The Ancient Law

"You're a first-rate chap," repeated Ordway gently, "and I'm glad, in spite of what I said, that you came after me just now. I'm going away to-morrow, you know, and it's probable that I shan't see you again."

"But won't you stay on in Tappahannock? In two weeks all this will blow over and things will be just what they were before."

Ordway shook his head, a movement which Banks felt, though he did not see it.

"No, I'll go away, it's best," he answered, and though his voice had dropped to a dull level there was still a cheerful sound to it, "I'll go away and begin again in a new place."

"Then I'll go, too," said Banks.

"What! and leave Milly? No, you won't come. Banks, you'll stay here."

"But I'll see you sometimes, shan't I?"

"Perhaps? – that's likely, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's likely," repeated Banks, and fell silent from sheer weight of sorrow. "At least you'll let me go with you to the station?" he said at last, after a long pause in which he had been visited by one of those acute flashes of sympathy which are to the heart what intuition is to the intellect.

"Why, of course," responded Ordway, more touched by the simple request than he had been even by the greater loyalty. "You may do that, Banks, and I'll thank you for it. And now go back to Tappahannock," he added, "I must take the midday train and there are a few preparations I've still to make."

"But where will you go?" demanded Banks, swinging round again after he had turned from him.

"Where?" repeated Ordway blankly, and he added indifferently, "I hadn't thought."

"The midday train goes west," said Banks.

"Then, I'll go west. It doesn't matter."

Banks had already started off, when turning back suddenly, he caught Ordway's hand and wrung it in a grip that hurt. Then without speaking again, he hurried breathlessly in the direction from which he had come.

A few steps beyond the cross-roads Ordway saw through the heavy foliage the light in the dining-room at Cedar Hill. Then as he entered the avenue, he lost sight of it again, until he had rounded the curve that swept up to the front porch. At his knock Emily opened the door, with a lamp held in her hand, and he saw her face, surrounded by dim waves of hair, shining pale and transparent in the glimmering circle of light. As he followed her into the dining-room, he realised that after the family had gone upstairs to bed, she had sat at her sewing under the lamp and waited for his knock. At the knowledge a sense of comfort, of homeliness came over him, and he felt all at once that his misery was not so great as he had believed it to be a moment ago.

"May I get you something?" she asked, placing the lamp upon the table and lowering the wick that the flame might not shine on his pallid and haggard face.

He shook his head; then as she turned from him toward the hearth, he followed her and stood looking down at the smouldering remains of a wood fire. Her work-basket and a pile of white ruffles which she had been hemming were on the table, but moved by a feeling of their utter triviality in the midst of a tragedy she vaguely understood, she swept them hurriedly into a chair, and came over to lay her hand upon his arm.

"What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" she asked. Taking her hand from his sleeve, he held it for an instant in his grasp, as if the pressure of her throbbing palm against his revived some living current under the outer deadness that enveloped him.

"I am going away from Tappahannock to-morrow, Emily," he said.

"To-morrow?" she repeated, and laid her free hand upon his shoulder with a soothing, motherly gesture – a gesture which changed their spiritual relations to those of a woman and a child.

"A man asked me three questions to-night," he went on quietly, yet in a voice which seemed to feel a pang in every word it uttered. "He asked me if my name was Daniel Smith, and I answered – no."

As he hesitated, she lifted her face and smiled at him, with a smile which he knew to be the one expression of love, of comprehension, that she could offer. It was a smile which a mother might have bent upon a child that was about to pass under the surgeon's knife, and it differed from tears only in that it offered courage and not weakness.

"He asked me if I had been in prison before I came to Tappahannock – and I answered – yes."

His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting his gaze from her hands he looked straight into her wide-open eyes. The smile which she had turned to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen there in the cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were the only things about her which seemed alive, and they appeared to him now not as eyes but as thoughts made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed the hand which enclosed her own.

"I still believe," she said, and looked into his face.

"But it is true," he replied slowly.

"But it is not the whole truth," she answered, "and for that reason it is half a lie."

"Yes, it is not the whole truth," he repeated, in his effort to catch something of her bright courage.

"Why should they judge you by that and by nothing else?" she demanded with passion. "If that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock true also?"

"To you – to you," he answered, "but to-morrow everything will be forgotten about me except the fact that because I had been in prison, I have lived a lie."

"You are wrong – oh, believe me, you are wrong," she said softly, while her tears broke forth and streamed down her white face.

"No," he returned patiently, as if weighing her words in his thoughts, "I am right, and my life here is wasted now from the day I came. All that I do from this moment will be useless. I must go away."

"But where?" she questioned passionately, as Banks had questioned before her.

"Where?" he echoed, "I don't know – anywhere. The midday train goes west."

"And what will you do in the new place?" she asked through her tears.

He shook his head as if the question hardly concerned him.

"I shall begin again," he answered indifferently at last.

She was turning hopelessly from him, when her eyes fell upon a slip of yellow paper which Beverly had placed under a vase on the mantel, and drawing it out, she glanced at the address before giving it into Ordway's hands.

"This must have come for you in the afternoon," she said, "I did not see it."

Taking the telegram from her, he opened it slowly, and read the words twice over.

    "Your father died last night. Will you come home?
    "Richard Ordway."

BOOK THIRD

THE LARGER PRISON

CHAPTER I

The Return To Life

AS the train rounded the long curve, Ordway leaned from the window and saw spread before him the smiling battlefields that encircled Botetourt. From the shadow and sunlight of the distance a wind blew in his face, and he felt suddenly younger, fresher, as if the burden of the years had been lifted from him. The Botetourt to which he was returning was the place of his happiest memories; and closing his eyes to the landscape, he saw Lydia standing under the sparrows that flew out from the ivied walls of the old church. He met her pensive gaze; he watched her faint smile under the long black feather in her hat.

"His death was unexpected," said a strange voice in his ear, "but for the past five years I've seen that he was a failing man."

The next instant his thoughts had scattered like startled birds, and without turning his head, he sat straining his ears to follow the conversation that went on, above the roar of the train, in the seat behind him.