CHAPTER VII

SHOWS THAT POLITENESS, LIKE CHARITY, IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE

When Ordway entered the room, he turned and closed the door carefully behind him, before he advanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with outstretched hand.

"I can't begin to tell you how I appreciate the honour, Mr. Smith. I didn't expect it--upon my word, I didn't," exclaimed Wherry, with the effusive amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger.

"I don't know that I mean it for an honour, but I hope we can get straight to business," returned Ordway shortly.

"Ah, then there's business?" repeated the other, as if in surprise. "I had hoped that you were paying me merely a friendly call. To tell the truth I've the very worst head in the world for business, you know, and I always manage to dodge it whenever I get half a chance."

"Well, you can't dodge it this time, so we may as well have it out."

"Then since you insist upon that awful word 'business,' I suppose you mean that you've come formally to ratify the treaty?" asked Wherry, smiling.

"The treaty? I made no treaty," returned Ordway gravely.

Laughing pleasantly, Wherry invited his visitor to be seated. Then turning away for an instant, he flung himself into a chair beside a little marble topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle of rye whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a metal tray.

"Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten our conversation in that beastly road?" he demanded, "and the prodigal? Surely you haven't forgotten the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my life that impressed me more."

"You told me then distinctly that you had no intention of remaining in Tappahannock."

"I'll tell you so again if you'd like to hear it. Will you have a drink?"

Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture.

"What I want to know," he insisted bluntly, "is why you are here at all?"

Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding a dash of iced water, tossed it down at a swallow.

"I thought I told you then," he answered, "that I have a little private business in the town. As it's purely personal I hope you'll have no objection to my transacting it."

"You said that afternoon that your presence was, in some way, connected with Jasper Trend's cotton mills."

Wherry gave a low whistle. "Did I?" he asked politely, "well, perhaps, I did. I can't remember."

"I was fool enough to believe that you wanted an honest job," said Ordway; "it did not enter my head that your designs were upon Trend's daughter."

"Didn't it?" inquired Wherry with a smile in which his white teeth flashed brilliantly. "Well, it might have, for I was honest enough about it. Didn't I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of every mess I was ever in?"

"Where is your wife?" asked Ordway.

"Dead," replied Wherry, in a solemn voice.

"If I am not mistaken, you had not less than three at the time of your trial."

"All dead," rejoined Wherry in the same solemn tone, while he drew out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes with a flourish, "there ain't many men that have supported such a treble affliction on the same day."

"I may as well inform you that I don't believe a word you utter."

"It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can find in town."

"Your oath? Pshaw!"

"Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head.

"Whether they are dead or alive," responded Ordway, "I want you to understand plainly that you are to give up your designs upon Milly Trend or her money."

"So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?"

A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned away with a sensation of disgust.

"If you'd only warned me in time--hang it--I'd have cut out and given you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I always like to play fair and square when I get the chance."

"Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it good."

"And leave you the open?"

"And leave me Tappahannock--yes."

"I don't want Tappahannock. To tell the truth I'm not particularly struck by its attractions."

"In that case you've no objection to leaving immediately, I suppose?"

"I've no objection on earth if you'll allow me a pretty woman to keep me company. I'm a deuced lonely bird, and I can't get on by myself--it's not in my nature."

Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a force which started the glasses rattling on the metal tray.

"I repeat for the last time that you are to leave Milly Trend alone," he said. "Do you understand me?"

"I'm not sure I do," rejoined Wherry, still pleasantly enough. "Would you mind saying that over again in a lower tone?"

"What I want to make plain is that you are not to marry Milly Trend--or any other women in this town," returned Ordway angrily.

"So there are others!" commented Wherry jauntily with his eye on the ceiling.

The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably effective, that Ordway felt his rage increased by the mere external advantages of the man.

"What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahannock for good and all this very evening," he resumed, drawing a sharp breath.

The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable amusement.

"I can't," he responded, after a minute in which he had enjoyed his humour to the full, "the train leaves at seven-ten and I've an engagement at eight o'clock."

"You'll break it, that's all."

"But it wouldn't be polite--it's with a lady."

"Then I'll break it for you," returned Ordway, starting toward the door, "for I may presume, I suppose, that the lady is Miss Trend?"

"Oh, come back, I say. Hang it all, don't get into a fury," protested Wherry, clutching the other by the arm, and closing the door which he had half opened. "Here, hold on a minute and let's talk things over quietly. I told you, didn't I? that I wanted to be obliging."

"Then you will go?" asked Ordway, in a milder tone.

"Well, I'll think about it. I've a quick enough wit for little things, but on serious matters my brain works slowly. In the first place now didn't we promise each other that we'd play fair?"

"But you haven't--that's why I came here."

"You're dead wrong. I'm doing it this very minute. I'll keep my mouth shut about you till Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me back when I'm trying to live honest."

"Honest!" exclaimed Ordway, and turned on his heel.

"Well, I'd like to know what you call it, for if it isn't honesty, it certainly isn't pleasure. My wife's dead, I swear it's a fact, and I swear again that I don't mean the girl any harm. I was never so much gone on a woman in my life, though a number of 'em have been pretty soft on me. So you keep off and manage your election--or whatever it is--while I go about my business. Great Scott! after all it ain't as if a woman were a bank note, is it?"

"The first question was mine. Will you leave to-day or will you not?"

"And if I will not what are you going to do about it?"

"As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you know."

"Well, say I won't. What is your next move then?"

"In that case I shall go straight to the girl's father after I leave this room."

"By Jove you will! And what will you do when you get there?"

