In the same year that Elliott Harding was graduated from Princeton, he came into possession of his estate, which he at once began to share with his mother. Her love of good living and luxury, her craving for such elegancies as sumptuous furniture, expensive bric-à-brac, and stylish equipages had well nigh exhausted her means, and she was now almost entirely dependent upon a half-interest in the small estate in Kentucky. Considering that Elliott had a leaning towards the learned professions and political and social pursuits, added to a constitutional abhorrence of a business career, his financial condition was not altogether uncomfortable. He longed to own a superb library, a collection of books, great both in number and quality, and, furthermore, he wanted to complete his education by travel abroad, followed by a year or two of serious research in the South. He realized how ill these aspirations mated with the pleasure loving habits of his mother and how impossible it would be for him to realize his dreams, so long as his purse remained the joint source of supply.
To many a young man the outlook would have been deeply discouraging. To him it was a means of developing the endurance and the strength of will which were among his distinguishing characteristics.
Nature had fashioned Elliott Harding when in one of her kindly moods. She had endowed him with many gifts; good birth, sound health of body and mind, industry, resolution and ambition. Besides possessing these goodly qualifications, he stood six feet in height, and in breadth of shoulder, depth of chest, sturdiness of legs and arms, he had few superiors. There was, too, a nobility of proportion in his forehead that indicated high breeding and broad intellectuality, and his face was full of force and refinement. His steel blue eyes gleamed with a superb self-confidence.
By profession, Elliott Harding was a lawyer; by instinct, a writer. He practiced law for gain. He wrote because it was his ruling passion. He was a man who had been early taught to have faith in his own destiny and to consider himself an agent called by God to do a great work. When he came to his southern home he came with a purpose—a purpose which he determined to carry out quietly but with mighty earnestness. When he first arrived in the town he was content to rest unheralded, and his presence was not understood by the villagers. Nearly every morning now, he could be seen from the opposite window of the college to enter the old abandoned house and sit for hours near the door, his head bowed, his fingers busy with note-book and pencil.
For some weeks this proceeding had continued with little variation. People noted it with diverse conjectures. Old men and women feared lest this man, whoever he might be,—a real estate agent perhaps—would bring about the restoration and sale of the old Harding home. These old-time friends, who had known and loved the father, Richard Harding, through youth and manhood, now rebelled against the possible disregard of his last request, which had become a heritage of the locality. With anxiety they watched the maneuvers of this mysterious individual and drearily wondered what would result from his stay.
To young Harding the anxiety he had caused was unknown. Absorbed in his own affairs, he was too much occupied to think of the impression he was creating. His whole thought was given to gleaning the knowledge he required for the writing of the book by which he hoped to permanently mould southern opinion in conformity with his own against what he believed to be the shame of his native land.
It was an evening in the third month of his residence in Georgetown. Elliott Harding paused in his walk along the street not quite decided which way to go.
“She writes me she has drawn a ten-day draft for twenty-two hundred dollars,” he said to himself. “How on earth can I meet it? What shall I do about it? Let me think it out.” And checking his steps, which had begun to tend towards the college, where a reception to which he had been invited was being held, he took a turn or two in the already darkening street, and then started back to his rooms. In his mind, step by step, he traced out the possible consequences of action in the matter, but long consideration only confirmed his first impression that it was too late now to change the course of affairs so long existing.
“But how am I to meet this last demand?” he questioned. “There is but one way open to me,” he finally thought. “The old home must go.”
He nervously walked on, repeating to himself, “Mother! mother! I could never do this for anyone but you.”
With the memory of his beloved father so strong within him, it was difficult to bring himself to face the inevitable with composure. The turbulent working of his heart contended against the resignation of his brain, and, when for a moment he felt resigned, then the memory of his dead father’s wish would rise up and protest, and the battle would have to be fought over again.
But what he considered to be duty to the living triumphed over what he held as loyalty to the dead, so the next time he went to the old homestead, “For Sale” glared coldly and, he even imagined, reproachfully at him. It was then that Elliott realized the immensity of his sacrifice and bowed his head in silent sorrow.