WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT
If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it, possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the tired brain to grapple with first.
For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness, stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone together.
"Ardea!" he said tremulously.
She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the fever fires in his.
"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother."
"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his head. "What happened to me?"
"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Saturday evening as you were coming home. One of them struck you."
"This is Wednesday."
The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for him, but for his mother. He remembered the Saturday evening quite clearly now: Japheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his assailants and guessed the identity of the other.
"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It was the least you could do, since your—"
She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him.
"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same colorless tone.
"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that. But no matter; we have passed the Saturday and have come to the Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?"
"He has been with you almost constantly from the first. He was here less than an hour ago."
"Where is he now?"
She hesitated. "There is urgency of some kind in your business affairs. Your father spent the night in South Tredegar; and a little while ago he telephoned for Mr. Norman—from the iron-works, I think." She had moved away again, and her hand was on the door-knob.
He raised himself on one elbow.
"You are in a desperate hurry, aren't you?" he gritted; though the teeth-grinding was from the pain it cost him to move. "Would you mind handing me that desk telephone before you go?"
She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to reach to the bed.
"If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you," she suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone.
His smile was a mere grimace of torture.
"If you could stretch your good-will to—to my mother—that far," he said. "Please call my office—number five-twenty-six G—and ask for Mr. Norman."
She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary. "This is Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn. Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to say—what did you want to say?" she asked, turning to him.
"Just ask what's going on; if it's Norman you've got, he'll know," said Tom, sinking back on the pillows.
What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea's color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and thoughtful as she listened. When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to the sick man, her tone was kinder.
"There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father," she said. "The stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you may have, and—"
She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that was creeping like a curious mask over the face of the man in the bed. Through all the strain of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger. But there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven.
"Tom!" she gasped, rising quickly to go to him.
"Wait," he muttered; "let me pull myself together. The papers—are—in—"
He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and gave it to him. It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the pillow and raised his head. It was the nearness of her that revived him.
"I—I'm weaker than a girl," he whispered. "Vince—I mean the thug, hit me a lot harder than he needed to. What was I saying?—oh, yes; the papers. Will you—will you go over there in the corner by the door and look behind the mopboard? You will find a piece of it sawed so it will come out. In the wall behind it there ought to be a package."
She found it readily,—a thick packet securely tied with heavy twine and a little charred at the corners.
"That's it," he said weakly. "Now one more last favor; please send Aunt 'Phrony up as you go down. Tell her I want my clothes."
Miss Dabney became the trained nurse again in the turning of a leaf.
"You are not going to get up?" she said.
"Yes, I must; I'm due this minute at that meeting down yonder."
"Indeed, you shall do no such insane thing!" she cried. "What are you thinking of!"
"Listen!" he commanded. "My father has worked hard all his life, and he's right old now, Ardea. If I should fail him—but I'm not going to. Please send Aunt 'Phrony."
"I'm going to call your mother," she said firmly.
"If you do, you'll regret it the longest day you live."
"Then let me take the papers down to Mr. Norman for you."
He considered the alternative for a moment—only a moment. What an exquisite revenge it would be to make her the messenger! But he found he did not hate her so bitterly as he had been trying to since that soul-torturing evening on the cliff's edge.
"No, I can't quite do that," he objected; and again he besought her to send the old negro housekeeper.
She consented finally, and as she was leaving him, she said:
"I hope your mother is still asleep. She was here with you all night, and Mr. Norman and I made her go to bed at daybreak. If you must go, get out of the house as quietly as you can, and I'll have Pete and the buggy waiting for you at the gate."
"God bless you!" said Tom fervently; and then he set his teeth hard and did that which came next.
The Dabney buggy was waiting for him when, after what seemed like a pilgrimage of endless miles, he had crept down to the gate. But it was Miss Dabney, and not Mammy Juliet's Pete, who was holding the reins.
"I couldn't find Pete, and Japheth has gone to town," she explained. "Can you get in by yourself?"
He was holding on by the cut wheel, and the death-look was creeping over his face again.
"I can't let you," he panted; and she thought he was thinking of the disgrace for her.
"I am my own mistress," she said coldly. "If I choose to drive you when you are too sick to hold the reins, it is my own affair."
He shook his head impatiently.
"I wasn't thinking of that; but you must first know just what you're doing. My father stands to lose all he has got to—to the Farley's. That's what the meeting is for. Do you understand?"
She bit her lip and a far-away look came into her eyes. Then she turned on him with a little frown of determination gathering between her straight eyebrows—a frown that reminded him of the Major in his militant moods.
"I must take your word for it," she said, and the words seemed to cut the air like edged things. "Tell me the truth: is your cause entirely just? Your motive is not revenge?"
