_ Following his impulsive blow in defense of Will Fletcher,
Christopher experienced, almost with his next breath, a reaction
in his feeling for the boy; and meeting him two days later at the
door of the tobacco barn, he fell at once into a tone of
contemptuous raillery.
"So you let Fred smash you up, eh?" he observed, with a sneer.
Will flushed.
"Oh, you needn't talk like that," he answered; "he's the biggest
man about here except you. By the way, you're a bully friend to a
fellow, you know, and it's not a particle of use pretending you
don't like me, because you can't help hitting back jolly quick
when anybody undertakes to give me a licking."
"Why were you such a fool as to go at him?" inquired Christopher,
glancing up at his evenly hanging rows of tobacco, and then
coming outside to lock the door. "You'll never get a reputation
as a fighter if you are always jumping on men over your own size.
Now, next time I should advise you to try your spirit on Sol
Peterkin."
"Oh, it was all about Molly," explained Will frankly. "I told
Fred that he was a big blackguard to use the girl so, and then he
called me a 'white-livered liar.'"
"I heard him," remarked Christopher quietly.
"Well, I don't care what he says--he is a blackguard. I'm glad
you knocked him down, too; it was no more than he deserved."
"I didn't do it on Molly Peterkin's account, you know. Tobacco
takes up quite enough of my time without my entering the lists as
a champion of light women. But if you aren't man enough to fight
your own battles, I suppose I'll have to keep my muscle in proper
shape."
Will smarted from the words, and the corners of his mouth took a
dogged droop.
"I don't see how you expect me to be a match for Fred Turner," he
returned angrily.
"Why, I don't expect it," replied Christopher coolly, as he
turned the key in the padlock, drew it out, and slipped it into
his pocket. "I expect you merely to keep away from him, that's
all."
Will stared at him in perplexity. "What a devil of a humour you
are in!" he exclaimed.
"Am I?" Christopher broke into a laugh. "You are accustomed to
the sunny temper of your grandfather. How is he to-day? In his
usual cheerful vein?"
"Oh, he's awful," answered the boy, relieved at the change of
subject. "If you could only have heard him yesterday! Somebody
told him about the fight at the store, and, as luck would have
it, he found out that Molly Peterkin was at the bottom of it all.
When he called me into his room and locked the door I knew
something was up; and sure enough, we had blood and thunder for
two mortal hours. He threatened to sell the horses and the
hounds, and to put me at the plough, if I ever so much as looked
at the girl again--'gal,' he called her, and a 'brazen wench.'
That is the way he talks, you know."
"I know," Christopher nodded gravely.
"But the funny part is, that the thing that made him hottest was
your knocking over Fred Turner. That he simply couldn't stand.
Why, he'd have paid Fred fifty dollars down to thrash me black
and blue, he said. He called you--Oh, he has a great store of pet
names!"
"What?" asked Christopher, for the other caught himself up
suddenly.
"Nothing much--he's always doing it, you know."
"You needn't trouble yourself on my account. I'm familiar with
his use of words."
"Oh, he called you 'a crazy pauper who ought to be in gaol.'"
"He did, did he? Well, for once in his life he drew it mild."
Then he gave a long whistle and kicked away a rock in the path. "
"'A crazy pauper who ought to be in gaol.' I've a pretty
good-sized debt to settle with your grandfather, when I come to
think of it."
"Just suppose you were in my place now," insisted Will. "Then I
reckon you'd have cause forswearing, sure enough. I tell you I
couldn't get out of that room yesterday until I promised him I'd
turn over a new leaf--that I'd start in with Mr. Morrison
to-morrow, and dig away at Latin and Greek until I go to the
university next fall."
Christopher turned quickly.
"To-morrow?" he repeated. "Why, that's the day I had planned we'd
go hunting. Make Morrison's Friday."
The boy wavered.
"Can't we go another day?" he asked. "He's so awfully set on
to-morrow. I'd have to be mighty sharp to fool him again."
"Oh, well, but it's the only day I've free. There's a lot of fall
ploughing to do; then the apples are ready to be gathered; and I
must take some corn to the mill before the week's up. I've wasted
too much time with you as it is. It's the only wealth I have, you
see."
"Then I'll go--I'll go," declared Will, jumping to a decision.
"There'll be a terrific fuss if he finds it out, but perhaps he
won't. I'll bring my gun over to the barn to-night, and get
Zebbadee to meet us with the hounds at the bend in the road.
Well, I must get back now. I don't want him to suspect I've seen
you to-day."
He started off at a rapid pace, and Christopher, turning in the
other direction, went to bring the horses from the distant
pasture. It was a mellow afternoon, and a golden haze wrapped the
broad meadow, filled with autumn wild flowers, and the little
bricked-up graveyard on the low, green hill. As he swung himself
over the bars at the end of the path he saw Lila and Jim
Weatherby gathering goldenrod in the center of the field. When
they caught sight of him, Jim laid his handful of blossoms in a
big basket on the ground and came to join him on his way to the
pasture.
