The Quickening Part 39

"The fifteenth," said Caleb; smoking reflectively through another long pause before he added. "And then come the business fireworks. Have you made up your mind what-all you're goin' to do, Buddy?"

"Oh, yes," said Tom, as if this were merely a matter in pa.s.sing. "We'll consolidate the two plants and the coal-mine, if it's agreeable all around."

The iron-master took a fresh hitch in his chair. Truly, this was a retransformed Tom; a creature totally and radically different from the college junior who had sweltered through the industrial battle of the previous summer, breathing out curses and threatenings.

"Was you allowin' to let Colonel Duxbury climb into all three o' the saddles?" he inquired, keeping his emotions out of his voice as he could.

"That will be for you and Major Dabney to decide," was the even-toned response. "I would suggest a three-cornered alliance: a third to you, another to Farley, and the remaining third to the Major. The pipe foundry can't run without the furnace and, under present conditions, the furnace is pretty largely dependent on the pipe foundry for its market; and neither could run without the Major's coal."

"Yes, that scheme might carry far enough to hit three of us. But whereabouts do you figure out the fourth third for yourself, son?"

"Oh, I'm not in it; or I'm not going to be after the Farleys come back.

I made up my mind to that six months ago," said Tom coolly.

"Great Peter!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Caleb, stirred for once out of his slow-speaking, reticent habit. But he made amends by remaining silent for five full minutes before he hazarded the query: "Got something else on the string, Buddy?"

"Yes, two or three things," was Tom's immediate and frank rejoinder. "I can have a place as chemist with the steel people at Bethlehem; and Mr.

Clarkson is anxious to have me to go to the New Arizona iron country for him."

It was the brightest of midsummer nights, and a late moon was swinging clear of the Lebanon sky-line, but the prospect of close-clipped lawn and stately trees suddenly went dim before the eyes of the old ex-artillery-man.

"You're all I got in this world, son, and I reckon it makes me sort o'

narrow. I know in reason it must seem mighty little and pindlin' down here to you, after what you've seen out in the big road, and I ain't goin' to say a word. But if you can sort it round somehow in the mix-up so I can get a few thousand dollars quittin' money out of it--jest enough to keep your mammy and me from gettin' hongry what few years we've got to eat, I'd be mighty proud."

"Oh," said Tom, still unmoved, as it seemed, "we can do better than that, if you want to pull out. But I made sure you'd rather stay in and hold your job. I've a notion you'd find 'retiring' pretty hard work after so many years spent in the furnace yard."

"You're right about that, son; I sure would," agreed Caleb. Then he went back to the main proposition. "What-all makes you restless, Buddy? Is it because Chiawa.s.see and the pipe-makin' ain't big enough for you?"

Tom answered promptly and without apparent reserve.

"The job's big enough, but I don't want to stay here and yoke up with the Farleys; they'd ruin me in a year."

"Get the better of you in the business--is that what you're aimin' to say?"

"Not exactly. I'm still brash enough to believe I could hold my own on that score. But--oh, well; you know what we found out last summer about their business methods. I can do business that way, too; as a matter of fact, I did do a good bit more of it last year than you knew anything about. But I'm out of it now, and I mean to stay out."

A longer interval of silence followed, and at the end of it another query.

"Is that all that's the matter, Buddy?"

"No--it isn't," hesitantly. "I'm seventeen other kinds of a fool, too, pappy."

"Reckon ye couldn't make out to onload the whole of it on to a pair o'

right old shoulders, could ye, son Tom?" was the gentle invitation.

"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. I'm foolish about Ardea; been that way ever since she used to wear frocks and I used to run barefoot.

I don't believe I could stand it to stay here and be her husband's business partner."

Caleb was shrouding himself in tobacco smoke and nodding complete intelligence.

"How did you ever come to let her get away from you, son?" he asked.

"That's a large question--too big for me to answer, I'm afraid. I always knew we were meant for each other, and I guess I took too much for granted. Then Vint Farley came along, and I helped his case by pitching into him every time she gave me a chance. Naturally, she leaned the other way; and the European business settled it."

Caleb drew a long breath. "Reckon it's everlastin'ly too late now, do ye, Tom?"

The young man's smile was wintry.

"You said the wedding-day was set, didn't you?"