"As God is my witness," he said solemnly. "It is my father's cause, and none of mine; more than that, it is your grandfather's cause—and yours."
She pushed the buggy hood back with a quick arm sweep and gave him her free hand. "Step carefully," she cautioned; and a minute later they were speeding swiftly down the pike in a white dust cloud of their own making.
There was a sharp crisis to the fore in the old log-house office at the furnace. Caleb Gordon, haggard and tremulous, sat at one end of the trestle-board which served as a table, with Norman at his elbow; and flanking him on either side were the two Farleys, Dyckman, Trewhitt, acting general counsel for the company in the Farley interest, and Hanchett, representing the Gordons.
Having arranged the preliminaries to his entire satisfaction, Colonel Duxbury had struck true and hard. The pipe foundry might be taken into the parent company at a certain nominal figure payable in a new issue of Chiawassee Limited stock, or three several things were due to happen simultaneously: the furnace would be shut down indefinitely "for repairs," thus cutting off the iron supply and making a ruinous forfeiture of pipe contracts inevitable; suit would be brought to recover damages for the alleged mismanagement of Chiawassee Consolidated during the absence of the majority stock-holders; and the validity of the pipe-pit patents would be contested in the courts. This was the ultimatum.
The one-sided battle had been fought to a finish. Hanchett, hewing away in the dark, had made every double and turn that keen legal acumen and a sharp wit could suggest to gain time. But Mr. Farley was inexorable. The business must be concluded at the present sitting; otherwise the papers in the two suits, which were already prepared, would be filed before noon. Hanchett took his principal into the laboratory for a private word.
"It's for you to decide, Mr. Gordon," he said. "If you want to follow them into the court, we'll do the best we can. But as a friend I can't advise you to take that course."
"If we could only make out to find out what Tom's holdin' over 'em!" groaned Caleb helplessly.
"Yes; but we can't," said the lawyer. "And whatever it may be, they are evidently not afraid of it."
"We'll never see a dollar's dividend out o' the stock, Cap'n Hanchett. I might as well give 'em the foundry free and clear."
"That's the chance you take, of course. But on the other hand, they can force you to the wall in a month and make you lose everything you have. I've been over the books with Norman: if you can't fill your pipe contracts, the forfeitures will ruin you. And you can't fill them unless you can have Chiawassee iron, and at the present price."
The old iron-master led the way back to the room of doom and took his place at the end of the trestle-board table.
"Give me the papers," he said gloomily; and the Farleys' attorney passed them across, with his fountain-pen.
There was a purring of wheels in the air and the staccato clatter of a horse's hoofs on the hard metaling of the pike. Vincent Farley rose quietly in his place and tiptoed to the door. He was in the act of snapping the catch of the spring-latch, when the door flew inward and he fell back with a smothered exclamation. Thereupon they all looked up, Caleb, the tremulous, with the pen still suspended over the signatures upon which the ink was still wet.
Tom was standing in the doorway, deathly sick and clinging to the jamb for support. In putting on his hat he had slipped the bandages, and the wound was bleeding afresh. Dyckman yelped like a stricken dog, overturning his chair as he leaped up and backed away into a corner. Only Mr. Duxbury Farley and his attorney were wholly unmoved. The lawyer had taken his fountain-pen from Caleb's shaking fingers and was carefully recapping it; and Mr. Farley was pocketing the agreement, by the terms of which the firm of Gordon and Gordon had ceased to exist.
Tom lurched into the room and threw himself feebly on the promoter, and Vincent made as if he would come between. But there was no need for intervention. Duxbury Farley had only to step aside, and Tom fell heavily, clutching the air as he went down.
The dusty office which had once been his mother's sitting-room was cleared of all save his father when Tom recovered consciousness and sat up, with Caleb's arm to help.
"There, now, Buddy; you ortn't to tried to get up and come down here," said the father soothingly. But Tom's blood was on fire.
"Tell me!" he raved: "have they got the foundry away from you?"
Caleb nodded gravely. "But don't you mind none about that, son. What I'm sweatin' about now is the fix you're in. My God! ain't Fred ever goin' to get back with Doc Williams!"
Tom struggled to his feet, tottering.
"I don't need any doctor, pappy; you couldn't kill me with a bullet—not till I've cut the heart out of these devils that have robbed you. Give me the pistol from that drawer, and drive me down to the station before their train comes. I'll do it, and by God, I'll do it now!"
But when old Longfellow, jigging vertically between the buggy shafts, picked his way out of the furnace yard, he was permitted to turn of his own accord in the homeward direction; and an hour later the sick man was back in bed, mingling horrible curses with his insistent calls for Ardea. And this time Miss Dabney did not come.