Teeftallow/Chapter 44

A PAINFUL uncertainty filled Abner Teeftallow as to whether or not he should attend the funeral services of his former employer and of his, perhaps, former friend. The young man was torn between a desire to be with Adelaide in this moment of great shock that had stricken her life, and his fealty to his foster-parents. Mixed pitifully with these emotions was a fear of what the villagers would say about him. In his shaken condition he dreaded the tyranny of the massed spite and unintelligence of the village; the rancour of the spiritual mob.

Mrs. Sandage no doubt divined her foster-son's dilemma, for presently she came to his door and looked in.

"Abner," she said in a colourless voice, "I believe I would go on over to the church if I was you. Adelaide—"

She broke off, pressing her lips together and disarranging her teeth, while her eyes filled with tears. Then she whispered, "You—haven't heard anything from—Florence?"

She meant news concerning the bloodhounds.

Abner shook his head silently and stood looking at her without any words to offer; she turned helplessly back to her own room.

Mrs. Sandage's advice decided the man. He finished putting on the serge suit which he kept for Sundays, and presently went out into the wintry sunshine of the street.

The keenest wound in his heart was for Adelaide. He knew her passion, her idolatry of her father, and now—this terrible end. . . . His chest quivered and the needle of repressed sobs stuck in his throat.

As for his own wrongs at the hands of Railroad Jones, if indeed he had been wronged, they dwindled to nothing at ​all in the face of the tragedy. The youth held no grievance against the magnate. And, it seemed to Abner, no longer did Miss Haly. The wreck which the financier had made of the Sandages and of Abner's fortunes had been so terribly atoned that nothing was left in Abner's heart except pity and tears. And these were mostly for Adelaide. The tears he stoically repressed, walking along with a strained face and compressed lips, because he was a hillman.

From every direction the villagers were gathering at the Jones home. Some came in motors, some drove horses and buggies ready to ride in the procession. A great many of the poorer folk came to walk in the line.

A feeling of leaderlessness, of being abandoned to their own futilities, filled the whole village. As Abner approached the manor where the dead lay in state, he instinctively framed the thought of the stricken town, "What can we do now?"

A hand took gentle hold of Abner's arm, as men sympathize with each other in the presence of death. The hillman looked around and saw Mr. Ditmas.

"It's a great pity, it's a great tragedy," said the engineer in a hushed voice, and after a few moments he added, "It was inevitable, I suppose."

Abner could not say anything. He bit the corner of his trembling lips and walked on under Mr. Ditmas's hand.

"The work on the railroad has stopped, of course," continued the engineer, "thoroughly disorganized. I doubt if any one goes on with it."

"I—I reckon not," assented Abner unsteadily, thinking of Adelaide.

After some moments, the engineer said, "We had a very bad thing happen down at camp, too, last night."

"What was that?"

"The train hit old man Belshue; the last train in; probably the last train that will ever run."

"Did it kill him?" asked Abner, looking at the Northerner.

​"Oh, yes—the way it happened—I doubt if it was ac—" he broke off his sentence, and Abner did not press the conclusion. Mr. Belshue's death, too, dwindled beside the great loss of Railroad Jones.

At the house Abner finally did not dare go in and present himself to Adelaide. He was too nearly in the opposite camp to do that. He was in the opposite camp. He stood outside the Jones gate with a great crowd which had filled the yard and overflowed into the street. He wished from his soul he could take Adelaide in his arms and tell her how he grieved for her, but—that was impossible.

He never saw Adelaide until the funeral procession came out of the manor, through the greak oaken doors. Adelaide and her mother came immediately behind the huge black-upholstered coffin. The pallbearers staggered under their burden. The mother and daughter were supported by other women of the village.

The undertaker, a tall man of professional solemnity, walked ahead, making a passage through the crowd to the black funeral car outside the gate.

Presently more men stepped up to help lift the coffin into the hearse. Adelaide and her mother got into a car behind the hearse. The other cars and buggies began arranging themselves down the street, the drivers directing one another in low voices and with unaccustomed patience and charity.