"They are for Mrs. Blake's fireplace," he remarked with a
friendly smile, as he glanced back at Lila standing knee-deep
amid the October flowers.
"It's a queer idea," observed Christopher, finding himself at a
loss for a reply.
Jim strolled on leisurely, snatching at the heads of wild carrot
as he passed.
"There's something I've wanted to tell you, Christopher," he said
after a moment, turning his pleasant, manly face upon the other.
"Is that so?" asked Christopher, with a sudden desire to avert
the impending responsibility. "Oh, but I hardly think I'm the
proper person, " he added, laughing.
Jim met his eyes squarely.
"I'm a plain man," he said slowly, "and though I'm not ashamed of
it, I know, of course, that my family have always been plain
people. As things are, I had no business on earth to fall in love
with your sister, but all the same it's what I've gone and done."
Christopher nodded and walked on.
"Well, I suppose it's what I should have done, too, in your
place," he returned quietly.
"I've reproached myself for it often enough," pursued Jim; "but
when all is said, how can a man prevent a thing like that? I
might as well try to shut my eyes to the sun when it is shining
straight on me. Why, everybody else seems dull and lifeless when
I look at her--and I seem such a brute myself that I hardly dare
touch her hand. All I ask is to be her servant until I die."
It took courage to speak such words, and Christopher, knowing it,
stopped midway of the little path and regarded Jim with the rare
smile which gave a boyish brightness to his face.
"By George, you are a trump!" he said heartily. "And as far as
that goes, you're good enough for Lila or for anybody else. It
isn't that, you see; it's only--"
"I know," finished Jim quietly and without resentment; "it's my
grandfather. Your sister, Cynthia, told me, and I reckon it's all
natural, but somehow I can't make myself ashamed of the old man--
nor is Lila, for that matter. He was an honest, upright body as
ever you saw, and he never did a mean thing in his life, though
he lived to be almost ninety."
"You're right," said Christopher, flushing suddenly; "and as far
as I'm concerned, I'd let Lila marry you to-morrow; but as for
mother, she would simply never consent. The idea would be
impossible to her, and we could never explain things; you must
see that yourself."
"I see," replied Jim readily; "but the main point is that you
yourself would have no objection to our marriage, provided it
were possible."
"Not a bit; not a bit."
He held out his hand, and Jim shook it warmly before he picked up
his basket and went to rejoin Lila.
Turning in the path, Christopher saw the girl, who was sitting
alone on the lowered bars, rise and wave a spray of goldenrod
above her head. Then, as the lovers met, she laid her hand upon
Jim's arm and lifted her glowing face as if to read his words
before he uttered them. Something in the happy surrender of her
gesture, or in the brooding mystery of the Indian summer, when
one seemed to hear the earth turn in the stillness, touched
Christopher with a sudden melancholy, and it appeared to him when
he went on again that a shadow had fallen over the brightness of
the autumn fields. Disturbed by the unrest which follows any
illuminating vision of ideal beauty, he asked himself almost
angrily, in an effort to divert his thoughts, if it were possible
that he was weakening in his purpose, since he no longer found
the old zest in his hatred of Fletcher. The deadness of his
emotions had then affected this one also--the single feeling
which he had told himself would be eternal; and the old nervous
thrill, so like the thrill of violent love, no longer troubled
him when he chanced to meet his enemy face to face. To-day he
held Will Fletcher absolutely in his hand, he knew; in a few
year's at most his debt to Fletcher would probably be cancelled;
the man and the boy would then be held together by blood ties
like two snarling hounds in the leash--and yet, when all was
said, what would the final outcome yield of satisfaction? As he
put the question he knew that he could meet it only by evasion,
and his inherited apathy enfeebled him even while he demanded an
answer of himself.
As the months went on, his indifference to success or failure
pervaded him like a physical lethargy, and he played his game so
recklessly at last that he sometimes caught himself wondering if
it were, after all, worth a single flicker of the candle. He
still saw Will Fletcher daily; but when the spring came he ceased
consciously, rather from weariness than from any nobler
sentiment, to exert an influence which he felt to be harmful to
the boy. For four years he had wrought tirelessly to compass the
ruin of Fletcher's ambition; and now, when he had but to stretch
forth his arm for the final blow, he admitted impatiently that
what he lacked was the impulsive energy the deed required.
He was still in this mood when, one afternoon in April, as he was
driving his oxen to the store, he met Fletcher in the road behind
the pair of bays. At sight of him the old man's temper slipped
control, and at the end of a few minutes they were quarrelling as
to who should be the one to turn aside.
