The Ancient Law Part 6

There was a sore little spot in Milly's heart, a vague sentiment of disenchantment. Her house of dreams, which she had reared so patiently, stood cold and tenantless once more.

"Did you ever find out his name?" she asked, with a last courageous hope.

"Smith," replied Banks, with luminous simplicity. "The boys have nick-named him 'Ten Commandment Smith.'"

"Ten Commandment Smith?" echoed Milly in a lifeless voice. Her house of dreams had tottered at the blow and fallen from its foundation stone.

CHAPTER VII

SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY

On the morning after the episode in the barroom which Banks had described to Milly, Ordway found Baxter awaiting him in a condition which in a smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter of excitement.

"So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, I hear, Smith?"

"Well, hardly that," returned Ordway, smiling as he saw the other's embarra.s.sment break out in drops of perspiration upon his forehead. "I was in it, I admit, but I can't exactly say that I was 'mixed up.'"

"You got Kit Berry out, eh?--and took him home."

"Nothing short of a sober man could have done it. He lives on the other side of the town in Bullfinch's Hollow."

"Oh, I've been there," said Baxter, "I've taken him home myself."

The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway's eyes which appeared in the animation of the moment to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As Baxter looked at him he felt something of the charm which had touched the drunken crowd in the saloon.

"His mother was at my house before breakfast," he said, in a tone that softened as he went on until it sounded as if his whole perspiring person had melted into it. "She was in a great state, poor creature, for it seemed that when Kit woke up this morning he promised her never to touch another drop."

"Well, I hope he'll keep his word, but I doubt it," responded Ordway. He thought of the bare little room he had seen last night, of the patched garments drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon the table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman who had received his burden from him.

"He may--for a week," commented Baxter, and he added with a big, shaking laugh, "they tell me you gave 'em a sermon that was as good as a preacher's."

"Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all."

"Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton went home without falling once, he said."

"There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information Cotton wanted."

"I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him out of a sc.r.a.pe as well as a lawyer could have done."

"I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all."

"Have you ever practised law in Virginia?"

"I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when--" he was going to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory."

"I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and gaiety in his look?

"Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be worth as good as a hundred a month to me."

There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the man--the unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man.

One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal proportions--as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of the lavish generosity of his heart.

"To tell the truth, I'd hoped for that all along," said Ordway, withdrawing his gaze with an effort from the soiled cravat. "Do you want me to start in at the books to-day?"

For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed and went on as if he found difficulty in selecting the words that would convey his meaning.

"Well, if you don't mind there's a delicate little matter I'd like you to attend to first. Being a stranger I thought it would be easier for you than for me--have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly Brooke?"

The interest quickened in Ordway's face.

"Why, yes. I came along the road one day with a farmer who gave me his whole story--Adam Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name."

Baxter whistled. "Oh, I reckon, he hardly told you the whole story--for I don't believe there's anybody living except myself who knows what a darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done an honest piece of work in his life; he's spent every red cent of his wife's money, and his sister's too, in some wild goose kind of speculation--and yet, bless my soul, he has the face to strut in here any day and lord it over me just as if he were his grandfather's ghost or George Washington. It's queer about those old families, now ain't it? When they begin to peter out it ain't just an ordinary petering, but a sort of mortal rottenness that takes 'em root and branch."

"And so I am to interview this interesting example of degeneration?"

asked Ordway, smiling.

"You've got to make him understand that he can't ship me any more of his worthless tobacco," exclaimed Baxter in an outburst of indignation. "Do you know what he does, sir?--Well, he raises a lazy, shiftless, worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field--plants it too late, tops it too late, cuts it too late, cures it too late, and then lets it lie around in some leaky smokehouse until it isn't fit for a hog to chew.

After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers the stuff up on the first pleasant day in spring and gets an old n.i.g.g.e.r to cart it to me in an open wagon. The next day he lounges in here with his palavering ways, and demands the highest price in the market--and I give it to him!

That's the d.a.m.ned outrage of it, I give it to him!" concluded Baxter with an excitement in which his huge person heaved like a shaken mountain. "I've bought his trash for twenty years and ground it into snuff because I was afraid to refuse a Brooke--but Brooke or no Brooke there's an end to it now," he turned and waved his hand furiously to a pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse floor, "there's his trash and it ain't fit even for snuff!"

He led Ordway back into the building, picked up several leaves from the pile, smelt them, and threw them down with a contemptuous oath.

"Worm-eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out to Cedar Hill and tell the man that his stuff ain't fit for anything but fertiliser,"

he went on. "If he wants it he'd better come for it and haul it away."

"And if he refuses?"

"He most likely will--then tell him I'll throw it into the ditch."

"Oh, I'll tell him," responded Ordway, and he was aware of a peculiar excitement in the prospect of an encounter with the redoubtable Mr.

Beverly. "I'll do my best," he added, going through the archway, while Baxter followed him with a few last words of instruction and advice. The big man's courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as Ordway pa.s.sed into the street, he hurried after him to suggest that he should approach the subject with as much delicacy as he possessed. "I wouldn't b.u.t.t at Mr.

Beverly, if I were you," he cautioned, "just edge around and work in slowly when you get the chance."

But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he had started out in an impatience not unmixed with anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he wondered, and what power did he possess that kept Tappahannock in a state of slavery? He was glad that Baxter had sent him on the errand, and the next minute he laughed aloud because the big man had been too timid to come in person.

He had reached the top of the hill, and was about to turn into the road he had taken his first night in Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a shawl, hurried across the street from one of the smaller houses fronting upon the green.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that helped William Cotton?"

Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into notice. At the thought Ordway looked down upon his questioner with a sensation that was almost one of pleasure.

"He needed business advice and I gave it, that was all," he answered.

"But you wrote down the whole case for him so that he could understand it and speak for himself," she said, catching her breath in a sob, as she pulled her thin shawl together. "You got him out of his troubles and asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing to do as much by me. I am a widow with five little children, and though I've paid every penny I could sc.r.a.pe together for the mortgage, the farm is to be sold over our heads and we have nowhere to go."