FullReads

Then he stopped and put down the pen.

“The contests of the courts,” he said, “are usually on the question of identity. I ought to see this slave for a correct description.”

The two men seemed for a moment uncertain what to do.

Then Zindorf addressed my father.

“Pendleton,” he said, “the fortunes of life change, and the ideas suited to one status are ridiculous in another. Ordez was a fool. He made believe to this girl a future that he never intended, and she is under the glamor of these fancies.”

He stood in the posture of a monk, and he spoke each word with a clear enunciation.

“It is a very delicate affair, to bring this girl out of the extravagances with which Ordez filled her idle head, and not be brutal in it. We must conduct the thing with tact, and we will ask you, Pendleton, to observe the courtesies of our pretension.”

When he had finished, he flung a door open and went down a stairway. For a time my father heard his footsteps, echoing, like those of a priest in the under chambers of a chapel. Then he ascended, and my father was astonished.

He came with a young girl on his arm, as in the ceremony of marriage sometimes the priest emerges with the bride. The girl was young and of a Spanish beauty. She was all in white with blossoms in her hair. And she was radiant, my father said, as in the glory of some happy contemplation. There was no slave like this on the block in Virginia. Young girls like this, my father had seen in Havana in the houses of Spanish Grandees.

“This is Mr. Pendleton, our neighbor,” Zindorf said. “He comes to offer you his felicitations.”

The girl made a little formal curtsy.

“When my father returns,” she said in a queer, liquid accent, “he will thank you, Meester Pendleton; just now he is on a journey.”

And she gave her hand to Lucian Morrow to kiss, like a lady of the time. Then Zindorf, mincing his big step, led her out.

And my father stood behind the table in the enclosure of the window, with his arms folded, and his chin lifted above his great black stock. I know how my father looked, for I have seen him stand like that before moving factors in great events, when he intended, at a certain cue, to enter.

He said that it was at this point that Mr. Lucian Morrow’s early comment on Zindorf seemed, all at once, to discover the nature of this whole affair. He said that suddenly, with a range of vision like the great figures in the Pentateuch, he saw how things right and true would work out backward into abominations, if, by any chance, the virtue of God in events were displaced!

Zindorf returned, and as he stepped through the door, closing it behind him, the far-off tolling of the bell, faint, eerie, carried by a stronger breath of April air, entered through the window. My father extended his arm toward the distant wood.

“Zindorf,” he said, “do you mark the sign?” The man listened.

“What sign?” he said.

“The sign of death!” replied my father.

The man made a deprecating gesture with his hands, “I do not believe in signs,” he said.

My father replied like one corrected by a memory.

“Why, yes,” he said, “that is true. I should have remembered that. You do not believe in signs, Zindorf, since you abandoned the sign of the cross, and set these coarse patches on your knees to remind you not to bend them in the sign of submission to the King of Kings.”

The intent in the mended clothing was the economy of avarice, but my father turned it to his use.

The man’s face clouded with anger.

“What I believe,” he said, “is neither the concern of you nor another.”

He paused with an oath.

“Whatever you may believe, Zindorf,” replied my father, “the sound of that bell is unquestionably a sign of death.” He pointed toward the distant wood. “In the edge of the forest yonder is the ancient church that the people built to replace the burned one here. It has been long abandoned, but in its graveyard lie a few old families. And now and then, when an old man dies, they bring him back to put him with his fathers. This morning, as I came along, they were digging the grave for old Adam Duncan, and the bell tolls for him. So you see,” and he looked Zindorf in the face, “a belief in signs is justified.”