The Quickening Part 23

"I don't think we need to go over that ground again," said Tom coolly.

"If you don't sign that paper, you'll miss your steamer."

The president glanced toward the open door, as if he half expected to see an officer waiting for him. Then he said, "Oh, well; it's as broad as it is long," and signed.

The leave-takings were brief, and somewhat constrained, save those of the genial Major. Tom pleaded business, further business, with his attorney, when the Major would have had him wait to tell the ladies good-by; hence he saw no more of the tourists after the conference broke up.

Not to lose time, Tom took a noon train back to Boston, first wiring his father to try and keep things in _statu quo_ at Gordonia for another week at all hazards. Winning back to the technical school, he plunged once more into the examination whirlpool, doing his best to forget Chiawa.s.see Consolidated and its mortal sickness for the time being, and succeeding so well that he pa.s.sed with colors flying.

But the school task done, he turned down the old leaf, pasting it firmly in place. Telegraphing his father to meet him, on the morning of the third day following, at the station in South Tredegar, he allowed himself a few hours for a run up the North Sh.o.r.e and a conference with the Michigan iron king; after which he turned his face southward and was soon speeding to the battle-field through a land by this time shaking to its industrial foundations in the throes of the panic earthquake.

XIX

ISSACHAR

In accordance with Tom's telegram, Caleb Gordon met his son at the station in South Tredegar, and they went together to breakfast in one of the dining-rooms of the Marlboro. Tom's heart burned within him when he saw how the late stress of things had aged his father, and for the first time in his life he opened a vengeance account: if the Farleys ever came back there should be reckoning for more than the looting of Chiawa.s.see Consolidated. But this was only the primitive under-thought. Uppermost at the moment was the joy of the young soldier arrived, fit and vigorous, on his maiden battle-field.

"You don't know how good it seems to get back home again, pappy," he said, over the bacon and eggs. "I've been grinding pretty hard this year, and now it's over, I feel as if I could whip my weight in wildcats, as j.a.pheth used to say. By the way, how is j.a.pheth?"

Caleb Gordon smiled in spite of the corroding industrial anxieties.

"j.a.pheth's going to surprise you some, I reckon, son; he's gone and got religion."

Tom put down his knife and fork.

"Why, the old sinner!" he laughed. "How did that happen?"

"Oh, just about the way it always does," said Caleb slowly. "The spirit moved your Uncle Silas to come out to Little Zoar and hold a protracted meetin', and j.a.phe joined the mourners and was gathered into the fold."

"Pshaw!" said Tom, in good-natured incredulity. "Why, the very meat and marrow of his existence is his horse-trading; and who could swap horses and tell the truth at the same time?"

"I don't know," was the doubtful reply. "But Brother j.a.pheth allows that's about what he aims to do. It's sort o' curious the way it works out, too. About a week after the baptizin', Jim Bledsoe came down from Pine k.n.o.b with a horse to swap. 'Long about sundown he met up with j.a.phe, and struck him for a trade on a piebald that the Major wouldn't let run in the same lot with the Deer Trace stock. They had it up one side and down the other; Brother j.a.phe tryin' to tell Bledsoe that his piebald was about the no-accountest horse in the valley, and Jim takin'

it all by contraries and gettin' more and more p'intedly anxious to trade."

"Well?" said Tom, enjoying his return to nature like any creature freed of the urban cage.

"They came to the trade, after a tolerable spell of it," Caleb went on, "and the last thing I heard j.a.phe say was, 'now you recollect, Brother Bledsoe, I done told you that there piebald's no account on the face of the earth--a-lovin' of my neighbor like I promise' Brother Silas I would.'"

Tom laughed again. There was the smell of the good red soil in the little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But the under-thought laid hold on j.a.pheth and his change of heart.

"j.a.phe was about the last man in Paradise, always excepting Major Dabney," he said half-musingly. "Haven't you often wondered what sort of a maggot it is that gets into the human brain to give it the superst.i.tious twist?"

