South, West and North/Part 1/Chapter 3

PHRAIM HAMPTON was chopping up old poles between house and barn, when he saw his son coming in from the road. He went on chopping, methodically, that big splay-bladed ax of his driving down into the white wood, snapping and crashing, splitting with fearful force into chunks set on end, shivering the poles, white chips flying all about in the trampled snow.

A terrible man, this, not for his great stooped body, but for the stark thing which was frozen in his gaunt face—the cold, chilled life which looked out of his eyes. No human affection lay there to see. All was naked granite, like the bleak hills rising dark upon the snowy horizon. When the time was come, this man drove his blade into the chopping-block, turned away toward the house, and before the doorway met his son. He gave no word of greeting, and ignored the half-questioning, half-wistful look of the younger man.

“Come inside,” said he, and led the way into the cold house.

That was enough for Dick Hampton, who followed and looked with narrowed eyes of hatred at the clean and chilly parlor, at the fearful mockery of the mottoes and pictures on the wall, at the big Bible resting on the center table. If only a picture of his mother had hung here, all might have been different, but there was none.

“Sit you down,” said his father, stiffly lowering himself into a chair at the table.

The cold voice and the colder heart be hind it drove an icy knife through Hampton's spirit. He was afraid of this man, he had always been afraid of him as his mother had been afraid. Not at all a physical fear; only a desperate and frantic shrinking of the warm soul from this abnormal thing in the guise of a man.

In sudden panic, Hampton longed to be out of here and away. Home! The word was mockery. He had found a better home than this in the squeaky forecastle of ships, with rats astir in the dark, with brine working in past strained bowsprit and leaking over the peak bunks, with the reek of sweat and steaming clothes closed in a week on end; more home, more human affection, in that place with its wild oaths and lewd talk than in this horrible abode of cleanliness and sanctity. No wonder Job Warlock refused to return here! Stout old Job had foreseen hell in prospect for the friend he loved. No wonder poor Eli had fled from this to the lure of golden California, as Dick himself had fled from it years before.

Hampton looked at his father, met those icy eyes, a colder gray than his own, and wondered. No pity lay in him for this man deserted in old age by both sons, for the man needed none. No emotions appeared to lie within that heart of granite—only stern duty. Ephraim Hampton was fiercely sufficient unto himself; he had grimly fought off the world until now it lay clear outside him, ignored, and he hewed only to the line of cold duty as he saw it. Dick stiffened a little, began to throw off his awe and fear, in a bitter rush of remembrances and memories; the man was no longer the child. Five words thus far, and not a word of greeting—while Job Warlock, who loved him, was tramping alone over the snow ruts toward Salem!

Still, the mere coming here had required an effort of will, and the effort must be maintained. Perhaps some spark of kindness might yet be struck from that flinty heart—perhaps it was the older man who was awaiting some sign of affection, of warmth. Dick put hand to pocket and drew out some of the loose gold there, and smiled.

“Well, father, I've not done so badly this trip. We turned a good trade at Havana, and I had a share in it, so here's a roll of the yellow boys that'll put new paint on the house and keep you in comfort”

“I'll have none of your ill-got gold,” said Ephraim Hampton coldly. “Put it away, for ye'll have need of it if ye do your duty, and more beside.”

Dick reddened under his bronze, and anger leaped in his unrestrained.

“Ah, this is more like it!” he said, coolly unsheathing the one weapon which never failed to drive home and infuriate his father. “You've sent out to all the neighbors?”

“And why?” demanded the other, deceived by that casual tone.

“To bid them to the feast, o' course. I suppose you've killed the fatted calf, and have decided to get out a jorum of rum for dinner ”

“Ye sacrilegious ruffian!” snapped his father, then checked the outburst and sat with big gnarled hands clenching and unclenching. The weapon had failed this time.

“Not a bit of it,” said Dick lightly. “Sorry I didn't bring Micky with me. He's an Irish chap, came up from the Havana with us. He says that the Irish believe hell to be a cold place, not a hot one—he'd have been confirmed in the belief if he'd come home with me. Yes, this is a grand reception and I appreciate it. Let's have Eli's letter, eh? Trot it out, and then I'll be running along on my way.”

The older man had a weapon, and a more terrible one, which he did not disdain to use.

“While you're in this house,” he said in a cold voice, biting off his words, “ye'll not fail in the duty ye owe the man who begat ye, Richard. Aye, that's your mother's impudence in ye, showing up! A wild heart she had and”

This weapon did not fail. Dick Hampton flushed, then a livid pallor crept into his face, and his lips parted in a snarl.

“You lying dog,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “put your tongue to my mother again and I'll drive your teeth in! Duty to you? Bah! I've had enough o' you!”

Ephraim Hampton put out a hand to the great Bible lying before him, and the knotted fingers were trembling; but his granite face did not change expression. Only a subtle tone of his voice showed his gratification at having pierced his son's armor.

