_ CHAPTER XXI. THICKET POINT
It WAS a point with Mr. Ware to see just as little as possible of Betty. He had no taste for what he called female chatter. A sane interest in the price of cotton or pork he considered the only rational test of human intelligence, and Betty evinced entire indifference where those great staples were concerned, hence it was agreeable to him to have most of his meals served in his office.
At first Betty had sought to adapt herself to his somewhat peculiar scheme of life, but Tom had begged her not to regard him, his movements from hour to hour were cloaked in uncertainty. The man who had to overlook the labor of eighty or ninety field hands was the worst sort of a slave himself; the niggers knew when they could sit down to a meal; he never did.
But for all his avoidance of Betty, he in reality kept the closest kind of a watch on her movements, and when he learned that she had visited Charley Norton--George, the groom, was the channel through which this information reached him--he was both scandalized and disturbed. He felt the situation demanded some sort of a protest.
"Isn't it just hell the way a woman can worry you?" he lamented, as he hurried up the path from the barns to the house. He found Betty at supper.
"I thought I'd have a cup of tea with you, Bet--what else have you that's good?" he inquired genially, as he dropped into a chair.
"That was nice of you; we don't see very much of each other, do we, Tom?" said Betty pleasantly.
Mr. Ware twisted his features, on which middle age had rested an untender hand, into a smile.
"When a man undertakes to manage a place like Belle Plain his work's laid out for him, Betty, and an old fellow like me is pretty apt to go one of two ways; either he takes to hard living to keep himself in trim, or he pampers himself soft."
"But you aren't old, Tom!"
"I wish I were sure of seeing forty-five or even forty-eight again--but I'm not," said Tom.
"But that isn't really old," objected Betty.
"Well, that's old enough, Bet, as you'll discover for yourself one of these days."
"Mercy, Tom!" cried Betty.
Mr. Ware consumed a cup of tea in silence.
"You were over to see Norton, weren't you, Bet? How did you find him?" he asked abruptly.
"The doctor says he will soon be about again," answered Betty.
Tom stroked his chin and gazed at her reflectively.
"Betty, I wish you wouldn't go there again--that's a good girl!" he said tactfully, and as he conceived it, affectionately, even, paving the way for an exercise of whatever influence might be his, a point on which he had no very clear idea. Betty glanced up quickly.
"Why, Tom, why shouldn't I go there?" she demanded.
"It might set people gossiping. I reckon there's been pretty near enough talk about you and Charley Norton. A young girl can't be too careful." The planter's tone was conciliatory in the extreme, he dared not risk a break by any open show of authority.
"You needn't distress yourself, Tom. I don't know that I shall go there again," said Betty indifferently.
"I wouldn't if I were you." He was charmed to find her so reasonable. "You know it isn't the thing for a young girl to call on a man, you'll get yourself talked about in a way you won't like--take my word for it! If you want to be kind and neighborly send one of the boys over to ask how he is--or bake a cake with your own hands, but you keep away. That's the idea!--send him something to eat, something you've made yourself, he'll appreciate that."
"I'm afraid he couldn't eat it if I did, Tom. It's plain you have no acquaintance with my cooking," said Betty, laughing.
"Did Norton say if he had any idea as to the identity of the men who robbed him?" inquired Tom casually.
"Their object wasn't robbery," said Betty.
"No?" Ware's glance was uneasy.
"It seems that some one objects to his coming here, Tom--here to Belle Plain to see me, I suppose," added Betty. The planter moved uncomfortably in his seat, refusing to meet her eyes.
"He shouldn't put out a yarn like that, Bet. It isn't just the thing for a gentleman to do--"
"He isn't putting it out, as you call it! He has told no one, so far as I know," said Betty quickly. Mr. Ware fell into a brooding silence. "Of course, Charley wouldn't mention my name in any such connection!" continued Betty.
"Who cares how often he comes here? You don't, and I don't. There's more back of this than Charley would want you to know. I reckon he's got his enemies; some one's had a grudge against him and taken this way to settle it." The planter's tone and manner were charged with an unpleasant significance.
"I don't like your hints, Tom," said Betty. Her heightened color and the light in her eyes warned Tom that he had said enough. In some haste he finished his second cup of tea, a beverage which he despised, and after a desultory remark or two, withdrew to his office.
Betty went up-stairs to her own room, where she tried to finish a letter she had begun the day before to Judith Ferris, but she was in no mood for this. She was owning to a sense of utter depression and she had been at home less than a month. Struggle as she might against the feeling, it was borne in upon her that she was wretchedly lonely. She had seated herself by an open window. Now, resting her elbows on the ledge and with her chin between her palms, she gazed off into the still night. A mile distant, on what was called "Shanty Hill," were the quarters of the slaves. The only lights she saw were there, the only sounds she heard reached her across the intervening fields. This was her world. A half-savage world with its uncouth army of black dependents.