"Git out of the road, will you?" cried Fletcher, half rising from
his seat and jerking at the reins until the horses reared. "Drive
your brutes into the bushes and let me pass!"
"If you think I'm going to swerve an inch out of my road to
oblige you, Bill Fletcher, you are almost as big a fool as you
are a rascal," replied Christopher in a cool voice, as he brought
his team to a halt and placed himself at the head of it with his
long rawhide whip in his hand.
As he stood there he had the appearance of taking his time as
lightly as did the Olympian deities; and it was clear that he
would wait patiently until the sun set and rose again rather than
yield one jot or tittle of his right upon the muddy road. While
he gazed placidly over Fletcher's head into the golden distance,
he removed his big straw hat and began fanning his heated face.
There followed a noisy upbraiding from Fletcher, which ended by
his driving madly into the underbrush and almost overturning the
heavy carriage. As he passed, he leaned from his seat and slashed
his whip furiously into Christopher's face; then he drove on at a
wild pace, bringing the horses in a shiver, and flecked with
foam, into the gravelled drive before the Hall.
The bright flower-beds and the calm white pillars were all in
sunshine, and Miss Saidie, with a little, green wateringpot in
her hand, was sprinkling a tub of crocuses beside the steps.
"You look flustered, Brother Bill," she observed, as Fletcher
threw the reins to a Negro servant and came up to where she
stood.
"Oh, I've just had some words with that darned Blake," returned
Fletcher, chewing the end of his mustache, as he did when he was
in a rage. "I met him as I drove up the road and he had the
impudence to keep his ox-cart standing plumb still while I tore
through the briers. It's the third time this thing has happened,
and I'll be even with him for it yet."
"I'm sure he must be a very rude person," remarked Miss Saidie,
pinching off a withered blossom and putting it in her pocket to
keep from throwing it on the trim grass. "For my part, I've never
been able to see what satisfaction people git out of being
ill-mannered. It takes twice as long as it does to be polite, and
it's not nearly so good for the digestion afterward."
Fletcher listened to her with a scowl. "Well, if you ever get
anything but curses from Christopher Blake, I'd like to hear of
it," he said, with a coarse laugh.
Why, he was really quite civil to me the other day when I passed
him," replied Miss Saidie, facing Fletcher with her hand resting
on the belt of her apron. "I was in the phaeton, and he got down
off his wagon and picked up my whip. I declare, it almost took my
breath away, but when I thanked him he raised his hat and spoke
very pleasantly."
"Oh, you and your everlasting excuses!" sneered Fletcher, going
up the steps and turning on the porch to look down upon her. "I
tell you I've had as many of 'em as I'm going to stand. This is
my house, and what I say in it has got to be the last word. If
you squirt any more of that blamed water around here the place
will rot to pieces under our very feet."
Miss Saidie placed her watering-pot on the step and lifted to him
the look of amiable wonder which he found more irritating than a
sharp retort.
"I forgot to tell you that Susan Spade has been waiting to speak
to you," she remarked, as if their previous conversation had been
of the friendliest nature.
"Oh, drat her! What does she want?"
"She wouldn't tell me--it was for you alone, she said. That was a
good half-hour ago, and she's been waiting in your setting-room
ever sence. She's such a sharp-tongued woman I wonder how Tom
manages to put up with her."
"Well, if he does, I won't," growled Fletcher, as he went in to
meet his visitor.
Mrs. Spade, wearing a severe manner and a freshly starched purple
calico, was sitting straight and stiff on the edge of the
cretonne-covered lounge, and as he entered she rose to receive
him with a visible unbending of her person. She was a lank woman,
with a long, scrawny figure which appeared to have run entirely
to muscle, and very full skirts that always sagged below the
belt-line in the back. Her face was like that of a man--
large-featured, impressive, and not without a ruddy masculine
comeliness.
"It's my duty that's brought me, Mr. Fletcher," she began, as
they shook hands. "You kin see very well yo'self that it's not a
pleasure, as far as that goes, for if it had been I never should
have come-not if I yearned and pined till I was sore. I never saw
a pleasure in my life that didn't lead astray, an' I've got the
eye of suspicion on the most harmless-lookin' one that goes. As I
tell Tom--though he won't believe it--the only way to be sartain
you're followin' yo' duty in this world is to find out the thing
you hate most to do an' then do it with all yo' might. That rule
has taken me through life, suh: it married me to Tom Spade, an'
it's brought me here to-day. 'Don't you go up thar blabbin' on
Will Fletcher,' said Tom, when I was tyin' on my bonnet. 'You
needn't say one word mo' about it,' was my reply. 'I know the
Lord's way, an' I know mine. I've wrastled with this in pra'r,
an' I tell you when the Lord turns anybody's stomach so dead agin
a piece of business, it means most likely that it's the very
thing they've got to swallow down."
"Oh, Will!" gasped Fletcher, dropping suddenly into his armchair.
