The Quickening Part 19

"You're an old fool, Caesar--that's about what you are--and Solomon allowed thar' wasn't no fool like an old one. But you needn't to swaller that whole, old boy; I've knowed some young ones in my time--sometimes gals, sometimes boys, sometimes _both_. But thar' ain't no 'possum up yonder, Caesar; you've flew the track this time, for certain. Come on, old dog; let's be gettin' down the mountain."

The baying dog and the whistling man were still within hearing when Tom swung Nan lightly to the ground and dropped beside her. No word was spoken until she had emptied and refilled her bucket at the spring, then Tom said, with the bickering tang still on his tongue:

"Say, Nan, I want to know who it is that's going to kill you if he happens to find you talking to me."

She shook her head despondently. "I cayn't nev' tell you that, Tom-Jeff."

"I'd like to know why you can't."

"Because he'd sh.o.r.e kill me then."

"Then I'll find out some other way."

"What differ' does it make to you?" she asked; and again the dark eyes searched him till he was fain to look away from her.

"I reckon it doesn't make any difference, if you don't want it to. But one time you were willing enough to tell me your troubles, and--"

"And I'll nev' do it nare 'nother time; never, _never_. And let me tell you somethin' else, Tom-Jeff Gordon: if you know what's good for you, don't you nev' come anigh me again. One time we usen to be a boy and a girl together; you're nothin' but a boy yet, but I--oh, G.o.d, Tom-Jeff--I'm a woman!"

And with that saying she s.n.a.t.c.hed her bucket and was gone before he could find a word wherewith to match it.

XVII

ABSALOM, MY SON!

Three days after the episode at the barrel-spring, Tom went afield again, this time to gather plunging courage for the confession to his mother--a thing which, after so many postponements, could be put off no longer.

It was more instinct than purpose that led him to avoid the mountain.

Thinking only of the crying need for solitude, he crossed the pike and the creek and rambled aimlessly for an hour or more over that farther hill ground beyond the country-house colony where he had once tried to break the Dabney spirit in a weary, bedraggled little girl with colorless lips and saucer-like eyes.

When he recrossed the stream, at a point some distance above the boy-time perch pools, the serving foot-log chanced to be that used by the Little Zoar folk coming from beyond the boundary hills. Following the windings of the path he presently came out in the rear of the weather-beaten, wooden-shuttered church standing, blind-eyed and silent, in week-day desertion in the midst of its groving of pines.

The spot was rife with memories, and Tom pa.s.sed around the building to the front, treading softly as on hallowed ground. Whatever the future might hold for him, there would always be heart-stirring recollections to cl.u.s.ter about this frail old building sheltered by the whispering pines.

How many times he had sat on the steps in the door-opening days of boyhood, looking out across the dusty pike and up to the opposing steeps of Lebanon lifting the eastward horizon half-way to the zenith!

Leg-weariness, and a sudden desire to live over again thus much of the past turning him aside, he went to sit on the highest of the three steps, with the brooding silence for company and the uplifted landscape to revamp the boyhood memories.

The sun had set for Paradise Valley, but his parting rays were still volleying in level lines against the great gray cliffs at the top of Lebanon, silvering the bare sandstone, blackening the cedars and pines by contrast, and making a fine-lined tracery, blue on gray, of the twigs and leafless branches of the deciduous trees. Off to the left a touch of sepia on the sky-line marked the chimneys of Crestcliffe Inn, and farther around, and happily almost hidden by the shouldering of the hills, a grayer cloud hung over the industries at Gordonia.

Nearer at hand were the wooded slopes of the Dabney lands--lordly forests culled and cared for through three generations of land-lovers until now their groves of oaks and hickories, tulip-trees and sweet-and black-gums were like those the pioneers looked on when the land was young.

Thomas Jefferson had the appreciative eye and heart of one born with a deep and abiding love of the beautiful in nature, and for a time the sunset ravishment possessed him utterly. But the blurring of the fine-lined traceries and the fading of the silver and the gray into twilight purple broke the spell. The postponed resolve was the thing present and pressing. His mother was as nearly recovered as she was ever likely to be, and his uncle would be returning to South Tredegar in the morning. The evil tale must be told while there was yet one to whom his mother could turn for help and sympathy in her hour of bitter disappointment.