Tom's words still rankled. Betty's temper flared up belligerently as she recalled them. He had evidently meant to insinuate that Charley had lied outright when he told her the motive for the attack, and he had followed it up by that covert slur on his character. Charley's devotion was the thing that redeemed the dull monotony of existence. She became suddenly humble and tenderly penitent in her mood toward him; he loved her much better than she deserved, and she suspected that her own attitude had been habitually ungenerous and selfish. She had accepted all and yielded nothing. She wondered gravely why it was she did not love him; she was fond of him--she was very, very fond of him; she wondered if after all, as he said, this were not the beginning of love, the beginning of that deeper feeling which she was not sure she understood, not sure she should ever experience.
The thought of Charley's unwavering affection gave her a great sense of peace; it was something to have inspired such devotion, she could never be quite desperate while she had him. She must try to make him understand how possible an ideal friendship was between them, how utterly impossible anything else. She would like to have seen Charley happily married to some nice girl--"I wonder whom!" thought Betty, gazing deep into the night through her drooping lashes. She considered possible candidates for the happiness she herself seemed so willing to forego, but for one reason or another dismissed them all. "I am not sure I should care to see him marry," she confessed under her breath. "It would spoil everything. Men are much nicer than girls!" And Charley possessed distinguished merits as a man; he was not to be too hastily disposed of, even for his own good. She viewed him in his various aspects, his character and disposition came under her critical survey. Nature had given the young planter a handsome presence; wealth and position had come to him as fortuitously. The first of these was no great matter, perhaps; Betty herself was sometimes burdened with a sense of possession, but family was indispensable.
In theory, at least, she was a thoroughgoing little aristocrat. A gentleman was always a gentleman. There were exceptions, like Tom, to be sure, but even Tom could have reached up and seized the title had he coveted it. She rarely forgot that she was the mistress of Belle Plain and a Malroy. Just wherein a Malroy differed from the rest of the sons of men she had never paused to consider, it sufficed that there was a hazy Malroy genealogy that went back to tidewater Virginia, and then if one were not meanly curious, and would skip a generation or two that could not be accounted for in ways any Malroy would accept, one might triumphantly follow the family to a red-roofed Sussex manor house. Altogether, it was a highly satisfactory genealogy and it had Betty's entire faith. The Nortons were every bit as good as the Malroys, which was saying a great deal. Their history was quite as pretentious, quite as vague, and as hopelessly involved in the mists of tradition.
Inexplicably enough, Betty found that her thoughts had wandered to Carrington; which was very singular, as she had long since formed a resolution not to think of him at all. Yet she remembered with satisfaction his manner that afternoon, it left nothing to be desired. He was probably understanding the impassable gulf that separated them--education, experience, feeling, everything that made up the substance of life but deepened and widened this gulf. He belonged to that shifting, adventurous population which was far beneath the slave-holding aristocracy, at least he more nearly belonged to this lower order than to any other. She fixed his status relentlessly as something to be remembered when they should meet again. At last, with a little puckering of the brows and a firm contraction of the lips, she dismissed the Kentuckian from her thoughts.
Betty complied with Tom's expressed wish, for she did not again visit Thicket Point, but then she had not intended doing so. However, the planter was greatly shocked by the discovery he presently made that she was engaged in a vigorous correspondence with Charley.
"I wish to blazes Murrell had told those fellows to kick the life clean out of him while they were about it!" he commented savagely, and fell to cursing impotently. Brute force was a factor to be introduced with caution into the affairs of life, but if you were going to use it, his belief was that you should use it to the limit. You couldn't scare Norton, he was in love with that pink-faced little fool. Keep away?--he'd never think of it, he'd stuff his pockets full of pistols and the next man who stopped him on the road would better look out! It made him sick--the utter lack of sense manifested by Murrell, and his talk, whenever they met, was still of the girl. He couldn't see anything so damn uncommon about that red-and-white chit. She wasn't worth running your neck into a halter for--no woman that ever lived was worth that.
The correspondence, so far as Betty was responsible for it, bore just on one point. She wanted Charley to promise that for a time, at least, he would not attempt to see her. It seemed such a needless risk to take, couldn't he be satisfied if he heard from her every day?
Charley was regretful, but firm. Just as soon as he could mount his horse he would ride down to Belle Plain. She was not to distress herself on his account; he had been surprised, but this should not happen again.
The calm manner in which he put aside her fears for his safety exasperated Betty beyond measure. She scolded him vigorously. Charley accepted the scolding with humility, but his resolution was unshaken; he did not propose to vacate the public roads at any man's behest; that would be an unwise precedent to establish.
Betty replied that this was not a matter in which silly vanity should enter, even if his life was of no value to himself it did not follow that she held it lightly. It required some eight closely written pages for Charley to explain why existence would be an unsupportable burden if he were denied the sight of her.
A week had intervened since the attack, and from Jeff, who always brought Charley's letters, Betty learned more of Charley's condition than Charley himself had seen fit to tell. According to Jeff his master was now able to get around pretty tolerable well, though he had a powerful keen misery in his side.
