Spurrier intended that when the smoke cleared from the field upon which the forces of Harrison and those of Trabue had been embattled, the Harrison banners should be victoriously afloat and the Trabue standards dust trailed. But also he intended that the native land-holders, upon whom both combatants had looked as mere unfortunate onlookers raked by the cross fire of opposing artillery, should emerge as real and substantial gainers.
Of late the man had not escaped the penalty of one who faces responsibility and wields power. He had abandoned as puerile his first impulse, after his marriage, to throw up his whole stewardship to the Wall Street masters. That would have amounted only to an ostentation of virtue which would have surrendered the situation into the merciless hands of A. O. and G., and would have left the mountain folk unprotected.
Yet he could not escape the realization that he would stand with all the seeming of a traitor and a plunderer to any of his simple friends who learned of his activities—for as yet he could confide to no one the plans he was maturing.
It was when the refurnished and enlarged place had been completed that the neighbors came from valley, slope, and cove to give their blessing at the housewarming which was also, belatedly, the “infaring.”
That homely, pioneer observance with which the groom brings home his bride, had not been possible 205 after the wedding, but now Aunt Erie Toppitt had come over and prepared entertainment on a lavish if homely scale since Glory was not yet well.
To the husband as he stood greeting the guests who arrived in jeans and hodden-gray, in bright shawls and calicoes, came the feeling of contrast and unreality, as though this were all part of some play quaintly and exaggeratedly staged to reflect a medieval period. In the drawing rooms of Martin Harrison and his confreres he had moved through a social atmosphere, quiet, contained, and reflecting such a life as the dramatist uses for background in a comedy of manners. Closing his eyes now he could see himself as he had been when, starting out for such an entertainment, he had paused before the cheval glass in his club bedroom, adding a straightening touch to his white tie, adjusting the set of his waistcoat and casting a critical eye over the impeccable black and white of his evening dress. Here, flannel shirted and booted, corduroy breeched and tanned brown, he stood by the door watching the arrival of guests who seemed to have stepped out of pioneer America or Elizabethan England. There were women riding mules or tramping long roads on foot and trailing processions of children who could not be left at home; men feeling overdressed and uncomfortable because they had donned coats and brushed their hats; even wagons plodding slowly behind yokes of oxen and one man riding a steer in lieu of a horse!
So they came to give Godspeed to his marriage—and they were the only people on God’s green earth who thought of him in any terms of regard save that 206 regard which sprung from self-interest in his ability to serve beyond others!
Men who were blood enemies met here as friends, because his roof covered a zone of common friendship and under its protection their hatreds could no more intrude on such a day than could pursuit in the Middle Ages follow beyond the sanctuary gates of a cathedral. Inside sounded the minors of the native fiddlers and the scrape of feet “running the sets” of quaint square dances.
The labors of preparation had been onerous. Aunt Erie stood at the open door constituting, with Spurrier and his wife, a “receiving line” of three, and her wrinkled old face bore an affectation of morose exhaustion as to each guest she made the same declaration:
“I hopes an’ prays ye all enjoys this hyar party—Gawd knows my back’s broke.”