented note +paper.</p> + +<p>When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man looked up at him with +blinking eyes. "Is it to hold good if the damned thing burns befo' +mornin'?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"If it burns before morning—yes."</p> + +<p>With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote his name. "How do I know if I'm to +get the money?" he inquired the next instant, moved by a new suspicion.</p> + +<p>"I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in Botetourt," replied +Ordway, as he handed the pen<a name="page_463" id="page_463"></a> to Baxter, "and you will receive an answer +by twelve o'clock to-morrow. I want your signature, also, Banks," he +continued, turning to the young man. "I've made two copies, you see, one +of which I shall leave with Baxter."</p> + +<p>"Then you're going away?" inquired Banks, gloomily.</p> + +<p>Ordway nodded. "I am leaving on the midnight train," he answered.</p> + +<p>"So you're going West?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm going West, and I've barely time to settle things at the mills +before I start. God bless you, Banks. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling into his overcoat in the +hall, he broke away from the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the +door, ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, where the +policeman called a "Merry Christmas!" to him as he hurried by.</p> + +<p>When he gained the top of the hill, and descended rapidly toward the +broad level beyond, where the brick buildings of the cotton mills stood +in the centre of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more +frequent, and the black mass on the frozen ground divided itself +presently into individual atoms. A few bonfires had started on the +outskirts of the crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged, +reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard faces of the men, the +sharpened ones of the women, and the pinched ones of little children, +all sallow from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan<a name="page_464" id="page_464"></a> from lack +of nourishing and wholesome food. As he approached one of these fires, +made from a burning barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, and a +baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, turned and spat fiercely +in his direction. "This ain't no place for swells!" she screamed, and +began laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice.</p> + +<p>In the excitement no one noticed her, and her demented shrieks followed +him while he made his way cautiously along the outskirts of the +strikers, until he came to the main building, before which a few men +with muskets had cleared a hollow space. They looked cowed and sullen, +he saw, for their sympathies were evidently with the operatives, and he +realised that the first organised attack would force them from their +dangerous position.</p> + +<p>Approaching one of the guards, whom he remembered, Ordway touched him +upon the arm and asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. "I +have a message to deliver to the men," he said.</p> + +<p>The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, recognising him, +exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "My God, boys, it's 'Ten Commandment +Smith' or it's his ghost!"</p> + +<p>"Let me get through to the steps," said Ordway, "I must speak to them."</p> + +<p>"Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt if they'd listen to an +angel from heaven if he were to talk to them about Jasper Trend. They +are preparing a rush on the doors now, and when they make it they'll go +through."<a name="page_465" id="page_465"></a></p> + +<p>Passing him in silence, Ordway mounted the steps, and stood with his +back against the doors of the main building, in which, when he had last +entered it, the great looms had been at work. Before him the dark mass +heaved back and forth, and farther away, amid the bonfires in the waste +of frozen snow, he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the +half-crazed woman.</p> + +<p>"We won't hear any talk," cried a spokesman in the front ranks of the +crowd. "It's too late to haggle now. We'll have nothin' from Jasper +Trend unless he gives us what we ask."</p> + +<p>"And if he says he'll give it who will believe him?" jeered a woman, +farther back, holding a crying child above her head. "He killed the +father and he's starvin' the children."</p> + +<p>"No—no, we'll have no damned words. We'll burn out the scabs!" shouted +a man, lifting a torch he had just lit at a bonfire. As the torch rose +in a splendid blaze, it lighted up the front of the building, and cast a +yellow flame upon Ordway's face.</p> + +<p>"I have nothing to do with Jasper Trend!" he called out, straightening +himself to his full height. "He has no part in the mills from to-night! +I have bought them from him!"</p> + +<p>With the light on his face, he stood there an instant before them, while +the shouts changed in the first shock of recognition from anger to +surprise. The minute afterward the crowd was rocked by a single gigantic +emotion, and it hurled itself forward, bearing down the guards in its +efforts to reach the steps.<a name="page_466" id="page_466"></a> As it swayed back and forth its individual +members—men, women and children—appeared to float like straws on some +cosmic undercurrent of feeling.</p> + +<p>"From to-night the mills belong to me!" he cried in a voice which rang +over the frozen ground to where the insane woman was laughing beside a +bonfire. "Your grievances after to-night are not against Jasper Trend, +but against me. You shall have fair pay, fair hours and clean rooms, I +promise you——"</p> + +<p>He went on still, but his words were drowned in the oncoming rush of the +crowd, which rolled forward like great waters, surrounding him, +overwhelming him, sweeping him off his feet, and bearing him out again +upon its bosom. The cries so lately growls of anger had changed +suddenly, and above all the din and rush he heard rising always the name +which he had made honoured and beloved in Tappahannock. It was the one +great moment of his life, he knew, when on the tremendous swell of +feeling, he was borne like a straw up the hillside and back into the +main street of Tappahannock.</p> + +<p>An hour later, bruised, aching and half stunned, he entered the station +and telegraphed twice to Richard Ordway before he went out upon the +platform to take the train. He had left his instructions with Baxter, +from whom he had just parted, and now, as he walked up and down in the +icy darkness, broken by the shivering lights of the station, it seemed<a name="page_467" id="page_467"></a> +to him that he was like a man, who having been condemned to death, +stands looking back a little wistfully at life from the edge of the +grave. He had had his great moment, and ahead of him there was nothing.</p> + +<p>A freight train passed with a grating noise, a station hand, holding a +lantern ran hurriedly along the track, a whistle blew, and then again +there was stillness. His eyes were wearily following the track, when he +felt a touch on his arm, and turning quickly, saw Banks, in a fur-lined +overcoat, looking up at him with an embarrassed air.</p> + +<p>"Smith," he said, strangling a cough, "I've seen Baxter, and neither he +nor I like your going West this way all by yourself and half sick. If +you don't mind, I've arranged to take a little holiday and come along. +To tell the truth, it's just exactly the chance I've been looking for. I +haven't been away from Milly twenty-four hours since I married her, and +a change does anybody good."</p> + +<p>"No, you can't come, Banks, I don't want you. I'd rather be alone," +replied Ordway, almost indignantly.</p> + +<p>"But you ain't well," insisted Banks stubbornly. "We don't like the +looks of you, Baxter and I."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't come, that's all," retorted Ordway, as the red eyes of +the engine pierced the darkness. "There, go home, Banks," he added, as +he held out his hand, "I'm much obliged to you. You're a first-rate +chap. Good-bye."<a name="page_468" id="page_468"></a></p> + +<p>"Then good-bye," returned Banks hastily turning away.</p> + +<p>A minute afterward, as Ordway swung himself on the train, he heard the +bells of a church, ringing cheerfully in the frosty air, and remembered, +with a start, that it was Christmas morning.<a name="page_469" id="page_469"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-d" id="CHAPTER_VIII-d"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The End Of The Road</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>N the morning, after a short sleep on the hard plush seat, he awoke +with a shooting pain in his head. When the drowsiness of exhaustion had +overcome him, he remembered, he had been idly counting the dazzling +electric lights of a town through which they were passing. By the time +he had reached "twenty-one" he had dropped off into unconsciousness, +though it seemed to him that a second self within him, wholly awake, had +gone on through the night counting without pause, "twenty-two, +twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five—" Still in his brain the numbers +went on, and still the great globular lights flashed past his eyes.</p> + +<p>Struggling awake in the gray dawn, he lay without changing his position, +until the mist gave place slowly to the broad daylight. Then he found +that they were approaching another town, which appeared from a distant +view to resemble a single gigantic factory, composed chiefly of a +wilderness of chimneys. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was +eight o'clock; and the conductor passing through the coach at the +instant, informed the passengers generally that they must change cars +for the West. The name of the town Ordway failed<a name="page_470" id="page_470"></a> to catch, but it made +so little difference to him that he followed the crowd mechanically, +without inquiring where it would lead him. The pain in his head had +extended now to his chest and shoulders, and presently it passed into +his lower limbs, with a racking ache that seemed to take from him the +control of his muscles. Yet all the while he felt a curious drowsiness, +which did not in the least resemble sleep, creeping over him like the +stealthy effect of some powerful drug. After he had breathed the fresh +air outside, he felt it to be impossible that he should return to the +overheated car, and pushing his way through the crowded station, where +men were rushing to the luncheon counter in one corner, he started along +a broad street, which looked as if it led to an open square at the top +of a long incline. On either side there were rows of narrow tenements, +occupied evidently by the operatives in the imposing factories he had +observed from the train. Here and there a holly wreath suspended from a +cheap lace curtain, reminded him again that it was Christmas morning, +and by some eccentricity of memory, he recalled vividly a Christmas +before his mother's death, when he had crept on his bare feet, in the +dawn, to peep into the bulging stocking before her fireplace.</p> + +<p>At the next corner a small eating house had hung out its list of +Christmas dainties, and going inside he sat down at one of the small +deserted tables and asked for a cup of coffee. When it was brought he +swallowed it in the hope that it might drive away the heaviness in his +head, but after a moment of<a name="page_471" id="page_471"></a> relief the stupor attacked him again more +oppressively than ever. He felt that even the growing agony in his +forehead and shoulders could not keep him awake if he could only find a +spot in which to lie down and rest.</p> + +<p>After he came out into the street again he felt stronger and better, and +it occurred to him that his headache was due probably to the fact that +he had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. He remembered now +that he had missed his luncheon because of his long walk into the +country, and the recollection of this trivial incident seemed to make +plain all the subsequent events. Everything that had been so confused a +moment ago stood out quite clearly now. His emotions, which had been +benumbed when he left Botetourt, revived immediately in the awakening of +his memory; and he was seized with a terrible longing to hold Alice in +his arms and to say to her that he forgave her and loved her still. It +seemed to him impossible that he should have come away after a single +indifferent kiss, without glancing back—and her face rose before him, +not convulsed and haggard as he had last seen it, but glowing and +transfigured, with her sparkling blue eyes and her lips that were too +red and too full for beauty. Then, even while he looked at her with +love, the old numbness crept back, and his feeling for her died utterly +away. "No, I have ceased to care," he thought indifferently. "It does +not matter to me whether I see her again or not. I must eat and lie +down, nothing else is of consequence."<a name="page_472" id="page_472"></a></p> + +<p>He had reached the open space at the end of the long graded hill, and as +he stopped to look about him he saw that a small hotel, frequented +probably by travelling salesmen, stood directly across the square, which +was now deep in snow. Following the pavement to the open door of the +lobby, he went inside and asked for a room, after which he passed into +the restaurant and drank a second cup of coffee. Then turning away from +his untasted food, he went upstairs to the large, bare apartment, with a +broken window pane, which they had assigned him, and throwing himself +upon the unmade bed, fell heavily asleep.</p> + +<p>When he awoke the pain was easier, and feeling oppressed by the chill +vacancy of the room, he went downstairs and out into the open square. +Though it was a dull gray afternoon, the square was filled with +children, dragging bright new sleds over the snow. One of them, a little +brown-haired girl, was trundling her Christmas doll and as she passed +him, she turned and smiled into his face with a joyful look. Something +in her smile was vaguely familiar to him, and he remembered, after a +minute, that Emily had looked at him like that on the morning when he +had met her for the first time riding her old white horse up the hill in +Tappahannock. "Yes, it was that look that made me love her," he thought +dispassionately, as if he were reviewing some dimly remembered event in +a former life, "and it is because I loved her that I was able to do +these things. If I had not loved her, I should not have saved Milly +Trend, nor gone back to Botetourt, nor sacrificed<a name="page_473" id="page_473"></a> myself for Alice. +Yes, all these have come from that," he added, "and will go back, I +suppose, to that in the end." The little girl ran by again, still +trundling her doll, and again he saw Emily in her red cape on the old +horse.</p> + +<p>For several hours he sat there in the frozen square, hardly feeling the +cold wind that blew over him. But when he rose presently to go into the +hotel, he found that his limbs were stiff, and the burning pain had +returned with violence to his head and chest. The snow in the square +seemed to roll toward him as he walked, and it was with difficulty that +he dragged himself step by step along the pavement to the entrance of +the hotel. After he was in his room again he threw himself, still +dressed, upon the bed, and fell back into the stupor out of which he had +come.</p> + +<p>When he opened his eyes after an hour, he was hardly sure, for the first +few minutes, whether he was awake or asleep. The large, bare room in +which he had lost consciousness had given place, when he awoke, to his +prison cell. The hard daylight came to him through the grated windows, +and from a nail in the wall he saw his gray prison coat, with the red +bars, won for good behaviour, upon the sleeve. Then while he looked at +it, the red bars changed quickly to the double stripes of a second term, +and the double stripes became three, and the three became four, until it +seemed to him that he was striped from head to foot so closely that he +knew that he must have gone on serving term after term since the +beginning<a name="page_474" id="page_474"></a> of the world. "No, no, that is not mine. I am wearing the red +bars!" he cried out, and came back to himself with a convulsive shudder.</p> + +<p>As he looked about him the hallucination vanished, and he felt that he +had come out of an eternity of unconsciousness into which he should +presently sink back again. The day before appeared to belong to some +other life that he had lived while he was still young, yet when he +opened his eyes the same gray light filled the windows, the same draught +blew through the broken pane, the same vague shadows crawled back and +forth on the ceiling. The headache was gone now, but the room had grown +very cold, and from time to time, when he coughed, long shivers ran +through his limbs and his teeth chattered. He had thrown his overcoat +across his chest as a coverlet, but the cold from which he suffered was +an inward chill, which was scarcely increased by the wind that blew +through the broken pane. There was no confusion in his mind now, but a +wonderful lucidity, in which he saw clearly all that had happened to him +last night in Tappahannock. "Yes, that was my good moment," he said "and +after such a moment there is nothing, but death. If I can only die +everything will be made entirely right and simple." As he uttered the +words the weakness of self pity swept over him, and with a sudden sense +of spiritual detachment, he was aware of a feeling of sympathy for that +other "I," who seemed so closely related to him, and yet outside of +himself. The real "I" was somewhere above amid the<a name="page_475" id="page_475"></a> crawling shadows on +the ceiling, but the other—the false one—lay on the bed under the +overcoat; and he saw, when he looked down that, though he himself was +young, the other "I" was old and haggard and unshaven. "So there are two +of us, after all," he thought, "poor fellows, poor fellows."</p> + +<p>But the minute afterward the perception of his dual nature faded as +rapidly as the hallucination of his prison cell. In its place there +appeared the little girl, who had passed him, trundling her Christmas +doll, in the square below. "I have seen her before—she is vaguely +familiar," he thought, troubled because he could not recall the +resemblance. From this he passed to the memory of Alice when she was +still a child, and she came back to him, fresh and vivid, as on the day +when she had run out to beg him to come in to listen to her music. The +broken scales ran in his head again, but there was no love in his heart.</p> + +<p>His gaze dropped from the ceiling and turned toward the door, for in the +midst of his visions, he had seen it open softly and Banks come into the +room on tiptoe and stop at the foot of the bed, regarding him with his +embarrassed and silly look "What in the devil, am I dreaming about Banks +for?" he demanded aloud, with an impatient movement of his feet, as if +he meant to kick the obtruding dream away from his bed.</p> + +<p>At the kick the dream stopped rolling its prominent pale eyes and spoke. +"I hope you ain't sick, Smith," it said, and with the first words he +knew<a name="page_476" id="page_476"></a> that it was Banks in the familiar flesh and not the disembodied +spirit.</p> + +<p>"No I'm not sick, but what are you doing here?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Enjoying myself," replied Banks gloomily.</p> + +<p>"Well, I wish you'd chosen to enjoy yourself somewhere else."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't. If you don't mind I'd like to stuff the curtain into that +window pane."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mind. When did you get here?"</p> + +<p>"I came on the train with you."</p> + +<p>"On the train with me? Where did you get on? I didn't see you."</p> + +<p>"You didn't look," replied Banks, from the window, where he was stuffing +the red velveteen curtain into the broken pane. "I was in the last seat +in the rear coach."</p> + +<p>"So you followed me," said Ordway indignantly. "I told you not to. Why +did you do it?"</p> + +<p>Banks came back and stood again at the foot of the bed, looking at him +with his sincere and kindly smile.</p> + +<p>"Well, the truth is, I wanted an outing," he answered, "it's a good baby +as babies go, but I get dog-tired of playing nurse."</p> + +<p>"You might have gone somewhere else. There are plenty of places."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't think of 'em, and, besides, this seems a nice town. The're a +spanking fine lot of factories. But I hope you ain't sick Smith? What +are you doing in bed?"<a name="page_477" id="page_477"></a></p> + +<p>"Oh, I've given up," replied Ordway gruffly. "Every man has a right to +give up some time, hasn't he?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know about every man," returned Banks, stolidly, "but you +haven't, Smith."</p> + +<p>"Well, I've done it anyway," retorted Ordway, and turned his face to the +wall.</p> + +<p>As he lay there with closed eyes, he had an obscure impression that +Banks—Banks, the simple; Banks, the impossible—was in some way +operating the forces of destiny. First he heard the bell ring, then the +door open and close, and a little later, the bleak room was suffused +with a warm rosy light in which the vague shadows melted into a +shimmering background. The crackling of the fire annoyed him because it +suggested the possibility of physical comfort, and he no longer wanted +to be comfortable.</p> + +<p>"Smith," said Banks, coming over to the bed and pulling off the +overcoat, "I've got a good fire here and a chair. I wish you'd get up. +Good Lord, your hands are as hot as a hornet's nest. When did you eat +anything?"</p> + +<p>"I had breakfast in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he rose from the bed +and came over to the chair Banks had prepared. "I can't remember when it +was, but it must have been since the creation of the world, I suppose." +The fire grew suddenly black before him, "I'd rather lie down," he +added, "my head is splitting and I can't see."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you'll see all right in a minute. Wait till I light this candle, so +the electric light won't hurt<a name="page_478" id="page_478"></a> your eyes. The boy's gone for a little +supper, and as soon as you've swallowed a mouthful you'll begin to feel +better."</p> + +<p>"But I'm not hungry. I won't eat," returned Ordway, with an irritable +feeling that Banks was looming into a responsibility. Anything that +pulled one back to life was what he wanted to escape, and even the +affection of Banks might prove, he thought, tenaciously clinging. One +resolution he had made in the beginning—he would not take up his life +again for the sake of Banks.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you must, Smith," remonstrated the other, with an angelic patience +which gave him, if possible, a more foolish aspect. "It's after six +o'clock and you haven't had a bite since yesterday at eight. That's why +your head's so light and you're in a raging fever."</p> + +<p>"It isn't that, Banks, it's because I've got to die," he answered. "If +they don't hush things up with money, I may have to go back to prison." +As he said the words he saw again the prison coat, with the double +stripes of a second term, as in the instant of his hallucination.</p> + +<p>"I know," said Banks, softly, as he bent over to poke the fire. "There +was a line or two about it in a New York paper. But they'll hush it up, +and besides they said it was just suspicion."</p> + +<p>"You knew all the time and yet you wanted me to go back to +Tappahannock?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they don't read the papers much there, except the <i>Tappahannock +Herald</i>, and it won't get into<a name="page_479" id="page_479"></a> that. It was just a silly little slip +anyway, and not two dozen people will be likely to know what it meant."</p> + +<p>"And you, Banks? What do you think?" he asked with a mild curiosity.</p> + +<p>Banks shook his head. "Why, what's the use in your asking?" he replied. +"Of course, I know that you didn't do it, and if you had done it, it +would have been just because the other man ought to have written his +name and wouldn't," he concluded, unblushingly.</p> + +<p>For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. "You're a good chap, +Banks," he said at last in a dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened +irritation, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back to life. Was it +impossible, after all, that a man should give up, as long as there +remained a soul alive who believed in him? It wasn't only the love of +women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved both Emily and Alice, +and yet they were of less importance in his life at this hour than was +Banks, whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought the love of Emily +a great thing and that of Banks a small one.</p> + +<p>His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not remove it when a knock +came at the door, and supper was brought in and placed on a little table +before the fire.</p> + +<p>"I ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith," said Banks, crumbling the +bread into it as he spoke, as if he were preparing a meal for a baby, +"and a good<a name="page_480" id="page_480"></a> stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this +whiskey, won't you."</p> + +<p>"I'm not hungry," returned Ordway, pushing the glass away, after it had +touched his lips. "I won't eat."</p> + +<p>Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and then sat down with his +eyes fastened on the tray. "I haven't had a bite myself since +breakfast," he remarked, "and I'm pretty faintish, but I tell you, +Smith, if it's the last word I speak, that I won't put my knife into +that beefsteak until you've eaten your soup—no, not if I die right here +of starvation."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry you're such a fool, for I've no intention of eating it. +I left you my whiskey, you can take that."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't dare to on an empty stomach. I get drunk too quick."</p> + +<p>For a few minutes he sat in silence regarding the supper with a hungry +look; then selecting a thin slice of bread, he stuck it on the end of a +fork, and kneeling upon the hearthrug, held it out to the glowing coals. +As it turned gradually to a delicious crisp brown, the appetising smell +of it floated to Ordway's nostrils.</p> + +<p>"I always had a particular taste for toast," remarked Banks as he +buttered the slice and laid it on a hot plate on the fender. When he +took up a second one, Ordway watched him with an attention of which he +was almost unconscious, and he did not remove his gaze from the fire, +until the last slice, brown and freshly buttered, was laid carefully +upon the others. As he finished Banks threw down his fork, and<a name="page_481" id="page_481"></a> rising +to his feet, looked wistfully at the beefsteak, keeping hot before the +cheerful flames.</p> + +<p>"It's kind of rare, just as I like it," he observed, "thick and juicy, +with little brown streaks from the broiler, and a few mushrooms +scattered gracefully on top. Tappahannock is a mighty poor place for a +steak," he concluded resignedly, "it ain't often I have a chance at one, +but I thought to-night being Christmas——"</p> + +<p>"Then, for God's sake, eat it!" thundered Ordway, while he made a dash +for his soup.</p> + +<p>But an hour after he had taken it, his fever rose so high that Banks +helped him into bed and rushed out in alarm for the doctor.<a name="page_482" id="page_482"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-d" id="CHAPTER_IX-d"></a>CHAPTER IX<br /><br /> +<span class="smcap">The Light Beyond</span></h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>UT of the obscurity of the next few weeks, he brought, with the memory +of Banks hovering about his bed, the vague impression of a woman's step +across his floor and a woman's touch on his brow and hands. When he +returned to consciousness the woman's step and touch had vanished, but +Banks was still nursing him with his infinite patience and his silly, +good-humoured smile. The rest was a dream, he said to himself, +resignedly, as he turned his face to the wall and slept.</p> + +<p>On a mild January morning, when he came downstairs for the first time, +and went with Banks out into the open square in front of the hotel, he +put almost timidly the question which had been throbbing in his brain +for weeks.</p> + +<p>"Was there anybody else with me, Banks? I thought—I dreamed—I couldn't +get rid of it——"</p> + +<p>"Who else could there have been?" asked Banks, and he stared straight +before him, at the slender spire of the big, gray church in the next +block. So the mystery would remain unsolved, Ordway understood, and he +would go back to life cherishing either a divine memory or a phantasy of +delirium.</p> + +<p>After a little while Banks went off to the chemists'<a name="page_483" id="page_483"></a> with a +prescription, and Ordway sat alone on a bench in the warm sunshine, +which was rapidly melting the snow. It was Sunday morning, and presently +the congregation streamed slowly past him on its way to the big gray +church just beyond. A bright blue sky was overhead, the sound of bells +was in the air, and under the melting snow he saw that the grass was +still fresh and green. As he sat there in the wonderful Sabbath +stillness, he felt, with a new sense of security, of reconciliation, +that his life had again been taken out of his hands and adjusted without +his knowledge. This time it had been Banks—Banks, the impossible—who +had swayed his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks had +accomplished it through the simple power of the human touch. In the hour +of his need it had been neither religion nor philosophy, but the +outstretched hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened and he saw +that though the body of love is one, the members of it are infinite; and +it was made plain to him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of +Alice, and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of the same +immortality. He had gone down into the deep places, and out of them he +had brought this light, this message. As the people streamed past him to +the big gray church, he felt that if they would only stop and listen, he +could tell them in the open, not in walls, of the thing that they were +seeking. Yet the time had not come, though in the hope of it he could +sit there patiently under the blue sky, with the snow melting over the +grass at his feet.<a name="page_484" id="page_484"></a></p> + +<p>At the end of an hour Banks returned, and stood over him with +affectionate anxiety. "In a few days you'll be well enough to travel, +Smith, and I'll take you back with me to Tappahannock."</p> + +<p>Ordway glanced up, smiling, and Banks saw in his face, so thin that the +flesh seemed almost transparent, the rapt and luminous look with which +he had stood over his Bible in the green field or in the little grove of +pines.</p> + +<p>"You will go back to Tappahannock and Baxter will take you in until you +grow strong and well, and then you can start your schools, or your +library, and look after the mills instead of letting Baxter do it."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ordway, "yes," but he had hardly heard Banks's words, for +his gaze was on the blue sky, against which the spire of the church rose +like a pointing finger. His face shone as if from an inward flame, and +this flame, burning clearly in his blue eyes, transfigured his look. Ah, +Smith was always a dreamer, thought Banks, with the uncomprehending +simplicity of a child.</p> + +<p>But Ordway was looking beyond Banks, beyond the church spire, beyond the +blue sky. He saw himself, not as Banks pictured him, living quietly in +Tappahannock, but still struggling, still fighting, still falling to +rise and go on again. His message was not for Tappahannock alone, but +for all places where there were men and women working and suffering and +going into prison and coming out. He heard his voice speaking to them in +the square of this town; then in many squares and in many towns——<a name="page_485" id="page_485"></a></p> + +<p>"Come," said Banks softly, "the wind is changing. It is time to go in."</p> + +<p>With an effort Ordway withdrew his gaze from the church spire. Then +leaning upon Banks's arm, he slowly crossed the square to the door of +the hotel. But before going inside, he turned and stood for a moment +looking back at the grass which showed fresh and green under the melting +snow.</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ancient Law, by Ellen Glasgow + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIENT LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 34419-h.htm or 34419-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/1/34419/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ancient Law + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: November 23, 2010 [EBook #34419] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIENT LAW *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + +THE ANCIENT LAW + + +BY + +THE SAME AUTHOR + + THE WHEEL OF LIFE + THE DELIVERANCE + THE BATTLE-GROUND + THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS + THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE + PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET + THE DESCENDANT + + + + +The Ancient Law + +By + +ELLEN GLASGOW + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company +1908 + +COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY +PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1908 + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED +INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES +INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN + +TO +MY GOOD FRIEND EFFENDI + + + + +CONTENTS + + +BOOK FIRST--THE NEW LIFE + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. The Road 3 + + II. The Night 15 + + III. The Return to Tappahannock 31 + + IV. The Dream of Daniel Smith 42 + + V. At Tappahannock 54 + + VI. The Pretty Daughter of the Mayor 62 + + VII. Shows the Graces of Adversity 72 + +VIII. "Ten Commandment Smith" 90 + + IX. The Old and the New 101 + + X. His Neighbour's Garden 111 + + XI. Bullfinch's Hollow 123 + + XII. A String of Coral 135 + +BOOK SECOND--THE DAY OF RECKONING + + I. In Which a Stranger Appears 147 + + II. Ordway Compromises With the Past 162 + + III. A Change of Lodging 174 + + IV. Shows That a Laugh Does not Heal a Heartache 185 + + V. Treats of a Great Passion in a Simple Soul 196 + + VI. In Which Baxter Plots 209 + + VII. Shows That Politeness, Like Charity, Is an Elastic Mantle 222 + +VIII. The Turn of the Wheel 234 + + IX. At the Cross-roads 248 + + X. Between Man and Man 256 + + XI. Between Man and Woman 268 + +BOOK THIRD--THE LARGER PRISON + + I. The Return to Life 281 + + II. His Own Place 290 + + III. The Outward Pattern 303 + + IV. The Letter and the Spirit 317 + + V. The Will of Alice 329 + + VI. The Iron Bars 341 + + VII. The Vision and the Fact 353 + +VIII. The Weakness in Strength 363 + +BOOK FOURTH--LIBERATION + + I. The Inward Light 379 + + II. At Tappahannock Again 392 + + III. Alice's Marriage 409 + + IV. The Power of the Blood 420 + + V. The House of Dreams 434 + + VI. The Ultimate Choice 443 + + VII. Flight 454 + +VIII. The End of the Road 469 + + IX. The Light Beyond 482 + + + + +BOOK FIRST + +THE NEW LIFE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE ROAD + + +Though it was six days since Daniel Ordway had come out of prison, he +was aware, when he reached the brow of the hill, and stopped to look +back over the sunny Virginia road, that he drank in the wind as if it +were his first breath of freedom. At his feet the road dropped between +two low hills beyond which swept a high, rolling sea of broomsedge; and +farther still--where the distance melted gradually into the blue sky--he +could see not less plainly the New York streets through which he had +gone from his trial and the walls of the prison where he had served five +years. Between this memory and the deserted look of the red clay road +there was the abrupt division which separates actual experience from the +objects in a dream. He felt that he was awake, yet it seemed that the +country through which he walked must vanish presently at a touch. Even +the rough March wind blowing among the broomsedge heightened rather than +diminished the effect of the visionary meeting of earth and sky. + +As he stood there in his ill-fitting clothes, with his head bared in the +sun and the red clay ground to fine dust on his coarse boots, it would +have been difficult at a casual glance to have grouped him +appropriately in any division of class. He might have been either a +gentleman who had turned tramp or a tramp who had been born to look a +gentleman. Though he was barely above medium height, his figure produced +even in repose an impression of great muscular strength, and this +impression was repeated in his large, regular, and singularly expressive +features. His face was square with a powerful and rather prominent mouth +and chin; the brows were heavily marked and the eyes were of so bright a +blue that they lent an effect which was almost one of gaiety to his +smile. In his dark and slightly coarsened face the colour of his eyes +was intensified until they appeared to flash at times like blue lights +under his thick black brows. His age was, perhaps, forty years, though +at fifty there would probably be but little change recorded in his +appearance. At thirty one might have found, doubtless, the same lines of +suffering upon his forehead and about his mouth. + +As he went on over some rotting planks which spanned a stream that had +gone dry, the road he followed was visible as a faded scar in a stretch +of impoverished, neutral-toned country--the least distinctive and most +isolated part of what is known in Virginia as "the Southside." A +bleached monotony was the one noticeable characteristic of the +landscape--the pale clay road, the dried broomsedge, and even the +brownish, circular-shaped cloud of smoke, which hung over the little +town in the distance, each contributing a depressing feature to a face +which presented at best an unrelieved flatness of colour. The single +high note in the dull perspective was struck by a clump of sassafras, +which, mistaking the mild weather for a genial April, had flowered +tremulously in gorgeous yellow. + +The sound of a wagon jolting over the rough road, reached him presently +from the top of the hill, and as he glanced back, he heard a drawling +curse thrown to the panting horses. A moment later he was overtaken by +an open spring wagon filled with dried tobacco plants of the last +season's crop. In the centre of the load, which gave out a stale, +pungent odour, sat a small middle-aged countryman, who swore mild oaths +in a pleasant, jesting tone. From time to time, as the stalks beneath +him were jostled out of place, he would shift his seat and spread out +his short legs clad in overalls of blue jean. Behind him in the road the +wind tossed scattered and damaged leaves of tobacco. + +When the wagon reached Ordway, he glanced over his shoulder at the +driver, while he turned into the small grass-grown path amid the clumps +of sassafras. + +"Is that Bernardsville over there?" he asked, pointing in the direction +of the cloud of smoke. + +The wagon drew up quickly and the driver--who showed at nearer view to +be a dirty, red-bearded farmer of the poorer class--stared at him with +an expression which settled into suspicion before it had time to denote +surprise. + +"Bernardsville! Why, you've come a good forty miles out of your road. +That thar's Tappahannock." + +"Tappahannock? I hadn't heard of it." + +"Mebbe you ain't, but it never knowed it." + +"Anything going on there? Work, I mean?" + +"The biggest shippin' of tobaccy this side o' Danville is goin' on thar. +Ever heard o' Danville?" + +"I know the name, but the tobacco market is about closed now, isn't it? +The season's over." + +The man's laugh startled the waiting horses, and lifting their heads +from a budding bush by the roadside, they moved patiently toward +Tappahannock. + +"Closed? Bless you, it never closes--Whoa! thar, won't you, darn you? To +be sure sales ain't so brisk to-day as they war a month back, but I'm +jest carryin' in my leetle crop to Baxter's warehouse." + +"It isn't manufactured, then--only bought and sold?" + +"Oh, it's sold quick enough and bought, too. Baxter auctions the leaf +off in lots and it's shipped to the factories in Richmond an' in +Danville. You ain't a native of these parts, I reckon?" + +"A native--no? I'm looking for work." + +"What sort of work? Thar's work an' work. I saw a man once settin' out +in an old field doin' a picture of a pine tree, an' he called it work. +Wall, wall, if you're goin' all the way to Tappahannock, I reckon I kin +give you a lift along. Mebbe you kin pick up an odd job in Baxter's +warehouse--thar's a sayin' that he feeds all the crows in Tappahannock." + +He drove on with a chuckle, for Ordway had declined the proffered +"lift," and the little cloud of dust raised by the wagon drifted slowly +in the direction of the town. + +A mile farther on Ordway found that as the road approached Tappahannock, +the country lost gradually its aspect of loneliness, and the colourless +fields were dotted here and there with small Negro cabins, built for the +most part of unbarked pine logs laid roughly cross-wise to form square +enclosures. Before one of these primitive dwellings a large black woman, +with a strip of checked blue and white gingham bound about her head, was +emptying a pail of buttermilk into a wooden trough. When she saw Ordway +she nodded to him from the end of the little path, bordered by rocks, +which led from the roadside to the single stone step before her cabin +door. + +As he watched the buttermilk splash into the trough, Ordway remembered, +with a spasm of faintness, that he had eaten nothing since the day +before, and turning out of the road, he asked the woman for a share of +the supper that she gave the pigs. + +"Go 'way, honey, dis yer ain' fit'n fur you," she replied, resting the +pail under her arm against her rolling hip, "I'se des' thowin' hit ter +de hawgs." + +But when he had repeated his request, she motioned to a wooden bench +beside a scrubby lilac bush on which a coloured shirt hung drying, and +going into the single room inside, brought him a glass of buttermilk and +a piece of corn bread on a tin plate. While he ate hungrily of the +coarse food a half-naked Negro baby, covered with wood ashes, rolled +across the threshold and lay sprawling in the path at his feet. + +After a little rambling talk the woman went back into the cabin, where +she whipped up cornmeal dough in an earthenware bowl, turning at +intervals to toss a scrap or two to a red and white cock that hovered, +expectant, about the doorway. In the road a covered wagon crawled by, +and the shadow it threw stretched along the path to the lilac bush where +the coloured shirt hung drying. The pigs drank the buttermilk from the +trough with loud grunts; the red and white cock ventured, alert and +wary, across the threshold; and the Negro baby, after sprawling on its +stomach in the warm earth, rolled over and lay staring in silence at the +blue sky overhead. + +There was little beauty in the scene except the beauty which belongs to +all things under the open sky. Road and landscape and cabin were bare +even of any chance effect of light and shadow. Yet there was life--the +raw, primal life of nature--and after his forty years of wasted +experience, Ordway was filled with a passionate desire for life. In his +careless pursuit of happiness he had often found weariness instead, but +sitting now homeless and penniless, before the negro's cabin, he +discovered that each object at which he looked--the long road that led +somewhere, the smoke hanging above the distant town, the deep-bosomed +negro mother and the half-naked negro baby--that each of these possessed +an interest to which he awakened almost with a start of wonder. And +yielding to the influence of his thought, his features appeared to lose +gradually their surface coarseness of line. It was as if his mouth grew +vague, enveloped in shadow, while the eyes dominated the entire face and +softened its expression to one of sweetness, gaiety and youth. The child +that is in every man big enough to contain it looked out suddenly from +his altered face. + +He was thinking now of a day in his boyhood--of an early autumn morning +when the frost was white on the grass and the chestnuts dropped heavily +from the spreading boughs and the cider smelt strong and sweet as it +oozed from the crushed winesaps. On that morning, after dressing by +candlelight, he had gone into town with his maiden aunt, a lady whom he +remembered chiefly by her false gray curls which she wore as if they had +been a halo. At the wayside station, while they had waited for the train +to the little city of Botetourt, he had seen a convict brought in, +handcuffed, on his way to the penitentiary, and in response to the boy's +persistent questioning, his aunt had told him that the man was wicked, +though he appeared to the child's eyes to be only miserable--a thin, +dirty, poorly clad labourer with a red cotton handkerchief bound tightly +about his jaw. A severe toothache had evidently attacked him, for while +he had stared sullenly at the bare planks of the floor, he had made from +time to time a suffering, irritable movement with his head. At each +gesture the guard had called out sharply: "Keep still there, won't you?" +to which the convict had responded by a savage lowering of his heavy +brows. + +For the first time it had occurred to the child that day that there must +be a strange contradiction--a fundamental injustice in the universal +scheme of nature. He had always been what his father had called +impatiently "a boy with ideas," and it had seemed to him then that this +last "idea" of his was far the most wonderful of them all--more +wonderful than any he had found in books or in his own head at night. At +the moment he had felt it swell so large in his heart that a glow of +happiness had spread through his body to his trembling hands. Slipping +from his aunt's hold he had crossed the room to where the convict sat +sullenly beside his guard. + +"I'll give you all my money," he had cried out joyously, "because I am +so much happier than you." + +The convict had started and looked up with an angry flash in his eyes; +the guard had burst into a loud laugh while he spat tobacco juice +through the window; the silver had scattered and rolled under the +benches on the plank floor; and the child's aunt, rustling over in her +stiff brocade, had seized his arm and dragged him, weeping loudly, into +the train. So his first mission had failed, yet at this day he could +remember the joy with which he had stretched out his little hand and the +humiliation in which he had drawn it back. That was thirty years ago, +but he wondered now if the child's way had been God's way, after all? + +For there had come an hour in his life when the convict of his boyhood +had stood in closer relationship to his misery than the people whom he +had touched in the street. His childish memories scattered like mist, +and the three great milestones of his past showed bare and white, as his +success, his temptation and his fall. He remembered the careless +ambition of his early youth, the brilliant promise of his college years, +and the day on which he had entered as a younger member the great +banking house of Amos, Bonner, and Amos. Between this day and the slow +minutes when he had stood in his wife's sitting-room awaiting his +arrest, he could find in his thoughts no gradation of years to mark the +terrible swiftness of his descent. In that time which he could not +divide Wall Street had reached out and sucked him in; the fever of +speculation had consumed like disease the hereditary instincts, the +sentiments of honour, which had barred its way. One minute he had stood +a rich man on the floor of the Stock Exchange--and was it an instant or +a century afterwards that he had gone out into the street and had known +himself to be a beggar and a criminal? Other men had made millions with +the use of money which they held in trust; but the star of the gambler +had deserted him at the critical hour; and where other men had won and +triumphed, he had gone down, he told himself, dishonoured by a stroke of +luck. In his office that day a mirror over the mantel had showed him his +face as he entered, and he had stopped to look at it almost with +curiosity--as if it were the face of a stranger which repelled him +because it bore some sinister likeness to his own. After this there had +come days, weeks, months, when at each sudden word, at each opening of +the door, he had started, half sickened, by fear of the discovery which +he knew must come. His nerves had quivered and given way under the +pressure; he had grown morose, irritable, silent; and in some +half-insane frenzy, he had imagined that his friends, his family, his +wife, even his young children, had begun to regard him with terror and +suspicion. But at last the hour had come, and in the strength with which +he had risen to meet it, he had won back almost his old self--for +courage, not patience, was the particular virtue of his temperament. He +had stood his trial bravely, had heard his sentence without a tremor, +and had borne his punishment without complaint. The world and he were +quits now, and he felt that it owed him at least the room for a fair +fight. + +The prison, he had said once, had squared him with his destiny, yet +to-day each act of his past appeared to rivet, not itself, but its +result upon his life. Though he told himself that he was free, he knew +that, in the reality of things, he was still a prisoner. From the lowest +depths that he had touched he was reached even now by the agony of his +most terrible moment when, at the end of his first hopeless month, he +had found awaiting him one day a letter from his wife. It was her final +good-bye, she had written; on the morrow she would leave with her two +children for his father's home in Virginia; and the single condition +upon which the old man had consented to provide for them was that she +should separate herself entirely from her husband. "The condition is +hard," she had added, "made harder, too, by the fact that you are his +son and my only real claim upon him is through you--yet when you +consider the failure of our life together, and that the children's +education even is unprovided for, you will, I feel sure, admit that my +decision has been a wise one." + +The words had dissolved and vanished before his eyes, and turning away +he had flung himself on his prison bed, while the hard, dry sobs had +quivered like blows in his chest. Yet she was right! His judgment had +acquitted her in the first agony of his reproach, and the unerring +justice in her decision had convicted him with each smooth, calm +sentence in her letter. As he lay there he had lost consciousness of the +bare walls and the hot sunshine that fell through the grating, for the +ultimate desolation had closed over him like black waters. + +A little later he had gone from his cell and taken up his life again; +but all that he remembered of it now was a voice that had called to him +in the prison yard. + +"You look so darn sunk in the mouth I'll let you have my last +smoke--damn you!" + +Turning sullenly he had accepted the stranger's tobacco, unaware at the +moment that he was partaking of the nature of a sacrament--for while he +had smoked there in his dogged misery, he had felt revive in his heart a +stir of sympathy for the convict he had seen at the wayside station in +Virginia. As if revealed by an inner illumination the impressions of +that morning had started, clear as light, into his brain. The frost on +the grass, the dropping chestnuts, the strong sweet smell of the crushed +winesaps--these things surrounded in his memory the wretched figure of +the man with the red cotton handkerchief bound tightly about his swollen +jaw. But the figure had ceased now to stand for itself and for its own +degradation alone--haunting, tragic, colossal, it had become in his +thoughts the image of all those who suffer and are oppressed. So through +his sin and his remorse, Ordway had travelled slowly toward the vision +of service. + +With a word of thanks to the woman, he rose from the bench and went down +the little path and out into the road. The wind had changed suddenly, +and as he emerged from the shelter of a thicket, it struck against his +face with a biting edge. Where the sun had declined in the western sky, +heavy clouds were driving close above the broken line of the horizon. +The night promised to be cold, and he pushed on rapidly, urged by a +feeling that the little town before him held rest and comfort and the +new life beneath its smoking chimneys. Walking was less difficult now, +for the road showed signs of travel as it approached the scattered +houses, which appeared thrust into community by the surrounding +isolation of the fields. At last, as he ascended a slight elevation, he +found that the village, screened by a small grove of pines, lay +immediately beneath the spot upon which he stood. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NIGHT + + +The scattered houses closed together in groups, the road descended +gradually into a hollow, and emerging on the opposite side, became a +street, and the street slouched lazily downhill to where a railroad +track ran straight as a seam across the bare country. Quickening his +steps, Ordway came presently to the station--a small wooden building +newly painted a brilliant yellow--and pushed his way with difficulty +through a crowd of Negroes that had gathered closely beside the waiting +train. + +"Thar's a good three hundred of the critters going to a factory in the +North," remarked a man behind him, "an' yit they don't leave more'n a +speck of white in the county. Between the crows an' the darkies I'll be +blamed if you can see the colour of the soil." + +The air was heavy with hot, close smells--a mingling of smoke, tobacco, +dust and humanity. A wailing sound issued from the windows of the cars +where the dark faces were packed tightly together, and a tall Negro, +black as ebony, in a red shirt open at the throat, began strumming +excitedly upon a banjo. Near him a mulatto woman lifted a shrill soprano +voice, while she stood beating the air distractedly with her open +palms. On the other side of the station a dog howled, and the engine +uttered an angry whistle as if impatient of the delay. + +After five years of prison discipline, the ugly little town appeared to +Ordway to contain an alluring promise of freedom. At the instant the +animation in the scene spoke to his blood as if it had been beauty, and +movement seemed to him to possess some peculiar aesthetic quality apart +from form or colour. The brightly dyed calicos on the Negro women; the +shining black faces of the men, smooth as ebony; the tragic primitive +voices, like voices imprisoned in the soil; the strumming of the rude +banjo; the whistling engine and the howling dog; the odours of smoke and +dust and fertilisers--all these things blended in his senses to form an +intoxicating impression of life. Nothing that could move or utter sounds +or lend a spot of colour appeared common or insignificant to his +awakened brain. It was all life, and for five years he had been starved +in every sense and instinct. + +The main street--Warehouse Street, as he found later that it was +called--appeared in the distance as a broad river of dust which ran from +the little station to where the warehouses and small shops gave place to +the larger dwellings which presided pleasantly over the neighbouring +fields. As Ordway followed the board sidewalk, he began idly reading the +signs over the shops he passed, until "Kelly's Saloon," and "Baker's +General Store" brought him suddenly upon a dark oblong building which +ran back, under a faded brick archway. Before the entrance several men +were seated in cane chairs, which they had tilted conveniently against +the wall, and at Ordway's approach they edged slightly away and sat +regarding him over their pipes with an expression of curiosity which +differed so little in the different faces that it appeared to result +from some internal automatic spring. + +"I beg your pardon," he began after a moment's hesitation, "but I was +told that I might find work in Baxter's warehouse." + +"Well, it's a first-rate habit not to believe everything you're told," +responded an enormous man, in half-soiled clothes, who sat smoking in +the middle of the archway. "I can't find work myself in Baxter's +warehouse at this season. Ain't that so, boys?" he enquired with a +good-natured chuckle of his neighbours. + +"Are you Mr. Baxter?" asked Ordway shortly. + +"I'm not sure about the Mister, but I'm Baxter all right." He had +shifted his pipe to the extreme corner of his mouth as he spoke, and now +removing it with what seemed an effort, he sat prodding the ashes with +his stubby thumb. His face, as he glanced down, was overspread by a +flabbiness which appeared to belong to expression rather than to +feature. + +"Then there's no chance for me?" enquired Ordway. + +"You might try the cotton mills--they's just down the next street. If +there's a job to be had in town you'll most likely run up against it +there." + +"It's no better than a wild goose chase you're sending him on, Baxter," +remarked a smaller member of the group, whose head protruded +unexpectedly above Baxter's enormous shoulder; "I was talking to Jasper +Trend this morning and he told me he was turning away men every day. +Whew! but this wind is getting too bitter for me, boys." + +"Oh, there's no harm can come of trying," insisted the cheerful giant, +pushing back his chair as the others retreated out of the wind, "if hope +doesn't fill the stomach it keeps the heart up, and that's something." + +His great laugh rolled out, following Ordway along the street as he went +in pursuit of the fugitive opportunity which disported itself now in the +cotton factory at the foot of the hill. When he reached the doors the +work of the day was already over, and a crowd of operatives surged +through the entrance and overflowed into the two roads which led by +opposite ways into the town. Drawing to one side of the swinging doors, +he stood watching the throng a moment before he could summon courage to +enter the building and inquire for the office of the manager. When he +did so at last it was with an almost boyish feeling of hesitation. + +The manager--a small, wiry man with a wart on the end of his long +nose--was hurriedly piling papers into his desk before closing the +factory and going home to supper. His hands moved impatiently, almost +angrily, for he remembered that he had already worked overtime and that +the muffins his wife had promised him for supper would be cold. At any +other hour of the day he would have received Ordway with politeness--for +he was at heart a well-disposed and even a charitable person--but it +happened that his dinner had been unsatisfactory (his mutton had been +served half raw by a new maid of all-work) and he had particularly set +his hopes upon the delicious light muffins in which his wife excelled. +So when he saw Ordway standing between him and his release, his face +grew black and the movements of his hands passed to jerks of frantic +irritation. + +"What do you want? Say it quick--I've no time to talk," he began, as he +pushed the last heap of papers inside, and let the lid of his desk fall +with a bang. + +"I'm looking for work," said Ordway, "and I was told at Baxter's +warehouse----" + +"Darn Baxter. What kind of work do you want?" + +"I'll take anything--I can do bookkeeping or----" + +"Well, I don't want a bookkeeper." + +He locked his desk, and turning to take down his hat, was incensed +further by discovering that it was not on the hook where he had placed +it when he came in. Finding it at last on a heap of reports in the +corner, he put it on his head and stared at Ordway, with his angry eyes. + +"You must have come a long way--haven't you? Mostly on foot?" + +"A good distance." + +"Why did you select Tappahannock? Was there any reason?" + +"I wanted to try the town, that was all." + +"Well, I tell you what, my man," concluded the manager, while his rage +boiled over in the added instants of his delay; "there have been a +blamed sight too many of your kind trying Tappahannock of late--and the +best thing you can do is to move on to a less particular place. When we +want bookkeepers here we don't pick 'em up out of the road." + +Ordway swallowed hard, and his hands clinched in a return of one of his +boyish spasms of temper. His vision of the new life was for an instant +defaced and clouded; then as he met the angry little eyes of the man +before him, he felt that his rage went out of him as suddenly as it had +come. Turning without a word, he passed through the entrance and out +into the road, which led back, by groups of negro hovels, into the main +street of the town. + +His anger gave place to helplessness; and it seemed to him, when he +reached presently the larger dwellings upon the hill, and walked slowly +past the squares of light that shone through the unshuttered windows, +that he was more absolutely alone than if he had stood miles away from +any human habitation. The outward nearness had become in his thoughts +the measure of the inner distance. He felt himself to be detached from +humanity, yet he knew that in his heart there existed a stronger bond +than he had ever admitted in the years of his prosperity. The generous +impulses of his youth were still there, but had not sorrow winnowed them +from all that was base or merely selfish? Was the lesson that he had +learned in prison to be wholly lost? Did the knowledge he had found +there count for nothing in his life--the bitterness of shame, the agony +of remorse, the companionship with misery? He remembered a Sunday in the +prison when he had listened to a sermon from a misshapen little +preacher, whose face was drawn sideways by a burn which he had suffered +during an epileptic seizure in his childhood. In spite of his grotesque +features the man had drawn Ordway by some invisible power which he had +felt even then to be the power of faith. Crippled, distorted, poorly +clad, the little preacher, he felt, had found the great possession which +he was still seeking--this man believed with a belief that was larger +than the external things which he had lost. When he shut his eyes now he +could still see the rows of convicts in the chapel, the pale, greenish +light in which each face resembled the face of a corpse, the open Bible +in its black leather binding, and beside it the grotesque figure of the +little preacher who had come, like his Master, to call not the righteous +but sinners to repentance. + +The sun had dropped like a ball below the gray horizon, and the raw +March wind, when it struck him now, brought no longer the exhilaration +of the afternoon. A man passed him, comfortable, well-fed, wheezing +slightly, with his fat neck wrapped in a woollen muffler, and as he +stopped before a whitewashed gate, which opened into the garden +surrounding a large, freshly painted house, Ordway touched his arm and +spoke to him in a voice that had fallen almost to a whisper. + +At his words, which were ordinary enough, the man turned on him a face +which had paled slightly from surprise or fear. In the twilight Ordway +could see his jaw drop while he fumbled awkwardly with his gloved hands +at the latch of the gate. + +"I don't know what you mean--I don't know" he repeated in a wheezing +voice, "I'm sorry, but I really don't know," he insisted again as if in +a helpless effort to be understood. Once inside the garden, he closed +the gate with a bang behind him, and went rapidly up the gravelled walk +to the long piazza where the light of a lamp under a red shade streamed +through the open door. + +Turning away Ordway followed the street to the end of the town, where it +passed without distinct change of character into the country road. On +this side the colour of the soil had paled until it looked almost +blanched under the rising moon. Though the twilight was already in +possession of the fields a thin red line was still visible low in the +west, and beneath this the scattered lights in negro cabins shone like +obscure, greenish glow-worms, hidden among clumps of sassafras or in +stretches of dried broomsedge. As Ordway looked at these humble +dwellings, it seemed to him that they might afford a hospitality denied +him by the more imposing houses of the town. He had already eaten of the +Negro's charity, and it was possible that before dawn he might be +compelled to eat of it again. + +Beneath his feet the long road called to him as it wound a curving white +line drawn through the vague darkness of the landscape. Somewhere in a +distant pasture a bull bellowed, and the sound came to him like the +plaintive voice of the abandoned fields. While he listened the response +of his tired feet to the road appeared to him as madness, and stopping +short, he turned quickly and looked back in the direction of +Tappahannock. But from the spot on which he stood the lights of the town +offered little promise of hospitality, so after an uncertain glance, he +moved on again to a bare, open place where two roads met and crossed at +the foot of a blasted pine. A few steps farther he discovered that a +ruined gate stood immediately on his right, and beyond the crumbling +brick pillars, he made out dimly the outlines of several fallen bodies, +which proved upon nearer view to be the prostrate forms of giant cedars. +An avenue had once led, he gathered, from the gate to a house situated +somewhere at the end of the long curve, for the great trees lying across +the road must have stood once as the guardians of an estate of no little +value. Whether the cedars had succumbed at last to age or to the axe of +the destroyer, it was too dark at the moment for him to ascertain; but +the earth had claimed them now, magnificent even in their ruin, while +under the dim tent of sky beyond, he could still discern their living +companions of a hundred years. So impressive was the past splendour of +this approach that the house seemed, when he reached it, almost an +affront to the mansion which his imagination had reared. Broad, low, +built of brick, with two long irregular wings embedded in English ivy, +and a rotting shingled roof that sloped over dormered windows, its most +striking characteristic as he first perceived it under the moonlight was +the sentiment which is inevitably associated with age and decay. Never +imposing, the dwelling was now barely habitable, for the roof was +sagging in places over the long wings, a chimney had fallen upon one of +the moss-covered eaves, the stone steps of the porch were hollowed into +dangerous channels, and the ground before the door was strewn with +scattered chips from a neighbouring wood pile. + +The air of desolation was so complete that at first Ordway supposed the +place to be uninhabited, but discovering a light presently in one of the +upper windows, he ascended the steps and beat with the rusted knocker on +the panel of the door. For several minutes there was no answer to his +knock. Then the sound of shuffling footsteps reached him from the +distance, drawing gradually nearer until they stopped immediately beyond +the threshold. + +"I ain' gwine open dis yer do' ef'n hits oner dem ole hants," said a +voice within, while a sharp point of light pierced through the keyhole. + +An instant later, in response to Ordway's assurance of his bodily +reality, the bolt creaked back with an effort and the door opened far +enough to admit the slovenly head and shoulders of an aged negress. + +"Miss Meely she's laid up en she cyar'n see ner comp'ny, Marster," she +announced with the evident intention of retreating as soon as her +message was delivered. + +Her purpose, however, was defeated, for, slipping his heavy boot into +the crack of the door, Ordway faced her under the lamp which she held +high above her head. In the shadows beyond he could see dimly the bare +old hall and the great winding staircase which led to the painted +railing of the gallery above. + +"Can you give me shelter for the night?" he asked, "I am a stranger in +the county, and I've walked thirty miles to-day." + +"Miss Meely don' wan'ner comp'ny," replied the negress, while her head, +in its faded cotton handkerchief, appeared to swing like a pendulum +before his exhausted eyes. + +"Who is Miss Meely?" he demanded, laying his hand upon her apron as she +made a sudden terrified motion of flight. + +"Miss Meely Brooke--Marse Edward's daughter. He's daid." + +"Well, go and ask her. I'll wait here on the porch until you return." + +Her eyelids flickered in the lamplight, and he saw the whites of her +eyes leap suddenly into prominence. Then the door closed again, the bolt +shot back into place, and the shuffling sound grew fainter as it passed +over the bare floor. A cold nose touched Ordway's hand, and looking down +he saw that an old fox-hound had crept into the porch and was fawning +with pleasure at his feet. He was conscious of a thrill of gratitude +for the first demonstrative welcome he had received at Tappahannock; and +while he stood there with the hound leaping upon his chest, he felt +that, in spite of "Miss Meely," hidden somewhere behind the closed door, +the old house had not lost utterly the spirit of hospitality. His hand +was still on the dog's head when the bolt creaked again and the negress +reappeared upon the threshold. + +"Miss Meely she sez she's moughty sorry, suh, but she cyarn' hev ner +strange gent'mun spendin' de night in de house. She reckons you mought +sleep in de barn ef'n you wanter." + +As the door opened wider, her whole person, clad in a faded woollen +dress, patched brightly in many colours, emerged timidly and followed +him to the topmost step. + +"You des go roun' ter de back en den thoo' de hole whar de gate used ter +be, en dar's de barn. Nuttin' ain' gwine hu't you lessen hits dat ar ole +ram 'Lejab." + +"Well, he shall not find me unprepared," responded Ordway, with a kind +of desperate gaiety, and while the old hound still leaped at his side, +he found his way into a little path which led around the corner of the +house, and through the tangled garden to the barn just beyond the fallen +gateposts. Here the dog deserted him, running back to the porch, where a +woman's voice called; and stumbling over a broken ploughshare or two, he +finally reached the poor shelter which Miss Meely's hospitality +afforded. + +It was very dark inside, but after closing the door to shut out the +wind, he groped his way through the blackness to a pile of straw in one +corner. The place smelt of cattle, and opposite to the spot on which he +lay, he distinguished presently a soft, regular sound which he concluded +to be caused by the breathing of a cow. Evidently the barn was used as a +cattleshed also, though his observation of the mansion did not lead him +to suppose that "Miss Meely" possessed anything approaching a herd. He +remembered the old negress's warning allusion to the ram, but so far at +least the darkness had revealed nothing that could prove hostile to his +company. His head ached and his will seemed suddenly benumbed, so +stretching himself at full length in the straw he fell, after a few +troubled moments, into the deep and dreamless sleep of complete physical +exhaustion. + +An instant afterwards, it seemed to him, he was aroused by a light which +flashed into his face from the opening door. A cold wind blew over him, +and as he struggled almost blindly back into consciousness, he saw that +a girl in a red cape stood holding a lantern above her head in the +centre of the barn. At his first look the red cape warmed him as if it +had been flame; then he became aware that a voice was speaking to him in +a peculiar tone of cheerful authority. And it seemed to him that the red +cape and the rich voice expressed the same dominant quality of +personality. + +"I thought you must be hungry," said the voice with energy, "so I've +brought your supper." + +Even while he instinctively grasped the tray she held out, he observed +with quickened attention that the hands which offered him the food had +toiled out of doors in good and bad weather--though small and shapely +they were chapped from cold and roughened by marks of labour. + +"You'd better drink your coffee while it's hot," said the voice again. + +The practical nature of her advice put him immediately at his ease. + +"It's the first hot thing I've had for a week," he responded. + +"Then it will be all the better for you," replied the girl, while she +reached up to hang the lantern from a rusted nail in the wall. + +As the light fell over her, the red cape slipped a little from her +shoulder and she put up her hand to catch it together on her bosom. The +movement, slight as it was, gave Ordway a chance to observe that she +possessed a kind of vigorous grace, which showed in the roundness of her +limbs and in the rebellious freedom of her thick brown hair. The airy +little curls on her temples stood out, he noticed, as if she had been +walking bareheaded in the wind. At his first look it did not occur to +him that she was beautiful; what impressed him most was the quality of +radiant energy which revealed itself in every line of her face and +figure--now sparkling in her eyes, now dimpling in her cheek, now +quickening her brisk steps across the floor, and now touching her eyes +and mouth like an edge of light. It may have been merely the effect of +the red cape on a cold night, but as she moved back and forth into the +dark corners of the barn, she appeared to him to gather both warmth and +animation out of the gloom. + +As she did not speak again during her work, he found himself forced to +observe the same friendly silence. The ravenous hunger of the afternoon +had returned to him with the odour of the food, and he ate rapidly, +sitting up on his straw bed, while she took up a bucket and a piece of +wood sharpened at one end and prepared a bran mash for the cow quartered +in a stall in one corner. When a little later she gathered up an armful +of straw to replenish the animal's bed, Ordway pushed the tray aside and +made a movement as if to assist her; but stopping an instant in her +task, she waved him aside with the easy dignity of perfect capability. + +"I can do it myself, thank you," she said, smiling; and then, glancing +at his emptied plate, she added carelessly, "I'll send back presently +for the tray and lantern--good-night!" + +Her tone had changed perceptibly on the last word, for its businesslike +authority had given place to the musical Southern drawl so familiar to +his ears in childhood. In that simple phrase, accompanied by the +gracious bend of her whole person, she had put unconsciously generations +of social courtesy--of racial breeding. + +"Thank you--good-night," he answered, rising, and drawing back with his +hand on the heavy latch. + +Then before she could reach the door and pass through, a second lantern +flashed there out of the blackness beyond, and the terrified face of a +Negro urchin was thrust into the full glare of light. + +"Fo' de good Lawd, Miss Em'ly, dat ar ole ram done butt Sis Mehitable +clean inter de smoke 'us." + +Perfectly unruffled by the news the girl looked at Ordway, and then held +out her small, strong hand for the lantern. + +"Very well, I'll come and shut him up," she responded quietly, and +holding the red cape together on her bosom, she stepped over the +threshold and followed the Negro urchin out into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK + + +At sunrise he came out of the barn, and washed his face and hands at the +well, where he found a coarse towel on the moss-covered trough. The day +was breaking clear, but in the fine golden light the house and lawn +appeared even more desolate than they had done under the full moon. +Before the war the place had been probably a comfortable, unpretentious +country mansion. Some simple dignity still attached to its bowers of ivy +and its ancient cedars, but it was easy to imagine that for thirty years +no shingle had been added to its crumbling roof, and hardly a ship +gathered from the littered walk before the door. At the end of the +avenue six great trees had fallen a sacrifice, he saw now, to the mere +lust for timber--for freshly cut and still odorous with sap, the huge +trunks lay directly across the approach over which they had presided +through the tragic history of the house. Judged by what it must have +been in a fairly prosperous past, the scene was sad enough even to the +eyes of a stranger; and as Ordway walked slowly down the dim, fragrant +curve of the avenue, he found it difficult to place against so sombre a +background, a figure as full of life and animation as that of the girl +he had seen in the barn on the evening before. She appeared to his +imagination as the embodiment of youth amid surroundings whose only +remaining beauties were those of age. + +Though he had resolved yesterday not to return to Tappahannock, he found +himself presently retracing, almost without an effort of will, the road +which he had travelled so heavily in the night. Something between +sunrise and sunset had renewed his courage and altered his +determination. Was it only the wasted strength which had returned to him +in his sleep? Or was it--he hesitated at the thought--the flush of shame +which had burned his face when the girl's lantern had flashed over him +out of the darkness? In that pitiless illumination it was as if not only +his roughened surface, but his secret sin was laid bare; and he had felt +again all the hideous publicity that had touched him and put him as one +apart in the court-room. Though he had outgrown the sin, he knew now +that he must carry the scar of it until his death; and he knew, also, +that the reality of his punishment had been in the spirit and not in the +law. + +For a while he walked rapidly in the direction of Tappahannock; then +sitting down in the sunshine upon the roadside, he ate the piece of +cornbread he had saved last night from his supper. It would be several +hours at least before he might hope to find the warehouses open for the +day, so he sat patiently eating his bread under the bared boughs of a +young peach-tree, while he watched the surface of the long white road +which appeared to hold for him as much despondency as freedom. A farmer +driving a spotted cow to market spoke to him presently in a friendly +voice; and rising to his feet, he overtook the man and fell into the +jogging pace which was rendered necessary by the reluctance of the +animal to proceed. + +"I declar' the sense in them thar critters do beat all," remarked the +farmer, after an ineffectual tug at the rope he held. "She won't be +drove no more 'n a woman will--her head is what she wants no matter whar +it leads her." + +"Can you tell me," inquired Ordway, when they had started again upon the +advance, "the name of the old house I passed a mile or so along the +road?" + +"Oh, you mean Cedar Hill, I reckon!--thar now, Betsey, that thar toad +ain't a turnip!" + +"Cedar Hill, is it? Well, they appear to be doing their level best to +get rid of the cedars." + +"Mr. Beverly did that--not Miss Em'ly. Miss Em'ly dotes on them trees +jest the same as if they were made of flesh and blood." + +"But the place belongs to Mr. Beverly, I presume?" + +"If thar's a shingle of it that ain't mortgaged, I reckon it +does--though for that matter Miss Em'ly is overseer and manager, besides +teachin' every day in the public school of Tappahannock. Mr. Beverly's +got a soft heart in his body--all the Brookes had that they say--but the +Lord who made him knows that he ain't overblessed with brains. He used +to speculate with most of the family money, but as luck would have it he +always speculated wrong. Then he took to farmin', but he's got such a +slow gentlemanly way about him that nothin' he puts in the ground ever +has spirit enough to come up agin. His wife's just like him--she was +Miss Amelia Meadows, his second cousin from the up-country, and when the +children kept on comin' so thick and fast, as is the Lord's way with po' +folks, people said thar warn't nothin' ahead of 'em but starvation. But +Miss Em'ly she come back from teachin' somewhar down South an' undertook +to run the whole place single-handed. Things are pickin' up a little +now, they say--she's got a will of her own, has Miss Em'ly, but thar +ain't anybody in these parts that wouldn't work for her till they +dropped. She sent for me last Monday to help her mend her henhouse, and +though I was puttin' a new roof over my wife's head, I dropped +everything I had and went. That was the day Mr. Beverly cut down the +cedars." + +"So Miss Emily didn't know of it?" + +"She was in school, suh--you see she teaches in Tappahannock from nine +till three, so Mr. Beverly chose that time to sell the avenue to young +Tom Myers. He's a sly man, is Mr. Beverly, for all his soft, slow ways, +and if Young Tom had been on time he'd have had half the avenue belted +before Miss Em'ly got back from school. But he got in some mess or other +at the store, and he was jest hewin' like thunder at his sixth cedar, +when up come Miss Em'ly on that old white horse she rides. Good Lord! I +hope I'll never see anybody turn so white agin as she did when her eyes +lighted on them fallen trees. 'Beverly,' she called out in a loud, high +voice, 'have you dared to sell the cedars?' Mr. Beverly looked a little +sick as if his stomach had gone aginst him of a sudden, but he stood +right up on the trunk of a tree, and mumbled something about presarvin' +useless timber when the children had no shoes an' stockings to thar +feet. Then Miss Em'ly gave him a look that scorched like fire, and she +rode straight up to Myers on her old horse and said as quiet as death: +'Put up your axe, Tom, I'll give you back your money. How much have you +paid him down?' When Young Tom looked kind of sheepish and said: 'a +hundred dollars,' I saw her eyelids flicker, but she didn't hesitate an +instant. 'You shall have it within an hour on my word of honour,' she +answered, 'can you wait?' 'I reckon I can wait all day, Miss,' said +Young Tom--and then she jumped down from her horse, and givin' me the +bridle, caught up her skirt and ran indoors. In a minute she came flying +out agin and before we had time to catch our breath she was ridin' for +dear life back to town. 'You'd better go on with yo' work,' said Mr. +Beverly in his soft way, but Young Tom picked up his axe, and sat down +on the big stump behind him. 