Newspaper Page Text
ran
|H shucks and fiddlesticks, Charles,”
I Freeman hurried to say, “you forget
| I am an officer of the law and that
I’ve got ’er abide by hits directions,
and carry ’em out to the letter, er I’ll get it
in the neck, but we’ll talk about that er’gin.
You’ve got some comp’ny come to see you,
what I’m sure you’ll be proud to see.”
“That altogether depends on who it is. I’ve
been spending the time by myself and I guess
I can keep on. I don’t know of anybody I’d
care to see now, except my mother and Isabel
and I know it ain’t neither one of them,” said
Charles with a cold, indignant tone that boded
no good to his visitors and was not calculat
ed to quiet the tumult of thought stirring
each heart.
“Who is it?” he asked with the same in
difference.
Although in speaking distance of his son,
Mr. Gurdon’s power of speech seemed as ut
terly gone from him as though he had been
really dumb, nor did his sister seem any more
willing to break the silence. Lifting the heavy
latch of the inner door from its socket as he
spoke, the sheriff replied: “Wa’al I believe
I’ll just let you see,” and grasping each of
them by the arm he pushed them into the dis
mal place, lighted only by its two small barred
windows with heavy wooden shutters, and
slamming the big door back with a quick mo
tion, he dropped the latch with all the noise
possible, as his boisterous laugh rang out
against the wall, “Thar now, I guess you are
all prisoners,” and he left them together.
“My gracious, Charles, is it really you, my
son?” said Mr. Gurdon, with an unfeigned
surprise and anxiety that was seconded by
Miss Gurdon’s, “Oh, Charles, how changed you
do look with all those whiskers and you are
so thin, too.”
But now an embarrassed as well as an omin
ous silence fell on them for Charles had step
ped back away from them with a quick motion
while he ignored the offer of his father’s hand
and stood like some wild animal at bay, await
ing its opportunity to spring on its enemy.
Drawing himself up to his full height and fold
ing his arms deliberately while he shifted his
eyes with a look of searching withering scorn
from one to the other that held them silent,
Charles seemed to be charming his victims
with all the power of the venomous serpent
whose spirit he had so long dealt out to
thoughtless humanity.
The father seemed to grow visibly older
and more haggard with each passing moment
as his son held him on this rack of silent tor
ture, while his aunt writing under the accus
ing light of his dark eyes, essayed to break
the silence, only to be stopped b ythe “charm
ers” lifted hand. The lowering of this once
brawny arm brought a blow from which the
father never recovered. The arm had grown
so flabby by the more than two month’s inac
tiveness and the severe attack of almost pneu
monia which had left its trail in frequent
coughing spells, one of which came on just
now, that had its lowering meant a physical
blow its effect would scarcely have been felt
and would have been far more easily outlived
than was the memory of that gesture of vehe-
CHAPTER XXIV.
A GIRL OF THE OZARKS
THE GOLDEN AGE FOR WEEK OF JUNE 11, 1914
By Elizabeth Montgomery Summers.
ment disgust, anger and accusation, folowed
as it was by the equally accusing attack of
coughing.
Controlling himself with great effort,
Charles cut short the cough, as he said with
all the force and sarcasm possible, “Are you
satisfied? Do you think the name of Gur
don and the ‘royal blood of the family’ with
which you two lashed the sweet spirit of my
mother into subjection until she became a
mere slave in her own home and with which
you inflated my boyish brain, pumped me full
of foolish pride, has been sufficiently proven
to the world, do you?”
Miss Gurdon, forgetting her purpose, since
she was included in the charge, became sud
denly very solicitous about her brother. “Oh,
Charles, how can you speak so to your suffer
ing father and your aunt who has helped to
raise you. I have always tried to warn you —”
“Stop your religious cant. It is my time
to talk,” he cried as he threw out his hand
with a greater force than before. “I will have
none of it. I have had nothing to do but think
and suffer these past weeks that have grown
into months and I have done much of it. De
serted because of an imaginary family name
which had long ago lost its prestige, and that
too by the father that was responsible for my
act more than any one else because of the
terrible double life he was living and the dam
nable stuff he was poisoning my brain with,
you can hardly think that my thoughts have
been extraordinarily kind or gentle.