"That was whar' they done kicked him most, Miss," he added. Betty shuddered.
"How much longer will he be confined to the house?" she asked.
"I heard him 'low to Mas'r Carrington, Miss, as how he reckoned he'd take a hossback ride to-morrow evenin' if the black and blue was all come out of his features--"
"Oh--" gasped Betty.
"Seems like they was mighty careless whar' they put their feet, don't it, Miss?" said Jeff.
It was this information she gleaned from Jeff that led Betty to desperate lengths, to the making of what her cooler judgment told her was a desperate bargain.
At Thicket Point Charley Norton, greatly excited, hobbled into the library in search of Carrington. He found him reading by the open window.
"Look here, Bruce!" he cried. "It's settled; she's going to marry me!"
The book slipped unheeded from Carrington's hand to the floor. For a moment he sat motionless, then he slowly pulled himself up out of his chair.
"What's that?" he asked a trifle thickly.
"Betty Malroy is going to marry me," said Norton. Carrington gazed at him in silence.
"It's settled, is it?" he asked at length. He saw his own hopes go down in miserable wreck; they had been utterly futile from the first. He had known all along that Norton loved her, the young planter had made no secret of it. He had been less frank.
"I swear you take it quietly enough," said Norton.
"Do I?"
"Can't you wish me joy?"
Carrington held out his hand.
"You are not going to take any risks now, you have too much to live for," he said haltingly.
"No, I'm to keep away from Belle Plain," said Norton happily. "She insists on that; she says she won't even see me if I come there. Everything is to be kept a secret; nothing's to be known until we are actually married; it's her wish--"
"It's to be soon then?" Carrington asked, still haltingly.
"Very soon."
There was a brief silence. Carrington, with face averted, looked from the window.
"I am going to stay here as long as you need me," he presently said. "She--Miss Malroy asked me to, and then I am going back to the river where I belong."
Norton turned on him quickly.
"You don't mean you've abandoned the notion of turning planter?" he demanded in surprise.
"Well, yes. What's the use of my trying my hand at a business I don't know the first thing about?"
"I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to decide finally on that point," urged Norton.
"It has decided itself," said Carrington quietly.
But Norton was conscious of a subtle change in their relation. Carrington seemed a shade less frank than had been habitual with him; all at once he had removed his private affairs from the field of discussion. Afterward, when Norton considered the matter, he wondered if it were not that the Kentuckian felt himself superfluous in this new situation that had grown up.
Charley Norton's features recovered their accustomed hue, but he did not go near Belle Plain; with resolute fortitude he confined himself to his own acres. He was tolerably familiar with certain engaging little peculiarities of Mr. Ware's; he knew, for instance, that the latter was a gentleman of excessively regular habits; once each fortnight, making an excuse of business, he spent a day in Memphis, neither more nor less. Norton told himself with satisfaction that Tom was destined to return to the surprise of his life from the next of these trips. This conviction was the one thing which sustained Charley for some ten days. They were altogether the longest ten days he had ever known, and he had about reached the limit of his endurance when Betty's groom arrived with a letter which threw him into a state of ecstatic happiness. The sober-minded Tom would devote the morrow to Memphis and business. This meant that he would leave Belle Plain at sun-up and return after nightfall.
"You may not like Tom, but you can always count on him," said Norton. Then he ordered his horse and rode off in the direction of Raleigh, but before leaving the house, he scribbled a line or two to be handed Carrington, who had gone down to the nearest river landing.
It was nightfall when the Kentuckian returned, Hearing his step in the hall, Jeff came from the dining-room, where he was laying the cloth for supper.
"Mas'r Charley has rid to Raleigh, Sah," said he; "but he done lef' this fo' me to han' to yo"--extending the letter.
Carrington took it. He guessed its contents. Breaking the seal he read the half dozen lines.
"To-morrow--" he muttered under his breath, and slowly tore the sheet of note-paper into thin ribbons. He turned to Jeff. "Mr. Charley won't be home until late," he said.
"Then I 'low yo' want yo' supper now, Sar?" But Carrington shook his head.
"No, you needn't bother, Jeff," he said, as he turned toward the stairs.
Ten minutes later and he had got together his belongings and was ready to quit Thicket Point. He retraced his steps to the floor below. In the hall he paused and glanced about him. He seemed to feel her presence--and very near--to-morrow she would enter there as Norton's wife. With his pack under his arm he entered the dining-room in search of Jeff.
"Tell your master I have gone to Memphis," he said briefly.
"Ain't yo' goin' to have a hoss, Mas'r Carrington?" demanded Jeff in some surprise. He had come to regard the Kentuckian as a fixture.
"No," said Carrington. "Good-by, Jeff," he added, turning away.
But when he left Thicket Point he did not take the Memphis road, but the road to Belle Plain. Walking rapidly, he reached the entrance to the lane within the hour. Here he paused irresolutely, it was as if the force of his purpose had already spent itself. Then he tossed his pack into a fence corner and kept on toward the house. _