_ "So this was Maria's trick all along," he repeated, as he lurched
out into the road. "This was what she had schemed for from the
beginning--this was what her palavering and her protestations
meant. Oh, it had been a deep game from the first, only he had
been too much of a blind fool to see the truth." A hundred facts
arose to drive in the discovery; a hundred trivial details now
bristled with importance. Why had she been so willing--so eager,
even--to give away her little property, unless she intended to
divert him with the crumbs while she reached for the whole loaf?
Why, again, had she shrunk so from mentioning him to his
grandfather? And why, still further, had she always fearfully
postponed a meeting between the two? He remembered suddenly that
she had once drawn Molly behind the trees when the old man passed
along the road. Poor, defrauded Molly! Forgetting his bitter
quarrel with her, he was ready to fall upon her neck in maudlin
sympathy.
Yes, it was all plain now--as clear as day. He saw one by one
each devilish move that she had made, and he meant to pay her
back for all before the night was over. He would tell her what he
thought of her, freely, fully, in words that she would never
forget. The names that he would use, the curses he would utter,
spun deliriously in his head, and as he went on he found himself
speaking his phrases aloud to the darkness, trying upon the
silence the effect of each blighting sentence.
The lights of the Hall twinkled presently among the trees, and,
crossing the lawn, he crept into the little area under the back
steps. If Maria was not in the kitchen, the servant would be, he
argued, and he would send up a peremptory summons which would
bring her down upon the instant. It was not late enough for her
to be in bed, at least, and he chuckled over the thought of the
sleepless night which she would spend.
Pushing back the door cautiously on its old, rusty hinges, he
entered on tip-toe and glanced suspiciously around. The room was
empty, but a lamp with a smoked chimney burned upon the table,
and there were the glimmering embers of a wood fire in the stove.
It was just as he had left it the evening before, and this
aroused in him a feeling of surprise, so long a stretch appeared
to cover the last twenty-four hours. The same basket of chicken
feathers was in the sagging split-bottomed chair, the same pile
of black walnuts lay on the hearth, and the rusted hammer was
still lying where he had dropped it upon the bricks. Even the
smell was the same--a mixture of baked bread and burned feathers.
Going to the door that led into the house, he opened it and
looked up the dark staircase; then a sound reached him from the
dining-room, and with nervous shiver he turned away and came back
to the stove. A dread paralysed him lest the meeting with Maria
should be delayed until his courage oozed out of him, and to
nerve himself for the encounter he summoned to mind all the
evidence, which gathered in a cloud of witnesses, to prove her
treachery. Once it occurred to him that after a few minutes of
waiting he might tighten the screw upon his nerves and so pluck
up the audacity, if not the resolution, to ascend the stair
boldly and denounce her in the presence of his grandfather. But
the memory of Fletcher's face wagged before him, and, quaking
with terror, he huddled with open palms above the stove. Then,
pacing slowly up and down the room, he set to work frantically to
lash himself into the drunken bravado which he miscalled courage.
Of a sudden his hunger assailed him, violent, convulsive, and,
going over to the tin safe, he rummaged among the cold scraps he
found there, devouring greedily the food which lead been set by
for the hounds. A bottle of Miss Saidie's raspberry vinegar was
hidden in one corner, and he tore the paper label from the cork
and drank like a man who perishes from thirst. His energy, which
had evaporated from fatigue and hunger, surged back in spasms of
anger, and as he turned away, invigorated, from the safe, he
realised as he had never done before the full measure of his rage
against Maria. At the moment, had she come in upon him, he felt
that he could have struck her in the face.
But she did not come, and the slow minutes fretted him in their
passage. A flame shot up in the stove, and, catching a knot of
resinous pine, burned steadily, licking patiently about the
fading embers. The air became charged again with the odour of
burned feathers, and he saw that a handful, with the dried blood
of the fowl still adhering to them, had been scattered upon the
ashes. As he idly noted the colours of red and black, he
remembered with bitterness that he had raised game-cocks once
when he was a boy at the Hall, and that Maria had smashed a
nestful of his eggs in a fit of passion. The incident swelled to
enormous proportions in his thoughts, and he determined that he
would remind her of it in the interview that was before them.
The door into the house creaked suddenly behind him; he wheeled
about nervously, and then stood with hanging jaws staring into
the face of Fletcher.
"So it is you, is it?" said the old man, raising the stick he
carried. "So it is you, as I suspected--you darn rascal!"
But the power of speech had departed from Will in the presence
that he dreaded, and he stood clutching tightly to his harvest
hat, and shaking his head as if to deny the obvious fact of his
own identity.
"I thought it was you," pursued Fletcher, licking his dry lips.
"I heard a noise, and I picked up my stick, thinking it was you.
I'll have no thieving beggars on my place, I tell you, so the
quicker you git off the better. When were you here last, I'd like
to know?"
"Yesterday," answered Will, speaking the truth from sheer
physical inability to frame a lie. "I came to see Maria. She's
cheated me--she's cheated me all along."
"Then she lied," said Fletcher softly. "Then she lied and I
didn't know it."
"She's cheated me," insisted Will hoarsely. "It's been all a
scheme of hers from the very beginning. She's cheated me about
the will, grandpa; I swear she has."