Caleb's gentle frown was the upcast of paternal bewilderment, partly prideful, partly disconcerting. He was not yet fully acquainted with this young giant with the frank face, the sober gray eyes, and the conscious grasp of himself. More than once since their meeting at the steps of the Pullman car he had felt obliged to rea.s.sure himself by saying, "This is Tom; this is my son." There were so many and such marked changes: the quick, curt speech, caught in the Northland; the nervous, sure-footed stride, and the athletic swing of the shoulders; the easy manner and confident air, not of college-boy conceit, but of the a.s.surance of young manhood; and, lastly, this blunt right-about-face in matters of religion. Caleb was not quite sure that this latter change was entirely welcome.

"Whereabouts did ye learn to call it superst.i.tion, son? Not at your mammy's knee, leastwise," he said, in sober deprecation.

Tom shook his head. "No; and not altogether at yours. But I guess I've worked around to your point of view, after so long a time."

"It's your mammy's faith, all the same, Buddy," said the father gravely.

"Let's not belittle it any more'n we can help."

"I don't belittle it," was the quick response. "In some of its phases it is grand--magnificent. We can't always be prying into the cause; the effect is what counts. And there is no denying that the fairy tale which we call Christianity has built some of the most G.o.dlike heroes the world has ever seen."

"You're right sure now that it is a fairy story, son?" said the old man, a little wistfully.

"There is no doubt about that," was the decisive rejoinder. "There is room for credulity only in ignorance. Any thinking person who is brought face to face with the materialistic facts--"

Caleb held up a toil-hardened hand.

"Hold on, Buddy; you'll have to pick a place where the water deepens sort o' gradually for the old man or you'll have him flounderin'. I reckon I been sittin' up on the bank all my life, waitin' for somebody to come along and pole the bottom for me in that pool."

"No," said Tom definitively. "There isn't any bank to that pool. You're in it, or you are out of it; one or the other. That was the notion I took with me to Boston. I thought I'd get well up above the eternal wrangle and look down on it--wouldn't believe, wouldn't disbelieve. It can't be done. Jesus, Himself, said, if they've reported Him straight, 'He that is not with me is against me.'"

"Well," said the father, still deprecating, "that's some farther along than I've ever been able to get--not sayin' that I wouldn't be willin'

to go." And then: "You don't allow to argue with your mammy about these things, do you, Tom?"

Tom's rejoinder was gravely considerate.

"It is a sealed book between us, now, pappy. She knows--and knows it can't be helped. If I wasn't her son, I hope I should still be the last person in the world to try to shake her faith--or any one's, for that matter. I have merely turned my own back--because I had to."

The old man put down his coffee-cup and the look in his eyes was half-appealing.

"What was it turned you, son?--nothing I've ever said or done, I hope?"

Tom shook his big blond head slowly.

"No, not directly; though I suppose a man does go back to his father for a measuring-stick. But indirectly you, and the other Gordons, are responsible for the best there is in me--and that's the questioning part. Given the doubt, I hunted till I found the man who could resolve or confirm it."

"Who was he?" inquired Caleb, willing to hear more particularly.

"His name is Bauer--the man I've been rooming with. He is a German biologist who was to have been educated for the Lutheran ministry. His people made the capital mistake of sending him to Freiburg for a couple of years as a preliminary, and, when they found out what the German university had done for him, they sent him to Boston, under the impression that the Puritan American city might correct some of his materialism."

Caleb smiled. "That ain't just the way we think of Boston over here," he remarked.

"No; and, of course, Bauer didn't change his point of view. We used to have it up hill and down. I had Scripture--mother and the Beershebans had taught me that--and Bauer had immense reading, flinty Dutch common sense, and a huge lack of the reverence for the so-called sacred subjects which seems to be ingrained in every race but the Teutonic. I fought hard, both for mother's sake and because it was the first time I had ever met a man with his sword out on the other side."

"Well?" said Caleb.

"He downed me, horse, foot and artillery; made me realize as I never had before what an absolute begging of the premises the entire Christian argument is."

"But how?" persisted the iron-master.

"Held me up at the muzzle of the cold facts. For example: do you happen to know that the oldest Bible ma.n.u.scripts in existence go back only to the fourth century, and are doubtless copies of copies of copies?"

The father had pushed back his chair and was trying to fold his napkin in the original creases.