Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries (16 page)

“And what have you come to see me about?” said Dillworth; “I knew that it was for something you came.” And he laughed a little, dry, nervous laugh. I had observed this laugh breaking now and then into his talk and I had observed his uneasy manner ever since we came. There was something below the surface in this man that made him nervous and it was from that under thing that this laugh broke out.

“It is about your lawsuit,” said Abner. “And what about it?”

“This,” said Abner: “That your suit has reached the point where you are not the man to have charge of it.”

“Abner,” cried Dillworth, “what do you mean?”

“I will tell you,” said Abner. “I have followed the progress of this suit, and you have won it. On any day that you call it up the judge will enter a decree, and yet for a year it has stood there on the docket and you have not called it up. Why?”

Dillworth did not reply, but again that dry, nervous laugh broke out.

“I will answer for you, Dillworth,” said Abner—“you are afraid!” Abner extended his arm and pointed out over the pasture lands, growing dimmer in the gathering twilight, across the river, across the wood to where lights moved and twinkled.

“Yonder,” said Abner, “lives Lemuel Arnold; he is the only man who is a defendant in your suit, the others are women and children. I know Lemuel Arnold. I intended to stop this night with him until I thought of you. I know the stock he comes from. When Hamilton was buying scalps on the Ohio, and haggling with the Indians over the price to be paid for those of the women and the children, old Hiram Arnold walked into the conference: ‘Scalp-buyer,' he said, ‘buy my scalps; there are no little ones among them,' and he emptied out on to the table a bagful of scalps of the king's soldiers. That man was Lemuel Arnold's grandfather and that is the blood he has. You would call him violent and dangerous, Dillworth, and you would be right. He is violent and he is dangerous. I know what he
told you before the courthouse door. And, Dillworth, you are afraid of that. And so you sit here looking out over these rich lands and coveting them in your heart—and are afraid to take them.”

The night was descending, and I sat on a step of the great porch, in the shadow, forgotten by these two men. Dillworth did not move, and Abner went on.

“That is bad for you, Dillworth, to sit here and brood over a thing like this. Plans will come to you that include ‘hell's work'; this is no thing for you to handle. Put it into my hands.”

The man cleared his throat with that bit of nervous laugh.

“How do you mean—into your hands?” he said.

“Sell me the lawsuit,” replied Abner.

Dillworth sat back in his chair at that and covered his jaw with his hand, and for a good while he was silent.

“But it is these lands I want, Abner, not the money for them.”

“I know what you want,” said Abner, “and I will agree to give you a proportion of all the lands that I recover in the suit.”

“It ought to be a large proportion, then, for the suit is won.”

“As large as you like,” said Abner.

Dillworth got up at that and walked about the porch. One could tell the two things that were moving in his mind: That Abner was, in truth, the man to carry the thing through—he stood well before the courts and he was not afraid; and the other thing—How great a proportion of the lands could he demand? Finally he came back and stood before the table.

“Seven-eighths then. Is it a bargain?”

“It is,” said Abner. “Write out the contract.”

A Negro brought foolscap paper, ink, pens, and a candle and set them on the table. Dillworth wrote, and when he had finished he signed the paper and made his seal with a flourish of the pen after his signature. Then he handed the contract to Abner across the table.

Abner read it aloud, weighing each legal term and every lawyer's phrase in it. Dillworth had knowledge of such things and he wrote with skill. Abner folded the contract carefully and put it into his pocket, then he got a silver dollar out of his leather wallet and flung it on to the table, for the paper read: “In consideration of one dollar cash in hand paid, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged.” The coin struck hard and spun on the oak board. “There,” he said, “is your silver. It is the money that Judas was paid in and, like that first payment to Judas, it is all you'll get.”

Dillworth got on his feet. “Abner,” he said, “what do you drive at now?”

“This,” replied Abner: “I have bought your lawsuit; I have paid you for it, and it belongs to me. The terms of that sale are written down and signed. You are to receive a portion of what I recover; but if I recover nothing you can receive nothing.”

