The Quickening Part 31

"Just why--apart from your prejudice?"

"It's Beauty and the Beast over again. You don't know Vint Farley."

"Don't I? My opportunities have been very much better than yours," she retorted.

"That may be, but I say you don't know him. He is a whited sepulcher."

"But you can not particularize," she insisted. "And the evidence is all the other way."

Tom was silent. During the summer of strugglings he had gone pretty deeply into the history of Chiawa.s.see Consolidated, and there was commercial sharp practice in plenty, with some nice balancings on the edge of criminality. Once, indeed, the balance had been quite lost, but it was Dyckman who had been thrust into the breach, or who had been induced to enter it by falsifying his books. Yet these were mere business matters, without standing in the present court.

"The evidence isn't all one-sided," he a.s.serted. "If you were a man, I could convince you in two minutes that both of the Farleys are rascals and hypocrites."

"Yet they are your father's business a.s.sociates," she reminded him.

He saw the hopelessness of any argument on that side, and was silent again, this time until they had pa.s.sed the Deer Trace gates and he had cut the buggy before the great Greek-pillared portico of the manor-house. When he had helped her out, she thanked him and gave him her hand quite in the old way; and he held it while he asked a single blunt question.

"Tell me one thing more, Ardea: do you love Vincent Farley?"

Her swift blush answered him, and he did not wait for her word.

"That settles it; you needn't say it in so many words. Isn't it a h.e.l.l of a world, Ardea? I love you--love you as this man never will, never could. And with half his chance, I could have made you love me. I--"

"Don't, Tom! please don't," she begged, trying to free her hand.

"I must, for this once; then we'll quit and go back to the former things. You said a while ago that I was vindictive; I'll show you that I am not. When the time comes for me to put my foot on Vint Farley's neck, I'm going to spare him for your sake. Then you'll know what it means to have a man's love. Good-by; I'm coming over for a few minutes this evening if you'll let me."

XXIII

TARRED ROPES

"Now jest you listen at me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't goin' to make out to find no better hawss 'n that this side o' the Blue Gra.s.s. Sound as a dollar in lung _and_ leg, highstepper--my Land! jest look at the way he holds his head--rides like a baby's cradle; why, that hawss is a perfect gentleman, Tom-Jeff."

Since her return from Europe Miss Ardea Dabney had taken to horseback riding, a five-mile canter before breakfast in the fine brisk air of the autumn mornings; and Tom had discovered that he needed a saddle animal.

Wherefore Brother j.a.pheth was parading a handsome bay up and down before the door of the small office building of the new foundry, descanting glowingly on its merits, while Tom lounged on the step and pretended to make difficulties.

"You think he's a pretty good horse, do you, j.a.phe--worth the money?" he queried, with the air of one who is about to surrender, not to the fact, but to the presentation of it.

"If you cayn't stable him this winter and then get your money back on him in ary hawss market this side o' the Ohio River, I'll eat hawss for the rest o' my bawn days. Now that's fair, ain't it?"

"It's more than fair; it's generous. But let me ask you: is this protracted-meeting talk you're giving me, or just plain, every-day horse lies?"

Brother j.a.pheth halted the parade and there was aggrieved reproachfulness in every line of his long, lantern-jawed face.

"Now lookee here; I didn't 'low to find _you_ a-sittin' in the seat of the scornful, Tom-Jeff; I sh.o.r.e didn't. Ain't the good cause precious to your soul no mo' sence you to'd loose f'om your mammy's ap.r.o.n-string?"

Tom's shrewd overlooking of the horse-trader spoke eloquently of the spiritual landmarks past and left behind.

"I don't know about you, j.a.phe. A fair half of the time you have me cornered; and the other half I'm wondering if you are just ordinary, canting hypocrite, like the majority of 'the brethren.'"

"Now see here, Tom-Jeff, you know a heap better'n that! First and fo'most, the majority ain't the majority, not by three sights and a horn-blow. Hit don't take more'n one good, perseverin' hypocrite in the chu'ch to spile the name o' chu'ch-member as fur as ye can holler it.

You been on a railroad train and seen the con-duc-tor havin' a furss with the feller 'at pays for one seat and tries to hog four, and you've set back and said, 'My gos.h.!.+ what a lot o' swine the human race is when hit gits away f'om home!' And right at that ve'y minute, mebbe, ther'

was forty-five 'r fifty other people in that cyar goin' erlong, mindin'

their own business, and not hoggin' any more 'n they paid for."

