Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries Read online

  I was astonished when Abner turned the drove into this other road, but I said nothing, for I presently understood the reason for this change of plans. One could hardly accept the hospitality of a man when he had negligently stood by to see him murdered.

  In half a mile the road came out into the open. There was a big new house on a bit of rising land and, below, fields and meadows. I did not know the crossroad, but I knew this place. The man, Dillworth, who lived here had been sometime the clerk of the county court. He had got this land, it was said, by taking advantage of a defective record, and he had now a suit in chancery against the neighboring grazers for the land about him. He had built this great new house, in pride boasting that it would sit in the center of the estate that he would gain. I had heard this talked about—this boasting, and how one of the grazers had sworn before the courthouse that he would kill Dillworth on the day that the decree was entered. I knew in what esteem Abner held this man and I wondered that he should choose him to stay the night with.

  When we first entered the house and while we ate our supper Abner had very little to say, but after that, when we had gone with the man out on to the great porch that overlooked the country, Abner changed—I think it was when he picked up the county newspaper from the table. Something in this paper seized on his attention and he examined it with care. It was a court notice of the sale of lands for delinquent taxes, but the paper had been torn and only half of the article was there. Abner called our host’s attention to it.

  “Dillworth,” he said, “what lands are included in this notice?”

  “Are they not there?” replied the man.

  “No,” said Abner, “a portion of the newspaper is gone. It is torn off at a description of the Jenkins tract”—and he put his finger on the line and showed the paper to the man—“what lands follow after that?”

  “I do not remember the several tracts,” Dillworth answered, “but you can easily get another copy of the newspaper. Are you interested in these lands?”

  “No,” said Abner, “but I am interested in this notice.”

  Then he laid the newspaper on the table and sat down in a chair. And then it was that his silence left him and he began to talk.

  Abner looked out over the country. “This is fine pasture land,” he said.

  Dillworth moved forward in his chair. He was a big man with a bushy chestnut beard, little glimmering eyes and a huge body.

  “Why, Abner,” he said, “it is the very best land that a beef steer ever cropped the grass on.”

  “It is a corner of the lands that Daniel Davisson got in a grant from George the Third,” Abner continued. “I don’t know what service he rendered the crown, but the pay was princely—a man would do king’s work for an estate like this.”

  “King’s work he would do,” said Dillworth, “or hell’s work. Why, Abner, the earth is rich for a yard down. I saw old Hezekiah Davisson buried in it, and the shovels full of earth that the Negroes threw on him were as black as their faces, and the sod over that land is as clean as a woman’s hair. I was a lad then, but I promised myself that I would one day possess these lands.”

  “It is a dangerous thing to covet the possession of another,” said Abner. “King David tried it and he had to do—what did you call it, Dillworth?—‘hell’s work’.”

  “And why not,” replied Dillworth, “if you get the things you want by it?”

  “There are several reasons,” said Abner, “and one is that it requires a certain courage. Hell’s work is heavy work, Dillworth, and the weakling who goes about it is apt to fail.”

  Dillworth laughed. “King David didn’t fail, did he?”

  “He did not,” replied Abner; “but David, the son of Jesse, was not a coward.”

  “Well,” said Dillworth, “I shall not fail either. My hands are not trained to war like this, but they are trained to lawsuits.”

  “You got this wedge of land on which your house is built by a lawsuit, did you not?” said Abner.

  “I did,” replied Dillworth; “but if men do not exercise ordinary care they must suffer for that negligence.”

  “Well,” said Abner, “the little farmer who lived here on this wedge suffered enough for his. When you dispossessed him he hanged himself in his stable with a halter.”

  “Abner,” cried Dillworth, “I have heard enough about that. I did not take the man’s life. I took what the law gave me. If a man will buy land and not look up the title it is his own fault.”

  “He bought at a judicial sale,” said Abner, “and he believed the court would not sell him a defective title. He was an honest man, and he thought the world was honest.”

  “He thought wrong,” said Dillworth.

  “He did,” said Abner.

  “Well,” cried Dillworth, “am I to blame because there is a fool the less? Will the people never learn that the court does not warrant the title to the lands that it sells in a suit in chancery? The man who buys before the courthouse door buys a pig in a poke, and it is not the court’s fault if the poke is empty. The judge could not look up the title to every tract of land that comes into his court, nor could the title to every tract be judicially determined in every suit that involves it. To do that, every suit over land would have to be a suit to determine title and every claimant would have to be a party.”

  “What you say may be the truth,” said Abner, “but the people do not always know it.”

  “They could know it if they would inquire,” answered Dillworth; “why did not this man go before the judge?”

  “Well,” replied Abner, “he has gone before a greater Judge.” Abner leaned back in his chair and his fingers rapped on the table.

  “The law is not always justice,” he said. “Is it not the law that a man may buy a tract of land and pay down the price in gold and enter into the possession of it, and yet, if by inadvertence, the justice of the peace omits to write certain words into the acknowledgment of the deed, the purchaser takes no title and may be dispossessed of his lands?”

  “That is the law,” said Dillworth emphatically; “it is the very point in my suit against these grazers. Squire Randolph could not find his copy of Mayo’s Guide on the day that the deeds were drawn and so he wrote from memory.”

  Abner was silent for a moment.

  “It is the law,” he said, “but is it justice, Dillworth?”

  “Abner,” replied Dillworth, “how shall we know what justice is unless the law defines it?”

  “I think every man knows what it is,” said Abner.

  “And shall every man set up a standard of his own,” said Dillworth, “and disregard the standard that the law sets up? That would be the end of justice.”

  “It would be the beginning of justice,” said Abner, “if every man followed the standard that God gives him.”

  “But, Abner,” replied Dillworth, “is there a court that could administer justice if there were no arbitrary standard and every man followed his own?”

  “I think there is such a court,” said Abner.

  Dillworth laughed.

  “If there is such a court it does not sit in Virginia.”

  Then he settled his huge body in his chair and spoke like a lawyer who sums up his case.

  “I know what you have in mind, Abner, but it is a fantastic notion. You would saddle every man with the thing you call a conscience, and let that ride him. Well, I would unsaddle him from that. What is right? What is wrong? These are vexed questions. I would leave them to the law. Look what a burden is on every man if he must decide the justice of every act as it comes up. Now the law would lift that burden from his shoulders, and I would let the law bear it.”

  “But under the law,” replied Abner, “the weak and the ignorant suffer for their weakness and for this ignorance, and the shrewd and the cunning profit by their shrewdness and by their cunning. How would you help that?”

  “Now, Abner,” said Dillworth, “to help that you would have to make the world over.” Again Abner was silent
for a while. “Well,” he said, “perhaps it could be done if every man put his shoulder to the wheel.”

  “But why should it be done?” replied Dillworth. “Does Nature do it? Look with what indifference she kills off the weakling. Is there any pity in her or any of your little soft concerns? I tell you these things are not to be found anywhere in Nature—they are man-made.”

  “Or God-made,” said Abner.

  “Call it what you like,” replied Dillworth, “it will be equally fantastic, and the law would be fantastic to follow after it. As for myself, Abner, I would avoid these troublesome refinements. Since the law will undertake to say what is right and what is wrong I shall leave her to say it and let myself go free. What she requires me to give I shall give, and what she permits me to take I shall take, and there shall be an end of it.”

  “It is an easy standard,” replied Abner, “and it simplifies a thing that I have come to see you about.”

  “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 yo
u. 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!”

  Chapter 10

  The Devil’s Tools

  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.