_ A month later Christopher's conversation with Carraway returned
to him, when, coming one morning from the house with his dogs at
his heels and his squirrel gun on his shoulder, he found Will
Fletcher and a troop of spotted foxhound puppies awaiting him
outside the whitewashed gate.
"I want to speak to you a moment, Mr. Blake," began the boy, in
the assured tones of the rich man to the poor. The Blake hounds
made a sudden rush at the puppies, to be roughly ordered to heel
by their master.
"Well, fire away," returned the young man coolly. "But I may as
well warn you that it's more than likely it will be a clear waste
of breath. I'll have nothing to do with you or your sort." He
leaned on his gun and looked indifferently over the misty fields,
where the autumn's crop of lifeeverlasting shone silver in the
sunrise.
"I don't see why you hate me so," said the boy wonderingly,
checking the too frolicsome adventures of the puppies in the
direction of the hounds. "I've always liked you, you know, even
before you saved my life--because you're the straightest shot and
the best trainer of hounds about here. Grandpa says I mustn't
have anything to do with you, but I will anyway, if I please."
"Oh, you will, will you?" was Christopher's rejoinder, as he
surveyed him with the humorous contempt which the strong so often
feel for the weak of the same sex. "Well, I suppose I'll have my
say in the matter, and strangely enough I'm on your grandfather's
side. The clearer you keep of me the better it will be for you,
my man."
"That's just like grandpa all over again," protested the boy; and
when it comes to that, he needn't know anything about it--he
doesn't know half that I do, anyway; he blusters so about
things."
Christopher's gaze returned slowly from the landscape and rested
inquiringly upon the youthful features before him, seeking in
them some definite promise of the future. The girlish look of the
mouth irritated him ludicrously, and half-forgotten words of
Carraway's awoke within his memory.
"Fletcher loves but one thing on this earth, and his ambition is
that the boy shall be respected in the county." A Fletcher
respected in the very stronghold of a Blake! He laughed aloud,
and then spoke hurriedly as if to explain the surprising mirth in
his outburst.
"So you came to pay a visit to your nearest neighbour and are
afraid your grandfather will find it out? Then you'll get a
spanking, I dare say."
Will blushed furiously, and stood awkwardly scraping up a pile of
sand with the sole of his boot. "I'm not a baby," he blurted out
at last, "and I'll go where I like, whatever he says."
"He keeps a pretty close watch over you, I reckon. Perhaps he's
afraid you'll become a man and step into his shoes before he
knows it."
"Oh, he can't find me out, all the same," said the boy slyly. "He
thinks I've gone over to Mr. Morrison's now to do my Greek--he's
crazy about my learning Greek, and I hate it--and, you bet your
life, he'll be hopping mad if he finds I've given him the slip."
"He will, will he?" remarked Christopher, and the thought
appeared to afford him a peculiar satisfaction. For the first
time the frown left his brow and his tone lost its insolent
contempt. Then he came forward suddenly and laid his hand upon
the gate. "Well, I can't waste my morning," he said. "You'd
better run back home and play the piano. I'm off."
"I don't play the piano--I'm not a girl," declared the boy; "and
what I want is to get you to train my hounds for me. I'd like to
go hunting with you to-day."
"Oh, I can't be bothered with babies," sneered Christopher in
reply. "You'd fall down, most likely, and scratch your knees on
the briers, and then you'd run straight home to blab to
Fletcher."
"I won't!" cried Will angrily. "I'll never blab. He'd be too mad,
I tell you, if he found it out."
"Well, I don't want you anyhow, so get out of my way. You'd
better look sharp after your pups or the hounds will chew them
up."
The boy stood midway of the road, kicking the dust impatiently
ahead of him. His lips quivered with disappointment, and the
expression gave them a singularly wistful beauty. "I'll give you
all my pocket money if you'll take me with you," he pleaded
suddenly, stretching out a handful of silver.
With a snarl Christopher pushed his arm roughly aside. "Put up
your money, you fool," he said; "I don't want it."
"Oh, you don't, don't you?" taunted the other, raging with
wounded pride. "Why, grandpa says you're as poor as Job's turkey
after it was plucked."