“Nothing?” Dillworth echoed.

“Nothing!” replied Abner.

Dillworth put his big hands on the table and rested his body on them; his head drooped below his shoulders, and he looked at Abner across the table.

“You mean—you mean—”

“Yes,” said Abner, “that is what I mean. I shall dismiss this suit.”

“Abner,” the other wailed, “this is ruin—these lands—these rich lands!” And he put out his arms, as toward something that one loves. “I have been a fool. Give me back my paper.” Abner arose.

“Dillworth,” he said, “you have a short memory. You said that a man ought to suffer for his lack of care, and you shall suffer for yours. You said that pity was fantastic, and I find it fantastic now.
You said that you would take what the law gives you; well, so shall I.”

The sniveling creature rocked his big body grotesquely in his chair.

“Abner,” he whined, “why did you come here to ruin me?”

“I did not come to ruin you,” said Abner. “I came to save you. But for me you would have done a murder.”

“Abner,” the man cried, “you are mad. Why should I do a murder?”

“Dillworth,” replied Abner, “there is a certain commandment prohibited, not because of the evil in it, but because of the thing it leads to—because there follows it—I use your own name, Dillworth, ‘hell's work.' This afternoon you tried to kill Lemuel Arnold from an ambush.”

Terror was on the man. He ceased to rock his body. He leaned forward, staring at Abner, the muscles of his face flabby.

“Did you see me?”

“No,” replied Abner, “I did not.”

The man's body seemed, at that, to escape from some hideous pressure. He cried out in relief, and his voice was like air wheezing from the bellows.

“It's a lie! a lie! a lie!”

I saw Abner look hard at the man, but he could not strike a thing like that.

“It's the truth,” he said, “you are the man; but when I stood in the thicket with your weapon in my hand I did not know it, and when I came here I did not know it. But I knew that this ambush was the work of a coward, and you were the only coward that I could think of. No,” he said, “do not delude yourself—that was no proof. But it was enough to bring me here. And the proof? I found it in this
house. I will show it to you. But before I do that, Dillworth, I will return to you something that is yours.”

He put his hand into his pocket, took out a score of buckshot and dropped them on the table. They clattered off and rolled away on the floor.

“And that is how I saved you from murder, Dillworth. Before I put your gun back into the hollow log I drew all the charge in it except the powder.”

He advanced a step nearer to the table.

“Dillworth,” he said, “a little while ago I asked you a question that you could not answer. I asked you what lands were included in the notice of sale for delinquent taxes printed in that county newspaper. Half of the newspaper had been torn off, and with it the other half of that notice. And you could not answer. Do you remember that question, Dillworth? Well, when I asked it of you I had the answer in my pocket. The missing part of that notice was the wadding over the buckshot!”

He took a crumpled piece of newspaper out of his pocket and joined it to the other half lying before Dillworth on the table.

“Look,” he said, “how the edges fit!”

I was about to follow my Uncle Abner into the garden when at a turn of the hedge, I stopped. A step or two beyond me in the sun, screened by a lattice of vines, was a scene that filled me full of wonder. Abner was standing quite still in the path, and a girl was clinging to his arm, with her face buried against his coat. There was no sound, but the girl's hands trembled and her shoulders were convulsed with sobs.

Whenever I think of pretty women, even now, I somehow always begin with Betty Randolph, and yet, I cannot put her before the eye, for all the memories. She remains in the fairy-land of youth, and her description is with the poets; their extravagances intrude and possess me, and I give it up.

I cannot say that a woman is an armful of apple blossoms, as they do, or as white as milk, and as playful as a kitten. These are happy collocations of words and quite descriptive of her, but they are not mine. Nor can I draw her in the language of a civilization to which she does not belong—one of wheels and spindles with its own type; superior, no doubt, but less desirable, I fancy. The age that grew its women in romance and dowered them with poetic fancies was not so impracticable as you think. It is a queer world; those who put their faith in the plow are rewarded by the plow, and those who put their faith in miracles are rewarded by miracles.