“There's a verse I have to read ye,” he said. “It has to do with Eli's letter, and the duty that's upon ye.”

There was a moment's silence. Dick Hampton drew a deep breath and relaxed, while his father donned spectacles and turned pages, mouth set in a harsh and unyielding line of thin red. Dick strove for calm, knowing that he had let himself be trapped into an outburst which he now regretted. Home! He cursed the place bitterly. If he had ever had a home to come back to, as other men had, a home to linger in and leave with loathing, a home to welcome him, all would have been different. Then he would have seen more of Nelly Barnes. Then he would not have stood at the cross-roads today and been forced to see her going away, with only one look from her eyes to leave an ache in his heart and an emptiness in his very soul.

It did not occur to him that in all this there might be the writing of destiny's finger. He looked upon it as one mischance after another—his loss of a berth, due to the sale of the Acadian to a gold company; his meeting with James Day, and the bitter news that man so idly gave him; his meeting with Nelly at the cross-roads, and now this scene of hideous cruelty, this travesty upon a home-coming. He could not see the thin red thread of connection running through it all. As he thus sat waiting, a woodpecker began to tap somewhere about the roof; and in a flash he was out at sea again, the cold wind pouring down from an icy sky, and somewhere overhead the tap—tap—tap of frozen reef-points smacking the hard, full-bellied canvas. Although the vision was gone instantly, that slight recurrent sound had called up all the manhood in him, so that then and afterward he was full master of himself, with never another burst of the red fury. Indeed, this scene in the farmhouse put a final seal, a finishing touch, to his character which it badly needed, since the spiritual body can grow only through suffering of the spirit—a prime argument, this, against a solitary hell of fire and brimstone.

Ephraim Hampton looked up and spoke, finger heavy on the Bible page before him.

“Here we are. Listen, now, and ye needn't get out that smelly, vile pipe. Take heed! 'And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.' Let those words sink into your dark heart, Richard, while I find your brother's letter.”

With this, the man began to search through the pages, in which he had evidently laid away that missive. Dick Hampton sat watching, pressing back an ironic smile at the twist of those words in his father's mind; here before him was one who could read only the letter of the law, denying in his whole life its spirit—and now preaching that same letter to the son for whom he bore no love.

“Aye, here 'tis!” Ephraim Hampton picked up a folded sheet of paper and began to uncrease it—a dirty, torn, stained sheet. “Read! See for yourself the mercies vouchsafed the runagate prodigal. Then hear what I have to say to ye.”

Hampton leaned forward, took the paper, spread it out on his knee. Two words of that wretched scrawled writing met his eye, brought a thin smile to his lips. Even poor Eli, then, omitted any least word of affection in writing this man! Then he read on, and the smile vanished from his face, and storm gathered in his eyes.

The letter was not dated.

What struck swiftest to the heart of Dick Hampton was that his brother made no direct appeal. There was the situation—take it or leave. No help was expected. Probably the boy thought none could be given, deeming himself beyond help. And by this time, he very possibly was beyond help.

As to the renegade Winslow or Dias, the tiger preying on the gold-seekers, Hampton gave him little thought. The man was one of many. Those who started for California met with no pity or mercy; they were fair game for all human tigers, and were robbed, plundered and murdered right and left.

“Poor Eli is better off than most of them,” said Hampton aloud. “As a rule, few manage to write home. A man in Havana told me that he had seen the Panama beach covered with corpses every morning—new bodies each day. And this was only a few weeks ago.”

His father's stony silence and stonier eyes made no answer; and as he re-read the letter, his heart sank. What could he do, even if he should find this man Dias—kill him? That would not help Eli. Ransom the boy? No such luck. Men forced into slavery would not be let free at any price. The sending of this letter itself was a miracle. The name of that Indian—El Hambre, or “Hunger”—looked very singular. The whole thing left Dick Hampton feeling helpless. Then, as he thought back to what must have happened in the beginning, he lifted bitter eyes to his father.

“Your fault,” he said, with intent to make his words bite. “You always loved Eli a little bit—and kept him here in your private hell. If you'd given him a chance, he'd have waited and asked me about going. I suppose you had words, drove him to it—eh? And you preach brotherly love! You ought to take that text of yours out West to the Sioux and Blackfeet, along with a keg of rum; they might understand it! So poor Eli is rotting somewhere in Mexico now—and all by your fault.”

The hard words hurt, and Ephraim Hampton winced, and his high chin sagged a little. At this, Dick stared curiously; it was the first time he could remember seeing that man of granite betray any sign of emotion. Yes, there must have been some bitter storm when Eli fled forth. Perhaps the father had let his tongue slip on the dead woman—only this would explain the two cruel words opening that letter.

“Ready to listen to me?” asked Ephraim Hampton in a dead voice.

“Fire away,” said the son, and leaned back. He got out his pipe and stuffed it. “If you don't like my smoking, be to you. I'm not in slavery, at least.”

This brought another wince; but Dick, thinking of his mother who had died before her time, and of his brother, only laughed cruelly.