'I reckon I can take her word better 'n +yours, Mr. Beverly,' he answered, 'an' 'I reckon you can, too, Young +Tom,' said I----." + +"But how did she raise the money?" inquired Ordway. + +"That's what nobody knows, suh, except her and one other. Some say she +sold a piece of her mother's old jewelry--a locket or something she had +put by--and some believe still that she borrowed it from Robert Baxter +or Jasper Trend. Whichever way it was, she came ridin' up within the +hour on her old white horse with the notes twisted tight in her +handkerchief. She was mighty quiet, then, but when it was over, great +Lord, what a temper she was in. I declar' she would have struck Mr. +Beverly with the sour gum twig she used for a whip if I hadn't slipped +in between 'em an' caught her arm. Then she lashed him with her tongue +till he seemed to wither and shrink all over." + +"And served him right, God bless her!" said Ordway. + +"That's so, suh, but Mr. Beverly ain't a bad man--he's jest soft." + +"Yet your Miss Emily still sticks to him, it seems?" + +"If she didn't the farm wouldn't hold together a week. What she makes +from teachin' is about all they have to live on in my opinion. Last +summer, too, she started raisin' garden things an' poultry, an' she'd +have got quite a thrivin' business if she had had any kind of help. Then +in July she tried her hand at puttin' up preserves and jellies to send +to them big stores in the North." + +Ordway remembered the cheerful authority in her voice, the little cold +red hands that had offered him his supper; and his heart contracted as +it did at the memory of his daughter Alice. Yet it was not pity alone +that moved him, for mingled with the appeal to his sympathy there was +something which awoke in him the bitter agony of remorse. So the girl +in the red cape could endure poverty such as this with honour! At the +thought his past sin and his present disgrace appeared to him not only +as crime but as cowardliness. He recalled the angry manager of the +cotton mills, but there was no longer resentment in his mind either +against the individual or against society. Instead it seemed to him that +all smaller emotions dissolved in a tenderness which placed this girl +and Alice apart with the other good and inspiring memories of his life. +As he walked on in silence a little incident of ten years before +returned to his thoughts, and he remembered the day he had found his +child weeping beside a crippled beggar on his front steps. + +When, a little later, they reached Tappahannock, the farmer turned with +his reluctant cow into one of the smaller paths which led across the +common on the edge of the town. As it was still too early to apply for +work, Ordway sat down on a flat stone before an iron gate and watched +the windows along the street for any signs of movement or life within. +At length several frowsy Negro maids leaned out while the wooden +shutters swung slowly back against the walls; then a milk wagon driven +by a small boy clattered noisily round the corner, and in response to +the shrill whistle of the driver, the doors opened hurriedly and the +Negro maids rushed, with outstretched pitchers, down the gravelled walks +to the iron gates. Presently an appetising odour of bacon reached +Ordway's nostrils; and in the house across the street a woman with her +hair done up on pins, came to the window and began grinding coffee in a +wooden mill. Not until eight o'clock did the town open its gates and +settle itself to the day's work. + +When the doors of the warehouses were fastened back, Ordway turned into +the main street again, and walked slowly downhill until he came to the +faded brick archway where the group of men had sat smoking the evening +before. Now there was an air of movement in the long building which had +appeared as mere dim vacancy at the hour of sunset. Men were passing in +and out of the brick entrance, from which a thin coat of whitewash was +peeling in splotches; covered wagons half filled with tobacco were +standing, unhitched, along the walls; huge bags of fresh fertilisers +were thrown carelessly in corners; and in the centre of the great floor, +an old Negro, with a birch broom tied together with coloured string, was +sweeping into piles the dried stems left after yesterday's sales. As he +swept, a little cloud of pungent dust rose before the strokes of his +broom and floated through the brick archway out into the street. + +This morning there was even less attention paid to Ordway's presence +than there had been at the closing hour. Planters hurried back and forth +preparing lots for the opening sale; a wagon drove into the building, +and the driver got down over the muddy wheel and lifted out several +willow crates through which Ordway could catch a glimpse of the yellow +sun-cured leaf. The old Negro swept briskly, piling the trash into heaps +which would finally be ground into snuff or used as a cheap grade of +fertiliser. Lean hounds wandered to and fro, following the covered +wagons and sniffing suspiciously at the loose plants arranged in +separate lots in the centre of the floor. + +"Is Baxter here this morning?" Ordway asked presently of a countryman +who lounged on a pile of bags near the archway. + +"I reckon you'll find him in his office," replied the man, as he spat +lazily out into the street; "that thar's his door," he added, pointing +to a little room on the right of the entrance--"I seed him go in an' I +ain't seed him come out." + +Nodding his thanks for the information, Ordway crossed the building and +rapped lightly on the door. In response to a loud "come in," he turned +the knob and stood next instant face to face with the genial giant of +the evening before. + +"Good-morning, Mr. Baxter, I've come back again," he said. + +"Good-morning!" responded Baxter, "I see you have." + +In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not +in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in +the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent +impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the +expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, +half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow +men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. To meet his +glance was to become suddenly intimate; to hear him speak was to feel +that he had shaken you by the hand. + +"I hoped you might have come to see things differently this morning," +said Ordway. + +Baxter looked him over with his soft yet penetrating eyes, his gaze +travelling slowly from the coarse boots covered with red clay to the +boyish smile on the dark, weather-beaten face. + +"You did not tell me what kind of work you were looking for," he +observed at last. "Do you want to sweep out the warehouse or to keep the +books?" + +Ordway laughed. "I prefer to keep the books, but I can sweep out the +warehouse," he replied. + +"You can--can you?" said Baxter. His pipe, which was never out of his +hand except when it was in his mouth, began to turn gray, and putting it +between his teeth, he sucked hard at the stem for a minute. + +"You're an educated man, then?" + +"I've been to college--do you mean that?" + +"You're fit for a clerk's position?" + +"I am sure of it." + +"Where did you work last?" + +Ordway's hesitation was barely perceptible. + +"I've been in business," he answered. + +"On your own hook?" inquired Baxter. + +"Yes, on my own hook." + +"But you couldn't make a living at it?" + +"No; I gave it up for several reasons." + +"Well, I don't know your reasons, my man," observed Baxter, drily, "but +I like your face." + +"Thank you," said Ordway, and he laughed again with the sparkling gaiety +which leaped first to his blue eyes. + +"And so you expect me to take you without knowing a darn thing about +you?" demanded Baxter. + +Ordway nodded gravely. + +"Yes, I hope that is what you will do," he answered. + +"I may ask your name, I reckon, mayn't I?--if you have no particular +objection." + +"I don't mind telling you it's Smith," said Ordway, with his gaze on a +huge pamphlet entitled "Smith's Almanac" lying on Baxter's desk. "Daniel +Smith." + +"Smith," repeated Baxter. "Well, it ain't hard to remember. If I warn't +a blamed fool, I'd let you go," he added thoughtfully, "but there ain't +much doubt, I reckon, about my being a blamed fool." + +He rose from his chair with difficulty, and steadying his huge body, +moved to the door, which he flung open with a jerk. + +"If you've made up your mind dead sure to butt in, you might as well +begin with the next sale," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH + + +He had been recommended for lodging to a certain Mrs. Twine, and at five +o'clock, when the day's work at Baxter's was over, he started up the +street in a bewildered search for her house, which he had been told was +situated immediately beyond the first turn on the brow of the hill. When +he reached the corner there was no one in sight except a small boy who +sat, crying loudly, astride a little whitewashed wooden gate. Beyond the +boy there was a narrow yard filled with partly dried garments hung on +clothes lines, which stretched from a young locust tree near the +sidewalk to the front porch, where a man with a red nose was reading the +local newspaper. As the man with the red nose paid no attention to the +loud lamentations of the child, Ordway stopped by the gate and inquired +sympathetically if he could be of help. + +"Oh, he ain't hurt," remarked the man, throwing a side glance over his +paper, "he al'ays yells like that when his Ma's done scrubbed him." + +"She's washed me so clean that I feel naked," howled the boy. + +"Well, you'll get over that in a year's time," observed Ordway +cheerfully, "so suppose you leave off a minute now and show me the way +to Mrs. Twine's." + +At his request the boy stopped crying instantly, and stared up at him +while the dirty tearmarks dried slowly on his cheeks. + +"Thar ain't no way," he replied solemnly, "'cause she's my ma." + +"Then jump down quickly and run indoors and tell her I'd like to see +her." + +"'T ain't no use. She won't come." + +"Well, go and ask her. I was told to come here to look for board and +lodging." + +He glanced inquiringly at the man on the porch, who, engrossed in the +local paper, was apparently oblivious of the conversation at the gate. + +"She won't come 'cause she's washin' the rest of us," returned the boy, +as he swung himself to the ground, "thar're six of us an' she ain't done +but two. That's Lemmy she's got hold of now. Can't you hear him holler?" + +He planted his feet squarely on the board walk, looked back at Ordway +over his shoulder, and departed reluctantly with the message for his +mother. At the end of a quarter of an hour, when Ordway had entered the +gate and sat down in the cold wind on the front steps, the door behind +him opened with a jar, and a large, crimson, untidy woman, splashed with +soapsuds, appeared like an embodied tempest upon the threshold. + +"Canty says you've come to look at the dead gentleman's room, suh," she +began in a high voice, approaching her point with a directness which +lost none of its force because of the panting vehemence with which she +spoke. + +"Baxter told me I might find board with you," explained Ordway in her +first breathless pause. + +"To be sure he may have the dead gentleman's room, Mag," put in the man +on the porch, folding his newspaper, with a shiver, as he rose to his +feet. + +"I warn't thinkin' about lettin' that room agin'," said Mrs. Twine, +crushing her husband's budding interference by the completeness with +which she ignored his presence. "But it's jest as well, I reckon, for a +defenceless married woman to have a stranger in the house. Though for +the matter of that," she concluded in a burst of domestic confidence, +"the woman that ain't a match for her own husband without outside help +ain't deservin' of the pleasure an' the blessin' of one." Then as the +man with the red nose slunk shamefacedly into the passage, she added in +an undertone to Ordway, "and now if you'll jest step inside, I'll show +you the spare room that I've got to let." + +She led the way indoors, scolding shrilly as she passed through the +hall, and up the little staircase, where several half-dressed children +were riding, with shrieks of delight, down the balustrade. "You needn't +think you've missed a scrubbing because company's come," she remarked +angrily, as she stooped to box the ears of a small girl lying flat on +her stomach upon the landing. "Such is my taste for cleanness," she +explained to Ordway, "that when my hands once tech the soap it's as +much as I can do to keep 'em back from rubbin' the skin off. Thar 're +times even when the taste is so ragin' in my breast that I can hardly +wait for Saturday night to come around. Yet I ain't no friend to license +whether it be in whiskey or in soap an' water. Temperance is my passion +and that's why, I suppose, I came to marry a drunkard." + +With this tragic confession, uttered in a matter of fact manner, she +produced a key from the pocket of her blue gingham apron, and ushered +Ordway into a small, poorly furnished room, which overlooked the front +street and the two bared locust trees in the yard. + +"I kin let you have this at three dollars a week," she said, "provided +you're content to do yo' own reachin' at the table. Thar ain't any +servant now except a twelve year old darkey." + +"Yes, I'll take it," returned Ordway, almost cheerfully; and when he had +agreed definitely as to the amount of service he was to receive, he +closed the creaking door behind her, and looked about the crudely +furnished apartment with a sense of ownership such as he had not felt +since the afternoon upon which he had stood in his wife's sitting-room +awaiting his arrest. He thought of the Florentine gilding, the rich +curtains, the long mirrors, the famous bronze Mercury and the Corot +landscape with the sunlight upon it--and then of the terrible oppression +in which these familiar objects had seemed closing in upon him and +smothering him into unconsciousness. The weight was lifted now, and he +breathed freely while his gaze rested on the common pine bedstead, the +scarred washstand, with the broken pitcher, the whitewashed walls, the +cane chairs, the rusted scuttle, filled with cheap coal, and the +unpainted table holding a glass lamp with a smoked chimney. From the +hall below he could hear the scolding voice of Mrs. Twine, but neither +the shrill sound nor the poor room produced in him the smothered anguish +he felt even to-day at the memory of the Corot landscape bathed in +sunlight. + +An hour later, when he came upstairs again as an escape from the +disorder of Mrs. Twine's supper table, he started a feeble blaze in the +grate, which was half full of ashes, and after lighting the glass lamp, +sat watching the shadows flicker to and fro on the whitewashed wall. His +single possession, a photograph of his wife taken with her two children, +rested against the brick chimney piece, and as he looked at it now it +seemed to stand in no closer relationship to his life than did one of +the brilliant chromos he had observed ornamenting the walls of Mrs. +Twine's dining-room. His old life, indeed, appeared remote, artificial, +conjured from unrealities--it was as if he had moved lightly upon the +painted surface of things, until at last a false step had broken through +the thin covering and he had plunged in a single instant against the +concrete actuality. The shock had stunned him, yet he realised now that +he could never return to his old sheltered outlook--to his pleasant +fiction--for he had come too close to experience ever to be satisfied +again with falsehood. + +The photograph upon the mantel was the single remaining link which held +him to-day to his past life--to his forfeited identity. In the +exquisite, still virgin face of his wife, draped for effect in a scarf +of Italian lace--he saw embodied the one sacred memory to which as +Daniel Smith he might still cling with honour. The face was perfect, the +expression of motherhood which bent, flamelike, over the small boy and +girl, was perfect also; and the pure soul of the woman seemed to him to +have formed both face and expression after its own divine image. In the +photograph, as in his memory, her beauty was touched always by some rare +quality of remoteness, as if no merely human conditions could ever +entirely compass so ethereal a spirit. The passion which had rocked his +soul had left her serenity unshaken, and even sorrow had been powerless +to leave its impress or disfigurement upon her features. + +As the shadows flickered out on the walls, the room grew suddenly +colder. Rising, he replenished the fire, and then going over to the bed, +he flung himself, still dressed, under the patchwork quilt from which +the wool was protruding in places. He was thinking of the morning +eighteen years ago when he had first seen her as she came, with several +girl companions, out of the old church in the little town of Botetourt. +It was a Christmas during his last year at Harvard, when moved by a +sudden interest in his Southern associations, he had gone down for two +days to his childhood's home in Virginia. Though the place was falling +gradually to ruin, his maiden great-aunt still lived there in a kind of +luxurious poverty; and at the sight of her false halo of gray curls, he +had remembered, almost with a start of surprise, the morning when he had +seen the convict at the little wayside station. The station, the +country, the muddy roads, and even the town of Botetourt were unchanged, +but he himself belonged now to another and what he felt to be a larger +world. Everything had appeared provincial and amusing to his eyes--until +as he passed on Christmas morning by the quaint old churchyard, he had +seen Lydia Preston standing in the sunshine amid the crumbling +tombstones of several hundred years. Under the long black feather in her +hat, her charming eyes had dwelt on him kindly for a minute, and in that +minute it had seemed to him that the racial ideal slumbering in his +brain had responded quickly to his startled blood. Afterward they had +told him that she was only nineteen, a Southern beauty of great promise, +and the daughter of old Adam Preston, who had made and lost a fortune in +the last ten years. But these details seemed to him to have no relation +to the face he had seen under the black feather against the ivy-covered +walls of the old church. The next evening they had danced together at a +ball; he had carried her fan, a trivial affair of lace and satin, away +in his pocket, and ten days later he had returned, flushed with passion, +to finish his course at Harvard. Love had put wings to his ambition; the +following year he had stood at the head of his class, and before the +summer was over he had married her and started brilliantly in his +career. There had been only success in the beginning. When had the tide +turned so suddenly? he wondered, and when had he begun to drift into the +great waters where men are washed down and lost? + +Lying on the bed now in the firelight, he shivered and drew the quilt +closer about his knees. She had loved beauty, riches, dignity, +religion--she had loved her children when they came; but had she ever +really loved him--the Daniel Ordway whom she had married? Were all pure +women as passionless--as utterly detached--as she had shown herself to +him from the beginning? And was her coldness, as he had always believed, +but the outward body of that spiritual grace for which he had loved her? +He had lavished abundantly out of his stormy nature; he had spent his +immortal soul upon her in desperate determination to possess her utterly +at her own price; and yet had she ever belonged to him, he questioned +now, even in the supreme hours of their deepest union? Had her very +innocence shut him out from her soul forever? + +In the end the little world had closed over them both; he had felt +himself slipping further--further--had made frantic efforts to regain +his footing; and had gone down hopelessly at last. Those terrible years +before his arrest crowded like minutes into his brain, and he knew now +that there had been relief--comfort--almost tranquillity in his life in +prison. The strain was lifted at last, and the days when he had moved +in dull hope or acute despair through the crowd in Wall Street were over +forever. To hold a place in the little world one needed great wealth; +and it had seemed to him in the time of temptation that this wealth was +not a fugitive possession, but an inherent necessity--a thing which +belonged to the inner structure of Lydia's nature. + +A shudder ran over him, while he drew a convulsive breath like one in +physical pain. The slow minutes in which he had waited for a rise in the +market were still ticking in agony somewhere in his brain. Time moved +on, yet those minutes never passed--his memory had become like the face +of a clock where the hands pointed, motionless, day or night, to the +same hour. Then hours, days, weeks, months, years, when he lived with +ruin in his thoughts and the sound of merriment, which was like the pipe +of hollow flutes, in his ears. At the end it came almost suddenly--the +blow for which he had waited, the blow which brought something akin to +relief because it ended the quivering torture of his suspense, and +compelled, for the hour at least, decisive action. He had known that +before evening he would be under arrest, and yet he had walked slowly +along Fifth Avenue from his office to his home; he recalled now that he +had even joked with a club wit, who had stopped him at the corner to +divulge the latest bit of gossip. At the very instant when he felt +himself to be approaching ruin in his house, he remembered that he had +complained a little irritably of the breaking wrapper of his cigar. Yet +he was thinking then that he must reach his home in time to prevent his +wife from keeping a luncheon engagement, of which she had spoken to him +at breakfast; and ten minutes later it was with a sensation of relief +that he met the blank face of his butler in the hall. On the staircase +his daughter ran after him, her short white, beruffled skirts standing +out stiffly like the skirts of a ballet dancer. She was taking her music +lesson, she cried out, and she called to him to come into the music room +and hear how wonderfully she could run her scales! Her blue eyes, which +were his eyes in a child's face, looked joyously up at him from under +the thatch of dark curls which she had inherited from him, not from her +blond mother. + +"Not now, Alice," he answered, almost impatiently, "not now--I will come +a little later." + +Then she darted back, and the stumbling music preceded him up the +staircase to the door of his wife's dressing-room. When he entered Lydia +was standing before her mirror, fastening a spotted veil with a diamond +butterfly at the back of her blond head; and as she turned smilingly +toward him, he put out his hand with a gesture of irritation. + +"Take that veil off, Lydia, I can't see you for the spots," he said. + +Complaisant always, she unfastened the diamond butterfly without a word, +and taking off the veil, flung it carelessly across the golden-topped +bottles upon her dressing-table. + +"You look ill," she said with her charming smile; "shall I ring for +Marie to bring you whiskey?" + +At her words he turned from her, driven by a torment of pity which +caused his voice to sound harsh and constrained in his own ears. + +"No--no--don't put that on again," he protested, for while she waited +she had taken up the spotted veil and the diamond pin. + +Something in his tone startled her into attention, and moving a step +forward, she stood before him on a white bearskin rug. Her face had +hardly changed, yet in some way she seemed to have put him at a +distance, and he felt all at once that he had never known her. + +From the room downstairs he heard Alice's music lesson go on at broken +intervals, the uncertain scales she ran now stopping, now beginning +violently again. The sound wrought suddenly on his nerves like anger, +and he felt that his voice was querulous in spite of the torment of pity +at his heart. + +"There's no use putting on your veil," he said, "a warrant is out for my +arrest and I must wait here till it comes." + + * * * * * + +His memory stopped now, as if it had snapped suddenly beneath the +strain. After this there was a mere blank of existence upon which people +and objects moved without visible impression. From that minute to this +one appeared so short a time that he started up half expecting to hear +Alice's scales filling Mrs. Twine's empty lodgings. Then his eyes fell +on the whitewashed walls, the smoking lamp, the bare table, and the +little square window with the branches of the locust tree frosted +against the pane. + +Rising from the bed, he fell on his knees and pressed his quivering face +to the patchwork quilt. + +"Give me a new life, O God--give me a new life!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT TAPPAHANNOCK + + +After a sleepless night, he rose as soon as the dawn had broken, and +sitting down before the pine table wrote a letter to Lydia, on a sheet +of paper which had evidently been left in the drawer by the former +lodger. "It isn't likely that you'll ever want me," he added at the end, +"but if you should happen to, remember that I am yours, as I have always +been, for whatever I am worth." When he had sealed the envelope and +written her name above that of the town of Botetourt, he put it into his +pocket and went down to the dining-room, where he found Mrs. Twine +pouring steaming coffee into a row of broken cups. A little mulatto +girl, with her hair plaited in a dozen fine braids, was placing a dish +of fried bacon at one end of the walnut-coloured oil-cloth on the table, +around which the six children, already clothed and hungry, were beating +an impatient tattoo with pewter spoons. Bill Twine, the father of the +family, was evidently sleeping off a drunken headache--a weakness which +appeared to afford his wife endless material for admonition and +philosophy. + +"Thar now, Canty," she was remarking to her son, "yo' po' daddy may not +be anything to be proud of as a man, but I reckon he's as big an example +as you'll ever see. He's had sermons p'inted at him from the pulpit; +they've took him up twice to the police court, an' if you'll believe me, +suh," she added with a kind of outraged pride to Ordway, "thar's been a +time when they've had out the whole fire department to protect me." + +The coffee though poor was hot, and while Ordway drank it, he listened +with an attention not unmixed with sympathy to Mrs. Twine's continuous +flow of speech. She was coarse and shrewish and unshapely, but his +judgment was softened by the marks of anxious thought on her forehead +and the disfigurements of honest labour on her hands. Any toil appeared +to him now to be invested with peculiar dignity; and he felt, sitting +there at her slovenly breakfast table, that he was closer to the +enduring heart of humanity than he had been among the shallow +refinements of his past life. Mrs. Twine was unpleasant, but at her +worst he felt her to be the real thing. + +"Not that I'm blamin' Bill, suh, as much as some folks," she proceeded +charitably, while she helped her youngest child to gravy, "for it made +me downright sick myself to hear them carryin' on over his beatin' his +own wife jest as much as if he'd been beatin' somebody else's. An' I +ain't one, when it comes to that, to put up with a white-livered, +knock-kneed, pulin' sort of a critter, as I told the Jedge a-settin' +upon his bench. When a woman is obleeged to take a strappin' thar's some +real satisfaction in her feelin' that she takes it from a man--an' the +kind that would lay on softly with never a broken head to show for +it--well, he ain't the kind, suh, that I could have helt in any respect +an' honour. And as to that, as I said to 'em right then an' thar, take +the manly health an' spirit out o' Bill, an' he's jest about as decent +an' law abidin' as the rest. Why, when he was laid up with malaria, he +never so much as rized his hand agin me, an' it'll be my belief untwel +my dyin' day that chills an' fever will keep a man moral when all the +sermons sence Moses will leave him unteched. Feed him low an' work him +hard, an' you kin make a saint out of most any male critter, that's my +way of thinkin'." + +While she talked she was busily selecting the choicest bit of bacon for +Bill's plate, and as Ordway left the house a little later, he saw her +toiling up the staircase with her husband's breakfast on a tin tray in +her hands. + +"If you think I'm goin' to set an' wait all day for you to get out o' +bed, you've jest about clean lost yo' wits, Bill Twine," she remarked in +furious tones, as she flung open a door on the landing above. + +Out of doors Ordway found that the wind had died down, though a sharp +edge of frost was still in the air. The movement of the day had already +begun; and as he passed the big house on the brow of the hill he saw a +pretty girl, with her hair tied back with a velvet ribbon, run along the +gravelled walk to meet the postman at the gate. A little farther, when +he had reached the corner, he turned back to hand his letter to the +postman, and found to his surprise that the pretty girl was still gazing +after him. No possible interest could attach to her in his thoughts; +and with a careless acknowledgment of her beauty, she faded from his +consciousness as rapidly as if she had been a ray of sunshine which he +had admired as he passed along. Then as he turned into the main street +at the corner, he saw that Emily Brooke was riding slowly up the hill on +her old white horse. She still wore her red cape, which fell over the +saddle on one side, and completely hid the short riding-skirt beneath. +On her head there was a small knitted Tam-o'-shanter cap, and this, with +the easy freedom of her seat in the saddle, gave her an air which was +gallant rather than graceful. The more feminine adjective hardly seemed +to apply to her at the moment; she looked brave, strong, buoyant, a +creature that had not as yet become aware of its sex. Yet she was older, +he discovered now, than he had at first imagined her to be. In the barn +he had supposed her age to be not more than twenty years; seen in the +morning light it was impossible to decide whether she was a year younger +or ten years older than he had believed. The radiant energy in her look +belonged, after all, less to the accident of youth than to some enduring +quality of spirit. + +As she neared him, she looked up from her horse's neck, rested her eyes +upon him for an instant, and smiled brightly, much as a charming boy +might have done. Then, just as she was about to pass on, the girth of +her saddle slipped under her, and she was thrown lightly to the ground, +while the old horse stopped and stood perfectly motionless above her. + +"My skirt has caught in the stirrup," she said to Ordway, and while he +bent to release her, he noticed that she clung, not to his arm, but to +the neck of the horse for support. + +To his surprise there was neither embarrassment nor amusement in her +voice. She spoke with the cool authority which had impressed him during +the incident of the ram's attack upon "Sis Mehitable." + +"I don't think it is quite safe yet," he said, after he had drawn the +rotten girth as tight as he dared. "It looks as if it wouldn't last, you +see." + +"Well, I dare say, it may be excused after forty years of service," she +returned, smiling. + +"What? this saddle? It does look a little quaint when one examines it." + +"Oh, it's been repaired, but even then one must forgive an old servant +for growing decrepit." + +"Then you'll ride it again?" he asked, seeing that she was about to +mount. + +"Of course--this isn't my first tumble--but Major expects them now and +he knows how to behave. So do I," she added, laughing, "you see it +doesn't take me by surprise." + +"Yes, I see it doesn't," he answered gaily. + +"Then if you chance to be about the next time it happens, I hope it +won't disturb you either," she remarked, as she rode up the hill. + +The meeting lingered in Ordway's mind with a freshness which was +associated less with the incident itself than with some vivid quality in +the appearance of the girl. Her face, her voice, her carriage--even the +little brown curls blowing on her temples, all united in his thoughts to +form a memory in which Alice appeared to hold a place. Why should this +country girl, he wondered, bring back to him so clearly the figure of +his daughter? + +But there was no room for a memory in his life just now, and by the time +he reached Baxter's Warehouse, he had forgotten the interest aroused in +him a moment before. Baxter had not yet appeared in his office, but two +men, belonging evidently to the labouring class, were talking together +under the brick archway. When Ordway joined them they did not interrupt +their conversation, which he found, after a minute, to concern the +domestic and financial troubles of the one whom he judged to be the +poorer of the two. He was a meanly clad, wretched looking workman, with +a shock of uncombed sandy hair, a cowed manner, and the expression of +one who has been beaten into apathy rather than into submission. A +sordid pathos in his voice and figure brought Ordway a step closer to +his side, and after a moment's careless attention, he found his mind +adjusting itself to the small financial problems in which the man had +become entangled. The workman had been forced to borrow upon his +pathetic personal securities; and in meeting from year to year the +exorbitant rate of interest, he had paid back several times the sum of +the original debt. Now his wife was ill, with an incurable cancer; he +had no hope, as he advanced beyond middle age, of any increase in his +earning capacity, and the debt under which he had struggled so long had +become at the end an intolerable burden. His wife had begged him to +consult a lawyer--but who, he questioned doggedly, would take an +interest in him since he had no money for a fee? He was afraid of +lawyers anyway, for he could give you a hundred cases where they had +stood banded together against the poor. + +As Ordway listened to the story, he felt for an instant a return of his +youthful enthusiasm, and standing there amid the tobacco stems in +Baxter's warehouse, he remembered a great flour trust from which he had +withdrawn because it seemed to him to bear unjustly upon the small, +isolated farmers. Beyond this he went back still further to his college +days, when during his vacation, he had read Virginia law in the office +of his uncle, Richard Ordway, in the town of Botetourt. He could see the +shining rows of legal volumes in the walnut bookcases, the engraving of +Latane's Burial, framed in black wood above the mantel, and against this +background the silent, gray haired, self-righteous old man so like his +father. Through the window, he could see still the sparrows that built +in the ivied walls of the old church. + +With a start he came back to the workman, who was unfolding his troubles +in an abandon of misery under the archway. + +"If you'll talk things over with me to-night when we get through work, I +think I may be able to straighten them out for you," he said. + +The man stared at him out of his dogged eyes with a helpless +incredulity. + +"But I ain't got any money," he responded sullenly, as if driven to the +defensive. + +"Well, we'll see," said Ordway, "I don't want your money." + +"You want something, though--my money or my vote, and I ain't got +either." + +Ordway laughed shortly. "I?--oh, I just want the fun," he answered. + +The beginning was trivial enough, the case sordid, and the client only a +dull-witted labourer; but to Ordway it came as the commencement of the +new life for which he had prayed--the life which would find its centre +not in possession, but in surrender, which would seek as its achievement +not personal happiness, but the joy of service. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR + + +The pretty girl whom Ordway had seen on the gravelled walk was Milly +Trend, the only child of the Mayor of Tappahannock. People said of +Jasper Trend that his daughter was the one soft spot in a heart that was +otherwise as small and hard as a silver dollar, and of Milly Trend the +same people said--well, that she was pretty. Her prettiness was +invariably the first and the last thing to be mentioned about her. +Whatever sterner qualities she may have possessed were utterly obscured +by an exterior which made one think of peach blossoms and spring +sunshine. She had a bunch of curls the colour of ripe corn, which she +wore tied back from her neck with a velvet ribbon; her eyes were the +eyes of a baby; and her mouth had an adorable little trick of closing +over her small, though slightly prominent teeth. The one flaw in her +face was this projection of her teeth, and when she looked at herself in +the glass it was her habit to bite her lips closely together until the +irregular ivory line was lost. It was this fault, perhaps, which kept +her prettiness, though it was superlative in its own degree, from ever +rising to the height of beauty. In Milly's opinion it had meant the +difference between the glory of a world-wide reputation and the lesser +honour of reigning as the acknowledged belle of Tappahannock. She +remembered that the magnificent manager of a theatrical company, a +gentleman who wore a fur-lined coat and a top hat all day long, had +almost lost his train while he stopped to look back at her on the +crowded platform of the station. Her heart had beat quickly at the +tribute, yet even in that dazzling minute she had felt a desperate +certainty that her single imperfection would decide her future. But for +her teeth, she was convinced to-day, that he might have returned. + +If a woman cannot be a heroine in reality, perhaps the next best thing +is to look as if she might have been one in the age of romance; and this +was what Milly Trend's appearance suggested to perfection. Her manner of +dressing, the black velvet ribbon on her flaxen curls, her wide white +collars open at her soft throat, her floating sky-blue sashes and the +delicate peach bloom of her cheeks and lips--all these combined to +produce a poetic atmosphere about an exceedingly poetic little figure. +Being plain she would probably have made currant jelly for her pastor, +and have taught sedately in the infant class in Sunday school: being +pretty she read extravagant romances and dreamed strange adventures of +fascinating highwaymen on lonely roads. + +But many a woman who has dreamed of a highwayman at eighteen has +compromised with a bank clerk at twenty-two. Even at Tappahannock--the +veriest prose piece of a town--romance might sometimes bud and blossom, +though it usually brought nothing more dangerous than respectability to +fruit. Milly had read Longfellow and _Lucille_, and her heroic ideal had +been taken bodily from one of Bulwer's novels. She had played the +graceful part of heroine in a hundred imaginary dramas; yet in actual +life she had been engaged for two years to a sandy-haired, freckled face +young fellow, who chewed tobacco, and bought the dry leaf in lots for a +factory in Richmond. From romance to reality is a hard distance, and the +most passionate dreamer is often the patient drudge of domestic service. + +And yet even to-day Milly was not without secret misgivings as to the +wisdom of her choice. She knew he was not her hero, but in her short +visits to larger cities she had met no one who had come nearer her ideal +lover. To be sure she had seen this ideal, in highly coloured glimpses, +upon the stage--though these gallant gentlemen in trunks had never so +much as condescended to glance across the foot-lights to the little girl +in the dark third row of the balcony. Then, too, all the ladies upon the +stage were beautiful enough for any hero, and just here she was apt to +remember dismally the fatal projection of her teeth. + +So, perhaps, after all, Harry Banks was as near Olympus as she could +hope to approach; and there was a mild consolation in the thought that +there was probably more sentiment in the inner than in the outward man. +Whatever came of it, she had learned that in a prose age it is safer to +think only in prose. + +On the morning upon which Ordway had first passed her gate, she had +left the breakfast table at the postman's call, and had run down the +gravelled walk to receive a letter from Mr. Banks, who was off on a +short business trip for his firm. With the letter in her hand she had +turned to find Ordway's blue eyes fixed in careless admiration upon her +figure; and for one breathless instant she had felt her insatiable dream +rise again and clutch at her heart. Some subtle distinction in his +appearance--an unlikeness to the masculine portion of Tappahannock--had +caught her eye in spite of his common and ill-fitting clothes. Though +she had known few men of his class, the sensitive perceptions of the +girl had made her instantly aware of the difference between him and +Harry Banks. For a moment her extravagant fancy dwelt on his figure--on +this distinction which she had noticed, on his square dark face and the +singular effect of his bright blue eyes. Then turning back in the yard, +she went slowly up the gravelled walk, while she read with a vague +feeling of disappointment the love letter written laboriously by Mr. +Banks. It was, doubtless, but the average love letter of the average +plain young man, but to Milly in her rosy world of fiction, it appeared +suddenly as if there had protruded upon her attention one of the great, +ugly, wholesome facts of life. What was the use, she wondered, in being +beautiful if her love letters were to be filled with enthusiastic +accounts of her lover's prowess in the tobacco market? + +At the breakfast table Jasper Trend was pouring maple syrup on the +buckwheat cakes he had piled on his plate, and at the girl's entrance he +spoke without removing his gaze from the plated silver pitcher in his +hand. + +"Any letters, daughter?" he inquired, carefully running his knife along +the mouth of the pitcher to catch the last drop of syrup. + +"One," said Milly, as she sat down beside the coffee pot and looked at +her father with a ripple of annoyance in her babyish eyes. + +"I reckon I can guess about that all right," remarked Jasper with his +cackling chuckle, which was as little related to a sense of humour as +was the beating of a tin plate. He was a long, scraggy man, with drab +hair that grew in scallops on his narrow forehead and a large nose where +the prominent red veins turned purple when he became excited. + +"There's a stranger in town, father," said Milly as she gave him his +second cup of coffee. "I think he is boarding at Mrs. Twine's." + +"A drummer, I reckon--thar're a plenty of 'em about this season." + +"No, I don't believe he is a drummer--he isn't--isn't quite so sparky +looking. But I wish you wouldn't say 'thar,' father. You promised me you +wouldn't do it." + +"Well, it ain't stood in the way of my getting on," returned Jasper +without resentment. Had Milly told him to shave his head, he might have +protested freely, but in the end he would have gone out obediently to +his barber. Yet people outside said that he ground the wages of his +workers in the cotton mills down to starvation point, and that he had +been elected Mayor not through popularity, but through terror. It was +rumoured even that he stood with his wealth behind the syndicate of +saloons which was giving an ugly local character to the town. But +whatever his public vices may have been, his private life was securely +hedged about by the paternal virtues. + +"I can't place him, but I'm sure he isn't a 'buyer,'" repeated Milly, +after a moment's devotion to the sugar bowl. + +"Well, I'll let you know when I see him," responded Jasper as he left +the table and got into his overcoat, while Milly jumped up to wrap his +neck in a blue spotted muffler. + +When he had gone from the house, she took out her lover's letter again, +but it proved, on a second trial, even more unsatisfactory than she had +found it to be at her first reading. As a schoolgirl Milly had known +every attribute of her divinity from the chivalry of his soul to the +shining gloss upon his boots--but to-day there remained to her only the +despairing conviction that he was unlike Banks. Banks appeared to her +suddenly in the hard prosaic light in which he, on his own account, +probably viewed his tobacco. Even her trousseau and the lace of her +wedding gown ceased to afford her the shadow of consolation, since she +remembered that neither of these accessories would occupy in marriage +quite so prominent a place as Banks. + +The next day Ordway passed at the same hour, still on the opposite side +of the street. After this she began to watch regularly for his figure, +looking for it when it appeared on Mrs. Twine's little porch, and +following it wistfully until it was lost beyond the new brick church at +the corner. She was not aware of cultivating a facile sentiment about +the stranger, but place a riotous imagination in an empty house and it +requires little effort to weave a romance from the opposite side of the +street. Distance, that subtle magnifier of attachments, had come to her +aid now as it had failed her in the person of Harry Banks. Even from +across the street it was impossible to invest Mr. Banks with any quality +which might have suggested an historic background or a mysterious past. +He was flagrantly, almost outrageously himself; in no fictitious +circumstances could he have appeared as anything except the unvarnished +fact that he was. No legendary light could have glorified his features +or improved the set of his trousers--which had taken their shape and +substance from the legs within. With these features and in these +trousers, she felt that he must usurp the sacred precincts where her +dream had dwelt. "It would all be so easy if one could only be born +where one belongs," she cried out hopelessly, in the unconscious +utterance of a philosophy larger than her own. + +And so as the week went by, she allowed her rosy fancies to surround the +figure that passed three times daily along the sidewalk across the way. +In the morning he walked by with a swinging stride; at midday he passed +rapidly, absorbed in thought; in the evening he came back slowly, +sometimes stopping to watch the sunset from the brow of the hill. Not +since the first morning had he turned his blue eyes toward Milly's gate. + +At the end of the month Mr. Banks returned to Tappahannock from a +business trip through the tobacco districts. He was an ugly, freckled +face, sandy-haired young fellow--an excellent judge of tobacco--with a +simple soul that attired itself in large checks, usually of a black and +white variety. On the day of his first visit to Milly he wore a crimson +necktie pierced by a scarf-pin bearing a turtle-dove in diamonds. + +"Who's that fellow over there?" he inquired as Ordway came up the hill +to his dinner. "I wonder if he's the chap Hudge was telling me about at +breakfast?" + +"Oh, I don't know," answered Milly, in a voice that sounded flat in her +own ears. "Nobody knows anything about him, father says. But what was +Hudge telling you?" she asked, impelled by a devouring yet timid +curiosity. + +"Well, if he's the man I mean, he seems to be a kind of revivalist out +of a job--or something or other queer. Hudge says he broke up a fight +last Saturday evening in Kelly's saloon--that's the place you've never +heard the name of, I reckon," he added hesitatingly, "it's where all the +factory hands gather after work on Saturday to drink up their week's +wages." + +For once Milly's interest was stronger than her modesty. + +"And did he fight?" she demanded in a suspense that was almost +breathless. + +"He wasn't there, you know--only passing along the street outside, at +least that's what they say--when the rumpus broke out. Then he went in +through the window and----" + +"And?" repeated Milly, with an entrancing vision of heroic blows, for +beneath her soft exterior the blood of the primitive woman flowed. + +"And preached!" finished Banks, with a prodigious burst of merriment. + +"Preached?" gasped Milly, "do you mean a sermon?" + +"Not a regular sermon, but he spoke just like a preacher for a solid +hour. Before he'd finished the men who were drunk were crying like +babies and the men who weren't were breaking their necks to sign the +pledge--at any rate that's something like the tale they tell. There was +never such speaking (Hudge says he was there) heard before in +Tappahannock, and Kelly is as mad as a hornet because he swears the town +is going dry." + +"And he didn't strike a single blow?" asked Milly, with a feeling of +disappointment. + +"Why, he had those drunken fools all blubbering like kids," said Banks, +"and then when it was over he got hold of Kit Berry (he started the row, +you know) and carried him all the way home to the little cottage in the +hollow across the town where Kit lives with his mother. Next Sunday if +it's fine there's going to be an open air meeting in Baxter's field." + +There was a sore little spot in Milly's heart, a vague sentiment of +disenchantment. Her house of dreams, which she had reared so patiently, +stood cold and tenantless once more. + +"Did you ever find out his name?" she asked, with a last courageous +hope. + +"Smith," replied Banks, with luminous simplicity. "The boys have +nick-named him 'Ten Commandment Smith.'" + +"Ten Commandment Smith?" echoed Milly in a lifeless voice. Her house of +dreams had tottered at the blow and fallen from its foundation stone. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY + + +On the morning after the episode in the barroom which Banks had +described to Milly, Ordway found Baxter awaiting him in a condition +which in a smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter of +excitement. + +"So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, I hear, Smith?" + +"Well, hardly that," returned Ordway, smiling as he saw the other's +embarrassment break out in drops of perspiration upon his forehead. "I +was in it, I admit, but I can't exactly say that I was 'mixed up.'" + +"You got Kit Berry out, eh?--and took him home." + +"Nothing short of a sober man could have done it. He lives on the other +side of the town in Bullfinch's Hollow." + +"Oh, I've been there," said Baxter, "I've taken him home myself." + +The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway's eyes which appeared in the +animation of the moment to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As +Baxter looked at him he felt something of the charm which had touched +the drunken crowd in the saloon. + +"His mother was at my house before breakfast," he said, in a tone that +softened as he went on until it sounded as if his whole perspiring +person had melted into it. "She was in a great state, poor creature, for +it seemed that when Kit woke up this morning he promised her never to +touch another drop." + +"Well, I hope he'll keep his word, but I doubt it," responded Ordway. He +thought of the bare little room he had seen last night, of the patched +garments drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon the +table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman who had received his burden +from him. + +"He may--for a week," commented Baxter, and he added with a big, shaking +laugh, "they tell me you gave 'em a sermon that was as good as a +preacher's." + +"Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all." + +"Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear +Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton +went home without falling once, he said." + +"There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information +Cotton wanted." + +"I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis +while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the +younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him +out of a scrape as well as a lawyer could have done." + +"I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all." + +"Have you ever practised law in Virginia?" + +"I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when--" he was going +to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped +short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I +read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory." + +"I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively +uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly +indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled +at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and +gaiety in his look? + +"Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he +said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the +reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to +have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all +the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like +you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in +blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be +worth as good as a hundred a month to me." + +There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his +cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination +during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the man--the +unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely +fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to +emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his +failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man. +One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal +proportions--as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of +the lavish generosity of his heart. + +"To tell the truth, I'd hoped for that all along," said Ordway, +withdrawing his gaze with an effort from the soiled cravat. "Do you want +me to start in at the books to-day?" + +For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed and went on as if he +found difficulty in selecting the words that would convey his meaning. + +"Well, if you don't mind there's a delicate little matter I'd like you +to attend to first. Being a stranger I thought it would be easier for +you than for me--have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly Brooke?" + +The interest quickened in Ordway's face. + +"Why, yes. I came along the road one day with a farmer who gave me his +whole story--Adam Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name." + +Baxter whistled. "Oh, I reckon, he hardly told you the whole story--for +I don't believe there's anybody living except myself who knows what a +darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done an honest piece of +work in his life; he's spent every red cent of his wife's money, and his +sister's too, in some wild goose kind of speculation--and yet, bless my +soul, he has the face to strut in here any day and lord it over me just +as if he were his grandfather's ghost or George Washington. It's queer +about those old families, now ain't it? When they begin to peter out it +ain't just an ordinary petering, but a sort of mortal rottenness that +takes 'em root and branch." + +"And so I am to interview this interesting example of degeneration?" +asked Ordway, smiling. + +"You've got to make him understand that he can't ship me any more of his +worthless tobacco," exclaimed Baxter in an outburst of indignation. "Do +you know what he does, sir?--Well, he raises a lazy, shiftless, +worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field--plants it too late, tops it +too late, cuts it too late, cures it too late, and then lets it lie +around in some leaky smokehouse until it isn't fit for a hog to chew. +After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers the stuff up on +the first pleasant day in spring and gets an old nigger to cart it to me +in an open wagon. The next day he lounges in here with his palavering +ways, and demands the highest price in the market--and I give it to him! +That's the damned outrage of it, I give it to him!" concluded Baxter +with an excitement in which his huge person heaved like a shaken +mountain. "I've bought his trash for twenty years and ground it into +snuff because I was afraid to refuse a Brooke--but Brooke or no Brooke +there's an end to it now," he turned and waved his hand furiously to a +pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse floor, "there's his trash and it +ain't fit even for snuff!" + +He led Ordway back into the building, picked up several leaves from the +pile, smelt them, and threw them down with a contemptuous oath. +"Worm-eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out to Cedar Hill +and tell the man that his stuff ain't fit for anything but fertiliser," +he went on. "If he wants it he'd better come for it and haul it away." + +"And if he refuses?" + +"He most likely will--then tell him I'll throw it into the ditch." + +"Oh, I'll tell him," responded Ordway, and he was aware of a peculiar +excitement in the prospect of an encounter with the redoubtable Mr. +Beverly. "I'll do my best," he added, going through the archway, while +Baxter followed him with a few last words of instruction and advice. The +big man's courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as Ordway passed into +the street, he hurried after him to suggest that he should approach the +subject with as much delicacy as he possessed. "I wouldn't butt at Mr. +Beverly, if I were you," he cautioned, "just edge around and work in +slowly when you get the chance." + +But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he had started out in an +impatience not unmixed with anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he +wondered, and what power did he possess that kept Tappahannock in a +state of slavery? He was glad that Baxter had sent him on the errand, +and the next minute he laughed aloud because the big man had been too +timid to come in person. + +He had reached the top of the hill, and was about to turn into the road +he had taken his first night in Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a +shawl, hurried across the street from one of the smaller houses fronting +upon the green. + +"I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that helped William +Cotton?" + +Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into notice. At the thought +Ordway looked down upon his questioner with a sensation that was almost +one of pleasure. + +"He needed business advice and I gave it, that was all," he answered. + +"But you wrote down the whole case for him so that he could understand +it and speak for himself," she said, catching her breath in a sob, as +she pulled her thin shawl together. "You got him out of his troubles and +asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing to do as much by me. I am +a widow with five little children, and though I've paid every penny I +could scrape together for the mortgage, the farm is to be sold over our +heads and we have nowhere to go." + +Again the glow that was like the glow of pleasure illuminated Ordway's +mind. + +"There's not one chance in a hundred that I can help you," he said; "in +the case of William Cotton it was a mere accident. Still if you will +tell me where you live, I will come to you this evening and talk +matters over. If I can help you, I promise you I will with pleasure." + +"And for nothing? I am very poor." + +He shook his head with a laugh. "Oh, I get more fun out of it than you +could understand!" + +After writing down the woman's name in his notebook, he passed into the +country road and bent his thoughts again upon the approaching visit to +Mr. Beverly. + +When he reached Cedar Hill, which lay a sombre shadow against the young +green of the landscape, he saw that the dead cedars still lay where they +had fallen across the avenue. Evidently the family temper had assumed an +opposite, though equally stubborn form, in the person of the girl in the +red cape, and she had, he surmised, refused to allow Beverly to profit +by his desecration even to the extent of selling the trees he had +already cut down. Was it from a sentiment, or as a warning, he wondered, +that she left the great cedars barring the single approach to the house? +In either case the magnificent insolence of her revenge moved him to an +acknowledgment of her spirit and her justice. + +In the avenue a brood of young turkeys were scratching in the fragrant +dust shed by the trees; and at his approach they scattered and fled +before him. It was long evidently since a stranger had penetrated into +the melancholy twilight of the cedars; for the flutter of the turkeys, +he discovered presently, was repeated in an excited movement he felt +rather than saw as he ascended the stone steps and knocked at the door. +The old hound he had seen the first night rose from under a bench on the +porch, and came up to lick his hand; a window somewhere in the right +wing shut with a loud noise; and through the bare old hall, which he +could see from the half open door, a breeze blew dispersing an odour of +hot soapsuds. The hall was dim and empty except for a dilapidated sofa +in one corner, on which a brown and white setter lay asleep, and a rusty +sword which clanked against the wall with a regular, swinging motion. In +response to his repeated knocks there was a sound of slow steps on the +staircase, and a handsome, shabbily dressed man, holding a box of +dominoes, came to the door and held out his hand with an apologetic +murmur. + +"I beg your pardon, but the wind makes such a noise I did not hear your +knock. Will you come inside or do you prefer to sit on the porch where +we can get the view?" + +As he spoke he edged his way courteously across the threshold and with a +hospitable wave of his hand, sat down upon one of the pine benches +against the decaying railing. In spite of the shabbiness of his clothes +he presented a singularly attractive, even picturesque appearance, from +the abundant white hair above his forehead to his small, shapely feet +encased now in an ancient pair of carpet slippers. His figure was +graceful and well built, his brown eyes soft and melancholy, and the +dark moustache drooping over his mouth had been trained evidently into +an immaculate precision. His moustache, however, was the one immaculate +feature of his person, for even his carpet slippers were dirty and worn +threadbare in places. Yet his beauty, which was obscured in the first +view by what in a famous portrait might have been called "the tone of +time," produced, after a closer and more sympathetic study, an effect +which, upon Ordway at least, fell little short of the romantic. In his +youth Beverly had been, probably, one of the handsomest men of his time, +and this distinction, it was easy to conjecture, must have been the +occasion, if not the cause, of his ruin. Even now, pompous and slovenly +as he appeared, it was difficult to resist a certain mysterious +fascination which he still possessed. When he left Tappahannock Ordway +had felt only a humorous contempt for the owner of Cedar Hill, but +sitting now beside him on the hard pine bench, he found himself yielding +against his will to an impulse of admiration. Was there not a certain +spiritual kinship in the fact that they were both failures in life? + +"You are visiting Tappahannock, then?" asked Beverly with his engaging +smile; "I go in seldom or I should perhaps have seen you. When a man +gets as old and as much of an invalid as I am, he usually prefers to +spend his days by the fireside in the bosom of his family." + +The bloom of health was in his cheeks, yet as he spoke he pressed his +hand to his chest with the habitual gesture of an invalid. "A chronic +trouble which has prevented my taking an active part in the world's +affairs," he explained, with a sad, yet cheerful dignity as of one who +could enliven tragedy with a comic sparkle. "I had my ambitions once, +sir," he added, "but we will not speak of them for they are over, and at +this time of my life I can do little more than try to amuse myself with +a box of dominoes." + +As he spoke he placed the box on the bench between them and began +patiently matching the little ivory blocks. Ordway expressed a casual +sympathy, and then, forgetting Baxter's warning, he attempted to bring +the conversation to a practical level. + +"I am employed now at Baxter's warehouse," he began, "and the object of +my call is to speak with you about your last load of tobacco." + +"Ah!" said Beverly, with warming interest, "it is a sufficient +recommendation to have come from Robert Baxter--for that man has been +the best, almost the only, friend I have had in life. It is impossible +to overestimate either his character or my admiration. He has come to my +assistance, sir, when I hardly knew where to turn for help. If you are +employed by him, you are indeed to be envied." + +"I am entirely of your opinion," observed Ordway, "but the point this +morning----" + +"Well, we'll let that rest a while now," interrupted Beverly, pushing +the dominoes away, and turning his beautiful, serious face upon his +companion. "When there is an opportunity for me to speak of Baxter's +generosity, I feel that I cannot let it escape me. Something tells me +that you will understand and pardon my enthusiasm. There is no boy like +an old boy, sir." + +His voice broke, and drawing a ragged handkerchief from the pocket of +his corduroy coat, he blew his nose and wiped away two large teardrops +from his eyes. After such an outburst of sentiment it seemed a positive +indecency to inform him that Baxter had threatened to throw his tobacco +into a ditch. + +"He regrets very much that your crop was a failure this year," said +Ordway, after what he felt to be a respectable pause. + +"And yet," returned Beverly, with his irrepressible optimism, "if things +had been worse it might even have rotted in the ground. As it was, I +never saw more beautiful seedlings--they were perfect specimens. Had not +the tobacco worms and the frost and the leak in the smokehouse all +combined against me, I should have raised the most splendid crop in +Virginia, sir." The spectacle of this imaginary crop suffused his face +with a glow of ardour. "My health permits me to pay little attention to +the farm," he continued in his eloquent voice, "I see it falling to +rains about me, and I am fortunate in being able to enjoy the beauty of +its decay. Yes, my crop was a failure, I admit," he added, with a +touching cheerfulness, "it lay several months too long in the barn +before I could get it sent to the warehouse--but this was my misfortune, +not my fault, as I am sure Robert Baxter will understand." + +"He will find it easier to understand the case than to sell the tobacco, +I fancy." + +"However that may be, he is aware that I place the utmost confidence in +his judgment. What he does will be the right thing, sir." + +This confession of artless trust was so overpowering that for a moment +Ordway hung back, feeling that any ground would be dangerous ground upon +which to proceed. The very absorption in which Beverly arranged the +dominoes upon the bench added to the childlike simplicity of his +appearance. Then a sudden irritation against the man possessed him, for +he remembered the girl in the red cape and the fallen cedars. From where +he sat now they were hidden by the curve of the avenue, but the +wonderful trees, which shed their rich gloom almost upon the roof of the +house, made him realise afresh the full extent of Beverly's folly. In +the fine spring sunshine whatever beauties were left in the ruined place +showed in an intenser and more vernal aspect. Every spear of grass on +the lawn was tipped with light, and the young green leaves on the lilacs +stood out as if illuminated on a golden background. In one of the +ivy-covered eaves a wren was building, and he could see the flutter of a +bluebird in an ancient cedar. + +"It is a beautiful day," remarked Beverly, pensively, "but the lawn +needs trimming." His gaze wandered gently over the tangled sheep mint, +orchard grass and Ailantus shoots which swept from the front steps to +the fallen fence which had once surrounded the place, and he added with +an outburst of animation, "I must tell Micah to turn in the cattle." + +Remembering the solitary cow he had seen in a sheltered corner of the +barn, Ordway bit back a smile as he rose and held out his hand. + +"After all, I haven't delivered my message," he said, "which was to the +effect that the tobacco is practically unfit for use. Baxter told me to +request you to send for it at your convenience." + +Beverly gathered up his dominoes, and rising with no appearance of +haste, turned upon him an expression of suffering dignity. + +"Such an act upon my part," he said, "would be a reflection upon +Baxter's ability as a merchant, and after thirty years of friendship I +refuse to put an affront upon him. I would rather, sir, lose every penny +my tobacco might bring me." + +His sincerity was so admirable, that for a moment it obscured even in +Ordway's mind the illusion upon which it rested. When a man is honestly +ready to sacrifice his fortune in the cause of friendship, it becomes +the part of mere vulgarity to suggest to him that his affairs are in a +state of penury. + +"Then it must be used for fertilisers or thrown away," said Ordway, +shortly. + +"I trust myself entirely in Baxter's hands," replied Beverly, in sad but +noble tones, "whatever he does will be the best that could be done under +the circumstances. You may assure him of this with my compliments." + +"Well, I fear, there's nothing further to be said," remarked Ordway; and +he was about to make his final good-bye, when a faded lady, wrapped in +a Paisley shawl, appeared in the doorway and came out upon the porch. + +"Amelia," said Beverly, "allow me to present Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, Mrs. +Brooke." + +Mrs. Brooke smiled at him wanly with a pretty, thin-lipped mouth and a +pair of large rather prominent eyes, which had once been gray but were +now washed into a cloudy drab. She was still pretty in a hopeless, +depressed, ineffectual fashion; and though her skirt was frayed about +the edges and her shoes run down at the heel, her pale, fawn-coloured +hair was arranged in elaborate spirals and the hand she held out to +Ordway was still delicately fine and white. She was like a philosopher, +who, having sunk into a universal pessimism of thought, preserves, in +spite of himself, a small belief or so in the minor pleasures of +existence. Out of the general wreck of her appearance she had clung +desperately to the beauties of her hair and hands. + +"I had hoped you would stay to dinner," she remarked in her listless +manner to Ordway. Fate had whipped her into submission, but there was +that in her aspect which never permitted one for an instant to forget +the whipping. If her husband had dominated by his utter incapacity, she +had found a smaller consolation in feeling that though she had been +obliged to drudge she had never learned to do it well. To do it badly, +indeed, had become at last the solitary proof that by right of birth she +was entitled not to do it at all. + +At Ordway's embarrassed excuse she made no effort to insist, but stood, +smiling like a ghost of her own past prettiness, in the doorway. Behind +her the bare hall and the dim staircase appeared more empty, more +gloomy, more forlornly naked than they had done before. + +Again Ordway reached for his hat, and prepared to pick his way carefully +down the sunken steps; but this time he was arrested by the sound of +smothered laughter at the side of the house, which ran back to the +vegetable garden. A moment later the girl in the red cape appeared +running at full speed across the lawn, pursued by several shrieking +children that followed closely at her skirts. Her clear, ringing +laugh--the laugh of youth and buoyant health--held Ordway motionless for +an instant upon the porch; then as she came nearer he saw that she held +an old, earth-covered spade in her hands and that her boots and short +woollen skirt were soiled with stains from the garden beds. But the +smell of the warm earth that clung about her seemed only to increase the +vitality and freshness in her look. Her vivid animation, her sparkling +glance, struck him even more forcibly than they had done in the street +of Tappahannock. + +At sight of Ordway her laugh was held back breathlessly for an instant; +then breaking out again, it began afresh with redoubled merriment, and +sinking with exhaustion on the lowest step, she let the spade fall to +the ground while she buried her wind-blown head in her hands. + +"I beg your pardon," she stammered presently, lifting her radiant brown +eyes, "but I've run so fast that I'm quite out of breath." Stopping with +an effort she sought in vain to extinguish her laughter in the curls of +the smallest child. + +"Emily," said Beverly with dignity, "allow me to present Mr. Smith." + +The girl looked up from the step; and then, rising, smiled brightly upon +Ordway over the spade which she had picked up from the ground. + +"I can't shake hands," she explained, "because I've been spading the +garden." + +If she recognised him for the tramp who had slept in her barn there was +no hint of it in her voice or manner. + +"Do you mean, Emily," asked Beverly, in his plaintive voice, "that you +have been actually digging in the ground?" + +"Actually," repeated Emily, in a manner which made Ordway suspect that +the traditional feminine softness was not included among her virtues, "I +actually stepped on dirt and saw--worms." + +"But where is Micah?" + +"Micah has an attack of old age. He was eighty-two yesterday." + +"Is it possible?" remarked Beverly, and the discovery appeared to afford +him ground for cheerful meditation. + +"No, it isn't possible, but it's true," returned the girl, with +good-humoured merriment. "As there are only two able-bodied persons on +the place, the mare and I, it seemed to me that one of us had better +take a hand at the spade. But I had to leave off after the first +round," she added to Ordway, showing him her right hand, from the palm +of which the skin had been rubbed away. She was so much like a gallant +boy that Ordway felt an impulse to take the hand in his own and examine +it more carefully. + +"Well, I'm very much surprised to hear that Micah is so old," commented +Beverly, dwelling upon the single fact which had riveted his attention. +"I must be making him a little present upon his birthday." + +The girl's eyes flashed under her dark lashes, but remembering Ordway's +presence, she turned to him with a casual remark about the promise of +the spring. He saw at once that she had achieved an indignant detachment +from her thriftless family, and the ardent, almost impatient energy with +which she fell to labour was, in itself, a rebuke to the pleasant +indolence which had hastened, if it had not brought about, the ruin of +the house. Was it some temperamental disgust for the hereditary idleness +which had spurred her on to take issue with the worn-out traditions of +her ancestors and to place herself among the labouring rather than the +leisure class? As she stood there in her freshness and charm, with the +short brown curls blown from her forehead, the edge of light shining in +her eyes and on her lips, and the rich blood kindling in her vivid face, +it seemed to Ordway, looking back at her from the end of his forty +years, that he was brought face to face with the spirit of the future +rising amid the decaying sentiment of the past. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH" + + +When Ordway had disappeared beyond the curve in the avenue, Emily went +slowly up the steps, her spade clanking against the stone as she +ascended. + +"Did he come about the tobacco, Beverly?" she asked. + +Beverly rose languidly from the bench, and stood rubbing his hand across +his forehead with an exhausted air. + +"My head was very painful and he talked so rapidly I could hardly follow +him," he replied; "but is it possible, Emily, that you have been digging +in the garden?" + +"There is nobody else to do it," replied Emily, with an impatient flash +in her eyes; "only half the garden has been spaded. If you disapprove so +heartily, I wish you'd produce someone to do the work." + +Mrs. Brooke, who had produced nothing in her life except nine children, +six of whom had died in infancy, offered at this a feeble and resigned +rebuke. + +"I am sure you could get Salem," she replied. + +"We owe him already three months' wages," returned the girl, "I am still +paying him for last autumn." + +"All I ask of you, Emily, is peace," remarked Beverly, in a gentle +voice, as he prepared to enter the house. "Nothing--no amount of +brilliant argument can take the place of peace in a family circle. My +poor head is almost distracted when you raise your voice." + +The three children flocked out of the dining-room and came, with a rush, +to fling themselves upon him. They adored him--and there was a live +terrapin which they had brought in a box for him to see! In an instant +his depression vanished, and he went off, his beautiful face beaming +with animation, while the children clung rapturously to his corduroy +coat. + +"Amelia," said Emily, lowering her voice, "don't you think it would +improve Beverly's health if he were to try working for an hour every day +in the garden?" + +Mrs. Brooke appeared troubled by the suggestion. "If he could only make +up his mind to it, I've no doubt it would," she answered, "he has had no +exercise since he was obliged to give up his horse. Walking he has +always felt to be ungentlemanly." + +She spoke in a softly tolerant voice, though she herself drudged day and +night in her anxious, tearful, and perfectly ineffectual manner. For +twenty years she had toiled patiently without, so far as one could +perceive, achieving a single definite result--for by some unfortunate +accident of temperament, she was doomed to do badly whatever she +undertook to do at all. Yet her intention was so admirable that she +appeared forever apologising in her heart for the incompetence of her +hands. + +Emily placed the spade in the corner of the porch, and desisting from +her purpose, went upstairs to wash her hands before going in to dinner. +As she ascended the wide, dimly lighted staircase, upon which the sun +shone with a greenish light from the gallery above, she stopped twice to +wonder why Beverly's visitor had slept in the barn like a tramp only six +weeks ago. Before her mirror, a minute later, she put the same question +to herself while she braided her hair. + +The room was large, cool, high-ceiled, with a great brick fireplace, and +windows which looked out on the garden, where purple and white lilacs +were blooming beside the gate. On the southern side the ivy had grown +through the slats of the old green shutters, until they were held back, +crumbling, against the house, and in the space between one of the cedars +brushed always, with a whispering sound, against the discoloured panes. +In Emily's absence a curious melancholy descended on the old mahogany +furniture, the greenish windows and the fireless hearth; but with the +opening of the door and the entrance of her vivid youth, there appeared +also a light and gracious atmosphere in her surroundings. She remembered +the day upon which she had returned after ten years' absence, and how as +she opened the closed shutters, the gloom of the place had resisted the +passage of the sunshine, retreating stubbornly from the ceiling to the +black old furniture and then across the uncarpeted floor to the hall +where it still held control. For months after her return it had seemed +to her that the fight was between her spirit and the spirit of the +past--between hope and melancholy, between growth and decay. The burden +of debt, of poverty, of hopeless impotence had fallen upon her +shoulders, and she had struggled under it with impetuous gusts of anger, +but with an energy that never faltered. To keep the children fed and +clothed, to work the poor farm as far as she was able, to stay clear of +any further debts, and to pay off the yearly mortgage with her small +income, these were the things which had filled her thoughts and absorbed +the gallant fervour of her youth. Her salary at the public school had +seemed to Beverly, though he disapproved of her position, to represent +the possibility of luxury; and in some loose, vague way he was never +able to understand why the same amount could not be made to serve in +several opposite directions at the same time. + +"That fifty dollars will come in very well, indeed, my dear," he would +remark, with cheerfulness, gloating over the unfamiliar sight of the +bank notes, "it's exactly the amount of Wilson's bill which he's been +sending in for the last year, and he refuses to furnish any groceries +until the account is settled. Then there's the roof which must be +repaired--it will help us there--then we must all have a supply of +shoes, and the wages of the hands are due to-morrow, I overlooked that +item." + +"But if you pay it all to Wilson," Emily would ask, as a kind of +elementary lesson in arithmetic, "how is the money going to buy all the +other things?" + +"Ah, to be sure," Beverly would respond, as if struck by the lucidity of +the idea, "that is the question." + +And it was likely to remain the question until the end of Beverly--for +he had grown so accustomed to the weight of poverty upon his shoulders +that he would probably have felt a sense of loss if it had been suddenly +removed. But it was impossible to live in the house with him, to receive +his confidences and meet his charming smile and not to entertain a +sentiment of affection for him in one's heart. His unfailing courtesy +was his defence, though even this at times worked in Emily an +unreasonable resentment. He had ruined his family, and she felt that she +could have forgiven him more easily if he had ruined it with a less +irreproachable demeanour. + +After her question he had said nothing further about the tobacco, but a +chance meeting with Adam Whaley, as she rode into Tappahannock on the +Sunday after Ordway's visit, made clear to her exactly what the purpose +of that visit had been. + +"It's a pity Mr. Beverly let his tobacco spoil, particular' arter his +wheat turned out to be no account," remarked Adam. "I hope you don't +mind my sayin', Miss Em'ly, that Mr. Beverly is about as po' a farmer as +he is a first rate gentleman." + +"Oh, no, I don't mind in the least, Adam," said Emily. "Do you know," +she asked presently, "any hands that I can get to work the garden this +week?" + +Whaley shook his head. "They get better paid at the factories," he +answered; "an' them that ain't got thar little patch to labour in, +usually manage to git a job in town." + +Emily was on her old horse--an animal discarded by Mr. Beverly on +account of age--and she looked down at his hanging neck with a feeling +that was almost one of hopelessness. Beverly, who had never paid his +bills, had seldom paid his servants; and of the old slave generation +that would work for its master for a song, there were only Micah and +poor half-demented Aunt Mehitable now left. + +"The trouble with Mr. Beverly," continued Adam, laying his hand on the +neck of the old horse, "is that he was born loose-fingered jest as some +folks are born loose-moraled. He's never held on to anything sense he +came into the world an' I doubt if he ever will. Why, bless yo' life, +even as a leetle boy he never could git a good grip on his fishin' line. +It was always a-slidin' an' slippin' into the water." + +They had reached Tappahannock in the midst of Adam's philosophic +reflection; and as they were about to pass an open field on the edge of +the town, Emily pointed to a little crowd which had gathered in the +centre of the grass-grown space. + +"Is it a Sunday frolic, do you suppose?" she inquired. + +"That? Oh no--it's 'Ten Commandment Smith,' as they call him now. He +gives a leetle talk out thar every fine Sunday arternoon." + +"A talk? About what?" + +"Wall, I ain't much of a listener, Miss, when it comes to that. My soul +is willin' an' peart enough, but it's my hands an' feet that make the +trouble. I declar' I've only got to set down in a pew for 'em to twitch +untwel you'd think I had the Saint Vitus dance. It don't look well to be +twitchin' the whole time you are in church, so that's the reason I'm +obleeged to stay away. As for 'Ten Commandment Smith,' though, he's got +a voice that's better than the doxology, an' his words jest boom along +like cannon." + +"And do the people like it?" + +"Some, of 'em do, I reckon, bein' as even sermons have thar followers, +but thar're t'others that go jest out of the sperit to be obleegin', an' +it seems to them that a man's got a pretty fair licence to preach who +gives away about two-thirds of what he gits a month. Good Lord, he could +drum up a respectable sized congregation jest from those whose back +mortgages he's helped pay up." + +While he spoke Emily had turned her horse's head into the field, and +riding slowly toward the group, she stopped again upon discovering that +it was composed entirely of men. Then going a little nearer, she drew +rein just beyond the outside circle, and paused for a moment with her +eyes fixed intently upon the speaker's face. + +In the distance a forest, still young in leaf, lent a radiant, +springlike background to the field, which rose in soft green swells that +changed to golden as they melted gradually into the landscape. Ordway's +head was bare, and she saw now that the thick locks upon his forehead +were powdered heavily with gray. She could not catch his words, but his +voice reached her beyond the crowd; and she found herself presently +straining her ears lest she miss the sound which seemed to pass with a +peculiar richness into the atmosphere about the speaker. The religious +significance of the scene moved her but little--for she came of a race +that scorned emotional conversions or any faith, for that matter, which +did not confine itself within four well-built walls. Yet, in spite of +her convictions, something in the voice whose words she could not +distinguish, held her there, as if she were rooted on her old horse to +the spot of ground. The unconventional preacher, in his cheap clothes, +aroused in her an interest which seemed in some vague way to have its +beginning in a mystery that she could not solve. The man was neither a +professional revivalist nor a member of the Salvation Army, yet he +appeared to hold the attention of his listeners as if either their money +or their faith was in his words. And it was no uncultured oratory--"Ten +Commandment Smith," for all his rough clothes, his muddy boots and his +hardened hands, was beneath all a gentleman, no matter what his work--no +matter even what his class. Though she had lived far out of the world in +which he had had his place, she felt instinctively that the voice she +heard had been trained to reach another audience than the one before him +in the old field. His words might be simple and straight from the +heart--doubtless they were--but the voice of the preacher--the vibrant, +musical, exquisitely modulated voice--was not merely a personal gift, +but the result of generations of culture. The atmosphere of a larger +world was around him as he stood there, bare-headed in the sunshine, +speaking to a breathless crowd of factory workers as if his heart went +out to them in the words he uttered. Perfectly motionless on the grass +at his feet his congregation sat in circles with their pathetic dumb +eyes fixed on his face. + +"What is it about, Adam? Can't you find out?" asked Emily, stirred by an +impulsive desire to be one of the attentive group of listeners--to come +under the spell of personality which drew its magic circle in the centre +of the green field. + +Adam crossed the space slowly, and returned after what was to Emily an +impatient interval. + +"It's one of his talks on the Ten Commandments--that's why they gave him +his nickname. I didn't stay to find out whether 'twas the top or the +bottom of 'em, Miss, as I thought you might be in a hurry." + +"But they can get that in church. What makes them come out here?" + +"Oh, he tells 'em things," said Adam, "about people and places, and how +to get on in life. Then he's al'ays so ready to listen to anybody's +troubles arterward; and he's taken over Martha Frayley's mortgage--you +know she's the widow of Mike Frayley who was a fireman and lost his life +last January in the fire at Bingham's Wall--I reckon, a man's got a +right to talk big when he lives big, too." + +"Yes, I suppose he has," said Emily. "Well, I must be going now, so I'll +ride on ahead of you." + +Touching the neck of the horse with her bare hand, she passed at a +gentle amble into one of the smaller streets of Tappahannock. Her +purpose was to call upon one of her pupils who had been absent from +school for several days, but upon reaching the house she found that the +child, after a slight illness, had recovered sufficiently to be out of +doors. This was a relief rather than a disappointment, and mounting +again, she started slowly back in the direction of Cedar Hill. A crowd +of men, walking in groups along the roadside, made her aware that the +gathering in the field had dispersed, and as she rode by she glanced +curiously among them in the hope of discovering the face of the speaker. +He was walking slightly behind the crowd, listening with an expression +of interest, to a man in faded blue overalls, who kept a timid yet +determined hold upon his arm. His face, which had appeared grave to +Emily when she saw it at Cedar Hill, wore now a look which seemed a +mixture of spiritual passion and boyish amusement. He impressed her as +both sad and gay, both bitter and sympathetic, and she was struck again +by the contrast between his hard mouth and his gentle eyes. As she met +his glance, he bowed without a smile, while he stepped back into the +little wayside path among the dusty thistles. + +Unconsciously, she had searched his face as Milly Trend had done before +her, and like her, she had found there only an impersonal kindliness. