The Quickening Part 33

XXIV

THE UNDER-DEPTHS

The Deer Trace family and the two guests from Woodlawn were in the music-room when Tom was admitted, with Ardea at the piano playing war songs for the pleasuring of her grandfather and the ex-artilleryman.

Under cover of the music, Tom slipped into the circle of listeners and went to sit beside his mother. There was a courteous hand-wave of welcome from Major Dabney, but Miss Euphrasia seemed not to see him. He saw and understood, and was obstinately impervious to the chilling east wind in that quarter. It was with Ardea that he must make his peace, and he settled himself to wait for his opportunity.

It bade fair to be a long time coming. Ardea's repertoire was apparently inexhaustible, and at the end of an added hour he began to suspect that she knew what was in store for her and was willing to postpone the afflictive moment. From the battle hymns of the Confederacy to the militant revival melodies best loved by Martha Gordon the transition was easy; and from these she drifted through a Beethoven sonata to Mozart, and from Mozart to Chopin.

Thomas Jefferson knew music as the barbarian knows it, which is to say that it lighted strange fires in him; stirred and thrilled him in certain heart or soul labyrinths locked against all other influences. As Ardea's fingers sought the changing chords he felt vaguely that she was speaking to him, now scorning, now rebuking, now pleading, but always in a tongue that he only half comprehended. He stole a glance at his watch, impatient to come to hand-grips with her and have it over. The suspense could not last much longer. It was past ten; the Major was dozing peacefully in his great arm-chair, and Miss Euphrasia yawned decorously behind her hand.

Ardea lingered lovingly on the closing harmonies of the nocturne, and when the final chord was struck her hands lingered on the keys until the sweet voices of the strings had sung themselves afar into the higher sound heaven. Then she turned quickly and surprised her anesthetized audience.

"You poor things!" she laughed. "In another five minutes the last one of you would have succ.u.mbed. Why didn't somebody stop me?"

The iron-master said something about the heavy work of the day, and helped his wife to her feet. The Major came awake with a start and bestirred himself hospitably, and Miss Euphrasia rose to speed the parting guests--or rather the two of them who had been invited. In the drift down the wide hall Ardea fell behind with Tom, whom Cousin Euphrasia continued to ignore.

"I came to tell you," he said in a low tone, s.n.a.t.c.hing his opportunity.

"I can't sleep until I have fought it out with you."

"You don't deserve a hearing, even from your best friend," was her discouraging reply; but when they were at the door she gave him a formal reprieve. "I shall walk for a few minutes on the portico to rest my nerves," she said. "If you want to come back--"

He thanked her gravely, and went obediently when his mother called to him from the steps. But on the Woodlawn veranda he excused himself to smoke a cigar in the open; and when the door closed behind the two in-going, he swiftly recrossed the lawns to pay the penalty.

The front door of the manor-house was shut and the broad, pillared portico was untenanted. He sat down in one of the rustic chairs and searched absently in his pockets for a cigar. Before he could find it the door opened and closed and Ardea stood before him. She had thrown a wrap over her shoulders, and the light from the music-room windows illuminated her. There was cool scorn in the slate-blue eyes, but in Tom's thought she had never appeared more unutterably beautiful and desirable--and unattainable.

"I have come," she said, in a tone that cut him to the heart for its very indifference. "What have you to say for yourself?"

He rose quickly and offered her the chair; and when she would not take it, he put his back to the wall and stood with her.

"I'm afraid I haven't left myself much to say," he began penitently. "I was born foolish, and it seems that I haven't outgrown it. But, really, if you could know--"

"Unhappily, I do know," she interrupted. "If I did not, I might listen to you with better patience."

"It did look pretty bad," he confessed. "And that's what I wanted to say; it looked a great deal worse than it was, you know."

"I _don't_ know," she retorted.

"You are tangling me," he said, gaining something in self-possession under the flick of the whip. "First you say you know, and then you say you don't know. Which is which?"

"If you are flippant I shall go in," she threatened. "There are things that not even the most loyal friends.h.i.+p can condone."

"That's the difference between friends.h.i.+p and love," he a.s.serted. "I believe I'd enjoy a little more real confidence and a little less of the dutiful kind of loyalty."

"You ask too much," she said, quite coolly. "Forgiveness implies penitence and continued good behavior."

"No, it doesn't, anything of the kind," he denied, matching her tone.

"That is the purely pagan point of view, and you are barred from taking it. You are bound to consider the motive."

"I am bound to believe what I see with my own eyes," she rejoined.

"Perhaps you can make it appear that seeing is not believing."

"Of course I can't, if you take that att.i.tude," he complained. And then he said irritably: "You talk about friends.h.i.+p! You don't know the meaning of the word!"

"If I didn't, I should hardly be here at this moment," she suggested.

"You don't seem to apprehend to what degrading depths you have sunk."

His sins in the business field rose before him accusingly and prompted his reply.

"Yes, I do; but that is another matter. We were speaking of what you saw this evening. Will you let me try to explain?"

"Yes, if you will tell the plain truth."

"Lacking imagination, I can't do anything else. Nan has had a falling-out with the old scamp of a moons.h.i.+ner who calls himself her father. She came to me for help, and broke down in the midst of telling me about it. I can't stand a woman's crying any better than other men."

The slate-blue eyes were transfixing him.

"And that was all--absolutely all, Tom?"

"I don't lie--to you," he said briefly.

She gave him her hand with an impulsive return to the old comrades.h.i.+p.

"I believe you, Tom, in the face of all the--the unlikelinesses. But please don't try me again. After what has happened--" she stopped in deference to something in his eyes, half anger, half bewilderment, or a most skilful simulation of both.

"Go on," he said; "tell me what has happened. I seem to have missed something."

"No," she said, with sudden gravity. "I don't want to be your accuser or your confessor; and if you should try to prevaricate, I should hate you!"

"There is nothing for me to confess to you, Ardea," he said soberly, still holding the hand she had given him. "You have known the worst of me, always and all along, I think."

"Yes, I _have_ known," she replied, freeing the imprisoned hand and turning from him. "And I have been sorry, sorry; not less for you than for poor Nancy Bryerson. You know now what I thought--what I _had_ to think--when I saw you with her this evening."

It was slowly beating its way into his brain. Little things, atoms of suggestion, were separating themselves from the ma.s.s of things disregarded to cl.u.s.ter thickly on this nucleus of revealment: the old story of his companying with Nan on the mountain; his uncle's and j.a.pheth's accusation at the time; and now the old moons.h.i.+ner's enmity, j.a.pheth's meaning look and distrustful silence, Nan's appearance with a child bearing his own name, the glances askance in Hargis's store when he was buying the little stock of necessaries for the poor outcast. It was all plain enough. For reasons best known to herself, Nan had not revealed the name of her betrayer, and all Gordonia, and all Paradise, believed him to be the man. Even Ardea ...

She had moved aside out of the square of window light, and he followed her.

"Tell me," he said thickly; "you heard this: you have believed it. Have I been misjudging you?"

"Not more than I misjudged you, perhaps. But that is all over, now: I am trusting you again, Tom. Only, as I said before, you mustn't try me too hard."

"Let me understand," he went on, still in the same strained tone.

"Knowing this, or believing it, you could still find a place in your heart for me--you could still forgive me, Ardea?"

"I could still be your friend; yes," she replied. "I believed--others believed--that your punishment would be great enough; there are all the coming years for you to be sorry in, Tom. But in the fullness of time I meant to remind you of your duty. The time has come; you must play the man's part now. What have you done with her?"

"Wait a moment. I must know one other thing," he insisted. "You heard this before you went to Europe?"