The Quickening Part 9

Mrs. Martha would and did; not ungrudgingly on the vice-president's account, but with many misgivings on Thomas Jefferson's. She was finding the surcharged industrial atmosphere of the new era inimical at every point to the development of the spiritual pa.s.sion she had striven to arouse in her son; to paving the way for the realizing of that ideal which had first taken form when she had written "Reverend Thomas Jefferson Gordon" on the margin of the letter to her brother Silas.

As it fell out, the worst happened that could happen, considering the apparent harmlessness of the exciting cause. Vincent Farley proved to be an anemic stripling, cold, reserved, with no surface indications of moral depravity, and with at least a veneer of good breeding. But in Thomas Jefferson's heart he planted the seed of discontent with his surroundings, with the homely old house on the pike, unchanged as yet by the rising tide of prosperity, and more than all, with the prospect of becoming a chosen vessel.

It was of no use to hark back to the revival and the heart-quaking experiences of a year agone. Thomas Jefferson tried, but all that seemed to belong to another world and another life. What he craved now was to be like this envied and enviable son of good fortune, who wore his Sunday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and traveled Ardea.

Later in the summer the envy died down and Thomas Jefferson developed a p.r.o.nounced case of hero-wors.h.i.+p, something to the disgust of the colder-hearted, older boy. It did not last very long, nor did it leave any permanent scars; but before Thomas Jefferson was fully convalescent the subtle flattery of his adulation warmed the subject of it into something like companions.h.i.+p, and there were bragging stories of boarding-school life and of the world at large to add fresh fuel to the fire of discontent.

Though Thomas Jefferson did not know it, his deliverance on that side was nigh. It had been decided in the family council of two--with a preacher-uncle for a casting-vote third--that he was to be sent away to school, Chiawa.s.see Coal and Iron promising handsomely to warrant the expense; and the decision hung only on the choice of courses to be pursued.

Caleb had marked the growing hunger for technical knowledge in the boy, and had secretly gloried in it. Here, at least, was a strong stream of his own craftsman's blood flowing in the veins of his son.

"It'd be a thousand pities to spoil a good iron man and engineer to make a poor preacher, Martha," he objected; this for the twentieth time, and when the approach of autumn was forcing the conclusion.

"I know, Caleb; but you don't understand," was the invariable rejoinder.

"You know that side of him, because it's your side. But he is my son, too; and--and Caleb, the Lord has called him!"

Gordon's smile was lenient, tolerant, as it always was in such discussions.

"Not out loud, I reckon, little woman; leastwise, Buddy don't act as if he'd heard it. As I've said, there's plenty of time. He's only a little shaver yet. Let him try the school in the city for a year 'r so, goin'

and comin' on the railroads, nights and mornin's, like the Major's gran'daughter. After that, we might see."

But now Martha Gordon was fighting the last great battle in the war of spiritual repression which had been going on ever since the day when that text, _Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers_, had been turned into a whip of scorpions to chasten her, and she fought as those who will not be denied the victory. Caleb yielded finally, but with some such hand-was.h.i.+ng as Pilate did when he gave way to the pressure from without.

"I aim to do what's for the best, Martha, but I own I hain't got your courage. You've been shovin' that boy up the steps o' the pulpit ever since he let on like he could understand what you was sayin' to him, and maybe it's all right. I've never been over on your side o' that fence, and I don't know how things look over there. But if it was my doin's, I'd be prayin' mighty hard to whatever G.o.d I believed in not to let me make a hypocrite out'n o' Buddy. I would _so_."

Thomas Jefferson was told what was in store for him only a short time before his outsetting for the sectarian home school in a neighboring state, which was the joint selection of his mother and Uncle Silas. He took it with outward calm, as he would have taken anything from a prize to a whipping. But there was dumb rebellion within when his mother read him the letter he was to carry to the princ.i.p.al--a letter written by Brother Crafts to one of like precious faith, commending the lamb of the flock, and definitely committing that lamb as a chosen vessel. It was unfair, he cried inwardly, in a hot upflash of antagonism. He might choose to be a preacher; he had always meant to be one, for his mother's sake. But to be pushed and driven--

He took his last afternoon for a ramble in the fields and woods beyond the manor-house, in that part of the valley as yet unfurrowed by the industrial plow. It was not the old love of the solitudes that called him; it was rather a sore-hearted desire to go apart and give place to all the hard thoughts that were bubbling and boiling within.