Tom smiled. "And you think that's the way it is in the church, do you?"

"I don't think nare' thing about hit; I know sufferin' well that's the how of it. Lord forgive me! didn't I let one scribe-an'-Pharisee keep me out o' the Isra'l o' G.o.d for nigh on to twenty year?"

"Who was it?" asked Tom, tranquilly curious.

"That ther' Jim Bledsoe, Brother Bill Layne's brother-in-law. He kep'

Brother Bill out, too, for a right smart spell."

Tom was turning the memory pages half-absently.

"Let me see," he said. "Didn't I hear something about your whaling the everlasting daylights out of Bledsoe sometime last winter?"

j.a.pheth hung his head after the manner of one who has spoiled a good argument by overstating it.

"That ther's jest like me," he said disgustedly. "I nev' do know enough to quit when I git thoo. Ain't it somewher's in the Bible 'at it says some folks is bawn troublesome, and some goes round huntin' for trouble, and some has trouble jammed up ag'inst 'em?"

"You can't prove it by me," Tom laughed. "I believe Shakespeare said something like that about greatness."

"Well, nev' mind; whoa, Saladin, boy, we'll git round to you ag'in, bime-by. As I was sayin', this here furss with Jim Bledsoe jest natch.e.l.ly couldn't be holped, nohow. Hit was thisaway: 'long late in the fall I swapped Jim a piebald that was jest erbout the no-accountest hawss 'at ever had a bit in his mouth. I done told Jim all his meanness; but Jim, he 'lowed I was lyin' and made the trade anyhow. Inside of a week he was back here, callin' me names. I turned him first one cheek and then t'other, like the Good Book says, till they was jest plum' wo'

out; and then I says, says I: 'Lookee here, Jim, you've done smack' me on both sides o' the jaw, and that ther's your priv'lege--me bein' a chu'ch-member in good and reg'lar standin', and no low-down, in-fergotten, turkey-trodden hypocrite like you. But right here the torections erbout what I'm bounden to do sort o' peter out. I got as many cheeks to turn as any of 'em, but that ain't sayin' that the stock's immortil' With that he ups and allows a heap mo' things about my morils; and me havin' turned both cheeks till my neck ached, and not havin' any mo' _toe_ turn, what-all could I do--what-all would you 'a'

done, Tom-Jeff?"

"Don't ask me. I'm one of the hair-hung and breeze-shaken majority. I should most probably have punched his head."

"Well, that's jest what I did. I says, says I, 'Jim, whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and jest at this time present, I'm the instru_ment_.' And when the dust got settled down, Jim he druv' home with that ther' piebald, allowin' he wasn't such an all-fired bad hawss after all. But lookee here, Tom-Jeff, this ain't sellin' you the finest saddle-hawss in the valley. What do ye say about Saladin?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Tom. "I don't love horses very much. You know what the Bible says: _A horse is a vain thing for safety_. Is this bay going to make me lose my temper and knock his pinhead brains out the first time I put a leg over him?"

"No-o-o, suh! Why, he's as kind and gentle and lovin as a woman. You jest natch.e.l.ly _couldn't_ whup this here bay, Tom-Jeff!"

"All right, j.a.phe; I was only deviling you a little. Take him up to the Woodlawn stables and tell William Henry Harrison to give him the box stall. I'll try him to-morrow morning, if the weather is good."

Brother j.a.pheth's business was concluded, and the architect who was building the latest extension to the pipe-pit floor was heading across the yard to consult the young boss. Pettigra.s.s paused with his foot in the stirrup to say, "Old Tike Bryerson's on the rampage ag'in; folks up at the valley head say he's a-lookin' for you, Tom-Jeff."

"For me?" said Tom; then he laughed easily. "I don't owe him anything, and I'm not very hard to find. What's the matter?"

He thought it a little singular at the time that j.a.pheth gave him a curious look and mounted and rode away without answering his question.

But the building activities were clamoring for time and attention, and his father was waiting to consult him about a run of iron that was not quite up to the pipe-making test requirements. So he forgot j.a.pheth's half-accusing glance at parting, and the implied warning that had preceded it, until an incident at the day's end reminded him of both.