Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1910 — THE QUICKENING By FRANCIS LYNDE [ARTICLE]

THE QUICKENING By FRANCIS LYNDE

Copyrltht, 1906.

by Francis Lynda

CHAPTER XI. There was no one at the station to *neet the disgraced one, news of the disaster! at Beersheba being as yet only on the way. Thomas Jefferson was rather glad of It; especially glad that there was no one from Woodlawn —this was the name of the new home —to recognize him and ask discomforting questions. But &rdea was expected, ®°d the Dabney' carriage, with old Scipio on the box, was drawn up beside the platform. Tom put Ardea into the carriage and was giving her hand luggage to Scipio when she called to him. . “Isn’t there any one here to meet you, Tom?” "They don't know I’m coming,” he explained. Wherehpon she quickly made room for him, holding the door open. But he hung back. , " “I reckon I’d better ride on the box with Unc’ Scipio," he suggested. “I am sure I don’t know why you should,” she objected. He told her straight; or at least gaya her his own view of it. ”3y to-morrow morning everybody In Gordonia and Paradise Valley will know that I’m home in disgrace. It won’t hurt Unc’ Scipio any if I’m seen riding with him.” It was the first time that he had been given to see the Dabney imperiousness shining star-like in Miss Ardea’s slate-blue eyes. “I wish you to get your hang-bag and ride in here with me,” she said, with the air of one Whoso wish was law. But when he was sitting opposite, and the carriage door was shut, she ikmiled companionably across at him and added: "You fooliah boy!” When he reached the house there was an ominous air of quiet about it, and a horse and buggy, with a black boy holding the reins, stood before the door. Tom’s heart came into his mouth. The turnout was Doctor Williams’. “Who’s sick?” he asked of the boy who was holding the doctor’s horse, and his tongue was thick with a nameless fear. . The black boy did not know; and Tom crept up the steps and let himself In as one enters a house of mourning, breaking down completely when he saw his father sitting bowed on the hall seat. "You, Buddy?—l’m mighty glad,” said the man; and when he held out his arms the boy flung himself on his knees beside the seat and buried his face in the cushions. “Is she—is she going to die?” he asked, when the dreadful words could be found and spoken. “We’re hoping for the best. Buddy, son. It’s some sort of a stroke, the doctor says; it took her yesterday morning, and she hasn't been herself since. Did somebody telegraph to you?” Tom rocked his head on the cushion. How could he add to the blackness of darkness by telling his miserable story of disgrace? Yet it had to be done, and surely no hapless penitent in the confessionaLever emptied his soul with more heartfelt contrition or more bitter remorse. Caleb Gordon listened, with what 'nward condemnings one could only guess from his silence. It was terrible! If his father would strike him, curse him, drive him out of the house, it would be easier to bear than the stifling silence. But when the Words came finally they were as balm poured into an angry wound. “There, there, Buddy; don’t take on so. You’re might’ nigh a man, now, and the sun’s still risin’ and settin' just the same as it did before you tripped up and fell down. And it’ll go on risin’ and settin’, too, long after you and me and all of us have quit goin’ to bed and gettin’ up by it. If it wasn’t for your poor mammy ” “That’s it—that’s just it,” groaned Tom. “It would kill her, even if she was well.” “Nev’ mind; you’re here now, and I reckon that’s the main thing. If she gets up again, of course she’ll have to know; but we won’t cross that bridge till we come to it And Buddy, son, whatever happens, your old pappy ain’t goin’ to believe that you'll be the first Gordon to die in the gutter. You’ve got better blood In you than what that calls for.” Tom felt the lightening of his burden to some extent; but beyond was the alternative of suffering, or causing Buffering. He had never realized until now how much he loved his mother; how large a place she had filled in his life, and what a vast void there would be when she was gone. He was yet too young and too self-centered to know that this is the mother-cross: to live for love and to be crowned and enthroned oftenest in memory. The fifth day after his home-coming was Christmas Eve. Late in the afternoon, when the doctor had made his second visit and had gone away, leaving no word of encouragement for the watchers, Tom left the house and took the path that led up through the young orchard to the foot of Lebanon. He was deep within the winter-strip-ped forest on the mountain side, plunging upward through the beds of dry leaves in the little hollows, when he met Ardea. She was coming down with her arms full of holly, and for the moment he forgot his troubles in the keen pleasure of looking at her. None the less, his greeting was a brotherly reproof. "I'd like to know what you’re thinking of, tramping around on the mountain alone,” he said, frowning at her. "I have been thinking of you, r%ost of the time, wishing you could be "with me,” she answered, so artlessly as to mollify him instantly. “Is your mother any better this aP'ernoon?”