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE OLD AND THE NEW + + +When she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in +the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which +constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had +always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so +he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing +beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in +great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was +littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made +of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the +six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already +laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared +ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma. +A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick +fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red +and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one +of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a +loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each +passage of the hands. + +"Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered, +for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an +insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip. + +"I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I +pour the coffee?" + +She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an +ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the +hickory log. + +"I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her +mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed. + +Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed +in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone +to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper. +The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the +room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but +observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down +again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake +more rapidly. + +"The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl +called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and +slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses +for its supper?" + +"Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair. +"They eat flies--I've seen 'em." + +"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl. + +"It ain't your terrapin!" + +"It is." + +"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?" + +Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with +the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn +for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face +in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene +domesticity. + +"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could +once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered +whimsically from his wife to the terrapin. + +Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat +now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow +against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to +survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity. + +"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to +achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows +in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped +this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer." + +"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his +coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you +ask it." + +She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question, +so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian +purposes. + +"Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too +late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice. + +"I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's +nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I +remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told +me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from +which he had been saved. As a small child I was taken to see him once +when he had just come to absolute ruin and had been obliged to sell his +horses and his house and even his wife's jewellery for debt. A red flag +was flying at the gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking port +wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 'Yes, I've lost +everything, my boy,' he cried, 'but it doesn't worry me a bit!' At that +instant I remember noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had +ever seen." + +"But his wife had to take in dressmaking," commented Emily, "and his +children grew up without a particle of education." + +"Ah, so they did," admitted Beverly, with sadness, "the details had +escaped me." + +As they had escaped him with equal success all his life, the fact seemed +to Emily hardly deserving of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she +went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a cold room, with her +head swathed in camphor bandages. In answer to Emily's inquiries, she +moaned plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring and that she +must get up at daybreak and begin the work. "I've just remembered lying +here that I planned to clean them last week," she said excitedly, "and +will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get up that Beverly's old brown +velveteen coat needs a patch at the elbow?" + +"Don't think of such things now, Amelia, there's plenty of time. You are +shivering all over--I'll start the fire in a moment. It has turned quite +cool again." + +"But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly came up," sighed Mrs. +Brooke, "he is so fond of them." + +Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily knelt on the hearth and +kindled a blaze which leaped rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of +the two family failings with which she was obliged to contend, she had +long ago decided that Beverly's selfishness was less harmful in its +results than Amelia's self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed +positively violent during her severe attacks of headache, and between +two spasms of pain her feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small +self-denials which served to increase her discomfort while they +conferred no possible benefit upon either her husband or her children. +Her temperament had fitted her for immolation; but the character of the +age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace a domestic rather +than a religious martyrdom. The rack would have been to her morally a +bed of roses, and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny that +she had missed was visible at times in her faded gray eyes and impassive +features. + +"Mehitable brought me an egg," she groaned presently, growing more +comfortable in spite of her resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated +into the chill gloom where she lay, "but I sent it down to Blair--I +heard him coughing." + +"He didn't want it. There was plenty of batter-bread." + +"Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so seldom has one. It is +very sad. Emily, have you noticed how inert and lifeless Mr. Brooke has +grown?" + +"It's nothing new, Amelia, he has always been that way. Can't you sleep +now?" + +"Oh, but if you could have seen him when we became engaged, Emily--such +life! such spirits! I remember the first time I dined at your +father's--that was before Beverly's mother died, so, of course, your +mother wasn't even thought of in the family. I suppose second marriages +are quite proper, since the Lord permits them, but they always seem to +me like trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal fervour. +Well, I was going to say that when your father asked me what part of the +fowl I preferred and I answered 'dark meat, sir,' he fairly rapped the +table in his delight: 'Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife you'll make for +Beverly,' he cried, 'if you will only continue to prefer dark meat!'" + +She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, and then began to +moan softly with pain. Emily swept the hearth, and after putting on a +fresh log, went out, closing the door after her. There was no light in +her room, but she reflected with a kind of desperation that there was no +Beverly and no Amelia. The weight of the family had left her bruised and +helpless, yet she knew that she must go downstairs again, remove the +supper things, and send the three resisting children off to bed. She was +quite equal to the task she had undertaken, yet there were moments when, +because of her youth and her vitality, she found it harder to control +her temper than to accomplish her work. + +At ten o'clock, when she had coaxed the children to sleep, and persuaded +Amelia to drink a cup of gruel, she came to her room again and began to +undress slowly by the full moonlight which streamed through the window. +Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she could see the tangled garden, with +the dried stubble of last year's corn protruding from the unspaded rows. +This was the last sight upon which her eyes turned before she climbed +into the high tester bed and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep +of youth. + +Awaking at six o'clock she went again to the window, and at the first +glance it seemed to her that she must have slipped back into some +orderly and quiet dream--for the corn rows which had presented a +blighted aspect under the moonlight were now spaded and harrowed into +furrows ready for planting. The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a +surprise for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed this the +next instant and thought of Adam, Micah, even of the demented Aunt +Mehitable. The memory of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a +laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran downstairs to the +garden gate, she half expected to see the pumpkin chariot disappearing +down the weed-grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac blossoms +shed a delicious perfume into her face, and leaning against the rotting +posts of the gate, she looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the +freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in the sunshine. A +heavy dew lay over the landscape and as the sun rose slowly higher the +mist was drawn back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that is +gathered up. + +"Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?" each name was a question she put to +herself, and after each she answered decisively, "No, it is impossible." +Micah, who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind and wholly +rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly in response to her eager +inquiries. There was clearly no help to be had from him except the +bewildered assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following on her +footsteps with a split basket while she dropped the grains of corn into +the opened furrows. His help in this case even was hardly more than a +hindrance, for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell over a +trailing brier in the path, and Emily was obliged to stop her work and +gather up the grain which he had scattered. + +"Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin' out fur you," he muttered as he sat +on the ground rubbing the variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When +the planting was over he went grumbling back to his cabin, while Emily +walked slowly up and down the garden path and dreamed of the vegetables +which would ripen for the market. In the midst of her business +calculations she remembered the little congregation in the green field +on Sunday afternoon and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face of +the man who passed her in the road. Why had she thought of him? she +wondered idly, and why should that group of listeners gathered out of +doors in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment which was +associated with some religious emotion of which she had been half +unconscious? + +The next night she awoke from a profound sleep with the same memory in +her mind, and turning on her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight, +which brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew outside. On the +ivy the light shone almost like dawn, and as she could not fall asleep +again, she rose presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing-gown, +crossed to the window and looked out upon the shining fields, the garden +and the blossoming lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay +thick and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were resting upon +them, when it seemed to her that a portion of the darkness detached +itself and melted out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only +the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was outlined on the bare rows +of the garden, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw +that the figure had assumed a human shape, though it was still followed +so closely by its semblance upon the ground that it was impossible at a +distance to distinguish the living worker from his airy double. Yet she +realised instantly that her mysterious gardener was at work before her +eyes, and hastening into her clothes, she caught up her cape from a +chair, and started toward the door with an impulsive determination to +discover his identity. With her hand on the knob, she hesitated and +stopped, full of perplexity, upon the threshold. Since he had wished to +remain undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust recognition +upon his kindness? On the other hand was it not more than unfair--was it +not positively ungrateful--to allow his work to pass without any sign of +acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white moonlight outside she +could see the pointed tops of the cedars rising like silver spires. As +the boughs moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours of cedar +berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For an instant longer her +hesitation lasted; then throwing aside her cape, she undressed quickly, +without glancing again down into the garden. When she fell asleep now it +was to dream of the shadowy gardener spading in the moonlight among the +lilacs. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +HIS NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN + + +In his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first +by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in +whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the +beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the +fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next +night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure +pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still +digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less +than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before +Sunday put a stop to his work. + +On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking +almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path +powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken +fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his +freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. +While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty +of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense +which was keener than the sense of touch. + +As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened +himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair +back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the +moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields, +and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the +hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and +moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw +that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the +purple and white lilacs. + +"It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say +'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her +voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her +hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the +pillow. + +"It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for +doing the thing that I enjoyed." + +Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and +his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in +the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She +felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she +had at first believed. + +"And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and +sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot +understand why you have done it." + +"Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a +whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it +justified that explanation of my behaviour?" + +"The explanation, yes--but not you," she answered, smiling. + +"Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't +I?" + +"It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but +even your success doesn't explain your motive." + +"Well, the truth is--if you will have it--I needed exercise." + +"You might have walked." + +"That doesn't reach the shoulders--there's the trouble." + +She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to +her gallant manner. + +"Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to +you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a +farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes +and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured +population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it +isn't mine. It looks too shiny." + +"I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs +it every night." + +"In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's +gardens." + +"She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke, "but you see I am a very +useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me." + +"Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her." + +"You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went." + +Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a +feeling of good fellowship. + +"So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily. + +"Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case." + +For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she +turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought. + +"After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to +Tappahannock," she observed. + +Her friendliness--which impressed him as that of a creature who had met +no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous, +almost childlike, appeal to his confidence. + +"Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly. + +She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac. + +"Yes, I remember." + +"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night--I was beaten down, +desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and--yes, and in your +courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back +to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road." + +"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her +frank, almost boyish way. + +"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I _was_ +hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my +fault, you understand--I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to +begin again low down--at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell +her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had +returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist +the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words +with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon +the handle, stood waiting for her to speak. + +"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she +asked. + +"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered. + +"And you are making a new foundation now?" + +"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't +they?" he added cheerfully. + +"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should +like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I +think, to see New York." + +"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?" + +"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school +once in Georgia." + +The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her +suddenly as if he had taken her in for the first time. Perfectly +unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would +have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes. +Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now, +than to some inherited ideal of manner--of social values; and it seemed +to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect +which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries. + +"You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked. + +"A great many--oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still +have the entire south wall in the library--the English classics are +there." + +"I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that +the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of +Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, +its red clay roads. + +She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and +bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that +first night in the barn. + +"Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said. + +"Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered. + +As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he +passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to +Tappahannock. + +When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him +that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from +Bullfinch's Hollow. + +"Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued +impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit +Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease, +that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is +in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if +you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't +seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two +weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low +lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that +Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for +respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr. +Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how +the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I +reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up +then tight as a keg--I'd wish you'd have seen him." + +"In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as +he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. +Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill. + +"Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs. +Twine, turning from the table to pick up a pair of Canty's little +breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I +reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the +weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk +of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's +an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could +manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to +step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have +thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a +man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin' +any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an' +honour a whale." + +"But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway, +picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and +be charitable to the rest of us." + +Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped +them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of +their infant wearer. + +"As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs +from another only in the set of his breeches--for the best an' the worst +of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all +pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon +that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A +weak woman would have kept a widow after my marriage with Bob Cotton, +the brother of William, suh--but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be +said for me--so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier, +I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage--whether +you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret +for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a +feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an' +when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my +determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most +likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now +that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin'--for thar's +got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I +reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the +worst." + +A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she +looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped +by to walk downtown with him. + +With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops, +Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his +hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon +which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached +himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At +his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his +youthful struggles, and the following day he had unburdened himself +with rapture of his passion for Milly. + +"I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I +might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco +now, isn't there?" + +"Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the +way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants +me to come over." + +"I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?" + +"He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the +afternoon." + +They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself +standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks +came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not +Milly held out her hand. + +"Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith," +she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember +to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity +afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr. +Banks will be here." + +"Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the +heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to +Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon." + +"Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's +look of bewilderment. "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying +to sick people." + +"Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway, +drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and +pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if +Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the +girl before him. + +As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion, +a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper. + +"After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want +to meet her when you got the chance." + +Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man, +and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance--that's the +best excuse I have." + +"All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care." + +"Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have +supported a comparison with your turtle-dove." + +Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a +conscious laugh. + +"Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's +something about you--I don't know what it is--that takes the place of +them." + +"The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway +with good-humoured raillery. + +"You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them--Milly says so." + +"I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's +right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved +by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you." + +"But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air." + +"My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to +the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are--well, you're a +downright trump!" + +He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an +instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the +luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he +"would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +BULLFINCH'S HOLLOW + + +At five o'clock Ordway followed the uneven board walk to the end of the +main street, and then turning into a little footpath which skirted the +railroad track, he came presently to the abandoned field known in +Tappahannock as Bullfinch's Hollow. Beyond a disorderly row of negro +hovels, he found a small frame cottage, which he recognised as the house +to which he had brought Kit Berry on the night when he had dragged him +bodily from Kelly's saloon. In response to his knock the door was opened +by the same weeping woman--a small withered person, with snapping black +eyes and sparse gray hair brushed fiercely against her scalp, where it +clung so closely that it outlined the bones beneath. At sight of Ordway +a smile curved her sunken mouth; and she led the way through the kitchen +to the door of a dimly lighted room at the back, where a boy of eighteen +years tossed deliriously on a pallet in one corner. It was poverty in +its direst, its most abject, results, Ordway saw at once as his eyes +travelled around the smoke stained, unplastered walls and rested upon +the few sticks of furniture and the scant remains of a meal on the +kitchen table. Then he looked into Mrs. Berry's face and saw that she +must have lived once amid surroundings far less wretched than these. + +"Kit was taken bad with fever three days ago," she said, "an' the doctor +told me this mornin' that the po' boy's in for a long spell of typhoid. +He's clean out of his head most of the time, but whenever he comes to +himself he begs and prays me to send for you. Something's on his mind, +but I can't make out what it is." + +"May I see him now?" asked Ordway. + +"I think he's wanderin', but I'll find out in a minute." + +She went to the pallet and bending over the young man, whispered a few +words in his ear, while her knotted hand stroked back the hair from his +forehead. As Ordway's eyes rested on her thin shoulders under the +ragged, half soiled calico dress she wore, he forgot the son in the +presence of the older and more poignant tragedy of the mother's life. +Yet all that he knew of her history was that she had married a drunkard +and had brought a second drunkard into the world. + +"He wants to speak to you, sir--he's come to," she said, returning to +the doorway, and fixing her small black eyes upon Ordway's face. "You +are the gentleman, ain't you, who got him to sign the pledge?" + +Ordway nodded. "Did he keep it?" + +Her sharp eyes filled with tears. + +"He hasn't touched a drop for going on six weeks, sir, but he hadn't the +strength to hold up without it, so the fever came on and wore him down." +Swallowing a sob with a gulp, she wiped her eyes fiercely on the back +of her hand. "He ain't much to look at now," she finished, divided +between her present grief and her reminiscent pride, "but, oh, Mr. +Smith, if you could have seen him as a baby! When he was a week old he +was far and away the prettiest thing you ever laid your eyes on--not +red, sir, like other children, but white as milk, with dimples at his +knees and elbows. I've still got some of his little things--a dress he +wore and a pair of knitted shoes--and it's them that make me cry, sir. I +ain't grievin' for the po' boy in there that's drunk himself to death, +but for that baby that used to be." + +Still crying softly, she slunk out into the kitchen, while Ordway, +crossing to the bed, stood looking down upon the dissipated features of +the boy who lay there, with his matted hair tossed over his flushed +forehead. + +"I'm sorry to see you down, Kit. Can I do anything to help you?" he +asked. + +Kit opened his eyes with a start of recognition, and reaching out, +gripped Ordway's wrist with his burning hand, while he threw off the +ragged patchwork quilt upon the bed. + +"I've something on my mind, and I want to get it off," he answered. +"When it's once off I'll be better and get back my wits." + +"Then get it off. I'm waiting." + +"Do you remember the night in the bar-room?" demanded the boy in a +whisper, "the time you came in through the window and took me home?" + +"Go on," said Ordway. + +"Well, I'd walked up the street behind you that afternoon when you left +Baxter's, and I got drunk that night on a dollar I stole from you." + +"But I didn't speak to you. I didn't even see you." + +"Of course you didn't. If you had I couldn't have stolen it, but Baxter +had just paid you and when you put your hand into your pocket to get out +something, a dollar bill dropped on the walk." + +"Go on." + +"I picked it up and got drunk on it, there's nothing else. It was a +pretty hard drunk, but before I got through you came in and dragged me +home. Twenty cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the money and +bought a fish for breakfast. + +"Well, I did that much good at least," observed Ordway with a smile, +"have you finished, Kit?" + +"It's been on my mind," repeated Kit deliriously, "and I wanted to get +it off." + +"It's off now, my boy," said Ordway, picking up the ragged quilt from +the floor and laying it across the other's feet, "and on the whole I'm +glad you told me. You've done the straight thing, Kit, and I am proud of +you." + +"Proud of me?" repeated Kit, and fell to crying like a baby. + +In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, after bathing the boy's +face and hands from a basin of water on a chair at the bedside, went +into the kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found weeping over a +pair of baby's knitted shoes. The pathos of her grief bordered so +closely upon the ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back +the laugh upon his lips. + +"Kit is worse again," he said. "Do you give him any medicine?" + +Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, while her sobs changed +into a low whimpering sound. + +"Did you sit up with him last night?" asked Ordway, following her to the +door. + +"I've been up for three nights, sir. He has to have his face and hands +bathed every hour." + +"What about medicine and food?" + +"The doctor gives him his medicine free, every drop of it, an' they let +me have a can of milk every day from Cedar Hill. I used to live there as +a girl, you know, my father was overseer in old Mr. Brooke's +time--before he married Miss Emily's mother----" + +Ordway cut short her reminiscences. + +"Well, you must sleep to-night," he said authoritatively, "I'll come +back in an hour and sit up with Kit. Where is your room?" + +She pointed to a rickety flight of stairs which led to the attic above. + +"Kit slept up there until he was taken ill," she answered. "He's been a +hard son to me, sir, as his father was a hard husband because of drink, +but to save the life of me I can't forgit how good he used to be when he +warn't more'n a week old. Never fretted or got into tempers like other +babies----" + +Again Ordway broke in drily upon her wandering recollections. + +"Now I'll go for an hour," he said abruptly, "and by the way, have you +had supper or shall I bring you some groceries when I come?" + +"There was a little milk left in the pitcher and I had a piece of +cornbread, but--oh, Mr. Smith," her small black eyes snapped fiercely +into his, "there are times when my mouth waters for a cup of coffee jest +as po' Kit's does for whiskey." + +"Then put the kettle on," returned Ordway, smiling, as he left the room. + +It was past sunset when he returned, and he found Kit sleeping quietly +under the effect of the medicine the doctor had just given him. Mrs. +Berry had recovered sufficient spirit, not only to put the kettle on the +stove, but to draw the kitchen table into the square of faint light +which entered over the doorstep. The preparations for her supper had +been made, he saw, with evident eagerness, and as he placed his packages +upon the table, she fell upon them with an excited, childish curiosity. +A few moments later the aroma of boiling coffee floated past him where +he sat on the doorstep smoking his last pipe before going into the +sick-room for the night. Turning presently he watched the old woman in +amazement while she sat smacking her thin lips and jerking her +shrivelled little hands over her fried bacon; and as he looked into her +ecstatic face, he realised something of the intensity which enters into +the scant enjoyments of the poor. The memory of his night in the +Brookes' barn returned to him with the aroma of the coffee, and he +understood for the first time that it is possible to associate a rapture +with meat and drink. Then, in spite of his resolve to keep his face +turned toward his future, he found himself contrasting the squalid +shanty at his back with the luxurious surroundings amid which he had +last watched all night by a sick-bed. He could see the rich +amber-coloured curtains, the bowls of violets on the inlaid table +between the open windows, the exquisite embroidered coverlet upon the +bed, and the long pale braid of Lydia's hair lying across the lace +ruffles upon her nightgown. Before his eyes was the sunken field filled +with Negro hovels and refuse heaps in which lean dogs prowled snarling +in search of bones; but his inward vision dwelt, in a luminous mist, on +the bright room, scented with violets, where Lydia had slept with her +baby cradled within her arm. He could see her arm still under the +falling lace, round and lovely, with delicate blue veins showing beneath +the inside curve. + +In the midst of his radiant memory the acrid voice of Mrs. Berry broke +with a shock, and turning quickly he found that his dream took instant +flight before the aggressive actuality which she presented. + +"I declare I believe I'd clean forgot how good things tasted," she +remarked in the cheerful tones of one who is full again after having +been empty. + +Picking up a chip from the ground, Ordway began scraping carelessly at +the red clay on his boots. "It smells rather nice anyway," he rejoined +good-humouredly, and rising from the doorstep, he crossed the kitchen +and sat down in the sagging split-bottomed chair beside the pallet. + +At sunrise he left Kit, sleeping peacefully after a delirious night, and +going out of doors for a breath of fresh air, stood looking wearily on +the dismal prospect of Bullfinch's Hollow. The disorderly road, the +dried herbage of the field, the Negro hovels, with pig pens for +backyards, and the refuse heaps piled with tin cans, old rags and +vegetable rinds, appeared to him now to possess a sordid horror which +had escaped him under the merciful obscurity of the twilight. Even the +sun, he thought, looked lean and shrunken, as it rose over the slovenly +landscape. + +With the first long breath he drew there was only dejection in his +mental outlook; then he remembered the enraptured face of Mrs. Berry as +she poured out her coffee, and he told himself that there were pleasures +hardy enough to thrive and expand even in the atmosphere of Bullfinch's +Hollow. + +As there was no wood in the kitchen, he shouldered an old axe which he +found leaning in one corner, and going to a wood-pile beyond the +doorstep, split up the single rotting log lying upon a heap of mould. +Returning with his armful of wood, he knelt on the hearth and attempted +to kindle a blaze before the old woman should make her appearance from +the attic. The sticks had just caught fire, when a shadow falling over +him from the open door caused him to start suddenly to his feet. + +"I beg your pardon," said a voice, "but I've brought some milk for Mrs. +Berry." + +At the words his face reddened as if from shame, and drawing himself to +his full height, he stood, embarrassed and silent, in the centre of the +room, while Emily Brooke crossed the floor and placed the can of milk +she had brought upon the table. + +"I didn't mean to interrupt you," she added cheerfully, "but there was +no one else to come, so I had to ride over before breakfast. Is Kit +better?" + +"Yes," said Ordway, and to his annoyance he felt himself flush painfully +at the sound of his own voice. + +"You spent last night with him?" she inquired in her energetic tones. + +"Yes." + +As he stood there in his cheap clothes, with his dishevelled hair and +his unwashed hands, she was struck by some distinction of personality, +before which these surface roughnesses appeared as mere incidental +things. Was it in his spare, weather-beaten face? Or was it in the +peculiar contrast between his gray hair and his young blue eyes? Then +her gaze fell on his badly made working clothes, worn threadbare in +places, on his clean striped shirt, frayed slightly at the collar and +cuffs, on his broken fingernails, and on the red clay still adhering to +his country boots. + +"I wonder why you do these things?" she asked so softly that the words +hardly reached him. "I wonder why?" + +Though she had expected no response to her question, to her surprise he +answered almost impulsively as he stooped to pick up a bit of charred +wood from the floor. + +"Well, one must fill one's life, you know," he said. "I tried the other +thing once but it didn't count--it was hardly better than this, when all +is said." + +"What 'other thing' do you mean?" + +"When I spoke I was thinking of what people have got to call +'pleasure,'" he responded, "getting what one wants in life, or trying to +get it and failing in the end." + +"And did you fail?" she asked, with a simplicity which saved the blunt +directness of the question. + +He laughed. "Do you think if I had succeeded, I'd be splitting wood in +Bullfinch's Hollow?" + +"And you care nothing for Kit Berry?" + +"Oh, I like him--he's an under dog." + +"Then you are for the under dog, right or wrong, as I am?" she responded +with a radiant look. + +"Well, I don't know about that," he answered, "but I have at least a +fellow feeling for him. I'm an under dog myself, you see." + +"But you won't stay one long?" + +"That's the danger. When I come out on top I'll doubtless stop splitting +wood and do something worse." + +"I don't believe it," she rejoined decisively. "You have never had a +chance at the real thing before." + +"You're right there," he admitted, "I had never seen the real thing in +my life until I came to Tappahannock." + +"Do you mind telling me," she asked, after an instant's hesitation, "why +you came to Tappahannock? I can't understand why anyone should ever come +here." + +"I don't know about the others, but I came because my road led here. I +followed my road." + +"Not knowing where it would end?" + +He laughed again. "Not _caring_ where it would end." + +Her charming boyish smile rippled across her lips. + +"It isn't necessary that I should understand to be glad that you kept +straight on," she said. + +"But the end isn't yet," he replied, with a gaiety beneath which she saw +the seriousness in his face. "It may lead me off again." + +"To a better place I hope." + +"Well, I suppose that would be easy to find," he admitted, as he glanced +beyond the doorway, "but I like Tappahannock. It has taken me in, you +know, and there's human nature even in Bullfinch's Hollow." + +"Oh, I suppose it's hideous," she remarked, following his look in the +direction of the town, "but I can't judge. I've seen so little else, you +know--and yet my City Beautiful is laid out in my mind." + +"Then you carry it with you, and that is best." + +As she was about to answer the door creaked above them and Mrs. Berry +came down the short flight of steps, hastily fastening her calico dress +as she descended. + +"Well, I declare, who'd have thought to see you at this hour, Miss +Emily," she exclaimed effusively. + +"I thought you might need the milk early," replied the girl, "and as +Micah had an attack of rheumatism I brought it over on horseback." + +While the old woman emptied the contents of the can into a cracked +china pitcher, Emily held out her hand to Ordway with an impulsive +gesture. + +"We shall have a flourishing kitchen garden," she said, "thanks to you." + +Then taking the empty can from Mrs. Berry, she crossed the threshold, +and remounted from the doorstep. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A STRING OF CORAL + + +As Emily rode slowly up from Bullfinch's Hollow, it seemed to her that +the abandoned fields had borrowed an aspect which was almost one of +sentiment. In the golden light of the sunrise even the Negro hovels, the +refuse heaps and the dead thistles by the roadside, were transfigured +until they appeared to lose their ordinary daytime ugliness; and the +same golden light was shining inwardly on the swift impressions which +crowded her thoughts. This strange inner illumination surrounded, she +discovered now, each common fact which presented itself to her mind, and +though the outward form of life was not changed, her mental vision had +become suddenly enraptured. She did not stop to ask herself why the +familiar events of every day appear so full of vivid interests--why the +external objects at which she looked swam before her gaze in an +atmosphere that was like a rainbow mist? It was sufficient to be alive +to the finger tips, and to realise that everything in the great universe +was alive around one--the air, the sky, the thistles along the roadside +and the dust blowing before the wind, all moved, she felt, in harmony +with the elemental pulse of life. On that morning she entered for the +first time into the secret of immortality. + +And yet--was it only the early morning hour? she asked herself, as she +rode back between the stretches of dried broomsedge. Or was it, she +questioned a moment later, the natural gratification she had felt in a +charity so generous, so unassuming as that of the man she had seen at +Mrs. Berry's? + +"It's a pity he isn't a gentleman and that his clothes are so rough," +she thought, and blushed the next instant with shame because she was +"only a wretched snob." + +"Whatever his class he _is_ a gentleman," she began again, "and he would +be quite--even very--good-looking if his face were not so drawn and +thin. What strange eyes he has--they are as blue as Blair's and as +young. No, he isn't exactly good-looking--not in Beverly's way, at +least--but I should know his face again if I didn't see it for twenty +years. It's odd that there are people one hardly knows whom one never +forgets." + +Her bare hands were on Major's neck, and as she looked at them a +displeased frown gathered her brows. She wondered why she had never +noticed before that they were ugly and unwomanly, and it occurred to her +that Aunt Mehitable had once told her that "ole Miss" washed her hands +in buttermilk to keep them soft and white. "They're almost as rough as +Mr. Smith's," she thought, "perhaps he noticed them." The idea worried +her for a minute, for she hated, she told herself, that people should +not think her "nice"--but the golden light was still flooding her +thoughts and these trivial disturbances scattered almost before they +had managed to take shape. Nothing worried her long to-day, and as she +dismounted at the steps, and ran hurriedly into the dining-room, she +remembered Beverly and Amelia with an affection which she had not felt +for years. It was as if the mere external friction of personalities had +dissolved before the fundamental relation of soul to soul; even poor +half-demented Aunt Mehitable wore in her eyes, at the minute, an +immortal aspect. + +A little later when she rode in to the public school at Tappahannock, +she discovered that the golden light irradiated even the questions in +geography and arithmetic upon the blackboard; and coming out again, she +found that it lay like sunshine on the newly turned vegetable rows in +the garden. That afternoon for the first time she planted in a discarded +pair of buck-skin gloves, and as soon as her work was over, she went +upstairs to her bedroom, and regarded herself wistfully by the light +from a branched candlestick which she held against the old greenish +mirror. Her forehead was too high, she admitted regretfully, her mouth +was too wide, her skin certainly was too brown. The blue cotton dress +she wore appeared to her suddenly common and old-fashioned, and she +began looking eagerly through her limited wardrobe in the hopeless quest +for a gown that was softened by so much as a fall of lace about the +throat. Then remembering the few precious trinkets saved from the +bartered heirlooms of her dead mother, she got out the old black leather +jewel case and went patiently over the family possessions. Among the +mourning brooches and hair bracelets that the box contained there was a +necklace of rare pink coral, which she had meant to give Bella upon her +birthday--but as her gaze was arrested now by the cheerful colour, she +sat for a moment wondering if she might not honestly keep the beads for +her own. Still undecided she went to the bureau again and fastened the +string of coral around her firm brown throat. + +"I may wear it for a week or two at least," she thought. "Why not?" It +seemed to her foolish, almost unfeminine that she had never cared or +thought about her clothes until to-day. "I've gone just like a boy--I +ought to be ashamed to show my hands," she said; and at the same instant +she was conscious of the vivid interest, of the excitement even, which +attached to this new discovery of the importance of one's appearance. +Before going downstairs she brushed the tangles out of her thick brown +hair, and spent a half hour arranging it in a becoming fashion upon her +neck. + +The next day Micah was well enough to carry the milk to Mrs. Berry's, +but three mornings afterward, when she came from the dairy with the can, +the old negro was not waiting for her on the porch, and she found, upon +going to his cabin, that the attack of rheumatism had returned with +violence. There was nothing for her to do but carry the milk herself, so +after leading Major from his stall, she mounted and rode, almost with a +feeling of shyness, in the direction of Bullfinch's Hollow. + +The door was closed this morning, and in answer to her knock, Mrs. Berry +appeared, rubbing her eyes, beyond the threshold. + +"I declare, Miss Emily, you don't look like yourself at all," she +exclaimed at the girl's entrance, "it must be them coral beads you've +got on, I reckon. They always was becomin' things--I had a string once +myself that I used to wear when my po' dead husband was courtin' me. +Lord! Lord!" she added, bursting into sobs, "who'd have thought when I +wore those beads that I'd ever have come to this? My po' ma gave 'em to +me herself--they were her weddin' present from her first husband, and +when she made up her mind to marry again, she kind of thought it warn't +modest to go aroun' wearin' what she'd got from her first marriage. She +was always powerful sensitive to decency, was po' ma. I've seen her +scent vulgarity in the most harmless soundin' speech you ever +heard--such as when my husband asked her one day if she was afflicted +with the budges in her knee, and she told me afterward that he had made +a sneakin' allusion to her leg. Ten years from that time, when all my +trouble came upon me, she held that over me as a kind of warnin'. 'If +you'd listened to me, Sarindy,' she used to say, 'you'd never have got +into this scrape of marryin' a man who talked free befo' women. For a +man who is indecent in his language can't be decent in his life,' she +said." + +As she talked she was pouring the milk into the cracked pitcher, and +Emily breaking in at the first pause, sought to hasten the washing of +the can, by bringing the old woman's rambling attention back to Kit. + +"Has he had a quiet night?" she asked. + +"Well, yes, miss, in a way, but then he always was what you might call a +quiet sleeper from the very hour that he was born. I remember old Aunt +Jemima, his monthly nurse, tellin' me that she had never in all her +experience brought a more reliable sleeper into the world. He never used +to stir, except to whimper now and then for his sugar rag when it +slipped out of his mouth." + +Hurriedly seizing the half-washed can, Emily caught up her skirt and +moved toward the door. + +"Did you sit up with him last night?" she asked, turning upon the step. + +"That was Mr. Smith's night, miss--he's taken such a fancy to Kit that +he comes every other night to watch by him--but he gets up and leaves +now a little before daybreak. I heard him choppin' wood before the sun +was up." + +"He has been very kind about it, hasn't he?" + +"Lord, miss, he's been a son and a brother as far as work goes, but I +declare I can't help wishin' he wasn't quite so shut mouthed. Every +blessed sound he utters I have to drag out of him like a fox out of a +burrow. He's a little cranky, too, I reckon, for he is so absent-minded +that sometimes when you call his name he never even turns aroun'. But +the Lord will overlook his unsociable ways, I s'pose, for he reads his +Bible half the night when he sets up, jest as hard as if he was paid to +do it. That's as good a recommendation, I reckon, as I need to have." + +"I should think his charity would be a better one," rejoined Emily, with +severity. + +"Well, that's as it may be, Miss," returned Mrs. Berry, "I'm not +ungrateful, I hope, and I'm much obliged for what he gives +me--particularly for the coffee, which ain't as thin as it might be +seein' it's a present. But when all's said I ain't so apt to jedge by +things like that because charity is jest a kind of Saint Vitus dance +with some folks--it's all in the muscles. Thank you, miss, yes, Kit is +doin' very well." + +Mounting from the step, Emily turned back into the Tappahannock road, +aware as she passed through the deserted fields that her exaltation of +the morning had given way before a despondency which seemed to change +the face of nature. The day was oppressive, the road ugly, Mrs. Berry +more tiresome than usual--each of these things suggested itself as a +possible reason for the dissatisfaction which she could not explain. Not +once during her troubled mood did the name or the face of Ordway appear +as the visible cause of her disturbance. So far, indeed, was his +individual aspect from her reflections, that some hours later, when she +rode back to school, it was with a shock of surprise that she saw him +turn the corner by the new brick church, and come rapidly toward her +from the brow of the long hill. That he had not at first seen her was +evident, for he walked in an abstracted reverie with his eyes on the +ground, and when he looked up at last, she had drawn almost within +speaking distance. At sight of his face her heart beat so quickly that +she dropped the reins on Major's neck, and raised her free hand to her +bosom, while she felt the blood mount joyously to her cheeks; but, to +her amazement, in the first instant of recognition, he turned abruptly +away and entered the shop of a harness maker which happened to be +immediately on his right. The action was so sudden that even as she +quickened her horse's pace, there flashed into her mind the humiliating +conviction that he had sought purposely to avoid her. The throbs of her +heart grew faster and then seemed to die utterly away, yet even as the +warm blood turned cold in her cheeks, she told herself with spirit that +it was all because she "could not bear to be disliked." "Why should he +dislike me?" she questioned presently; "it is very foolish of him, and +what have I done?" She searched her memory for some past rudeness of +which she had been guilty, but there was nothing she could recall which +would justify, however slightly, his open avoidance of a chance meeting. +"Perhaps he doesn't like the colour of my hair. I've heard men were like +that," she thought, "or the freckles on my face? Or the roughness of my +hands?" But the instant afterward she saw how ridiculous were her +surmises, and she felt angry with herself for having permitted them to +appear in her mind. She remembered his blue eyes with the moonlight upon +them, and she wondered why he had seemed to her more masculine than any +man that she had ever known. With the memory of his eyes and his smile +she smelt again the odour of the warm earth that had clung about him, +and she was conscious that this and everything about him was strange and +new as if she had never looked into a pair of blue eyes or smelt the +odour of the soil before. + +After this meeting she did not see Ordway again for several weeks, and +then it was only to pass him in the road one Sunday afternoon when he +had finished his sermon in the old field. As he drew back among the +thistles, he spoke to her gravely, with a deference, she noticed, which +had the effect of placing him apart from her as a member of the working +class. Since Kit Berry's recovery she had not gone again to Bullfinch's +Hollow; and she could not fail to observe that even when an opportunity +appeared, Ordway made no further effort to bridge the mere casual +acquaintance which divided rather than united them. If it were possible +to avoid conversation with her he did so by retiring into the +background; if the event forced him into notice, he addressed her with a +reserve which seemed at each meeting to widen the distance between them. + +Though she hardly confessed it to herself, her heart was wounded for a +month or two by his frank indifference to her presence. Then one bright +afternoon in May, when she had observed him turn out of his path as she +rode up the hill, she saved the situation in her mind by the final +triumph of her buoyant humour. + +"Everybody is privileged to be a little fool," she said with a laugh, +"but when there's the danger of becoming a great big one, it's time to +stop short and turn round. Now, Emily, my dear, you're to stop short +from this minute. I hope you understand me." + +That the Emily she addressed understood her very clearly was proved a +little later in the afternoon, when going upstairs to her bedroom, she +unfastened the coral beads and laid them away again among the mourning +brooches and the hair bracelets in the leather case. + + + + +BOOK SECOND + +THE DAY OF RECKONING + + + + +CHAPTER I + +IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS + + +On a bright June morning, when Ordway had been more than two years at +Tappahannock, he came out upon Mrs. Twine's little porch as soon as +breakfast was over, and looked down the board walk for Harry Banks, who +had fallen into the habit of accompanying him to the warehouse. From +where he stood, under the hanging blossoms of the locust trees, he could +see the painted tin roofs and the huddled chimneys of the town, flanked +by the brazen sweep of the cornfields along the country roads. As his +eyes rested on the familiar scene, they softened unconsciously with an +affection which was almost paternal--for in the last two years +Tappahannock had become a different place from the Tappahannock he had +entered as a tramp on that windy afternoon in March. The town as it +stood to-day was the town which he had helped to make, and behind each +roll of progress there had been the informing purpose of his mind, as +well as the strength of his shoulder at the wheel. Behind the law which +had closed the disreputable barrooms; behind the sentiment for decency +which had purified the filthy hollows; behind the spirit of charity +which had organised and opened, not only a reading room for the factory +workers, but an industrial home for the poorer classes--behind each of +these separate movements there had been a single energy to plan and act. +In two years he had watched the little town cover the stretch of ten +years' improvement; in two years he had aroused and vitalised the +community into which he had come a stranger. Tappahannock was the child +of his brain--the life that was in her to-day he had given her out of +himself, and the love he felt for her was the love that one bestows upon +one's own. Standing there his eyes followed the street to the ugly brick +church at the corner, and then as his mental vision travelled down the +long, hot hill which led to the railroad, he could tell himself, with a +kind of exultation, that there was hardly a dwelling along the way which +had not some great or little reason to bless his name. Even Kelly, whose +saloon he had closed, had been put upon his feet again and started, with +a fair chance, in the tobacco market. Yes, a new life had been given +him, and he had made good his promise to himself. The clothes he wore +to-day were as rough as those in which he had chopped wood in +Bullfinch's Hollow; the room he lived in was the same small, bare +lodging of Mrs. Twine's; for though his position at Baxter's now assured +him a comfortable income, he had kept to his cramped manner of life in +order that he might contribute the more generously to the lives of +others. Out of his little he had given abundantly, and he had gained in +return the happiness which he had ceased to make the object of his +search. In looking back over his whole life, he could honestly tell +himself that his happiest years since childhood were the ones that he +had spent in Tappahannock. + +The gate closed with a slam, and Banks came up the short brick walk +inside, mopping his heated face with a pink bordered handkerchief. + +"I'm a minute late," he said, "but it doesn't matter, does it? The +Trends asked me to breakfast." + +"It doesn't matter in the least if you spent that minute with Milly," +replied Ordway, with a laugh, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe +and descended the steps. "The hot weather has come early, hasn't it?" + +"Oh, we're going in for a scorcher," responded Banks, indifferently. +There was a heavy gloom in his manner which was hardly to be accounted +for by the temperature in which he moved, and as they closed the gate +behind them and passed under the shade of the locust trees on the board +walk, he turned to Ordway in an outburst which was little short of +desperation. + +"I don't know how it is--or whether it's just a woman's way," he said, +"but I never can be sure of Milly for ten minutes at a time. A month ago +I was positive that she meant to marry me in the autumn, but now I'm in +a kind of blue funk about her doing it at all. She's never been the same +since she went North in April." + +"My dear chap, these things will vary, I suppose--though, mind you, I +make no claim to exact knowledge of the sex." + +"It isn't the sex," said Banks, "it's Milly." + +"Well, I certainly can't claim any particular knowledge of Milly. It +would be rather presumptuous if I did, considering I've only seen her +about a dozen times--mostly at a distance." + +"I wish you knew her better, perhaps you could help me," returned Banks +in a voice of melancholy. "To save the life of me I don't see how it +is--I've done my best--I swear I've done my best--yet nothing somehow +seems to suit her. She wants to make me over from the skin and even that +doesn't satisfy her. When my hair is short she wants it long, and when +it's long she says she wants it short. She can't stand me in coloured +cravats and when I put on a black tie she calls me an undertaker. I had +to leave off my turtle-dove scarf-pin and this morning," he rolled his +innocent blue eyes, like pale marbles, in the direction of Ordway, "she +actually got into a temper about my stockings." + +"It seems to be a case for sympathy," commented Ordway seriously, "but +hardly, I should say, for marriage. Imagine, my dear Banks, what a hell +you'd make out of your domesticity. Suppose you give her up and bear it +like a man?" + +"Give her up? to what?" + +"Well, to her own amiability, we'll say." + +"I can't," said Banks, waving his pink bordered handkerchief before his +face in an effort either to disperse the swarming blue flies or to +conceal the working of his emotion. "I'd die--I'd kill myself--that's +the awful part of it. The more she bangs me over the head, the more I +feel that I can't live without her. Is that natural, do you s'pose?" he +inquired uneasily, "or have I gone clean crazy?" + +Checking his smile severely, Ordway turned and slipped his left arm +affectionately through his companion's. + +"I've heard of similar cases," he remarked, "though I confess, they +sounded a little strained." + +"Do you think I'd better see a doctor? I will if you say so." + +"By no means. Go off on a trip." + +"And leave Milly here? I'd jump out of the train--and, I reckon, she'd +bang my head off for doing it." + +"But if it's as bad as that, you couldn't be much more miserable without +her." + +"I know it," replied Banks obstinately, "but it would be a different +sort of miserableness, and that happens to be the sort that I can't +stand." + +"Then I give it up," said Ordway, cheerfully, "there's no hope but +marriage." + +With his words they turned under the archway of Baxter's warehouse, and +Banks's passionate confidences were extinguished in the odour of +tobacco. + +A group of men stood talking loudly in the centre of the building, and +as Ordway approached, Baxter broke away, with his great rolling laugh, +and came to join him at the door of his private office. + +"Catesby and Frazier have got into a squabble about that lot of tobacco +they brought in last February," he said, "and they have both agreed to +accept your decision in the matter." + +Ordway nodded, without replying, as he followed the other through the +doorway. Such judicial appeals to him were not uncommon, and his power +of pacification, as his employer had once remarked, was one of his +principal qualifications for the tobacco market. + +"Shall I hear them now? or would it be as well to give them time to cool +off?" he asked presently, while Baxter settled his great person in a +desk chair that seemed a size too small to contain it. + +"If they can cool off on a day like this they're lucky dogs," returned +Baxter, with a groan, "however, I reckon you might as well get it over +and let 'em go home and stew in peace. By the way, Smith, I forgot to +tell you that Major Leary--he's the president of the Southside Bank, you +know, was asking me yesterday if I could tell him anything about you +before you came to work for me." + +"Of the Southside Bank," repeated Ordway, while his hand closed tightly +over a paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, which lay on +Baxter's desk. With the words he was conscious only of the muffled +drumming of his pulses, and above the discord in his ears, the cheerful +tones of Baxter sounded like an echo rather than a real voice. At the +instant he was back again in his room in the great banking house of +Amos, Bonner & Amos, in the midst of the pale brown walls, the black oak +furniture and the shining leather covered volumes behind the glass doors +of the bookcases. With peculiar vividness he remembered the eccentric +little bird on the bronze clock on the mantel, which had hopped from +its swinging perch to strike the hour with its beak; and through the +open windows he could hear still the din of traffic in the street below +and the ceaseless, irregular tread of footsteps upon the pavement. + +"Oh, I didn't mean to raise your hopes too high," remarked Baxter, +rising from his chair to slap him affectionately upon the shoulder, "he +isn't going to make you president of the bank, but of the Citizen's +Improvement League, whose object is to oust Jasper Trend, you know, in +the autumn. The Major told me before he left that you'd done as much for +Tappahannock in two years as any other man had done in a lifetime. I +said I thought he'd hit the nail pretty squarely, which is something he +doesn't generally manage to do." + +"So I'm to fight Jasper Trend, am I?" asked Ordway, with sudden +interest. The sound of his throbbing arteries was no longer in his ears, +and as he spoke, he felt that his past life with his old identity had +departed from him. In the swift renewal of his confidence he had become +again "Ten Commandment Smith" of Tappahannock. + +"Well, you see, Jasper has been a precious bad influence around here," +pursued Baxter, engrossed in the political scheme he was unfolding. "The +only thing on earth he's got to recommend him is his pretty daughter. +Now, I've a soft enough heart, as everybody knows, when the ladies come +about--particularly if they're pretty--but I'm ready to stand up and say +that Jasper Trend can't be allowed to run this town on the platform of +pure chivalry. There's such a thing as fairness, suh, even where women +are concerned, and I'll back my word with my oath that it ain't fair!" + +"And I'll back your word with another that it isn't," rejoined Ordway. + +"There's no doubt, I reckon," continued Baxter, "that Jasper has +connived with those disorderly saloons that you've been trying to shut +up, and for all his money and the men he employs in the cotton mills +there's come a considerable reaction against him in public sentiment. +Now, I ain't afraid to say, Smith," he concluded with an ample flourish +of his dirty hand, "that the fact that there's any public sentiment at +all in Tappahannock is due to you. Until you came here there weren't six +decent men you could count mixed up in the affairs of this town. Jasper +had everything his own way, that's why he hates you." + +"But I wasn't even aware that he did me so much honour." + +"You mean he hasn't told you his feelings to your face. Well, he hasn't +gone so far as to confide them to me either--but even if I ain't a +woman, I can hear some things that ain't spoke out in words. He's made a +dirty town and you're sweepin' it clean--do you think it likely that it +makes him love you?" + +"He's welcome to feel about me anyway he pleases, but do you know, +Baxter," he added with his whimsical gravity, "I've a pretty strong +conviction that I'd make a jolly good street sweeper." + +"I reckon you're right!" roared Baxter, "and when you're done, we'll +shoot off some sky-rockets over the job--so there you are, ain't you?" + +"All right--but there's Jasper Trend also," retorted Ordway. + +"Oh, he can afford to send off his own sky-rockets. We needn't bother +about him. He won't be out of a job like Kelly, you know. Great Scott!" +he added, chuckling, "I can see your face now when you marched in here +the day after you closed Kelly's saloon, and told me you had to start a +man in tobacco because you'd taken him out of whiskey." + +His laugh shook through his figure until Ordway saw his fat chest heave +violently beneath his alpaca coat. Custom had made the younger man +almost indifferent to the external details which had once annoyed him in +his employer, and he hardly noticed now that Baxter's coat was turning +from black to green and that the old ashes from his pipe had lodged in +the crumpled bosom of his shirt. Baxter was--well, Baxter, and tolerance +was a virtue which one acquired sooner or later in Tappahannock. + +"I suppose I might as well get at Catesby and Frazier now," remarked +Ordway, watching the other disinter a tattered palm leaf fan from +beneath a dusty pile of old almanacs and catalogues. + +"Wait a minute first," said Baxter, "there's something I want to say as +soon as I get settled. I ain't made for heat, that's certain," he +pursued, as he pulled off his coat, and hung it from a nail in the wall, +"it sweats all my morals out of me." + +Detaching the collar from his shirt, he placed it above his coat on the +nail, and then rolling up his shirt sleeves, sank, with a panting +breath, back into his chair. + +"If I were you I'd get out of this at night anyway, Smith," he urged. +"Why don't you try boarding for the next few months over at Cedar Hill. +It would be a godsend to the family, now that Miss Emily's school has +stopped." + +"But I don't suppose they'd take me in," replied Ordway, staring out +into the street, where the dust rose like steam in the air, and the +rough-coated country horses toiled patiently up the long hill. Across +the way he saw the six stale currant buns and the three bottles of pale +beer behind the fly-specked window panes of a cheap eating house. In +front of them, a Negro woman, barefooted, with her ragged calico dress +tucked up about her waist, was sousing the steaming board walk with a +pailful of dirty water. From his memory of two years ago there floated +the mingled odours of wild flowers and freshly turned earth in the +garden of Cedar Hill, and Emily appeared in his thoughts only as an +appropriate figure against the pleasant natural background of the lilacs +and the meadows. In the past year he had seen her hardly more than a +dozen times--mere casual glimpses for the most part--and he had almost +forgotten his earlier avoidance of her, which had resulted from an +instinctive delicacy rather than from any premeditated purpose. His +judgment had told him that he had no right to permit a woman to become +his friend in ignorance of his past; and at the same time he was aware +of a terrible shrinking from intruding his old self, however remotely, +into the new life at Tappahannock. When the choice came between +confessing his sin and sacrificing the chance acquaintance, he had found +it easier simply to keep away from her actual presence. Yet his interest +in her had been so closely associated with his larger feeling for +humanity, that he could tell himself with sincerity that it was mere +folly which put her forward as an objection to his boarding for the +summer at Cedar Hill. + +"The truth is," admitted Baxter, after a pause, "that Mrs. Brooke spoke +to me about having to take a boarder or two, when I went out there to +pay Mr. Beverly for that tobacco I couldn't sell." + +"So you bought it in the end," laughed Ordway, "as you did last year +after sending me out there on a mission?" + +"Yes, I bought it," replied Baxter, blushing like a boy under the beads +of perspiration upon his face. "I may as well confess it, though I tried +to keep it secret. But I ask you as man to man," he demanded warmly, +"was there another blessed thing on God's earth for me to do?" + +"Let Mr. Beverly go about his business--that's what I'd have done." + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't," protested Baxter softly, "not when he'd ruin +himself for you to-morrow if you were to walk out and ask him." + +"But he couldn't," insisted Ordway with the brutality of the naked +fact, "he did that little job on his own account too long ago." + +"But that ain't the point, Smith," replied Baxter in an awed and solemn +accent. "The point ain't that he couldn't, but that he _would_. As I +make it out that's the point which has cost me money on him for the last +thirty years." + +"Oh, well, I suppose it's a charity like any other, only the old fool is +so pompous about his poverty that it wears me out." + +"It does at Tappahannock, but it won't when you get out to Cedar Hill, +that's the difference between Mr. Beverly in the air and Mr. Beverly in +the flesh. The one wears you out, the other rests you for all his +darnation foolishness. Now, you can board out there for twenty-five +dollars a month and put a little ready money where it ought to be in +Mrs. Brooke's pocket." + +"Of course I'd like it tremendously," said Ordway, after a moment in +which the perfume of the lilacs filled his memory. "It would be like +stepping into heaven after that stifling little room under the tin roof +at Mrs. Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night +last summer?" + +"You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a +large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick +enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very +day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the +week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. +There's nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had +the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it." + +"Oh, I promise you I'll bear with him," laughed Ordway, as he left the +office and went out into the warehouse. + +The knot of men was still in the centre of the building, and as Ordway +walked down the long floor in search of Catesby and Frazier, he saw that +a stranger had drifted in during his half hour in Baxter's office. With +his first casual glance all that he observed of the man was a sleek fair +head, slightly bald in the centre, and a pair of abnormally flat +shoulders in a light gray coat, which had evidently left a clothing shop +only a day or two before. Then as Frazier--a big, loud voiced +planter--turned toward him with the exclamation, "here's Smith, himself, +now!"--he saw the stranger wheel round abruptly and give vent the next +instant to a sharp whistle of surprise. + +"Well, I'll be damned!" he said. + +For a minute the tobacco dust filled Ordway's throat and nostrils, and +he felt that he was stifling for a breath of air. The dim length of the +warehouse and the familiar shadowy figures of the planters receded +before his eyes, and he saw again the bare walls of the prison chapel, +with the rows of convicts seated in the pale, greenish light. With his +recognition of the man before him, it seemed to him suddenly that the +last year in Tappahannock was all a lie. The prison walls, the grated +windows, and the hard benches of the shoe shop were closer realities +than were the open door of the warehouse and the free, hot streets of +the little town. + +"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Smith," said the stranger, as he held +out his hand with a good-humoured smile. + +"I beg your pardon," returned Ordway quietly, "but I did not catch your +name." + +At the handshake a chill mounted from his finger tips to his shoulder, +but drawing slightly away he stood his ground without so much as the +perceptible flicker of an eyelash. + +"My name is Brown--Horatio Brown, very much at your service," answered +the other, with a manner like that of a successful, yet obsequious +commercial traveller. + +It was on Ordway's tongue to retort: "You lie--it's Gus Wherry!"--but +checking the impulse with a frown, he turned on his heel and asked the +two men for whom he was looking to come with him to settle their +disagreement in Baxter's office. As he moved down the building an +instant later, it was with an effort that he kept his gaze fixed +straight ahead through the archway, for he was aware that every muscle +in his body pricked him to turn back and follow Wherry to the end. That +the man would be forced, in self-defence, to keep his secret for a time +at least, he had caught in the smiling insolence of his glance; but that +it was possible to enter into a permanent association or even a treaty +with Gus Wherry, he knew to be a supposition that was utterly beyond +the question. The crime for which the man had been sentenced he could +not remember; but he had a vague recollection that something morbidly +romantic in his history had combined with his handsome face to give him +an ephemeral notoriety as the Adonis of imaginative shop-girls. Even in +prison Wherry had attained a certain prominence because of his beauty, +which at the time when Ordway first saw him had been conspicuous in +spite of his convict's clothes. In the years since then his athletic +figure had grown a trifle too heavy, and his fair hair had worn a little +thin on the crown of his head; yet these slight changes of time had left +him, Ordway admitted reluctantly, still handsome in the brawny, +full-blooded style, which had generally made fools of women. His lips +were still as red, his features as severely classic, and his manner was +not less vulgar, and quite as debonnair as in the days when the +newspapers had clamoured for his pictures. Even the soft, girlish cleft +in his smooth-shaven chin, Ordway remembered now, with a return of the +instinctive aversion with which it had first inspired him. Yet he was +obliged to confess, as he walked ahead of Catesby and Frazier down the +dusty floor of the warehouse, that if Wherry had been less of an +uncompromising rascal, he would probably have made a particularly +amiable acquaintance. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ORDWAY COMPROMISES WITH THE PAST + + +When Ordway came out of Baxter's office, he found that Gus Wherry had +left the warehouse, but the effect upon him of the man's appearance in +Tappahannock was not to be overcome by the temporary withdrawal of his +visible presence. Not only the town, but existence itself seemed +altered, and in a way polluted, by the obtrusion of Wherry's personality +upon the scene. Though he was not in the building, Ordway felt an angry +conviction that he was in the air. It was impossible to breathe freely +lest he might by accident draw in some insidious poison which would +bring him under the influence of his past life and of Gus Wherry. + +As he went along the street at one o'clock to his dinner at Mrs. +Twine's, he was grateful for the intensity of the sun, which rendered +him, while he walked in it, almost incapable of thought. There was +positive relief in the fact that he must count the uneven lengths of +board walk which it was necessary for him to traverse, and the buzzing +of the blue flies before his face forced his attention, at the minute, +from the inward to the outward disturbance. + +When he reached the house, Mrs. Twine met him at the door and led him, +with an inquiry as to his susceptibility to sunstroke, into the awful +gloom of her tightly shuttered parlour. + +"I declar' you do look well nigh in yo' last gasp," she remarked +cheerfully, bustling into the dining-room for a palm leaf fan. "Thar, +now, come right in an' set down an' eat yo' dinner. Hot or cold, glad or +sorry, I never saw the man yit that could stand goin' without his dinner +at the regular hour. Sech is the habit in some folks that I remember +when old Mat Fawling's second wife died he actually hurried up her +funeral an hour earlier so as to git back in time for dinner. 'It ain't +that I'm meanin' any disrespect to Sary, Mrs. Twine,' he said to me +right whar I was layin' her out, 'but the truth is that I can't even +mourn on an empty stomach. The undertaker put it at twelve,' he said, +'but I reckon we might manage to git out to the cemetery by eleven.'" + +"All the same if you'll give me a slice of bread and a glass of milk, +I'll take it standing," remarked Ordway. "I'm sorry to leave you, Mrs. +Twine, even for a few months," he added, "but I think I'll try to get +board outside the town until the summer is over." + +"Well, I'll hate to lose you, suh, to be sure," responded Mrs. Twine, +dealing out the fried batter with a lavish hand despite his protest, +"for I respect you as a fellow mortal, though I despise you as a sex." + +Her hard eyes softened as she looked at him; but his gaze was on the +walnut coloured oilcloth, where the flies dispersed lazily before the +waving elm branch in the hands of the small Negro, and so he did not +observe the motherly tenderness which almost beautified her shrewish +face. + +"You've been very kind to me," he said, as he put his glass and plate +down, and turned toward the door. "Whatever happens I shall always +remember you and the children with pleasure." + +She choked violently, and looking back at the gasping sound, he saw that +her eyes had filled suddenly with tears. Lifting a corner of her blue +gingham apron, she mopped her face in a furious effort to conceal the +cause of her unaccustomed emotion. + +"I declar' I'm all het up;" she remarked in an indignant voice, "but if +you should ever need a friend in sickness, Mr. Smith," she added, after +a moment in which she choked and coughed under the shelter of her apron, +"you jest send for me an' I'll drop every thing I've got an' go. I'll +leave husband an' children without a thought, suh, an' thar's nothin' I +won't do for you with pleasure, from makin' a mustard plaster to layin' +out yo' corpse. When I'm a friend, I'm a friend, if I do say it, an' +you've had a way with me from the very first minute that I clapped eyes +upon you. 