Abner Daniel: A Novel

HE young man stood in the field road giving directions to a robust negro who was ploughing the corn, which, in parallel rows, stretched on to the main road a quarter of a mile distant. The negro placed the point of his ploughshare a few inches from the first stalk of corn, wound the line around his wrist, and clucked to his horse. With a jangling jerk of the trace-chains the animal lunged ahead: the polished ploughshare cut into the mellow soil and sped onward, curling the gray earth like shavings, and uprooting and burying the tenacious crab-grass and succulent purslane.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly, but the atmosphere had dropped a dim veil over the near-by mountain. Even the two-storied farm-house, with its veranda and white columns, to which the field road led up a gradual slope, showed only its outlines. However, Alan Bishop, as he steadied his gaze upon the house, saw the figure of an elderly woman come out of the gate and with a quick step hurry down to him. It was his mother; she was tall and angular, and had high cheek-bones and small blue eyes. She had rather thin gray hair, which was wound into a knot behind her head, and over it she wore only a small red breakfast shawl which she held in place by one of her long hands.

“Alan,” she said, panting from her brisk walk, “I want you to come to the house right off. Mr. Trabue has come to see yore pa again an' I can't do a thing with 'im.”

“Well, what does he want with him?” asked the young man. His glance was on the ploughman and his horse. They had turned the far end of the corn-row and were coming back, only the nodding head of the animal being visible beyond a little rise.

“He's come to draw up the papers fer another land trade yore pa's makin'. He's the lawyer fer the Tompkins estate. Yore pa tried to buy the land a yeer ago, but it wasn't in shape to dispose of. Oh, Alan, don't you see he's goin' to ruin us with his fool notions? Folks all about are a-laughin' at him fer buyin' so much useless mountain-land. I'm powerful afeered his mind is wrong.”

“Well, mother, what could I do?” Alan Bishop asked impatiently. “You know he won't listen to me.”

“I reckon you can' t stop 'im,” sighed the woman, “but I wish you'd come on to the house. I knowed he was up to some 'n'. Ever'day fer the last week he's been ridin' up the valley an' rollin' and tumblin' at night an' chawin' ten times as much tobacco as he ort. Oh, he's goin' to ruin us! Brother Abner says he is buyin' beca'se he thinks it's goin' to advance in value, but sech property hain't advanced a speck sence I kin remember, an' is bein' sold ever' yeer fer tax money.”

“No, it's very foolish of him,” said the young man as the two turned towards the house. “Father keeps talking about the fine timber on such property, but it is entirely too far from a railroad ever to be worth anything. I asked Rayburn Miller about it and he told me to do all I could to stop father from investing, and you know he's as sharp a speculator as ever lived; but it's his money.”

There was a paling fence around the house, and the enclosure was alive with chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, and peafowls. In the sunshine on the veranda two pointers lay sleeping, but at the sound of the opening gate they rose, stretched themselves lazily, and gaped.

“They are in the parlor,” said Mrs. Bishop, as she whisked off her breakfast shawl. “Go right in, I 'll come in a minute. I want to see how Linda is makin' out with the churnin'. La! I feel like it's a waste o' time to do a lick o' work with him in thar actin' like a child. Ef we both go in together it 'll look like we've concocked somethin', but we must stop 'im ef we kin.”

Alan went into the parlor on the left of the wide, uncarpeted hall. The room had white plastered walls, but the ceiling was of boards planed by hand and painted sky blue. In one corner stood a very old piano with pointed, octagonal legs and a stool with hair-cloth covering. The fireplace was wide and high, and had a screen made of a decorated window-shade tightly pasted on a wooden frame. Old man Bishop sat near a window, and through his steel-framed nose-glasses was carefully reading a long document written on legal-cap paper. He paid no attention to the entrance of his son, but the lawyer, a short, fat man of sixty-five with thick black hair that fell below his coat-collar, rose and extended his hand.

“How's Alan?” he asked, pleasantly. “I saw you down in the field as I come along, but I couldn't catch your eye. You see I'm out after some o' your dad's cash. He's buying hisse'f rich. My Lord! if it ever does turn his way he 'll scoop in enough money to set you and your sister up for life. Folks tell me he owns mighty near every stick of timber-land in the Cohutta Valley, and what he has he got at the bottom figure.”

“If it ever turns his way,” said Alan; “but do you see any prospect of it's ever doing so, Mr. Trabue?” The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “I never bet on another man's trick, my boy, and I never throw cold water on the plans of a speculator. I used to when I was about your age, but I saw so many of 'em get rich by paying no attention to me that I quit right off. A man ought to be allowed to use his own judgment.” Old Bishop was evidently not hearing a word of this conversation, being wholly absorbed in studying the details of the deed before him. “I reckon it's all right,” he finally said. “You say the Tompkins children are all of age?”

“Yes, Effie was the youngest,” answered Trabue, “and she stepped over the line last Tuesday. There's her signature in black and white. The deed's all right. I don't draw up any other sort.”

