The Ancient Law

CHAPTER X

His Neighbour's Garden

IN his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before Sunday put a stop to his work.

On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense which was keener than the sense of touch.

As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields, and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the purple and white lilacs.

"It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say 'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the pillow.

"It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for doing the thing that I enjoyed."

Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she had at first believed.

"And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot understand why you have done it."

"Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it justified that explanation of my behaviour?"

"The explanation, yes – but not you," she answered, smiling.

"Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't I?"

"It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but even your success doesn't explain your motive."

"Well, the truth is – if you will have it – I needed exercise."

"You might have walked."

"That doesn't reach the shoulders – there's the trouble."

She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to her gallant manner.

"Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it isn't mine. It looks too shiny."

"I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs it every night."

"In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's gardens."

"She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke, "but you see I am a very useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me."

"Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her."

"You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went."

Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a feeling of good fellowship.

"So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily.

"Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case."

For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought.

"After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to Tappahannock," she observed.

Her friendliness – which impressed him as that of a creature who had met no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous, almost childlike, appeal to his confidence.

"Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly.

She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac.

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night – I was beaten down, desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and – yes, and in your courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road."

"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her frank, almost boyish way.

"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I was hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my fault, you understand – I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to begin again low down – at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon the handle, stood waiting for her to speak.

"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she asked.

"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered.

"And you are making a new foundation now?"

"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't they?" he added cheerfully.

"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I think, to see New York."

"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?"

"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school once in Georgia."

The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her suddenly as if he had taken her in for the first time. Perfectly unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes. Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now, than to some inherited ideal of manner – of social values; and it seemed to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries.

"You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked.

"A great many – oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still have the entire south wall in the library – the English classics are there."

"I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, its red clay roads.

She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that first night in the barn.

"Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said.

"Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered.

As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to Tappahannock.

When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from Bullfinch's Hollow.

"Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease, that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr. Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up then tight as a keg – I'd wish you'd have seen him."

"In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill.

"Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs. Twine, turning from the table to pick up a pair of Canty's little breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin' any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an' honour a whale."

"But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway, picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and be charitable to the rest of us."

Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of their infant wearer.

"As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs from another only in the set of his breeches – for the best an' the worst of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A weak woman would have kept a widow after my marriage with Bob Cotton, the brother of William, suh – but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be said for me – so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier, I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage – whether you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an' when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin' – for thar's got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the worst."

A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped by to walk downtown with him.

With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops, Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his youthful struggles, and the following day he had unburdened himself with rapture of his passion for Milly.

"I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco now, isn't there?"

"Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants me to come over."

"I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?"

"He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the afternoon."

They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not Milly held out her hand.

"Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith," she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr. Banks will be here."

"Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon."

"Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's look of bewilderment. "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying to sick people."

"Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway, drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the girl before him.

As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion, a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper.

"After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want to meet her when you got the chance."

Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man, and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance – that's the best excuse I have."

"All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care."

"Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have supported a comparison with your turtle-dove."

Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a conscious laugh.

"Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's something about you – I don't know what it is – that takes the place of them."

"The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway with good-humoured raillery.

"You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them – Milly says so."

"I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you."

"But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air."

"My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are – well, you're a downright trump!"

He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he "would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith."

CHAPTER XI

Bullfinch's Hollow

AT five o'clock Ordway followed the uneven board walk to the end of the main street, and then turning into a little footpath which skirted the railroad track, he came presently to the abandoned field known in Tappahannock as Bullfinch's Hollow. Beyond a disorderly row of negro hovels, he found a small frame cottage, which he recognised as the house to which he had brought Kit Berry on the night when he had dragged him bodily from Kelly's saloon. In response to his knock the door was opened by the same weeping woman – a small withered person, with snapping black eyes and sparse gray hair brushed fiercely against her scalp, where it clung so closely that it outlined the bones beneath. At sight of Ordway a smile curved her sunken mouth; and she led the way through the kitchen to the door of a dimly lighted room at the back, where a boy of eighteen years tossed deliriously on a pallet in one corner. It was poverty in its direst, its most abject, results, Ordway saw at once as his eyes travelled around the smoke stained, unplastered walls and rested upon the few sticks of furniture and the scant remains of a meal on the kitchen table. Then he looked into Mrs. Berry's face and saw that she must have lived once amid surroundings far less wretched than these.

"Kit was taken bad with fever three days ago," she said, "an' the doctor told me this mornin' that the po' boy's in for a long spell of typhoid. He's clean out of his head most of the time, but whenever he comes to himself he begs and prays me to send for you. Something's on his mind, but I can't make out what it is."

"May I see him now?" asked Ordway.

"I think he's wanderin', but I'll find out in a minute."

She went to the pallet and bending over the young man, whispered a few words in his ear, while her knotted hand stroked back the hair from his forehead. As Ordway's eyes rested on her thin shoulders under the ragged, half soiled calico dress she wore, he forgot the son in the presence of the older and more poignant tragedy of the mother's life. Yet all that he knew of her history was that she had married a drunkard and had brought a second drunkard into the world.

"He wants to speak to you, sir – he's come to," she said, returning to the doorway, and fixing her small black eyes upon Ordway's face. "You are the gentleman, ain't you, who got him to sign the pledge?"

Ordway nodded. "Did he keep it?"

Her sharp eyes filled with tears.

