第7章

AND SCARBOROUGH.

His name was Hampden Scarborough and he came from a farm about twenty miles east of Saint X.He was descended from men who had learned to hate kings in Holland in the sixteenth century, had learned to despise them in England in the seventeenth century, had learned to laugh at them in America in the eighteenth century, had learned to exalt themselves into kings--the kings of the new democracy--in the free West in the nineteenth century.

When any one asked his father, Bladen Scarborough, who the family ancestors were, Bladen usually did not answer at all.It was his habit thus to treat a question he did not fancy, and, if the question was repeated, to supplement silence with a piercing look from under his aggressive eyebrows.But sometimes he would answer it.Once, for example, he looked coldly at the man who, with a covert sneer, had asked it, said, "You're impudent, sir.

You insinuate I'm not enough by myself to command your consideration," and struck him a staggering blow across the mouth.Again--he was in a playful mood that day and the questioner was a woman--he replied, "I'm descended from murderers, ma'am--murderers."And in a sense it was the truth.

In 1568 the Scarboroughs were seated obscurely in an east county of England.They were tenant farmers on the estates of the Earl of Ashford and had been strongly infected with "leveling" ideas by the refugees then fleeing to England to escape the fury of continental prince and priest.John Scarborough was trudging along the highway with his sister Kate.On horseback came Aubrey Walton, youngest son of the Earl of Ashford.He admired the rosy, pretty face of Kate Scarborough.He dismounted and, without so much as a glance at her brother, put his arm round her.John snatched her free.Young Walton, all amazement and wrath at the hind who did not appreciate the favor he was condescending to bestow upon a humble maiden, ripped out an insult and drew his sword.John wrenched it from him and ran it through his body.

That night, with four gold pieces in his pocket, John Scarborough left England in a smuggler and was presently fighting Philip of Spain in the army of the Dutch people.

In 1653 Zachariah Scarborough, great grandson of the preceding, was a soldier in Cromwell's army.On the night of April twentieth he was in an ale-house off Fleet Street with three brother officers.That day Cromwell had driven out Parliament and had dissolved the Council of State.Three of the officers were of Cromwell's party; the fourth, Captain Zachariah Scarborough, was a "leveler"--a hater of kings, a Dutch-bred pioneer of Dutch-bred democracy.The discussion began hot--and they poured ale on it.

"He's a tyrant!" shouted Zachariah Scarborough, bringing his huge fist down on the table and upsetting a mug."He has set up for king.Down with all kings, say I! His head must come off!"At this knives were drawn, and when Zachariah Scarborough staggered into the darkness of filthy Fleet Street with a cut down his cheek from temple to jaw-bone, his knife was dripping the life of a cousin of Ireton's.

He fled to the Virginia plantations and drifted thence to North Carolina.

His great-grandson, Gaston Scarborough, was one of Marion's men in his boyhood--a fierce spirit made arrogant by isolated freedom, where every man of character owned his land and could conceive of no superior between him and Almighty God.One autumn day in 1794 Gaston was out shooting with his youngest brother, John, their father's favorite.Gaston's gun was caught by a creeper, was torn from him; and his hand, reaching for it, exploded the charge into his brother's neck.His brother fell backward into the swamp and disappeared.

Gaston plunged into the wilderness--to Tennessee, to Kentucky, to Indiana.

"And it's my turn," said Hampden Scarborough as he ended a brief recital of the ancestral murders which Pauline had drawn from him--they were out for a walk together.

"Your turn?" she inquired.

"Yes--I'm the great-grandson--the only one.It's always a great-grandson.""You DO look dangerous," said Pauline, and the smile and the glance she sent with the words might have been misunderstood by a young man entertaining the ideas which were then filling that young man's brain.