"Please come to the point at once, ma'am, and let me hear what
the rascal has done last."
"I'm comin', suh; I'm comin'," Mrs. Spade hastened to assure him.
"Yes, Tom an' I hev talked it all down to the very bone, but I
wouldn't trust a man's judgment on morals any mo' than I would on
matchin' calico. Right an' wrong don't look the same to 'em by
lamplight as they do by day, an' if thar conscience ain't set
plum' in the pupils of thar eyes, I don't know whar 'tis, that's
sho'. But, thank heaven, I ain't one of those that's always
findin' an excuse for people--not even if the backslider be my
own husband. Thar's got to be some few folks on the side of
decency, an' I'm one of 'em. Virtue's a slippery thing--that's
how I look at it--an' if you don't git a good grip on it an'
watch it with a mighty stern eye it's precious apt to wriggle
through yo' fingers. I'm an honest woman, Mr. Fletcher, an' I
wouldn't blush to own it in the presence of the King of England
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Fletcher, with a brutal laugh; "do you
mean to tell me the precious young fool has fallen in love with
you?"
"Me, suh? If he had, a broomstick an' a spar' rib or so would
have been all you'd ever found of him agin. I've never yit laid
eyes on the man I couldn't settle with a single sweep, an' when a
lone woman comes to wantin' a protector, I've never seen the
husband that could hold a candle to a good stout broom. That's
what I said to Jinnie when she got herself engaged to Fred
Boxley. 'Married or single,' I said, 'gal, wife, or widow, a
broom is yo' best friend.'"
Fletcher twisted impatiently in his chair.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, stop your drivelling," he blurted out at
last, "and tell me in plain language what the boy has done."
"Oh, I don't know what he's done or what he hasn't," rejoined
Mrs. Spade, "but I've watched him courtin' Molly Peterkin till I
told Tom this thing had to stop or I would stop it. If thar's a
p'isonous snake or lizard in this country, suh, it's that
tow-headed huzzy of Sol Peterkin's; an' if thar's a sex on this
earth that I ain't go no patience with, it's the woman sex. A man
may slip an' slide a little because he was made that way, but
when it comes to a woman she's got to w'ar whalebones in her
clothes when I'm aroun'. Lord! Lord! What's the use of bein'
honest if you can't p'int yo' finger at them that ain't? Virtue
gits mighty little in the way of gewgaws in this world, an' I
reckon it's got to make things up in the way it feels when it
looks at them that's gone astray--"
"Molly Peterkin!" gasped Fletcher, striking the arm of his chair
a blow that almost shattered it. "Christopher Blake was bad
enough, and now it's Molly Peterkin! Out of the frying-pan right
spang into the fire. Oh, you did me a good turn in coming, Mrs.
Spade. I'll forgive you the news you brought, and I'll even
forgive you your blasted chatter. How long has this thing been
going on, do you know?"
"That I don't, suh, that I don't; though I've been pryin' an'
peekin' mighty close. All I know is, that every blessed evenin'
for the last two weeks I've seen 'em walkin' together in the lane
that leads to Sol's. This here ain't goin' to keep up one day
mo'; that's what I put my foot down on yestiddy. I'd stop it if I
didn't have nothin' agin that gal but the colour of her hair. I
don' know how 'tis, suh, but I've always had the feelin' that
thar's somethin' indecent about yaller hair, an' if I'd been born
with it I'd have stuck my head into a bowl of pitch befo' I'd
have gone flauntin' those corn-tassels in the eyes of every man I
met. Thar's nothin' in the looks of me that's goin' to make a man
regret he's got a wife if I can help it; an' mark my word, Mr.
Fletcher, if they had dyed Molly Peterkin's hair black she might
have been a self-respectin' woman an' a hater of men this very
day. A light character an' a light head go precious well
together, an' when you set one a good sober colour the other's
pretty apt to follow."
Fletcher rose from his chair and stood gripping the table hard.
"Have you any reason to think--does it look likely--that young
Blake has had a hand in this?" he asked.
"Who? Mr. Christopher? Why, I don't believe he could tell a
petticoat from a pair of breeches to save his soul. He ain't got
no fancy for corn-tassels and blue ribbons, I kin tell you that.
It's good honest women that are the mothers of families that he
takes to, an' even then it ain't no mo' than 'How are you, Mrs.
Spade? A fine mornin'!'"
"Well, thar's one thing you may be sartain of," returned
Fletcher, breaking in upon her, "and that is that this whole
business is as good as settled. I leave here with the boy
to-morrow morning at sunrise, and he doesn't set foot agin in
this county until he's gone straight through the university. I'll
drag him clean across the broad ocean before he shall do it."
Then, as Mrs. Spade took a noisy departure, he stood, without
listening to her, gazing morosely down upon the pattern of the
carpet. _