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_ October dragged slowly along, and Christopher followed his work
upon the farm with the gloomy indifference which had become the
settled expression of his attitude toward life. Since the morning
when he had seen Will drive by to the cross-roads he had heard
nothing of him, and gradually, as the weeks went on, that last
reckless night behind the hounds had ceased to represent a cause
either of rejoicing or of regret. He had not meant to goad the
boy into drinking--of this he was quite sure--and yet when the
hunt was over and the two stood just before dawn in Tom Spade's
room he had felt the devil enter into him and take possession.
The old mad humour of his blood ran high, and as the raw whisky
fired his imagination he was dimly conscious that his talk grew
wilder and that the surrounding objects swam before his gaze as
if seen through a fog. Life, for the time at least, lost its
relative values; the moment loomed larger in his vision than the
years, and he beheld the past and the future dwarfed by the
single radiant instant that was his own. It was as if he could
pay back the score of a lifetime in that one minute.
"Is it possible that what was so difficult yesterday should have
grown so easy to-day?" he asked himself, astonished. "Why have I
never seen so clearly before? Why, until this evening, have I
gone puling about my life as if such things as disgrace and
poverty were sufficient to crush the strength out of a man? Let
me put forth all my courage and nothing is impossible--not even
the attainment of success nor the punishment of Fletcher. It is
only necessary to begin at once--to hasten about one's task--and
in a few short years it will be accomplished and done with. All
will be as I wish, and I shall then be as happy as Tucker."
Following this came the questions, How? When? Where shall I
begin?--but he put them angrily aside and refilled his glass. A
great good-humour possessed him, and, as he drank, all the
unpleasant things of life--loss, unrest, heavy labour--vanished
in the roseate glow that pervaded his thoughts.
What came of it was not quite clear to him next day, and this
caused the uneasiness that lasted for a week. He had a vague
recollection that Tom Spade took the boy home and rolled him
through the window, and that he himself went whistling to his bed
with the glorious sensation that he was riding the crest of a big
wave. With the morning came a severe headache and the ineffectual
effort to remember just how far it had all gone, and then a sharp
anxiety, which vanished when he saw Will pass on his way to
school.
"The boy was none the worse for it," Tom Spade told him later;
"he had a drop too much, to be sure, but his legs were as steady
as mine, an' he slept it off in an hour. He's a ticklish chap,
Mr. Christopher," the storekeeper added after a moment, "an' I'd
keep my hands from meddlin' with him, if I was you. That thing
shan't happen agin at my place, an' it wouldn't have happened
then if I'd been around at the beginnin'. You may tamper with yo'
own salvation as much as you please--that's my gospel, but I'll
be hanged if you've got a right to tamper with anybody else's."
Christopher wheeled suddenly about and gave him a keen glance
from under his lowered eyelids. For the first time he detected a
lack of deference in Tom Spade's tone, and a suspicion shot
through him that the words were meant to veil a reprimand.
"Well, I reckon the boy's got as good a right to drink as I
have," he retorted sneeringly, and a moment afterward went gaily
whistling through the store. At the time he felt a certain
pleasure in defying Tom's opinion--in setting himself so boldly
in opposition to the conventional morality of his neighbours. The
situation gave him several sharp breaths and that dizzy sense of
insecurity in which his mood delighted. It had needed only the
shade of disapproval expressed in the storekeeper's voice to lend
a wonderful piquancy to his enjoyment--to cause him to toy in
imagination with his hatred as a man does with his desire. Before
Tom spoke he had caught himself almost regretting the
affair--wondering, even, if his error were past retrieving--but
with the first mere suggestion of outside criticism his humour
underwent a startling change.
Between Fletcher and himself the account was still open, and the
way in which he meant to settle it concerned himself alone--least
of all did it concern Tom Spade.
He was groping confusedly among these reflections when, one
evening in early November, he went upstairs after a hasty supper
to find Cynthia already awaiting him in his room. At his start of
displeased surprise she came timidly forward and touched his arm.
"Are you sick, Christopher? or has anything happened? You are so
unlike yourself."
He shook his head impatiently and her hand fell from his sleeve.
It occurred to him all at once, with an aggrieved irritation,
that of late his family had failed him in sympathy--that they had
ceased to value the daily sacrifices he made. Almost with horror
he found himself asking the next instant whether the simple bond
of blood was worth all that he had given--worth his youth, his
manhood, his ambition? Until this moment his course had seemed to
him the one inevitable outcome of circumstances--the one
appointed path for him to tread; but even as he put the question
he saw in a sudden illumination that there might have been
another way--that with the burden of the three women removed he
might have struck out into the world and at least have kept his
own head above water. With his next breath the horror of his
thought held him speechless, and he turned away lest Cynthia
should read his degradation in his eyes.
"Happened! Why, what should have happened?" he inquired with
attempted lightness. "Good Lord! After a day's work like mine you
can hardly expect me to dance a hornpipe. Since sunrise I've done
a turn at fall ploughing, felled and chopped a tree, mended the
pasture fence, brought the water for the washing, tied up some
tobacco leaves, and looked after the cattle and the horses--and
now you find fault because I haven't cut any extra capers!"
"Not find fault, dear," she answered, and the hopeless courage in
her face smote him to the heart. In a bitter revulsion of feeling
he felt that he could not endure her suffering tenderness.
"Find fault with you! Oh, Christopher! It is only that you have
been so different of late, so brooding, and you seem to avoid us
at every instant. Even mother has noticed it, and she imagines
that you are in love."
"In love!" he threw back his head with a loud laugh. "Oh, I'm
tired, Cynthia--dog-tired, that's the matter."