"I shall tell him that to the best of my belief you have a wife--possibly several--now living."

"Then you'll lie," said Wherry, dropping for the first time his persuasive tone.

"That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you."

"And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?"

"Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want."

"And suppose he asks you--as he probably will--how in the devil it came to be any business of yours?"

For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open window into the street below.

"I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I shall tell him the whole truth as I know it--about myself as well as about you."

"The deuce you will!" exclaimed Wherry. "It appears that you want to take the whole job out of my hands now, doesn't it?"

The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one?

"I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you--I'll send you half my salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job."

Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink.

"So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, wouldn't you?" he inquired.

Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned toward the door and laid his hand upon the knob before he spoke.

"Is it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?" he asked.

"Well, I wouldn't if I were you," said Wherry, "but that's your affair. On the whole I think that you'll pay more than your share of the price."

"It's natural, I suppose, that you should want your revenge," returned Ordway, without resentment, "but all the same I shall tell him as little as possible about your past. What I shall say is that I have reason to believe that your wife is still living."

"One or more?" enquired Wherry, with a sneer.

"One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my purpose."

"Well, go ahead," rejoined Wherry, angrily, "but before you strike you'd better be pretty sure you see a snake in the grass. I'd advise you for your own sake to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me."

"What?" cried Ordway, wheeling round, "do you mean she has refused you?"

"Oh, ask her--ask her," retorted Wherry airily, as he turned back to the whiskey bottle.

In the street, a moment later, Ordway passed under the red flag, which, inflated by the wind, swelled triumphantly above his head. From the opposite sidewalk a man spoke to him; and then, turning, waved his slouch hat enthusiastically toward the flag. "If he only knew," thought Ordway, looking after him; and the words brought to his imagination what disgrace in Tappahannock would mean in his life. As he passed the dim vacancy of the warehouse he threw toward it a look which was almost one of entreaty. "No, no, it can't be," he insisted, as if to reassure himself, "it is impossible. How could it happen?" And seized by a sudden rage against circumstances, he remembered the windy afternoon upon which he had come for the first time to Tappahannock--the wide stretches of broomsedge; the pale red road, which appeared to lead nowhere; his violent hunger; and the Negro woman who had given him the cornbread at the door of her cabin. A hundred years seemed to have passed since then--no, not a hundred years as men count them, but a dissolution and a resurrection. It was as if his personality--his whole inner structure had dissolved and renewed itself again; and when he thought now of that March afternoon it was with the visual distinctness that belongs to an observer rather than to an actor. His point of view was detached, almost remote. He saw himself from the outside alone--his clothes, his face, even his gestures; and these things were as vivid to him as were the Negro cabin, the red clay road, and the covered wagon that threw its shadow on the path as it crawled by. In no way could he associate his immediate personality either with the scene or with the man who had sat on the pine bench ravenously eating the coarse food. At the moment it seemed to him that he was released, not only from any spiritual bondage to the past, but even from any physical connection with the man he had been then. "What have I to do with Gus Wherry or with Daniel Ordway?" he demanded. "Above all, what in heaven have I to do with Milly Trend?" As he asked the question he flushed with resentment against the girl for whom he was about to sacrifice all that he valued in his life. He thought with disgust of her vanity, her shallowness, her insincerity; and the course that he had planned showed in this sudden light as utterly unreasonable. It struck him on the instant that in going to Wherry he had been a fool. "Yes, I should have thought of that before. I have been too hasty, for what, after all, have I to do with Milly Trend?"

With an effort he put the question aside, and in the emotional reaction which followed, he felt that his spirit soared into the blue October sky. Emily, looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never seen him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly unreserved. When his game of dominoes with Beverly was over, he followed the children out into the orchard, where they were gathering apples into great straw hampers; and as he stood under the fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish laughter in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, even his memories had dissolved and vanished into air. An irresponsible happiness swelled in his heart while he watched the golden orchard grass blown like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill.

But when night fell the joy of the sunshine went from him, and it was almost with a feeling of heaviness that he lit his lamp and sat down in the chintz-covered chair under the faded sampler worked by Margaret, aged nine. Without apparent cause or outward disturbance he had passed from the exhilaration of the afternoon into a pensive, almost a melancholy mood. The past, which had been so remote for several hours, had leaped suddenly to life again--not only in his memory, but in every fibre of his body as well as in every breath he drew. "No, I cannot escape it, for is it not a part of me--it is I myself," he thought; and he knew that he could no more free himself from his duty to Milly Trend than he could tear the knowledge of her existence from his brain. "After all, it is not Milly Trend," he added, "it is something larger, stronger, far more vital than she."

A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and fluttered blindly in the circle of light which the lamp threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft whirring of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the sound entered into his thoughts and became a part of his reflections. "Will the moth fall into the flame or will it escape?" he asked, feeling himself powerless to avert the creature's fate. In some strange way his own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that narrow circle of light; and in the pitiless illumination that surrounded it, he saw not only all that was passed, but all that was present as well as all that was yet to come. At the same instant he saw his mother's face as she lay dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen upon her lips; and the face of Lydia when she had lowered a black veil at their last parting; and the face of Alice, his daughter; and of the girl downstairs as he had seen her through the gray twilight; and the face of the epileptic little preacher, who had preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces looked back at him he knew that the illumination in which his soul had struggled so blindly was the light of love. "Yes, it is love," he thought, "and that is the meaning of the circle of light into which I have come out of the darkness."

He looked up startled, for the white moth, after one last delirious whirl of ecstasy, had dropped from the ceiling into the flame of the lamp.