It was an old joke of Fletcher's, who, in giving utterance to it,
little thought of the purpose it would finally be made to serve,
for Christopher, halting suddenly at the words, swung round in
the cloud of dust and stood regarding the grandson of his enemy
with a thoughtful and troubled look. The lawyer's words sounded
so distinctly in his ears that he glanced at the boy with a
start, fearing that they had been spoken aloud: "His grandson is
the sole living thing that Fletcher loves." Again the
recollection brought a laugh from him, which he carelessly threw
off upon the frolics of the puppies. Then the frown settled
slowly back upon his brow, and the brutal look, which Carraway
had found so disfiguring, crept out about his mouth.
"I tell you honestly," he said gruffly, "that if you knew what
was good for you, you'd scoot back along that road a good deal
faster than you came. If you're such a headstrong fool as to want
to come with me, however, I reckon you may do it. One thing,
though, I'll have no puling ways."
The boy jumped with pleasure. "Why, I knew all the time I'd get
around you," he answered.
"I always do when I try; and may I shoot some with your shotgun?"
"I'll teach you, perhaps."
"When? Shall we start now? Call the dogs together--they're nosing
in the ditch."
Without taking the trouble to reply, Christopher strode off
briskly along the road, and after waiting a moment to assemble
his scattered puppies, Will caught up with him and broke into a
running pace at his side. As they swung onward the two shadows--
the long one and the short one--stretched straight and black
behind them in the sunlight.
"You're the biggest man about here, aren't you?" the boy asked
suddenly, glancing upward with frank admiration.
"I dare say. What of it?"
"Oh, nothing; and your father was the biggest man of his time,
Sol Peterkin says; and Aunt Mehitable remembers your grandfather,
and he was the tallest man alive in his day. Who'll be the
biggest when you die, I wonder? And, I say, isn't it a pity that
such tall men had to live in such a little old house--I don't see
how they ever got in the doors without stooping. Do you have to
stoop when you go in and out?"
Christopher nodded.
"Well, I shouldn't like that," pursued Will; "and I'm glad I
don't live in such a little place. Now, the doors at the Hall are
so high that I could stand on your shoulders and go in without
bending my head. Let's try it some day. Grandpa wouldn't know."
Christopher turned and looked at him suddenly. "What would you
say to going 'possum hunting one night?" he asked in a queer
voice.
"Whoopee!" cried the boy, tossing his hat in the air. "Will you
take me?"
"Well, it's hard work, you know," went on the other thoughtfully.
"You'd have to get up in the middle of the night and steal out of
the window without your grandfather's knowing it."
"I should say so!"
"We'd tramp till morning, probably, with the hounds, and Tom
Spade would come along to bring his lanterns. Then when it was
over we'd wind up for drinks at his store. It's great sport, I
tell you, but it takes a man to stand it."
"Oh, I'm man enough by now."
"Not according to your grandfather's thinking."
"What does he know about it? He's just an old fogy himself."
"We'll see, we'll see. If he wants to keep you tied to nurse's
strings too long, we must play him a trick. Why, when I was
fourteen I could shoot with any man about here--and drink with
him, too, for that matter. Nobody kept me back, you see."
The boy looked up at Christopher with sparkling eyes, in which
the eternal hero-worship of youth was already kindled.
"Oh, you're splendid!" he exclaimed, "and I'm going to be just
like you. Grandpa shan't keep me a baby any longer, I can tell
you. All this Greek, now--he's crazy about my learning it--and I
hate it. Do you know Greek?"
Christopher laughed shortly. "Where does he live?" he inquired
mockingly.
For a moment the boy looked at him perplexed. "It's a language,"
he replied gravely; "and grandpa says it comes handy in a
bargain, but I won't learn it. I hate school, anyway, and he
swears he's going to send me back in two weeks. I hope I'll fall
ill, and then he can't."
"In two weeks," repeated the other reflectively; "well, a good
deal may happen, I reckon, in two weeks."
"Oh, lots!" agreed the boy with enthusiasm; "you'll let me chase
rabbits with you every day--won't you? and teach me to shoot? and
we'll go 'possum hunting one night and not get home till morning.
It will be easy enough to fool grandpa. I'll take care of that,
and if Aunt Saidie finds it out she'll never tell him--she never
does tell on me. Here, let me take the gun awhile, will you?"
Christopher handed him the gun, and they went on rapidly along
the old road under the honey locusts that grew beyond the bend.