I remained in the shelter of the hedge in some considerable wonder. We had come to pay our respects to this young woman on her approaching marriage, and to be received like this was somewhat beyond our expectations. There could be nothing in this marriage on which to found a tragedy of tears. It was a love match if ever there was one.

Edward Duncan was a fine figure of a man; his lands adjoined, and he had ancestors enough for Randolph. He stood high in the hills, but I did not like him. You will smile at that, seeing what I have written of Betty Randolph, and remembering how, at ten, the human heart is desperately jealous.

The two had been mated by the county gossips from the cradle, and had lived the prophecy. The romance, too, had got its tang of denial to make it sharper. The young man had bought his lands and builded his house, but he must pay for them before he took his bride in, Randolph said, and he had stood by that condition.

There had been some years of waiting, and Randolph had been stormed. The debt had been reduced, but a mortgage remained, until now, by chance, it had been removed, and the gates of Paradise were opened. Edward Duncan had a tract of wild land in the edge of Maryland which his father had got for a song at a judicial sale. He had sold this land, he said, to a foreign purchaser, and so got the money to clear off his debt. He had written to Betty, who was in Baltimore at the time, and she had hurried back with frocks and furbelows. The day was set, we had come to see how happy she would be, and here she was clinging to my Uncle Abner's arm and crying like her heart would break.

It was some time before the girl spoke, and Abner stood caressing her hair, as though she were a little child. When the paroxysms of tears was over she told him what distressed her, and I heard the story, for the turn of the hedge was beside them, and I could have touched the girl with my hand. She took a worn ribbon from around her neck and held it out to Abner. There was a heavy gold cross slung to it on a tiny ring. I knew this cross, as every one did; it had been her mother's, and the three big emeralds set in it were of the few fine gems in the county. They were worth five thousand dollars, and had been passed down from the divided heirlooms of an English grandmother. I knew what the matter was before Betty Randolph said it. The emeralds were gone. The cross lying in her hand was bare.

She told the story in a dozen words. The jewels had been gone for some time, but her father had not known it until today. She had hoped he would never know, but by accident he had found it out. Then he had called an inquisition, and sat down to discover who had done the robbery. And here it was that Betty Randolph's greatest grief came in. The loss of the emeralds was enough; but to have her old Mammy Liza, who had been the only mother that she could remember, singled out and interrogated for the criminal, was too much to be borne. Her father was now in his office proceeding with the outrage. Would my Uncle Abner go and see him before he broke her heart?

Abner took the cross and held it in his hand. He asked a question or two, but, on the whole, he said very little, which seemed strange to me, with the matter to clear up. How long had the emeralds been missing? And she replied that they had been in the cross before her trip to Baltimore, and missing at her return. She had not taken the cross on the journey. It had remained among her possessions in her room. She did not know when she had seen it on her return.

And she began once more to cry, and her dainty mouth to tremble, and the big tears to gather in her brown eyes.

Abner promised to go in and brave Randolph at his inquisition, and bring Mammy Liza out. He bade Betty walk in the garden until he returned, and she went away comforted.

But Abner did not at once go in. He remained for some moments standing there with the cross in his hand; then, to my surprise, he turned about and went back the way that he had come. I had barely time to get out of his way, for he walked swiftly along the path to the gate, and down to the stable. I followed, for I wondered why he went here instead of to the house, as he had promised. He crossed before the tables and entered a big shed where the plows and farm tools were kept, the scythes hung up, and the corn hoes. The shed was of huge logs, roofed with clapboards, and open at each end.

I lost a little time in making a detour around the stable, but when I looked into the shed between a crack of the logs, my Uncle Abner was sitting before the big grindstone, turning it with his foot, and very delicately holding the cross on the edge of the stone. He paused and examined his work, and then continued. I could not understand what he was at. Why had he come here, and why did he grind the cross on the stone? At any rate, he presently stopped, looked about until he found a piece of old leather, and again sat down to rub the cross, as though to polish what he had ground.