'He may not have sech calves as you've got,' was what I said +to Bill, 'but he's got a manner of his own, an' I reckon it's the manner +an' not the calves that is the man.' Not that I'm meaning any slur on +yo' shape, suh," she hastened to explain. + +"Well, I'll come to see you now and then," said Ordway, smiling, "and I +shan't forget to take the children for a picnic as I promised." But with +the words he remembered Gus Wherry, as he had seen him standing in the +centre of Baxter's warehouse, and it seemed to him that even his promise +to the children was rendered vain and worthless. + +The next day was Sunday, and immediately after dinner he walked over to +Baxter's house, where he learned that Mrs. Brooke had expressed her +willingness to receive him upon the following afternoon. + +"We had to talk Mr. Beverly over," said Baxter, chuckling. "At first he +didn't like the idea because of some notion he'd got out of his +great-grandfather's head about the sacredness of the family circle. +However, he's all right now, though if you take my advice, Smith, you'll +play a game of dominoes with him occasionally just to keep him kind of +soft. The chief thing he has against you is your preachin' in the +fields, for he told me he could never bring himself to countenance +religion out of doors. He seems to think that it ought to be kept shut +up tight." + +"Well, I'm glad he doesn't have to listen to me," responded Ordway. "By +the way, you know I'm speaking in Catlett's grove of pines now. It's +pleasanter away from the glare of the sun." Then as Baxter pressed him +to come back to supper, he declined the oppressive hospitality and went +back to Mrs. Twine's. + +That afternoon at five o'clock he went out to the grove of pines on the +Southern edge of the town, to find his congregation gathered ahead of +him on the rude plank benches which had been placed among the trees. +The sunshine fell in drops through the tent of boughs overhead, and from +the southwest a pleasant breeze had sprung up, blowing the pine needles +in eddies about his feet. At sight of the friendly faces gathered so +closely around him, he felt his foreboding depart as if it had been +blown from him by the pure breeze; and beginning his simple discourse, +he found himself absorbed presently in the religious significance of his +subject, which chanced to be an interpretation of the parable of the +prodigal son. Not until he was midway of his last sentence did he +discover that Gus Wherry was standing just beyond the little wildrose +thicket on the edge of the grove. + +In the instant of recognition the words upon his lips sounded strangely +hollow and meaningless in his ears, and he felt again that the +appearance of the man had given the lie, not only to his identity, but +to his life. He knew himself at the instant to have changed from Daniel +Smith to Daniel Ordway, and the name that he had worn honestly in +Tappahannock showed to him suddenly as a falsehood and a cheat. Even his +inward motive was contemptible in his eyes, and he felt himself dragged +back in a single minute to the level upon which Wherry stood. As he +appeared to Wherry, so he saw himself now by some distorted power of +vision, and even his religion seemed but a convenient mask which he had +picked up and used. When he went on a moment later with his closing +words, he felt that the mockery of his speech must be evident to the +ears of the congregation that knew and loved him. + +The gathering broke up slowly, but after speaking to several men who +stood near him, Ordway turned away and went out into the road which led +from Tappahannock in the direction of Cedar Hill. Only after he had +walked rapidly for a mile, did the sound of footsteps, following close +behind him, cause him to wheel round abruptly with an impatient +exclamation. As he did so, he saw that Wherry had stopped short in the +road before him. + +"I wanted to tell you how much obliged I am for your talk, Mr. Smith," +he said, with a smile which appeared to flash at the same instant from +his eyes and his teeth. "I declare you came pretty near converting +me--by Jove, you did. It wouldn't be convenient to listen to you too +often." + +Whatever might be said of the effusive manner of his compliments, his +good humour was so evident in his voice, in his laugh, and even in his +conspicuously flashing teeth, that Ordway, who had been prepared for a +quarrel, was rendered almost helpless by so peaceable an encounter. +Turning out of the road, he stepped back among the tall weeds growing in +the corner of the old "worm" fence, and rested his tightly clinched hand +on the topmost rail. + +"If you have anything to say to me, you will do me a favour by getting +it over as soon as possible," he rejoined shortly. + +Wherry had taken off his hat and the red disc of the setting sun made an +appropriate frame for his handsome head, upon which his fair hair grew, +Ordway noticed, in the peculiar waving circle which is found on the +heads of ancient statues. + +"Well, I can't say that I've anything to remark except that I +congratulate you on your eloquence," he replied, with a kind of infernal +amiability. "If this is your little game, you are doing it with a +success which I envy from my boots up." + +"Since this is your business with me, there is no need for us to discuss +it further," returned Ordway, at white heat. + +"Oh, but I say, don't hurry--what's the use? You're afraid I'm going to +squeeze you, now, isn't that it?" + +"You'll get nothing out of me if you try." + +"That's as much as I want, I guess. Have I asked you for as much as a +darned cent? Haven't I played the gentleman from the first minute that I +spotted you?" + +Ordway nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've been as fair as you knew how," he +answered, "I'll do you the justice to admit that." + +"Well, I tell you now," said Wherry, growing confidential as he +approached, "my object isn't blackmail, it's human intercourse. I want a +decent word or two, that's all, on my honour." + +"But I won't talk to you. I've nothing further to say, that's to be +understood." + +"You're a confounded bully, that's what you are," observed Wherry, in +the playful tones which he might have used to a child or an animal. +"Now, I don't want a blooming cent out of you, that's flat--all I ask +for is a pleasant word or two just as from man to man." + +"Then why did you follow me? And what are you after in Tappahannock?" + +Wherry laughed hilariously, while his remarkably fine teeth became the +most prominent feature in his face. + +"The reply to your question, Smith," he answered pleasantly, "is that I +followed you to say that you're an all-fired, first rate sort of a +preacher--there's not harm in that much, is there? If you don't want me +to chaff you about it, I'll swear to be as dead serious on the subject +as if it were my wife's funeral. What I want is your hand down, I +say--no matter what is trumps!" + +"My hand down for what?" demanded Ordway. + +"Just for plain decency, nothing more, I swear. You've started on your +road, and I've started on mine, and the square thing is to live and let +live, that's as I see it. Leave room for honest repentance to go to +work, but don't begin to pull back before it's had a chance to begin. +Ain't we all prodigals, when it comes to that, and the only difference +is that some of us don't get a bite at the fatted calf." + +For a moment Ordway stared in silence to where the other stood with his +face turned toward the red light of the sunset. + +"We're all prodigals," repeated Wherry, as if impressed by the ethical +problem he had uttered unawares, "you and me and the President and +every man. We've all fallen from grace, ain't we?--and it's neither +here nor there that you and I have got the swine husks while the +President has stuffed and eaten the fatted calf." + +"If you've honestly meant to begin again, I have certainly no wish to +interfere," remarked Ordway, ignoring the other's excursion into the +field of philosophy. As he spoke, however, it occurred to him that +Wherry's reformation might have had better chance of success if it had +been associated with fewer physical advantages. + +"Well, I'm much obliged to you," said Wherry, "and I'll say the same by +you, here's my hand on it. Rise or fall, we'll play fair." + +"You haven't told me yet why you came to Tappahannock," rejoined Ordway, +shortly. + +"Oh, a little matter of business. Are you settled here now?" + +"At the moment you can answer that question better than I." + +"You mean when I come, you quit?" + +Ordway nodded. "That's something like it." + +"Well, I shan't drive you out if I can help it--I hate to play the +sneak. The truth is if you'd only get to believe it, there's not a more +peaceable fellow alive if I don't get backed up into a place where +there's no way out. When it comes to that I like the clean, straight +road best, and I always have. From first to last, though, it's the women +that have been dead against me, and I may say that a woman--one or more +of 'em--has been back of every single scrape I ever got into in my +life. If I'd had ten thousand a year and a fine looking wife, I'd have +been a pillar in the Church and the father of a family. My tastes all +lean that way," he added sentimentally. "I've always had a weakness for +babies, and I've got it to this day." + +As he could think of nothing to reply to this touching confession, +Ordway picked up a bit of wood from the ground, and taking out his +knife, began whittling carelessly while he waited. + +"I suppose you think I want to work you for that fat old codger in the +warehouse," observed Wherry suddenly, passing lightly from the pathetic +to the facetious point of view, "but I'll give you my word I haven't +thought of it a minute." + +"I'm glad you haven't," returned Ordway, quietly, "for you would be +disappointed." + +"You mean you wouldn't trust me?" + +"I mean there's no place there. Whether I trust you or not is another +question--and I don't." + +"Do you think I'd turn sneak?" + +"I think if you stay in Tappahannock that I'll clear out." + +"Well, you're a darn disagreeable chap," said Wherry, indignantly, +"particularly after all you've had to say about the prodigal. But, all +the same," he added, as his natural amiability got the better of his +temper, "it isn't likely that I'll pitch my tent here, so you needn't +begin to pack for a day or two at least." + +"Do you expect to go shortly?" + +"How about to-morrow? Would that suit you?" + +"Yes," said Ordway, gravely, "better than the day afterward." He threw +the bit of wood away and looked steadily into the other's face. "If I +can help you live honestly, I am ready to do it," he added. + +"Ready? How?" + +"However I can." + +"Well, you can't--not now," returned Wherry, laughing, "because I've +worked that little scheme already without your backing. Honesty is going +to be my policy from yesterday on. Did you, by the way," he added +abruptly, "ever happen to run up against Jasper Trend?" + +"Jasper Trend?" exclaimed Ordway, "why, yes, he owns the cotton mills." + +"He makes a handsome little pile out of 'em too, I guess?" + +"I believe he does. Are you looking for a job with him?" + +At this Wherry burst again into his hilarious humour. "If I am," he +asked jokingly, "will you promise to stand off and not spoil the game?" + +"I have nothing to do with Trend," replied Ordway, "but the day you come +here is my last in Tappahannock." + +"Well, I'm sorry for that," remarked Wherry, pleasantly, "for it appears +to be a dull enough place even with the addition of your presence." He +put on his hat and held out his hand with a friendly gesture. "Are you +ready to walk back now?" he inquired. + +"When I am," answered Ordway, "I shall walk back alone." + +Even this rebuff Wherry accepted with his invincible good temper. + +"Every man to his company, of course," he responded, "but as to my +coming to Tappahannock, if it is any comfort to you to know it, you +needn't begin to pack." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A CHANGE OF LODGING + + +When Ordway awoke the next morning, it seemed to him that Wherry had +taken his place among the other nightmares, which, combined with the +reflected heat from the tin roof, had rendered his sleep broken and +distracted. With the sunrise his evil dreams and his recollections of +Wherry had scattered together, and when, after the early closing at +Baxter's warehouse, he drove out to Cedar Hill, with the leather bag +containing his few possessions at his feet, he felt that there had been +something morbid, almost inhuman, in the loathing aroused in him by the +handsome face of his fellow prisoner. In any case, for good or for evil, +he determined to banish the man utterly from his thoughts. + +The vehicle in which he sat was an ancient gig driven by a decrepit +Negro, and as it drew up before the steps at Cedar Hill, he was +conscious almost of a sensation of shame because he had not approached +the ruined mansion on foot. Then descending over the dusty wheel, he +lifted out his bag, and rapped twice upon the open door with the +greenish knocker which he supposed had once been shining brass. Through +the hall a sleepy breeze blew from the honeysuckle arbour over the back +porch, and at his right hand the swinging sword still clanked against +the discoloured plaster. So quiet was the house that it seemed as if the +movement of life within had been suspended, and when at last the figure +of Mrs. Brooke floated down the great staircase under the pallid light +from the window above, she appeared to him as the disembodied spirit of +one of the historic belles who had tripped up and down in trailing +brocades and satin shoes. Instead of coming toward him, she completed +her ghostly impression by vanishing suddenly into the gloom beyond the +staircase, and a moment afterward his knock was answered by a small, +embarrassed darky in purple calico. Entering the dining-room by her +invitation, he stumbled upon Beverly stretched fast asleep, and snoring +slightly, upon a horsehair sofa, with the brown and white setter dozing +on a mat at his feet. At the approach of footsteps, the dog, without +lifting its head, began rapping the floor heavily with its tail, and +aroused by the sound, Beverly opened one eye and struggled confusedly +into an upright position. + +"I was entirely overcome by the heat," he remarked apologetically, as he +rose from the sofa and held out his hand, "but it is a pleasure to see +you, Mr. Smith. I hope you did not find the sun oppressive on your drive +out. Amelia, my dear," he remarked courteously, as Mrs. Brooke entered +in a freshly starched print gown, "I feel a return of that strange +dizziness I spoke of, so if it will not inconvenience you, may I beg for +another of your refreshing lemonades?" + +Mrs. Brooke, who had just completed the hasty ironing of her dress, +which she had put on while it was still warm, met his request with an +amiable but exhausted smile. + +"Don't you think six lemonades in one day too many?" she asked +anxiously, when she had shaken hands with Ordway. + +"But this strange dizziness, my dear? An iced drink, I find far more +effective than a bandage." + +"Very well, I'll make it of course, if it gives you any relief," replied +his wife, wondering if she would be able to bake the bread by the time +Beverly demanded supper. "If you'll come up stairs now, Mr. Smith," she +added, "Malviny will show you to the blue room." + +Malviny, who proved upon further acquaintance to be the eldest +great-grandchild of Aunt Mehitable, descended like a hawk upon his +waiting property, while Mrs. Brooke led the procession up the staircase +to an apartment upon the second floor. + +The blue room, as he discovered presently, contained a few rather fine +pieces of old mahogany, a grandfather's chair, with a freshly laundered +chintz cover, and a rag carpet made after the "log cabin" pattern. Of +the colour from which it had taken its name, there was visible only a +faded sampler worked elaborately in peacock blue worsteds, by one +"Margaret, aged nine." Beyond this the walls were bare of decoration, +though an oblong streak upon the plaster suggested to Ordway that a +family portrait had probably been removed in the hurried preparations +for his arrival. + +After remarking that she hoped he would "make himself quite at home," +Mrs. Brooke was glancing inquiringly about the room with her large, +pale, rather prominent eyes, when a flash of purple in the doorway +preceded the announcement that "Marse Beverly done turn right green wid +de dizziness, en wus axin' kinder faintlike fur his lemonade." + +"My poor husband," explained the exhausted wife, "contracted a chronic +heart trouble in the War, and he suffers so patiently that at times we +are in danger of forgetting it." + +Pressing her aching head, she hurried downstairs to prepare Beverly's +drink, while Ordway, after closing the broken latch of the door, walked +slowly up and down the large, cool, barely furnished room. After his +cramped chamber at Mrs. Twine's his eyes rested with contentment upon +the high white ceiling overhead, and then descended leisurely to the +stately bedstead, with its old French canopy above, and to the broad, +red brick hearth freshly filled with odorous boughs of cedar. The +cleanly quiet of the place restored to him at once the peace which he +had missed in the last few days in Tappahannock, and his nerves, which +had revolted from Mrs. Twine's scolding voice and slovenly table, became +composed again in the ample space of these high white walls. Even +"Margaret, aged nine," delivered a soothing message to him in the faded +blues of her crewel work. + +When he had unpacked his bag, he drew the chintz-covered chair to the +window, and leaning his elbow on the sill, looked out gratefully upon +the overgrown lawn filled with sheepmint and clover. Though it was +already twilight under the cedars, the lawn was still bright with +sunshine, and beyond the dwindling clump of cabbage roses in the centre, +he saw that the solitary cow had not yet finished her evening meal. As +he watched her, his ears caught the sound of light footsteps on the +porch below, and a moment afterward, he saw Emily pass from the avenue +to the edge of the lawn, where she called the cow by name in a caressing +voice. Lifting her head, the animal started at a slow walk through the +tangled weeds, stopping from time to time to bite a particularly +tempting head of purple clover. As the setting sun was in Emily's eyes, +she raised her bared arm while she waited, to shield her forehead, and +Ordway was struck afresh by the vigorous grace which showed itself in +her slightest movement. The blue cotton dress she wore, which had shrunk +from repeated washings until it had grown scant in the waist and skirt, +revealed the firm rounded curve of her bosom and her slender hips. +Standing there in the faint sunshine against the blue-black cedars, he +felt her charm in some mysterious way to be akin to the beauty of the +hour and the scene. The sight of her blue gown was associated in his +mind with a peculiar freshness of feeling--an intensified enjoyment of +life. + +When the cow reached her side, the girl turned back toward the barnyard, +and the two passed out of sight together beyond the avenue. As he +followed them with his gaze, Ordway had no longer any thought of Gus +Wherry, or of his possible presence in Tappahannock upon the morrow. +The evil association was withdrawn now from his consciousness, and in +its place he found the tranquil pleasure which he had felt while he +watched the sunshine upon the sheepmint and clover--a pleasure not +unlike that he had experienced when Emily's blue cotton dress was +visible against the cedars. The faces of the men who had listened to him +yesterday returned to his memory; and as he saw them again seated on the +rude benches among the pines, his heart expanded in an emotion which was +like the melting of his will into the Divine Will which contained and +enveloped all. + +A knock at the door startled him back to his surroundings, and when he +went to answer it, he found the small frightened servant standing +outside, with an old serving tray clutched desperately to her bosom. +From her excited stutter he gathered that supper awaited him upon the +table, and descending hastily, he found the family already assembled in +the dining-room. Beverly received him graciously, Emily quietly, and the +children assured him enthusiastically that they were glad he had come to +stay because now they might eat ham every night. When they had been +properly suppressed by Emily, her brother took up the conversation which +he carried on in a polite, rambling strain that produced upon Ordway the +effect of a monologue delivered in sleep. + +"I hope the birds won't annoy you at daybreak, Mr. Smith," he remarked, +"the ivy at your windows harbours any number of wrens and sparrows." + +"Oh, I like them," replied Ordway, "I've been sleeping under a tin roof +in Tappahannock which no intelligent bird or human being would +approach." + +"I remember," said Mr. Beverly pensively, "that there was a tin roof on +the hotel at Richmond I stayed at during the War when I first met my +wife. Do you recall how very unpleasant that tin roof was, Amelia? Or +were you too young at the time to notice it? You couldn't have been more +than fifteen, I suppose? Yes, you must have been sixteen, because I +remember when I marched past the door with my regiment, I noticed you +standing on the balcony, in a long white dress, and you couldn't have +worn long dresses before you were sixteen." + +Mrs. Brooke glanced up calmly from the coffee-pot. + +"The roof was slate," she remarked with the rigid adherence to a single +idea, which characterised her devoted temperament. + +"Ah, to be sure, it was slate," admitted Beverly, turning his genial +face upon Ordway, "and I remember now it wasn't the roof that was +unpleasant, but the food--the food was very unpleasant indeed, was it +not, Amelia?" + +"I don't think we ever got enough of it to test its quality," replied +Mrs. Brooke, "poor mama was so reduced at the end of a month that she +had to take up three inches of her bodice." + +"It's quite clear to me now," observed Beverly, delightedly, "it was not +that the food was unpleasant, but that it was scarce--very scarce." + +He had finished his supper; and when he had risen from the table with +his last amiable words, he proceeded to install himself, without +apparent selection, into the only comfortable chair which the room +contained. Drawing out his pipe a moment afterward, he waved Ordway, +with a hospitable gesture, to a stiff wooden seat, and invited him in a +persuasive tone, to join him in a smoke. + +"My tobacco is open to you," he observed, "but I regret to say that I am +unable to offer you a cigar. Yet a cigar, I maintain, is the only form +in which a gentleman should use tobacco." + +Ordway took out the leather case he carried and offered it to him with a +smile. + +"I'm afraid they are not all that they might be," he remarked, as +Beverly supplied himself with a murmured word of thanks. + +Mrs. Brooke brought out her darning, and Emily, after disappearing into +the pantry, sent back the small servant for the dishes. The girl did not +return again before Ordway took his candle from the mantel-piece and +went upstairs; and he remembered after he had reached his bedroom that +she had spoken hardly two words during the entire evening. Had she any +objection, he asked himself now, to his presence in the household? Was +it possible, indeed, that Mrs. Brooke should have taken him in against +her sister-in-law's inclination, or even without her knowledge? In the +supposition there was not only embarrassment, but a sympathetic +resentment; and he resolved that if such proved to be the case, he was +in honour bound to return immediately to Tappahannock. Then he +remembered the stifling little room under the tin roof with a feeling of +thankfulness for at least this one night's escape. + +Awaking at dawn he lay for a while contentedly listening to the flutter +of the sparrows in the ivy, and watching the paling arch of the sky +beyond the pointed tops of the cedars. A great peace seemed to encompass +him at the moment, and he thought with gratitude of the quiet evening he +had spent with Beverly. It was dull enough probably, when one came to +think of it, yet the simple talk, the measured courtesies, returned to +him now as a part of the pleasant homeliness of his surroundings. The +soft starlight on the sheepmint and clover, the chirp of the small +insects in the trees, the refreshing moisture which had crept toward him +with the rising dew, the good-night kisses of the children, delivered +under protest and beneath Mrs. Brooke's eyes--all these trivial +recollections were attended in his thoughts by a train of pensive and +soothing associations. + +Across the hall he heard the soft opening and closing of a door, and +immediately afterward the sound of rapid footsteps growing fainter as +they descended the staircase. Already the room was full of a pale golden +light, and as he could not sleep again because of the broken shutter to +the window which gave on the lawn, he rose and dressed himself with an +eagerness which recalled the early morning risings of his childhood. A +little later when he went downstairs, he found that the front door was +still barred, and removing the heavy iron fastenings, he descended the +steps into the avenue, where the faint sunbeams had not yet penetrated +the thick screen of boughs. Remembering the garden, while he stood +watching the sunrise from the steps, he turned presently into the little +footpath which led by the house, and pushing aside the lilacs, from +which the blossoms had all dropped, he leaned on the swinging gate +before the beds he had spaded on those enchanted nights. Now the rank +weeds were almost strangling the plants, and it occurred to him that +there was still work ready for his hand in the Brooke's garden. He was +telling himself that he would begin clearing the smothered rows as soon +as his morning at the warehouse was over, when the old hound ran +suddenly up to him, and turning quickly he saw Emily coming from the +springhouse with a print of golden butter in her hand. + +"So it was you I heard stirring before sunrise!" he exclaimed +impulsively, as his eyes rested on her radiant face, over which the +early mist had scattered a pearly dew like the fragrant moisture upon a +rose. + +"Yes, it was I. At four o'clock I remembered there was no butter for +breakfast, so I got up and betook myself to the churn." + +"And this is the result?" he asked, glancing down at the delicious +creamy mould she had just worked into shape and crowned with a printed +garland of thistles. "It makes me hungry enough for my muffins upon the +minute." + +"You shall have them shortly," she said, smiling, "but do you prefer +pop-overs or plain?" + +He met the question with serious consideration. + +"Well, if the choice is mine I think I'll have pop-overs," he replied. + +Before his unbroken gravity her quick humour rippled forth. + +"Then I must run to Aunt Mehitable," she responded merrily, "for I +suspect that she has already made them plain." + +With a laughing nod she turned from him, and following the little path +entered the house under the honeysuckle arbour on the back porch. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SHOWS THAT A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL A HEARTACHE + + +When Emily entered the dining-room, she found that Beverly had departed +from his usual custom sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast. + +"I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear," he remarked, "and I +think it was due entirely to the heavy supper you insisted upon giving +us." + +"But, Beverly, we must have hot things now," said Emily, as she arranged +the crocheted centrepiece upon the table. "Mr. Smith is our boarder, you +know, not our guest." + +"The fact that he is a boarder," commented Beverly, with dignity, +"entirely relieves me of any feeling of responsibility upon his account. +If he were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as you do that +hot suppers are a necessity, but when a man pays for the meals he eats, +we are no longer under an obligation to consider his preferences." + +"His presence in the household is a great trial to us all," observed his +wife, whose attitude of general acceptance was modified by the fact that +she accepted everything for the worst. Her sense of tragic values had +been long since obliterated by a gray wash of melancholy that covered +all. + +"Well, I don't see that he is very zealous about interfering with us," +remarked Emily, almost indignantly, "he doesn't appear to be of a +particularly sociable disposition." + +"Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depressing," rejoined Mrs. +Brooke. "It's a pity, perhaps, that we couldn't have secured a blond +person--they are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and I +remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie Colton's, when I called +there once, was exceedingly lively and entertaining. But it's too late, +of course, to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his morals, +at least, are above reproach." + +As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been made by Mrs. Brooke +herself upon the day that Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for +the fifth time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped lightly +upon her tongue; but restraining her words with an effort, she observed +cheerfully an instant later that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no +inconvenience to the family. + +"Well, he seems to be a respectable enough person," admitted Beverly, in +his gracious manner, "but, of course, if he were to become offensively +presuming it would be a very simple matter to drop him a hint." + +"It reminds me of a case I read of in the newspaper a few weeks ago," +said Mrs. Brooke, "where a family in Roanoke took a stranger to board +with them and shortly afterward were all poisoned by a powder in the +soup. No, they weren't all poisoned," she corrected herself +thoughtfully, "for I am positive now that the boarder was the only one +who died. It was the cook who put the poison into the soup and the +boarder who ate all of it. I remember the Coroner remarked at the +inquest that he had saved the lives of the entire family." + +"All the same I hope Mr. Smith won't eat all the soup," observed Emily. + +"It terrifies me at times," murmured Amelia, "to think of the awful +power that we place so carelessly in the hands of cooks." + +"In that case, my dear, it might be quite a safeguard always to have a +boarder at the table," suggested Beverly, with his undaunted optimism. + +"But surely, Amelia," laughed Emily, "you can't suppose that after she +has lived in the family for seventy years, Aunt Mehitable would yield at +last to a passing temptation to destroy us?" + +"I imagine the poor boarder suspected nothing while he ate his soup," +returned Mrs. Brooke. "No, I repeat that in cases like that no one is +safe, and the only sensible attitude is to be prepared for anything." + +"Well, if I'm to be poisoned, I think I'd prefer to take it without +preparation," rejoined Emily. "There is Mr. Smith now in the hall, so we +may as well send Malviny to bring in breakfast." + +When Ordway entered an instant later with his hearty greeting, even Mrs. +Brooke unbent a trifle from her rigid melancholy and joined affably in +the conversation. By a curious emotional paradox she was able to enjoy +him only as an affliction; and his presence in the house had served as +an excuse for a continuous parade of martyrdom. From the hour of his +arrival, she had been perfectly convinced not only that he interfered +with her customary peace of mind, but that he prevented her as surely +from receiving her supply of hot water upon rising and her ordinary +amount of food at dinner. + +But as the days went by he fell so easily into his place in the family +circle that they forgot at last to remark either his presence or his +personal peculiarities. After dinner he would play his game of dominoes +with Beverly in the breezy hall, until the sunlight began to slant +across the cedars, when he would go out into the garden and weed the +overgrown rows. Emily had seen him but seldom alone during the first few +weeks of his stay, though she had found a peculiar pleasure in rendering +him the small domestic services of which he was quite unconscious. How +should he imagine that it was her hand that arranged the flowers upon +his bureau, that placed his favourite chair near the window, and that +smoothed the old-fashioned dimity coverlet upon his bed. Still less +would he have suspected that the elaborate rag carpet upon his floor was +one which she had contributed to his comfort from her own room. Had he +known these things he would probably have been melancholy enough to have +proved congenial company even to Mrs. Brooke, though, in reality, there +was, perhaps, nothing he could have offered Emily which would have +exceeded the pleasure she now found in these simple services. Ignorant +as she was in all worldly matters, in grasping this essential truth, +she had stumbled unawares upon the pure philosophy of love--whose +satisfaction lies, after all, not in possession, but in surrender. + +She was still absorbed in the wonder of this discovery, when going out +into the garden one afternoon to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found +him working among the tall, green corn at the end of the long walk. As +he turned toward her in the late sunshine, which slanted across the +waving yellow tassels, she noticed that there was the same eager, +youthful look in his face that she had seen on the night when she had +come down to find him spading by the moonbeams. + +In response to her smile he came out from among the corn, and went with +her down the narrow space which separated two overgrown hills of tomato +plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton shirt was open at the +throat and wrists. + +"It's delicious in the corn now," he said; "I can almost fancy that I +hear the light rustle along the leaves." + +"You love the country so much that you ought to have been a farmer," she +returned, "then you might have raised tobacco." + +"That reminds me that I worked yesterday in your brother's crop--but +it's too sticky for me. I like the garden better." + +"Then you ought to have a garden of your own. Is all your chopping and +your digging merely for the promotion of the general good?" + +"Isn't it better so?" he asked, smiling, "particularly when I share in +the results as I shall in this case? Who knows but that I shall eat this +wonderful tomato to-night at supper?" + +She took it from his hand and placed it on the lettuce leaves in the +bottom of the basket upon her arm. + +"You make a careful choice, I see," she observed, "it is a particularly +fine one." + +"I suppose your philosophy would insist that after plucking it I should +demand the eating of it also?" + +"I don't know about my philosophy--I haven't any--but my common sense +would." + +"I'm not sure," he returned half seriously, "that I have much opinion of +common sense." + +"But you would have," she commented gravely, "if you had happened to be +born with Beverly for a brother. I used to think that all men were +alike," she added, "but you don't remind me of Beverly in the very +least." + +As she spoke she turned her face slightly toward him, and still leaning +over the luxuriant tomato row, looked up at him joyously with her +sparkling eyes. Her breath came quickly and he saw her bosom rise and +fall under the scant bodice of her blue cotton gown. Almost +unconsciously he had drifted into an association with her which +constituted for him the principal charm of his summer at Cedar Hill. + +"On the other hand I've discovered many points of resemblance," he +retorted in his whimsical tone. + +"Well, you're both easy to live in the house with, I admit that." + +"And we're both perfectly amiable as long as everybody agrees with us +and nobody crosses us," he added. + +"I shouldn't like to cross you," she said, laughing, "but then why +should I? Isn't it very pleasant as it is now?" + +"Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now," he repeated slowly. + +Turning away from her he stood looking in silence over the tall corn to +the amber light that fell beyond the clear outline of a distant hill. +The association was, as she had just said, very pleasant in his +thoughts, and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with the +summer, leaving events to shape themselves as they would in the future. +What harm, he demanded, could come of any relation so healthful, so +simple as this? + +"I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, +laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for +me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow tassels I named Princess +Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess +Fadeaway." + +At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice +of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back +from the sunset into her face. + +"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little--how very little +you know of me? By you I mean all of you, especially your brother and +Mrs. Brooke." + +Her glowing face questioned him for a moment. + +"But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after +all?" + +"I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her +words unanswered. + +Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied +quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth +time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less +conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite +evasion. + +"We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said. + +"What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just +this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded +strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to +you--it doesn't really concern you, of course--that's what I felt--but," +he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's +birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since +I saw her." + +"Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a +ripe tomato. + +"Doubtless I shouldn't know her if I were to pass her in the street," he +pursued, after a minute. "But it's worse than that and it's harder--for +it's as many years since I saw my wife." + +She had not lifted her head from the basket, and he felt suddenly that +her stillness was not the stillness of flesh, but of marble. + +"Perhaps I ought to have told you all this before," he went on again, +"perhaps it wasn't fair to let you take me in in ignorance of this and +of much else?" + +Raising her head, she stood looking into his face with her kind, brown +eyes. + +"But how could these things possibly affect us?" she asked, smiling +slightly. + +"No," he replied slowly, "they didn't affect you, of course--they don't +now. It made no difference to any of you, I thought. How could it make +any?" + +"No, it makes no difference to any of us," she repeated quietly. + +"Then, perhaps, I've been wrong in telling you this to-day?" + +She shook her head. "Not in telling me, but," she drew a long breath, +"it might be as well not to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia--at least +for a while." + +"You mean they would regret their kindness?" + +"It would make them uncomfortable--they are very old-fashioned in their +views. I don't know just how to put it, but it seems to them--oh, a +terrible thing for a husband and wife to live apart." + +"Well, I shan't speak of it, of course--but would it not be better for +me to return immediately to Tappahannock?" + +For an instant she hesitated. "It would be very dreadful at Mrs. +Twine's." + +"I know it," he answered, "but I'm ready to go back, this minute if you +should prefer it." + +"But I shouldn't," she rejoined in her energetic manner. "Why should I, +indeed? It is much wiser for you to stay here until the end of the +summer." + +When she had finished he looked at her a moment without replying. The +light had grown very faint and through the thin mist that floated up +from the fields her features appeared drawn and pallid. + +"What I can't make you understand is that even though it is all my +fault--every bit my fault from the beginning--yet I have never really +wanted to do evil in my heart. Though I've done wrong, I've always +wanted to do right." + +If she heard his words they made little impression upon her, for going +out into the walk, she started, without speaking, in the direction of +the house. Then, when she had moved a few steps from him, she stopped +and looked back as if she had forgotten something that had been in her +thoughts. + +"I meant to tell you that I hope--I pray it will come right again," she +said. + +"I thank you," he answered, and drew back into the corn so that she +might go on alone. + +A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down the garden path, it seemed +to her that the distance between the gate and the house covered an +immeasurable space. Her one hope was that she might go to her room for +at least the single hour before supper, and that there, behind a locked +door with her head buried in the pillows, she might shed the hot tears +which she felt pressing against her eyelids. + +Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the staircase, with the +basket of tomatoes still on her arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by +descending like a phantom from the darkened bend. + +"O Emily, I've been looking for you for twenty minutes," she cried in +despairing tones. "The biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in +a temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen and beat up a few +quick muffins for supper." + +Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon +the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her +eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a +lament upon the universal tragedy of her sex. + +"I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TREATS OF A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL + + +FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and +during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a +number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken +fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. +Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a +mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause +the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When +the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a +watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily +had planted in the bare spots beside the steps. + +"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked +to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or +tired." + +Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him +quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage +her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a +strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or +met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he +had not seen for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as +great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden +he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage +relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that +some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many +years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from +her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered +heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt +features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that +other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I +wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I +almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why +I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, +and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I +suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow +it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she +reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable +beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and +hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am +very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she +could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to +life. + +"I can't help believing that you would tire of it in time," she said +presently aloud. + +"Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon +her. + +"I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone +before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did +there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against +the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?" + +Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation +brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw +Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and +the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table. + +"Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, +I think I'd be content," was all he said. + +She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper +was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires. + +"You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big +thing badly?" she inquired. + +"But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big +thing--it's the very biggest thing of all." + +A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and +go in her cheek. + +"I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted +mockingly. + +"I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire +your courage, also." + +She shook her head. "It's the cheapest of the virtues." + +"Not your kind, my dear child--it's the rarest and the costliest of +achievements." + +"Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's +a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your +bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?" + +"Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits +down in the sand and looks out for a ship." + +Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it +will be time enough to hoist my flag." + +A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned +away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house. + +The next morning Ordway went into Tappahannock, not so much on account +of the little business he found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged +by the necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To furnish Beverly +three times a day with the kind of cigar he considered it "worth while +for a gentleman to smoke"--even though his choice fell, in Ordway's +opinion, upon a quite inferior brand--had become in the end a courtesy +too extravagant for him to contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that +almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was now an +established fact, and that as long as he remained at Cedar Hill he would +continue to supply with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would accept +with affability. + +The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting +experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had +swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's +evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. +Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted +was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, +on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an +hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm. + +After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to +count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his +memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won +over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving +back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told +himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty +October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape. + +Late in September Banks returned from his vacation, and during his first +visit to Cedar Hill, he showed himself painfully nervous and ill at +ease. But coming out for a walk with Ordway one afternoon, he suggested +at the end of their first mile that they should sit down and have a +smoke beneath a young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his pipe +he held the match in his hand until it burned his fingers; then throwing +it into the grass, he turned upon his companion as eloquently +despairing a look as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful +features to assume. + +"Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any +worse to die by your own hand than by disease?" + +"By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out +with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?" + +Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the +branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat. + +"She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan. + +"Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the +mask of scorn." + +"But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks. + +For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared +blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the +life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply. + +"If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at +the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me." + +"But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not +expected to combat the former irrefutable statement. + +"She tried to keep me away from the springs where she went, and when I +would follow her, whether or no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for +the first two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she would say it +was too hot for walking, and if I asked her to drive she'd answer that +she didn't drive with men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a +dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of Tappahannock!" + +"But perhaps the custom of the place was different?" + +"No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a +bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the +same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would +always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the +minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in +somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off +after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And +yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates +together." + +He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and +plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked. + +"And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the +ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed +presently, in an agony of recollection. + +"Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway. + +"You'd have fallen in love with her if you had--you couldn't have helped +it." + +"Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as +it is now." + +"I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the +other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if +she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked +it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well +she treated the other man." + +"Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway. + +"Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring--but +it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem +to have eyes or ears for anybody else." + +"So you're positive she means to marry him?" + +"She swears she doesn't--that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I +believe it is as good as settled between them." + +"Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see +how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling. + +"But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks. + +"If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow +her heart back to you again." + +"I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless +dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any +more heart than--than--I don't know what." + +"In that case I'd drag myself together and let her alone. I'd go back +to my work and resolve never to give her another thought." + +"Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is +in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what +she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. +When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing +on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging +is." + +"I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not +what might be called a successful lover." + +"It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's +because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie +awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her +in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before +the mirror--I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but +I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. +Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell +as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant +speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day +before." + +They were seated under a cherry tree by the side of the road which led +to Tappahannock, and as Banks finished his confessions, a large, dust +covered buggy was seen approaching them from the direction of the town. +As Ordway recognised Baxter through the cloud of dust raised by the +wheels, he waved his hat with a shout of welcome, and a minute later the +buggy reached them and drew up in the patch of briars upon the roadside. + +"I was just on my way to see you, Smith," said Baxter, as he let fall +the reins and held out his great dirty hand, "but I'm too heavy to get +out, and if I once sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more +than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again." + +"Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill," suggested Ordway, "and we'll follow you +at a brisk walk." + +"No, I won't do that. I can say what I have got to say right here over +the wheel, if you'll stand awhile in the dust. Major Leary was in to see +me again this morning, and the notion he's got in his head now is that +you're the man to run for Mayor of Tappahannock." + +"I!" exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as he spoke. "He forgets +that I'm out of the question. I refuse, of course." + +"Well, you see, he says you're the only man we've got strong enough to +defeat Jasper Trend--and he's as sure as shot that you'd have something +like a clean walk-over. He's already drawn up a big red flag with 'The +People's Candidate: Ten Commandment Smith,' upon it. I asked him why he +wouldn't put just plain 'Daniel,' but he said that little Biblical smack +alone was worth as much as a bushel of votes to you. If you drew the +line at 'Ten Commandment' he's going to substitute +'Daniel-in-the-Lions'-Den Smith' or something of that kind." + +"Tell him to stop it," broke in Ordway, with a smothered anger in his +usually quiet voice, "he's said nothing to me about it, and I decline it +absolutely and without consideration!" + +"You mean you won't run?" inquired Baxter, in astonishment. + +"I mean I won't run--I can't run--put it any way you please." + +"I thought you'd put your whole heart and soul into defeating Trend." + +"I have, but not that way--where's Trenton whom we've been talking of +all summer?" + +"He's out of it--consumption, the doctor says--anyway he's going South." + +"Then there's but one other man," said Ordway, decisively, "and that's +Baxter." + +"Me?" said Baxter softly, "you mean me, do you say?" His chuckle shook +the buggy until it creaked upon its rusty wheels. "I can't," he added, +with a burst of humour, "to tell the truth, I'm afraid." + +"Afraid?" repeated Ordway, "you're afraid of Jasper Trend?" + +"No," said Baxter, "it ain't Jasper--it's my wife." + +He winked slowly as he caught Ordway's eyes, and then picking up the +reins, made a movement as if to turn back to Tappahannock. "So you're +dead sure then that you can't be talked over?" he asked. + +"As sure as you are," returned Ordway promptly; then as the buggy +started back in the direction from which it had come, he went over to +Banks, who had risen to his feet and was leaning heavily against the +cherry tree, with the long blade of grass still between his teeth. + +"What do you think of their wanting to make me Mayor, Banks?" he +inquired, with a laugh. + +Banks started from his gloomy reverie. "Mayor!" he exclaimed almost with +animation. "Why, they've shown jolly good sense, that's what I think!" + +"Well, you needn't begin to get excited," responded Ordway, "for I +didn't accept, and you won't have to quarrel either with me or with +Jasper Trend." + +"There's one thing you may be sure of," said Banks with energy, "and +that is that I'd quarrel with Jasper every time." + +"In spite of Milly?" laughed Ordway. + +"In spite of Milly," repeated Banks in an awed but determined voice; +"she may manage my hair and my cravats and my life to come, but I'll be +darned if she's going to manage my vote!" + +"All the same I'm glad you can honestly stick to Jasper," said Ordway, +"he counts on you now, doesn't he?" + +"Oh, I suppose so," returned Banks, without enthusiasm; "at any rate, I +think he'd rather she'd marry me than Brown." + +There was a moment's silence in which the name brought no association +into Ordway's consciousness. Then in a single flashing instant the truth +leaped upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged up to meet +his eyes like the waves of a high sea. + +"Than whom?" he demanded in so loud a tone that Banks fell back a step +and looked at him with blinking eyelids. + +"Than marry whom?" asked Ordway for the second time, dropping his voice +almost to a whisper before the blank surprise in the other's face. + +"Oh, his name's Brown--Horatio Brown--I thought I'd told you," answered +Banks, and he added a moment later, "you've met him, I believe." + +"Yes," said Ordway, with an effort, "he's the handsome chap who came +here last June, isn't he?" + +"Oh, he's handsome enough," admitted Banks, and he groaned out +presently. "You liked him, didn't you?" + +Ordway smiled slightly as he met the desperation in the other's look. + +"I like him," he answered quietly, "as much as I like a toad." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS + + +When Baxter reached the warehouse the following morning, he found Major +Leary pacing restlessly back and forth under the brick archway, with the +regular military step at which, during the four years' war, he had +marched into battle. + +"Come in, sir, come in and sit down," said Baxter, leading the way into +his office, and sweeping a pile of newspapers from an armchair with a +hospitable gesture. + +"Have you seen Smith? and is he all right?" were the Major's first +words, as he placed his hat upon the table and took a quick, impatient +turn about the room before throwing himself into the chair which the +other had emptied. He was a short, erect, nervous man, with a fiery +face, a pair of small gray eyes, like steel points, and a long white +moustache, discoloured where it overhung his mouth by the faint yellow +stain of tobacco. + +"Oh, I've see him," answered Baxter in a soothing voice, "but he won't +run--there's no use talking. He's dead set against it." + +"Won't run?" cried the Major, furiously. "Nonsense, sir, he must run. +There's no help for it. Did you tell him that we'd decided that he +should run?" + +"I told him," returned Baxter, "but, somehow, it didn't look as if he +were impressed. He was so positive that he would not even let me put in +a word more on the subject. 'Are you dead sure, Smith?' I said, and he +answered, 'I'm as dead sure as you are yourself, Baxter.'" + +The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched himself back in his +chair, and began pulling nervously at the ends of his moustache. + +"Well, I'll have to see him myself," he said authoritatively. + +"You may see him as much as you please," replied Baxter, with a soft, +offended dignity, "but I'll be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him +to change his mind." + +"Well, I reckon you're right, Bob," admitted the other, after a moment's +reflection, "what he won't do for you, it isn't likely that he'll do for +the rest of Tappahannock--but the fact remains that somebody has got to +step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now I ask you pointblank--where'll you +get your man?" + +"The Lord knows!" sighed Baxter, and he sucked hard at the stem of his +pipe. + +"Then I tell you if you can't make Smith come out, it's your duty as an +honest citizen to run yourself." + +Baxter relapsed into a depressed silence, in the midst of which his +thoughts were invaded not so much by the political necessity of the +occasion as by the small, but dominant figure of his wife. The big man, +who had feared neither shot nor bayonet, trembled in spirit as he +imagined the outraged authority that could express itself in a person +that measured hardly a fraction more than five feet from her shoes to +the curling gray fringe above her forehead. He remembered that once in +the early days of his marriage, he had allowed himself to be seduced by +the promise of political honours, and that for a whole miserable month +he had gone without griddle cakes and syrup for his breakfast. "No--no, +I could never tell Marthy," he thought, desperately, still seeing in +imagination the pretty, indignant face of Mrs. Baxter. + +"It's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself," repeated the +Major, rapping the arm of his chair to enforce his words. + +"I can't," rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, "I can't sir," and he added an +instant afterward, "you see women have got the idea somehow, that +politics ain't exactly moral." + +"Women!" said the Major, in the dry, contemptuous tone in which he might +have uttered the word, "Pshaw!" + +"I don't mean just 'women,'" replied Baxter, "I mean my wife." + +"Oh!" said the Major, "you mean your wife would be opposed to the whole +thing?" + +"She wouldn't hear of it, sir, she simply wouldn't hear a word of it." + +For a long pause the Major made no answer; then rising from his chair he +began pacing with his military stride up and down the floor of the +little room. At the end of five minutes he turned upon Baxter with an +exclamation of triumph, and threw himself again into the armchair beside +the desk. + +"I have it, Bob!" he said, slapping his knee until the dust flew out of +his striped trousers, "I knew I'd get it in the end and here it is. The +very thing, on my word, sir, I've discovered the very thing." + +"Then I'm out of it," said Baxter, "an' I'm mighty glad of that." + +"Oh, no, you aren't out of it--not just yet," said the Major, "we're to +start you in, Bob, you're to start in as a candidate; and then a week +before the nomination, something will crop up to make you fall out of +the race, and you'll turn over all your votes to Smith. It would be too +late, then, for him to back out--he'd simply have to keep in to save the +day." + +In spite of the roar of delight with which the Major ended his speech, +Baxter sat unconvinced and unmoved, shaking his great head in a +voiceless protest against the plot. + +"It's the only way, I tell you," urged the Major, half pleased, half +angry. "After Smith you're by long odds the most popular man in +Tappahannock, and if it isn't one of you, it's Jasper Trend and his +everlasting barrooms." + +"But suppose Smith still declines," said Baxter remembering his wife. + +"Oh, he won't--he isn't a blamed fool," returned the Major, "and if he +does," he added impressively, "if he does I swear to you I'll go into +the race myself." + +He held out his hand and Baxter grasped it in token of good faith. + +"Then I'll do it," said the big man, "provided--" he hesitated, cleared +his throat, and went on bravely, "provided there's no objection to my +telling my wife the scheme"--bending his ear an instant, he drew back +with an embarrassed and guilty face, "that's Smith's step in the +warehouse. He'll be in here in less than two minutes." + +The Major took up his hat, and flung back the door with a hurried +movement. + +"Well, good-bye, I'll see Smith later about the plans," he returned, +"and meanwhile, we'll go hard to work to whip our friend Jasper." + +Meeting Ordway an instant later upon the threshold, he passed him with a +flourish of his hat, and marched rapidly under the brick archway out +into the street. + +As his bookkeeper entered Baxter appeared to be absorbed in a newspaper +which he had picked up hastily from the pile upon the floor. + +"Good-morning," said Ordway, a little surprised; "it looks as if I'd put +the fiery Major to flight." + +"Smith," said Baxter, dropping his paper, and lifting his big, simple +face to the younger man, "Smith, you've got me into a hole, and I want +you to pull me out again." + +"A hole?" repeated Ordway; then as light broke on him, he laughed aloud +and held out his hand. "Oh, I see, he's going to make you Mayor of +Tappahannock!" + +With a groan Baxter prodded fresh tobacco into his pipe, and applying a +match, sat for several minutes brooding in silence amid the cloud of +smoke. + +"He says it's got to be either you or me," he pursued presently, without +noticing Ordway's ejaculation, "and on my word, Smith, seeing I've got a +wife who's all against it, I think it would be but fair to me to let me +off. You're my friend now, ain't you? Well, I'm asking you, Smith, as +friend to friend." + +A flush passed slowly over Ordway's face, and the unusual colour lent a +peculiar animation to his glance. As Baxter met his eyes, he was +conscious that they pierced through him, bright blue, sparkling, as +incisive as a blade. + +"To tell the truth, the thing is all but impossible," said Ordway, after +a long pause. "You don't know, I suppose, that I've never even touched +politics in Tappahannock." + +"That ain't the point, Smith--it's going on three years since you came +here--am I right?" + +"Yes--three years next March, and it seems a century." + +"Well, anyway, you've as good a right as I to be Mayor, and a long sight +better one than Jasper Trend has. Come, now, Smith, if you don't get me +out of this hole I'm in, heaven knows how I 'm going to face the Major." + +"Give me time," said Ordway, quickly, "give me time--a week from +to-morrow I am to make my first speech in the town hall. May I have till +then?" + +"Till Thursday week? Oh, I say, Smith, you've got to give in in the +end--and a week sooner or later, what's the difference?" + +Without replying, Ordway walked slowly to the window and stood looking +out upon the steep street that crawled up from the railroad track, where +an engine whistled. He had held out till now, but with Baxter's last +words he had heard in his thoughts a question larger and older than any +of which his employer had dreamed. "Why not?" he asked himself again as +he looked out upon the sunshine. "Why should not Daniel Smith, for a +good purpose, resume the rights which Daniel Ordway has forfeited?" And +it appeared to him while he stood there that his decision involved not +himself alone, and that the outcome had ceased to be merely an election +to the highest office in Tappahannock. Infinitely deep and wide, the +problem belonged not only to his individual life, but to the lives of +all those who had sinned and paid the penalty of sin and asked of +humanity the right and the freedom to begin anew. The impulsive daring +which he had almost lived down stirred for an instant in his pulses, and +turning quickly he looked at Baxter with a boyish laugh. + +"If I go in, Baxter, I go in to win!" he cried. + +At the moment it had seemed to him that he was obliging rather than +ambitious in the choice that he had made; but several days later, when +he came out of the warehouse to find the Major's red flag flying in the +street, he felt the thrill of his youthful enthusiasm quicken in his +blood. There was a strangely martial air about the red flag in the +sunshine, and the response in his pulses was not unlike the ardour of +battle. + +"After all the world is no smaller here than it is in New York," he +thought, "only the littleness of the one is different from the +littleness of the other. In either place success would have meant +nothing in itself, but in Tappahannock I can be more than successful, I +can be useful." With the words it seemed to him that his heart dissolved +in happiness, and as he looked now on the people who passed him in the +street--on the old Negro midwife waddling down the board walk; on the +Italian who kept a fruit stand at the corner; on the pretty girl +flirting in the door of the harness shop; and on the rough-coated, +soft-eyed country horses--he felt that one and all of these must +recognise and respond to the goodwill that had overflowed his thoughts. +So detached from personal bitterness, indeed, was even his fight against +Jasper Trend that he went out of his way at the top of the hill to pick +up a small whip which the Mayor had dropped from horseback as he rode +by. The scowling thanks with which Jasper received the courtesy puzzled +him for a moment until he remembered that by the man in the harness shop +they were regarded probably as enemies. At the recollection he stopped +short in his walk and laughed aloud--no, he was not interested in +fighting anything so small, so insignificant as Jasper Trend. It was the +injustice, the social disease he combated and not the man. "I wonder if +he really hates me?" he thought, for it seemed to him absurd and +meaningless that one man should waste his strength in hating another. +"If he'd been five years in prison he would have learned how foolish it +all is," he added; and an instant afterward he asked himself almost with +terror if his punishment had been, in reality, the greatest good that +had come to him in life? Without that terrible atonement would he have +gone on like Jasper Trend from fraud to fraud, from selfishness to +damnation? + +Looking round him in the perfect October weather, he felt that the +emotion in his heart swelled suddenly to rapture. Straight ahead the +sunshine sifted in drops through the red and yellow trees that bordered +the roadside, while in the field on his right the brown cornricks +crowded in even rows to where the arch of the hill was outlined against +the deep blue sky. Here was not only peace, but happiness, and his old +life, as he glanced back upon it, appeared hollow, futile, a corpse +without breath or animation. That was the mere outward form and body of +existence; but standing here in the deserted road, with his eyes on the +brilliant October fields, he could tell himself that he had come at last +into the ways and the understanding of faith. As he had once walked by +sight alone and stumbled, so he moved now blindly like a child that is +led step by step through the dark. + +From the road behind him a happy laugh struck on his ears, and turning +quickly he saw that a dog-cart was rolling rapidly from Tappahannock. As +he stepped back upon the roadside to avoid the dust raised by the +wheels, he lifted his eyes to the face of Milly Trend, who sat, flushed +and smiling, under a pink sunshade. She bowed joyfully; and it was not +until a moment afterward, when the cart had gone by, that Ordway +realised, almost with the force of a blow struck unawares, that he had +acknowledged the obsequious greeting of Gus Wherry. + +After the pink sunshade had vanished, Milly's laugh was still blown back +to him on the rising wind. With the happy sound of it in his ears, he +watched the dust settle again in the road, the tall golden poplars close +like a screen after the passing wheels, and the distance resume its +aspect of radiant loneliness. Nothing was changed at which he looked, +yet he was conscious that the rapture had passed from his thoughts and +the beauty from the October landscape. The release that he had won +appeared to him as an illusion and a cheat, and lifting his face to the +sunshine, he watched, like a prisoner, the flight of the swallows across +the sky. + +At dinner Beverly noticed his abstraction, and recommended a mint julep, +which Emily went out immediately to prepare. + +"The blood is easily chilled at this season," he said, "and care should +be taken to keep it warm by means of a gentle stimulant. I am not a +great drinker, sir, as you may have remarked, but in cases either of +sickness or sorrow, I have observed that few things are more efficacious +than a thimbleful of whiskey taken at the proper time. When I had the +misfortune to break to my uncle Colonel Algernon Brooke the distressing +news of the death of his wife by drowning, I remember that, though he +was one of the most abstemious men alive, his first articulate words +were: 'bring the whiskey jug.'" + +Even with the cheering assistance of the mint julep, however, it was +impossible for Ordway to eat his dinner; and making an excuse presently, +he rose from the table and went out into the avenue, where he walked +slowly up and down in the shadow of the cedars. At the end of his last +restless turn, he went indoors for his hat, and coming out again started +rapidly toward Tappahannock. With his first decisive step he felt that +the larger share of his burden had fallen from him. + + * * * * * + +The Tappahannock Hotel was a low, whitewashed frame building, withdrawn +slightly from the street, where several dejected looking horses, with +saddle-bags attached to them, were usually fastened to the iron rings in +the hitching-rail upon the sidewalk. The place was the resort chiefly of +commercial travellers or of neighbouring farmers, who drove in with +wagon loads of garden produce or of sun-cured tobacco; and the number of +loungers reclining on the newly painted green benches upon the porch +made Ordway aware that the fall trade was already beginning to show +signs of life. + +In answer to his questions, the proprietor an unctuous person, whose +mouth was distorted by a professional habit of welcome--informed him +that a gentleman by the name of Brown had registered there the evening +before, and that he was, to the best of his belief, upstairs in number +eighteen at the present moment. + +"To tell the truth I can't quite size him up," he concluded +confidentially. "He don't seem to hev' come either to sell or to buy an' +thar's precious little else that ever brings a body to Tappahannock." + +"Please add that I wish particularly to see him in private," said +Ordway. + +Without turning his head the proprietor beckoned, by a movement of his +thumb delivered backward over his left shoulder, to a Negro boy, who sat +surreptitiously eating peanuts out of a paper bag in his pocket. + +"Tell the gentleman in number eighteen, Sol, that Mr. Smith, the +people's candidate for Mayor, would like to have a little talk with him +in private. I'm mighty glad to see you out in the race, suh," he added, +turning again to Ordway, as the Negro disappeared up the staircase. + +"Thank you," replied Ordway, with a start, which brought him back from +his approaching interview with Gus Wherry to the recollection that he +was fighting to become the Mayor of Tappahannock. + +"Thar's obleeged to be a scrummage, I reckon," resumed the loquacious +little man, when he had received Ordway's acknowledgments--"but I s'pose +thar ain't any doubt as to who'll come off with the scalps in the end." +His manner changed abruptly, and he looked round with a lurking +curiosity in his watery eyes. "You knew Mr. Brown, didn't you say, +suh?--before you came here?" + +Ordway glanced up quickly. + +"Did you tell me he got here yesterday?" he asked. + +"Last night on the eight-forty-five, which came in two hours after +time." + +"An accident on the road, wasn't it?" + +"Wreck of a freight--now, Mr. Brown, as I was saying----" + +At this instant, to Ordway's relief, the messenger landed with a bound +on the floor of the hall, and picking himself up, announced with a +cheerful grin, that "the gentleman would be powerful pleased to see Mr. +Smith upstairs in his room." + +Nodding to the proprietor, Ordway followed the Negro up to the first +landing, and knocked at a half open door at the end of the long, dark +hall. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SHOWS THAT POLITENESS, LIKE CHARITY, IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE + + +When Ordway entered the room, he turned and closed the door carefully +behind him, before he advanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with +outstretched hand. + +"I can't begin to tell you how I appreciate the honour, Mr. Smith. I +didn't expect it--upon my word, I didn't," exclaimed Wherry, with the +effusive amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger. + +"I don't know that I mean it for an honour, but I hope we can get +straight to business," returned Ordway shortly. + +"Ah, then there's business?" repeated the other, as if in surprise. "I +had hoped that you were paying me merely a friendly call. To tell the +truth I've the very worst head in the world for business, you know, and +I always manage to dodge it whenever I get half a chance." + +"Well, you can't dodge it this time, so we may as well have it out." + +"Then since you insist upon that awful word 'business,' I suppose you +mean that you've come formally to ratify the treaty?" asked Wherry, +smiling. + +"The treaty? I made no treaty," returned Ordway gravely. + +Laughing pleasantly, Wherry invited his visitor to be seated. Then +turning away for an instant, he flung himself into a chair beside a +little marble topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle of rye +whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a metal tray. + +"Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten our conversation in that +beastly road?" he demanded, "and the prodigal? Surely you haven't +forgotten the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my life that +impressed me more." + +"You told me then distinctly that you had no intention of remaining in +Tappahannock." + +"I'll tell you so again if you'd like to hear it. Will you have a +drink?" + +Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture. + +"What I want to know," he insisted bluntly, "is why you are here at +all?" + +Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding a dash of iced water, +tossed it down at a swallow. + +"I thought I told you then," he answered, "that I have a little private +business in the town. As it's purely personal I hope you'll have no +objection to my transacting it." + +"You said that afternoon that your presence was, in some way, connected +with Jasper Trend's cotton mills." + +Wherry gave a low whistle. "Did I?" he asked politely, "well, perhaps, I +did. I can't remember." + +"I was fool enough to believe that you wanted an honest job," said +Ordway; "it did not enter my head that your designs were upon Trend's +daughter." + +"Didn't it?" inquired Wherry with a smile in which his white teeth +flashed brilliantly. "Well, it might have, for I was honest enough about +it. Didn't I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of every mess I was +ever in?" + +"Where is your wife?" asked Ordway. + +"Dead," replied Wherry, in a solemn voice. + +"If I am not mistaken, you had not less than three at the time of your +trial." + +"All dead," rejoined Wherry in the same solemn tone, while he drew out +his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes with a flourish, "there ain't +many men that have supported such a treble affliction on the same day." + +"I may as well inform you that I don't believe a word you utter." + +"It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can +find in town." + +"Your oath? Pshaw!" + +"Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the +slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his +fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second +drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed +carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head. + +"Whether they are dead or alive," responded Ordway, "I want you to +understand plainly that you are to give up your designs upon Milly +Trend or her money." + +"So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare +I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?" + +A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway +suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the +half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon +rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a +bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, +stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned +away with a sensation of disgust. + +"If you'd only warned me in time--hang it--I'd have cut out and given +you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway +resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I +always like to play fair and square when I get the chance." + +"Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it +good." + +"And leave you the open?" + +"And leave me Tappahannock--yes." + +"I don't want Tappahannock. To tell the truth I'm not particularly +struck by its attractions." + +"In that case you've no objection to leaving immediately, I suppose?" + +"I've no objection on earth if you'll allow me a pretty woman to keep me +company. I'm a deuced lonely bird, and I can't get on by myself--it's +not in my nature." + +Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a force which started the +glasses rattling on the metal tray. + +"I repeat for the last time that you are to leave Milly Trend alone," he +said. "Do you understand me?" + +"I'm not sure I do," rejoined Wherry, still pleasantly enough. "Would +you mind saying that over again in a lower tone?" + +"What I want to make plain is that you are not to marry Milly Trend--or +any other women in this town," returned Ordway angrily. + +"So there are others!" commented Wherry jauntily with his eye on the +ceiling. + +The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably effective, that Ordway +felt his rage increased by the mere external advantages of the man. + +"What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahannock for good and all this +very evening," he resumed, drawing a sharp breath. + +The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable amusement. + +"I can't," he responded, after a minute in which he had enjoyed his +humour to the full, "the train leaves at seven-ten and I've an +engagement at eight o'clock." + +"You'll break it, that's all." + +"But it wouldn't be polite--it's with a lady." + +"Then I'll break it for you," returned Ordway, starting toward the +door, "for I may presume, I suppose, that the lady is Miss Trend?" + +"Oh, come back, I say. Hang it all, don't get into a fury," protested +Wherry, clutching the other by the arm, and closing the door which he +had half opened. "Here, hold on a minute and let's talk things over +quietly. I told you, didn't I? that I wanted to be obliging." + +"Then you will go?" asked Ordway, in a milder tone. + +"Well, I'll think about it. I've a quick enough wit for little things, +but on serious matters my brain works slowly. In the first place now +didn't we promise each other that we'd play fair?" + +"But you haven't--that's why I came here." + +"You're dead wrong. I'm doing it this very minute. I'll keep my mouth +shut about you till Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me +back when I'm trying to live honest." + +"Honest!" exclaimed Ordway, and turned on his heel. + +"Well, I'd like to know what you call it, for if it isn't honesty, it +certainly isn't pleasure. My wife's dead, I swear it's a fact, and I +swear again that I don't mean the girl any harm. I was never so much +gone on a woman in my life, though a number of 'em have been pretty soft +on me. So you keep off and manage your election--or whatever it +is--while I go about my business. Great Scott! after all it ain't as if +a woman were a bank note, is it?" + +"The first question was mine. Will you leave to-day or will you not?" + +"And if I will not what are you going to do about it?" + +"As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you know." + +"Well, say I won't. What is your next move then?" + +"In that case I shall go straight to the girl's father after I leave +this room." + +"By Jove you will! And what will you do when you get there?" + +"I shall tell him that to the best of my belief you have a +wife--possibly several--now living." + +"Then you'll lie," said Wherry, dropping for the first time his +persuasive tone. + +"That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he +needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you." + +"And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?" + +"Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want." + +"And suppose he asks you--as he probably will--how in the devil it came +to be any business of yours?" + +For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open +window into the street below. + +"I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I +shall tell him the whole truth as I know it--about myself as well as +about you." + +"The deuce you will!" exclaimed Wherry. "It appears that you want to +take the whole job out of my hands now, doesn't it?" + +The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of +the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry +laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite +of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life +had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one? + +"I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the +question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that +idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you--I'll send you half my +salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job." + +Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink. + +"So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, wouldn't you?" he +inquired. + +Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned toward the door and laid +his hand upon the knob before he spoke. + +"Is it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?" he asked. + +"Well, I wouldn't if I were you," said Wherry, "but that's your affair. +On the whole I think that you'll pay more than your share of the price." + +"It's natural, I suppose, that you should want your revenge," returned +Ordway, without resentment, "but all the same I shall tell him as little +as possible about your past. What I shall say is that I have reason to +believe that your wife is still living." + +"One or more?" enquired Wherry, with a sneer. + +"One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my purpose." + +"Well, go ahead," rejoined Wherry, angrily, "but before you strike you'd +better be pretty sure you see a snake in the grass. I'd advise you for +your own sake to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me." + +"What?" cried Ordway, wheeling round, "do you mean she has refused you?" + +"Oh, ask her--ask her," retorted Wherry airily, as he turned back to the +whiskey bottle. + +In the street, a moment later, Ordway passed under the red flag, which, +inflated by the wind, swelled triumphantly above his head. From the +opposite sidewalk a man spoke to him; and then, turning, waved his +slouch hat enthusiastically toward the flag. "If he only knew," thought +Ordway, looking after him; and the words brought to his imagination what +disgrace in Tappahannock would mean in his life. As he passed the dim +vacancy of the warehouse he threw toward it a look which was almost one +of entreaty. "No, no, it can't be," he insisted, as if to reassure +himself, "it is impossible. How could it happen?" And seized by a sudden +rage against circumstances, he remembered the windy afternoon upon which +he had come for the first time to Tappahannock--the wide stretches of +broomsedge; the pale red road, which appeared to lead nowhere; his +violent hunger; and the Negro woman who had given him the cornbread at +the door of her cabin. A hundred years seemed to have passed since +then--no, not a hundred years as men count them, but a dissolution and +a resurrection. It was as if his personality--his whole inner structure +had dissolved and renewed itself again; and when he thought now of that +March afternoon it was with the visual distinctness that belongs to an +observer rather than to an actor. His point of view was detached, almost +remote. He saw himself from the outside alone--his clothes, his face, +even his gestures; and these things were as vivid to him as were the +Negro cabin, the red clay road, and the covered wagon that threw its +shadow on the path as it crawled by. In no way could he associate his +immediate personality either with the scene or with the man who had sat +on the pine bench ravenously eating the coarse food. At the moment it +seemed to him that he was released, not only from any spiritual bondage +to the past, but even from any physical connection with the man he had +been then. "What have I to do with Gus Wherry or with Daniel Ordway?" he +demanded. "Above all, what in heaven have I to do with Milly Trend?" As +he asked the question he flushed with resentment against the girl for +whom he was about to sacrifice all that he valued in his life. He +thought with disgust of her vanity, her shallowness, her insincerity; +and the course that he had planned showed in this sudden light as +utterly unreasonable. It struck him on the instant that in going to +Wherry he had been a fool. "Yes, I should have thought of that before. I +have been too hasty, for what, after all, have I to do with Milly +Trend?" + +With an effort he put the question aside, and in the emotional reaction +which followed, he felt that his spirit soared into the blue October +sky. Emily, looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never seen +him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly unreserved. When his game +of dominoes with Beverly was over, he followed the children out into the +orchard, where they were gathering apples into great straw hampers; and +as he stood under the fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish +laughter in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, even +his memories had dissolved and vanished into air. An irresponsible +happiness swelled in his heart while he watched the golden orchard grass +blown like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill. + +But when night fell the joy of the sunshine went from him, and it was +almost with a feeling of heaviness that he lit his lamp and sat down in +the chintz-covered chair under the faded sampler worked by Margaret, +aged nine. Without apparent cause or outward disturbance he had passed +from the exhilaration of the afternoon into a pensive, almost a +melancholy mood. The past, which had been so remote for several hours, +had leaped suddenly to life again--not only in his memory, but in every +fibre of his body as well as in every breath he drew. "No, I cannot +escape it, for is it not a part of me--it is I myself," he thought; and +he knew that he could no more free himself from his duty to Milly Trend +than he could tear the knowledge of her existence from his brain. "After +all, it is not Milly Trend," he added, "it is something larger, +stronger, far more vital than she." + +A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and fluttered blindly in the +circle of light which the lamp threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft +whirring of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the sound +entered into his thoughts and became a part of his reflections. "Will +the moth fall into the flame or will it escape?" he asked, feeling +himself powerless to avert the creature's fate. In some strange way his +own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that narrow circle of +light; and in the pitiless illumination that surrounded it, he saw not +only all that was passed, but all that was present as well as all that +was yet to come. At the same instant he saw his mother's face as she lay +dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen upon her lips; and the face +of Lydia when she had lowered a black veil at their last parting; and +the face of Alice, his daughter; and of the girl downstairs as he had +seen her through the gray twilight; and the face of the epileptic little +preacher, who had preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces +looked back at him he knew that the illumination in which his soul had +struggled so blindly was the light of love. "Yes, it is love," he +thought, "and that is the meaning of the circle of light into which I +have come out of the darkness." + +He looked up startled, for the white moth, after one last delirious +whirl of ecstasy, had dropped from the ceiling into the flame of the +lamp. