The Quickening Part 30

"Yes. Didn't the Major tell you about it?"

"Not a word. I hope you didn't quarrel with him, too?"

He marked the adverb of addition and wondered if Vincent Farley had been less reticent than Major Dabney.

"No; I didn't quarrel with your grandfather."

"But you did quarrel with Mr. Farley?--or was it with Vincent?"

He smiled and shook his head.

"We can't do it, Ardea--go back to the old way, you know. You see there's a stump in the road, the very first thing."

"I shan't admit it," she said half-defiantly. "I am going to make you like the Farleys."

He shook his head again. "You'll have to make a Christian of me first, and teach me how to love my enemies."

"Don't you do that now?"

"No; not unless you are my enemy; I love you."

She looked up at him appealingly.

"Don't make fun of such things, Tom. Love is sacred."

"I was never further from making fun of things in my life. I mean it with every drop of blood in me. You said you didn't want to find me changed; I'm not changed in that, at least."

"You ridiculous boy!" she said; but that was only a stop-gap, and Longfellow added another by coming to a stand opposite a vast obstruction of building material half damming the white road. "What are you doing here--building more additions?" she asked.

"No," said Tom. "It is a new plant--a pipe foundry."

"Don't tell me we are going to have more neighbors in Paradise," she said in mock concern.

"I'll tell you something that may shock you worse than that: the owner of this new plant has camped down right next door to Deer Trace."

"How dreadful! You don't mean that!"

"Oh, but I do. He's a young man, of poor but honest parentage, with a large eye for the main chance. I shouldn't be surprised if he took every opportunity to make love to you."

"How absurd you can be, Tom! Who is he?"

"He is Mr. Caleb Gordon's son. I think you think you know him, but you don't; n.o.body does."

"Really, Tom? Have you gone into business for yourself? I thought you had another year at Boston."

"I have another year coming to me, but I don't know when I shall get it.

And I am in business for myself; though perhaps I should be modest and call it a firm--Gordon and Gordon."

"What does the firm do?"

"A number of things; among others, it buys the entire iron output of the Chiawa.s.see Consolidated, just at present."

"Dear me!" she said; "how fine and large that sounds! If I should say anything like that you would tell me that Brag was a good dog, but--"

He grinned ecstatically. It was so like old times--the good old times--to be bandying good-tempered abuse with her.

"I do brag a lot, don't I? But have you ever noticed that I 'most always have something to brag about? This time, for instance. I built this new firm, and it is all that has kept Chiawa.s.see from going into the sheriff's hands any time during the past six months."

Longfellow had picked his way judiciously around the obstructions and through the gap in the boundary hills, and was jogging in a vertical trot up the valley pike made clean and hard and stony-white by the sweeping and hammering of the autumn rains. The mingled clamor of the industries was left behind, but the throbbing pulsations of the big blowing-engines hung in the air like the sighings of an imprisoned giant. They were pa.s.sing the miniature copy of Morwenstow Church when Ardea spoke again.

"You have been home all summer?" she asked.

"At home and on the road, trying to hypnotize somebody into buying something--anything--made out of cast-iron. Ah, girl! it's been a bitter fight!"

She was instantly sympathetic; more, there was a little thrill of vicarious triumph to go with the sympathy. She was sure he had won, or was winning, the battle.

"We read something about the hard times in the American papers," she said. "You don't know how far away anything like that seems when there is an ocean between. And I was hoping all the time that our homeland down here was escaping."

"Escaping? You came through South Tredegar a little while ago; it is dead--too dead to bury. You hear the sob of those blowing-engines?--you will travel two hundred miles in the iron belt before you will hear it again. When I came home in June we were smashed, like all the other furnaces in the South--only worse."

"How worse, Tom?"

He forgot the tacit truce for the moment.

"Duxbury Farley and his son had deliberately wrecked the company."

She laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Let us understand each other," she said gently. "You must not say such things of Mr. Farley and--and his son to me. If you do, I can't listen."

"You don't believe what I say?"

"I believe you have convinced yourself. But you are vindictive; you know you are. And I mean to be fair and just."

He let the plodding horse measure a full half-mile before he turned and looked at her with anger and despair glooming in his eyes.

"Tell me one thing, Ardea, and maybe it will shut my mouth. What is Vincent Parley to you--anything more than Eva's brother?"

Another young woman might have claimed her undoubted right to evade such a pointed question. But Ardea saw safety only in instant frankness.

"He has asked me to be his wife, Tom."

"And you have consented?"

"I wonder if I have," she said half-musingly.

"Don't you _know_?" he demanded. And then, "Ardea, I'd rather see you dead and in your coffin!"