There was more to that crazy outburst of Tom's about the cutting out of hearts, and the like, than would appear on the surface of things, to you who dwell in a land shadowed with wings, where law abides and a man sues his neighbor for defamation of character, if he is called a liar, I mean.
In the land unshadowed, where Polaris makes a somewhat sharper angle with the horizon, there is law, also, but much of it is unwritten. And one of the unwritten statutes is that which maintains the inherent right of a man to avenge his own quarrel with his own hand.
So, when the younger Gordon was up and about again, and was able to keep his seat soldierly on the back of the big bay, folk who knew the Gordon blood and temper looked for trouble, not of the plaintiff-and-defendant sort; and when it did not come, there were a few to lament the degeneracy of the times, and to say that old Caleb, for example, would never have so slept on his father's wrongs.
But Tom was not degenerate, even in the sense of those who thought he should have called out and shot the younger of the Farleys. It was in him to kill or be killed, quite in the traditional way: that grim gift is in the blood as the wine is in the grape—to stay unless you shall water it to extinction with many base inbreedings. Nor was the spur lacking. When the sweeping extent of the business coup de grâce was measured, Woodlawn was left, and there were a few thousands in bank; these and the three hundred and fifty shares of the reorganization stock which the Farleys might render worthless at will.
Tom's heart burned within him, and the race thirst—for vengeance that could be touched and seen and handled—parched his lips and swelled the veins in his forehead. Vincent Farley had it all: the business, the good repute, the love of the one woman. At such crises the wild beast in a man, if any there be, rattles the bars of its cage, and—well, you will see that the gnashing of teeth and that fierce talk of heart-cutting at the quickening moment were not inartistic.
Soberer second thought, less frenzied, was no less vengeful and vindictive. Tom had lived four formative years in a climate where the passions are colder—and more comprehensive. Also, he was of his own generation—which slays its enemy peacefully and without messing in bloody-angle details.
Riding up the pike one sun-shot afternoon in the golden September, Tom saw Ardea entering the open door of the Morwenstow church-copy, drew rein, flung himself out of the saddle and followed her. She saw him and stopped in the vestibule, quaking a little as she felt she must always quake until the impassable chasm of wedlock with another should be safely opened between them.
"Just a moment," he said abruptly. "There was a time when I said I would spare Vincent Farley and his kin for your sake. Do you remember it?"
She bowed her head without speaking. Her lips were dry.
"That was a year ago," he went on roughly. "Things have changed since then; I have changed. When my father is buried, I shall do my best to fill the mourners' carriages with those who have killed him."