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE TURN OF THE WHEEL + + +At eight o'clock the next morning Ordway entered Jasper Trend's gate, +and passed up the gravelled walk between borders of white and yellow +chrysanthemums. In a window on his right a canary was singing loudly in +a gilt cage; and a moment later, the maid invited him into a room which +seemed, as he entered it, to be filled with a jubilant burst of music. +As he waited here for the man he had come to see, he felt that, in spite +of his terrible purpose, he had found no place in Tappahannock so +cheerful as this long room flooded with sunshine, in the midst of which +the canary swung back and forth in his wire cage. The furniture was +crude enough, the colours of the rugs were unharmonious, the imitation +lace of the curtains was offensive to his eyes. Yet the room was made +almost attractive by the large windows which gave on the piazza, the +borders of chrysanthemums and the smoothly shaven plot of lawn. + +His back was turned toward the door when it opened and shut quickly, and +Jasper Trend came in, hastily swallowing his last mouthful of breakfast. + +"You wanted to see me, Mr. Smith, I understand," he said at once, +showing in his manner a mixture of curiosity and resentment. It was +evident at the first glance that even in his own house he was unable to +overcome the political antagonism of the man of little stature. The +smallest social amenity he would probably have regarded as a kind of +moral subterfuge. + +"I must ask you to overlook the intimate nature of my question," began +Ordway, in a voice which was so repressed that it sounded dull and +lifeless, "but I have heard that your daughter intends to marry Horatio +Brown. Is this true?" + +At the words Jasper, who had prepared himself for a political onslaught, +fell back a step or two and stood in the merciless sunlight, blinking at +his questioner with his little, watery, pale gray eyes. Each dull red +vein in his long nose became suddenly prominent. + +"Horatio Brown?" he repeated, "why, I thought you'd come about nothing +less than the nomination. What in the devil do you want anyway with +Horatio Brown. He can't vote in Tappahannock, can he?" + +"I'll answer that in time," replied Ordway, "my motive is more serious +than you can possibly realise--it is a question which involves your +daughter's happiness--perhaps her life." + +"Good Lord, is that so?" exclaimed Jasper, "I don't reckon you're sweet +on her yourself, are you?" + +Ordway's only reply was an impatient groan which sent the other +stumbling back against a jar of goldfish on the centre table. Though he +had come fully prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, he was unable to +control the repulsion aroused in him by the bleared eyes and sunken +mouth of the man before him. + +"Well, if you ain't," resumed Jasper presently, with a fresh outburst of +hilarity, "you're about the only male critter in Tappahannock that don't +turn his eyes sooner or later toward my door." + +"I've barely a speaking acquaintance with your daughter," returned +Ordway shortly, "but her reputation as a beauty is certainly very well +deserved." + +Mollified by the compliment, Jasper unbent so far as to make an abrupt, +jerky motion in the direction of a chair; but shaking his head, Ordway +put again bluntly the question he had asked upon the other's entrance. + +"Am I to understand seriously that she means to marry Brown?" he +demanded. + +Jasper twisted his scraggy neck nervously in his loose collar. "Lord, +how you do hear things!" he ejaculated. "Now, as far as I can see, thar +ain't a single word of truth in all that talk. Just between you and me I +don't believe my girl has had her mind on that fellow Brown more'n a +minute. I'm dead against it and that'll go a long way with her, you may +be sure. Why, only this morning she told me that if she had to choose +between the two of 'em, she'd stick to young Banks every time." + +With the words it seemed to Ordway that the sunshine became fairly +dazzling as it fell through the windows, while the song of the canary +went up rapturously like a paean. Only by the relief which flooded his +heart like warmth could he measure the extent of the ruin he had +escaped. Even Jasper Trend's face appeared no longer hideous to him, and +as he held out his hand, the exhilaration of his release lent a note +that was almost one of affection to his voice. + +"Don't let her do it--for God's sake don't let her do it," he said, and +an instant afterward he was out on the gravelled walk between the +borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums. + +At the gate Milly was standing with a letter in her hand, and when he +spoke to her, he watched her face change slowly to the colour of a +flower. Never had she appeared softer, prettier, more enticing in his +eyes, and he felt for the first time an understanding of the hopeless +subjection of Banks. + +"Oh, it's you, Mr. Smith!" she exclaimed, smiling and blushing as she +had smiled and blushed at Wherry the day before, "I was asking Harry +Banks yesterday what had become of you?" + +"What had become of me?" he repeated in surprise, while he drew back +quickly with his hand on the latch of the gate. + +"I hadn't seen you for so long," she answered, with a laugh which bore +less relation to humour than it did to pleasure. "You used to pass by +five times a day, and I got so accustomed to you that I really missed +you when you went away." + +"Well, I've been in the country all summer, though that hardly counts, +for you were out of town yourself." + +"Yes, I was out of town myself." She lingered over the words, and her +voice softened as she went on until it seemed to flow with the sweetness +of liquid honey, "but even when I am here, you never care to see me." + +"Do you think so?" he asked gaily, and the next instant he wondered why +the question had passed his lips before it had entered into his +thoughts, "the truth is that I know a good deal more about you than you +suspect," he added; "I have the honour, you see, to be the confidant of +Harry Banks." + +"Oh, Harry Banks!" she exclaimed indifferently, as she turned from the +gate, while Ordway opened it and passed out into the street. + +For the next day or two it seemed to him that the lightness of his heart +was reflected in the faces of those about him--that Baxter, Mrs. Brooke, +Emily, Beverly each appeared to move in response to some hidden spring +within himself. He felt no longer either Beverly's tediousness or Mrs. +Brooke's melancholy, for these early October mornings contained a +rapture which transfigured the people with whom he lived. + +With this unlooked for renewal of hope he threw himself eagerly into the +political fight for the control of Tappahannock. It was now Tuesday and +on Thursday evening he was to deliver his first speech in the town hall. +Already the preparations were made, already the flags were flying from +the galleries, and already Baxter had been trimmed for his public +appearance upon the platform. + +"By George, I believe the Major's right and it's the Ten Commandment +part that has done it," said the big man, settling his person with a +shake in the new clothes he had purchased for the occasion. "I reckon +this coat's all right, Smith, ain't it? My wife wouldn't let me come +out on the platform in those old clothes I've been wearing." + +"Oh, you're all right," returned Ordway, cheerfully--so cheerfully that +Baxter was struck afresh by the peculiar charm which belonged less to +manner than to temperament, "you're all right, old man, but it isn't +your clothes that make you so." + +"All the same I'll feel better when I get into my old suit again," said +Baxter, "I don't know how it is, but, somehow, I seem to have left +two-thirds of myself behind in those old clothes. I just wore these down +to show 'em off, but I shan't put 'em on again till Thursday." + +It was the closing hour at the warehouse, and after a few eager words on +the subject of the approaching meeting, Ordway left the office and went +out into the deserted building where the old Negro was sweeping the +floor with his twig broom. A moment later he was about to pass under the +archway, when a man, hurrying in from the street, ran straight into his +arms and then staggered back with a laugh of mirthless apology. + +"My God, Smith," said the tragic voice of Banks, "I'm half crazy and I +must have a word with you alone." + +Catching his arm Ordway drew him into the dim light of the warehouse, +until they reached the shelter of an old wagon standing unhitched +against the wall. The only sound which came to them here was the +scratching noise made by the twig broom on the rough planks of the +floor. + +"Speak now," said Ordway, while his heart sank as he looked into the +other's face, "It's quite safe--there's no one about but old Abraham." + +"I can't speak," returned Banks, preserving with an effort a decent +composure of his features, "but it's all up with me--it's worse than I +imagined, and there's nothing ahead of me but death." + +"I suppose it's small consolation to be told that you look unusually +healthy at the minute," replied Ordway, "but don't keep me guessing, +Banks. What's happened now?" + +"All her indifference--all her pretence of flirting was pure deception," +groaned the miserable Banks, "she wanted to throw dust, not only in my +eyes, but in Jasper's, also." + +"Why, he told me with his own lips that his daughter had given him to +understand that she preferred you to Brown." + +"And so she did give him to understand--so she did," affirmed Banks, in +despair, "but it was all a blind so that he wouldn't make trouble +between her and Brown. I tell you, Smith," he concluded, bringing his +clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, from which a shower of +dried mud was scattered into Ordway's face, "I tell you, I don't believe +women think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking a cocktail!" + +"But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? and when did you discover +it?" + +"That's the awful part, I'm coming to it." His voice gave out and he +swallowed a lump in his throat before he could go on. "Oh, Smith, +Smith, I declare, if it's the last word I speak, I believe she means to +run away with Brown this very evening!" + +"What?" cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. A +burning resentment, almost a repulsion swept over him, and he felt that +he could have spurned the girl's silly beauty if she had lain at his +feet. What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she should cost him, +a stranger to her, so great a price? + +"Tell me all," he said sharply, turning again to his companion. "How did +you hear it? Why do you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?" + +Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single large round teardrop +trickled slowly down his freckled nose. + +"I should never have suspected it," he answered, "but for Milly's old +black Mammy Delphy, who has lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt +Delphy came upon her this morning when she was packing her bag, and by +hook or crook, heaven knows how, she managed to get at the truth. Then +she came directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown worse than +the devil." + +"When did she come to you?" + +"A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight to you." + +Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at the face of it with a +wondering frown. + +"That must have been five o'clock," he said, "and it is now half past. +Shall I catch Milly, do you think, if I start at once?" + +"You?" cried Banks, "you mean that you will stop her?" + +"I mean that I must stop her. There is no question." + +As he spoke he had started quickly down the warehouse, scattering as he +walked, a pile of trash which the old Negro had swept together in the +centre of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with which he moved +that Banks, in spite of his frantic haste, could barely keep in step +with him as they passed into the street. Ordway's face had changed as if +from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks looked at it in the +afternoon light he was startled to find that it was the face of an old +man. The brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, and the gray +hair upon the temples had become suddenly more prominent than the dark +locks above. + +"Then you knew Brown before?" asked Banks, with an accession of courage, +as they slackened their pace with the beginning of the hill. + +"I knew him before--yes," replied Ordway, shortly. His reserve had +become not only a mask, but a coffin, and his companion had for a minute +a sensation that was almost uncanny as he walked by his side--as if he +were striving to keep pace uphill with a dead man. Banks had known him +to be silent, gloomy, uncommunicative before now, but he had never until +this instant seen that look of iron resolve which was too cold and still +to approach the heat of passion. Had he been furious Banks might have +shared his fury with him; had he shown bitterness of mood Banks might +have been bitter also; had he given way even to sardonic merriment, +Banks felt that it would have been possible to have feigned a mild +hilarity of manner; but before this swift, implacable pursuit of +something he could not comprehend, the wretched lover lost all +consciousness of the part which he himself must act, well or ill, in the +event to come. + +At Trend's gate Ordway stopped and looked at his companion with a smile +which appeared to throw an artificial light upon his drawn features. + +"Will you let me speak to her alone first," he asked, "for a few +minutes?" + +"I'll take a turn up the street then," returned Banks eagerly, still +panting from his hurried walk up the long hill. "She's in the room on +the right now," he added, "I can see her feeding the canary." + +Ordway nodded indifferently. "I shan't be long," he said, and going +inside the gate, passed deliberately up the walk and into the room where +Milly stood at the window with her mouth close against the wires of the +gilt cage. + +At his step on the threshold the girl turned quickly toward the door +with a fluttering movement. Surprise and disappointment battled for an +instant in her glance, and he gathered from his first look that he had +come at the moment when she was expecting Wherry. He noticed, too, that +in spite of the mild autumn weather, she wore a dark dress which was not +unsuitable for a long journey, and that her sailor hat, from which a +blue veil floated, lay on a chair in one corner. A deeper meaning had +entered into the shallow prettiness of her face, and he felt that she +had passed through some subtle change in which she had left her girlhood +behind her. For the first time it occurred to him that Milly Trend was +deserving not only of passion, but of sympathy. + +At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him his bit of cake, the +canary fluttered from his perch and uttered a sweet, short, questioning +note; and in Milly's face, as she came forward, there was something of +this birdlike, palpitating entreaty. + +"Oh, it is you, Mr. Smith," she said, "I did not hear your ring." + +"I didn't ring," responded Ordway, as he took her trembling outstretched +hand in which she still held the bit of sponge cake, "I saw you at the +window so I came straight in without sending word. What I have to say to +you is so important that I dared not lose a minute." + +"And it is about me?" asked Milly, with a quiver of her eyelids. + +"No, it is about someone else, though it concerns you in a measure. The +thing I have to tell you relates directly to a man whom you know as +Horatio Brown----" + +He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his meaning from his face +rather than from his words. + +"Then you know him?" she questioned, in a frightened whisper. + +"I know more of his life than I can tell you. It is sufficient to say +that to the best of my belief he has a wife now living--that he has been +married before this under different names to at least two living +women----" + +He stopped and put out his hand with an impulsive protecting gesture, +for the wounded vanity in the girl's face had pierced to his heart. +"Will you let me see your father?" he asked gently, "would it not be +better for me to speak to him instead of to you?" + +"No, no!" cried Milly sharply, "don't tell him--don't dare to tell +him--for he would believe it and it is a lie--it is a lie! I tell you it +is a lie!" + +"As God is my witness it is the truth," he answered, without resentment. + +"Then you shall accuse him to his face. He is coming in a little while, +and you shall accuse him before me----" + +She stopped breathlessly and the pity in his look made her wince sharply +and shrink away. With her movement the piece of sponge cake fell from +her loosened fingers and rolled on the floor at her feet. + +"But if it were true how could you know it?" she demanded. "No, it is +not true--I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" she repeated in a +passion of terror. + +At her excited voice the canary, swinging on his perch, broke suddenly +into an ecstasy of song, and Milly's words, when she spoke again, were +drowned in the liquid sweetness that flowed from the cage. For a minute +Ordway stood in silence waiting for the music to end, while he watched +the angry, helpless tremor of the girl's outstretched hands. + +"Will you promise me to wait?" he asked, raising his voice in the +effort to be heard, "will you promise me to wait at least until you find +out the truth or the falsehood of what I tell you?" + +"But I don't believe it," repeated Milly in the stubborn misery of +hopeless innocence. + +"Ask yourself, then, what possible reason I could have in coming to +you--except to save you?" + +"Wait!" cried the girl angrily, "I can't hear--wait!" Picking up a shawl +from a chair, she flung it with an impatient gesture over the cage, and +turning immediately from the extinguished bird, took up his sentence +where he had broken off. + +"To save me?" she repeated, "you mean from marriage?" + +"From a marriage that would be no marriage. Am I right in suspecting +that you meant to go away with him to-night?" + +She bowed her head--all the violent spirit gone out of her. "I was ready +to go to-night," she answered, like a child that has been hurt and is +still afraid of what is to come. + +"And you promise me that you will give it up?" he went on gently. + +"I don't know--I can't tell--I must see him first," she said, and burst +suddenly into tears, hiding her face in her hands with a pathetic, +shamed gesture. + +Turning away for a moment, he stood blankly staring down into the jar of +goldfish. Then, as her sobs grew presently beyond her control, he came +back to the chair into which she had dropped and looked with moist eyes +at her bowed fair head. + +"Before I leave you, will you promise me to give him up?--to forget him +if it be possible?" he asked. + +"But it is not possible," she flashed back, lifting her wet blue eyes to +his. "How dare you come to me with a tale like this? Oh, I hate you! I +shall always hate you! Will you go?" + +Before her helpless fury he felt a compassion stronger even than the +emotion her tears had aroused. + +"It is not fair that I should tell you so much and not tell you all, +Milly," he said. "It is not fair that in accusing the man you love, I +should still try to shield myself. I know that these things are true +because Brown's--Wherry is his name--trial took place immediately before +mine--and we saw each other during the terms which we served in prison." + +Then before she could move or speak he turned from her and went rapidly +from the house and out into the walk. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AT THE CROSS-ROADS + + +At the corner he looked down the street and saw the red flag still +swelling in the wind. A man spoke to him; the face was familiar, but he +could not recall the name, until after a few congratulatory words about +his political prospects, he remembered, with a start, that he was +talking to Major Leary. + +"You may count on a clean sweep of votes, Mr. Smith--there's no doubt of +it," said the Major, beaming with his amiable fiery face. + +"There's no doubt of it?" repeated Ordway, while he regarded the +enthusiastic politician with a perplexed and troubled look. The Major, +the political campaign, the waving red flag and the noisy little town +had receded to a blank distance from the moment in which he stood. He +wondered vaguely what connection he--Daniel Ordway--had ever held with +these things? + +Yet his smile was still bright and cheerful as he turned away, with an +apologetic word, and passed on into the road to Cedar Hill. The impulse +which had driven him breathlessly into Milly's presence had yielded now +to the mere dull apathy of indifference, and it mattered to him no +longer whether the girl was saved or lost in the end. He thought of her +vanity, of her trivial pink and white prettiness with a return of his +old irritation. Well, he had done his part--his temperament had ruled +him at the decisive instant, and the ensuing consequences of his +confession had ceased now to affect or even to interest him. Then, with +something like a pang of thought, he remembered that he had with his own +hand burned his bridges behind him, and that there was no way out for +him except the straight way which led over the body of Daniel Smith. His +existence in Tappahannock was now finished; his victory had ended in +flight; and there was nothing ahead of him except the new beginning and +the old ending. A fresh start and then what? And afterward the few years +of quiet again and at the end the expected, the inevitable recurrence of +the disgrace which he had begun to recognise as some impersonal natural +law that followed upon his footsteps. As the future gradually unrolled +itself in his imagination, he felt that his heart sickened in the clutch +of the terror that had sprung upon him. Was there to be no end anywhere? +Could no place, no name even afford him a permanent shelter? Looking +ahead now he saw himself as an old man wandering from refuge to refuge, +pursued always by the resurrected corpse of his old life, which though +it contained neither his spirit nor his will, still triumphed by the +awful semblance it bore his outward body. Was he to be always alone? Was +there no spot in his future where he could possess himself in reality of +the freedom which was his in name? + +Without seeing, without hearing, he went almost deliriously where his +road led him, for the terror in his thought had become a living presence +before which his spirit rather than his body moved. He walked rapidly, +yet it seemed to him that his feet were inert and lifeless weights which +were dragged forward by the invincible torrent of his will. In the +swiftness of his flight, he felt that he was a conscious soul chained to +a body that was a corpse. + +When he came at last to the place where the two roads crossed before the +ruined gate, he stopped short, while the tumult died gradually in his +brain, and the agony through which he had just passed appeared as a +frenzy to his saner judgment. Looking up a moment later as he was about +to enter the avenue, he saw that Emily Brooke was walking toward him +under the heavy shadow of the cedars. In the first movement of her +surprise the mask which she had always worn in his presence dropped from +her face, and as she stepped from the gloom into the sunlight, he felt +that the sweetness of her look bent over him like protecting wings. For +a single instant, as her eyes gazed wide open into his, he saw reflected +in them the visions from which his soul had shrunk back formerly +abashed. Nothing had changed in her since yesterday; she was outwardly +the same brave and simple woman, with her radiant smile, her blown hair, +and her roughened hands. Yet because of that revealing look she appeared +no longer human in his eyes, but something almost unearthly bright and +distant, like the sunshine he had followed so often through the bars of +his prison cell. + +"You are suffering," she said, when he would have passed on, and he felt +that she had divined without words all that he could not utter. + +"Don't pity me," he answered, smiling at her question, because to smile +had become for him the easier part of habit, "I'm not above liking pity, +but it isn't exactly what I need. And besides, I told you once, you +know, that whatever happened to me would always be the outcome of my own +failure." + +"Yes, I remember you told me so--but does that make it any easier to +bear?" + +"Easier to bear?--no, but I don't think the chief end of things is to be +easy, do you?" + +She shook her head. "But isn't our chief end just to make them easier +for others?" she asked. + +The pity in her face was like an illumination, and her features were +enkindled with a beauty he had never found in them before. It was the +elemental motherhood in her nature that he had touched; and he felt as +he watched her that this ecstasy of tenderness swelled in her bosom and +overflowed her lips. Confession to her would have been for him the +supreme luxury of despair; but because his heart strained toward her, he +drew back and turned his eyes to the road, which stretched solitary and +dim beyond them. + +"Well, I suppose, I've got what I deserved," he said, "the price that a +man pays for being a fool, he pays but once and that is his whole life +long." + +"But it ought not to be so--it is not just," she answered. + +"Just?" he repeated, bitterly, "no, I dare say, it isn't--but the facts +of life don't trouble themselves about justice, do they? Is it just, for +instance, that you should slave your youth away on your brother's farm, +while he sits and plays dominoes on the porch? Is it just that with the +instinct for luxury in your blood you should be condemned to a poverty +so terrible as this?" He reached out and touched the little red hand +hanging at her side. "Is this just?" he questioned with an ironical +smile. + +"There is some reason for it," she answered bravely, "I feel it though I +cannot see it." + +"Some reason--yes, but that reason is not justice--not the little human +justice that we can call by the name. It's something infinitely bigger +than any idea that we have known." + +"I can trust," she said softly, "but I can't reason." + +"Don't reason--don't even attempt to--let God run his world. Do you +think if we didn't believe in the meaning--in the purpose of it all that +you and I could stand together here like this? It's because we believe +that we can be happy even while we suffer." + +"Then you will be happy again--to-morrow?" + +"Surely. Perhaps to-night--who knows? I've had a shock. My brain is +whirling and I can't see straight. In a little while it will be over and +I shall steady down." + +"But I should like to help you now while it lasts," she said. + +"You are helping me--it's a mercy that you stand there and listen to my +wild talk. Do you know I was telling myself as I came along the road +just now that there wasn't a living soul to whom I should dare to say +that I was in a quake of fear." + +"A quake of fear?" She looked at him with swimming eyes, and by that +look he saw that she loved him. If he had stretched out his arms, he +knew that the passion of her sorrow would have swept her to his breast; +and he felt that every fibre of his starved soul and body cried out for +the divine food that she offered. At the moment he did not stop to ask +himself whether it was his flesh or his spirit that hungered after her, +for his whole being had dissolved into the longing which drew him as +with cords to her lips. All he understood at the instant was that in his +terrible loneliness love had been offered him and he must refuse the +gift. A thought passed like a drawn sword between them, and he saw in +his imagination Lydia lowering her black veil at their last parting. + +"It's a kind of cowardliness, I suppose," he went on with his eyes on +the ground, "but I was thinking that minute how greatly I needed help +and how much--how very much--you had given me. If I ever learn really to +live it will be because of you--because of your wonderful courage, your +unfailing sweetness----" + +For the first time he saw in her face the consciousness of her own +unfulfilment. "If you only knew how often I wonder if it is worth +while," she answered. + +At this he made a sudden start forward and then checked himself. "The +chief tragedy in my life," he said, "is that I knew you twenty years too +late." + +Until his words were uttered he did not realise how much of a confession +he had put into them; and with the discovery he watched her face bloom +softly like a flower that opens its closed petals. + +"If I could have helped you then, why cannot I help you now?" she asked, +while the innocence in her look humbled him more than a divine fury +would have done. The larger his ideal of her became, the keener grew his +sense of failure--of bondage to that dead past from which he could never +release his living body. As he looked at her now he realised that the +supreme thing he had missed in life was the control of the power which +lies in simple goodness; and the purity of Lydia appeared to him as a +shining blank--an unwritten surface beside the passionate humanity in +the heart of the girl before him. + +"You will hear things from others which I can't tell you and then you +will understand," he said. + +"I shall hear nothing that will make me cease to believe in you," she +answered. + +"You will hear that I have done wrong in my life and you will understand +that if I have suffered it has been by my own fault." + +She met his gaze without wavering. + +"I shall still believe in you," she responded. + +Her eyes were on his face and she saw that the wan light of the +afterglow revealed the angularities of his brow and chin and filled in +with shadows the deeper hollows in his temples. The smile on his lips +was almost ironical as he answered. + +"Those from whom I might have expected loyalty, fell away from me--my +father, my wife, my children----" + +"To believe against belief is a woman's virtue," she responded, "but at +least it is a virtue." + +"You mean that you would have been my friend through everything?" he +asked quickly, half blinded by the ideal which seemed to flash so +closely to his eyelids. + +There was scorn in her voice as she answered: "If I had been your friend +once--yes, a thousand times." + +Before his inward vision there rose the conception of a love that would +have pardoned, blessed and purified. Bending his head he kissed her +little cold hand once and let it fall. Then without looking again into +her face, he entered the avenue and went on alone. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +BETWEEN MAN AND MAN + + +When he entered Tappahannock the following morning, he saw with surprise +that the red flag was still flying above the street. As he looked into +the face of the first man he met, he felt a sensation of relief, almost +of gratitude because he received merely the usual morning greeting; and +the instant afterward he flinched and hesitated before replying to the +friendly nod of the harness-maker, stretching himself under the hanging +bridles in the door of the little shop. + +Entering the warehouse he glanced nervously down the deserted building, +and when a moment later he opened the door into Baxter's office, he grew +hot at the familiar sight of the local newspaper in his employer's +hands. The years had divided suddenly and he saw again the crowd in +Fifth Avenue as he walked home on the morning of his arrest. He smelt +the smoke of the great city; he heard the sharp street cries around him; +and he pushed aside the fading violets offered him by the crippled +flower seller at the corner. He even remembered, without effort, the +particular bit of scandal retailed to him over a cigar by the club wit +who had joined him. All his sensations to-day were what they had been +then, only now his consciousness was less acute, as if the edge of his +perceptions had been blunted by the force of the former blow. + +"Howdy, Smith, is that you?" remarked Baxter, crushing the top of the +paper beneath the weight of his chin as he looked over it at Ordway. +"Did you meet Banks as you came in? He was in here asking for you not +two minutes ago." + +"Banks? No, I didn't see him. What did he want?" As he put the ordinary +question the dull level of his voice surprised him. + +"Oh, he didn't tell me," returned Baxter, "but it was some love-lorn +whining he had to do, I reckon. Now what I can't understand is how a man +can be so narrow sighted as only to see one woman out of the whole +bouncing sex of 'em. It would take more than a refusal--it would take a +downright football to knock out my heart. Good Lord! in this world of +fine an' middling fine women, the trouble ain't to get the one you want, +but to keep on wanting the one you get. I've done my little share of +observing in my time, and what I've learned from it is that the biggest +trial a man can have is not to want another man's wife, but to _want_ to +want his own." + +A knock at the door called Ordway out into the warehouse, where he +yielded himself immediately to the persuasive voice of Banks. + +"Come back here a minute, will you, out of hearing? I tried to get to +you last night and couldn't." + +"Has anything gone wrong?" inquired Ordway, following the other to a +safe distance from Baxter's office. At first he had hardly had courage +to lift his eyes to Banks' face, but reassured by the quiet opening of +the conversation, he stood now with his sad gaze fixed on the beaming +freckled features of the melancholy lover. + +"I only wanted to tell you that she didn't go," whispered Banks, rolling +his prominent eyes into the dusky recesses of the warehouse, "she's ill +in bed to-day, and Brown left town on the eight-forty-five this +morning." + +"So he's gone for good!" exclaimed Ordway, and drew a long breath as if +he had been released from an emotional tension which had suspended, +while it lasted, the ordinary movement of life. Since he had prepared +himself for the worst was it possible that his terror of yesterday would +scatter to-day like the delusions of an unsettled brain? Had Wherry held +back in mercy or had Milly Trend? Even if he were spared now must he +still live on here unaware how widely--or how pitifully--his secret was +known? Would this ceaseless dread of discovery prove again, as it had +proved in the past, more terrible even than the discovery itself? Would +he be able to look fearlessly at Milly Trend again?--at Baxter? at +Banks? at Emily? + +"Well, I've got to thank you for it, Smith?" said Banks. "How you +stopped it, I don't know for the life of me, but stop it you did." + +The cheerful selfishness in such rejoicing struck Ordway even in the +midst of his own bitter musing. Though Banks adored Milly, soul and +body, he was frankly jubilant over the tragic ending of her short +romance. + +"I hope there's little danger of its beginning anew," Ordway remarked +presently, with less sympathy than he would have shown his friend twelve +hours before. + +"I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me what you said to her?" inquired +Banks, his customary awe of his companion swept away in the momentary +swing of his elation. + +"No, I shouldn't like to tell you," returned Ordway quietly. + +"Then it's all right, of course, and I'll be off to drape the town hall +in bunting for to-morrow night. We're going to make the biggest +political display for you that Tappahannock has ever seen." + +At the instant Ordway was hardly conscious of the immensity of his +relief, but some hours later, after the early closing of the warehouse, +when he walked slowly back along the road to Cedar Hill, it seemed to +him that his life had settled again into its quiet monotonous spaces. +The peaceful fields on either side, with their short crop of +live-ever-lasting, in which a few lonely sheep were browsing, appeared +to him now as a part of the inward breadth and calm of the years that he +had spent in Tappahannock. + +In the loneliness of the road he could tell himself that the fear of Gus +Wherry was gone for a time at least, yet the next day upon going into +town he was aware of the same nervous shrinking from the people he +passed, from the planters hanging about the warehouse, from Baxter +buried behind his local newspaper. + +"They've got a piece as long as your arm about you in the Tappahannock +_Herald_, Smith," cried Baxter, chuckling; and Ordway felt himself +redden painfully with apprehension. Not until the evening, when he came +out upon the platform under the floating buntings in the town hall, did +he regain entirely the self-possession which he had lost in the presence +of Milly Trend. + +In its white and red decorations, with the extravagant glare of its +gas-jets, the hall had assumed almost a festive appearance; and as +Ordway glanced at the crowded benches and doorways, he forgot the +trivial political purpose he was to serve, in the more human relation in +which he stood to the men who had gathered to hear him speak. These men +were his friends, and if they believed in him he felt a triumphant +conviction that they had seen their belief justified day by day, hour by +hour, since he had come among them. In the crowd of faces before him, he +recognised, here and there, workingmen whom he had helped--operatives in +Jasper Trend's cotton mills, or in the smaller factories which combined +with the larger to create the political situation in Tappahannock. +Closer at hand he saw the shining red face of Major Leary; the +affectionate freckled face of Banks; the massive benevolent face of +Baxter. As he looked at them an emotion which was almost one of love +stirred in his breast, and he felt the words he had prepared dissolve +and fade from his memory to reunite in an appeal of which he had not +thought until this minute. There was something, he knew now, for him to +say to-night--something so infinitely large that he could utter it only +because it rose like love or sorrow to his lips. Of all the solemn +moments when he had stood before these men, with his open Bible, in the +green field or in the little grove of pines, there was none so solemn, +he felt, as the approaching instant in which he would speak to them no +longer as a man to children, but as a man to men. + +On the stage before him Baxter was addressing the house, his soft, +persuasive voice mingling with a sympathetic murmur from the floor. The +applause which had broken out at Ordway's entrance had not yet died +away, and with each mention of his name, with each allusion to his +services to Tappahannock, it burst forth again, enthusiastic, +irrepressible, overwhelming. Never before, it seemed to him, sitting +there on the platform with his roughened hands crossed on his knees, had +he felt himself to be so intimately a part of the community in which he +lived. Never before--not even when he had started this man in life, had +bought off that one's mortgage or had helped another to struggle free of +drink, had he come quite so near to the pathetic individual lives that +compose the mass. They loved him, they believed in him, and they were +justified! At the moment it seemed to him nothing--less than +nothing--that they should make him Mayor of Tappahannock. In this one +instant of understanding they had given him more than any office--than +any honour. + +While he sat there outwardly so still, so confident of his success, it +seemed to him that in the exhilaration of the hour he was possessed of a +new and singularly penetrating insight into life. Not only did he see +further and deeper than he had ever seen before, but he looked beyond +the beginning of things into the causes and beyond the ending of them +into the results. He saw himself and why he was himself as clearly as he +saw his sin and why he had sinned. Out of their obscurity his father and +his mother returned to him, and as he met the bitter ironical smile of +the one and the curved black brows and red, half open mouth of the +other, he knew himself to be equally the child of each, for he +understood at last why he was a mixture of strength and weakness, of +gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and compassion. His short, troubled +childhood rushed through his thoughts, and with that swiftness of memory +which comes so often in tragic moments, he lived over again--not +separately and in successive instants--but fully, vitally, and in all +the freshness of experience, the three events which he saw now, in +looking back, as the milestones upon his road. Again he saw his mother +as she lay in her coffin, with her curved black brows and half open +mouth frozen into a joyous look, and in that single fleeting instant he +passed through his meeting with the convict at the wayside station, and +through the long suspended minutes when he had waited in the Stock +Exchange for the rise in the market which did not come. And these things +appeared to him, not as detached and obscure remnants of his past, but +clear and delicate and vivid as if they were projected in living colours +against the illumination of his mind. They were there not to bewilder, +but to make plain; not to accuse, but to vindicate. "Everything is clear +to me now and I see it all," he thought, "and if I can only keep this +penetration of vision nothing will be harder to-morrow than it is +to-night." In his whole life there was not an incident too small for him +to remember it and to feel that it was significant of all the rest; and +he knew that if he could have seen from the beginning as clearly as he +saw to-night, his past would not have been merely different, it would +have been entirely another than his own. + +Baxter had stopped, and turning with an embarrassed upheaval of his +whole body, he spoke to Ordway, who rose at his words and came slowly +forward to the centre of the stage. A hoarse murmur, followed by a +tumult of shouts, greeted him, while he stood for a moment looking +silently among those upturned faces for the faces of the men to whom he +must speak. "That one will listen because I nursed him back to life, and +that one because I brought him out of ruin--and that one and that one--" +He knew them each by name, and as his gaze travelled from man to man he +felt that he was seeking a refuge from some impending evil in the +shelter of the good deeds that he had done. + +Though he held a paper in his hand, he did not look at it, for he had +found his words in that instant of illumination when, seated upon the +stage, he had seen the meaning of his whole life made plain. The present +event and the issue of it no longer concerned him; he had ceased to +fear, even to shrink from the punishment that was yet to come. In the +completeness with which he yielded himself to the moment, he felt that +he was possessed of the calm, almost of the power of necessity; and he +experienced suddenly the sensation of being lifted and swept forward on +one of the high waves of life. He spoke rapidly, without effort, almost +without consciousness of the words he uttered, until it seemed to him +presently that it was the torrent of his speech which carried him +outward and upward with that strange sense of lightness, of security. +And this lightness, this security belonged not to him, but to some +outside current of being. + + * * * * * + +His speech was over, and he had spoken to these factory workers as no +man had spoken before him in Tappahannock. With his last word the +silence had held tight and strained for a minute, and then the grateful +faces pressed round him and the ringing cheers passed through the open +windows out into the street. His body was still trembling, but as he +stood there with his sparkling blue eyes on the house, he looked gay and +boyish. He had made his mark, he had spoken his best speech, and he had +touched not merely the factory toilers in Tappahannock, but that common +pulse of feeling in which all humanity is made one. Then the next +instant, while he still waited, he was aware of a new movement upon the +platform behind him, and a man came forward and stopped short under the +gas jet, which threw a flickering yellow light upon his face. Though he +had seen him but once, he recognized him instantly as the short, +long-nosed, irascible manager of the cotton mills, and with the first +glance into his face he had heard already the unspoken question and the +reply. + +"May I ask you, Mr. Smith," began the little man, suddenly, "if you can +prove your right to vote or to hold office in Virginia?" + +Ordway's gaze passed beyond him to rest upon Baxter and Major Leary, who +sat close together, genial, elated, rather thirsty. At the moment he +felt sorry for Baxter--not for himself. + +"No," he answered with a smile which threw a humorous light upon the +question, "I cannot--can you prove yours?" + +The little man cleared his throat with a sniffling sound, and when he +spoke again it was in a high nasal voice, as if he had become suddenly +very excited or very angry. + +"Is your name Daniel Smith?" he asked, with a short laugh. + +The question was out at last and the silence in which Ordway stood was +like the suspension between thought and thought. All at once he found +himself wondering why he had lived in hourly terror of this instant, +for now that it was upon him, he saw that it was no more tragic, no less +commonplace, than the most ordinary instant of his life. As in the past +his courage had revived in him with the first need of decisive action, +so he felt it revive now, and lifting his head, he looked straight into +the angry, little eyes of the man who waited, under the yellow gaslight, +on the platform before him. + +"My name," he answered, still smiling, "is Daniel Ordway." + +There was no confusion in his mind, no anxiety, no resentment. Instead +the wonderful brightness of a moment ago still shone in his thoughts, +and while he appeared to rest his sparkling gaze on the face of his +questioner, he was seeing, in reality, the road by which he had come to +Tappahannock, and at the beginning of the road the prison, and beyond +the prison the whole of his past life. + +"Did you serve a term in prison before you came here?" + +"Yes." + +"Were you tried and convicted in New York?" + +"Yes." + +"Were you guilty?" + +Looking over the head of the little man, Ordway's gaze travelled slowly +across the upturned faces upon the floor of the house. Hardly a man +passed under his look whom he had not assisted once at least in the hour +of his need. "I saved that one from drink," he thought almost joyfully, +"that one from beggary--I stood side by side with that other in the +hour of his shame----" + +"Were you guilty?" repeated the high nasal voice in his ear. + +His gaze came quickly back, and as it passed over the head of Baxter, he +was conscious again of a throb of pity. + +"Yes," he answered for the last time. Then, while the silence lasted, he +turned from the platform and went out of the hall into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN + + +He walked rapidly to the end of the street, and then slackened his pace +almost unconsciously as he turned into the country road. The night had +closed in a thick black curtain over the landscape, and the windows of +the Negroes' cabins burned like little still red flames along the +horizon. Straight ahead the road was visible as a pale, curving streak +across the darkness. + +A farmer, carrying a lantern, came down the path leading from the +fields, and hearing Ordway's footsteps in the road, flashed the light +suddenly into his face. Upon recognition there followed a cheerful +"good-night!" and the offer of the use of the lantern to Cedar Hill. +"It's a black night and you'll likely have trouble in keeping straight. +I've been to look after a sick cow, but I can feel my way up to the +house in two minutes." + +"Thank you," returned Ordway, smiling as the light shone full in his +face, "but my feet are accustomed to the road." + +He passed on, while the farmer turned at the gate by the roadside, to +shout cheerfully after him: "Well, good-night--Mayor!" + +The gate closed quickly, and the ray of the lantern darted like a pale +yellow moth across the grass. + +As Ordway went on it seemed to him that the darkness became tangible, +enveloping--that he had to fight his way through it presently as through +water. The little red flames danced along the horizon until he wondered +if they were burning only in his imagination. He felt tired and dazed as +if his body had been beaten into insensibility, but the hour through +which he had just passed appeared to have left merely a fading +impression upon his brain. Not only had he ceased to care, he had ceased +to think of it. When he tried now to recall the manager of the cotton +mills, it was to remember, with aversion, his angry little eyes, his +high nasal voice, and the wart upon the end of his long nose. At the +instant these physical details were the only associations which the +man's name presented to his thoughts. The rest was something so +insignificant that it had escaped his memory. He felt in a vague way +that he was sorry for Baxter, yet this very feeling of sympathy bored +and annoyed him. It was plainly ridiculous to be sorry for a person as +rich, as fat, as well fed as his employer. Wherever he looked the little +red flames flickered and waved in the fields, and when he lifted his +eyes to the dark sky, he saw them come and go in short, scintillant +flashes, like fire struck from an anvil. They were in his brain, he +supposed, after all, and so was this tangible darkness, and so, too, was +this indescribable delicacy and lightness with which he moved. +Everything was in his brain, even his ridiculous pity for Baxter and the +angry-eyed little manager with the wart on his long nose. He could see +these things distinctly, though he had forgotten everything that had +been so clear to him while he stood on the stage of the town hall. His +past life and the prison and even the illumination in which he had +remembered them so vividly were obscured now as if they, too, had been +received into the tangible darkness. + +From the road behind him the sound of footsteps reached him suddenly, +and he quickened his pace with an impulse, rather than a determination +of flight. But the faster he walked the faster came the even beat of the +footsteps, now rising, now falling with a rhythmic regularity in the +dust of the road. Once he glanced back, but he could see nothing because +of the encompassing blackness, and in the instant of his delay it seemed +to him that the pursuit gained steadily upon him, still moving with the +regular muffled beat of the footsteps in the thick dust. A horror of +recognition had come over him, and as he walked on breathlessly, now +almost running, it occurred to him, like an inspiration, that he might +drop aside into the fields and so let his pursuer pass on ahead. The +next instant he realised that the darkness could not conceal the abrupt +pause of his flight--that as those approaching footsteps fell on his +ears, so must the sound of his fall on the ears of the man behind him. +Then a voice called his name, and he stopped short, and stood, trembling +from head to foot, by the side of the road. + +"Smith!" cried the voice, "if it's you, Smith, for God's sake stop a +minute!" + +"Yes, it's I," he answered, waiting, and a moment afterward the hand of +Banks reached out of the night and clasped his arm. + +"Hold on," said Banks, breathing hard, "I'm all blown." + +His laboured breath came with a struggling violence that died gradually +away, but while it lasted the strain of the meeting, the awkwardness of +the emotional crisis, seemed suddenly put off--suspended. Now in the +silence the tension became so great that, drawing slightly away from the +detaining hold, Ordway was about to resume his walk. At his first +movement, however, Banks clung the more firmly to his arm. "Oh, damn it, +Smith!" he burst out, and with the exclamation Ordway felt that the +touch of flesh and blood had reached to the terrible loneliness in which +he stood. In a single oath Banks had uttered the unutterable spirit of +prayer. + +"You followed me?" asked Ordway quietly, while the illusions of the +flight, the physical delicacy and lightness, the tangible darkness, the +little red flames in the fields, departed from him. With the first hand +that was laid on his own, his nature swung back into balance, and he +felt that he possessed at the moment a sanity that was almost sublime. + +"As soon as I could get out I came. There was such a crush," said Banks, +"I thought I'd catch up with you at once, but it was so black I couldn't +see my hand before me. In a little while I heard footsteps, so I kept +straight on." + +"I wish you hadn't, Banks." + +"But I had to." His usually cheerful voice sounded hoarse and throaty. +"I ain't much of a chap at words, Smith, you know that, but I want just +to say that you're the best friend I ever had, and I haven't forgot +it--I haven't forgot it," he repeated, and blew his nose. "Nothing that +that darn fool of a manager said to-night can come between you and me," +he went on laboriously after a minute. "If you ever want my help, by +thunder, I'll go to hell and back again for you without a word." + +Stretching out his free hand Ordway laid it upon his friend's shoulder. + +"You're a first-rate chap, Banks," he said cheerfully, at which a loud +sob burst from Banks, who sought to disguise it the instant afterward in +a violent cough. + +"You're a first-rate chap," repeated Ordway gently, "and I'm glad, in +spite of what I said, that you came after me just now. I'm going away +to-morrow, you know, and it's probable that I shan't see you again." + +"But won't you stay on in Tappahannock? In two weeks all this will blow +over and things will be just what they were before." + +Ordway shook his head, a movement which Banks felt, though he did not +see it. + +"No, I'll go away, it's best," he answered, and though his voice had +dropped to a dull level there was still a cheerful sound to it, "I'll go +away and begin again in a new place." + +"Then I'll go, too," said Banks. + +"What! and leave Milly? No, you won't come. Banks, you'll stay here." + +"But I'll see you sometimes, shan't I?" + +"Perhaps?--that's likely, isn't it?" + +"Yes, that's likely," repeated Banks, and fell silent from sheer weight +of sorrow. "At least you'll let me go with you to the station?" he said +at last, after a long pause in which he had been visited by one of those +acute flashes of sympathy which are to the heart what intuition is to +the intellect. + +"Why, of course," responded Ordway, more touched by the simple request +than he had been even by the greater loyalty. "You may do that, Banks, +and I'll thank you for it. And now go back to Tappahannock," he added, +"I must take the midday train and there are a few preparations I've +still to make." + +"But where will you go?" demanded Banks, swinging round again after he +had turned from him. + +"Where?" repeated Ordway blankly, and he added indifferently, "I hadn't +thought." + +"The midday train goes west," said Banks. + +"Then, I'll go west. It doesn't matter." + +Banks had already started off, when turning back suddenly, he caught +Ordway's hand and wrung it in a grip that hurt. Then without speaking +again, he hurried breathlessly in the direction from which he had come. + +A few steps beyond the cross-roads Ordway saw through the heavy foliage +the light in the dining-room at Cedar Hill. Then as he entered the +avenue, he lost sight of it again, until he had rounded the curve that +swept up to the front porch. At his knock Emily opened the door, with a +lamp held in her hand, and he saw her face, surrounded by dim waves of +hair, shining pale and transparent in the glimmering circle of light. As +he followed her into the dining-room, he realised that after the family +had gone upstairs to bed, she had sat at her sewing under the lamp and +waited for his knock. At the knowledge a sense of comfort, of homeliness +came over him, and he felt all at once that his misery was not so great +as he had believed it to be a moment ago. + +"May I get you something?" she asked, placing the lamp upon the table +and lowering the wick that the flame might not shine on his pallid and +haggard face. + +He shook his head; then as she turned from him toward the hearth, he +followed her and stood looking down at the smouldering remains of a wood +fire. Her work-basket and a pile of white ruffles which she had been +hemming were on the table, but moved by a feeling of their utter +triviality in the midst of a tragedy she vaguely understood, she swept +them hurriedly into a chair, and came over to lay her hand upon his arm. + +"What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" she asked. Taking her hand from his +sleeve, he held it for an instant in his grasp, as if the pressure of +her throbbing palm against his revived some living current under the +outer deadness that enveloped him. + +"I am going away from Tappahannock to-morrow, Emily," he said. + +"To-morrow?" she repeated, and laid her free hand upon his shoulder with +a soothing, motherly gesture--a gesture which changed their spiritual +relations to those of a woman and a child. + +"A man asked me three questions to-night," he went on quietly, yet in a +voice which seemed to feel a pang in every word it uttered. "He asked me +if my name was Daniel Smith, and I answered--no." + +As he hesitated, she lifted her face and smiled at him, with a smile +which he knew to be the one expression of love, of comprehension, that +she could offer. It was a smile which a mother might have bent upon a +child that was about to pass under the surgeon's knife, and it differed +from tears only in that it offered courage and not weakness. + +"He asked me if I had been in prison before I came to Tappahannock--and +I answered--yes." + +His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting his gaze from her hands +he looked straight into her wide-open eyes. The smile which she had +turned to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen there in the +cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were the only things about her which +seemed alive, and they appeared to him now not as eyes but as thoughts +made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed the hand which +enclosed her own. + +"I still believe," she said, and looked into his face. + +"But it is true," he replied slowly. + +"But it is not the whole truth," she answered, "and for that reason it +is half a lie." + +"Yes, it is not the whole truth," he repeated, in his effort to catch +something of her bright courage. + +"Why should they judge you by that and by nothing else?" she demanded +with passion. "If that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock true +also?" + +"To you--to you," he answered, "but to-morrow everything will be +forgotten about me except the fact that because I had been in prison, I +have lived a lie." + +"You are wrong--oh, believe me, you are wrong," she said softly, while +her tears broke forth and streamed down her white face. + +"No," he returned patiently, as if weighing her words in his thoughts, +"I am right, and my life here is wasted now from the day I came. All +that I do from this moment will be useless. I must go away." + +"But where?" she questioned passionately, as Banks had questioned before +her. + +"Where?" he echoed, "I don't know--anywhere. The midday train goes +west." + +"And what will you do in the new place?" she asked through her tears. + +He shook his head as if the question hardly concerned him. + +"I shall begin again," he answered indifferently at last. + +She was turning hopelessly from him, when her eyes fell upon a slip of +yellow paper which Beverly had placed under a vase on the mantel, and +drawing it out, she glanced at the address before giving it into +Ordway's hands. + +"This must have come for you in the afternoon," she said, "I did not see +it." + +Taking the telegram from her, he opened it slowly, and read the words +twice over. + + "Your father died last night. Will you come home? + + "RICHARD ORDWAY." + + + + +BOOK THIRD + +THE LARGER PRISON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE RETURN TO LIFE + + +As the train rounded the long curve, Ordway leaned from the window and +saw spread before him the smiling battlefields that encircled Botetourt. +From the shadow and sunlight of the distance a wind blew in his face, +and he felt suddenly younger, fresher, as if the burden of the years had +been lifted from him. The Botetourt to which he was returning was the +place of his happiest memories; and closing his eyes to the landscape, +he saw Lydia standing under the sparrows that flew out from the ivied +walls of the old church. He met her pensive gaze; he watched her faint +smile under the long black feather in her hat. + +"His death was unexpected," said a strange voice in his ear, "but for +the past five years I've seen that he was a failing man." + +The next instant his thoughts had scattered like startled birds, and +without turning his head, he sat straining his ears to follow the +conversation that went on, above the roar of the train, in the seat +behind him. + +"Had a son, didn't he?" inquired the man who had not spoken. "What's +become of him, I'd like to know? I mean the chap who went to smash +somewhere in the North." + +"Oh, he misappropriated trust funds and got found out and sent to +prison. When he came out, he went West, I heard, and struck a gold mine, +but, all the same, he left his wife and children for the old man to look +after. Ever seen his wife? Well, she's a downright saint, if there ever +lived one." + +"And yet he went wrong, the more's the pity." + +"It's a funny thing," commented the first speaker, who was evidently of +a philosophic bent, "but I've often noticed that a good wife is apt to +make a bad husband. It looks somehow as if male human nature, like the +Irish members, is obliged to sit on the Opposition bench. The only +example that ever counts with it, is an example that urges the other +way." + +"Well, what about this particular instance? I hope at least that she has +come into the old man's money?" + +"Nobody can tell, but it's generally believed that the two children will +get the most of it. The son left a boy and a girl when he went to +prison, you know." + +"Ah, that's rather a pity, isn't it?" + +"Well, I can't say--they've got good blood as well as bad, when it comes +to that. My daughter went to school with the girl, and she was said to +be, by long odds, the most popular member of her class. She graduated +last spring, and people tell me that she has turned out to be the +handsomest young woman in Botetourt." + +"Like the mother?" + +"No, dark and tall, with those snapping blue eyes of her +grandmother's----" + + * * * * * + +So Alice was no longer the little girl in short white skirts, +outstanding like a ballet dancer's! There was a pang for him in the +thought, and he tried in vain to accustom himself to the knowledge that +she would meet him to-night as a woman, not as a child. He remembered +the morning when she had run out, as he passed up the staircase, to beg +him to come in to listen to her music lesson; and with the sound of the +stumbling scales in his ears, he felt again that terrible throbbing of +his pulses and the dull weight of anguish which had escaped at last in +an outburst of bitterness. + +With a jolting motion the train drew up into the little station, and +following the crowd that pressed through the door of the car, he emerged +presently into the noisy throng of Negro drivers gathered before the +rusty vehicles which were waiting beside the narrow pavement. Pushing +aside the gaily decorated whips which encircled him at his approach, he +turned, after a moment's hesitation, into one of the heavily shaded +streets, which seemed to his awakened memory to have remained unaltered +since the afternoon upon which he had left the town almost twenty years +ago. The same red and gold maples stirred gently above his head; the +same silent, green-shuttered houses were withdrawn behind glossy +clusters of microphylla rose-creepers. Even the same shafts of sunshine +slanted across the roughly paved streets, which were strewn thickly +with yellowed leaves. It was to Ordway as if a pleasant dream had +descended upon the place, and had kept unchanged the particular golden +stillness of that autumn afternoon when he had last seen it. All at once +he realised that what Tappahannock needed was not progress, but age; and +he saw for the first time that the mellowed charm of Botetourt was +relieved against the splendour of an historic background. Not the +distinction of the present, but the enchantment of the past, produced +this quality of atmosphere into which the thought of Tappahannock +entered like a vulgar discord. The dead, not the living, had built these +walls, had paved these streets, had loved and fought and starved beneath +these maples; and it was the memory of such solemn things that steeped +the little town in its softening haze of sentiment. A thrill of +pleasure, more intense than any he had known for months, shot through +his heart, and the next instant he acknowledged with a sensation of +shame that he was returning, not only to his people, but to his class. +Was this all that experience, that humiliation, could do for one--that +he should still find satisfaction in the refinements of habit, in the +mere external pleasantness of life? As he passed the old church he saw +that the sparrows still fluttered in and out of the ivy, which was full +of twittering cries like a gigantic bird's nest, and he had suddenly a +ghostly feeling as if he were a moving shadow under shadowy trees and +unreal shafts of sunlight. A moment later he almost held his breath +lest the dark old church and the dreamy little town should vanish before +his eyes and leave him alone in the outer space of shadows. + +Coming presently under a row of poplars to the street in which stood his +father's house--a square red brick building with white Doric columns to +the portico--he saw with a shock of surprise that the funeral carriages +were standing in a solemn train for many blocks. Until that moment it +had not occurred to him that he might come in time to look on the dead +face of the man who had not forgiven him while he was alive; and at +first he shivered and shrank back as if hesitating to enter the door +that had been so lately closed against him. An old Negro driver, who sat +on the curbing, wiping the broad black band on his battered silk hat +with a red bandanna handkerchief, turned to speak to him with mingled +sympathy and curiosity. + +"Ef'n you don' hurry up, you'll miss de bes' er hit, marster," he +remarked. "Dey's been gwine on a pow'ful long time, but I'se been +a-lisenin' wid all my years en I ain' hyearn nairy a sh'ut come thoo' de +do'. Lawd! Lawd! dey ain' mo'n like I mo'n, caze w'en dey buried my +Salviny I set up sech a sh'uttin' dat I bu'st two er my spar ribs clean +ter pieces." + +Still muttering to himself he fell to polishing his old top hat more +vigorously, while Ordway quickened his steps with an effort, and +entering the gate, ascended the brick walk to the white steps of the +portico. A wide black streamer hung from the bell handle, so pushing +open the door, which gave noiselessly before him, he entered softly into +the heavy perfume of flowers. From the room on his right, which he +remembered dimly as the formal drawing-room in the days of his earliest +childhood, he heard a low voice speaking as if in prayer; and looking +across the threshold, he saw a group of black robed persons kneeling in +the faint light which fell through the chinks in the green shutters. The +intense odour of lilies awoke in him a sharp anguish, which had no +association in his thoughts with his father's death, and which he could +not explain until the incidents of his mother's funeral crowded, one by +one, into his memory. The scent of lilies was the scent of death in his +nostrils, and he saw again the cool, high-ceiled room in the midst of +which her coffin had stood, and through the open windows the wide green +fields in which spring was just putting forth. That was nearly thirty +years ago, yet the emotion he felt at this instant was less for his +father who had died yesterday than for his mother whom he had lost while +he was still a child. + +At his entrance no one had observed him, and while the low prayer went +on, he stood with bowed head searching among the veiled figures about +the coffin for the figure of his wife. Was that Lydia, he wondered, +kneeling there in her mourning garments with her brow hidden in her +clasped hands? And as he looked at her it seemed to him that she had +never lifted the black veil which she had lowered over her face at +their last parting. Though he was outwardly now among his own people, +though the physical distance which divided him from his wife and +children was barely a dozen steps, the loneliness which oppressed him +was like the loneliness of the prison; and he understood that his real +home was not here, but in Tappahannock--that his true kinship was with +the labourers whose lives he had shared and whose bitter poverty he had +lessened. In the presence of death he was conscious of the space, the +luxury, the costly funeral wreaths that surrounded him; and these +external refinements of living produced in him a sensation of shyness, +as if he had no longer a rightful place in the class in which he had +been born. Against his will he grew ashamed of his coarse clothes and +his roughened hands; and with this burning sense of humiliation a wave +of homesickness for Tappahannock swept over him--for the dusty little +town, with its hot, close smells and for the blue tent of sky which was +visible from his ivied window at Cedar Hill. Then he remembered, with a +pang, that even from Tappahannock he had been cast out. For the second +time since his release from prison, he felt cowed and beaten, like an +animal that is driven to bay. The dead man in his coffin was more +closely woven into his surroundings than was the living son who had +returned to his inheritance. + +As the grave faces looked back at him at the end of the prayer, he +realised that they belonged to branches, near or distant, of the Ordway +connections. With the first glimpse of his figure in the doorway there +came no movement of recognition; then he observed a slight start of +surprise--or was it dismay? He knew that Lydia had seen him at last, +though he did not look at her. It appeared to him suddenly that his +return was an insult to her as well as to the dead man who lay there, +helpless yet majestic, in the centre of the room. Flight seemed to him +at the instant the only amendment in his power, and he had made an +impulsive start back from the threshold, when the strained hush was +broken by a word that left him trembling and white as from a blow. + +"Father!" cried a voice, in the first uncontrollable joy of recognition; +and with an impetuous rush through the crowd that surrounded her, Alice +threw herself into his arms. + +A mist swam before his eyes and he lost the encircling faces in a blur +of tears; but as she clung to his breast and he held her close, he was +conscious of a fierce joy that throbbed, like a physical pain, in his +throat. The word which she had uttered had brought his soul up from the +abyss as surely as if it were lifted by the hands of angels; and with +each sobbing breath of happiness she drew, he felt that her nature was +knit more firmly into his. The repulse he had received the moment before +was forgotten, and while he held her drawn apart in the doorway, the +silence of Lydia, and even the reproach of the dead man, had ceased to +affect him. In that breathless, hysterical rush to his embrace Alice +saved him to-day as Emily's outstretched hand had saved him three years +before. + +"They did not tell me! Oh, why, did they not tell me?" cried the girl, +lifting her head from his breast, and the funeral hush that shrouded the +room could not keep back the ecstasy in her voice. Even when after the +first awkward instant the others gathered around him, nervous, effusive, +friendly, Alice still clung to his hands, kissing first one and then the +other and then both together, with the exquisite joyous abandonment of a +child. + +Lydia had kissed him, weeping softly under her long black veil, and +hiding her pale, lovely face the moment afterwards in her clasped hands. +Dick, his son, had touched his cheek with his fresh young mouth; Richard +Ordway, his father's brother, had shaken him by the hand; and the +others, one and all, kinsmen and kinswomen, had given him their +embarrassed, yet kindly, welcome. But it was on Alice that his eyes +rested, while he felt his whole being impelled toward her in a recovered +rapture that was almost one of worship. In her dark beauty, with her +splendid hair, her blue, flashing Ordway eyes, and her lips which were +too red and too full for perfection, she appeared to him the one vital +thing among the mourning figures in this house of death. Her delight +still ran in little tremors through her limbs, and when a moment later, +she slipped her hand through his arm, and followed Lydia and Richard +Ordway down the steps, and into one of the waiting carriages, he felt +that her bosom quivered with the emotion which the solemn presence of +his father had forced back from her lips. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +HIS OWN PLACE + + +Some hours later when he sat alone in his room, he told himself that he +could never forget the drive home from the cemetery in the closed +carriage. Lydia had raised her veil slightly, as if in a desire for air, +and as she sat with her head resting against the lowered blind, he could +trace the delicate, pale lines of her mouth and chin, and a single wisp +of her ash blond hair which lay heavily upon her forehead. Not once had +she spoken, not once had she met his eyes of her own accord, and he had +discovered that she leaned almost desperately upon the iron presence of +Richard Ordway. Had his sin, indeed, crushed her until she had not power +to lift her head? he asked passionately, with a sharper remorse than he +had ever felt. + +"I am glad that you were able to come in time," Richard Ordway remarked +in his cold, even voice; and after this the rattle of the wheels on the +cobblestones in the street was the only sound which broke the death-like +stillness in which they sat. No, he could never forget it, nor could he +forget the bewildering effect of the sunshine when they opened the +carriage door. Beside the curbing a few idle Negroes were left of the +crowd that had gathered to watch the coffin borne through the gate, and +the pavement was thick with dust, as if many hurrying feet had tramped +by since the funeral had passed. As they entered the house the scent of +lilies struck him afresh with all the agony of its associations. The +shutters were still closed, the chairs were still arranged in their +solemn circle, the streamer of crape, hurriedly untied from the bell +handle, still lay where it had been thrown on the library table; and as +he crossed the threshold, he trod upon some fading lilies which had +fallen, unnoticed, from a funeral wreath. Then, in the dining-room, +Richard Ordway poured out a glass of whiskey, and in the very instant +when he was about to raise it to his lips, he put it hurriedly down and +pushed the decanter aside with an embarrassed and furtive movement. + +"Do you feel the need of a cup of coffee, Daniel?" he asked in a +pleasant, conciliatory tone, "or will you have only a glass of seltzer?" + +"I am not thirsty, thank you," Daniel responded shortly, and the next +moment he asked Alice to show him the room in which he would stay. + +With laughing eagerness she led him up the great staircase to the +chamber in which he had slept as a boy. + +"It's just next to Dick's," she said, "and mother's and mine are +directly across the hall. At first we thought of putting you in the red +guest-room, but that's only for visitors, so we knew you would be sure +to like this better." + +"Yes, I'll like this better," he responded, and then as she would have +moved away, he caught her, with a gesture of anguish, back to his arms. + +"You remember me, Alice, my child? you have not forgotten me?" + +She laughed merrily, biting her full red lips the moment afterward to +check the sound. + +"Why, how funny of you! I was quite a big girl--don't you +remember?