"Eh? What's that?" responded the old man, shaking back his heavy
eyebrows. "Say your say right now, for in five minutes you go off
this place with every hound in the pack yelping at your heels.
I'll not have you here--I'll not have you here!"
The words ended in a snarl, and a fleck of foam dropped on his
gray beard.
"But it was all Maria's doing," urged Will passionately. "She has
been against me from the first; I see that now. She's plotted to
oust me from the very start."
"Well, she might have spared herself the trouble," was Fletcher's
sharp rejoinder.
"Let me explain--let me explain," pleaded the other, in a
desperate effort to gain time; "just a word or two--I only want a
word."
But when his grandfather drew back and stood glowering upon him
in silence, the speech he had wished to utter withered upon his
lips, blighted by a panic terror, and he stood mumbling
incoherently beneath his breath.
"Give me a word--a word is all I want," he reiterated wildly.
"Then out with your damned word and begone!" roared Fletcher.
Will's eyes travelled helplessly around the room, seeking in vain
some inspiration from the objects his gaze encountered. The tin
safe, the basket of feathers, the pile of walnuts on the hearth,
each arrested his wandering attention for an instant, and he
beheld all the details with amazing vividness.
A mouse came out into the room, gliding like a shadow along the
wall to the pile of walnuts, and his eyes followed it as if drawn
by an invisible thread.
"It's Maria--it's all Maria," he stuttered, and could think of
nothing further. His brain seemed suddenly paralysed, and he
found himself tugging hopelessly at the most commonplace word
which would not come. All his swaggering bravado had scampered
off at the first wag of the old man's head.
"If that's what you've got to say, you might as well be gone,"
returned Fletcher, moving toward him. "I warn you now that the
next time I find you here you won't git off so easy. Maria or no
Maria, you ain't goin' to lounge about this place so long as my
name is Bill Fletcher. The farther you keep yourself and your
yaller-headed huzzy out of my sight the better. Thar, now, be off
or you'll git a licking."
"But I tell you Maria's cheated me--she's cheated me," returned
Will, his voice rising shrilly as he was goaded into revolt.
"She's been scheming to get the place all along; that's her
trick."
"Pish! Tush!" responded Fletcher. "Are you going or are you not?"
Will's eyes burned like coals, and an observer, noting the two
men as they stood glaring at each other, would have been struck
by their resemblance in attitude and expression rather than in
feature. Both leaned slightly forward, with their chins thrust
out and their jaws dropped, and there was a ceaseless twitching
of the small muscles in both faces. The beast in each had sprung
violently to the surface and recognised the likeness at which he
snarled.
"You've left me to starve!" cried Will, strangling a sob of
anger. "It's not fair! You have no right. The money ought to be
mine--I swear it ought!"
"Oh, it ought, ought it?" sneered the old man, with an ugly
laugh.
At the sound of the laugh, Will shrank back and shivered as if
from the stroke of a whip. The spirit of rage worked in his blood
like the spirit of drink, and he felt his disordered nerves
respond in a sudden frenzy.
"It ought to be mine, you devil, and you know it!" he cried.
"I do, do I?" retorted Fletcher, still cackling. "Well, jest grin
at me a minute longer like that brazen wench your mother and I'll
lay my stick across your shoulders for good and all. As for my
money, it's mine, I reckon, and, living or dead, I'll look to it
that not one red cent gits to you. Blast you! Stop your
grinning!"
He raised the stick and made a long swerve sideways, but the
other, picking up the hammer from the hearth, jerked it above his
head and stood braced for the assault. In the silence of the room
Will heard the thumping of his own heart, and the sound inspired
him like the drums of battle. He was in a quiver from head to
foot, but it was a quiver of rage, not of fear, and a glow of
pride possessed him that he could lift his eyes and look Fletcher
squarely in the face.
"You're a devil--a devil! a devil!" he cried shrilly, sticking
out his tongue like a pert and vulgar little boy. "Christopher
Blake was right--you're a devil!"
As the name struck him between the eyes the old man lurched back
against the stove; then recovering himself, he made a swift
movement forward and brought his stick down with all his force on
the boy's shoulder.
"Take that, you lying varmint!" he shouted, choking.
The next instant his weapon had dropped from his hand, and he
reached out blindly, grappling with the air, for Will had turned
upon him with the spring of a wild beast and sent the hammer
crushing into his temple.
There was a muffled thud, and Fletcher went down in a huddled
heap
upon the floor, while the other stood over him in the weakness
which had succeeded his drunken frenzy.
"I told you to let me alone. I told you I'd do it," said Will
doggedly, and a moment later: "I told you I'd do it."
The hammer was still in his hand, and, lifting it, he examined it
with a morbid curiosity. A red fleck stained the iron, and
glancing down he saw that there was a splotch of blood on
Fletcher's temple. "I told him I'd do it," he repeated, speaking
this time to himself.
Then instantly the silence in the room stopped his heartbeats and
set him quaking in a superstitious terror through every fiber. He
heard the stir of the mouse in the pile of walnuts, the hissing
of the flame above the embers, and the sudden breaking of the
smoked chimney of the lamp. Then as he leaned down he heard
something else--the steady ticking of the big silver watch in
Fletcher's pocket.
A horror of great darkness fell over him, and, turning, he reeled
like a drunken man out into the night. _