The Quickening Part 4

When she did see him, she looked twice at him; not because he was trigly clad in brown duck and tightly-b.u.t.toned service leggings, but because he wore his beard trimmed to a point, after the manner of the students in the Latin Quarter, and so was reminiscent of things freshly forsaken.

She had succeeded in making the Great Dane carry her on his back quite all the way around the circular coleus bed when the explosion took place. There was a startling thunderclap of fierce words from the portico, and she slipped from the dog's back and stared wide-eyed. Her grandfather was on his feet, towering above the visitor as if he were about to fall on and crush him.

"Bring youh d.a.m.ned Yankee railroad through my fields and pastchuhs, suh?

Foul the pure, G.o.d-given ai-ah of this peaceful Gyarden of Eden with youh dust-flingin', smoke-pot locomotives? Not a rod, suh! not a foot or an inch oveh the Dabney lands! Do I make it plain to you, suh?"

"But Major Dabney--one moment; this is purely a matter of business; there is nothing personal about it. Our company is able and willing to pay liberally for its right of way; and you must remember that the coming of the railroad will treble and quadruple your land values. I am only asking you to consider the matter in a business way, and to name your own price."

Thus the smooth-spoken young locating engineer in brown duck, serving as plowman for his company. But there be tough old roots in some soils, roots stout enough to snap the colter of the commercializing plow,--as, for example, in Paradise Valley, owned, in broken areas, princ.i.p.ally by an unreconciled Major Dabney.

"Not anotheh word, or by Heaven, suh, you'll make me lose my tempah! You add insult to injury, suh, when you offeh me youh contemptible Yankee gold. When I desiah to sell my birthright for youh beggahly mess of pottage, I'll send a black boy in town to infawm you, suh!"

It is conceivable that the locating engineer of the Great Southwestern Railway Company was younger than he looked; or, at all events, that his experience hitherto had not brought him in contact with fire-eating gentlemen of the old school. Else he would hardly have said what he did.

"Of course, it is optional with you, Major Dabney, whether you sell us our right of way peaceably or compel us to acquire it by condemnation proceedings in the courts. As for the rest--is it possible that you don't know the war is over?"

With a roar like that of a maddened lion the Major bowed himself, caught his man in a mighty wrestler's grip and flung him broadcast into the coleus bed. The words that went with the fierce attack made Ardea crouch and s.h.i.+ver and take refuge behind the great dog. j.a.pheth Pettigra.s.s jumped down from his step-ladder and went to help the engineer out of the flower bed. The Major had sworn himself to a stand, but the fine old face was a terrifying mask of pa.s.sion.

"The old firebrand!" the engineer was muttering under his breath when Pettigra.s.s reached him; but the foreman cut him short.

"You got mighty little sense, looks like, to me. Stove up any?"

"Nothing to hurt, I guess."

"Well, your hawss is waitin' for ye down yonder at the gate, and I don't b'lieve the Major is allowin' to ask ye to stay to supper."

The railroad man scowled and recovered his dignity, or some portion of it.

"You're a hospitable lot," he said, moving off toward the driveway. "You can tell the old maniac he'll hear from us later."

Pettigra.s.s stooped with his back to the portico and patted the dog.

"Don't you look so shuck up, little one," he whispered rea.s.suringly to Ardea. "There ain't nothin' goin' to happen, worse than has happened, I reckon." But Ardea was mute.

When the engineer had mounted and ridden away down the pike, the foreman straightened himself and faced about. The Major had dropped into his big arm-chair and was trying to relight his pipe. But his hands shook and the match went out.

Pettigra.s.s moved nearer and spoke so that the child should not hear. "If you run me off the place the nex' minute, I'm goin' to tell you you ort to be tolerably 'shamed of yourse'f, Maje' Dabney. That po' little gal is scared out of a year's growin', right now."

"I know, j.a.pheth; I know. I'm a d.a.m.ned old heathen! For, insultin' as he was, the man was for the time bein' my guest, suh--my guest!"

"I'm talkin' about the little one--not that railroader. So far as I know, he earned what he got. I allowed they'd make some sort of a swap with you, so I didn't say anything when they was layin' out their lines thoo' the hawss-lot and across the lower corn-field this mornin'--easy, now; no more r'arin' and t'arin' with that thar little gal not a-knowin'

which side o' the earth's goin' to cave in next!"

The Major dropped his pipe, laid fast hold of the arms of his chair, and breathed hard.

"Laid out _theyuh_ lines--across _my_ prope'ty? j.a.pheth, faveh me by riding down to the furnace and askin' Caleb Gordon if he will do me the honor to come up heah--this evenin', if he can. I--I--it's twenty yeahs and mo' since I've troubled the law cou'ts of ouh po', Yankee-ridden country with any affai-ah of mine; and now--well, I don't know--I don't know," with a despondent shake of the leonine head.

After Pettigra.s.s had gone on his errand the Major rose and went unsteadily into the house. Then, and not till then, Ardea got up on her knees and put her arms around the neck of the Great Dane.

"O, Hector!" she whispered; "me, I am Dabney, too! Once the gamins killed a poor little cat of mine; and I forgot G.o.d--the good G.o.d--and said wicked things; and I could have torn them into little, little pieces! But we--we shall be very good and patient after this, won't we, Hector--you and me--no, you and _I_? What is it when you lick my face that way? Does it mean that you understand?"

VI

BLUE BLOOD AND RED

In a world full of puzzling questions for Thomas Jefferson, one of the chief cl.u.s.tering points of the persistent "whys" was Major Dabney's att.i.tude, as a Man of Sin, and as the natural overlord of Paradise Valley.

That the Major was a Man of Sin there could be no manner of doubt.