He was rising from his seat on the church step when he heard sounds like m.u.f.fled groans. Recovering quickly from the first boyish startle of fear oozing like a cool breeze blowing up the back of his neck, he saw that the church door was ajar. By cautiously adding another inch to the aperture he could see the interior of the building, its outlines taking shape when his eyes had become accustomed to darkness relieved only by the small fan-light over the door. Some one was in the church: a man, kneeling, with clasped hands uplifted, in the open s.p.a.ce fronting the rude pulpit. Tom recognized the voice and withdrew quickly. It was his Uncle Silas, praying fervently for a lost sheep of the house of Israel.

In former times, with grim rebellion gripping him as it gripped him now, Tom would have run away. But there was a prompting stronger than rebellion: a sudden melting of the heart that made him remember the loving-kindnesses, and not any of the austerities, of the man who was praying for him, and he sat down on the lowest step to wait.

The twilight was glooming to dusk when Silas Crafts came out of the church and locked the door behind him. If he were surprised to find Tom waiting for him, he made no sign. Neither was there any word of greeting pa.s.sed between them when he gathered his coat tails and sat down on the higher step, self-restraint being a heritage which had come down undiminished from the Covenanter ancestors of both. A little grayer, a little thinner, but with the deep-set eyes still glowing with the fires of utter convincement and the marvelous voice still unimpaired, Silas Crafts would have refused to believe that the pa.s.sing years had changed him; yet now there was kinsman love to temper solemn austerity when he spoke to the lost sheep--as there might not have been in the sterner years.

"The way of the transgressor is hard, grievously hard, Thomas. I think you are already finding it so, are you not?"

Tom shook his head slowly.

"That doesn't mean what it used to, to me, Uncle Silas; nothing means the same any more. It's just as if somebody had hit that part of me with a club; it's all numb and dead. I'm sure of only one thing now: that is, that I'm not going to be a hypocrite after this, if I can help it."

The man put his hand on the boy's knee.

"Have you been that all along, Thomas?"

"I reckon so,"--monotonously. "At first it was partly scare, and partly because I knew what mother wanted. But ever since I've been big enough to think, I've been asking why, and, as you would say, doubting."

Silas Crafts was silent for a moment. Then he said:

"You have come to the years of discretion, Thomas, and you have chosen death rather than life. If you go on as you have begun, you will bring the gray hairs of your father and mother in sorrow to the grave.

Leaving your own soul's salvation out of the question, can you go on and drag an upright, honorable name in the dust and mire of degradation?"

"No," said Tom definitely. "And what's more, I don't mean to. I don't know what Doctor Tollivar wrote you about me, and it doesn't make any difference now. That's over and done with. You haven't been seeing me every day for these three weeks without knowing that I'm ashamed of it."

"Ashamed of the consequences, you mean, Thomas. You are not repentant."

"Yes, I am, Uncle Silas; though maybe not in your way. I don't allow to make a fool of myself again."

The preacher's comment was a groan.

"Tom, my boy, if any one had told me a year ago that a short twelvemonth would make you, not only an apostate to the faith, but a shameless liar as well--"

Tom started as if he had been struck with a whip.

"Hold on, Uncle Silas," he broke in hardily. "That's mighty near a fighting word, even between blood kin. When have you ever caught me in a lie?"

"Now!" thundered the accusing voice; "this moment! You have been giving me to understand that your sinful rebellion at Beersheba was the worst that could be charged against you. Answer me: isn't that what you want me to believe?"

"I don't care whether you believe it or not. It's so."

"It is not so. Here, at your own home, when your mother had just been spared to you by the mercies of the G.o.d whose commandments you set at naught, you have been wallowing in sin--in crime!"

Tom locked his clasped fingers fast around his knees and would not open the flood-gates of pa.s.sion.

"If I can sit here and take that from you, it's because it isn't so," he replied soberly.

Silas Crafts rose, stern and pitiless.

"Wretched boy! Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted. Where were you on Wednesday morning?"