"Why, yes; _toe_ be sure. Leastwise, your mammy talked like it was. But, lawzee, son! the Gordon stock don't lie down in the harness. Ardee thinks a heap o' you, and if you could jest've made out to keep from gettin' so everlastin'ly tangled with that gal o' Tike--" he stopped abruptly, but not quite soon enough, and the word was as the flick of a whip on a wound already made raw by the abrasion of the closed doors.

"So that miserable story has got around to you at last, has it?" said Tom, in fine scorn. "I did hope they'd spare you and mother."

"She's spared yet, so far as I know," said the father, with a backward nod to indicate the antecedent of the p.r.o.noun. Following which, he said what lay uppermost in his mind. "I been allowin' maybe you'd come back this time with your head sot on lettin' that gal alone, son."

Thomas Jefferson was on his feet and a hot anger wave was sweeping him back over the years to other times when things used to turn red under the rage blast. But he got some sort of grip on himself before the words came.

"You've believed all you've heard, have you?--condemned me before I could say a word in my own defense? That's what they've all done."

"I don't say that, son." Then, with a note of fatherly yearning in his voice: "I'm waitin' to hear that word right now, Buddy--or as much of it as ye can say honestly."

"You'll never hear it from me--never in this world or another. Now tell me who told you!"

"Why, it's in mighty near ever'body's mouth, son!" said Caleb, in mild surprise. "You certain'y didn't take any pains to cover it up."

"Didn't take any pains? Why, in the name of G.o.d, should I?" Tom burst out. After which he tramped heavily to the farther end of the veranda, refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked furiously for a time, glooming over at the darkened windows of Deer Trace and letting bitter anger and disappointment work their will on him. And when he finally turned and tramped back it was only to say an abrupt "Good night," and to pa.s.s into the house and up to his room.

He thought he was alone in the moon-lighted dusk of the upper chamber when he closed the door and began to pace a rageful sentry-beat back and forth between the windows. But all unknown to him one of the three fell sisters, she of the implacable front and deep-set, burning eyes, had entered with him to pace evenly as he paced, and to lay a maddening finger on his soul.

Without vowing a vow and confirming it with an oath, he had partly turned a new life-leaf on the night of heavenly comfort when Ardea had sent him forth to tramp the pike with her kiss of sisterly love still caressing him. Beyond the needs of the moment, the recall of Norman and the determination to turn his back on the world struggle for the time being, he had not gone in that first fervor of the uplifting impulse.

But later on there had been other steps: a growing hunger for success with self-respect kept whole; a dulling of the sharp edge of his hatred for the Farleys; a meliorating of his fierce contempt for all the hypocrites, conscious and subconscious.

With the changing point of view had come a corresponding change in the life. The men of his cla.s.s had marked it, and there were helping hands held out, as there always are when one struggles toward the forward margin of any Slough of Despond. He had even gone to church at long intervals, having there the good hap to fall under the influence of a man whose faults were neither of ignorance nor of insincerity.

In these surface-scratchings of the heart soil there had sprung up a mixed growth in which the tares of self-righteousness began presently to overtop the good grain of humility. One must not be too exacting. If the world were not all good, neither was it all bad; at all events, it was the part of wisdom to make the magnanimous best of it, and to be thankful that the day-star of reason had at last arisen for one's self.

At the close of his college course he would go home prepared to deal firmly but justly with the Farleys, prepared to show Ardea and the small world of Paradise a pattern of business rect.i.tude, of filial devotion, of upright, honorable manhood. As Ardea had said, the example was needed; it should be forthcoming. And perhaps, in the dim and distant future, Ardea herself would look back to the night when her word and her kiss had fas.h.i.+oned a man after her own heart, and be--not sorry (true love was still stronger than prideful Phariseeism here), but a little regretful, it might be, that her love could not have gone where it was sent.

And now.... With Alecto's maddening finger pressed on the soul-hurt, no man is responsible. After the furious storm of upbubbling curses had spent itself there was a little calm, not of surcease but of vacuity, since even the cursing vocabulary has its limitations. Then a grouping of words long forgotten arrayed itself before him, like the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzer's banqueting hall.

_When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first._

He put his hands before his face to shut out the sight of the words.

Farther on, he felt his way across the room to stand at the window where he could look across to the gray, shadowy bulk of the manor-house, to the house and to the window of the upper room which was Ardea's.

"They've got me down," he whispered, as if the words might reach her ear. "The devils have come back, Ardea, my love; but you can cast them out again, if you will. Ah, girl, girl! Vincent Farley will never need you as I need you this night!"