Abner watched Adelaide's car move away, up the rocky lane toward the cemetery; the head of a long, slow procession through the cold sunshine.

From across the valley in which the village lay came the first solitary clang of a tolling bell. A long pause, and another church bell from another section of the hamlet struck its note. All of the poor churches in the village tolled for the passing of the magnate. Somehow, under this melacholy tolling, Abner's heart broke; the pity, the helplessness, the hopelessness of it all! His sobs squeezed up past his tight aching throat. He tried desperately to control ​himself, but at last walked in the end of the long line, sobbing at intervals, and once he gasped in a whisper to his companion,

"Y-you m-must excuse me, M-Mr. Ditmas. . . ."

The Reverend Blackman conducted the funeral services of the financier. In the silence of the crowd, which was touched here and there by a muffled sob, the evangelist said:

"My brothers and sisters, we stand to-day by this open grave to put away, in the eternal peace of God, a man whose life-long thought has been for the betterment of his country and his countrymen. The hairs of my head could not number the enterprises he has brought into our midst, or the charitable acts he has performed. No poor man ever appealed to him in vain for aid. No beggar was too low for his charity; no cause too remote for his sympathy.

"God, in his wisdom, my brother, has seen fit to remove David Jones from his earthly labours. A noble, unselfish life here on earth is ended. To this sad dust we must say our last farewells; but, thank God, we Christians know that in Heaven our friend and leader faces the golden sunrise of an eternal day. Dust to dust; ashes to ashes; and the soul back to the God who gave it."

Abner heard the scrape of spades and the soft spreading of the earth over the coffin. Renewed choking sobs burst forth from the family and mourners at the edge of the grave.

At some distance away, in another corner of the cemetery among the melancholy cedars, two Negroes were digging another grave. This next burial was timed to take place an hour after the financier was interred. During the ceremonies for David Jones, the two black men stood in the long rectangular hole they were digging with their poor hats off and pick and shovel at rest.

The grave they dug was not oriented east and west as were the other graves in the cemetery. It was turned at an angle to denote that it was the final resting place of a self-slayer. After the great crowd had flowed slowly back down ​the rocky lane, a few onlookers, out of a sort of morbid curiosity, remained and drew near this second grave. After a while two horses pulled an old hearse to this place and behind it, in a buggy, a labourer from the railroad camp brought a girl with a baby in her lap. Three other labourers came in a wagon to help with the work of the burial.

There was no ceremony; there was no priest. The girl with her baby got out of the buggy and stood staring, dry-eyed, as the men lowered and covered the box.

Abner went up to the woman with a strange shaken feeling; whether of grief or not he hardly knew.

"Nessie," he said in a low tone.

She looked around at him with solemn, impassive face.

"Yes, Abner."

"I—I heard of yore trouble, Nessie."

"Yes," nodded the girl.

The baby in her arms began to whimper and she soothed it by bending her head down to it.

"Are you going to keep on living at the old Coltrane place, Nessie?" asked Abner after a pause.

"There is nowhere else for me to go."

The teamster stood torn by some vague irresolution which he felt but could not understand. Nessie turned a little away from him and gave her bosom to the whimpering baby.

A profound and entirely unforeseen emotion filled Abner—a feeling of unity with this mother deeper than any he had ever felt even in his most tender moments with her. Without forethought he stammered out, "I—I'll come over in a day or two an' see if I can help you in any way, Nessie."

She made no answer, but stood perfectly still with the baby at her breast, as if she sensed the silent commotion of his heart. The labourers finished filling and mounding the grave.