Alan went to his father and leaned over him. “Father,” he said, softly, and yet with firmness, “I wish you'd not act hastily in this deal. You ought to consider mother's wishes, and she is nearly distracted over it.”

Bishop was angry. His massive, clean-shaven face was red. “I'd like to know what I'd consult her fer,” he said. “In a matter o' this kind a woman's about as responsible as a suckin' baby.”

Trabue laughed heartily. “Well, I reckon it's a good thing your wife didn't hear that or she'd show you whether she was responsible or not. I couldn't have got the first word of that off my tongue before my wife would 'a' knocked me clean through that wall.”

Alfred Bishop seemed not to care for levity during business hours, for he greeted this remark only with a frown. He scanned the paper again and said: “Well, ef thar's any flaw in this I reckon you 'll make it right.”

“Oh yes, I 'll make any mistake of mine good,” returned Trabue. “The paper's all right.”

“You see,” said Alan to the lawyer, “mother and I think father has already more of this sort of property than he can carry, and--”

“I wish you and yore mother'd let my business alone,” broke in Bishop, firing up again. “Trabue heer knows I've been worryin' 'im fer the last two months to get the property in salable shape. Do you reckon after he gets it that away I want to listen to yore two tongues a-waggin' in open opposition to it?”

Trabue rubbed his hands together. “It really don't make a bit of difference to me, Alan, one way or the other,” he said, pacifically. “I'm only acting as attorney for the Tompkins estate, and get my fee whether there's a transfer or not. That's where I stand in the matter.”

“But it's not whar I stand in it, Mr. Trabue,” said a firm voice in the doorway. It was Mrs. Bishop, her blue eyes flashing, her face pale and rigid. “I think I've got a right--and a big one--to have a say-so in this kind of a trade. A woman 'at 's stayed by a man's side fer thirty odd yeer an' raked an' scraped to he'p save a little handful o' property fer her two children has got a right to raise a rumpus when her husband goes crooked like Alfred has an' starts in to bankrupt 'em all jest fer a blind notion o' his'n.”

“Oh, thar you are!” said Bishop, lifting his eyes from the paper and glaring at her over his glasses. “I knowed I'd have to have a knock-down-an'-drag-out fight with you 'fore I signed my name, so sail in an' git it over. Trabue's got to ride back to town.”

“But whar in the name o' common-sense is the money to come from?” the woman hurled at her husband, as she rested one of her bony hands on the edge of the table and glared at him. “As I understand it, thar's about five thousand acres in this piece alone, an' yo're a-payin' a dollar a acre. Whar's it a-comin' from, I'd like to know? Whar's it to come from?”

Bishop sniffed and ran a steady hand over his short, gray hair. “You see how little she knows o' my business,” he said to the lawyer. “Heer she's raisin' the devil an' Tom Walker about the trade an' she don't so much as know whar the money's to come from.”

“How was I to know?” retorted the woman, “when you've been tellin' me fer the last six months that thar wasn't enough in the bank to give the house a coat o' fresh paint an' patch the barn roof.”

“You knowed I had five thousand dollars wuth o' stock in the Shoal River Cotton Mills, didn't you?” asked Bishop, defiantly, and yet with the manner of a man throwing a missile which he hoped would fall lightly.

“Yes, I knowed that, but--” The woman's eyes were two small fires burning hungrily for information beyond their reach.

“Well, it happens that Shoal stock is jest the same on the market as ready money, up a little to-day an' down to-morrow, but never varyin' more'n a fraction of a cent on the dollar, an' so the Tompkins heirs say they'd jest as lieve have it, an' as I'm itchin' to relieve them of the'r land, it didn't take us long to come together.”

If he had struck the woman squarely in the face, she could not have shown more surprise. She became white to the lips, and with a low cry turned to her son. “Oh, Alan, don't--don't let 'im do it, it's all we have left that we can depend on! It will ruin us!”

“Why, father, surely,” protested Alan, as he put his arm around his mother, “surely you can't mean to let go your mill investment which is paying fifteen per cent, to put the money into lands that may never advance in value and always be a dead weight on your hands! Think of the loss of interest and the taxes to be kept up. Father, you must listen to--”

“Listen to nothin',” thundered Bishop, half rising from his chair. “Nobody axed you two to put in. It's my business an' I'm a-goin' to attend to it. I believe I'm doin' the right thing, an' that settles it.”

“The right thing,” moaned the old woman, as she sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. “Mr. Trabue,” she went on, fiercely, “when that factory stock leaves our hands we won't have a single thing to our names that will bring in a cent of income. You kin see how bad it is on a woman who has worked as hard to do fer her children as I have. Mr. Bishop always said Adele, who is visitin' her uncle's family in Atlanta, should have that stock for a weddin'-gift, ef she ever married, an' Alan was to have the lower half of this farm. Now what would we have to give the girl--nothin' but thousands o' acres o' hills, mountains an' gulches full o' bear, wild-cats, and catamounts--land that it ud break any young couple to hold on to--much less put to any use. Oh, I feel perfectly sick over it.”