During the revival he had been frequently and pointedly prayed for by that name, and the groans from the Amen corner were conclusively d.a.m.ning. Just what the distinction was between a Man of Sin and a sinner--spelled with a small "s"--was something which Thomas Jefferson could never quite determine; but the desire to find out made him spy on Major Dabney at odd moments when the spying could be done safely and with a clear field for retreat in the event of the Major's catching him at it.

Thus far the spying had been barren of results--of that kind which do not have to be undone and made over to fit in with other things. Once, Thomas Jefferson had been picking blackberries behind the wall of his father's infield when the Major and Squire Bates had met on the pike.

There was some talk of the new railroad; and when the Squire allowed that it was certain to come through Paradise, the Major had taken the name of G.o.d in vain in a way that suggested the fiery blast roaring from the furnace lip after the iron was out.

This was one of the results. But on reflection, Thomas Jefferson decided that this could not be The Sin. Profane swearing--that was what the Sunday-school lesson-leaf called it--was doubtless a mortal sin in a believer; was not he, Thomas Jefferson, finding the heavens as bra.s.s and the earth a place of fear and trembling because of that word to Nan Bryerson? But in other people--well, he had heard his father swear once, when one of the negroes at the furnace had opened the sand at the end of the sow and let the stream of molten iron run out into the creek.

The charge of profanity being tried and found wanting in the Major's case, there remained that of violence. One day, Tike Bryerson--Nan's father and the man who had tried to kill his Uncle Silas in the revival meeting--was beating his horses because they would not take the water at the lower ford. Tike had been stilling more pine-top whisky, and had been to town with some jugs hidden under the cornstalks in his wagon-bed. When he did that, he always came back with his eyes red like a squirrel's, and everybody gave him all the road.

But this time the Major had happened along, and when Tike would not stop beating the horses for a shouted cursing-out from the bank, the Major had spurred his Hambletonian into the creek and knocked Tike winding.

More than that, he had made him lead his team out of the ford and go back to the bridge crossing.

Being himself committed to the theory of turning the other cheek, Thomas Jefferson could not question the acute sinfulness of all this; yet it did not sufficiently account for the Major as a Man of Sin. Had not Peter, stirred, no doubt, by some such generous rage as the Major's, s.n.a.t.c.hed out his sword and smitten off a man's ear?

In the other field, that of overlords.h.i.+p, the subtleties were still more elusive. That the negroes, many of whom were the sons and daughters of the Major's former slaves, should pa.s.s the old-time "Mawstuh" on the pike with uncovered heads and respectful heel-sc.r.a.pings, was a matter of course. Thomas Jefferson was white, free, and Southern born. But why his own father and mother should betray something of the same deference was not so readily apparent.

On rare occasions the Major, riding to or from the cross-roads post-office in Hargis's store, would rein in his horse at the Gordon gate and ask for a drink of water from the Gordon well. At such times Thomas Jefferson remarked that his mother always hastened to serve the Major with her own hands; this notwithstanding her own and Uncle Silas's oft-repeated a.s.severation touching the Major's unenviable preeminence as a Man of Sin. Also, he remarked that the Major's manner at such moments was a thing to dazzle the eye, like the reflection of the summer sun on the surface of burnished metal. But beneath the polished exterior, the groping perceptions of the boy would touch a thing repellent; a thing to stir a slow current of resentment in his blood.

It was Thomas Jefferson's first collision with the law of caste; a law Draconian in the Old South. Before the war, when Deer Trace Manor had been a seigniory with its six score black thralls, there had been no visiting between the great house on the inner knoll and the overgrown log homestead at the iron furnace. Quarrel there was none, nor any shadow of enmity; but the Dabneys were lords of the soil, and the Gordons were craftsmen.

Even in war the distinction was maintained. The Dabneys, father and son, were officers, having their commissions at the enrolment; while Caleb Gordon, whose name headed the list of the Paradise volunteers, began and ended a private in the ranks.

In the years of heart-hardenings which followed, a breach was opened, narrow at first, and never very deep, but wide enough to serve. Caleb Gordon had accepted defeat openly and honestly, and for this the unreconstructed Major had never fully forgiven him. It was an added proof that there was no redeeming drop of the _sang azure_ in the Gordon veins--and Major Caspar was as scrupulously polite to Caleb Gordon's wife as he would have been, and was, to the helpmate of Tike Bryerson, mountaineer and distiller of illicit whisky.

Thomas Jefferson was vaguely indignant when Pettigra.s.s came to ask his father to go forthwith to the manor-house. In the mouth of the foreman the invitation took on something of the flavor of a command. Besides, since the Major's return from New York, Thomas Jefferson had a grudge against him of a purely private and personal nature.

None the less, he was eager for news when his father came back, and though he got it only from overhearing the answer to his mother's question, it was satisfyingly thrilling.

"It's mighty near as we talked, Martha. The Major lumps the railroad in with all the other improvements, calls 'em Yankee, and h'ists his battle-flag. The engineer, that smart young fellow with the peaked whiskers and the eye-gla.s.ses, went to see him this evenin' about the right of way down the valley, and got himself slung off the porch of the great house into a posy bed."

"There is going to be trouble, Caleb; now you mark my words. You mustn't mix up in it."

"I don't allow to, if I can he'p it. The railroad's goin' to be a mighty good thing for us if I can get Mr. Downing to put in a side-track for the furnace."

Following this there were other conferences, the Major unbending sufficiently to come and sit on the Gordon porch in the cool of the evening. The iron-master, as one still in touch with the moving world, gave good advice. Failing to buy, the railroad company might possibly seek to bully a right of way through the valley. But in that case, there would certainly be redress in the courts for the property owners. In the meantime, nothing would be gained by making the contest a personal fight on individuals.