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Page 47
He made a courteous bow, accompanied by a dancing master's
gesture.
"I do not offend you with the offer of a fee, but I present my
gratitude for the conspicuous courtesy, and I indicate the
service to the commonwealth of legal papers in form and court
proof. May I hope, Sir, that you will not deny us the benefit of
your highly distinguished service."
My father very slowly looked about him in calm reflection.
He had ridden ten miles through the hills on this April morning,
at Zindorf's message sent the night before. The clay of the
roads was still damp and plastic from the recent rain. There
were flecks of mud on him and the splashing of the streams.
He was a big, dominating man, in the hardened strength and
experience of middle life. He had come, as he believed, upon
some service of the state. And here was a thing for the little
dexterities of a lawyer's clerk. Everybody in Virginia, who knew
my father, can realize how he was apt to meet the vague message
of Zindorf that got him in this house, and the patronizing
courtesies of Mr. Lucian Morrow.
He was direct and virile, and while he feared God, like the great
figures in the Pentateuch, as though he were a judge of Israel
enforcing his decrees with the weapon of iron, I cannot write
here, that at any period of his life, or for any concern or
reason, he very greatly regarded man.
He went over to the window and looked out at the hills and the
road that he had traveled.
The mid-morning sun was on the fields and groves like a
benediction. The soft vitalizing air entered and took up the
stench of liquor, the ash of tobacco and the imported perfumes
affected by Mr. Lucian Morrow.
The windows in the room were long, gothic like a church, and
turning on a pivot. They ran into the ceiling that Monroe had
built across the gutted walls. The house stood on the crown of a
hill, in a cluster of oak trees. Below was the abandoned
graveyard, the fence about it rotted down; the stone slabs
overgrown with moss. The four roads running into the hills
joined and crossed below this oak grove that the early people had
selected for a house of God.
My father looked out on these roads and far back on the one that
he had traveled.
There was no sound in the world, except the faint tolling of a
bell in a distant wood on the road. It was far off on the way to
my father's house, and the vague sound was to be heard only when
a breath of wind carried from that way.
My father gathered his big chin, flat like a plowshare, into the
trough of his bronze hand. He stood for some moments in
reflection, then he turned to Mr. Lucian Morrow.
"I think you are right," he said. "I think this is a triangular
affair with the state a party. I am in the service of the state.
Will you kindly put the table by this window."
They thought he wished the air, and would thus escape the
closeness of the room. And while my father stood aside, Zindorf
and his guest carried the flat writing table to the window and
placed a chair.
My father sat down behind the table by the great open window, and
looked at Zindorf.
The man moved and acted like a monk. He had the figure and the
tonsured head. His coarse, patched clothes cut like the homely
garments of the simple people of the day, were not wholly out of
keeping to the part. The idea was visualized about him; the
simplicity and the poverty of the great monastic orders in their
vast, noble humility. All striking and real until one saw his
face!
My father used to say that the great orders of God were correct
in this humility; for in its vast, comprehensive action, the
justice of God moved in a great plain, where every indicatory
event was precisely equal; a straw was a weaver's beam.
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