--when you went away. It was so dull afterwards that I cried +for days, and that was why I was so overjoyed when mamma told me you +would come back. It was never dull when you lived at home with us, +because you would always take me to the park or the circus whenever I +grew tired of dolls. Nobody did that after you went away and I used to +cry and kick sometimes thinking that they would tell you and bring you +back." + +"And you remembered me chiefly because of the park and the circus?" he +asked, smiling for joy, as he kissed her hand which lay on his sleeve. + +"Oh, I never forget anything, you know. Mamma even says that about me. I +remember my first nurse and the baker's boy with red cheeks who used to +bring me pink cakes when I was three years old. No, I never forget--I +never forget," she repeated with vehemence. + +Animation had kindled her features into a beauty of colour which made +her eyes bluer and brighter and softened the too intense contrast of her +full, red lips. + +"All these years I've hoped that you would come back and that things +would change," she said impulsively, her words tripping rapidly over +one another. "Everything is so dreadfully grave and solemn here. +Grandfather hated noise so that he would hardly let me laugh if he was +in the house. Then mamma's health is wrecked, and she lies always on the +sofa, and never goes out except for a drive sometimes when it is fair." + +"Mamma's health is wrecked?" he repeated inquiringly, as she paused. + +"Oh, that's what everybody says about her--her health is wrecked. And +Uncle Richard is hardly any better, for he has a wife whose health is +wrecked also. And Dick--he isn't sick, but he might as well be, he is so +dull and plodding and over nice----" + +"And you Alice?" + +"I? Oh, I'm not dull, but I'm unhappy--awfully--you'll find that out. I +like fun and pretty clothes and new people and strange places. I want to +marry and have a home of my own and a lot of rings like mamma's, and a +carriage with two men on the box, and to go to Europe to buy things +whenever I please. That's the way Molly Burridge does and she was only +two classes ahead of me. How rough your hands are, papa, and what a +funny kind of shirt you have on. Do people dress like that where you +came from? Well, I don't like it, so you'll have to change." + +She had gone out at last, forgetting to walk properly in her mourning +garments, tripping into a run on the threshold, and then checking +herself with a prim, mocking look over her shoulder. Not until the door +had closed with a slam behind her black skirt, did Ordway's gaze turn +from following her and fix itself on the long mirror between the +windows, in which he could see, as Alice had seen the moment before, his +roughened hands, his carelessly trimmed hair and his common clothes. He +was dressed as the labourers dressed on Sundays in Tappahannock; though, +he remembered now, that in that crude little town he had been +conspicuous for the neatness, almost the jauntiness, of his attire. As +he laid out presently on the bed his few poor belongings, he told +himself, with determination, that for Alice's sake even this must be +changed. He was no longer of the class of Baxter, of Banks, of Mrs. +Twine. All that was over, and he must return now into the world in which +his wife and his children had kept a place. To do Alice honour--at least +not to do her further shame--would become from this day, he realised, +the controlling motive of his life. Then, as he looked down at the +coarse, unshapely garments upon the delicate counterpane, he knew that +Daniel Smith and Daniel Ordway were now parted forever. + +He was still holding one of the rough blue shirts in his hand, when a +servant entered to inquire if there was anything that he might need. The +man, a bright young mulatto, was not one of the old family slaves; and +while he waited, alert and intelligent, upon the threshold, Ordway was +seized by a nervous feeling that he was regarded with curiosity and +suspicion by the black rolling eyes. + +"Where is uncle Boaz? He used to wait upon me," he asked. + +"He's daid, suh. He drapped down daid right on de do' step." + +"And Aunt Mirandy?" + +"She's daid, too, en' I'se her chile." + +"Oh, you are, are you?" said Ordway, and he had again the sensation that +he was watched through inquisitive eyes. "That is all now," he added +presently, "you may go," and it was with a long breath of relief that he +saw the door close after the figure of Aunt Mirandy's son. + +When a little later he dressed himself and went out into the hall, he +found, to his annoyance, that he walked with a cautious and timid step +like that of a labourer who has stumbled by accident into surroundings +of luxury. As he descended the wide curving staircase, with his hand on +the mahogany balustrade, the sound of his footsteps seemed to +reverberate disagreeably through the awful funereal silence in which he +moved. If he could only hear Alice's laugh, Dick's whistle, or even the +garrulous flow of the Negro voices that he had listened to in his +childhood. With a pang he recalled that Uncle Boaz was dead, and his +heart swelled as he remembered how often he had passed up and down this +same staircase on the old servant's shoulder. At that age he had felt no +awe of the shining emptiness and the oppressive silence. Then he had +believed himself to be master of all at which he looked; now he was +conscious of that complete detachment from his surroundings which +produces almost a sense of the actual separation of soul and body. + +Reaching the hall below, he found that some hurried attempt had been +made to banish or to conceal the remaining signs of the funeral. The +doors and windows were open, the shreds of crape had disappeared from +the carpet, and the fading lilies had been swept out upon the graveled +walk in the yard. Upon entering the library, which invited him by its +rows of calf-bound books, he discovered that Richard Ordway was +patiently awaiting him in the large red leather chair which had once +been the favourite seat of his father. + +"Before I go home, I think it better to have a little talk with you, +Daniel," began the old man, as he motioned to a sofa on the opposite +side of the Turkish rug before the open grate. "It has been a peculiar +satisfaction to me to feel that I was able to bring you back in time for +the service." + +"I came," replied Daniel slowly, "as soon as I received your telegram." +He hesitated an instant and then went on in the same quiet tone in which +the other had spoken, "Do you think, though, that he would have wished +me to come at all?" + +After folding the newspaper which he had held in his hand, Richard laid +it, with a courteous gesture upon the table beside him. As he sat there +with his long limbs outstretched and relaxed, and his handsome, severe +profile resting against the leather back of his chair, the younger man +was impressed, as if for the first time, by the curious mixture of +strength and refinement in his features. He was not only a cleverer man +than his brother had been, he was gentler, smoother, more distinguished +on every side. In spite of his reserve, it was evident that he had +wished to be kind--that he wished it still; yet this kindness was so +removed from the ordinary impulse of humanity that it appeared to his +nephew to be in a way as detached and impersonal as an abstract virtue. +The very lines of his face were drawn with the precision, the finality, +of a geometrical figure. To imagine that they could melt into tenderness +was as impossible as to conceive of their finally crumbling into dust. + +"He would have wished it--he did wish it," he said, after a minute. "I +talked with him only a few hours before his death, and he told me then +that it was necessary to send for you--that he felt that he had +neglected his duty in not bringing you home immediately after your +release. He saw at last that it would have been far better to have acted +as I strongly advised at the time." + +"It was his desire, then, that I should return?" asked Daniel, while a +stinging moisture rose to his eyes at the thought that he had not looked +once upon the face of the dead man. "I wish I had known." + +A slight surprise showed in the other's gesture of response, and he +glanced hastily away as he might have done had he chanced to surprise +his nephew while he was still without his boots or his shirt. + +"I think he realised before he died that the individual has no right to +place his personal pride above the family tie," he resumed quietly, +ignoring the indecency of emotion as he would have ignored, probably, +the unclothed body. "I had said much the same thing to him eight years +ago, when I told him that he would realise before his death that he was +not morally free to act as he had done with regard to you. As a matter +of fact," he observed in his trained, legal voice, "the family is, after +all, the social unit, and each member is as closely related as the eye +to the ear or the right arm to the left. It is illogical to speak of +denying one's flesh and blood, for it can't be done." + +So this was why they had received him. He turned his head away, and his +gaze rested upon the boughs of the great golden poplar beyond the +window. + +"It is understood, then," he asked "that I am to come back--back to this +house to live?" + +When he had finished, but not until then, Richard Ordway looked at him +again with his dry, conventional kindness. "If you are free," he began, +altering the word immediately lest it should suggest painful +associations to his companion's mind, "I mean if you have no other +binding engagements, no decided plans for the future." + +"No, I have made no other plans. I was working as a bookkeeper in a +tobacco warehouse in Tappahannock." + +"As a bookkeeper?" repeated Richard, as he glanced down inquiringly at +the other's hands. + +"Oh, I worked sometimes out of doors, but the position I held was that +of confidential clerk." + +The old man nodded amiably, accepting the explanation with a readiness +for which the other was not prepared. "I was about to offer you some +legal work in my office," he remarked. "Dry and musty stuff, I fear it +is, but it's better--isn't it?--for a man to have some kind of +occupation----" + +Though the words were uttered pleasantly enough, it seemed to the +younger man that the concluding and significant phrase was left +unspoken. "Some kind of occupation to keep you out of temptation" was +what Richard had meant to say--what he had withheld, from consideration, +if not from humanity. While the horror of the whole situation closed +over Daniel like a mental darkness, he remembered the sensitive +shrinking of Lydia on the drive home, the prying, inquisitive eyes of +the mulatto servant, the furtive withdrawal of the whiskey by the man +who sat opposite to him. With all its attending humiliation and despair, +there rushed upon him the knowledge that by the people of his own +household he was regarded still as a creature to be restrained and +protected at every instant. Though outwardly they had received him, +instinctively they had repulsed him. The thing which stood between them +and himself was neither of their making nor of his. It belonged to their +very nature and was woven in with their inner fibre. It was a creation, +not of the individual, but of the race, and the law by which it existed +was rooted deep in the racial structure. Tradition, inheritance, +instinct--these were the barriers through which he had broken and which +had closed like the impenetrable sea-gates behind him. Though he were +to live on day by day as a saint among them, they could never forget: +though he were to shed his heart's blood for them, they would never +believe. To convince them of his sincerity was more hopeless, he +understood, than to reanimate their affection. In their very forgiveness +they had not ceased to condemn him, and in the shelter which they +offered him there would be always a hidden restraint. With the thought +it seemed to him that he was stifling in the closeness of the +atmosphere, that he must break away again, that he must find air and +freedom, though it cost him all else besides. The possibility of his own +weakness seemed created in him by their acceptance of it; and he felt +suddenly a terror lest the knowledge of their suspicion should drive him +to justify it by his future in Botetourt. + +"Yes, it is better for me to work," he said aloud. "I hope that I shall +be able to make myself of some small use in your office." + +"There's no doubt of that, I'm sure," responded Richard, in his +friendliest tone. + +"It is taken for granted, then, that I shall live on here with my wife +and children?" + +"We have decided that it is best. But as for your wife, you must +remember that she is very much of an invalid. Do not forget that she has +had a sad--a most tragic life." + +"I promise you that I shall not forget it--make your mind easy." + +After this it seemed to Daniel that there was nothing further to be +said; but before rising from his chair, the old man sat for a moment +with his thin lips tightly folded and a troubled frown ruffling his +forehead. In the dim twilight the profile outlined against the leather +chair appeared to have been ground rather than roughly hewn out of +granite. + +"About the disposition of the estate, there were some changes made +shortly before your father's death," remarked Richard presently. "In the +will itself you were not mentioned; a provision was made for your wife +and the bulk of the property left to your two children. But in a +codicil, which was added the day before your father died, he directed +that you should be given a life interest in the house as well as in +investments to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. +This is to be paid you in the form of a quarterly allowance, which will +yield you a personal income of about six thousand a year." + +"I understand," replied the younger man, without emotion, almost without +surprise. At the moment he was wondering by what name his father had +alluded to him in his will. Had he spoken of him as "my son," or merely +as "Daniel Ordway"? + +"That is all, I think," remarked the other, with a movement which +expressed, in spite of him, a sensation of relief. With a smile which +appeared to be little more than a muscular contraction of his mouth, he +held out his hand and stood for a moment, vainly searching for a phrase +or a word that would fit the delicate requirements of the occasion. + +"Well, I shall never cease to be thankful that you were with us at the +cemetery," he said at last in a tone which was a patent admission that +he had failed. Then, with a kindly inclination of his head, he released +the hand he held and passed at his rapid, yet dignified step out of the +house. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE OUTWARD PATTERN + + +The front door had hardly closed when a breath of freshness blew into +the library with the entrance of Alice, and a moment afterwards the +butler rolled back the mahogany doors of the dining-room and they saw +the lighted candles and the chrysanthemums upon the dinner table. + +"We hardly ever dress," said Alice, slipping her hand through his arm, +"I wish we did." + +"Well, if you'll only pardon these clothes to-night I'll promise to call +on the tailor before breakfast," he returned, smiling, conscious that he +watched in anxiety lest the look of delight in his presence should +vanish from her face. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter now, because we're in the deepest grief--aren't +we?--and mamma isn't coming down. She wants to see you, by the way, just +for a minute when you go upstairs. It is to be just for a minute, I was +to be very particular about that, as she is broken down. I wonder why +they have put so many covers. There is nobody but you and Dick. I asked +Uncle Richard, but he said that he wouldn't stay. It's just as well he +didn't--he's so dreadfully dull, isn't he, papa?" + +"All I wish is that I were dull in Uncle Richard's way," remarked Dick, +with his boyish air of superiority, "I'd be the greatest lawyer in the +state then, when my turn came." + +"And you'd be even more tiresome than you are now," retorted the girl +with a flash of irritation which brought out three fine, nervous +wrinkles on her delicate forehead. + +"Well, I shouldn't have your temper anyway," commented Dick +imperturbably, as he ate his soup. "Do you remember, papa, how Alice +used to bite and scratch as a baby? She'd like to behave exactly that +way now if she weren't so tall." + +"Oh, I know Alice better than you do," said Ordway, in a voice which he +tried to make cheerful. The girl sat on his right, and while she choked +back her anger, he reached out and catching her hand, held it against +his cheek. "We stand together, Alice and I," he said softly--"Alice and +I." + +As he repeated the words a wave of joy rose in his heart, submerging the +disappointment, the bitterness, the hard despair, of the last few hours. +Here also, as well as in Tappahannock, he found awaiting him his +appointed task. + +Dick laughed pleasantly, preserving always the unshakable +self-possession which reminded his father of Richard Ordway. He was a +good boy, Daniel knew, upright, honest, manly, all the things which his +grandfather and his great-grandfather had been before him. + +"Then you'll have to stand with Geoffrey Heath," he said jestingly, +"and, by Jove, I don't think I'd care for his company." + +"Geoffrey Heath?" repeated Ordway inquiringly, with his eyes on his +daughter, who sat silent and angry, biting her lower lip. Her mouth, +which he had soon discovered to be her least perfect feature, was at the +same time her most expressive one. At her slightest change of mood, he +watched it tremble into a smile or a frown, and from a distance it was +plainly the first thing one noticed about her face. Now, as she sat +there, with her eyes on her plate, her vivid lips showed like a splash +of carmine in the lustreless pallor of her skin. + +"Oh, he's one of Alice's chums," returned Dick with his merciless +youthful sneer, "she has a pretty lot of them, too, though he is by long +odds the worst." + +"Well, he's rich enough anyway," protested Alice defiantly, "he keeps +beautiful horses and sends me boxes of candy, and I don't care a bit for +the rest." + +"Who is he, by the way?" asked Daniel. "There was a family of Heaths who +lived near us in the country when I was a boy. Is he one of these?" + +"He's the son of old Rupert Heath, who made a million out of some panic +in stocks. Uncle Richard says the father was all right, but he's tried +his best to break up Alice's craze about Geoffrey. But let her once get +her nose to the wind and nobody can do anything with her." + +"Well, I can, can't I, darling?" asked Ordway, smiling in spite of a +jealous pang. The appeal of the girl to him was like the appeal of the +finer part of his own nature. Her temptations he recognised as the old +familiar temptations of his youth, and the kinship between them seemed +at the moment something deeper and more enduring than the tie of blood. +Yet the thought that she was his daughter awoke in him a gratitude that +was almost as acute as pain. The emptiness of his life was filled +suddenly to over-flowing, and he felt again that he had found here as he +had found at Tappahannock both his mission and his reward. + +When dinner was over he left the boy and girl in the library and went +slowly, and with a nervous hesitation, upstairs to the room in which +Lydia was lying on her couch, with a flower-decked tray upon the little +inlaid table beside her. As he entered the room something in the +luxurious atmosphere--in the amber satin curtains, the white bearskin +rugs, the shining mirrors between the windows--recalled the early years +of his marriage, and as he remembered them, he realised for the first +time the immensity of the change which divided his present existence +from his past. The time had been when he could not separate his inner +life from his surroundings, and with the thought he saw in his memory +the bare cleanliness of the blue guest-room at Cedar Hill--with its +simple white bed, its rag carpet, its faded sampler worked in blue +worsteds. That place had become as a sanctuary to him now, for it was +there that he had known his most perfect peace, his completest +reconciliation with God. + +As he entered the room Lydia raised herself slightly upon her elbow, and +without turning her head, nervously pushed back a white silk shawl which +she had thrown over her knees. A lamp with an amber shade cast its light +on her averted profile, and he noticed that its perfect outline, its +serene loveliness, was untouched by suffering. Already he had discovered +those almost imperceptible furrows between Alice's eyebrows, but when +Lydia looked up at him at last, he saw that her beautiful forehead, +under its parting of ash blond hair, was as smooth as a child's. Was it +merely the Madonna-like arrangement of her hair, after all, he wondered, +not without bitterness, that had bestowed upon her that appealing +expression of injured innocence? + +"You wished to speak to me, Alice said," he began with an awkward +gesture, acutely conscious, as he stood there, of the amber light in the +room, of the shining waves of her hair, of the delicate perfume which +floated from the gold-topped boxes upon her dressing-table. An oval +mirror above the mantel gave back to him the reflection of his own +roughly clad figure, and the violent contrast between himself and his +surroundings stung him into a sense of humiliation that was like a +physical smart. + +"I thought it better to speak to you--Uncle Richard and Dick advised me +to----" she broke off in a gentle confusion, lifting her lovely, pensive +eyes for the first time to his face. + +"Of course it is better, Lydia," he answered gravely. "You must let me +know what you wish--you must tell me quite frankly just what you would +rather that I should do----" + +The look of gratitude in her face gave him a sudden inexplicable pang. + +"I am hardly more than an invalid," she said in a voice that had grown +firm and sweet, "Uncle Richard will tell you----" + +Her reliance upon Richard Ordway aroused in him a passion of resentment, +and for an instant the primitive man in him battled hotly against the +renunciation his lips had made. + +"I know, I understand," he said hurriedly at last. "I appreciate it all +and I shall do whatever is in my power to make it easier for you." As he +looked at her bowed head a wave of remorse rose in his breast and swept +down, one by one, the impulses of anger, of pride, of self-righteousness. +"O my dear, my dear, don't you think I know what I have done to you?" he +asked, and going a step toward her, he fell on his knees beside the +couch and kissed passionately the hand that lay in her lap. "Don't you +think I know that I have ruined your life?" + +For a moment her eyes dwelt thoughtfully upon his, and she let her hand +lie still beneath his remorseful kisses, until her withdrawal of it had +lost any appearance of haste or of discourtesy. + +"Then you will not object to my living on in this way? You will not seek +to change anything? You will----" She hesitated and broke off, not +impulsively, but with the same clear, sweet voice in which she had put +her question. + +Lifting his head, he looked up at her from his knees, and the dumb +loneliness in his eyes caused her at last to drop her own to the rug +upon which he knelt. + +"If you will only let me care for you--serve you--work for you," he +implored brokenly. "If you will only let me make up, however poorly, +something of what you have suffered." + +A vague discomfort, produced in her by the intensity of his gaze, moved +her to draw slightly away from him, while she turned restlessly on her +pillows. At the first shade of perplexity, of annoyance, that showed in +her face, he felt, with a terrible power of intuition, that she was +seeking in vain to estimate each of his heartbroken words at its full +value--to read calmly by the light of experience the passion for +atonement to which his lips had tried hopelessly to give expression. The +wall of personality rose like a visible object between them. He might +beat against it in desperation until his strength was gone, yet he knew +that it would remain forever impenetrable, and through its thickness +there would pass only the loud, unmeaning sound of each other's voice. + +"Have you lost all love for me, Lydia?" he asked. "Have you even +forgotten that I am the father of your children?" + +As soon as his words were uttered, he stumbled to his feet, horrified by +the effect upon her. A change that was like a spasm of physical nausea +had shaken her limbs, and he felt rather than saw that she had shrunk +from him, convulsed and quivering, until she was crushed powerless +against the back of the sofa on which she lay. Her whole attitude, he +realised, was the result, not of a moral judgment, but of a purely +physical antipathy. Her horror of him had become instinctive, and she +was no more responsible for its existence than a child is responsible +for the dread aroused in it by the goblins of nursery rhymes. His life +as a convict had not only unclassed him in her eyes, it had put him +entirely outside and below the ordinary relations of human beings. To +his wife he must remain forever an object of pity, perhaps, but of +intense loathing and fear also. + +The wave of remorse turned to bitterness on his lips, and all the +tenderer emotions he had felt when he knelt by her side--the +self-reproach, the spiritual yearning, the passion for goodness, all +these were extinguished in the sense of desolation which swept over him. + +"Don't be afraid," he said coldly, "I shall not touch you." + +"It was nothing--a moment's pain," she answered, in a wistful, +apologetic voice. + +She was playing nervously with the fringe of the silk shawl, and he +stood for a minute in silence while he watched her long, slender fingers +twine themselves in and out of the tasseled ends. Then turning aside she +pushed away the coffee service on the little table as if its fragrance +annoyed her. + +"Is it in your way? Do you wish it removed?" he inquired, and when she +had nodded in reply, he lifted the tray and carried it in the direction +of the door. "Don't be afraid. It is all right," he repeated as he went +out. + +Back in his own room again, he asked himself desperately if this +existence could be possible? Would it not be better for him to lose +himself a second time--to throw in his lot with a lower class, since his +own had rejected him? Flinging himself on the floor beside the window, +he pressed his forehead against the white painted wood as if the outward +violence could deaden the throbbing agony he felt within. Again he smelt +the delicate, yet intense perfume of Lydia's chamber; again he saw her +shrinking from him until she lay crushed and white against the back of +the sofa; again he watched her features contract with the instinctive +repulsion she could not control. The pitiful deprecating gesture with +which she had murmured: "It is nothing--a moment's pain," was seared +forever like the mark from a burning iron into his memory. + +"No, no--it cannot be--it is impossible," he said suddenly aloud. And +though he had not the strength to frame the rest of his thought into +words, he knew that the impossible thing he meant was this life, this +torture, this slow martyrdom day by day without hope and without end +except in death. After all there was a way of escape, so why should it +be closed to him? What were these people to him beside those others whom +he might yet serve--the miserable, the poor, the afflicted who would +take from him the gifts which his own had rejected? What duty remained? +What obligation? What responsibility? Step by step he retraced the +nineteen years of his marriage, and he understood for the first time, +that Lydia had given him on her wedding day nothing of herself beyond +the gentle, apologetic gesture which had followed that evening her +involuntary repulsion. From the beginning to the end she had presided +always above, not shared in his destiny. She had wanted what he could +give, but not himself, and when he could give nothing more she had shown +that she wanted him no longer. While he knelt there, still pressing his +forehead against the window sill, the image of her part in his life rose +out of the darkness of his mind, which opened and closed over it, and he +saw her fixed, shining and immovable, to receive his offerings, like +some heathen deity above the sacrificial altar. + +The next instant the image faded and was replaced by Emily as she had +looked at him on that last evening with her soft, comforting gaze. The +weakness of self pity came over him, and he asked himself in the +coward's luxury of hopeless questioning, what Emily would have done had +she stood to him in Lydia's place? He saw her parting from him with her +bright courage at the prison doors; he saw her meeting him with her +smile of welcome and of forgiveness when he came out. As once before he +had risen to the vision of service, so now in the agony of his +humiliation he was blessed at last with the understanding of love. + +For many minutes he knelt there motionless by the open window, beyond +which he could see the dimly lighted town on which a few drops of rain +had begun to fall. The faint perfume of lilies came up to him from the +walk below, where the broken sprays swept from the house were fading +under the slow, soft rain. With the fragrance the image of Emily +dissolved as in a mist to reappear the minute afterwards in a more +torturing and human shape. He saw her now with her bright dark hair +blown into little curls on her temples, with her radiant brown eyes that +penetrated him with their soft, yet animated glance. The vigorous grace +of her figure, as he had seen it outlined in her scant blue cotton gown +against the background of cedars, remained motionless in his thoughts, +bathed in a clear golden light that tormented his senses. + +Rising from his knees with an effort, he struck a match and raised the +green shade from the lamp on the table. Then while the little blue flame +flickered out in his hand, he felt that he was seized by a frantic, an +irresistible impulse of flight. Gathering his clothes from the bed in +the darkness, he pushed them hurriedly back into the bag he had emptied, +and with a last glance at the room which had become unendurable to him, +opened the door and went with a rapid step down the great staircase and +into the hall below. The direction of his journey, as well as the +purpose of it, was obscure in his mind. Yesterday he had told himself +that he could not remain in Tappahannock, and to-day he knew that it was +impossible for him to live on in his father's house. To pass the hall +door meant release--escape to him; beyond that there lay only the +distance and the unknown. + +The lights burned dimly on the staircase, and when he reached the bottom +he could see on the carpet the thin reddish stream which issued from the +closed door of the library. As he was about to pass by, a short sob fell +on his ear, arresting him as authoritatively as if it had been the sound +of his own name. While he stood there listening the sobs ceased and then +broke out more loudly, now violent, now smothered, now followed by +quick, furious steps across the floor within. Alice was shut in the room +alone and suffering! With the realisation the bag fell from his hand, +and turning the knob softly, he opened the door and paused for an +instant upon the threshold. + +At the noise of the opening door the girl made a single step forward, +and as she raised her hands to conceal her distorted features, her +handkerchief, torn into shreds, fell to the carpet at her feet. Around +her the room showed other signs of an outbreak of anger--the chairs were +pushed hurriedly out of place, the books from the centre table were +lying with opened backs on the floor, and a vase of dahlias lay +overturned and scattered upon the mantel. + +"I don't care--I don't care," she repeated, convulsively. "Why do they +always interfere with me? What right has Dick or Uncle Richard to say +whom I shall see or whom I shall not? I hate them all. Mamma is always +against me--so is Uncle Richard--so is everybody. They side with +Dick--always--always." + +A single wave of her dark hair had fallen low on her forehead, and this, +with the violent colour of her mouth, gave her a look that was almost +barbaric. The splendid possibilities in her beauty caused him, in the +midst of his pity, a sensation of dread. + +"Alice," he said softly, almost in a whisper, and closing the door after +him, he came to the middle of the room and stood near her, though still +without touching her quivering body. + +"They side with Dick always," she repeated furiously, "and you will side +with him, too--you will side with him, too!" + +For a long pause he looked at her in silence, waiting until the +convulsive tremors of her limbs should cease. + +"I shall never side against my daughter," he said very slowly. "Alice, +my child, my darling, are you not really mine?" + +A last quivering sob shook through her and she grew suddenly still. +"They will tell you things about me and you will believe them," she +answered sternly. + +"Against you, Alice? Against you?" + +"You will blame me as they do." + +"I love you," he returned, almost as sternly as she had spoken. + +An emotional change, so swift that it startled him, broke in her look, +and he saw the bright red of her mouth tremble and open like a flower in +her glowing face. At the sight a sharp joy took possession of him--a +joy that he could measure only by the depth of the agony out of which he +had come. Without moving from his place, he stretched out his arms and +stood waiting. + +"Alice, I love you," he said. + +Then his arms closed over her, for with the straight flight of a bird +she had flown to his breast. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT + + +Awaking before dawn, he realised with his first conscious thought that +his life had been irrevocably settled while he slept. His place was +here; he could not break away from it without leaving a ragged edge; and +while he had believed himself to be deciding his future actions, that +greater Destiny, of which his will was only a part, had arranged them +for him during the dim pause of the night. He could feel still on his +arm, as if it had persisted there through his sleep, the firm, almost +viselike pressure of Alice's hands, and his whole sensitive nature +thrilled in response to this mute appeal to his fatherhood. Yes, his +purpose, his mission, and his happiness were here in his father's house. + +At breakfast he found a white rosebud on his plate, and as he took it +up, Alice rushed in from the garden and threw herself into his arms. + +"I thought you were never, never coming down!" she exclaimed, choking +with laughter, and utterly forgetful of the shadow of death which still +lay over the house. "At first I was afraid you might have gone away in +the night--just as you went that awful day eight years ago. Then I +peeped out and saw your boots, so I went back to bed again and fell +asleep. Oh, I'm so glad you've come! Why did you stay away such an age? +Now, at last, I'll have somebody to take my side against mamma and Dick +and Uncle Richard----" + +"But why against them, Alice? Surely they love you just as I do?" + +Biting her lips sharply, she bent her heavy brows in a stern and +frowning expression. "Oh, they're horrid," she said angrily, "they want +me to live just as mamma does--shut up all day in a hot room on a +hateful sofa. She reads novels all the time, and I despise books. I want +to go away and see things and to have plenty of clothes and all the fun +I choose. They let Dick do just as he pleases because he's a boy, but +they try to make me dull and stupid and foolish all because I'm a girl. +I won't have it like that and it makes them angry----" + +"Oh, well, we'll have fun together, you and I," returned Ordway, with a +sinking heart, "but you must wait a bit till I catch up with you. Don't +be in a precious hurry, if you please." + +"Shall we have a good time, then? Shall we?" she persisted, delighted, +kissing him with her warm mouth until he was dazzled by her beauty, her +fascination, her ardent vitality. "And you will do just what I wish, +won't you?" she whispered in his ear as she hung on his shoulder, "you +will be good and kind always? and you will make them leave me alone +about Geoffrey Heath?" + +"About Geoffrey Heath?" he repeated, and grew suddenly serious. + +"Oh, he's rich and he's fun, too," she responded irritably. "He has +asked me to ride one of his horses--the most beautiful chestnut mare in +the world--but mamma scolds me about it because she says he's not nice +and that he did something once years ago about cards. As if I cared +about cards!" + +By the fear that had gripped him he could judge the strength of her hold +on his heart. "Alice, be careful--promise me to be careful!" he +entreated. + +At his words he felt her arms relax from their embrace, and she seemed +instantly to turn to marble upon his breast. "Oh, you're just like the +others now. I knew you would be!" she exclaimed, as she drew away from +him. + +Before the coldness of her withdrawal he felt that his will went out of +him; and in one despairing flight of imagination he saw what the loss of +her affection would mean now in his life. An emotion which he knew to be +weakness pervaded not only his heart, but his soul and his senses and +the remotest fibre of his physical being. "Whatever comes I shall always +stand by you, Alice," he said. + +Though she appeared to be mollified by his subjection, the thin almost +imperceptible furrows caused by the moment's anger, were still visible +between her eyebrows. There was a certain fascination, he found, in +watching these marks of age or of experience come and go on her fresh, +childlike forehead, with its lustrous pallor, from which her splendid +dark hair rolled back, touched with light, like a moonlit cloud. It was +a singular characteristic of her beauty that its appeal was rather to +the imagination than to the eye, and the moments, perhaps, when she +dazzled least were those in which she conquered most through her +enigmatical charm. + +"You will buy some clothes, first of all, will you not?" she said, when, +having finished his breakfast, he rose from the table and went out into +the hall. + +He met her eyes laughing, filled with happiness at the playful authority +she assumed, and yet fearful still lest some incautious word of his +should bring out those fine nervous wrinkles upon her forehead. + +"Give me a week and I'll promise you a fashion plate," he responded +gaily, kissing his hand to her as he went down the steps, and, under the +trailing rose creepers at the gate, out into the street. + +Rain had fallen in the night, and the ground was covered with shining +puddles beneath which a few autumn leaves showed drenched and beaten. +From the golden and red maples above a damp odour was wafted down into +his face by the October wind, which now rose and now died away with a +gentle sound. In the pale sunshine, which had not yet drained the +moisture from the bricks, a wonderful freshness seemed to emanate from +the sky and the earth and the white-pillared houses. + +As he approached the corner, he heard his name called in a clear +emphatic voice from the opposite sidewalk, and turning his head, he saw +hastening toward him, a little elderly lady in a black silk gown trimmed +heavily with bugles. As she neared him, followed by a young Negro maid +bearing a market basket filled with vegetables, he recognised her as an +intimate friend of his mother's, whom he had known familiarly in his +childhood as "Aunt Lucy." It seemed so long now since his mother's death +that he was attacked by a ghostly sensation, as if he were dreaming over +his past life, while he stood face to face with the old lady's small +soldierly figure and listened to the crisp, emphatic tones in which she +welcomed him back to Botetourt. He remembered his frequent visits to her +solemn old house, which she kept so dark that he had always stumbled +over the two embroidered ottomans on the parlour hearth. He recalled the +smell of spices which had hung about her storeroom, and the raspberry +preserves which she had never failed to give him out of a blue china +jar. + +"Why, my dear, blessed child, it's such a pleasure to have you back!" +she exclaimed now with an effusion which he felt to be the outward veil +of some hidden embarrassment. "You must come sometimes and let me talk +to you about your mother. I knew your mother so well--I was one of her +bridesmaids." + +Seizing his arm in her little firm, clawlike hands, she assured him with +animation of her delight at his return, alluding in a shaking voice to +his mother, and urging him to come to sit with her whenever he could +stand the gloom of her empty house. + +"And you will give me raspberry preserves out of the blue china jar?" he +asked, laughing, "and let me feed crackers to the green parrot?" + +"What a boy! What a boy!" she returned. "You remember everything. The +parrot is dead--my poor Polly!--but there is a second." + +Her effusiveness, her volubility, which seemed to him to be the result +of concealed embarrassment, produced in him presently a feeling of +distrust, almost of resentment, and he remembered the next instant that, +in his childhood, she had been looked upon as a creature of uncontrolled +charitable impulses. Upon the occasion of his last meeting with her was +she not hastening upon some ministering errand to the city gaol? At the +casual recollection an unreasoning bitterness awoke in his mind; her +reiterated raptures fell with a strange effect of irritation upon his +ears; and he knew now that he could never bring himself to enter her +house again, that he could never accept her preserved raspberries out of +the blue china jar. Her reception of him, he saw, was but a part of the +general reception of Botetourt. Like her the town would be voluble, +unnatural, overdone in its kindness, hiding within itself a furtive +constraint as if it addressed its speeches to the sensitive sufferer +from some incurable malady. The very tenderness, the exaggerated +sympathy in its manner would hardly have been different, he understood, +if he had been recently discharged as harmless, yet half-distraught, +from an asylum for the insane. + +As the days went on this idea, instead of dissolving, became unalterably +lodged in his brain. Gradually he retreated further and further into +himself, until the spiritual isolation in which he lived appeared to +him more and more like the isolation of the prison. His figure had +become a familiar one in the streets of Botetourt, yet he lived bodily +among the people without entering into their lives or sharing in any +degree the emotions that moved their hearts. Only in periods of sorrow +did he go willingly into the houses of those of his own class, though he +had found a way from the beginning to reach the poor, the distressed, or +the physically afflicted. His tall, slightly stooping figure, in its +loose black clothes, his dark head, with the thick locks of iron gray +hair upon the temples, his sparkling blue eyes, his bright, almost +boyish smile, and the peculiar, unforgettable charm of his +presence--these were the things which those in sickness or poverty began +to recognise and to look for. In his own home he lived, except for the +fitful tenderness of Alice, as much apart as he felt himself to be in +the little town. They were considerate of him, but their consideration, +he knew, contained an ineradicable suspicion, and in the house as +outside, he was surrounded by the watchful regard that is given to the +infirm or the mentally diseased. He read this in Lydia's gently averted +eyes; he felt it in Richard Ordway's constrained manner; he detected it +even in the silent haste with which the servants fulfilled his slightest +wish. + +His work in his uncle's office, he had soon found to be of the most +mechanical character, a mere pretext to give him daily employment, and +he told himself, in a moment of bitterness that it was convincing proof +of the opinion which the older man must hold of his honesty or of his +mental capacity. It became presently little more than a hopeless round +to him--this morning walk through the sunny streets, past the ivied +walls of the old church, to the clean, varnish scented office, where he +sat, until the luncheon hour, under the hard, though not unkind, eyes of +the man who reminded him at every instant of his dead father. And the +bitterest part of it, after all, was that the closer he came to the +character of Richard Ordway, the profounder grew his respect for his +uncle's unwavering professional honour. The old man would have starved, +he knew, rather than have held back a penny that was not legally his own +or have owed a debt that he felt had begun to weigh, however lightly, +upon his conscience. Yet this lawyer of scrupulous rectitude was the +husband, his nephew suspected, of a neglected, a wretchedly unhappy +wife--a small, nervous creature, whom he had married, shortly after the +death of his first wife, some twenty years ago. The secret of this +unhappiness Daniel had discovered almost by intuition on the day of his +father's funeral, when he had looked up suddenly in the cemetery to find +his uncle's wife regarding him with a pair of wonderful, pathetic eyes, +which seemed to gaze at him sadly out of a blue mist. So full of +sympathy and understanding was her look that the memory of it had +returned to him more than a year later, and had caused him to stop at +her gate one November afternoon as he was returning from his office +work. After an instant's pause, and an uncertain glance at the big +brick house with its clean white columns, he ascended the steps and rang +the bell for the first time since his boyhood. + +The house was one of the most charming in Botetourt, but as he followed +the servant down the hall to the library, it seemed to him that all +these high, imposing walls, with their fine white woodwork, enclosed but +so much empty space to fill with loneliness. His uncle had no children, +and the sad, fair-haired little wife appeared to be always alone and +always suffering. + +She was seated now in a low rocking-chair beside the window, and as she +turned her head at his entrance, he could see, through the lace +curtains, a few pale November leaves, which fluttered down from an elm +tree beside the porch. When she looked at him he noticed that her eyes +were large and beautiful and of a changeable misty colour which appeared +now gray, now violet. + +"It is so good of you, Daniel," she said, in a soft, grateful voice, +removing her work-basket from the chair at her side so that he might +come within the reach of her short-sighted gaze. + +"I've wanted to come ever since I saw you for the first time after my +return," he answered cheerfully. "It is strange, isn't it?--that I +hardly remember you when I lived here. You were always ill, were you +not?" + +"Yes, ill almost always," she replied, smiling as she met his glance. +"When you were married I remember I couldn't go to the wedding because +I had been in bed for three months. But that's all over now," she +added, fearing to produce in him a momentary depression. "I am well +again, you see, so the past doesn't matter." + +"The past doesn't matter," he repeated in a low voice, struck by the +words as if they held more than their surface meaning for his ears. + +She nodded gravely. "How can it matter if one is really happy at last." + +"And you are happy at last?" + +As he watched her it seemed to him that a pale flame burned in her face, +tinging its sallow wanness with a golden light. "I am at peace and is +that not happiness?" she asked. + +"But you were sad once--that day in the cemetery? I felt it." + +"That was while I was still struggling," she answered, "and it always +hurts one to struggle. I wanted happiness--I kept on wanting it even +after I ceased to believe in its existence. I fought very hard--oh, +desperately hard--but now I have learned that the only way to get +anything is to give it up. Happiness is like everything else, it is only +when one gives it back to God that one really possesses it." + +He had never seen a face in which the soul spoke so clearly, and her +look rather than her words came to him like the touch of divine healing. + +"When I saw you standing beside your father's grave, I knew that you +were just where I had been for so many years--that you were still +telling your self that things were too hard, that they were +unendurable. I had been through it all, you see, so I understood." + +"But how could you know the bitterness, the shame of feeling that it was +all the result of my own mistake--of my own sin." + +Taking his hand in hers, she sat for a moment in silence with her +ecstatic gaze fixed on his face. "I know that in spite of your sin you +are better than they are," she said at last, "because your sin was on +the outside--a thing to be sloughed off and left far behind, while their +self-righteousness is of their very souls----" + +"Oh, hush, hush," he interrupted sternly, "they have forgiven me for +what I did, that is enough." + +"Sixteen years ago," she returned, dropping her voice, "my husband +forgave me in the same way, and he has never forgotten it." + +At his start of surprise, he felt that she clung the more closely to the +hand she held. "Oh, it wasn't so big a thing," she went on, "I had been +married to him for five years, and I was very unhappy when I met someone +who seemed to understand and to love me. For a time I was almost insane +with the wonder and delight of it--I might have gone away with him--with +the other--in my first rapture, had not Richard found it all out two +days before. He behaved very generously--he forgave me. I should have +been happier," she added a little wistfully, "if he had not." + +As she broke off trembling, he lifted her hand to his lips, kissing it +with tenderness, almost with passion. "Then that was the beginning of +your unhappiness--of your long illness!" he exclaimed. + +She nodded smiling, while a tear ran slowly down her flushed cheek. "He +forgave me sixteen years ago and he has never allowed me to forget it +one hour--hardly a minute since." + +"Then you understand how bitter--how intolerable it is!" he returned in +an outbreak of anger. + +"I thought I knew," she replied more firmly than he had ever heard her +speak, "but I learned afterwards that it was a mistake. I see now that +they are kind--that they are good in their way, and I love them for it. +It isn't our way, I know, but the essence of charity, after all, is to +learn to appreciate goodness in all its expressions, no matter how +different they may be from our own. Even Richard is kind--he means +everything for the best, and it is only his nature that is +straightened--that is narrow--not his will. I felt bitterly once, but +not now because I am so happy at last." + +Beyond the pale outline of her head, he saw the elm leaves drifting +slowly down, and beyond them the low roofs and the dim church spires of +the quiet town. Was it possible that even here he might find peace in +the heart of the storm? + +"It is only since I have given my happiness back to God that it is +really mine," she said, and it seemed to him again that her soul +gathered brightness and shone in her face. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE WILL OF ALICE + + +When he reached home the servant who helped him out of his overcoat, +informed him at the same time that his uncle awaited him in the library. +With the news a strange chill came over him as if he had left something +warm and bright in the November sunset outside. For an instant it seemed +to him that he must turn back--that he could not go forward. Then with a +gesture of assent, he crossed the hall and entered the library, where he +found Lydia and the children as well as Richard Ordway. + +The lamps were unlit, and the mellow light of the sunset fell through +the interlacing half-bared boughs of the golden poplar beyond the +window. This light, so rich, so vivid, steeped the old mahogany +furniture and the faded family portraits in a glow which seemed to +Daniel to release, for the first time, some latent romantic spirit that +had dwelt in the room. In the midst of this glamor of historic +atmosphere, the four figures, gathered so closely together against the +clear space of the window, with its network of poplar leaves beyond the +panes, borrowed for the moment a strange effectiveness of pose, a +singular intensity of outline. Not only the figures, but the very +objects by which they were surrounded appeared to vibrate in response to +a tragic impulse. + +Richard Ordway was standing upon the hearthrug, his fine head and +profile limned sharply against the pale brown wall at his side. His +right hand was on Lydia's shoulder, who sat motionless, as if she had +fallen there, with her gentle, flower-like head lying upon the arm of +her son. Before them, as before her judges, Alice was drawn to her full +height, her girlish body held tense and quivering, her splendid hair +loosened about her forehead, her trembling mouth making a violent +contrast to the intense pallor of her face. + +Right or wrong Ordway saw only that she was standing alone, and as he +crossed the threshold, he turned toward her and held out his hand. + +"Alice," he said softly, as if the others were not present. Without +raising her eyes, she shrank from him in the direction of Richard +Ordway, as if shielding herself behind the iron fortitude of the man +whom she so bitterly disliked. + +"Alice has been out driving alone with Geoffrey Heath all the +afternoon," said Lydia in her clear, calm voice. "We had forbidden it, +but she says that you knew of it and did not object to her going." + +With the knowledge of the lie, Ordway grew red with humiliation, while +his gaze remained fastened on the figure in the carpet at Alice's feet. +He could not look at her, for he felt that her shame was scorching him +like a hot wind. To look at her at the moment meant to convict her, and +this his heart told him he could never do. He was conscious of the loud +ticking of the clock, of the regular tapping of Richard's fingers upon +the marble mantel-piece, of the fading light on the poplar leaves beyond +the window, and presently of the rapid roll of a carriage that went by +in the street. Each of these sounds produced in him a curious irritation +like a physical smart, and he felt again something of the dumb +resentment with which he had entered his wife's dressing-room on the +morning of his arrest. Then a smothered sob reached his ear, and Alice +began to tremble from head to foot at his side. Lifting his eyes at +last, he made a step forward and drew her into his arms. + +"Was it so very wrong? I am sorry," he said to Lydia over the bowed head +of their child. Until the words were uttered, and he felt Alice's tense +body relax in his arms, he had not realised that in taking sides with +her, he was not only making himself responsible for her fault, he was, +in truth, actually sharing in the lie that she had spoken. The choice +was an unconscious one, yet he knew even in the ensuing moment of his +clearer judgment that it had been inevitable--that from the first +instant, when he had paused speechless upon the threshold, there had +been open to him no other course. + +"I am sorry if it was wrong," he repeated, turning his glance now upon +Richard Ordway. + +"Do you know anything of Geoffrey Heath? Have you heard him spoken of by +decent people since you have been in Botetourt?" asked the old man +sternly. + +"I have heard little of him," answered Daniel, "and that little was far +from good. We are sorry, Alice, are we not? It must not happen again if +we can help it." + +"It has happened before," said Lydia, lifting her head from Dick's arm, +where it had lain. "It was then that I forbade her to see him alone." + +"I did not know," responded Daniel, "but she will do as you wish +hereafter. Will you not, Alice?" + +"How does it concern them? What have they to do with me?" demanded +Alice, turning in his arms to face her mother with a defiant and angry +look, "they have never cared for me--they have always preferred +Dick--always, even when I was a little child." + +He saw Lydia grow white and hide her drooping face again on Dick's +shoulder. "You are unjust to your mother, Alice," he said gravely, "she +has loved you always, and I have loved you." + +"Oh, you are different--I would die for you!" she exclaimed +passionately, as she wept on his breast. + +While he stood there holding her in his arms, it seemed to him that he +could feel like an electric current the wave of feeling which had swept +Alice and himself together. The inheritance which was his had descended +to her also with its keen joys and its sharp anguish. Even the road +which he had travelled so lately in weariness was the one upon which her +brave young feet were now set. Not his alone, but his child's also, was +this mixture of strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of +bitterness and compassion. + +"If you will leave me alone with her, I think I can make her understand +what you wish," he said, lifting his eyes from the dark head on his +breast to Lydia, who had risen and was standing before him with her +pensive, inquiring gaze fixed on his face. "She is like me," he added +abruptly, "in so many ways." + +"Yes, she is like you, I have always thought so," returned Lydia, +quietly. + +"And for that reason, perhaps, you have never quite understood her," he +responded. + +She bowed her head as if too polite or too indifferent to dissent from +his words; and then slipping her hand through Richard Ordway's arm, she +stood waiting patiently while the old man delivered his last bit of +remonstrance. + +"Try to curb her impulses, Daniel, or you will regret it." + +He went out, still holding Lydia's hand, and a moment afterwards, when +Daniel looked up at the sound of the hall door closing quickly, he saw +that Dick also had vanished, and that he was alone in the library with +Alice, who still sobbed on his breast. + +A few moments before it had seemed to him that he needed only to be +alone with her to make all perfectly clear between them. But when the +others had passed out, and the door had closed at last on the empty +silence in which they stood, he found that the words which he had meant +to utter had vanished hopelessly from his mind. He had said to Lydia +that Alice was like himself, but there had never been an hour in his +life when his hatred of a lie had not been as intense, as +uncompromising, as it was to-day. And this lie which she had spoken +appeared to divide them now like a drawn sword. + +"Alice," he said, breaking with an effort through the embarrassment +which had held him speechless, "will you give me your word of honour +that you will never tell me a falsehood again?" + +She stirred slightly in his arms, and he felt her body grow soft and +yielding. "I didn't to you," she answered, "oh, I wouldn't to you." + +"Not to the others then. Will you promise?" + +Her warm young arm tightened about his neck. "I didn't mean to--I didn't +mean to," she protested between her sobs, "but they forced me to do it. +It was more than half their fault--they are so--so hateful! I tried to +think of something else, but there was nothing to say, and I knew you +would stand by me----" + +"You have almost broken my heart," he answered, "for you have lied, +Alice, you have lied." + +She lifted her head and the next instant he felt her mouth on his cheek, +"I wish I were dead! I have hurt you and I wish I were dead!" she cried. + +"It is not hurting me that I mind--you may do that and welcome. It is +hurting yourself, my child, my Alice," he answered; and pressing her +upturned face back on his arm, he bent over her in an ecstasy of +emotion, calling her his daughter, his darling, the one joy of his life. +The iron in his nature had melted beneath her warm touch, and he felt +again the thrill, half agony, half rapture, with which he had received +her into his arms on the day of her birth. That day was nearer to him +now than was the minute in which he stood, and he could trace still the +soft, babyish curves in the face which nestled so penitently on his arm. +His very fear for her moved him into a deeper tenderness, and the appeal +she made to him now was one with the appeal of her infancy, for its +power lay in her weakness, not in her strength. + +"Be truthful with me, Alice," he said, "and remember that nothing can +separate me from you." + +An hour later when he parted from her and went upstairs, he heard +Lydia's voice calling to him through her half open door, and turning +obediently, he entered her bedroom for the first time since the night of +his return. Now as then the luxury, the softness, of his wife's +surroundings produced in him a curious depression, an enervation of +body; and he stood for an instant vainly striving to close his nostrils +against the delicious perfume which floated from her lace-trimmed +dressing-table. + +Lydia, still in her light mourning gown, was standing, when he entered, +before a little marquetry desk in one corner, her eyes on an open letter +which she appeared to have left partially unread. + +"I wanted to tell you, Daniel," she began at once, approaching the point +with a directness which left him no time to wonder as to the purpose of +her summons, "that Alice's intimacy with Geoffrey Heath has already been +commented upon in Botetourt. Cousin Paulina has actually written to me +for an explanation." + +"Cousin Paulina?" he repeated vaguely, and remembered immediately that +the lady in question was his wife's one rich relation--an elderly female +who was greatly respected for her fortune, which she spent entirely in +gratifying her personal passion for trinkets. "Oh, yes," he added +flippantly, "the old lady who used to look like a heathen idol got up +for the sacrifice." + +He felt that his levity was out of place, yet he went on rashly because +he knew that he was doomed forever to appear at a disadvantage in +Lydia's presence. She would never believe in him--his best motives would +wear always to her the covering of hypocrisy; and the very hopelessness +of ever convincing her goaded him at times into the reckless folly of +despair. + +"She writes me that people are talking of it," she resumed, sweetly, as +if his untimely mirth had returned still-born into the vacancy from +which it emerged. + +"Who is this Geoffrey Heath you speak of so incessantly?" he demanded. +"There was a Heath, I remember, who had a place near us in the country, +and kept a barroom or a butcher's shop or something in town." + +"That was the father," replied Lydia, with a shudder which deepened the +slightly scornful curve of her lip. "He was a respectable old man, I +believe, and made his fortune quite honestly, however it was. It was +only after his son began to grow up that he became socially +ambitious----" + +"And is that all you have against him?" + +"Oh, there's nothing against the old man--nothing at least except the +glaring bad taste he showed in that monstrous house he built in Henry +Street. He's dead now, you know." + +"Then the son has all the money and the house, too, hasn't he?" + +"All he hasn't wasted, yes." + +As she spoke she subsided into a chair, with a graceful, eddying motion +of her black chiffon draperies, and continued the conversation with an +expression of smiling weariness. All her attitudes were effective, and +he was struck, while he stood, embarrassed and awkward, before her, by +the plaintive grace that she introduced into her smallest gesture. +Though he was aware that he saw her now too clearly for passion, the +appeal of her delicate fairness went suddenly to his head. + +"Then there's not much to be said for the chap, I suppose?" he asked +abruptly, fearing the prolonged strain of the silence. + +"Very little for him, but a good deal about him, according to Cousin +Paulina. It seems that three years ago he was sent away from the +University for something disgraceful--cheating at cards, I believe; and +since then he has been conspicuous chiefly because of his low +associations. How Alice met him, I could never understand--I can't +understand now." + +"And do you think she cares for him--that she even imagines that she +does?" he demanded, while his terror rose in his throat and choked back +his words. + +"She will not confess it--how could she?" replied Lydia wearily, "I +believe it is only wildness, recklessness, lack of discipline that +prompts her. Yet he is good-looking--in a vulgar way," she added in +disgust, "and Alice has always seemed to like vulgar things." + +Her eyes rested on him, not directly, but as if they merely included him +in their general pensive survey of the world; yet he read the accusation +in her gentle avoidance of his gaze as plainly as she had uttered in it +her clear, flute-like tones. + +"It is very important," she went on, "that she should be curbed in her +impulses, in her extravagance. Already her bills are larger than mine +and yet she is never satisfied with the amount of her allowance. We can +do nothing with her, Uncle Richard and I, but she seems to yield, in a +measure, to your influence, and we thought--we hoped----" + +"I will--I will," he answered. "I will give my life to help her if need +be. But Lydia," he broke out more earnestly, "you must stand by and aid +me for her sake, for the sake of our child, we must work together----" + +Half rising in her chair, she looked at him fixedly a moment, while he +saw her pupils dilate almost as if she were in physical fear. + +"But what can I do? I have done all I could," she protested, with an +injured look. By this look, without so much as a gesture, she put the +space of the whole room between them. The corners of her mouth quivered +and drooped, and he watched the pathos creep back into her light blue +eyes. "I have given up my whole life to the children since--since----" + +She broke off in a frightened whisper, but the unfinished sentence was +more expressive than a volley of reproaches would have been. There was +something in her thoughts too horrible to put into words, and this +something of which she could not bring herself to speak, would have had +no place in her existence except for him. He felt cowed suddenly, as if +he had been physically beaten and thrust aside. + +"You have been very brave--I know--I appreciate it all," he said, and +while he spoke he drew away from her until he stood with his back +against one of the amber satin curtains. Instinctively he put out his +hand for support, and as it closed over the heavy draperies, he felt +that the hard silken texture made his flesh creep. The physical +sensation, brief as it was, recalled in some strange way the effect upon +him of Lydia's smooth and shining surface when he had knelt before her +on the night of his homecoming. Yet it was with difficulty even now that +he could free himself from the conviction that her emotional apathy was +but one aspect of innocence. Would he admit to-day that what he had once +worshipped as purity of soul was but the frost of an unnatural coldness +of nature? All at once, as he looked at her, he found himself reminded +by her calm forehead, her classic features, of the sculptured front of +a marble tomb which he had seen in some foreign gallery. Was there +death, after all, not life hidden for him in her plaintive beauty? The +next instant, as he watched her, he told himself that such questions +belonged to the evil promptings of his own nature. + +"I realise all that you have been, all that you have suffered," he said +at last, aware that his words sounded hysterical in the icy constraint +which surrounded them. + +When his speech was out, his embarrassment became so great that he found +himself presently measuring the distance which divided him from the +closed door. With a last effort of will, he went toward her and +stretched out his hand in a gesture that was almost one of entreaty. + +"Lydia," he asked, "is it too painful for you to have me here? Would it +be any better for you if I went away?" + +As he moved toward her she bent over with a nervous, mechanical movement +to arrange her train, and before replying to his question, she laid each +separate fold in place. "Why, by no means," she answered, looking up +with her conventional smile. "It would only mean--wouldn't it?--that +people would begin to wonder all over again?" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE IRON BARS + + +As the days went on it seemed to him that his nature, repressed in so +many other directions, was concentrated at last in a single channel of +feeling. The one outlet was his passion for Alice, and nothing that +concerned her was too remote or too trivial to engross him--her clothes, +her friendships, the particular chocolate creams for which she had once +expressed a preference. To fill her life with amusements that would +withdraw her erring impulses from Geoffrey Heath became for a time his +absorbing purpose. + +At first he told himself in a kind of rapture that success was apparent +in his earliest and slightest efforts. For weeks Alice appeared to find +interest and animation in his presence. She flattered, scolded, caressed +and tyrannised, but with each day, each hour, she grew nearer his heart +and became more firmly interwoven into his life. + +Then suddenly a change came over her, and one day when she had been +kissing him with "butterfly kisses" on his forehead, he felt her +suddenly grow restless and draw back impatiently as if seeking a fresh +diversion. A bored look had come into her eyes and he saw the three +little wrinkles gather between her eyebrows. + +"Alice," he said, alarmed by the swift alteration, "are you tired of the +house? Shall we ride together?" + +She shook her head, half pettishly, half playfully, "I can't--I've an +engagement," she responded. + +"An engagement?" he repeated inquiringly. "Why, I thought we were always +to ride when it was fair." + +"I promised one of the girls to go to tea with her," she repeated, after +a minute. "It isn't a real tea, but she wanted to talk to me, so I said +I would go." + +"Well, I'm glad you did--don't give up the girls," he answered, relieved +at once by the explanation. + +In the evening when she returned, shortly after dark, "one of the girls" +as she called laughingly from the library, had come home for the night +with her. Ordway heard them chatting gayly together, but, when he went +in for a moment before going upstairs to dress, they lapsed immediately +into an embarrassed silence. Alice's visitor was a pretty, gray-eyed, +flaxen-haired young woman named Jenny Lane, who smiled in a frightened +way and answered "Yes--no," when he spoke to her, as if she offered him +the choice of his favourite monosyllable from her lips. Clearly the +subject which animated them was one in which, even as Alice's father, he +could have no share. + +For weeks after this it seemed to him that a silence fell gradually +between them--that silence of the heart which is so much more oppressive +than the mere outward silence of the lips. It was not, he told himself +again and again, that there had come a perceptible change in her +manner. She still met him at breakfast with her flower and her caress, +still flung herself into his arms at unexpected moments, still coaxed +and upbraided in her passionate, childish voice. Nevertheless, the +difference was there, and he recognised it with a pang even while he +demanded of himself in what breathless suspension of feeling it could +consist? Her caresses were as frequent, but the fervour, the +responsiveness, had gone out of them; and he was brought at last face to +face with the knowledge that her first vivid delight in him had departed +forever. The thing which absorbed her now was a thing in which he had no +share, no recognition; and true to her temperament, her whole impulsive +being had directed itself into this new channel. "She is young and it is +only natural that she should wish to have her school friends about her," +he thought with a smile. + +In the beginning it had been an easy matter to efface his personality +and stand out of the way of Alice's life, but as the weeks drew on into +months and the months into a year, he found that he had been left aside +not only by his daughter, but by the rest of the household as well. In +his home he felt himself to exist presently in an ignored, yet obvious +way like a familiar piece of household furniture, which is neither +commented upon nor wilfully overlooked. It would have occasioned, he +supposed, some vague exclamations of surprise had he failed to appear in +his proper place at the breakfast table, but as long as his accustomed +seat was occupied all further use for his existence seemed at an end. +He was not necessary, he was not even enjoyed, but he was tolerated. + +Before this passive indifference, which was worse to him than direct +hostility, he found that his sympathies, his impulses, and even his +personality, were invaded by an apathy that paralysed the very sources +of his will. He beheld himself as the cause of the gloom, the suspicion, +the sadness, that surrounded him, and as the cause, too, of Alice's +wildness and of the pathetic loneliness in which Lydia lived. But for +him, he told himself, there would have been no shadow upon the +household; and his wife's pensive smile was like a knife in his heart +whenever he looked up from his place at the table and met it unawares. +At Tappahannock he had sometimes believed that his past was a skeleton +which he had left behind; here he had grown, as the years went by, to +think of it as a coffin which had shut over him and from which there was +no escape. And with the realisation of this, a blighting remorse, a +painful humbleness awoke in his soul, and was revealed outwardly in his +face, in his walk, in his embarrassed movements. As he passed up and +down the staircase, he went softly lest the heavy sound of his footsteps +should become an annoyance to Lydia's sensitive ears. His manner lost +its boyish freedom and grew awkward and nervous, and when he gave an +order to the servants it seemed to him that a dreadful timidity sounded +in his voice. He began to grow old suddenly in a year, before middle age +had as yet had time to soften the way. + +Looking in the glass one morning, when he had been less than three years +in Botetourt, he discovered that the dark locks upon his forehead had +turned almost white, and that his shoulders were losing gradually their +youthful erectness of carriage. And it seemed to him that the courage +with which he might have once broken away and begun anew had departed +from him in this new and paralysing humility, which was like the +humility of a helpless and burdensome old age. + +After a day of peculiar loneliness, he was returning from Richard's +office on this same afternoon, when a voice called to him from beneath +the fringed linen cover of a little phaeton which had driven up to the +crossing. Turning in surprise he found Aunt Lucy holding the reins over +a fat pony, while she sat very erect, with her trim, soldierly figure +emerging from a mountain of brown-paper parcels. + +"This is the very chance I've been looking for, Daniel Ordway!" she +exclaimed, in her emphatic voice. "Do you know, sir, that you have not +entered my house once in the last three years?" + +"Yes," he replied, "I know--but the fact is that I have hardly been +anywhere since I came back." + +"And why is that?" she demanded sharply. + +He shook his head, "I don't know. Perhaps you can tell me." + +"Yes, I can tell you," she snapped back, with a rudeness which, in some +singular way, seemed to him kinder than the studied politeness that he +had met. "It's because, in spite of all you've gone through, you are +still more than half a fool, Daniel Ordway." + +"Oh, you're right, I dare say," he acknowledged bitterly. + +With a frown, which struck him curiously as the wrong side of a smile, +she nodded her head while she made room for him among the brown-paper +parcels on the low linen covered seat of the phaeton. "Come in here, I +want to talk to you," she said, "there's a little matter about which I +should like your help." + +"My help?" he repeated in astonishment, as a sensation of pleasure shot +through his heart. It was so seldom that anybody asked his help in +Botetourt. "Is the second green parrot dead, and do you want me to dig +the grave?" he inquired, checking his unseemly derision as he met her +warning glance. + +"Polly is perfectly well," she returned, rapping him smartly upon the +knee with her little tightly closed black fan which she carried as if it +were a baton, "but I do not like Richard Ordway." + +The suddenness of her announcement, following so inappropriately her +comment upon the health of the green parrot, caused him to start from +his seat in the amazement with which he faced her. Then he broke into an +echo of his old boyish merriment. "You don't?" he retorted flippantly. +"Well, Lydia does." + +Her eyes blinked rapidly in the midst of her wrinkled little face, and +bending over she flicked the back of the fat pony gently with the end +of the whip. "Oh, I'm not sure I like Lydia," she responded, "though, of +course, Lydia is a saint." + +"Yes, Lydia is a saint," he affirmed. + +"Well, I'm not talking about Lydia," she resumed presently, "though +there's something I've always had a burning curiosity to find out." For +an instant she held back, and then made her charge with a kind of +desperate courage. "Is she really a saint?" she questioned, "or is it +only the way that she wears her hair?" + +Her question was so like the spoken sound of his own dreadful suspicion +that it took away his breath completely, while he stared at her with a +gasp that was evenly divided between a laugh and a groan. + +"Oh, she's a saint, there's no doubt of that," he insisted loyally. + +"Then I'll let her rest," she replied, "and I'm glad, heaven knows, to +have my doubts at an end. But where do you imagine that I am taking +you?" + +"For a drive, I hope," he answered, smiling. + +"It's not," she rejoined grimly, "it's for a visit." + +"A visit?" he repeated, starting up with the impulse to jump over the +moving wheel, "but I never visit." + +She reached out her wiry little fingers, which clung like a bird's claw, +and drew him by force back upon the seat. + +"I am taking you to see Adam Crowley," she explained, "do you remember +him?" + +"Crowley?" he repeated the name as he searched his memory. "Why, yes, +he was my father's clerk for forty years, wasn't he? I asked when I came +home what had become of him. So he is still living?" + +"He was paralysed in one arm some years ago, and it seems he has lost +all his savings in some investment your father had advised him to make. +Of course, there was no legal question of a debt to him, but until the +day your father died he had always made ample provision for the old +man's support. Crowley had always believed that the allowance would be +continued--that there would be a mention made of him in the will." + +"And there was none?" + +"It was an oversight, Crowley is still convinced, for he says he had a +distinct promise." + +"Then surely my uncle will fulfil the trust? He is an honourable man." + +She shook her head. "I don't know that he is so much 'honourable' as he +is 'lawful.' The written obligation is the one which binds him like +steel, but I don't think he cares whether a thing is right or wrong, +just or unjust, as long as it is the law. The letter holds him, but I +doubt if he has ever even felt the motion of the spirit. If he ever felt +it," she concluded with grim humour, "he would probably try to drive it +out with quinine." + +"Are we going there now--to see Crowley, I mean?" + +"If you don't mind. Of course there may be nothing that you can do--but +I thought that you might, perhaps, speak to Richard about it." + +He shook his head, "No, I can't speak to my uncle, though I think you +are unjust to him," he answered, after a pause in which the full joy of +her appeal had swept through his heart, "but I have an income of my own, +you know, and out of this, I can help Crowley." + +For an instant she did not reply, and he felt her thin, upright little +figure grow rigid at his side. Then turning with a start, she laid her +hand, in its black lace mitten, upon his knee. + +"O my boy, you are your mother all over again!" she said. + +After this they drove on in silence down one of the shaded streets, +where rows of neat little houses, packed together like pasteboard boxes, +were divided from the unpaved sidewalks by low whitewashed fences. At +one of these doors the phaeton presently drew up, and dropping the reins +on the pony's back, Aunt Lucy alighted with a bound between the wheels, +and began with Ordway's help, to remove the paper parcels from the seat. +When their arms were full, she pushed open the gate, and led him up the +short walk to the door where an old man, wearing a knitted shawl, sat in +an invalid's chair beyond the threshold. At the sound of their footsteps +Crowley turned on them a cheerful wrinkled face which was brightened by +a pair of twinkling black eyes that gave him an innocent and merry look. + +"I knew you'd come around," he said, smiling with his toothless mouth +like an amiable infant. "Matildy has been complaining that the coffee +gave out at breakfast, but I said 'twas only a sign that you were +coming. Everything bad is the sign of something good, that's what I +say." + +"I've brought something better than coffee to-day, Adam," replied Aunt +Lucy, seating herself upon the doorstep. "This is Daniel Ordway--do you +remember him?" + +The old man bent forward, without moving his withered hand, which lay +outstretched on the cushioned arm of the chair, and it seemed to Ordway +that the smiling black eyes pierced to his heart. "Oh, I remember him, I +remember him," said Crowley, "poor boy--poor boy." + +"He's come back now," rejoined Aunt Lucy, raising her voice, "and he has +come to see you." + +"He's like his mother," remarked Crowley, almost in a whisper, "and I'm +glad of that, though his father was a good man. But there are some good +people who do more harm than bad ones," he added, "and I always knew +that old Daniel Ordway would ruin his son." A chuckle broke from him, +"but your mother: I can see her now running out bareheaded in the snow +to scold me for not having on my overcoat. She was always seeing with +other people's eyes, bless her, and feeling with other people's bodies." + +Dropping upon the doorstep, Ordway replaced the knitted shawl which had +slipped from the old man's shoulder. "I wonder how it is that you keep +so happy in spite of everything?" he said. + +"Happy?" repeated Crowley with a laugh. "Well, I don't know, but I am +not complaining. I've seen men who hadn't an ache in their bodies, who +were worse off than I am to-day. I tell you it isn't the thing that +comes to you, but the way you look at it that counts, and because you've +got a paralysed arm is no reason that you should have a paralysed heart +as well. I've had a powerful lot of suffering, but I've had a powerful +lot of happiness, too, and the suffering somehow, doesn't seem to come +inside of me to stay as the happiness does. You see, I'm a great +believer in the Lord, sir," he added simply, "and what I can't +understand, I don't bother about, but just take on trust." All the +cheerful wrinkles of his face shone peacefully as he talked. "It's true +there've been times when things have gone so hard I've felt that I'd +just let go and drop down to the bottom, but the wonderful part is that +when you get to the bottom there's still something down below you. It's +when you fall lowest that you feel most the Lord holding you up. It may +be that there ain't any bottom after all but I know if there is one the +Lord is surely waiting down there to catch you when you let go. He ain't +only there, I reckon, but He's in all the particular hard places on +earth much oftener than He's up in His heaven. He knows the poorhouse, +you may be sure, and He'll be there to receive me and tell me it ain't +so bad as it looks. I don't want to get there, but if I do it will come +a bit easier to think that the Lord has been there before me----" + +The look in his smiling, toothless face brought to Ordway, as he +watched him, the memory of the epileptic little preacher who had +preached in the prison chapel. Here, also, was that untranslatable +rapture of the mystic, which cannot be put into words though it passes +silently in its terrible joy from the heart of the speaker to the other +heart that is waiting. Again he felt his whole being dissolve in the +emotion which had overflowed his eyes that Sunday when he was a +prisoner. He remembered the ecstasy with which he had said to himself on +that day: "I have found the key!" and he knew now that this ecstasy was +akin to the light that had shone for him while he sat on the stage of +the town hall in Tappahannock. A chance word from the lips of a doting +old man, who saw the doors of the poorhouse swing open to receive him, +had restored to Ordway, with a miraculous clearness, the vision that he +had lost; and he felt suddenly that the hope with which he had come out +of the prison had never really suffered disappointment or failure. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE VISION AND THE FACT + + +As he walked home along one of the side streets, shaded by an irregular +row of flowering linden trees, it appeared to him that his life in +Botetourt, so unendurable an hour before, had been rendered suddenly +easy by a miracle, not in his surroundings, but in himself. His help had +been asked, and in the act of giving there had flowed back into his +heart the strength by which he might live his daily life. His unrest, +his loneliness, his ineffectiveness, showed to him now as the result of +some fatal weakness in his own nature--some failure in his personal +attitude to the people among whom he lived. + +Straight ahead of him a fine white dust drifted down from the blossoming +lindens, lying like powder on the roughly paved street, where the wind +blew it in soft swirls and eddies against the crumbling stone steps +which led down from the straight doorways of the old-fashioned houses. +The boughs overhead made a green arch through which the light fell, and +it was under this thick tent of leaves, that, looking up presently, he +saw Emily Brooke coming toward him. Not until she was so close to him +that he could hear the rustle of her dress, did she lift her eyes from +the pavement and meet his cry of welcome with a look of joyful +surprise. + +"Emily!" he cried, and at his voice, she stretched out her hand and +stood smiling at him with the soft and animated gaze which, it seemed to +him now, he had but dimly remembered. The thought of her had dwelt as a +vision in his memory, yet he knew, as he looked into her face, that the +ideal figure had lacked the charm, the radiance, the sparkling energy, +of the living substance. + +"So you came to Botetourt and did not send me word," he said. + +"No, I did not send you word," she answered, "and now I am leaving +within an hour." + +"And you would have gone without seeing me?" + +For an instant she hesitated, and he watched the joy in her face melt +into a sorrowful tenderness. "I knew that you were well and I was +satisfied. Would it have been kind to appear to you like an arisen ghost +of Tappahannock?" + +"The greatest kindness," he answered gravely, "that you--or anyone could +do me." + +She shook her head: "Kindness or not, I found that I could not do it." + +"And you go in an hour?" + +"My train leaves at seven o'clock. Is it nearly that?" + +He drew out his watch, a mechanical action which relieved the emotional +tension that stretched like a drawn cord between them. "It is not yet +six. Will you walk a little way with me down this street? There is still +time." + +As she nodded silently, they turned and went back along the side +street, under the irregular rows of lindens, in the direction from which +he had come. + +"One of the girls I used to teach sent for me when she was dying," she +said presently, as if feeling the need of some explanation of her +presence in Botetourt. "That was three days ago and the funeral was +yesterday. It is a great loss to me, for I haven't so many friends that +I can spare the few I love." + +He made no answer to her remark, and in the silence that followed, he +felt, with a strange ache at his heart, that the distance that separated +them was greater than it had been when she was in Tappahannock and he in +Botetourt. Then there had stretched only the luminous dream spaces +between their souls; now they stood divided by miles and miles of an +immovable reality. Was it possible that in making her a part of his +intense inner life, he had lost, in a measure, his consciousness of her +actual existence? Then while the vision still struggled blindly against +the fact, she turned toward him with a smile which lifted her once more +into the shining zone of spirits. + +"If I can feel that you are happy, that you are at peace, I shall ask +nothing more of God," she said. + +"I am happy to-day," he answered, "but if you had come yesterday, I +should have broken down in my weakness. Oh, I have been homesick for +Tappahannock since I came away!" + +"Yet Botetourt is far prettier to my eyes." + +"To mine also--but it isn't beauty, it is usefulness that I need. For +the last two years I have told myself night and day that I had no place +and no purpose--that I was the stone that the builders rejected." + +"And it is different now?" + +"Different? Yes, I feel as if I had been shoved suddenly into a place +where I fitted--as if I were meant, after all, to help hold things +together. And the change came--how do you think?" he asked, smiling. "A +man wanted money of me to keep him out of the poorhouse." + +The old gaiety was in his voice, but as she looked at him a ray of faint +sunshine fell on his face through a parting in the leaves overhead, and +she saw for the first time how much older he had grown since that last +evening in Tappahannock. The dark hair was all gray now, the lines of +the nose were sharper, the cheek bones showed higher above the bluish +hollows beneath. Yet the change which had so greatly aged him had +deepened the peculiar sweetness in the curves of his mouth, and this +sweetness, which was visible also in his rare smile, moved her heart to +a tenderness which was but the keener agony of renouncement. + +"I know how it is," she said slowly, "just as in Tappahannock you found +your happiness in giving yourself to others, so you will find it here." + +"If I can only be of use--perhaps." + +"You can be--you will be. What you were with us you will be again." + +"Yet it was different. There I had your help, hadn't I?" + +"And you shall have it here," she responded, brightly, though he saw +that her eyes were dim with tears. + +"Will you make me a promise?" he asked, stopping suddenly before some +discoloured stone steps "will you promise me that if ever you need a +friend--a strong arm, a brain to think for you--you will send me word?" + +She looked at him smiling, while her tears fell from her eyes. "I will +make no promise that is not for your sake as well as for mine," she +answered. + +"But it is for my sake--it is for my happiness." + +"Then I will promise," she rejoined gravely, "and I will keep it." + +"I thank you," he responded, taking the hand that she held out. + +At his words she had turned back, pausing a moment in her walk, as if +she had caught from his voice or his look a sense of finality in their +parting. "I have but a few minutes left," she said, "so I must walk +rapidly back or I shall be late." + +A sudden clatter of horses' hoofs on the cobblestones in the street +caused them to start away from each other, and turning his head, Ordway +saw Alice gallop furiously past him with Geoffrey Heath at her side. + +"How beautiful!" exclaimed Emily beneath her breath, for Alice as she +rode by had looked back for an instant, her glowing face framed in blown +masses of hair. + +"Yes, she is beautiful," he replied, and added after a moment as they +walked on, "she is my daughter." + +Her face brightened with pleasure. "Then you are happy--you must be +happy," she said. "Why, she looked like Brunhilde." + +For a moment he hesitated. "Yes," he answered at last, "she is very +beautiful--and I am happy." + +After this they did not speak again until they reached the iron gate +before the house in which she was staying. On his side he was caught up +into some ideal realm of feeling, in which he possessed her so utterly +that the meeting could not bring her nearer to him nor the parting take +her farther away. His longing, his unrest, and his failure, were a part +of his earthly nature which he seemed to have left below him in that +other life from which he had escaped. Without doubt he would descend to +it again, as he had descended at moments back into the body of his sin; +but in the immediate exaltation of his mood, his love had passed the +bounds of personality and entered into a larger and freer world. When +they parted, presently, after a casual good-bye, he could persuade +himself, almost without effort, that she went on with him in the soft +May twilight. + +At his door he found Lydia just returning from a drive, and taking her +wraps from her arm, he ascended the steps and entered the house at her +side. She had changed her mourning dress for a gown of pale gray cloth, +and he noticed at once that her beauty had lost in transparency and +become more human. + +"I thought you had gone riding with Alice," she said without looking at +him, as she stooped to gather up the ends of a lace scarf which had +slipped from her arm. + +"No, I was not with her," he answered. "I wanted to go, but she would +not let me." + +"Are you sure, then, that she was not with Geoffrey Heath?" + +"I am sure that she was with him, for they passed me not a half hour ago +as I came up." + +They had entered the library while he spoke, and crossing to the hearth, +where a small fire burned, Lydia looked up at him with her anxious gaze. +"I hoped at first that you would gain some influence over her," she +said, in a distressed voice, "but it seems now that she is estranged +even from you." + +"Not estranged, but there is a difference and I am troubled by it. She +is young, you see, and I am but a dull and sober companion for her." + +She shook her head with the little hopeless gesture which was so +characteristic of her. Only yesterday this absence of resolution, the +discontented droop of her thin, red lips, had worked him into a feeling +of irritation against her. But his vision of her to-day had passed +through some softening lens; and he saw her shallowness, her vanity, her +lack of passion, as spiritual infirmities which were not less to be +pitied than an infirmity of the body. + +"The end is not yet, though," he added cheerfully after a moment, "and +she will come back to me in time when I am able really to help her." + +"Meanwhile is she to be left utterly uncontrolled?" + +"Not if we can do otherwise. Only we must go quietly and not frighten +her too much." + +Again she met his words with the resigned, hopeless movement of her +pretty head in its pearl gray bonnet. "I have done all I can," she said, +"and it has been worse than useless. Now you must try if your method is +better than mine." + +"I am trying," he answered smiling. + +For an instant her gaze fluttered irresolutely over him, as if she were +moved by a passing impulse to a deeper utterance. That this impulse +concerned Alice he was vaguely aware, for when had his wife ever spoken +to him upon a subject more directly personal? Apart from their children +he knew there was no bond between them--no memories, no hopes, no ground +even for the building of a common interest. Lydia adored her children, +he still believed, but when there was nothing further to be said of Dick +or of Alice, their conversation flagged upon the most trivial topics. +Upon the few unfortunate occasions when he had attempted to surmount the +barrier between them, she had appeared to dissolve, rather than to +retreat, before his approach. Yet despite her soft, cloud-like exterior, +he had discovered that the rigour of her repulsion had hardened to a +vein of iron in her nature. What must her life be, he demanded in a +sudden passion of pity, when the strongest emotion she had ever known +was the aversion that she now felt to him? All the bitterness in his +heart melted into compassion at the thought, and he resisted an impulse +to take her into his arms and say: "I know, I understand, and I am +sorry." Yet he was perfectly aware that if he were to do this, she would +only shrink farther away from him, and look up at him with fear and +mystification, as if she suspected him of some hidden meaning, of some +strategic movement against her impregnable reserve. Her whole relation +to him had narrowed into the single instinct of self-defence. If he came +unconsciously a step nearer, if he accidentally touched her hand as he +passed, he had grown to expect the flaring of her uncontrollable +repugnance in the heightened red in her cheeks. "I know that I am +repulsive to her, that when she looks at me she still sees the convict," +he thought, "and yet the knowledge of this only adds to the pity and +tenderness I feel." + +Lydia had moved through the doorway, but turning back in the hall, she +spoke with a return of confidence, as if the fact of the threshold, +which she had put between them, had restored to her, in a measure, the +advantage that she had lost. + +"Then I shall leave Alice in your hands. I can do nothing more," she +said. + +"Give me time and I will do all that you cannot," he answered. + +When she had gone upstairs, he crossed the hall to the closed door of +the library, and stopped short on hearing Alice's voice break out into +song. The girl was still in her riding habit, and the gay French air on +her lips was in accord with the spirited gesture with which she turned +to him as he appeared. Her beauty would have disarmed him even without +the kiss with which she hastened to avert his reproach. + +"Alice, can you kiss me when you know you have broken your promise?" + +"I made no promise," she answered coldly, drawing away. "You told me not +to go riding with Geoffrey, but it was you that said it, not I, and you +said it only because mamma made you. Oh, I knew all the time that it was +she!" + +Her voice broke with anger and before he could restrain her, she ran +from the room and up the staircase. An instant afterward he heard a door +slam violently above his head. Was she really in love with Geoffrey +Heath? he asked in alarm, or was the passion she had shown merely the +outburst of an undisciplined child? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH + + +At breakfast Alice did not appear, and when he went upstairs to her +room, she returned an answer in a sullen voice through her closed door. +All day his heart was oppressed by the thought of her, but to his +surprise, when he came home to luncheon, she met him on the steps with a +smiling face. It was evident to him at the first glance that she meant +to ignore both the cause and the occasion of last evening's outburst; +and he found himself yielding to her determination before he realised +all that his evasion of the subject must imply. But while she hung upon +his neck, with her cheek pressed to his, it was impossible that he +should speak any word that would revive her anger against him. Anything +was better than the violence with which she had parted from him the +evening before. He could never forget his night of anguish, when he had +strained his ears unceasingly for some stir in her room, hoping that a +poignant realisation of his love for her would bring her sobbing and +penitent to his door before dawn. + +Now when he saw her again for the first time, she had apparently +forgotten the parting which had so tortured his heart. + +"You've been working too hard, papa, and you're tired," she remarked, +rubbing the furrows between his eyebrows in a vain endeavour to smooth +them out. "Are you obliged to go back to that hateful office this +afternoon?" + +"I've some work that will keep me there until dark, I fear," he replied. +"It's a pity because I'd like a ride of all things." + +"It is a pity, poor dear," protested Alice, but he noticed that there +was no alteration in her sparkling gaiety. Was there, indeed, almost a +hint of relief in her tone? and was this demonstrative embrace but a +guarded confession of her gratitude for his absence? Something in her +manner--a veiled excitement in her look, a subtle change in her +voice--caused him to hold her to him in a keener tenderness. It was on +his lips to beg for her confidence, to remind her of his sympathy in +whatever she might feel or think--to assure her even of his tolerance of +Geoffrey Heath. But in the instant when he was about to speak, a sudden +recollection of the look with which she had turned from him last +evening, checked the impulse before it had had time to pass into words. +And so because of his terror of losing her, he let her go at last in +silence from his arms. + +His office work that afternoon was heavier than usual, for in the midst +of his mechanical copying and filing, he was abstracted by the memory of +that strange, unnatural vivacity in Alice's face. Then in the effort to +banish the disturbing recollection, he recalled old Adam Crowley, +wrapped in his knitted shawl, on the doorstep of his cottage. A check of +Richard's contributing six hundred dollars toward the purchase of a new +organ for the church he attended gave Daniel his first opportunity to +mention the old man to his uncle. + +"I saw Crowley the other day," he began abruptly, "the man who was my +father's clerk for forty years, and whose place," he added smiling, "I +seem to have filled." + +"Ah, indeed," remarked Richard quietly. "So he is still living?" + +"His right arm has been paralysed, as you know, and he is very poor. All +his savings were lost in some investments he made by my father's +advice." + +"So I have heard--it was most unfortunate." + +"He had always been led to believe, I understand, that he would be +provided for by my father's will." + +Richard laid down his pen and leaned thoughtfully back in his chair. "He +has told me so," he rejoined, "but we have only his word for it, as +there was no memorandum concerning him among my brother's papers." + +"But surely it was well known that father had given him a pension. Aunt +Lucy was perfectly aware of it--they talked of it together." + +"During his lifetime he did pay Crowley a small monthly allowance in +consideration of his past services. But his will was an extremely +careful document--his bequests are all made in a perfectly legal form." + +"Was not this will made some years ago, however, before the old man +became helpless and lost his money?" + +Richard nodded: "I understood as much from Crowley when he came to me +with his complaint. But, as I reminded him, it would have been a +perfectly simple matter for Daniel to have made such a bequest in a +codicil--as he did in your case," he concluded deliberately. + +The younger man met his gaze without flinching. "The will, I believe, +was written while I was in prison," he observed. + +"Upon the day following your conviction. By a former will, which he then +destroyed, he had bequeathed to you his entire estate. You understand, +of course," he pursued, after a pause in which he had given his nephew +full time to possess himself of the information, as well as of the +multiplied suggestions that he had offered, "that the income you receive +now comes from money that is legally your own. If it should ever appear +advisable for me to do so, I am empowered to make over to you the sum of +one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in securities. The principal is +left in my hands merely because it is to your interest that I should +keep an eye on the investments." + +"Yes, I understand, and I understand, too, that but for your insistence +my father would probably have left me nothing." + +"I felt very strongly that he had no right to disinherit you," returned +Richard. "In my eyes he made a grave mistake in refusing to lend you +support at your trial----" + +"As you did, I acknowledge gratefully," interrupted Daniel, and wondered +why the fact had aroused in him so little appreciation. As far as the +observance of the conventional virtues were concerned, Richard Ordway, +he supposed, was, and had been all his life, a good man, yet something +in his austere excellence froze instantly all the gentler impulses in +his nephew's heart. It was impossible after this to mention again the +subject of Crowley, so going back to his work, he applied himself to his +copying until Richard put down his papers and left the office. Then he +locked his desk wearily and followed his uncle out into the street. + +A soft May afternoon was just closing, and the street lamps glimmered, +here and there, like white moths out of the mist which was fragrant with +honeysuckle and roses. An old lamplighter, who was descending on his +ladder from a tall lamppost at the corner, looked down at Ordway with a +friendly and merry face. + +"The days will soon be so long that you won't be needing us to light you +home," he remarked, as he came down gingerly, his hands grasping the +rungs of the ladder above his head. When he landed at Daniel's side he +began to tell him in a pleasant, garrulous voice about his work, his +rheumatism and the strange sights that he had seen in his rounds for so +many years. "I've seen wonders in my day, you may believe it," he went +on, chuckling, "I've seen babies in carriages that grew up to be brides +in orange blossoms, and then went by me later as corpses in hearses. +I've seen this town when it warn't mo'n a little middlin' village, and +I've seen soldiers dyin' in blood in this very street." A train went by +with a rush along the gleaming track that ran through the town. "An' +I've known the time when a sight like that would have skeered folks to +death," he added. + +For a minute Ordway looked back, almost wistfully, after the flying +train. Then with a friendly "good-bye!" he parted from the lamplighter +and went on his way. + +When he reached home he half expected to find Alice waiting for him in +the twilight on the piazza, but, to his surprise, Lydia met him as he +entered the hall and asked him, in a voice which sounded as if she were +speaking in the presence of servants, to come with her into the library. +There she closed the door upon him and inquired in a guarded tone: + +"Has Alice been with you this afternoon? Have you seen or heard anything +of her?" + +"Not since luncheon. Why, I thought that she was at home with one of the +girls." + +"It seems she left the house immediately after you. She wore her dark +blue travelling dress, and one of the servants saw her at the railway +station at three o'clock." + +For an instant the room swam before his eyes. "You believe, then, that +she has gone off?" he asked in an unnatural voice, "that she has gone +off with Geoffrey Heath?" + +In the midst of his own hideous anguish he was impressed by the perfect +decency of Lydia's grief--by the fact that she wore her anxiety as an +added grace. + +"I have telephoned for Uncle Richard," she said in a subdued tone, "and +he has just sent me word that after making inquiries, he learned that +Geoffrey Heath went to Washington on the afternoon train." + +"And Alice is with him!" + +"If she is not, where is she?" Her eyes filled with tears, and sinking +into a chair she dropped her face in her clasped hands. "Oh, I wish +Uncle Richard would come," she moaned through her fingers. + +Again he felt a smothered resentment at this implicit reliance upon +Richard Ordway. "We must make sure first that she is gone," he said, +"and then it will be time enough to consider ways and means of bringing +her back." + +Turning abruptly away from her, he went out of the library and up the +staircase to Alice's room, which was situated directly across the hall +from his own. At the first glance it seemed to him that nothing was +missing, but when he looked at her dressing-table in the alcove, he +found that it had been stripped of her silver toilet articles, and that +her little red leather bag, which he had filled with banknotes a few +days ago, was not in the top drawer where she kept it. Something in the +girl's chamber, so familiar, so redolent of associations with her bright +presence, tore at his heart with a fresh sense of loss, like a gnawing +pain that fastens into a new wound. On the bed he saw her pink flannel +dressing-gown, with the embroidered collar which had so delighted her +when she had bought it; on the floor at one side lay her pink quilted +slippers, slightly soiled from use; and between the larger pillows was +the delicate, lace-trimmed baby's pillow upon which she slept. The +perfume of her youth, her freshness, was still in the room, as if she +had gone from it for a little while through a still open door. + +At a touch on his arm he looked round startled, to find one of the +servants--the single remaining slave of the past generation--rocking her +aged body as she stood at his side. + +"She ain' gwine come back no mo'--Yes, Lawd, she ain' gwine come back no +mo'. Whut's done hit's done en hit cyarn be undone agin." + +"Why, Aunt Mehaley, what do you mean?" he demanded sternly, oppressed, +in spite of himself by her wailing voice and her African superstition. + +"I'se seen er tur'ble heap done in my day wid dese hyer eyes," resumed +the old negress, "but I ain' never seen none un um undone agin atter +deys wunst been done. You kin cut down er tree, but you cyarn' mek hit +grow back togedder. You kin wring de neck er a rooster, but you cyarn' +mek him crow. Yes, my Lawd, hit's easy to pull down, but hit's hard to +riz up. I'se ole, Marster, en I'se mos' bline wid lookin', but I ain' +never seen whut's done undone agin." + +She tottered out, still wailing in her half-crazed voice, and hastily +shutting the drawers of the dressing-table, he went downstairs again to +where Lydia awaited him in the library. + +"There's no doubt, I fear, that she's gone with Heath," he said, with a +constraint into which he had schooled himself on the staircase. "As he +appears to have stopped at Washington, I shall take the next train +there, which leaves at nine-twenty-five. If they are married----" + +He broke off, struck by the pallor that overspread her face. + +"But they are married! They must be married!" she cried in terror. + +For an instant he stared back at her white face in a horror as great as +hers. Was it the first time in his life, he questioned afterwards, that +he had been brought face to face with the hideous skeletons upon which +living conventions assume a semblance of truth? + +"I hope to heaven that he has _not_ married her!" he exclaimed in a +passion from which she shrank back trembling. "Good God! do you want me +to haggle with a cad like that to make him marry my child?" + +"And if he doesn't? what then?" moaned Lydia, in a voice that seemed to +fade away while she spoke. + +"If he doesn't I shall be almost tempted to bless his name. Haven't you +proved to me that he is a cheat and a brute and a libertine, and yet you +dare to tell me that I must force him to marry Alice. Oh, if he will +only have the mercy to leave her free, I may still save her!" he said. + +She looked at him with dilated eyes as if rooted in fear to the spot +upon which she stood. "But the consequences," she urged weakly at last +in a burst of tears. + +"Oh, I'll take the consequences," he retorted harshly, as he went out. + +An hour later, when he was settled in the rushing train, it seemed to +him that he was able to find comfort in the words with which he had +separated from his wife. Let Alice do what she would, there was always +hope for her in the thought that he might help her to bear, even if he +could not remove from her, the consequences of her actions. Could so +great a force as his love for her fail to avert from her young head at +least a portion of her inevitable disillusionment? The recollection of +her beauty, of her generosity, and of the wreck of her womanhood almost +before it had begun, not only added to his suffering, but seemed in some +inexplicable way to increase his love. The affection he had always felt +for her was strengthened now by that touch of pity which lends a deeper +tenderness to all human relations. + +Upon reaching Washington he found that a shower had come up, and the +pavements were already wet when he left the station. He had brought no +umbrella, but he hardly heeded this in the eagerness which drove him +from street to street in his search for his child. After making vain +inquiries at several of the larger hotels, he had begun to feel almost +hopeless, when going into the newest and most fashionable of them all, +he discovered that "Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Heath" had been assigned an +apartment there an hour before. In answer to his question the clerk +informed him that the lady had ordered her dinner served upstairs, +leaving at the same time explicit instructions that she was "not at +home" to anyone who should call. But in spite of this rebuff, he drew +out his card, and sat down in a chair in the brilliantly lighted lobby. +He had selected a seat near a radiator in the hope of drying his damp +clothes, and presently a little cloud of steam rose from his shoulders +and drifted out into the shining space. As he watched the gorgeous, +over-dressed women who swept by him, he remembered as one remembers a +distant dream, the years when his life had been spent among such crowds +in just such a dazzling glare of electric light. It appeared false and +artificial to him now, but in the meantime, he reflected, while he +looked on, he had been in prison. + +A voice at his elbow interrupted his thoughts, and turning in response +to an invitation from a buttoned sleeve, he entered an elevator and was +borne rapidly aloft among a tightly wedged group of women who were +loudly bewailing their absence from the theatre. It was with difficulty +that he released himself at the given signal from his escort, and +stepped out upon the red velvet carpet which led to Alice's rooms. In +response to a knock from the boy who had accompanied him, the door flew +open with a jerk, and Alice appeared before him in a bewildering effect +of lace and pink satin. + +"O papa, papa, you naughty darling!" she exclaimed, and was in his arms +before he had time to utter the reproach on his lips. + +With her head on his breast, he was conscious at first only of an +irresponsible joy, like the joy of the angels for whom evil no longer +exists. To know that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was in +his arms, seemed sufficient delight, not only unto the day, but unto his +whole future as well. Then the thought of what it meant to find her thus +in her lace and satin came over him, and drawing slightly away he looked +for the first time into her face. + +"Alice, what does it mean?" he asked, as he kissed her. + +Pushing the loosened hair back from her forehead, she met his question +with a protesting pout. + +"It means that you're a wicked boy to run away from home like this and +be all by yourself in a bad city," she responded with a playful shake of +her finger. Then she caught his hand and drew him down on the sofa +beside her in the midst of the filmy train of her tea-gown. "If you +promise never to do it again, I shan't tell mamma on you," she added, +with a burst of light-hearted merriment. + +"Where were you married, Alice? and who did it?" he asked sternly. + +At his tone a ripple of laughter broke from her lips, and reaching for +her little red leather bag on the table, she opened it and tossed a +folded paper upon his knees. "I didn't ask his name," she responded, +"but you can find it all written on that, I suppose." + +"And you cared nothing for me?--nothing for my anxiety, my distress?" + +"I always meant to telegraph you, of course. Geoffrey has gone down now +to do it." + +"But were you obliged to leave home in this way? If you had told me you +loved him, I should have understood--should have sympathised." + +"Oh, but mamma wouldn't, and I had to run off. Of course, I wanted a big +wedding like other girls, and a lot of bridesmaids and a long veil, but +I knew you'd never consent to it, so I made up my mind just to slip away +without saying a word. Geoffrey is so rich that I can make up afterwards +for the things I missed when I was married. This is what he gave me +to-day. Isn't it lovely?" + +Baring her throat she showed him a pearl necklace hidden beneath her +lace collar. "We're sailing day after to-morrow," she went on, +delightedly, "and we shall go straight to Paris because I am dying to +see the shops. I wouldn't run away with him until he promised to take me +there." + +There was no regret in her mind, no misgiving, no disquietude. The +thought of his pain had not marred for an instant the pleasure of her +imaginary shopping. "O papa, I am happy, so happy!" she sang aloud, +springing suddenly to her full height and standing before him in her +almost barbaric beauty--from the splendid hair falling upon her +shoulders to the little feet that could not keep still for sheer joy of +living. He saw her red mouth glow and tremble as she bent toward him. +"To think that I'm really and truly out of Botetourt at last!" she +cried. + +"Then you've no need of me and I may as well go home?" he said a little +wistfully as he rose. + +At this she hung upon his neck for a minute with her first show of +feeling. "I'd rather you wouldn't stay till Geoffrey comes back," she +answered, abruptly releasing him, "because it would be a surprise to him +and he's always so cross when he's surprised. He has a perfectly awful +temper," she confided in a burst of frankness, "but I've learned exactly +how to manage him, so it doesn't matter. Then he's so handsome, too. I +shouldn't have looked at him twice if he hadn't been handsome. Now, go +straight home and take good care of yourself and don't get fat and bald +before I come back." + +She kissed him several times, laughing in little gasps, while she held +him close in her arms. Then putting him from her, she pushed him gently +out into the hall. As the door closed on her figure, he felt that it +shut upon all that was living or warm in his heart. + + + + +BOOK FOURTH + +LIBERATION + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE INWARD LIGHT + + +On the day that he returned to Botetourt, it seemed to Ordway that the +last vestige of his youth dropped from him; and one afternoon six months +later, as he passed some schoolboys who were playing ball in the street, +he heard one of them remark in an audible whisper: "Just wait till that +old fellow over there gets out of the way." Since coming home again his +interests, as well as his power of usefulness, had been taken from him; +and the time that he had spent in prison had aged him less than the +three peaceful years which he had passed in Botetourt. All that +suffering and experience could not destroy had withered and died in the +monotonous daily round which carried him from his home to Richard's +office and back again from Richard's office to his home. + +Outwardly he had grown only more quiet and gentle, as people are apt to +do who approach the middle years in a position of loneliness and +dependence. To Richard and to Lydia, who had never entirely ceased to +watch him, it appeared that he had at last "settled down," that he might +be, perhaps, trusted to walk alone; and it was with a sensation of +relief that his wife observed the intense youthful beam fade from his +blue eyes. When his glance grew dull and lifeless, and his features fell +gradually into the lines of placid repose which mark the body's +contentment rather than the spirit's triumph, it seemed to her that she +might at last lay aside the sleepless anxiety which had been her +marriage portion. + +"He has become quite like other people now," she said one day to +Richard, "do you know that he has grown to take everything exactly as a +matter of course, and I really believe he enjoys what he eats." + +"I'm glad of that," returned Richard, "for I've noticed that he is +looking very far from well. I advised him several weeks ago to take care +of that cough, but he seems to have some difficulty in getting rid of +it." + +"He hasn't been well since Alice's marriage," observed Lydia, a little +troubled. "You know he travelled home from Washington in wet clothes and +had a spell of influenza afterward. He's had a cold ever since, for I +hear him coughing a good deal after he first goes to bed." + +"You'd better make him attend to it, I think, though with his fine chest +there's little danger of anything serious." + +"Do you suppose Alice's marriage could have sobered him? He's grown very +quiet and grave, and I dare say it's a sign that his wildness has gone +out of him, poor fellow. You remember how his laugh used to frighten me? +Well, he never laughs like that now, though he sometimes stares hard at +me as if he were looking directly through me, and didn't even know that +he was doing it." + +As she spoke she glanced out of the window and her eyes fell on Daniel, +who came slowly up the gravelled walk, his head bent over an armful of +old books he carried. + +"He visits a great deal among the poor," remarked Richard, "and I think +that's good for him, provided, of course, that he does it with +discretion." + +"I suppose it is," said Lydia, though she added immediately, "but aren't +the poor often very immoral?" + +A reply was on Richard's lips, but before he could utter it, the door +opened and Daniel entered with the slow, almost timid, step into which +he had schooled himself since his return to Botetourt. As he saw Richard +a smile--his old boyish smile of peculiar sweetness--came to his lips, +but without speaking, he crossed to the table and laid down the books he +carried. + +"If those are old books, won't you remember to take them up to your +room, Daniel?" said Lydia, in her tone of aggrieved sweetness. "They +make such a litter in the library." + +He started slightly, a nervous affection which had increased in the last +months, and looked at her with an apologetic glance. As he stood there +she had again that singular sensation of which she had spoken to +Richard, as if he were gazing through her and not at her. + +"I beg your pardon," he answered, "I remember now that I left some here +yesterday." + +"Oh, it doesn't matter, of course," she responded pleasantly, "it's only +that I like to keep the house tidy, you know." + +"They do make rather a mess," he admitted, and gathering them up again, +he carried them out of the room and up the staircase. + +They watched his bent gray head disappear between the damask curtains in +the doorway, and then listened almost unconsciously for the sound of his +slow gentle tread on the floor above. + +"There was always too much of the dreamer about him, even as a child," +commented Richard, when the door was heard to close over their heads, +"but he seems contented enough now with his old books, doesn't he?" + +"Contented? Yes, I believe he is even happy. I never say much to him +because, you see, there is so very little for us to talk about. It is a +dreadful thing to confess," she concluded resolutely, "but the truth is +I've been always a little afraid of him since--since----" + +"Afraid?" he looked at her in astonishment. + +"Well, not exactly afraid--but nervous with a kind of panic shudder at +times--a dread of his coming close to me, of his touching me, of his +wanting things of me." A shiver ran through her and she bit her lip as +if to hide the expression of horror upon her face. "There's nobody else +on earth that I would say it to, but when he first came back I used to +have nightmares about it. I could never get it out of my mind a minute +and if they left me alone with him, I wanted almost to scream with +nervousness. It's silly I know, and I can't explain it even to you, but +there were times when I shrieked aloud in my sleep because I dreamed +that he had come into my room and touched me. I felt that I was wrong +and foolish, but I couldn't help it, and I tried--tried--oh, so hard to +bear things and to be brave and patient." + +The tears fell from her eyes on her clasped hands, but her attitude of +sorrow only made more appealing the Madonna-like loveliness of her +features. + +"You've been a saint, Lydia," he answered, patting her drooping shoulder +as he rose to his feet. "Poor girl, poor girl! and no daughter of my own +could be dearer to me," he added in his austere sincerity of manner. + +"I have tried to do right," replied Lydia, lifting her pure eyes to his +in an overflow of religious emotion. + +Meanwhile the harmless object of their anxiety sat alone in his room +under a green lamp, with one of the musty books he had bought open upon +his knees. He was not reading, for his gaze was fixed on the opposite +wall, and there was in his eyes something of the abstracted vision which +Lydia dreaded. It was as if his intellect, forced from the outward +experience back into the inner world of thought, had ended by projecting +an image of itself into the space at which he looked. While he sat there +the patient, apologetic smile with which he had answered to his wife +was still on his lips. + +"I suppose it's because I'm getting old that people and things no longer +make me suffer," he said to himself, "it's because I'm getting old that +I can look at Lydia unmoved, that I can feel tenderness for her even +while I see the repulsion creep into her eyes. It isn't her fault, after +all, that she loathes me, nor is it mine. Yes, I'm certainly an old +fellow, the boy was right. At any rate, it's pleasanter, on the whole, +than being young." + +Closing the book, he laid it on the table, and leaned forward with his +chin on his hands. "But if I'd only known when I was young!" he added, +"if I'd only known!" His past life rose before him as a picture that he +had seen, rather than as a road along which he had travelled; and he +found himself regarding it almost as impersonally as he might have +regarded the drawing upon the canvas. The peril of the inner life had +already begun to beset him--that mysterious power of reliving one's +experience with an intensity which makes the objective world appear dull +and colourless by contrast. It was with an effort at times that he was +able to detach his mind from the contemplative habit into which he had +fallen. Between him and his surroundings there existed but a single +bond, and this was the sympathy which went out of him when he was +permitted to reach the poor and the afflicted. To them he could still +speak, with them he could still be mirthful; but from his wife, his +uncle, and the members of his own class, he was divided by that +impenetrable wall of social tradition. In his home he had ceased to +laugh, as Lydia had said; but he could still laugh in the humbler houses +of the poor. They had received him as one of themselves, and for this +reason alone he could remember how to be merry when he was with them. To +the others, to his own people, he felt himself to be always an outsider, +a reclaimed castaway, a philanthropic case instead of an individual; and +he knew that if there was one proof the more to Lydia that he was in the +end a redeemed character, it was the single fact that he no longer +laughed in her presence. It was, he could almost hear her say, +unbecoming, if not positively improper, that a person who had spent five +years in prison should be able to laugh immoderately afterward; and the +gravity of his lips was in her eyes, he understood, the most +satisfactory testimony to the regeneration of his heart. + +And yet Lydia, according to her vision, was a kind, as well as a +conscientious woman. The pity of it was that if he were to die now, +three years after his homecoming, she would probably reconstruct an +imaginary figure of him in her memory, and wear crape for it with +appropriate grace and dignity. The works of the imagination are +manifold, he thought with a grim humour, even in a dull woman. + +But as there was not likely to occur anything so dramatic, in the +immediate present, as his death, he wondered vaguely what particular +form of aversion his wife's attitude would next express. Or could it be +that since he had effaced himself so utterly, he hardly dared to listen +to the sound of his footsteps in the house, she had grown to regard him +with a kind of quiet tolerance, as an object which was unnecessary, +perhaps, yet entirely inoffensive? He remembered now that during those +terrible first years in prison he had pursued the thought of her with a +kind of hopeless violence, yet to-day he could look back upon her +desertion of him in his need with a compassion which forgave the +weakness that it could not comprehend. That, too, he supposed was a part +of the increasing listlessness of middle age. In a little while he would +look forward, it might be, to the coming years without dread--to the +long dinners when he sat opposite to her with the festive bowl of +flowers between them, to the quiet evenings when she lingered for a few +minutes under the lamp before going to her room--those evenings which +are the supreme hours of love or of despair. Oh, well, he would grow +indifferent to the horror of these things, as he had already grown +indifferent to the soft curves of her body. Yes, it was a thrice blessed +thing, this old age to which he was coming! + +Then another memory flooded his heart with the glow of youth, and he saw +Emily, as she had appeared to him that night in the barn more than six +years ago, when she had stood with the lantern held high above her head +and the red cape slipping back from her upraised arm. A sharp pain shot +through him, and he dropped his eyes as if he had met a blow. That was +youth at which he had looked for one longing instant--that was youth and +happiness and inextinguishable desire. + +For a moment he sat with bent head; then with an effort he put the +memory from him, and opened his book at the page where he had left off. +As he did so there was a tap at his door, and when he had spoken, Lydia +came in timidly with a letter in her hand. + +"This was put into Uncle Richard's box by mistake," she said, "and he +has just sent it over." + +He took it from her and seeing that it was addressed in Baxter's +handwriting, laid it, still unopened, upon the table. "Won't you sit +down?" he asked, pushing forward the chair from which he had risen. + +A brief hesitation showed in her face; then as he turned away from her +to pick up some scattered papers from the floor, she sat down with a +tentative, nervous manner. + +"Are you quite sure that you're well, Daniel?" she inquired. "Uncle +Richard noticed to-day that you coughed a good deal in the office. I +wonder if you get exactly the proper kind of food?" + +He nodded, smiling. "Oh, I'm all right," he responded, "I'm as hard as +nails, you know, and always have been." + +"Even hard people break down sometimes. I wish you would take a tonic or +see a doctor." + +Her solicitude surprised him, until he remembered that she had never +failed in sympathy for purely physical ailments. If he had needed +bodily healing instead of mental, she would probably have applied it +with a conscientious devotedness. + +"I am much obliged to you, but I'm really not sick," he insisted, "it is +very good of you, however." + +"It is nothing more than my duty," she rejoined, sweetly. + +"Well, that may be, but there's nothing to prevent my being obliged to +you for doing your duty." + +Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat looking at him with her +gentle, uncomprehending glance. "I wish, all the same," she murmured, +"that you would let me send you a mustard plaster to put on your chest." + +He shook his head without replying in words to her suggestion. + +"Do you know it is three months since we had a letter from Alice," he +said, "and six since she went away?" + +"Oh, it's that then? You have been worrying about Alice?" + +"How can I help it? We hardly know even that she is living." + +"I've thought of her day and night since her marriage, though it's just +as likely, isn't it, that she's taken up with the new countries and her +new clothes?" + +"Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful uncertainty that +kills." + +With a sigh she looked down at her slippered feet. "I was thinking +to-day what a comfort Dick is to me--to us all," she said, "one is so +sure of him and he is doing so splendidly at college." + +"Yes," he agreed, "Dick is a comfort. I wish poor Alice was more like +him." + +"She was always wild, you remember, never like other children, and it +was impossible to make her understand that some things were right and +some wrong. Yet I never thought that she would care for such a loud, +vulgar creature as Geoffrey Heath." + +"Did she care for him?" asked Daniel, almost in a whisper, "or was it +only that she wanted to see Paris?" + +"Well, she may have improved him a little--at least let us hope so," she +remarked as if she had not heard his question. "He has money, at any +rate, and that is what she has always wanted, though I fear even +Geoffrey's income will be strained by her ceaseless extravagance." + +As she finished he thought of her own youth, which she had evidently +forgotten, and it seemed to him that the faults she blamed most in Alice +were those which she had overcome patiently in her own nature. + +"I could stand anything better than this long suspense," he said gently. + +"It does wear one out," she rejoined. "I am very, very sorry for you." + +Some unaccustomed tone in her voice--a more human quality, a deeper +cadence, made him wonder in an impulse of self-reproach if, after all, +the breach between them was in part of his own making? Was it still +possible to save from the ruin, if not love, at least human +companionship? + +"Lydia," he said, "it isn't Alice, it is mostly loneliness, I think." + +Rising from her chair she stood before him with her vague, sweet smile +playing about her lips. + +"It is natural that you should feel depressed with that cough," she +remarked, "I really wish you would let me send you a mustard plaster." + +As the cough broke out again, he strangled it hilariously in a laugh. +"Oh, well, if it's any comfort to you, I don't mind," he responded. + +When she had gone he picked up Baxter's letter from the table and opened +it with trembling fingers. What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, +but as he read the words, written so laboriously in Baxter's big +scrawling writing, he felt that his energy returned to him with the +demand for action--for personal responsibility. + + "I don't know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke's death three + months ago," the letter ran, "but this is to say that Mr. Beverly + dropped down with a paralytic stroke last week; and now since he's + dead and buried, the place is to be sold for debt and the children + sent off to school to a friend of Miss Emily's where they can go + cheap. Miss Emily has a good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, + but she's going North before Christmas to some big boarding school + where they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled + about the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might + take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your + advice, _which is of the best always_. + + "Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present, + + BAXTER." + + +As he folded the letter a flush overspread his face. "I'll go," he said, +with a new energy in his voice, "I'll go to-morrow." + +Then turning in response to a knock, he opened the door and received the +mustard plaster which Lydia had made. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN + + +He had sent a telegram to Banks, and as the train pulled into the +station, he saw the familiar sandy head and freckled face awaiting him +upon the platform. + +"By George, this is a bully sight, Smith," was the first shout that +reached his ears. + +"You're not a bit more pleased than I am," he returned laughing with +pleasure, as he glanced from the station, crowded with noisy Negroes, up +the dusty street into which they were about to turn. "It's like coming +home again, and upon my word, I wish I were never to leave here. But how +are you, Banks? So you are married to Milly and going to live contented +forever afterward." + +"Yes, I'm married," replied Banks, without enthusiasm, "and there's a +baby about which Milly is clean crazy. Milly has got so fat," he added, +"that you'd never believe I could have spanned her waist with my hands +three years ago." + +"Indeed? And is she as captivating as ever?" + +"Well, I reckon she must be," said Banks, "but it doesn't seem so +mysterious, somehow, as it used to." His silly, affectionate smile broke +out as he looked at his companion. "To tell the truth," he confessed, +"I've been missing you mighty hard, Smith, marriage or no marriage. It +ain't anything against Milly, God knows, that she can't take your place, +and it ain't anything against the baby. What I want is somebody I can +sit down and look up to, and I don't seem to be exactly able to look up +to Milly or to the baby." + +"The trouble with you, my dear Banks, is that you are an incorrigible +idealist and always will be. You were born to be a poet and I don't see +to save my life how you escaped." + +"I didn't. I used to write a poem every Sunday of my life when I first +went into tobacco. But after that Milly came and I got used to spending +all my Sundays with her." + +"Well, now that you have her in the week, you might begin all over +again." + +They were walking rapidly up the long hill, and as Ordway passed, he +nodded right and left to the familiar faces that looked out from the +shop doors. They were all friendly, they were all smiling, they were all +ready to welcome him back among them. + +"The queer part is," observed Banks, with that stubborn vein of +philosophy which accorded so oddly with his frivolous features, "that +the thing you get doesn't ever seem to be the same as the thing you +wanted. This Milly is kind to me and the other wasn't, but, somehow, +that hasn't made me stop regretting the other one that I didn't +marry--the Milly that banged and snapped at me about my clothes and +things all day long. I don't know what it means, Smith, I've studied +about it, but I can't understand." + +"The meaning of it is, Banks, that you wanted not the woman, but the +dream." + +"Well, I didn't get it," rejoined Banks, gloomily. + +"Yet Milly's a good wife and you're happy, aren't you?" + +"I should be," replied Banks, "if I could forget how darn fascinating +that other Milly was. Oh, yes, she's a good wife and a doting mother, +and I'm happy enough, but it's a soft, squashy kind of happiness, not +like the way I used to feel when I'd walk home with you after the +preaching in the old field." + +While he spoke they had reached Baxter's warehouse, and as Ordway was +recognized, there was a quiver of excitement in the little crowd about +the doorway. A moment later it had surrounded him with a shout of +welcome. A dozen friendly hands were outstretched, a dozen breathless +lips were calling his name. As the noise passed through the neighbouring +windows, the throng was increased by a number of small storekeepers and +a few straggling operatives from the cotton mills, until at last he +stopped, half laughing, half crying, in their midst. Ten minutes +afterward, when Baxter wedged his big person through the archway, he saw +Ordway standing bareheaded in the street, his face suffused with a glow +which seemed to give back to him a fleeting beam of the youth that he +had lost. + +"Well, I reckon it's my turn now. You can just step inside the office, +Smith," remarked Baxter, while he grasped Ordway's arm and pulled him +back into the warehouse. As they entered the little room, Daniel saw +again the battered chair, the pile of Smith's Almanacs, and the paper +weight, representing a gambolling kitten, upon the desk. + +"I'm glad to see you--we're all glad to see you," said Baxter, shaking +his hand for the third time with a grasp which made Ordway feel that he +was in the clutch of a down cushion. "It isn't the way of Tappahannock +to forget a friend, and she ain't forgotten you." + +"It's like her," returned Ordway, and he added with a sigh, "I only wish +I were coming back for good, Baxter." + +"There now!" exclaimed Baxter, chuckling, "you don't, do you? Well, all +I can say, my boy, is that you've got a powerful soft spot that you left +here, and your old job in the warehouse is still waiting for you when +you care to take it. I tell you what, Smith, you've surely spoiled me +for any other bookkeeper, and I ain't so certain, when it comes to that, +that you haven't spoiled me for myself." + +He was larger, softer, more slovenly than ever, but he was so undeniably +the perfect and inimitable Baxter, that Ordway felt his heart go out to +him in a rush of sentiment. "Oh, Baxter, how is it possible that I've +lived without you?" he asked. + +"I don't know, Smith, but it's a plain fact that after my wife--and +that's nature--there ain't anybody goin' that I set so much store by. +Why, when I was in Botetourt last spring, I went so far as to put my +right foot on your bottom step, but, somehow, the left never picked up +the courage to follow it." + +"Do you dare to tell me that you've been to Botetourt?" demanded Ordway +with indignation. + +"Well, I could have stood the house you live it, though it kind of took +my breath away," replied Baxter, with an embarrassed and guilty air, +"but when it came to facing that fellow at the door, then my courage +gave out and I bolted. I studied him a long while, thinking I might get +my eyes used to the sight of him, but it did no good. I declar', Smith, +I could no more have put a word to him than I could to the undertaker at +my own funeral. Bless my soul, suh, poor Mr. Beverly, when he was alive, +didn't hold a tallow candle to that man." + +"You might have laid in wait for me in the street, then, that would have +been only fair." + +"But how did I know, Smith, that you wan't livin' up to the man at your +door?" + +"It wouldn't have taken you long to find out that I wasn't. So poor Mr. +Beverly is dead and buried, then, is he?" + +Baxter's face adopted instantly a funereal gloom, and his voice, when he +spoke, held a quaver of regret. + +"There wasn't a finer gentleman on earth than Mr. Beverly," he said, +"and he would have given me his last blessed cent if he'd ever had one +to give. I've lost a friend, Smith, there's no doubt of that, I've lost +a friend. And poor Mrs. Brooke, too," he added sadly. "Many and many is +the time I've heard Mr. Beverly grieven' over the way she worked. 'If +things had only come out as I planned them, Baxter,' he'd say to me, 'my +wife should never have raised her finger except to lift food to her +lips.'" + +"And yet I've seen him send her downstairs a dozen times a day to make +him a lemonade," observed Ordway cynically. + +"That wasn't his fault, suh, he was born like that--it was just his way. +He was always obliged to have what he wanted." + +"Well, I can forgive him for killing his wife, but I can't pardon him +for the way he treated his sister. That girl used to work like a farm +hand when I was out there." + +"She was mighty fond of him all the same, was Miss Emily." + +"Everybody was, that's what I'm quarreling about. He didn't deserve it." + +"But he meant well in his heart, Smith, and it's by that that I'm +judgin' him. It wasn't his fault, was it, if things never went just the +way he had planned them out? I don't deny, of course, that he was sort +of flighty at times, as when he made a will the week before he died and +left five hundred dollars to the Tappahannock Orphan Asylum." + +"To the Orphan Asylum? Why, his own children are orphans, and he didn't +have five hundred dollars to his name!" + +"Of course, he didn't, that's just the point," said Baxter with a +placid tolerance which seemed largely the result of physical bulk, "and +so they have had to sell most of the furniture to pay the bequest. You +see, just the night before his stroke, he got himself considerably +worked up over those orphans. So he just couldn't help hopin' he would +have five hundred dollars to leave 'em when he came to die, an' in case +he did have it he thought he might as well be prepared. Then he sat +right down and wrote the bequest out, and the next day there came his +stroke and carried him off." + +"Oh, you're a first-rate advocate, Baxter, but that doesn't alter my +opinion of Mr. Beverly. What about his own orphans now? How are they +going to be provided for?" + +"It seems Miss Emily is to board 'em out at some school she knows of, +and I've settled it with her that she's to borrow enough from me to tide +over any extra expenses until spring." + +"Then we are to wind up the affairs of Cedar Hill, are we? I suppose +it's best for everybody, but it makes me sad enough to think of it." + +"And me, too, Smith," said Baxter, sentimentally. "I can see Mr. Beverly +to the life now playin' with his dominoes on the front porch. But +there's mighty little to wind up, when it comes to that. It's mortgaged +pretty near to the last shingle, and when the bequest to the orphans is +paid out of what's over, there'll be precious few dollars that Miss +Emily can call her own. The reason I sent for you, Smith," he added in a +solemn voice, "was that I thought you might be some comfort to that +poor girl out there in her affliction. If you feel inclined, I hoped +you'd walk out to Cedar Hill and read her a chapter or so in the Bible. +I remembered how consolin' you used to be to people in trouble." + +With a prodigious effort Ordway swallowed his irreverent mirth, while +Baxter's pious tones sounded in his ears. "Of course I shall go out to +Cedar Hill," he returned, "but I was wondering, Baxter," he broke off +for a minute and then went on again with an embarrassed manner, "I was +wondering if there was any way I could help those children without being +found out? It would make me particularly happy to feel that I might +share in giving them an education. Do you think you could smuggle the +money for their school bills into their Christmas stockings?" + +Baxter thought over it a moment. "I might manage it," he replied, +"seein' that the bills are mostly to come through my hands, and I'm to +settle all that I can out of what's left of the estate." + +As he paused Daniel looked hastily away from him, fearful lest Baxter +might be perplexed by the joy that shone in his face. To be connected, +even so remotely, with Emily in the care of Beverly's children, was a +happiness for which, a moment ago, he had not dared to hope. + +"Let me deposit the amount with you twice a year," he said, "that will +be both the easiest and the safest way." + +"Maybe you're right. And now it's settled, ain't it, that you're to come +to my house to stay?" + +"I must go back on the night train, I'm sorry to say, but if you'll let +me I'll drop in to supper. I remember your wife's biscuits of old," he +added, smiling. + +"You don't mean it! Well, it'll tickle her to death, I reckon. It ain't +likely, by the way, that you'll find much to eat out at Cedar Hill, so +you'd better remember to have a snack before you start." + +"Oh, I can fast until supper," returned Daniel, rising. + +"Well, don't forget to give my respects to Miss Emily, and tell her I +say not to worry, but to let the Lord take a turn. You'll find things +pretty topsy-turvy out there, Smith," he added, "but if you don't happen +to have your Bible handy, I'll lend you one and welcome. There's the big +one with gilt clasps the boys gave me last Christmas right on top of my +desk." + +"Oh, they're sure to have one around," replied Ordway gravely, as he +shook hands again before leaving the office. + +From the top of the hill by the brick church, he caught a glimpse of the +locust trees in Mrs. Twine's little yard, and turning in response to a +remembered force of habit, he followed the board sidewalk to the +whitewashed gate, which hung slightly open. In the street a small boy +was busily flinging pebbles at the driver of a coal wagon, and calling +the child to him, Ordway inquired if Mrs. Twine still lived in that +house. + +"Thar ain't no Mrs. Twine," replied the boy, "she's Mrs. Buzzy. She +married my pa, that's why I'm here," he explained with a wink, as the +door behind him flew open, and the lady in question rushed out to +welcome her former lodger. "I hear her now--she's a-comin'. My, an' +she's a tartar, she is!" + +"It's the best sight I've laid eyes on sense I saw po', dear Bill on his +deathbed," exclaimed the tartar, with delight. "Come right in, suh, come +right in an' set down an' let me git a look at you. Thar ain't much +cheer in the house now sence I've lost Bill an' his sprightly ways, but +the welcome's warm if the house ain't." + +She brought him ceremoniously into her closed parlour, and then at his +request led him out of the stagnant air back into her comfortable, +though untidy, kitchen. "I jest had my hand in the dough, suh, when I +heard yo' voice," she observed apologetically, as she wiped off the +bottom of a chair with her blue gingham apron. "I knew you'd be set back +to find out I didn't stay long a widder." + +"I hadn't even heard of Bill's death," he returned, "so it was something +of a surprise to discover that you were no longer Mrs. Twine. Was it +very sudden?" + +"Yes, suh, 'twas tremens--delicious tremens--an' they took him off so +quick we didn't even have the crape in the house to tie on the front do' +knob. You could a heard him holler all the way down to the cotton mills. +He al'ays had powerful fine lungs, had Bill, an' if he'd a-waited for +his lungs to take him, he'd be settin' thar right now, as peart as +life." + +Her eyes filled with tears, but wiping them hastily away with her apron, +she took up a pan of potatoes and began paring them with a handleless +knife. + +"After your former marriages," he remarked doubtful as to whether he +should offer sympathy or congratulations, "I should have thought you +would have rested free for a time at least." + +"It warn't my way, Mr. Smith," she responded, with a mournful shake of +her head. "To be sure I had a few peaceful months arter Bill was gone, +but the queer thing is how powerful soon peace can begin to pall on yo' +taste. Why, I hadn't been in mo'nin' for Bill goin' on to four months, +when Silas Trimmer came along an' axed me, an' I said 'yes' as quick as +that, jest out a the habit of it. I took off my mo'nin' an' kep' comp'ny +with him for quite a while, but we had a quarrel over Bill's tombstone, +suh, for, bein' a close-fisted man, he warn't willin' that I should put +up as big a monument as I'd a mind to. Well, I broke off with him on +that account, for when it comes to choosin' between respect to the dead +an' marriage to the livin' Silas Trimmer, I told him 'I reckon it won't +take long for you to find out which way my morals air set.' He got mad +as a hornet and went off, and I put on mo'nin' agin an' wo' it steddy +twil the year was up." + +"And at the end of that time, I presume, you were wearied of widowhood +and married Buzzy?" + +"It's a queer thing, suh," she observed, as she picked up a fresh potato +and inspected it as attentively as if it had been a new proposal, "it's +a queer thing we ain't never so miserable in this world as when we +ain't got the frazzle of an excuse to be so. Now, arter Bill went from +me, thar was sech a quiet about that it began to git on my nerves, an' +at last it got so that I couldn't sleep at nights because I was no +longer obleeged to keep one ear open to hear if he was comin' upstairs +drunk or sober. Bless yo' heart, thar's not a woman on earth that don't +need some sort of distraction, an Bill was a long sight better at +distractin' you than any circus I've ever seen. Why, I even stopped +goin' to 'em as long as he was livin', for it was a question every +minute as to whether he was goin' to chuck you under the chin or lam you +on the head, an' thar was a mortal lot a sprightliness about it. I +reckon I must have got sort a sp'iled by the excitement, for when 't was +took away, I jest didn't seem to be able to settle down. But thar are +mighty few men with the little ways that Bill had," she reflected sadly. + +"Yet your present husband is kind to you, is he not?" + +"Oh, he's kind enough, suh," she replied, with unutterable contempt, +"but thar ain't nothin' in marriage that palls so soon as kindness. It's +unexpectedness that keeps you from goin' plum crazy with the sameness of +it, an' thar ain't a bit of unexpectedness about Jake. He does +everything so regular that thar're times when I'd like to bust him open +jest to see how he is wound up inside. Naw, suh, it ain't the blows that +wears a woman out, it's the mortal sameness." + +Clearly there was no comfort to be afforded her, and after a few words +of practical advice on the subject of the children's education, he shook +hands with her and started again in the direction of Cedar Hill. + +The road with its November colours brought back to him the many hours +when he had tramped over it in cheerfulness or in despair. The dull +brown stretches of broomsedge, rolling like a high sea, the humble +cabins, nestling so close to the ground, the pale clay road winding +under the half-bared trees, from which the bright leaves were fluttering +downward--these things made the breach of the years close as suddenly as +if the divided scenery upon a stage had rolled together. While he walked +alone here it was impossible to believe in the reality of his life in +Botetourt. + +As he approached Cedar Hill, the long melancholy avenue appeared to him +as an appropriate shelter for Beverly's gentle ghost. He was surprised +to discover with what tenderness he was able to surround the memory of +that poetic figure since he stood again in the atmosphere which had +helped to cultivate his indefinable charm. In Tappahannock Beverly's +life might still be read in the dry lines of prose, but beneath the +historic influences of Cedar Hill it became, even in Ordway's eyes, a +poem of sentiment. + +Beyond the garden, he could see presently, through a gap in the trees, +the silvery blur of life everlasting in the fallow land, which was +steeped in afternoon sunshine. Somewhere from a nearer meadow there +floated a faint call of "Coopee! Coopee! Coopee!" to the turkeys lost in +the sassafras. Then as he reached the house Aunt Mehitable's face looked +down at him from a window in the second story: and in response to her +signs of welcome, he ascended the steps and entered the hall, where he +stopped upon hearing a child's voice through the half open door of the +dining-room. + +"May I wear my coral beads even if I am in mourning, Aunt Emily?" + +"Not yet, Bella," answered Emily's patient yet energetic tones. "Put +them away awhile and they'll be all the prettier when you take them out +again." + +"But can't I mourn for papa and mamma just as well in my beads as I can +without them?" + +"That may be, dear, but we must consider what other people will say." + +"What have other people got to do with my mourning, Aunt Emily?" + +"I don't know, but when you grow up you'll find that they have something +to do with everything that concerns you." + +"Well, then, I shan't mourn at all," replied Bella, defiantly. "If you +won't let me mourn in my coral beads, I shan't mourn a single bit +without them." + +"There, there, Bella, go on with your lesson," said Emily sternly, "you +are a naughty girl." + +At the sound of Ordway's step on the threshold, she rose to her feet, +with a frightened movement, and stood, white and trembling, her hand +pressed to her quivering bosom. + +"You!" she cried out sharply, and there was a sound in her voice that +brought him with a rush to her side. But as he reached her she drew +quickly away, and hiding her face in her hands, broke into passionate +weeping. + +It was the first time that he had seen her lose her habit of +self-command, and while he watched her, he felt that each of her broken +sobs was wrung from his own heart. + +"I was a fool not to prepare you," he said, as he placed a restraining +hand on the awe-struck Bella. "You've had so many shocks I ought to have +known--I ought to have foreseen----" + +At his words she looked up instantly, drying her tears on a child's +dress which she was mending. "You came so suddenly that it startled me, +that is all," she answered. "I thought for a minute that something had +happened to you--that you were an apparition instead of a reality. I've +got into the habit of seeing ghosts of late." + +"It's a bad habit," he replied, as he pushed Bella from the room and +closed the door after her. "But I'm not a ghost, Emily, only a rough and +common mortal. Baxter wrote me of Beverly's death, so I came thinking +that I might be of some little use. Remember what you promised me in +Botetourt." + +As he looked at her now more closely, he saw that the clear brown of her +skin had taken a sallow tinge, as if she were very weary, and that there +were faint violet shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. These outward +signs of her weakness moved him to a passion deeper and tenderer than +he had ever felt before. + +"I have not forgotten," she responded, after a moment in which she had +recovered her usual bright aspect, "but there is really nothing one can +do, it is all so simple. The farm has already been sold for debt, and so +I shall start in the world without burdens, if without wealth." + +"And the children? What of them?" + +"That is arranged, too, very easily. Blair is fifteen now, and he will +be given a scholarship at college. The girls will go to a friend of +mine, who has a boarding school and has made most reasonable terms." + +"And you?" he asked in a voice that expressed something of the longing +he could not keep back. "Is there to be nothing but hard work for you in +the future?" + +"I am not afraid of work," she rejoined, smiling, "I am afraid only of +reaching a place where work does not count." + +As he made no answer, she talked on brightly, telling him of her plans +for the future, of the progress the children had shown at their lessons, +of the arrangements she had made for Aunt Mehitable and Micah, and of +the innumerable changes which had occurred since he went away. So full +of life, of energy, of hopefulness, were her face and voice that but for +her black dress he would not have suspected that she had stood recently +beside a deathbed. Yet as he listened to her, his heart was torn by the +sharp anguish of parting, and when presently she began to question him +about his life in Botetourt, it was with difficulty that he forced +himself to reply in a steady voice. All other memories of her would give +way, he felt, before the picture of her in her black dress against the +burning logs, with the red firelight playing over her white face and +hands. + +An hour later, when he rose to go, he took both of her hands in his, and +bending his head laid his burning forehead against her open palms. + +"Emily," he said, "tell me that you understand." + +For a moment she gazed down on him in silence. Then, as he raised his +eyes, she kissed him so softly that it seemed as if a spirit had touched +his lips. + +"I understand--forever," she answered. + +At her words he straightened himself, as though a burden had fallen from +him, and turning slowly away he went out of the house and back in the +direction of Tappahannock. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ALICE'S MARRIAGE + + +It was after ten o'clock when he returned to Botetourt, and he found +upon reaching home that Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle +of cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, bore mute witness +to the continuance of her solicitude. After so marked a consideration it +seemed to him only decent that he should swallow a portion of the +liquid; and he was in the act of filling the tablespoon she had left, +when a ring at the door caused him to start until the medicine spilled +from his hand. A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, and +as he was aware that the servants had already left the house, he threw +on his coat, and lighting a candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and +down the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating on the panels of +the door quickened his steps almost into a run, and he was hardly +surprised, when he had withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice's face looking +at him from the darkness outside. She was pale and thin, he saw at the +first glance, and there was an angry look in her eyes, which appeared +unnaturally large in their violent circles. + +"I thought you would never open to me, papa," she said fretfully as she +crossed the threshold. "Oh, I am so glad to see you again! Feel how +cold my hands are, I am half frozen." + +Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passionately as it rested +for an instant against his shoulder. + +"Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?" + +Without answering, she raised her head, shivering slightly, and then +turning away, entered the library where a log fire was smouldering to +ashes. As he threw on more wood, she came over to the hearth, and +stretched out her hands to the warmth with a nervous gesture. Then the +flame shot up and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than lost by +the change in her features. She appeared taller, slenderer, more +distinguished, and the vivid black and white of her colouring was +intensified by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown and dark +furs she wore. + +"Oh, he's at home," she answered, breaking the long silence. "I mean +he's in the house in Henry Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we +got back, so I put on my hat again and came away. I'm not going +back--not unless he makes it bearable for me to live with him. He's +such--such a brute that it's as much as one can do to put up with it, +and it's been killing me by inches for the last months. I meant to write +you about it, but somehow I couldn't, and yet I knew that I couldn't +write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he's unbearable!" she +exclaimed, with a tremor of disgust. "You will never know--you will +never be able to imagine all that I've been through!" + +"But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?" + +She bared her arm with a superb disdainful gesture, and he saw three +rapidly discolouring bruises on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him +with loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to him almost +fiercely as if he would hold her not only against Geoffrey Heath, but +against herself. + +"You shall not go back to him," he said, "I will not permit it!" + +"The worst part is," she went on vehemently, as if he had not spoken, +"that it is about money--money--always money. He has millions, his +lawyers told me so, and yet he makes me give an account to him of every +penny that I spend. I married him because I thought I should be rich and +free, but he's been hardly better than a miser since the day of the +wedding. He wants me to dress like a dowdy, for all his wealth, and I +can't buy a ring that he doesn't raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more +and more every day I live, but it makes no difference to him as long as +he has me around to look at whenever he pleases. I have to pay him back +for every dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him and get +cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she exclaimed +wildly, "and it is killing me!" + +"You shan't bear it, Alice. As long as I'm alive you are safe with me." + +"For a time I could endure it because of the travelling and the strange +countries," she resumed, ignoring the tenderness in his voice, "but +Geoffrey was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke to a +man, he immediately flew into a rage. He even made me leave the opera +one night in Paris because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked +at me so hard." + +Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs slip from her shoulders, +and sat staring moodily into the fire. "I've sworn a hundred times that +I'd leave him," she said, "and yet I've never done it until to-night." + +While she talked on feverishly, he untied her veil, which she had tossed +back, and taking off her hat, pressed her gently against the cushions he +had placed in her chair. + +"You look so tired, darling, you must rest," he said. + +"Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!" she exclaimed. Then her tone +altered abruptly, and for the first time, she seemed able to penetrate +beyond her own selfish absorption. "Oh, you poor papa, how very old you +look!" she said. + +Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her bosom and cried +softly for a minute. "It's all my fault--everything is my fault, but I +can't help it. I'm made that way." Then pushing him from her suddenly, +she sprang to her feet and began walking up and down in her restless +excited manner. + +"Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice," he said, "you are trembling all +over." + +She shook her head. "It isn't that--it isn't that. It's the awful--awful +money. If it wasn't for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I'd never +spent a single dollar! I wish I'd always gone in rags!" + +Again he forced her back into her chair and again, after a minute of +quiet, she rose to her feet and broke into hysterical sobs. + +"All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that," he said in the effort +to soothe her, "and, besides, your own property is hardly less than two +hundred thousand." + +"But Uncle Richard won't give it to me," she returned angrily. "I wrote +and begged him on my knees and he still refused to let me have a penny +more than my regular income. It's all tied up, he says, in investments, +and that until I am twenty-one it must remain in his hands." + +With a frantic movement, she reached for her muff, and drew from it a +handful of crumpled papers, which she held out to him. "Geoffrey found +these to-night and they brought on the quarrel," she said. "Yesterday he +gave me this bracelet and he seems to think I could live on it for a +month!" She stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him a +glittering circle of diamonds immediately below the blue finger marks. +"There's a sable coat still that he doesn't know a thing of," she +finished with a moan. + +Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly over the papers she had +given him, and then rose to his feet still holding them in his hand. + +"These alone come to twenty thousand dollars, Alice," he said with a +gentle sternness. + +"And there are others, too," she cried, making no effort to control her +convulsive sobs. "There are others which I didn't dare even to let him +see." + +For a moment he let her weep without seeking to arrest her tears. + +"Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?" he asked at last. "Will you +be careful--very careful from this time?" + +"Oh, I'll never spend a penny again. I'll stay in Botetourt forever," +she promised desperately, eager to retrieve the immediate instant by the +pledge of a more or less uncertain future. + +"Then we must help you," he said. "Among us all--Uncle Richard, your +mother and I--it will surely be possible." + +Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down again and dried her eyes +in her muff. + +"It seems a thousand years since I went away," she observed, glancing +about her for the first time. "Nothing is changed and yet everything +appears to be different." + +"And are you different also?" he asked. + +"Oh, I'm older and I've seen a great deal more," she responded, with a +laugh which came almost as a shock to him after her recent tears, "but I +still want to go everywhere and have everything just as I used to." + +"But I thought you were determined to stay in Botetourt for the future?" +he suggested. + +"Well, so I am, I suppose," she returned dismally, "there's nothing else +for me to do, is there?" + +"Nothing that I see." + +"Then I may as well make up my mind to be miserable forever. It's so +frightfully gloomy in this old house, isn't it? How is mamma?" + +"She's just as you left her, neither very well nor very sick." + +"So it's exactly what it always was, I suppose, and will drive me to +distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick away?" + +"He's at college, and he's doing finely." + +"Of course he is--that's why he's such a bore." + +"Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. So you went to +Europe immediately after I saw you in Washington?" + +"Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and Geoffrey was as +disagreeable as he could be, and made all kinds of horrid jokes about +me." + +"You went straight to Paris, didn't you?" + +"As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me come away in three weeks +because he said I spent so much money." Her face clouded again at the +recollection of her embarrassments. "Oh, we had awful scenes, but I +hadn't even a wedding dress, you know, and French dressmakers are so +frightfully expensive. One of them charged me five thousand dollars for +a gown--but he told me that it was really cheap, because he'd sold one +to another American the day before for twelve thousand. I don't know who +her husband is," she added wistfully, "but I wish I were married to +him." + +The wildness of her extravagance depressed him even more than her +excessive despair had done; and he wondered if the vagueness of her +ideas of wealth was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination +which foresees results? She had lived since her girlhood in a quiet +Virginia town, her surroundings had been comparatively simple, and she +had never been thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting +influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these things, she had +squandered a fortune as carelessly as a child might have strewed pebbles +upon the beach. Her regret at last had come not through realisation of +her fault, but in the face of the immediate punishment which threatened +her. + +"So he got you out of Paris? Well, I'm glad of that," he remarked. + +"He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you could have heard him. Then +we went down into Italy and did nothing for months but look at old +pictures--at least I did, he wouldn't come--and float around in a +gondola until I almost died from the monotony. It was only after I found +a lace shop, where they had the most beautiful things, that he would +take me away, and then he insisted upon going to some little place up in +the Alps because he said he didn't suppose I could possibly pack the +mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful mountains! They were so +glaring I could never go out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey +would go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a horrid little +hotel where there was nobody but a one-eyed German army officer, and a +woman missionary who was bracing herself for South Africa. She wore a +knitted jersey all day and a collar which looked as if it would cut her +head off if she ever forgot herself and bent her neck." Her laughter, +the delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled out: "She +asked me one day if our blacks wore draperies? The ones in South Africa +didn't, and it made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, to +missionary to them. Oh, you can't imagine what I suffered from her, and +Geoffrey was so horrid about it, and insisted that she was just the sort +of companion that I needed. So one day when he happened to be in the +writing-room where she was, I locked the door on the outside and threw +the key down into the gorge. There wasn't any locksmith nearer than +twenty miles, and when they sent for him he was away. Oh, it was simply +too funny for words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break the +heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside was protesting that he +mustn't, and all the time we could hear the missionary begging everybody +please to be patient. She said if it were required of her she was quite +prepared to stay locked up all night, but Geoffrey wasn't, so he swung +himself down by the branches of a tree which grew near the window." + +All her old fascination had come back to her with her change of mood, +and he forgot to listen to her words while he watched the merriment +sparkle in her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny that he +should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, even Geoffrey submitted at +times. + +He was about to make some vague comment upon her story, when her face +changed abruptly into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he saw +that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, and was advancing to meet +her daughter with outstretched arms. + +"Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! When did you come?" + +As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway noticed that there was +an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her body. + +"Only a few minutes ago," she replied, with the characteristic disregard +of time which seemed, in some way, to belong to her inability to +consider figures, "and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are just as +lovely as ever." + +"Well, you are lovelier," said Lydia, kissing her, and adding a moment +afterward, as the result of her quick, woman's glance, "what a charming +gown!" + +Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign gesture which she had +picked up. "Oh, you must see some of my others," she replied, "I wish +that my trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent to the other +house, and I haven't even a nightgown. Will you lend me a nightgown, +mamma? I have some of the loveliest you ever saw which were embroidered +for me by the nuns in a French convent." + +"So, you'll spend the night?" said Lydia, "I'm so glad, dear, and I'll +go up and see if your bed has sheets on it." + +"Oh, it's not only for the night," returned Alice, defiantly, "I've +come back for good. I've left Geoffrey, haven't I, papa?" + +"I hope so, darling," answered Ordway, coming for the first time over to +where they stood. + +"Left Geoffrey?" repeated Lydia. "Do you mean you've separated?" + +"I mean I'm never going back again--that I detest him--that I'd rather +die--that I'll kill myself before I'll do it." + +Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned sweetness that she +presented to an impending crisis. + +"But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible thing!" she wailed. + +"Well, it isn't half so horrible as Geoffrey," retorted Alice. + +Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia spoke, came forward at the +girl's angry words, and caught the hand that she had stretched out as if +to push her mother from her. + +"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, +"while we prepare her bed." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE POWER OF THE BLOOD + + +When he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her +dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room. + +"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?" + +"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a +quarter of an hour ago." + +"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?" + +A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing +instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her +voice. + +"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her +maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him." + +"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would +rather kill herself." + +"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first +time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, +after all, not to himself, but to her. + +"You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent +protestations of last night?" + +"I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them--not a minute +afterward. She can't help being dramatic any more than she can help +being beautiful." + +"Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did +you influence her in any way?" + +"I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for +all--that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some +kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her +see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and +indecent." + +Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself +hopelessly overpowered by its unassailable logic. + +"So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?" + +"For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much +she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?" + +"Sacrifice? Good God, what?" he demanded. + +"Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for +Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents +when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only +settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a +satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it +all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she +made downstairs last night." + +This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently +he would never attain to the critical judgment of her. Well, in any +case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment. + +"I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last. + +"She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is +right." + +"Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why, +there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers." + +Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was +thrust on her notice. + +"Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had +lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very +much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy +she may be able to arrange matters between them." + +"Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!" + +Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance. + +"It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it +with seriousness." + +"I was never more serious in my life. I'm melancholy. I'm abject." + +"Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened to go West and get a +divorce, and this frightened her." + +"But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in +bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?" + +"She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is +impossible, I suppose, for you to realise her complete dependence upon +wealth--the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her +income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last +her a month." + +"I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave +me." + +"Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand +dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand +already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed +to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she +would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet +these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as +much as possible in order to pay those she gave you." + +"I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property," +he said. + +"But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such +matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had +clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should +deem it for your interest to turn it over to you." + +Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered +her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were +confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the +past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow +mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the attitude +of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her +practical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy +glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle +of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to +sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend +its healing insight. + +"But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause. + +"I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all," +she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little +things." + +An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he +found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a +flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny, +like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense. + +"Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition of Alice's +reconciliation with her husband," said the old man, "but I shall +certainly not sacrifice your securities in order to do it. Such an act +would be directly against the terms of your father's will." + +There was no further concession to be had from him, so Daniel turned to +his work, half in disappointment, half in admiration of his uncle's +loyalty to the written word. + +When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him that she had seen Alice, +who had appeared seriously disturbed, though she had shown her, with +evident enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. "She had a sable +coat, also, in her closet, which could not have cost less, I should +have supposed, than forty thousand dollars--the kind of coat that a +Russian Grand Duchess might have worn--but when I spoke of it, she grew +very much depressed and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle +Richard? And was I right?" + +"You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think, +then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?" + +"Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a +very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than +he has been since her marriage." + +"Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?" + +"She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone--and any +way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon." + +"Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out. + +In the evening there was no news beyond a reassuring visit from Richard +Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview +with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than +I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has +some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a +very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will +promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own +income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six +months in order to meet his obligations without touching his +investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the +shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money +recently." + +"I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said +Lydia, sweetly. + +"I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand. + +The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours--the +fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human +connection--had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner, +separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous +chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant +reminder that Dick would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable +silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a +little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when +a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the +hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice, +wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she +entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with +an uncontrollable burst of tears. + +"My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising +from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked +to the butler that he need not serve the dessert. + +"Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there," she said, putting +her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure. + +"O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall +never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties +and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell +him that I will never--never go back." + +"I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he +answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door. + +"But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once." + +"I'll go this very hour--I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean +it." + +"Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested +Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things +rationally." + +"I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know +now--this very instant--that he has gone too far--that I will not stand +it. He told me a minute ago--the beast!--that he'd like to see the man +who would be fool enough to keep me--that if I went he'd find a +handsomer woman within a week!" + +"Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother, +and have a good cry and talk things over." + +As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got +into his overcoat. + +"Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a +warning whisper, coming after him, "she is quite hysterical now and +does not realise what she is saying." + +"Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the +front door behind him. + +On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned +dispassionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that +he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was +possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his +consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a +perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he +concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he +went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that +he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a +step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to +a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the +brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was +opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by +marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again +of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life +in Botetourt. + +Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter +of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his +chair with a lazy shake of his whole person. + +"I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as +he held out his hand, "though I've known you by sight for several +years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair +and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right +hand. + +At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or +drinking heavily--probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at +the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red +and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man +inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical +specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly +built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have +been remarkable for its masculine beauty. + +"No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause. +"What I have to say can be said better standing, I think." + +"Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coarse laugh. "It's about +Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you +with." + +"It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to +forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it +impossible that she should remain in your house." + +"Well, I've treated her a damned sight better than she deserved," +rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he +had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you, +that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months." + +"I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she." + +"Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more +in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid +out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her +away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may +go into court about it and get their money however they can." + +"In the future there will be no question of that." + +"You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's +back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which +side her bread is buttered, and she won't stay in that dull old place, +not for all you're worth." + +"She shall never return to you with my consent." + +"Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing +uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes +precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays." + +"She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he +uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly, +"she shall never do it if I can help it." + +"It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but +she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she +isn't so big a fool as you think her." + +"She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is +very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality." + +Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's +face. + +"I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he +sneered. + +"I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his +daughter." + +"Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting, +righteous airs, aren't you?" + +For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like +physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he +questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had +moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words +Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening. + +"Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been +keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been +running back there again after that Brooke girl----" + +The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had passed his +lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth. + +With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature +was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of +manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant +when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to +be not only triumphant, but immortal. All that his years of +self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive +rush of energy through his arm. + +There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that +Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk, +to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed--the laugh of the boastful +and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went +out of the house and down into the street. + +The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still +tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger, +stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he +reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting +together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step. + +"Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he +do?" + +Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on +Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet. + +"I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off +the floor." + +"You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that +left her breathless. + +"I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the +blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth." + +Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia +looked up at him, while he stood there wiping the blood from his +bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to +Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute, +after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HOUSE OF DREAMS + + +FROM that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an +increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time, +he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change, +which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only +the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute +from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his +patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had +that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing +recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had +treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked +roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she +might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely +regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have +compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally +repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he +was seeking. + +On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and +begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know +how it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had +noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his +replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a +minute. + +"It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that +famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match +to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of +astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of +course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to +live there." + +"It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make +that house a home, dear," was his only comment. + +"But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it +is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and +she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even +if it were a palace!" + +Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed +him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever +play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses. + +For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared +himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her +colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly +that there was nothing for her to do in the house, and that she +couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his +reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her +trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides +nobody could pack them unless she was there to overlook it." + +"If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be +the one," he urged desperately at last. + +"To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty, +papa!"--she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her +laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of +her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious +laces," she protested, half seriously. + +For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked +irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk +dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her +old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house. +When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur +coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold +day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange +calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband. + +"I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her +unerring prescience. + +"Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to put up with Heath for the +sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded. + +"Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air +of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never +settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to +take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow +restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up." + +"But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted. +You could have gone with her." + +"Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this +when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from +Geoffrey." + +"Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?" + +"I encouraged her to behave with decency--and this isn't decent." + +"No, I admit that. It decidedly is not." + +"Yet we have no assurance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner +to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully. + +His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the +sanctity of convention. + +"In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her +mind?" he inquired. + +But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and +she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience. + +"For myself I can bear anything," she answered, "but I feel that for +her it is shocking to make things so public." + +It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it +as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely +akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them +that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation. + +"But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice. + +"We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared +certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is +surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public +scandal." + +They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the +girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life +and spirits. + +"We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're +going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend +too much money, we are going to Egypt in April." + +"If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out +his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology. + +To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for +the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy +and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery +Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for +Richard Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his +sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice. + +As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and +even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the +assembled family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a quiet, +distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle +Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate +mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, +Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude. + +In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the +pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with +her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again +the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible +day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness, +and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a +new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to +him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt +before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound +together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved. + +"There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said +Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else +because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now +shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa, +there's to be really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a +boy--I hope it will be a girl--you'll promise to love it and be good to +it, won't you?" + +"Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke. + +She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which +had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon +her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him. + +"I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like +mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with +dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big +wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out +of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for +years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses, +and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her +clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one +could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's +ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk, +and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest +dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with +bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until +she's five years old, can she?" + +"And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored +no longer?" + +"I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet +to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money +when he hears this?" + +"I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be +extravagant, just at first." + +"But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind +to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?" + +"Are simple things always ugly?" + +"Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine--and I had beautiful +clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them." + +She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood, +dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had +conjured into life. + +It was dark when they returned to town, and when Daniel entered his +door, after leaving Alice in Henry Street, he found that the lamps were +already lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he glanced +into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick were sitting together before +the fire, the boy resting his head on her knees, while her fragile hand +played caressingly with his hair. They did not look up at his footsteps, +and his heart was so warm with happiness that even the picture of mother +and son in the firelit room appeared dim beside it. + +When he opened his door he found a bright fire in his grate, and +throwing off his coat, he sat down in an easy chair with his eyes on the +glowing coals. The beneficent vision that he had brought home with him +was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, and while he gazed on +it, he told himself that the years of his loneliness, and his inner +impoverishment, were ended forever. The path of age showed to him no +longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road along which he +might travel hopefully with young feet to keep him company. With a +longing, which no excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw +Alice's child as she had seen it in her maternal rapture--as something +immortally young and fair and innocent. He thought of the moment so long +ago, when they had first placed Alice in his arms, and it seemed to him +that this unborn child was only a renewal of the one he had held that +day--that he would reach out his arms to it with that same half human, +half mystic passion. Even to-day he could almost feel the soft pressure +of her little body, and he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice +or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the reality faded +from his consciousness and the dream began, for while he sat there he +heard the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt the +little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. Oh, the little hands +that would bring healing and love in their touch! + +And he understood as he looked forward now into the dreaded future, that +the age to which he was travelling was only an immortal youth. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE ULTIMATE CHOICE + + +On Christmas Eve a heavy snowstorm set in, and as there was but little +work in the office that day, he took a long walk into the country before +going home to luncheon. By the time he came back to town the ground was +already covered with snow, which was blown by a high wind into deep +drifts against the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the +poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each branch outlined in a +delicate tracery, and where the skeletons of last spring's flowers still +clung to the boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of frozen +blossoms. + +As he passed Richard's house, the sight of his aunt's fair head at the +window arrested his steps, and going inside, he found her filling yarn +stockings for twenty poor children, to whose homes she went every +Christmas Eve. The toys and the bright tarleton bags of candy scattered +about the room gave it an air that was almost festive; and for a few +minutes he stayed with her, watching the glow of pleasure in her small, +pale face, while he helped stuff the toes of the yarn stockings with +oranges and nuts. As he stood there, surrounded by the little gifts, he +felt, for the first time since his childhood, the full significance of +Christmas--of its cheer, its mirth and its solemnity. + +"I am to have a tree at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Will you come?" she +asked wistfully, and he promised, with a smile, before he left her and +went out again into the storm. + +In the street a crowd of boys were snowballing one another, and as he +passed a ball struck him, knocking his hat into a drift. Turning in +pretended fury, he plunged into the thick of the battle, and when he +retreated some minutes afterward, he was powdered from head to foot with +dry, feathery flakes. When he reached home, he discovered, with dismay, +that he left patches of white on the carpet from the door to the upper +landing. After he had entered his room he shook the snow from his +clothes, and then looking at his watch, saw to his surprise, that +luncheon must have been over for at least an hour. In a little while, he +told himself, he would go downstairs and demand something to eat from +the old butler; but the hearth was so bright and warm that after sinking +into his accustomed chair, he found that it was almost impossible to +make the effort to go out. In a moment a delicious drowsiness crept over +him, and he fell presently asleep, while the cigar he had lighted burned +slowly out in his hand. + +The sound of the opening and closing door brought him suddenly awake +with a throb of pain. The gray light from the windows, beyond which the +snow fell heavily, was obscured by the figure of Lydia, who seemed to +spring upon him out of some dim mist of sleep. At first he saw only her +pale face and white outstretched hands; then as she came rapidly forward +and dropped on her knees in the firelight, he saw that her face was +convulsed with weeping and her eyes red and swollen. For the first time +in his life, it occurred to him with a curious quickness of perception, +he looked upon the naked soul of the woman, with her last rag of +conventionality stripped from her. In the shock of the surprise, he half +rose to his feet, and then sank back helplessly, putting out his hand as +if he would push her away from him. + +"Lydia," he said, "don't keep me waiting. Tell me at once." + +She tried to speak, and he heard her voice strangle like a live thing in +her throat. + +"Is Alice dead?" he asked quietly, "or is Dick?" + +At this she appeared to regain control of herself and he watched the +mask of her impenetrable reserve close over her features. "It is not +that--nobody is dead--it is worse," she answered in a subdued and +lifeless voice. + +"Worse?" The word stunned him, and he stared at her blankly, like a +person whose mind has suddenly given way. + +"Alice is in my room," she went on, when he had paused, "I left her with +Uncle Richard while I came here to look for you. We did not hear you +come in. I thought you were still out." + +Her manner, even more than her words, impressed him only as an evasion +of the thing in her mind, and seizing her hands almost roughly, he drew +her forward until he could look closely into her face. + +"For God's sake--speak!" he commanded. + +But with his grasp all animation appeared to go out of her, and she fell +across his knees in an immovable weight, while her eyes still gazed up +at him. + +"If you can't tell me I must go to Uncle Richard," he added. + +As he attempted to rise she put out her hands to restrain him, and in +the midst of his suspense, he was amazed at the strength there was in a +creature so slight and fragile. + +"Uncle Richard has just come to tell us," she said in a whisper. "A +lawyer--a detective--somebody. I can't remember who it is--has come down +from New York to see Geoffrey about a check signed in his name, which +was returned to the bank there. At the first glance it was seen to +be--to be not in his writing. When it was sent to him, after the bank +had declined to honour it, he declared it to be a forgery and sent it +back to them at once. It is now in their hands----" + +"To whom was it drawn?" he asked so quietly that his voice sounded in +his own ears like the voice of a stranger. + +"To Damon & Hanska, furriers in Fifth Avenue, and it was sent in payment +for a sable coat which Alice had bought. They had already begun a suit, +it seems, to recover the money." + +As she finished he rose slowly to his feet, and stood staring at the +snow which fell heavily beyond the window. The twisted bough of a +poplar tree just outside was rocking back and forth with a creaking +noise, and presently, as his ears grew accustomed to the silence in the +room, he heard the loud monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel, +which seemed to grow more distinct with each minute that the hands +travelled. Lydia had slipped from his grasp as he rose, and lay now with +her face buried in the cushions of the chair. It was a terrible thing +for Lydia, he thought suddenly, as he looked down on her. + +"And Geoffrey Heath?" he asked, repeating the question in a raised voice +when she did not answer. + +"Oh, what can we expect of him? What can we expect?" she demanded, with +a shudder. "Alice is sure that he hates her, that he would seize any +excuse to divorce her, to outrage her publicly. He will do +nothing--nothing--nothing," she said, rising to her feet, "he has +returned the check to the bank, and denied openly all knowledge of it. +After some violent words with Alice in the lawyer's presence, he +declared to them both that he did not care in the least what steps were +taken--that he had washed his hands of her and of the whole affair. She +is half insane with terror of a prosecution, and can hardly speak +coherently. Oh, I wonder why one ever has children?" she exclaimed in +anguish. + +With her last words it seemed to him that the barrier which had +separated him from Lydia had crumbled suddenly to ruins between them. +The space which love could not bridge was spanned by pity; and crossing +to where she stood, he put his arms about her, while she bowed her head +on his breast and wept. + +"Poor girl! poor girl!" he said softly, and then putting her from him, +he went out of the room and closed the door gently upon her grief. + +From across the hall the sound of smothered sobs came to him, and +entering Lydia's room, he saw Alice clinging hysterically to Richard's +arm. As she looked round at his footsteps, her face showed so old and +haggard between the splendid masses of her hair, that he could hardly +believe for a minute that this half distraught creature was really his +daughter. For an instant he was held dumb by the horror of it; then the +silence was broken by the cry with which Alice threw herself into his +arms. Once before she had rushed to his breast with the same word on her +lips, he remembered. + +"O papa, you will help me! You must help me!" she cried. "Oh, make them +tell you all so that you may help me!" + +"They have told me--your mother has told me, Alice," he answered, +seeking in vain to release himself from the frantic grasp of her arms. + +"Then you will make Geoffrey understand," she returned, almost angrily. +"You will make Geoffrey understand that it was not my fault--that I +couldn't help it." + +Richard Ordway turned from the window, through which he had been +looking, and taking her fingers, which were closed in a vice-like +pressure about Daniel's arm, pried them forcibly apart. + +"Look at me, Alice," he said sternly, "and answer the question that I +asked you. What did you say to Geoffrey when he spoke to you in the +lawyer's presence? Did you deny, then, that you had signed the check? +Don't struggle so, I must hear what you told them." + +But she only writhed in his hold, straining her arms and her neck in the +direction of Daniel. + +"He was very cruel," she replied at last, "they were both very cruel. I +don't know what I said, I was so frightened. Geoffrey hurt me +terribly--he hurt me terribly," she whimpered like a child, and as she +turned toward Daniel, he saw her bloodless gum, from which her lower lip +had quivered and dropped. + +"I must know what you told them, Alice," repeated the old man in an +unmoved tone. "I can do nothing to help you, if you will not speak the +truth." Even when her body struggled in his grasp, no muscle altered in +the stern face he bent above her. + +"Let me go," she pleaded passionately, "I want to go to papa! I want +papa!" + +At her cry Daniel made a single step forward, and then fell back because +the situation seemed at the moment in the command of Richard. Again he +felt the curious respect, the confidence, with which his uncle inspired +him in critical moments. + +"I shall let you go when you have told me the truth," said Richard +calmly. + +She grew instantly quiet, and for a minute she appeared to hang a dead +weight on his arm. Then her voice came with the whimpering, childlike +sound. + +"I told them that I had never touched it--that I had asked papa for the +money, and he had given it to me," she said. + +"I thought so," returned Richard grimly, and he released his hold so +quickly that she fell in a limp heap at his feet. + +"I wanted it from her own lips, though Mr. Cummins had already told me," +he added, as he looked at his nephew. + +For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with his eyes on the +gold-topped bottles on Lydia's dressing table. He had heard Alice's +fall, but he did not stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard's words, +but he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent revulsion--a +furious anger against Alice swept over him, and the next he felt +suddenly, as in his dream, the little hands pass over his brow and lips. + +"She is right about it, Uncle Richard," he said, "I gave her the check." + +At the words Richard turned quickly away, but with a shriek of joy, +Alice raised herself to her knees, and looked up with shining eyes. + +"I told you papa would know! I told you papa would help me!" she cried +triumphantly to the old man. + +Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance again to his nephew's +face, and something that was almost a tremor seemed to pass through his +voice. + +"Daniel," he asked, "what is the use?" + +"She has told you the truth," repeated Daniel steadily, "I gave her the +check." + +"You are ready to swear to this?" + +"If it is necessary, I am." + +Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still on her knees, but as she +came nearer him, Daniel retreated instinctively step by step until he +had put the table between them. + +"It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?" he inquired of +Richard. + +The gesture with which Richard responded was almost impatient. "If you +are determined--it will be necessary for a time at least," he replied. +"There's no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, but already +there has been something of a scandal. I have made good the loss to the +bank, but Geoffrey has been very difficult to bring to reason. He wanted +a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way upon Alice." + +"But she is safe now?" asked Daniel, and the coldness in his tone came +as a surprise to him when he spoke. + +"Yes, she is safe," returned Richard, "and you, also, I trust. There is +little danger, I think, under the circumstances, of a prosecution. If at +any time," he added, with a shaking voice, "before your return you +should wish the control of your property, I will turn it over to you at +once." + +"Thank you," said Daniel quietly, and then with an embarrassed movement, +he held out his hand. "I shall go, I think, on the four o'clock train," +he continued, "is that what you would advise?" + +"It is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have an appointment with the +lawyer for the bank at a quarter of five." He put out his hand again for +his nephew's. "Daniel, you are a good man," he added, as he turned away. + +Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, did Ordway remember +that he had left Alice crouched on the floor, and coming back he lifted +her into his arms. "It is all right, Alice, don't cry," he said, as he +kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange dullness of sensation, +he crossed the hall and entered his room, where he found Lydia still +lying with her face hidden in the cushions of the chair. + +At his step she looked up and put out her hand, with an imploring +gesture. + +"Daniel!" she called softly, "Daniel!" + +Before replying to her he went to his bureau and hurriedly packed some +clothes into a bag. Then, with the satchel still in his hand, he came +over and stopped beside her. + +"I can't wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard will tell you," he said. + +"You are going away? Do you mean you are going away?" she questioned. + +"To-morrow you will understand," he answered, "that it is better so." + +For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then she raised herself and +leaned toward him. + +"But Alice? Does Alice go with you?" she asked. + +"No, Alice is safe. Go to her." + +"You will come back again? It is not forever?" + +He shook his head smiling. "Perhaps," he answered. + +She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw presently a look come +into her face like the look with which she had heard of the blow he had +struck Geoffrey Heath. + +"Daniel, you are a brave man," she said, and sobbed as she kissed him. + +Following him to the threshold, she listened, with her face pressed +against the lintel, while she heard him go down the staircase and close +the front door softly behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +FLIGHT + + +NOT until the train had started and the conductor had asked for his +ticket, did Ordway realize that he was on his way to Tappahannock. At +the discovery he was conscious of no surprise--scarcely of any +interest--it seemed to matter to him so little in which direction he +went. A curious numbness of sensation had paralysed both his memory and +his perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry, warm +or cold. In the same way he wondered why he felt no regret at leaving +Botetourt forever--no clinging tenderness for his home, for Lydia, for +Alice. If his children had been strangers to him he could not have +thought of his parting from them with a greater absence of feeling. Was +it possible at last that he was to be delivered from the emotional +intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, which had made him one of +the world's failures? He recalled indifferently Alice's convulsed +features, and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped like a +child's that is hurt. These things left him utterly unmoved when he +remembered them, and he even found himself asking the next instant, with +a vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in front of him +was going home to spend Christmas with his daughter? "But what has this +bald-headed man to do with Alice or with me?" he demanded in perplexity, +"and why is it that I can think of him now with the same interest with +which I think of my own child? I am going away forever and I shall never +see them again," he continued, with emphasis, as if to convince himself +of some fact which he had but half understood. "Yes, I shall never see +them again, and Alice will be quite happy without me, and Alice's child +will grow up probably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for Alice. +No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice's child," he corrected +quickly, with a piercing flash of insight. "It was for something larger, +stronger--something as inevitable as the law. I could not help it, it +was for myself," he added, after a minute. And it seemed to him that +with this inward revelation the outer covering of things was stripped +suddenly from before his eyes. As beneath his sacrifice he recognised +the inexorable law, so beneath Alice's beauty he beheld the skeleton +which her radiant flesh clothed with life, and beneath Lydia's mask of +conventionality her little naked soul, too delicate and shivering to +stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, all illusions, had +shrivelled now in the hard dry, atmosphere through which he looked. +"Yes, I am indifferent to them all and to everything," he concluded; +"Lydia, and Dick and even Alice are no closer to me than is the +bald-headed man on the front seat. Nobody is closer to another when it +comes to that, for each one of us is alone in an illimitable space." + +The swinging lights of the train were reflected in the falling snow +outside, like orbed blue flames against a curtain of white. Through the +crack under the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the +cinders from the sill into his face. It was the common day coach of a +local train, and the passengers were, for the most part, young men or +young women clerks, who were hastening back to their country homes for +Christmas. Once when they reached a station several girls got off, with +their arms filled with packages, and pushed their way through the heavy +drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil lamp outside. For a minute +he followed them idly in his imagination, seeing the merry party +ploughing over the old country roads to the warm farm house, where a +bright log fire and a Christmas tree were prepared for them. The window +panes were frosted over now, and when the train started on its slow +journey he could see only the orbed blue flames dancing in the night +against the whirling snowflakes. + +It was nine o'clock when they pulled into Tappahannock and when he came +out upon the platform he found that the storm had ceased, though the +ground lay white and hard beneath the scattered street lamps. Straight +ahead of him, as he walked up the long hill from the station, he heard +the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The lights were still +burning in the little shops, and through the uncurtained windows he +could see the variegated display of Christmas decorations. Here and +there a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was peering eagerly at +a collection of toys or a wreath of evergreens, but, for the rest, the +shops appeared singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christmas +Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he scarcely noticed this, and he +was conscious of no particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar +warehouse, he saw Baxter's enormous figure loom darkly under the +flickering light above the sidewalk. Behind him the vacant building +yawned like a sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a glistening +fringe of icicles. + +"Is that you, Baxter?" he asked, and stretched out his hand with a +mechanical movement. + +"Why, bless my soul, Smith!" exclaimed Baxter, "who'd ever have believed +it!" + +"I've just got off the train," returned Ordway, feeling vaguely that +some explanation of his presence was needed, "and I'm trying to find a +place where I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at +midnight. It didn't occur to me that you would be in your office. I was +going to Mrs. Buzzy's." + +"You'd better come along with me, for I don't believe you'll find a +living soul at Mag Buzzy's--not even a kid," replied Baxter, "her +husband is one of Jasper Trend's overseers, you know, and they're most +likely down at the cotton mills." + +"At the cotton mills? Why, what's the matter there?" + +"You haven't heard then? I thought it was in all the papers. There's +been a big strike on for a week--Jasper lowered wages the first of the +month--and every operative has turned out and demanded more pay and +shorter hours. The old man's hoppin', of course, and the funny part is, +Smith, that he lays every bit of the trouble at your door. He says that +you started it all by raisin' the ideas of the operatives." + +"But it's a pretty serious business for them, Baxter. How are they going +to live through this weather?" + +"They ain't livin', they're starvin', though I believe the union is +comin' to their help sooner or later. But what's that in such a +blood-curdlin' spell as this?" + +A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising and falling in the +bitter air, came to them from below the slope of the hill, and catching +Ordway's arm, Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp. + +"They're hootin' at the guards Trend has put around the mills," he said, +while his words floated like vapour out of his mouth into the cold, +"he's got policemen stalkin' up an' down before his house, too." + +"You mean he actually fears violence?" + +"Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a +gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the +strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin' +Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker +or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought +to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six +months ago. But he wouldn't do it because he said he made more than the +interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he +didn't catch at it." + +For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the +cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered +sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them +from the foot of the hill. + +Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of +Richard Ordway's parting words. + +"Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand +dollars for his mills to-night." + +Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back +a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big shaggy overcoat. + +"You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief +that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, +there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they +are once caught." + +Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it +seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the +darkness. + +"But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy +the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at +midnight." + +"You mean you'll go away even after you've bought 'em?" + +"I mean I've got to go--to go always from place to place--but I'll leave +you here in my stead." He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in +the sound. "I'll run the mills on the cooperative plan, Baxter, and I'll +leave you in charge of them--you and Banks." Then he caught Baxter's arm +with both hands, and turned his body forcibly in the direction of the +church at the top of the hill. "While we are talking those people down +there are freezing," he said. + +"An' so am I, if you don't mind my mentionin' it," observed Baxter +meekly. + +"Then let's go to Trend's. There's not a minute to lose, if we are to +save the mills. Are you coming, Baxter?" + +"Oh, I'm comin'," replied Baxter, waddling in his shaggy coat like a +great black bear, "but I'd like to git up my wind first," he added, +puffing clouds of steam as he ascended the hill. + +"There's no time for that," returned Ordway, sharply, as he dragged him +along. + +When they reached Jasper Trend's gate, a policeman, who strolled, +beating his hands together, on the board walk, came up and stopped them +as they were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, he apologised and +moved on. A moment later the sound of their footsteps on the porch +brought the head of Banks to the crack of the door. + +"Who are you? and what is your business?" he demanded. + +"Banks!" said Ordway in a whisper, and at his voice the bar, which +Banks had slipped from the door, fell with a loud crash from his hands. + +"Good Lord, it's really you, Smith!" he cried in a delirium of joy. + +"Harry, be careful or you'll wake the baby," called a voice softly from +the top of the staircase. + +"Darn the baby!" growled Banks, lowering his tone obediently. "The next +thing she'll be asking me to put out the mills because the light wakes +the baby. When did you come, Smith? And what on God's earth are you +doing here?" + +"I came to stop the strike," responded Ordway, smiling. "I've brought an +offer to Mr. Trend, I must speak to him at once." + +"He's in the dining-room, but if you've come from the strikers it's no +use. His back's up." + +"Well, it ain't from the strikers," interrupted Baxter, pushing his way +in the direction of the dining-room. "It's from a chap we won't name, +but he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with Jasper." + +"Then he's a darn fool," remarked Jasper Trend from the threshold, "for +if I don't get the ringleaders arrested befo' mornin' thar won't be a +brick left standin' in the buildings." + +"The chap I mean ain't worryin' about that," said Baxter, "provided +you'll sign the agreement in the next ten minutes. He's ready to give +you a hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an' all." + +"Sign the agreement? I ain't got any agreement," protested Jasper, +suspecting a trap, "and how do I know that the strike ain't over befo' +you're making the offer?" + +"Well, if you'll just step over to the window, and stick your head out, +you won't have much uncertainty about that, I reckon," returned Baxter. + +Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, waiting with his hand on +the sash, while the threatening shouts from below the hill floated into +the room. + +"Papa, the baby can't sleep for the noise those men make down at the +mills," called a peremptory voice from the landing above. + +"I told you so!" groaned Banks, closing the window. + +"I ain't got any agreement," repeated Jasper, in helpless irritation, as +he sank back into his chair. + +"Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as well as a lawyer," said +Baxter, while Ordway, sitting down at a little fancy desk of Milly's in +one corner, wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of scented note +paper. + +When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man looked up at him with +blinking eyes. "Is it to hold good if the damned thing burns befo' +mornin'?" he asked. + +"If it burns before morning--yes." + +With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote his name. "How do I know if I'm to +get the money?" he inquired the next instant, moved by a new suspicion. + +"I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in Botetourt," replied +Ordway, as he handed the pen to Baxter, "and you will receive an answer +by twelve o'clock to-morrow. I want your signature, also, Banks," he +continued, turning to the young man. "I've made two copies, you see, one +of which I shall leave with Baxter." + +"Then you're going away?" inquired Banks, gloomily. + +Ordway nodded. "I am leaving on the midnight train," he answered. + +"So you're going West?" + +"Yes, I'm going West, and I've barely time to settle things at the mills +before I start. God bless you, Banks. Good-bye." + +Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling into his overcoat in the +hall, he broke away from the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the +door, ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, where the +policeman called a "Merry Christmas!" to him as he hurried by. + +When he gained the top of the hill, and descended rapidly toward the +broad level beyond, where the brick buildings of the cotton mills stood +in the centre of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more +frequent, and the black mass on the frozen ground divided itself +presently into individual atoms. A few bonfires had started on the +outskirts of the crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged, +reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard faces of the men, the +sharpened ones of the women, and the pinched ones of little children, +all sallow from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan from lack +of nourishing and wholesome food. As he approached one of these fires, +made from a burning barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, and a +baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, turned and spat fiercely +in his direction. "This ain't no place for swells!" she screamed, and +began laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice. + +In the excitement no one noticed her, and her demented shrieks followed +him while he made his way cautiously along the outskirts of the +strikers, until he came to the main building, before which a few men +with muskets had cleared a hollow space. They looked cowed and sullen, +he saw, for their sympathies were evidently with the operatives, and he +realised that the first organised attack would force them from their +dangerous position. + +Approaching one of the guards, whom he remembered, Ordway touched him +upon the arm and asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. "I +have a message to deliver to the men," he said. + +The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, recognising him, +exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "My God, boys, it's 'Ten Commandment +Smith' or it's his ghost!" + +"Let me get through to the steps," said Ordway, "I must speak to them." + +"Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt if they'd listen to an +angel from heaven if he were to talk to them about Jasper Trend. They +are preparing a rush on the doors now, and when they make it they'll go +through." + +Passing him in silence, Ordway mounted the steps, and stood with his +back against the doors of the main building, in which, when he had last +entered it, the great looms had been at work. Before him the dark mass +heaved back and forth, and farther away, amid the bonfires in the waste +of frozen snow, he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the +half-crazed woman. + +"We won't hear any talk," cried a spokesman in the front ranks of the +crowd. "It's too late to haggle now. We'll have nothin' from Jasper +Trend unless he gives us what we ask." + +"And if he says he'll give it who will believe him?" jeered a woman, +farther back, holding a crying child above her head. "He killed the +father and he's starvin' the children." + +"No--no, we'll have no damned words. We'll burn out the scabs!" shouted +a man, lifting a torch he had just lit at a bonfire. As the torch rose +in a splendid blaze, it lighted up the front of the building, and cast a +yellow flame upon Ordway's face. + +"I have nothing to do with Jasper Trend!" he called out, straightening +himself to his full height. "He has no part in the mills from to-night! +I have bought them from him!" + +With the light on his face, he stood there an instant before them, while +the shouts changed in the first shock of recognition from anger to +surprise. The minute afterward the crowd was rocked by a single gigantic +emotion, and it hurled itself forward, bearing down the guards in its +efforts to reach the steps. As it swayed back and forth its individual +members--men, women and children--appeared to float like straws on some +cosmic undercurrent of feeling. + +"From to-night the mills belong to me!" he cried in a voice which rang +over the frozen ground to where the insane woman was laughing beside a +bonfire. "Your grievances after to-night are not against Jasper Trend, +but against me. You shall have fair pay, fair hours and clean rooms, I +promise you----" + +He went on still, but his words were drowned in the oncoming rush of the +crowd, which rolled forward like great waters, surrounding him, +overwhelming him, sweeping him off his feet, and bearing him out again +upon its bosom. The cries so lately growls of anger had changed +suddenly, and above all the din and rush he heard rising always the name +which he had made honoured and beloved in Tappahannock. It was the one +great moment of his life, he knew, when on the tremendous swell of +feeling, he was borne like a straw up the hillside and back into the +main street of Tappahannock. + +An hour later, bruised, aching and half stunned, he entered the station +and telegraphed twice to Richard Ordway before he went out upon the +platform to take the train. He had left his instructions with Baxter, +from whom he had just parted, and now, as he walked up and down in the +icy darkness, broken by the shivering lights of the station, it seemed +to him that he was like a man, who having been condemned to death, +stands looking back a little wistfully at life from the edge of the +grave. He had had his great moment, and ahead of him there was nothing. + +A freight train passed with a grating noise, a station hand, holding a +lantern ran hurriedly along the track, a whistle blew, and then again +there was stillness. His eyes were wearily following the track, when he +felt a touch on his arm, and turning quickly, saw Banks, in a fur-lined +overcoat, looking up at him with an embarrassed air. + +"Smith," he said, strangling a cough, "I've seen Baxter, and neither he +nor I like your going West this way all by yourself and half sick. If +you don't mind, I've arranged to take a little holiday and come along. +To tell the truth, it's just exactly the chance I've been looking for. I +haven't been away from Milly twenty-four hours since I married her, and +a change does anybody good." + +"No, you can't come, Banks, I don't want you. I'd rather be alone," +replied Ordway, almost indignantly. + +"But you ain't well," insisted Banks stubbornly. "We don't like the +looks of you, Baxter and I." + +"Well, you can't come, that's all," retorted Ordway, as the red eyes of +the engine pierced the darkness. "There, go home, Banks," he added, as +he held out his hand, "I'm much obliged to you. You're a first-rate +chap. Good-bye." + +"Then good-bye," returned Banks hastily turning away. + +A minute afterward, as Ordway swung himself on the train, he heard the +bells of a church, ringing cheerfully in the frosty air, and remembered, +with a start, that it was Christmas morning. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE END OF THE ROAD + + +In the morning, after a short sleep on the hard plush seat, he awoke +with a shooting pain in his head. When the drowsiness of exhaustion had +overcome him, he remembered, he had been idly counting the dazzling +electric lights of a town through which they were passing. By the time +he had reached "twenty-one" he had dropped off into unconsciousness, +though it seemed to him that a second self within him, wholly awake, had +gone on through the night counting without pause, "twenty-two, +twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five--" Still in his brain the numbers +went on, and still the great globular lights flashed past his eyes. + +Struggling awake in the gray dawn, he lay without changing his position, +until the mist gave place slowly to the broad daylight. Then he found +that they were approaching another town, which appeared from a distant +view to resemble a single gigantic factory, composed chiefly of a +wilderness of chimneys. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was +eight o'clock; and the conductor passing through the coach at the +instant, informed the passengers generally that they must change cars +for the West. The name of the town Ordway failed to catch, but it made +so little difference to him that he followed the crowd mechanically, +without inquiring where it would lead him. The pain in his head had +extended now to his chest and shoulders, and presently it passed into +his lower limbs, with a racking ache that seemed to take from him the +control of his muscles. Yet all the while he felt a curious drowsiness, +which did not in the least resemble sleep, creeping over him like the +stealthy effect of some powerful drug. After he had breathed the fresh +air outside, he felt it to be impossible that he should return to the +overheated car, and pushing his way through the crowded station, where +men were rushing to the luncheon counter in one corner, he started along +a broad street, which looked as if it led to an open square at the top +of a long incline. On either side there were rows of narrow tenements, +occupied evidently by the operatives in the imposing factories he had +observed from the train. Here and there a holly wreath suspended from a +cheap lace curtain, reminded him again that it was Christmas morning, +and by some eccentricity of memory, he recalled vividly a Christmas +before his mother's death, when he had crept on his bare feet, in the +dawn, to peep into the bulging stocking before her fireplace. + +At the next corner a small eating house had hung out its list of +Christmas dainties, and going inside he sat down at one of the small +deserted tables and asked for a cup of coffee. When it was brought he +swallowed it in the hope that it might drive away the heaviness in his +head, but after a moment of relief the stupor attacked him again more +oppressively than ever. He felt that even the growing agony in his +forehead and shoulders could not keep him awake if he could only find a +spot in which to lie down and rest. + +After he came out into the street again he felt stronger and better, and +it occurred to him that his headache was due probably to the fact that +he had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. He remembered now +that he had missed his luncheon because of his long walk into the +country, and the recollection of this trivial incident seemed to make +plain all the subsequent events. Everything that had been so confused a +moment ago stood out quite clearly now. His emotions, which had been +benumbed when he left Botetourt, revived immediately in the awakening of +his memory; and he was seized with a terrible longing to hold Alice in +his arms and to say to her that he forgave her and loved her still. It +seemed to him impossible that he should have come away after a single +indifferent kiss, without glancing back--and her face rose before him, +not convulsed and haggard as he had last seen it, but glowing and +transfigured, with her sparkling blue eyes and her lips that were too +red and too full for beauty. Then, even while he looked at her with +love, the old numbness crept back, and his feeling for her died utterly +away. "No, I have ceased to care," he thought indifferently. "It does +not matter to me whether I see her again or not. I must eat and lie +down, nothing else is of consequence." + +He had reached the open space at the end of the long graded hill, and as +he stopped to look about him he saw that a small hotel, frequented +probably by travelling salesmen, stood directly across the square, which +was now deep in snow. Following the pavement to the open door of the +lobby, he went inside and asked for a room, after which he passed into +the restaurant and drank a second cup of coffee. Then turning away from +his untasted food, he went upstairs to the large, bare apartment, with a +broken window pane, which they had assigned him, and throwing himself +upon the unmade bed, fell heavily asleep. + +When he awoke the pain was easier, and feeling oppressed by the chill +vacancy of the room, he went downstairs and out into the open square. +Though it was a dull gray afternoon, the square was filled with +children, dragging bright new sleds over the snow. One of them, a little +brown-haired girl, was trundling her Christmas doll and as she passed +him, she turned and smiled into his face with a joyful look. Something +in her smile was vaguely familiar to him, and he remembered, after a +minute, that Emily had looked at him like that on the morning when he +had met her for the first time riding her old white horse up the hill in +Tappahannock. "Yes, it was that look that made me love her," he thought +dispassionately, as if he were reviewing some dimly remembered event in +a former life, "and it is because I loved her that I was able to do +these things. If I had not loved her, I should not have saved Milly +Trend, nor gone back to Botetourt, nor sacrificed myself for Alice. +Yes, all these have come from that," he added, "and will go back, I +suppose, to that in the end." The little girl ran by again, still +trundling her doll, and again he saw Emily in her red cape on the old +horse. + +For several hours he sat there in the frozen square, hardly feeling the +cold wind that blew over him. But when he rose presently to go into the +hotel, he found that his limbs were stiff, and the burning pain had +returned with violence to his head and chest. The snow in the square +seemed to roll toward him as he walked, and it was with difficulty that +he dragged himself step by step along the pavement to the entrance of +the hotel. After he was in his room again he threw himself, still +dressed, upon the bed, and fell back into the stupor out of which he had +come. + +When he opened his eyes after an hour, he was hardly sure, for the first +few minutes, whether he was awake or asleep. The large, bare room in +which he had lost consciousness had given place, when he awoke, to his +prison cell. The hard daylight came to him through the grated windows, +and from a nail in the wall he saw his gray prison coat, with the red +bars, won for good behaviour, upon the sleeve. Then while he looked at +it, the red bars changed quickly to the double stripes of a second term, +and the double stripes became three, and the three became four, until it +seemed to him that he was striped from head to foot so closely that he +knew that he must have gone on serving term after term since the +beginning of the world. "No, no, that is not mine. I am wearing the red +bars!" he cried out, and came back to himself with a convulsive shudder. + +As he looked about him the hallucination vanished, and he felt that he +had come out of an eternity of unconsciousness into which he should +presently sink back again. The day before appeared to belong to some +other life that he had lived while he was still young, yet when he +opened his eyes the same gray light filled the windows, the same draught +blew through the broken pane, the same vague shadows crawled back and +forth on the ceiling. The headache was gone now, but the room had grown +very cold, and from time to time, when he coughed, long shivers ran +through his limbs and his teeth chattered. He had thrown his overcoat +across his chest as a coverlet, but the cold from which he suffered was +an inward chill, which was scarcely increased by the wind that blew +through the broken pane. There was no confusion in his mind now, but a +wonderful lucidity, in which he saw clearly all that had happened to him +last night in Tappahannock. "Yes, that was my good moment," he said "and +after such a moment there is nothing, but death. If I can only die +everything will be made entirely right and simple." As he uttered the +words the weakness of self pity swept over him, and with a sudden sense +of spiritual detachment, he was aware of a feeling of sympathy for that +other "I," who seemed so closely related to him, and yet outside of +himself. The real "I" was somewhere above amid the crawling shadows on +the ceiling, but the other--the false one--lay on the bed under the +overcoat; and he saw, when he looked down that, though he himself was +young, the other "I" was old and haggard and unshaven. "So there are two +of us, after all," he thought, "poor fellows, poor fellows." + +But the minute afterward the perception of his dual nature faded as +rapidly as the hallucination of his prison cell. In its place there +appeared the little girl, who had passed him, trundling her Christmas +doll, in the square below. "I have seen her before--she is vaguely +familiar," he thought, troubled because he could not recall the +resemblance. From this he passed to the memory of Alice when she was +still a child, and she came back to him, fresh and vivid, as on the day +when she had run out to beg him to come in to listen to her music. The +broken scales ran in his head again, but there was no love in his heart. + +His gaze dropped from the ceiling and turned toward the door, for in the +midst of his visions, he had seen it open softly and Banks come into the +room on tiptoe and stop at the foot of the bed, regarding him with his +embarrassed and silly look "What in the devil, am I dreaming about Banks +for?" he demanded aloud, with an impatient movement of his feet, as if +he meant to kick the obtruding dream away from his bed. + +At the kick the dream stopped rolling its prominent pale eyes and spoke. +"I hope you ain't sick, Smith," it said, and with the first words he +knew that it was Banks in the familiar flesh and not the disembodied +spirit. + +"No I'm not sick, but what are you doing here?" he asked. + +"Enjoying myself," replied Banks gloomily. + +"Well, I wish you'd chosen to enjoy yourself somewhere else." + +"I couldn't. If you don't mind I'd like to stuff the curtain into that +window pane." + +"Oh, I don't mind. When did you get here?" + +"I came on the train with you." + +"On the train with me? Where did you get on? I didn't see you." + +"You didn't look," replied Banks, from the window, where he was stuffing +the red velveteen curtain into the broken pane. "I was in the last seat +in the rear coach." + +"So you followed me," said Ordway indignantly. "I told you not to. Why +did you do it?" + +Banks came back and stood again at the foot of the bed, looking at him +with his sincere and kindly smile. + +"Well, the truth is, I wanted an outing," he answered, "it's a good baby +as babies go, but I get dog-tired of playing nurse." + +"You might have gone somewhere else. There are plenty of places." + +"I couldn't think of 'em, and, besides, this seems a nice town. The're a +spanking fine lot of factories. But I hope you ain't sick Smith? What +are you doing in bed?" + +"Oh, I've given up," replied Ordway gruffly. "Every man has a right to +give up some time, hasn't he?" + +"I don't know about every man," returned Banks, stolidly, "but you +haven't, Smith." + +"Well, I've done it anyway," retorted Ordway, and turned his face to the +wall. + +As he lay there with closed eyes, he had an obscure impression that +Banks--Banks, the simple; Banks, the impossible--was in some way +operating the forces of destiny. First he heard the bell ring, then the +door open and close, and a little later, the bleak room was suffused +with a warm rosy light in which the vague shadows melted into a +shimmering background. The crackling of the fire annoyed him because it +suggested the possibility of physical comfort, and he no longer wanted +to be comfortable. + +"Smith," said Banks, coming over to the bed and pulling off the +overcoat, "I've got a good fire here and a chair. I wish you'd get up. +Good Lord, your hands are as hot as a hornet's nest. When did you eat +anything?" + +"I had breakfast in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he rose from the bed +and came over to the chair Banks had prepared. "I can't remember when it +was, but it must have been since the creation of the world, I suppose." +The fire grew suddenly black before him, "I'd rather lie down," he +added, "my head is splitting and I can't see." + +"Oh, you'll see all right in a minute. Wait till I light this candle, so +the electric light won't hurt your eyes. The boy's gone for a little +supper, and as soon as you've swallowed a mouthful you'll begin to feel +better." + +"But I'm not hungry. I won't eat," returned Ordway, with an irritable +feeling that Banks was looming into a responsibility. Anything that +pulled one back to life was what he wanted to escape, and even the +affection of Banks might prove, he thought, tenaciously clinging. One +resolution he had made in the beginning--he would not take up his life +again for the sake of Banks. + +"Yes, you must, Smith," remonstrated the other, with an angelic patience +which gave him, if possible, a more foolish aspect. "It's after six +o'clock and you haven't had a bite since yesterday at eight. That's why +your head's so light and you're in a raging fever." + +"It isn't that, Banks, it's because I've got to die," he answered. "If +they don't hush things up with money, I may have to go back to prison." +As he said the words he saw again the prison coat, with the double +stripes of a second term, as in the instant of his hallucination. + +"I know," said Banks, softly, as he bent over to poke the fire. "There +was a line or two about it in a New York paper. But they'll hush it up, +and besides they said it was just suspicion." + +"You knew all the time and yet you wanted me to go back to +Tappahannock?" + +"Oh, they don't read the papers much there, except the _Tappahannock +Herald_, and it won't get into that. It was just a silly little slip +anyway, and not two dozen people will be likely to know what it meant." + +"And you, Banks? What do you think?" he asked with a mild curiosity. + +Banks shook his head. "Why, what's the use in your asking?" he replied. +"Of course, I know that you didn't do it, and if you had done it, it +would have been just because the other man ought to have written his +name and wouldn't," he concluded, unblushingly. + +For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. "You're a good chap, +Banks," he said at last in a dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened +irritation, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back to life. Was it +impossible, after all, that a man should give up, as long as there +remained a soul alive who believed in him? It wasn't only the love of +women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved both Emily and Alice, +and yet they were of less importance in his life at this hour than was +Banks, whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought the love of Emily +a great thing and that of Banks a small one. + +His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not remove it when a knock +came at the door, and supper was brought in and placed on a little table +before the fire. + +"I ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith," said Banks, crumbling the +bread into it as he spoke, as if he were preparing a meal for a baby, +"and a good stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this +whiskey, won't you." + +"I'm not hungry," returned Ordway, pushing the glass away, after it had +touched his lips. "I won't eat." + +Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and then sat down with his +eyes fastened on the tray. "I haven't had a bite myself since +breakfast," he remarked, "and I'm pretty faintish, but I tell you, +Smith, if it's the last word I speak, that I won't put my knife into +that beefsteak until you've eaten your soup--no, not if I die right here +of starvation." + +"Well, I'm sorry you're such a fool, for I've no intention of eating it. +I left you my whiskey, you can take that." + +"I shouldn't dare to on an empty stomach. I get drunk too quick." + +For a few minutes he sat in silence regarding the supper with a hungry +look; then selecting a thin slice of bread, he stuck it on the end of a +fork, and kneeling upon the hearthrug, held it out to the glowing coals. +As it turned gradually to a delicious crisp brown, the appetising smell +of it floated to Ordway's nostrils. + +"I always had a particular taste for toast," remarked Banks as he +buttered the slice and laid it on a hot plate on the fender. When he +took up a second one, Ordway watched him with an attention of which he +was almost unconscious, and he did not remove his gaze from the fire, +until the last slice, brown and freshly buttered, was laid carefully +upon the others. As he finished Banks threw down his fork, and rising +to his feet, looked wistfully at the beefsteak, keeping hot before the +cheerful flames. + +"It's kind of rare, just as I like it," he observed, "thick and juicy, +with little brown streaks from the broiler, and a few mushrooms +scattered gracefully on top. Tappahannock is a mighty poor place for a +steak," he concluded resignedly, "it ain't often I have a chance at one, +but I thought to-night being Christmas----" + +"Then, for God's sake, eat it!" thundered Ordway, while he made a dash +for his soup. + +But an hour after he had taken it, his fever rose so high that Banks +helped him into bed and rushed out in alarm for the doctor. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE LIGHT BEYOND + + +Out of the obscurity of the next few weeks, he brought, with the memory +of Banks hovering about his bed, the vague impression of a woman's step +across his floor and a woman's touch on his brow and hands. When he +returned to consciousness the woman's step and touch had vanished, but +Banks was still nursing him with his infinite patience and his silly, +good-humoured smile. The rest was a dream, he said to himself, +resignedly, as he turned his face to the wall and slept. + +On a mild January morning, when he came downstairs for the first time, +and went with Banks out into the open square in front of the hotel, he +put almost timidly the question which had been throbbing in his brain +for weeks. + +"Was there anybody else with me, Banks? I thought--I dreamed--I couldn't +get rid of it----" + +"Who else could there have been?" asked Banks, and he stared straight +before him, at the slender spire of the big, gray church in the next +block. So the mystery would remain unsolved, Ordway understood, and he +would go back to life cherishing either a divine memory or a phantasy of +delirium. + +After a little while Banks went off to the chemists' with a +prescription, and Ordway sat alone on a bench in the warm sunshine, +which was rapidly melting the snow. It was Sunday morning, and presently +the congregation streamed slowly past him on its way to the big gray +church just beyond. A bright blue sky was overhead, the sound of bells +was in the air, and under the melting snow he saw that the grass was +still fresh and green. As he sat there in the wonderful Sabbath +stillness, he felt, with a new sense of security, of reconciliation, +that his life had again been taken out of his hands and adjusted without +his knowledge. This time it had been Banks--Banks, the impossible--who +had swayed his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks had +accomplished it through the simple power of the human touch. In the hour +of his need it had been neither religion nor philosophy, but the +outstretched hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened and he saw +that though the body of love is one, the members of it are infinite; and +it was made plain to him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of +Alice, and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of the same +immortality. He had gone down into the deep places, and out of them he +had brought this light, this message. As the people streamed past him to +the big gray church, he felt that if they would only stop and listen, he +could tell them in the open, not in walls, of the thing that they were +seeking. Yet the time had not come, though in the hope of it he could +sit there patiently under the blue sky, with the snow melting over the +grass at his feet. + +At the end of an hour Banks returned, and stood over him with +affectionate anxiety. "In a few days you'll be well enough to travel, +Smith, and I'll take you back with me to Tappahannock." + +Ordway glanced up, smiling, and Banks saw in his face, so thin that the +flesh seemed almost transparent, the rapt and luminous look with which +he had stood over his Bible in the green field or in the little grove of +pines. + +"You will go back to Tappahannock and Baxter will take you in until you +grow strong and well, and then you can start your schools, or your +library, and look after the mills instead of letting Baxter do it." + +"Yes," said Ordway, "yes," but he had hardly heard Banks's words, for +his gaze was on the blue sky, against which the spire of the church rose +like a pointing finger. His face shone as if from an inward flame, and +this flame, burning clearly in his blue eyes, transfigured his look. Ah, +Smith was always a dreamer, thought Banks, with the uncomprehending +simplicity of a child. + +But Ordway was looking beyond Banks, beyond the church spire, beyond the +blue sky. He saw himself, not as Banks pictured him, living quietly in +Tappahannock, but still struggling, still fighting, still falling to +rise and go on again. His message was not for Tappahannock alone, but +for all places where there were men and women working and suffering and +going into prison and coming out. He heard his voice speaking to them in +the square of this town; then in many squares and in many towns---- + +"Come," said Banks softly, "the wind is changing. It is time to go in." + +With an effort Ordway withdrew his gaze from the church spire. Then +leaning upon Banks's arm, he slowly crossed the square to the door of +the hotel. But before going inside, he turned and stood for a moment +looking back at the grass which showed fresh and green under the melting +snow. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ancient Law, by Ellen Glasgow + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIENT LAW *** + +***** This file should be named 34419.txt or 34419.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/1/34419/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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