Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Ancient Law
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.