For some time after the death of Railroad Jones, Abner remained in Lanesburg with the Sandages, waiting to do what he could when some legal action was taken against ​Jim. But no indictment was ever brought. The original charge of conspiracy to embezzle the county funds remained on the sheriff's blotter, but the revenge of the hillman on Railroad Jones bespoke his innocence on that count; so by a quirk so characteristic of the hills, public opinion exonerated Sandage of theft because he had committed murder, and excused him of murder because the villagers felt a certain wild justice in his vengeance. Eventually the tragedy would dwindle in the memory of the village until it merely marked a date in county history—the winter Jim Sandage killed Railroad Jones—as many another homicide had done.

During his stay at the Sandages', Abner Teeftallow lived in a state of painful indecision in regard to Nessie Belshue and his little natural daughter. He had told Nessie at the funeral that he would come over and see her in a day or two, but he never had. The condemnation of the village lay over such a course, and Abner was growing chary of opposing it. He began considering his good name; his reputation. . . . He was growing older rapidly these days; being crushed into the village mould; hardening into a villager no matter what generous impulses he may once have had.

On the other hand, after the murder of Railroad Jones, Abner knew that Adelaide was not for him. He had lost both women at a stroke, and an endless emptiness filled his days. He could not contemplate any other girl, so the only real objective in the life of an ordinary hillman, marriage and a family, had been taken from him. Any other career, some constructive work to engage his life with its cold sufficiency, was so remote from him as never to enter his comprehension. Even the simple massing together of property was too abstract an undertaking for the poorhouse boy. Besides, he had had money, and it had brought him boredom. He thought he would go West—to Texas.

One day he heard that Mrs. Jones and Adelaide were going to move away from Lanesburg. The news gave him a kind of shock. It seemed impossible that Lanesburg would no longer contain the Jones family; Railroad had dominated ​the village for such a long time, and now for there to be no Joneses at all . . . and then the thought of never seeing Adelaide again. It screwed Abner's courage to the point of sending the girl a note asking to call. She answered kindly enough, and when he went to the Jones manor he found all the furniture packed for shipment, the carpets baled, even the electric fixtures in process of being removed.

Adelaide was in black. She and her mother were going away, she said. She would find her mother a home, then she herself meant to go to India. When Abner asked an amazed question, she explained with that complete frankness and simplicity which had attracted him from the very first time he saw her. She said while she was in the seminary at Nashville she had fallen in love with a man who was going to India, a theological student. Her position at that time, her feeling of abhorrence for her lover's work as a missionary, led to their separation, but he had made her promise if God should ever make her feel the truth she would come to him.

"And, Abner," she concluded, "if this isn't the work of God, if—if this terrible sorrow isn't—isn't the work of God—" She broke off with tears in her eyes, compressing her lips to steady them.

"Do—do you still love him?" asked Abner, aghast.

"I—don't know . . . I did love him . . . Life twists you about so . . . Anyway, I couldn't endure just a village existence now, Abner, with you . . . or Buckingham Sharp . . . or any one at all. I must have something great somewhere." And her shadowed eyes took on a momentary burning that reminded Abner of Railroad Jones.

This last resignation of her was the last and the sharpest pang Adelaide ever gave the hillman. When he lost her, even Abner realized that he was losing a high brave soul; self-centred, no doubt, journeying toward strange and perhaps bitter goals, but courageous and somehow generous.

Before he went away Adelaide suggested that he marry ​Nessie Belshue. Abner had no such crystal outlook as the girl. He coloured slightly and mumbled forth the village opinion about "illicit love."

Adelaide stared at him in amazement.

"Illicit love!" she cried. "Why, Abner, what earthly difference does that make? Love is love. Licit may be more convenient than illicit, but the divine thing is love. Why, look at my dear, dear father. What a man, what a glorious man! And he was, as people say, an illegitimate!" And Adelaide's eyes shone like altar lamps lighted to the memory of her great lost idol.

When he left her, filled with Adelaide's warmth and courage, Abner set out walking boldly toward the old Coltrane place. As he hurried toward Nessie his heart beat faster and faster. He remembered with a kind of melting pang the curl of a little rose-leaf baby's palm around his thumb. He strode on with a great rapture dawning in his heart as he set his face against the wintry rock-bound hills.