The Ploughshare

Summary

A crumbling antebellum dynasty—its marble porticoes already sweating the guilt of generations—passes from the gout-ridden Judge Lawrence into the manicured grasp of his elder son William, who steps off the veranda and straight into the governor’s mansion while the plantation bells still clang like iron lungs. Twenty humid seasons later the same bells toll for Little Jim, the bastard half-brother whose smile is a blade, a libertine stitched from shadow and silk. He toys with Jenny Strong, a clay-dust village girl who hides her swelling belly beneath calico, then pirouettes into the chandeliered salons of the capital, lacing Helena Leigh’s pulse to his with a single glance. Arthur Willet—hawk-eyed, righteous—records every trespass; the pistol crack that follows is less a duel than a cathedral bell announcing the collapse of one moral ceiling after another. When the smoke clears, Jenny is a dangling silhouette in the barn, Jack lies bleeding in the wrong man’s name, and Governor William—his starched collar suddenly noose-tight—must choose between the gallows of public truth and the oubliette of fraternal blood. Helena, half-mad with remorse, spirits the murderer away on a double-saddled midnight ride, trading her wedding ring for a jailer’s key. William’s resignation letter lands like a Confederate sword on the legislature’s floor; Helena’s courtroom confession lands harder. Yet the final reckoning arrives not by scaffold but by postcard from the Andes: Jim drowned, a far-off river sealing what Southern jurisprudence could not. The widowed couple, stripped of title and illusion, meet on a dawn-drenched cliff—two ghosts clutching the tatters of a marriage that never lived, yet refusing to die.

Synopsis

By the death of his father, old Judge Lawrence, William Lawrence inherits the family's vast Southern estates. The slaves welcome him as their new master, but they all dislike "little Jim," William's half-brother, who is left by the father in William's guardianship. Twenty years elapse, and William is elected governor of his state. Little Jim has grown to young manhood, but with the passage of the years, his nature has become worse. It is discovered that Jim has had a secret intrigue with Jenny Strong, a simple country girl, who implores him to keep his promise and make her his wife. Meanwhile, she has kept all knowledge of what has transpired from her brother, Jack. At the state capital are two important families, the Leighs and the Claytons. Evelyn Clayton has fallen deeply in love with Jim Lawrence. William Lawrence has met and fallen in love with Helena Leigh. Arthur Willet, a friend of both families, who has had from the first an instinctive dislike for Jim Lawrence, overhears Jim talking with Jenny Strong. Later, at the home of the Leighs, he comes upon Jim making love to Helena. He thereupon tells her father how he has heard Jenny Strong pleading with Jim to right the wrong he has done her. Dr. Leigh drives Jim from his house. There follows a violent quarrel between Helena and her father, during which the doctor falls to the floor, overcome by heart trouble. On his deathbed he begs Helena to marry the governor. Helena consents because it is her father's dying wish, though she fancies herself in love with Jim. Strong discovers the trouble with his sister and determines to get satisfaction. To revenge the exposition of his guilt, Jim writes to Willet to fight a duel with him. Willet, who is a crack shot, accepts and leaves to indulge in a little practice. Jack comes upon Jim, and before he has finished talking, Jim shoots him with one of Willet's pistols. Willet is accused of the crime and is placed in jail. Jenny takes her own life and an unsuccessful appeal is made for Willet by Curwood, a political leader and uncle of the accused. Moved by Helena's pleadings, Jim confesses to his brother, but still maintains that he committed the murder in self-defense. His brother, the governor, pending the arrival of the sheriff, locks Jim in a room, but he is released by Helena, who, having taken two horses from the stable, rides away with him. Inasmuch as the governor had been to the stable, and seeing that he is accused of intrigue, he says that he did spirit his brother away. He resigns, and Helena, who realizes that she is the cause of her husband's downfall, declares herself in court as the accomplice in the murderer's escape. Helena, now that she is to be indicted in her husband's place and being cognizant of his great love, which she feels is lost forever, is about to commit suicide when her husband appears and tells her that the law has been satisfied by the death of Jim, whom they have learned was drowned in South America. The governor and his wife are reconciled.