They were nearing the place where Christopher, as a child of
twelve, had waited with his birdgun in the bushes to shoot
Fletcher when he came in sight, and now as the recollection
returned to him he unconsciously slackened his pace and cast his
eyes about for the spot where he had stood. It was all there just
as it had been that morning--the red clumps of sumach covered
with gray dust, the dried underbrush piled along the fence, and
the brown honeyshucks strewn in the sunny road. For the first
time in his life he was glad at this instant that he had not
killed Fletcher then--that his hand had been stayed that day to
fall the heavier, it might be, at the appointed time. The boy
still chatted eagerly, and when presently the hounds scented a
rabbit in the sassafras beyond the fence, he started with a shout
at the heels of the pursuing pack. Swinging himself over the
brushwood, Christopher followed slowly across the waste of
lifeeverlasting, tearing impatiently through the flowering net
which the wild potato vine cast about his feet.
Through the brilliant October day they hunted over the ragged
fields, resting at noon to eat the slices of bread and bacon
which Christopher had brought in his pocket. As they lay at full
length in the sunshine upon the lifeeverlasting, the young man's
gaze flew like a bird across the landscape--where the gaily
decorated autumn fallows broke in upon the bare tobacco fields
like gaudy patches on a homely garment--to rest upon the far-off
huddled chimneys of Blake Hall. For a time he looked steadily
upon them; then, turning on his side, he drew his harvest hat
over his eyes and began a story of his early adventures behind
the hounds, speaking in half-gay, half-bitter tones.
In the mild autumn weather a faint haze overhung the landscape,
changing from violet to gray as the shadows rose or fell. Around
them the unploughed wasteland swept clear to the distant road,
which wound like a muddy river beside the naked tobacco fields.
Lying within the slight depression of a hilltop, the two were
buried deep amid the lifeeverlasting, which shed its soft dust
upon them and filled their nostrils with its ghostly fragrance.
As he went on, Christopher found a savage delight in mocking the
refinements of the boy's language, in tossing him coarse
expressions and brutal oaths much as he tossed scraps to the
hounds, in touching with vulgar scorn all the conventional ideals
of the household--obedience, duty, family affection, religion
even. While he sank still lower in that defiant self-respect to
which he had always clung doggedly until to-day, there was a
fierce satisfaction in the knowledge that as he fell he dragged
Will Fletcher with him--that he had sold himself to the devil and
got his price.
This unholy joy was still possessing him when at nightfall,
exhausted, dirty, brier-scratched, and bearing their strings of
game, they reached Tom Spade's, and Christopher demanded raw
whisky in the little room behind the store. Sol Peterkin was
there, astride his barrel, and as they entered he gave breath to
a low whistle of astonishment.
"Why, your grandpa's been sweepin' up the county for you!" he
exclaimed to Will.
"So he's found out I wasn't at the Morrisons'," said the boy a
little nervously. "I'd better be going home, I reckon, and get it
over."
Christopher drained his glass of whisky, and then, refilling it,
pushed it across the table.
"What! Aren't you man enough to swallow a thimbleful?" he asked,
with a laugh. His face was flushed, and the dust of the roads
showed in streaks upon his forehead, where the crown of his straw
hat had drawn a circle around his moist fair hair. The hand with
which he touched the glass trembled slightly, and his eyes were
so reckless that, after an instants' frightened silence. Peterkin
cried out in alarm: "For the Lord's sake, Mr. Christopher, you're
not yourself--it's the way his father went, you know!"
"What of it?" demanded Christopher, turning his dangerous look
upon the little man. "If there's a merrier way to go, I'd like to
know it."
Peterkin drew over to the table and laid a restraining hold on
the boy's arm. "Put that down, sonny," he said. "I couldn't stand
it, and you may be sure it'll do you no good. It will turn your
stomach clean inside out."
"He took it," replied the boy stubbornly, "and I'll drink it if
he says so." He lifted the glass and stood looking inquiringly at
the man across from him. "Shall I drink it?" he asked, and waited
with a boyish swagger.
Christopher gave a short nod. "Oh, not if you're afraid of it,"
he responded roughly; and then, as Will threw back his head and
the whisky touched his lips, the other struck out suddenly and
sent the glass shivering to the floor. "Go home, you fool!" he
cried, "and keep clear of me for good and all."
A moment afterward he had passed from the room, through the
store, and was out upon the road. _