She is just the same; lying there so still that you have to look close to see whether she is breathing. The dqctor says that if there isn’t a change pretty soon, she’ll die.” “O Tom!” He looked up at her with the old boyish frown pulling his eyebrows together. “She’s been good to God all her life; what do you reckon He’s letting her die this way for?” It was a terrible question, made more terrible by the savage hardihood that lay behind it. Ardea could not reason with him; and she felt intuitively that at this crisis only reason would appeal to him. Yet she could not turn him away empty-handed in his hour of need. “How can we tell?” she said, and there were tears in her voice. “We only know that He does everything for the best.” “I wish you’d ask Him to let my mother live!” he said, brokenly. “I've tried and tried, and the words just die in my mouth.” There is a of Sorrows in every womanly heart, to whom the appeal of the stricken is never made in vain. Ardea saw -only a boy-brother crying out in his pain, and she dropped on her knees and put her arms around his neck and wept over him in a pure transport of sisterly sympathy. "Indeed and indeed I will help, Tom! And yon mustn’t let it drive you out into the dark. Y'qu poor boy! I know just how it hurts, and I’m so sorry for you! ” He freed himself gently from the comforting arms, got up rather unsteadily, and lifted her to her feet. Then the manly bigness of him sent the hot blood to her cheeks and she was ashamed. “O Tom!” she faltered; “what must you think of me!” “I think God made you—and that was one time when His hand didn’t tremble,” he said, gravely. They had picked their way down the leaf-slippery mountain side and ha was giving her the bunch of holly at the. Dabney orchard gate before he spoke, again. Rut at the moment of leave-taking he said: "How did you know what I needed more than anything else In all the world, Ardea?” She blushed painfully and the blue eyes were downcast. “You must never speak of that again. I didn’t stop to think. It’s a Dabney failing, I’m afraid—to do things first and consider them afterward. It was as if we were little again, and you had fallen down and hurt yourself.” “I know,” he acquiesced, with the same manly gentleness that had made her ashamed. “I won’t speak of it any more—and I’ll never forget it the longest day I live. Good-by.” And he went the back way to his own orchard gate, plunging through the leaf beds with his head down and his hands in his pockets, struggling as he could to stem the swift current which was whirling him out beyond all the old landmarks. For now he was made to know that boyhood was gone, and youth was going, and for one intoxicating moment he had looked over the mountain top Into the Promised Land of manhood.

CHAPTER XII. It was until late in the afternoon of Christmas Day that Ardea was able to slip away from her guests long enough to run over to apprise herself of the condition of things at ’ the Gordon house. Tom opened the door for her, and he made her gome to the fire before he would answer her questions. Even then he sat glowering at the cheerful Maze as If he had forgotten her presence; and she was womanly enough, or amiable enough, to let him take his own time. When he began, it was seemingly at a great distance from matters present and pressing. “Say, Ardea; do you believe in miracles?" he asked abruptly'. “How do you account for them. Did God piake vHls laws so that they could be taken apart and put together again when some little human ant loses its way oh a grass stalk or drops its grain of sugar?” “I don't know,” she confessed, frank-, ly. “I am not sure that I ever tried to account for them; I suppose I have swallowed them' whole, as you say I have swallowed my religion.” “Well, you believe in them, anyway.” he said, “and that makes it easier to hit what I’m aiming at. Do you reckon they stopped short in the Apostles' time?” “You are the queerest boy,” she commented. “I ran over here Just for a minute to ask how your mother Is, and you won't tell me.” “I’m coming to that,” he rejoined, gravely. “But I wanted to get this other thing straightened out first. Now tell me this: did you pray for my mother last night, like you said you would?” “You can be so barbarously personal when you try, Tom,” she protested. And then she added: “But I did.” “Well, the miracle was brought. Early this morning mother came to herself and asked for something to eat. Doctor Williams has been here, and now he tells us all the things he wouldn’t tell us before. It was some little clot In one of the veins or arteries of the brain, and nine times out of ten there Is no hope/* / "O Tom! —and she will gejt well again?” "She has more chances to-day of getting well than she had last night of djdng—so the doctor says. But It’s a miracle. Just the same.” “I’m so glad! And now I really must go home." “What’s your rush? I’m not trying to get rid of you now.”

“I positively must go back. We have company, and I ran away without saying a word.” “Anybody I know?” Inquired Tom. “Three somebodies whom you know, or ought to know, very well: Mr. Duxbury Farley, Mr.* Vincent Farley, Miss Eva Farley." .. - - I. “I’d like to know how under the sun they managed to get on your grandfather’s good side!” he grumbled. “Why do you say that?” she retorted. “Eva was my classmate for years at Miss De Valle’s.” He made a boyish face of disapproval, saying bluntly: “I don’t care if she was. You shouldn’t make friends of them. They are not fit for yop to wii>e your shoes on." “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Gordon! Less than aji hour ago, we were speaking of you, and of what happened at Beersheba. Mr. Farley and his soh both stood up for you.” “And you took the other side, I reckon," he broke out, Quite unreasonably. It had not as yet come to blows between him and his father’s business associates, but it made him immeasurably dissatisfied to find them on social terms at Deer Trace Manor. “Perhaps I did, and perhaps I did not,” she answered, matching his tartness. “Well, you can tell them both that I’m much obliged to them for nothing,” he said, rising and going to the door with her. “They would be mighty glad to see it patched up again and me back in the Beersheba school.” “Of course they would; so would all of your friends.” “But they are not my friends. They have fooled my father, and they’ll fool your grandfather, if he doesn’t watch out. But they can’t fool moi” “That is the first downright coward - ly thing I have ever known you to say!” she declared. “And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva Farley are my guests and my friends!” And with that for her leave-taking, she turned her back on him and went swiftly across the two lawns to the great gray house on the opposite knoll. For the first fortnight of his mother’s convalescence Tom slept badly, and his days were as the days of the accused whose been suspended The time drew near when his continued stay at home must be explained to his mother. Ardea had gone back to Carroll the Saturday before New Year’s and there was no one to talk to. Bu(r for that matter, he had cut himself out of her confidence by his assault on the Farleys. Every morning for a week after the Christmas-day clash, Scipio came over with the -compliments of “Mawsteh Majah,” Miss Euphrasia, and Miss Dabney, and kindly inquiries touching the progress of the invalid. But after New Year’s Tom remarked that there were only the Major and Miss Euphrasia to send complifhents, and despair set in. For out of his boyhood he had brought up undiminished the longing for sympathy, or rather for a burdenbearer on whom he might unload his troubles, and Ardea had begun to promise well. (Tobecdhtinued.)