A long circuit over the boundary hills brought him at length to the little glade with the pool in its center where he had been fis.h.i.+ng for perch on that day when Ardea and the great dog had come to make him back-slide. He wondered if she had ever forgiven him. Most likely she had not. She never seemed to think him greatly worth while when they happened to meet.

He was sitting on the overhanging bank, just where he had sat that other day, when suddenly history repeated itself. There was a rustling in the bushes; the Great Dane bounded out, though not as before to stand menacing; and when he turned his head she was there near him.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said coolly; and then she called to the dog and made as if she would go away. But Thomas Jefferson's heart was full, and full hearts are soft.

"You needn't run," he hazarded. "I reckon I ain't going to bite you. I don't feel much like biting anybody to-day."

"You did bite me once, though," she said airily.

"And you've never forgiven me for it," he a.s.serted, in deepest self-pity.

"Oh, yes, I have; the Dabneys always forgive--but they never forget. And me, I am a Dabney."

"That's just as bad. You wouldn't be so awful mean to me if you knew.

I--I'm going away."

She came a little nearer at that and sat down beside him on the yellow gra.s.s with an arm around the dog's neck.

"Does it hurt?" she asked. "Because, if it does, I'm sorry; and I'll promise to forget."

"It does hurt some," he confessed. "Because, you see, I'm going to be a preacher."

"You?" she said, with the frank and unsympathetic surprise of childhood.

Then politeness came to the rescue and she added: "I'm sorry for that, too, if you are wanting me to be. Only I should think it would be fine to wear a long black robe and a pretty white surplice, and to learn to sing the prayers beautifully, and all that."

Thomas Jefferson was honestly horrified, and he looked it.

"I'd like to know what in the world you're talking about," he said.

"About your being a minister, of course. Only in France, they call them priests of the church."

The boy's lips went together in a fine straight line. Not for nothing did the blood of many generations of Protestants flow in his veins.

"Priest" was a Popish word.

"The Pope of Rome is antichrist!" he declared authoritatively.

She seemed only politely interested.

"Is he? I didn't know." Then, with a tactfulness worthy of graver years, she drew away from the dangerous topic. "When are you going?"

"To-morrow."

"Is it far?"

"Yes; it's an awful long ways."

"Never mind; you'll be coming back after a while, and then we'll be friends--if you want to."

Surely Thomas Jefferson's heart was as wax before the fire that day.

"I'm mighty glad," he said. Then he got up. "Will you let me show you the way home again?--the short, easy way, this time?"

She hesitated a moment, and then stood up and gave him her hand.

"I'm not afraid of you now; _we_ don't hate him any more, do we, Hector?"

And so they went together through the yellowing aisles of the September wood and across the fields to the manor-house gates.

X

THE SHADOW OF THE ROCK

Tom Gordon--Thomas Jefferson now only in his mother's letters--was fifteen past, and his voice was in the transition stage which made him blus.h.i.+ngly self-conscious when he ran up the window-shade in the Pullman to watch for the earliest morning outlining of old Lebanon on the southern horizon.

There had been no home-going for him at the close of his first year in the sectarian school. The princ.i.p.al had reported him somewhat backward in his studies for his age,--which was true enough,--and had intimated that a summer spent with the preceptor who had the vacation charge of the school buildings would be invaluable to a boy of such excellent natural parts. So Tom had gone into semi-solitary confinement for three months with a man who thought in the dead languages and spoke in terms of ancient history, studying with sullen resentment in his heart, and charging his imprisonment to his preacher-uncle, who was, indeed, chiefly responsible.