"He hasn't touched a drop for going on six weeks, sir, but he hadn't the strength to hold up without it, so the fever came on and wore him down." Swallowing a sob with a gulp, she wiped her eyes fiercely on the back of her hand. "He ain't much to look at now," she finished, divided between her present grief and her reminiscent pride, "but, oh, Mr. Smith, if you could have seen him as a baby! When he was a week old he was far and away the prettiest thing you ever laid your eyes on – not red, sir, like other children, but white as milk, with dimples at his knees and elbows. I've still got some of his little things – a dress he wore and a pair of knitted shoes – and it's them that make me cry, sir. I ain't grievin' for the po' boy in there that's drunk himself to death, but for that baby that used to be."

Still crying softly, she slunk out into the kitchen, while Ordway, crossing to the bed, stood looking down upon the dissipated features of the boy who lay there, with his matted hair tossed over his flushed forehead.

"I'm sorry to see you down, Kit. Can I do anything to help you?" he asked.

Kit opened his eyes with a start of recognition, and reaching out, gripped Ordway's wrist with his burning hand, while he threw off the ragged patchwork quilt upon the bed.

"I've something on my mind, and I want to get it off," he answered. "When it's once off I'll be better and get back my wits."

"Then get it off. I'm waiting."

"Do you remember the night in the bar-room?" demanded the boy in a whisper, "the time you came in through the window and took me home?"

"Go on," said Ordway.

"Well, I'd walked up the street behind you that afternoon when you left Baxter's, and I got drunk that night on a dollar I stole from you."

"But I didn't speak to you. I didn't even see you."

"Of course you didn't. If you had I couldn't have stolen it, but Baxter had just paid you and when you put your hand into your pocket to get out something, a dollar bill dropped on the walk."

"Go on."

"I picked it up and got drunk on it, there's nothing else. It was a pretty hard drunk, but before I got through you came in and dragged me home. Twenty cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the money and bought a fish for breakfast.

"Well, I did that much good at least," observed Ordway with a smile, "have you finished, Kit?"

"It's been on my mind," repeated Kit deliriously, "and I wanted to get it off."

"It's off now, my boy," said Ordway, picking up the ragged quilt from the floor and laying it across the other's feet, "and on the whole I'm glad you told me. You've done the straight thing, Kit, and I am proud of you."

"Proud of me?" repeated Kit, and fell to crying like a baby.

In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, after bathing the boy's face and hands from a basin of water on a chair at the bedside, went into the kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found weeping over a pair of baby's knitted shoes. The pathos of her grief bordered so closely upon the ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back the laugh upon his lips.

"Kit is worse again," he said. "Do you give him any medicine?"

Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, while her sobs changed into a low whimpering sound.

"Did you sit up with him last night?" asked Ordway, following her to the door.

"I've been up for three nights, sir. He has to have his face and hands bathed every hour."

"What about medicine and food?"

"The doctor gives him his medicine free, every drop of it, an' they let me have a can of milk every day from Cedar Hill. I used to live there as a girl, you know, my father was overseer in old Mr. Brooke's time – before he married Miss Emily's mother – "

Ordway cut short her reminiscences.

"Well, you must sleep to-night," he said authoritatively, "I'll come back in an hour and sit up with Kit. Where is your room?"

She pointed to a rickety flight of stairs which led to the attic above.

"Kit slept up there until he was taken ill," she answered. "He's been a hard son to me, sir, as his father was a hard husband because of drink, but to save the life of me I can't forgit how good he used to be when he warn't more'n a week old. Never fretted or got into tempers like other babies – "

Again Ordway broke in drily upon her wandering recollections.

"Now I'll go for an hour," he said abruptly, "and by the way, have you had supper or shall I bring you some groceries when I come?"

"There was a little milk left in the pitcher and I had a piece of cornbread, but – oh, Mr. Smith," her small black eyes snapped fiercely into his, "there are times when my mouth waters for a cup of coffee jest as po' Kit's does for whiskey."

"Then put the kettle on," returned Ordway, smiling, as he left the room.

It was past sunset when he returned, and he found Kit sleeping quietly under the effect of the medicine the doctor had just given him. Mrs. Berry had recovered sufficient spirit, not only to put the kettle on the stove, but to draw the kitchen table into the square of faint light which entered over the doorstep. The preparations for her supper had been made, he saw, with evident eagerness, and as he placed his packages upon the table, she fell upon them with an excited, childish curiosity. A few moments later the aroma of boiling coffee floated past him where he sat on the doorstep smoking his last pipe before going into the sick-room for the night. Turning presently he watched the old woman in amazement while she sat smacking her thin lips and jerking her shrivelled little hands over her fried bacon; and as he looked into her ecstatic face, he realised something of the intensity which enters into the scant enjoyments of the poor. The memory of his night in the Brookes' barn returned to him with the aroma of the coffee, and he understood for the first time that it is possible to associate a rapture with meat and drink. Then, in spite of his resolve to keep his face turned toward his future, he found himself contrasting the squalid shanty at his back with the luxurious surroundings amid which he had last watched all night by a sick-bed. He could see the rich amber-coloured curtains, the bowls of violets on the inlaid table between the open windows, the exquisite embroidered coverlet upon the bed, and the long pale braid of Lydia's hair lying across the lace ruffles upon her nightgown. Before his eyes was the sunken field filled with Negro hovels and refuse heaps in which lean dogs prowled snarling in search of bones; but his inward vision dwelt, in a luminous mist, on the bright room, scented with violets, where Lydia had slept with her baby cradled within her arm. He could see her arm still under the falling lace, round and lovely, with delicate blue veins showing beneath the inside curve.