Do you see these bits of paper?” he asked
harshly, turning to Miss Gurdon. “These are
parts of one of your tracts which I tore to
pieces and stamped under my feet and then be
cause there was nothing else to do, placed
them back together two days later. The first
words on it are, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth
that shall he also read.’ That’s some of your
scripture, ain’t it?” and he took a step nearer
to hear as though he meant to grasp her by the
shoulders and thinking of himself, stepped
back still farther from them as if he was
afraid of contamination. “It seems some of
us have been reaping, but them that needed it
most have got the least,” is my opinion. Then
hurrying on without giving her time to an
swer he added, “From the very first moment
that I can remember of you coming into our
home it has meant an important ruling over
my mother as though she had been a servant
and an effort to make her two children feel
that their mother was not as good as their
father; that there was something connected
with her family that made her unworthy of
her children’s love or confidence, and I am
ashamed to say that having so much of the
Gurdon blood in me I, too, came to feel my
mother was little less than a slave.”
He paused for a brief moment and turned
his eyes, dilated with intense feeling, on his
father as he continued, “Between you, you
crushed the life just about out of the mother
of your children, boasting of your aristocratic
English blood and demanding of her a ser
vant’s obedience, playing lord over us all while
you drilled into your only son the teaching
that it was right to defy the law for the sake
of money, that it was right to use them poor
ignorant mountaineers to make money for
you, yet they weren’t fit to make friends of
and that a Gurdon should have anything he
wanted at any cost.”
“Charles,” broke in Mr. Gurdon, goaded to
speech more perhaps by the reference to the
“double life” of which he believed his sister
ignorant than anything else, “there are some
things which I think you might spare me.”
There was much of the “Gurdon sternness” in
his tone and yet there was also an appeal of
suffering that Charles had not expected.
“Do you imagine that I have passed through
all these days and nights that seem to have no
ending without suffering any?” he asked with
more humility than Charles had ever seen him
show, and yet in the depths of his own misery
Charles could not feel the need of giving quar
ter. He had not told them half of those things
that all these weeks, day after day, had writ
ten themselves out in his bitter selfish heart.
“You have not spared me one single pain
that it was in your power to inflict,” he re
plied bitterly. “You did not spare mother all
those years when you could have made life
happy for her. You did not spare poor Isabel
when you thought it in your power to barter
her off like so much cattle for more money;
you have left me here so far as you knew
without word of any kind of what was going
on in the home. I don’t care what I have
done, I wasn’t a dog,” he snarled with the
fierceness of one regardless of his protest to
the contrary.
Mr. Gurdon threw out his hand as if to
ward off a blow and started to speak, but
Miss Gurdon stopped him by saying, “Brother,
I don’t see that any good can come of our
visit if Charles expects to keep up this kind of
railing. I had meant to tell you a part of
these things for I learned,” she said with an
air of subdued triumph, “about your becoming
a common mountain stiller the same day Tom
was brought over and that was more than I
could stand. I decided at once that I would
go back to dear old England where I could
die with God’s people, but I wanted to bring
you here and in the presence of Charles warn
you both again of the ‘wrath to come,’ and
then beg you to do something to get Charles
out of his trouble, but since he has accused
me so harshly it seems he needs to stay in
his fiery furnace of trial awhile longer,” and
she lifted her head with arrogant pride and
turned toward the door, evidently thinking
she had put an end to the interview and come
off with at least some show of victory.
(Continued on page 14.)
OUR SUMMER OFFER.
FIVE MONTHS TRIAL FOR 50 CENTS.
If you get this copy of THE GOLDEN
AGE as a sample and you like it well enough
to want to see more of it—and we believe
you will—send us 50 cents for a trial sub
scription for five months, or fifteen months
for the yearly price of $1.50. You will find
that THE GOLDEN AGE brings you some
thing inspiring that no other paper brings.
COME ON!
3