Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Ancient Law
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."
