The Quickening Part 20

Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of conscious guilt.

"I was at home most of the time; between ten o'clock and noon I was on the mountain."

"Alone?"

"No; not all of the time."

"You say well. There were three of you: a hardened, degraded boy, a woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you."

The flood-gates of pa.s.sion would hold no longer.

"It's a lie!" he denied hotly. "I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at the spring under the big rock, and--"

"Well, go on," said the inexorable voice.

Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness. He saw how incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him. So he took refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened guilt.

"I don't have to defend myself!" he burst out. "If you can believe I'm that low-down, you're welcome to!" Then, abruptly: "I reckon we'd better be going on home; they'll be waiting dinner for us at the house."

He got on his feet with that, but the accuser was still confronting him, with the dark eyes glowing and a monitory finger pointed to detain him.

"Not yet, Thomas Gordon; there is a duty laid on me. I had hoped and prayed that I might find you repentant; you are not repentant."

"No," said Tom, and he confirmed it with an oath in sheer bravado.

"Peace, miserable boy! G.o.d is not mocked. Your father has a letter from Doctor Tollivar; the doors of Beersheba are open to you again. I had hoped--" The pause was not for effect. It was merely that the man and the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge. "It breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it. You have put it out of your power to say with the Psalmist, 'I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compa.s.s thine altar, O Lord.' You must give up all thoughts of going back to Beersheba."

"Don't trouble yourself," said Tom, with more bravado. "I wouldn't go back there if it was the only place on earth." Then suddenly: "Who was it that told on me, Uncle Silas?"

"Never mind about that. It was one who could have no object in misstating the fact--which you have not denied. Let us go home."

The mile walk down the pike, lying white and ghostly under the starlight, was paced in silence, man and boy striding side by side and each busy with his own thoughts. As they were pa.s.sing the Deer Trace gates a loose-jointed figure loomed black against the palings, and the voice of j.a.pheth Pettigra.s.s said:

"Why, howdy, Brother Silas! Thought ye'd gone back to South Tredegar.

When are ye comin' out to Little Zoar ag'in to give us another o' them old-fas.h.i.+oned, spiritual times o' refres.h.i.+n' from the presence of the Lord?"

Silas Crafts turned short on the scoffer.

"Why do you ask that, j.a.pheth Pettigra.s.s? The Lord will deal with you, one day."

"Yes, I reckon so; that's what makes me say what I does. There's a heap o' sinners left round here, yit, Brother Silas. There's the Major, for one, and I know you're always countin' me in for another. I dunno but you might s.n.a.t.c.h me as a brand from the burnin', if you could make out to try it one more lap around the you'se. I been thinkin' right p'intedly about--"

But the preacher had cut in with a curt "Good night," and was gone, with his broad-shouldered nephew at his heels; and the horse-trader went on, with the stars for his audience.

"Look at that, now, will ye? Old Brother Silas is gettin' right smart tetchy with the pa.s.sin' of the years; he is, so. But he's a powerful preacher. If anybody ever gits me for a star in their crown, it's Brother Silas ag'inst the field, even money up."

Pettigra.s.s turned and was groping for the gate latch when a hand fell on his shoulder, and a clutch that was more than half a blow twirled him about to face the roadway. He was doubling his fists for defense when he saw who his a.s.sailant was.

"Why, Tom-Jeff! what's ailin' ye?" he began; but Tom broke in with gaspings of rage.

"j.a.phe Pettigra.s.s, what did you think you saw last Wednesday forenoon up yonder at Big Rock Spring on the mountain? Tell it straight, this time, or by the G.o.d you don't believe in, I'll dig the truth out of you with my bare hands!"

"Sho, now, Tom-Jeff; don't you git so servigrous over nothin'. I didn't see nothin' but a couple o' young fly-aways playin' 'possum in a hole in the big rock. And I'll leave it to you if I didn't call Caesar off and go my ways, jes' like I'd like to be done by."

"Yes," snarled Tom, dog-mad and furious in this second submergence of the wave of wrath. "Yes; and then you came straight down here and told my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front, clutching a stone s.n.a.t.c.hed up from the metaling of the pike as he ran.

"If I should break your face in with this, j.a.phe Pettigra.s.s, it wouldn't be any more than you've earned!"

"By gravy! _I_ tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff? You show me the man 'at says I done any such low-down thing as that, and I'll frazzle a fifty-dollar hawsswhip out on his ornery hide--I will, so. Say, boy; you don't certain'y believe that o' me, do ye?"

"I don't want to believe it of you, j.a.phe," quavered Tom, as near to tears as the pride of his eighteen years would sanction. "But somebody saw and told, and made it a heap worse than it was." He leaned over the top of the wall and put his face in the crook of his elbow, being nothing better than a hurt child, for all his bigness.

"Well, now; I wouldn't let a little thing like that gravel me, if I was you, Tom-Jeff," said Pettigra.s.s, turned comforter. "Nan's a mighty pretty gal, and you ort to be willin' to stand a little devilin' on her account--more especially as you've--"

Tom put up his arm as if to ward a blow.

"Don't you say it, j.a.phe, or I'll go mad again," he broke out.

"I ain't sayin' nothin'. But who do you reckon it was told on you? Was there anybody else in the big woods that mornin'?"

"Yes; there were three men testing the pipe-line. We both saw them, and Nan was scared stiff at sight of one of them; that's why I put her up in that hole."

"Who was the man?"

"I don't know. I didn't recognize any of them--they were too far off when I saw them. And afterward, Nan wouldn't tell me."

"Did any of 'em see you and Nan?"

"I thought not. Nan was sitting on the flat rock where you stood and looked into the cave, and when she began to whimper, I flung her over into the leaves and ran with her to the hole."

"H'm," said j.a.pheth. "When you find out who that feller is that Nan's skeered of, you can lay your hand on the man that told Brother Silas on you. But I wouldn't trouble about it none, if I was you. You've got a long ways the best of him, whoever he is, and--"

But Tom had turned to go home, feeling his way by the wall because the angry tears were still blinding him, and the horse-trader fell back into his star-gazing.

"Law, law," he mused; "'the horrible pit an' the miry clay.' What a sufferin' pity it is we pore sinners cayn't dance a little now and ag'in 'thout havin' to walk right up and pay the fiddler! Tom-Jeff, there, now, he's a-thinkin' the price is toler'ble high; and I don't know but it is--I don't know but what it is."

The dinner at Woodlawn that night was a stiff and comfortless meal, as it had come to be with the taking on of four-tined forks and the other conventions for which an oak-paneled dining-room in an ornate brick mansion sets the pace. Caleb Gordon was fathoms deep in the mechanical problems of the day's work, as was his wont. Silas Crafts was abstracted and silent. Tom's food choked him, as it had need under the sharp stress of things; and the convalescent housemother remained at table only long enough to pour the coffee.

Tom excused himself a few minutes later, and followed his mother to her room, climbing the stair to her door, leaden-footed and with his heart ready to burst.

"Is that you, Thomas?" said the gentle voice within, answering his tap on the panel. "Come in, son; come in and sit by my fire. It's right chilly to-night."

Thomas Jefferson entered and placed his chair so that she could not see him without turning, and for many minutes the silence was unbroken. Then he began, as begin he must, sometime and in some way.

"Mammy," he said, feeling unconsciously for the childish phrase, "Mammy, has Uncle Silas been telling you anything about me?"

She gave a little nod of a.s.sent.

"Something, Thomas, but not a great deal. You have had some trouble with Doctor Tollivar?"