“It's this,” said the older man. “Your duty is to go and look for Eli. It's your bounden duty, Richard; I say it. I, who begat you, lay that duty upon your conscience.”

Dick laughed again, and now spoke words that he did not entirely mean, as men do when the white heat of anger is in their brain.

“Who are you to lay a duty upon me?” he said, meeting those icy eyes squarely with his own gaze, and speaking quite coolly. “Did I ever have a friendly word from you in my whole life? Not one. Many a dutiful word, but never one of affection or love. You hate all the world, including yourself, and always did. You're a narrow-minded old man, and I thank heaven daily that I've mighty little of your mean disposition in me. What I am, I owe to mother—and the same with Eli. You needn't lay any duty on me, because I don't give a hang for your laying; I see things with my own eyes, not with yours. If you'd given me one gentle word when I came in this house today, I'd have met it half-way—but it's not in you. You've made your bed and for all of me you can lie in it. What good could I do poor Eli? He's gone.”

His words met with no anger, only with an intensified coldness. Ephraim regarded his son grimly for a moment, then made response.

“True enough, Richard, all very true; but let me finish. You are, and always have been, a headstrong and unregenerate limb of the devil. Love? No. You've given me hate for hate, and yet I cannot say that I hate you at all. You've given me grief and pain with your ungodly ways, and yet I never put you from my roof. If you were in Eli's place today, I'd do for you what I shall for him.”

This gave Dick pause.

“Duty,” he commented, and uttered a scornful laugh. Yet he began to see that while he and his father were poles apart, every question was bound to have two sides.

“Aye, duty,” said the older man. “I think more of Eli than I do of you, yes. Why not? He stayed here with me while you ran away to sea, to wallow in the iniquities of godless men”

“Aye,” and Dick broke into a laugh, then began to chant the words:

“Silence!” snapped his father. “Will ye listen to me out or no?”

“If ye have anything better than sermons to deliver. As for going after Eli, why not go yourself? It was you sent him out, not I—and I can imagine the words on your godly lips that drove him to take flight.”

Then Dick Hampton was astounded; for his father, sitting there so grimly, lifted a hand as if to ward off a blow.

“Don't. Don't! That's true enough.” He held the gnarled hand over his eyes for a moment, and then the thin lips were compressed. Then he relaxed, sat back, looked at his son. “I've sold the east forty, Richard, and the money's here in the desk. It's been waiting for you. Take it and go, find Eli, and tell him that—that I've repented the bitter words I said.”

This came hard enough, and fairly smote Dick in the face. He could not believe his own senses. None the less, he kept up the game he was playing, for now he found it leading him into astonishing ways. He had meant first to torment and taunt the man, yet now he meant quite otherwise, for it seemed that he had at last found a means to pierce that cold armor.

“Not I,” he said. “I've money of my own, and enough. Take your own money and go, if ye want, for I'll have none of it. Blood money, that's what it is! I'll not touch your thirty pieces of silver”

Ephraim Hampton leaned forward, his great fingers twisting together.

“Richard, I'll not last long,” he said quietly, earnestly. “I'm to die any day, they tell me. I want you to do this thing. Oh, my lad, is all your soul a hardened thing? Is there no love in you for your brother? Granted I've not been what I should—there's yet your own duty. I'll not last long, Richard. Will ye go and take my blessing, or will ye have my curse on you?”

“Little enough your curse would worry me, and that's flat,” said Dick. Then, as he met his father's eyes, he checked himself. He felt himself staring into those eyes, felt all his world rocking to chaos around him—for in those bitter and intolerant eyes there was a glistening that he had never seen there, even when his mother died—the glisten of tears.

Dick put his thumb on his pipe-bowl, pressed down the gray ash, shoved the pipe into his pocket. Then he thrust himself erect. He made his decision swiftly, on the instant, as it must be made when the wind shifts about if the ship is not to be stripped bare.

“Your money,” he said slowly, deliberately, “I don't want and sha'n't touch. Lay a duty on me? I'll cheat you even in that—aye, cheat you even in that! It's little you know of the man who's awaiting me at Beverly, or the girl who's there, or the friend I have on the road—little you know or would care if you knew. But never mind all that. Father, I'm going to Panama, going a dozen errands in one—and one of the dozen is Eli's. Tell me this. You love him?”

The stooped figure stood before him, staring at him mistily.

“Aye, Richard. And if ye'd not give me hate for hate—I don't know”

Dick Marsh took a step forward and caught the other man by the shoulders. Then all that was repressed leaped into his face, and he looked at his father as he had looked at Nelly Barnes that morning, with things in his eyes too deep and great for words.

“Father,” he said in a low voice, “I'm going, and I'm going now. I don't give a hang for your curse—but, father, I—I'd give you a kiss on the lips for your blessing”

The-woodpecker tapped along the eaves, like the tap-tap—tap of frozen reef-points slapping a bellying sail, but Dick Hampton did not hear the sound.