"I know, I know," replied Cynthia, rubbing her eyes hard with the
back of her hand. "And the worst is that there's no help for
it--absolutely none. I think about it sometimes until I wonder
that I don't go mad."
He turned at this from the window through which he had been
gazing and fixed upon her a perplexed and moody stare. The
wistful patience in her face, like the look he had seen in the
eyes of overworked farm animals, aroused in him a desire to prod
her into actual revolt--into any decisive rebellion against fate.
To accept life upon its own terms seemed to him, at the instant,
pure cowardliness--the enforced submission of a weakened will;
and he questioned almost angrily if the hereditary instincts were
alive in her also? Did she, too, have her secret battles and her
silent capitulations? Or was her pious resignation, after all,
only a new form of the old Blake malady--of that fatal apathy
which seized them, like disease, when events demanded strenuous
endeavour? Could the saintly fortitude he had once so envied be,
when all was said, merely the outward expression of the inertia
he himself had felt--of the impulse to drift with the tide, let
it carry one where it would?
"Well, I'm glad it's no worse," said Cynthia, with a sigh of
relief, as she turned toward the door. "Since you are not sick,
dear, things are not so bad as they might be. I'll let mother
fancy you have what she calls 'a secret sentiment.' It amuses
her, at any rate. And now I'm going to stir up some buckwheat
cakes for your breakfast. We've got a jug of black molasses."
"That's pleasant, at least," he returned, laughing; and then as
she reached the door he went toward her and laid his hand
awkwardly upon her shoulder. "Don't worry about me, Cynthia," he
added; "there's a lot of work left in me yet, and a change for
the better may come any day, you know. By next year the price of
tobacco may shoot skyhigh."
Her face brightened and a flush smoothed out all the fine
wrinkles on her brow, but with the pathetic shyness of a woman
who has never been caressed she let his hand fall stiffly from
her arm and went hurriedly from the room.
For a few minutes Christopher stood looking abstractedly at the
closed door. Then shaking his head, as if to rid himself of an
accusing thought, he turned away and began rapidly to undress. He
had thrown off his coat, and was stooping to remove his boots,
when a slight noise at the window startled him, and straightening
himself instantly he awaited attentively a repetition of the
sound. In a moment it came again, and hastily crossing the room
and raising the sash, he looked out into the full moonlight and
saw Will Fletcher standing in the gravelled path below. At the
first glance surprise held him motionless, but as the boy waved
to him he responded to the signal, and, catching up his coat from
the bed, ran down the staircase and out into the yard.
"What in the devil's name--" he exclaimed, aghast.
Will was trembling from exhaustion, and his face glimmered like a
pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys
stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously
and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to
death; this Christopher saw at the first anxious look.
"Get me something to eat," said the boy; "I'm half starved--but
bring it to the barn, for I'm too dead tired to stand a moment.
Yes, I ran away, of course," he finished irritably. "Do I look as
if I'd come in grandpa's carriage?"
With a last spurt of energy he disappeared into the shadows
behind the house, and Christopher, going into the kitchen, began
searching the tin safe for the chance remains of supper. On the
table was the bowl of buckwheat which Cynthia had been preparing
when she was called away by some imperious demand of her
mother's, and near it he saw the open prayer-book from which she
had been reading. From the adjoining room he heard Tucker's
voice--those rich, pleasant tones that translated into sound the
courageous manliness of the old soldier's face--and for an
instant he yearned toward the cheerful group sitting in the
firelight beyond the whitewashed wall--toward the blind woman in
her old oak chair, listening to the evening chapter from the
Scriptures. Then the feeling passed as quickly as it had come,
and securing a plate of bread and a dried ham-bone, he filled a
glass with fresh milk, and, picking up his lantern, went out of
doors and along the little straggling path to the barn.
The yard was frosted over with moonlight, but when he reached the
rude building where the farm implements and cattle fodder were
sheltered he saw that it was quite dark inside, only a few
scattered moonbeams crawling through the narrow doorway. To his
first call there was no answer, and it was only after he had
lighted his lantern and swung it round in the darkness that he
discovered Will lying fast asleep upon a pile of straw.
As the light struck him full in the face the boy opened his eyes
and sprang up.
"Why, it's you," he said in a relieved voice. "I thought it was
grandpa. If he comes you've got to keep him out, you know!"
He spoke in an excited whisper, and his eyes plunged beyond the
entrance with a look of pitiable and abject terror. Once or twice
he shivered as if from cold, and then, turning away, cowered into
the pile of straw in search of warmth.
For a time Christopher stood gazing uneasily down upon him. "Look
here, man, this can't keep up," he said. "You'd better go
straight home, that's my opinion, and get into a decent bed."
Will started up again. "I won't see him! I won't!" he cried
angrily. "If you bring him here I'll get up and hide. I won't see
him! Why, he almost killed me after that 'possum hunt we had, and
if he found this out so soon he'd kill me outright. There was an
awful rumpus at school. They wrote him and he said he was coming,
so I ran away. It was all his fault, too; he had no business to
send me back again when he knew how I hated it. I told him he'd
be sorry."
"Well, he shan't get in here to-night," returned Christopher
soothingly. I'll keep him out with a shotgun, bless him, if he
shows his face. Come, now, sit up and eat a bit, or there won't
be any fight left in us."
Will took the food obediently, but before it touched his lips the
hand in which he held it dropped limply to the straw.
"I can't eat," he complained, with a gesture of disgust. "I'm too
sick--I've been sick for days. It was all grandpa's doing, too.
When I heard he was coming I went out and got soaking wet, and
then slept in my clothes all night. I knew he'd never make a fuss
if I could only get ill enough, but the next morning I felt all
right, so I came away."
Kneeling upon the floor, Christopher held the glass to his lips,
gently forcing him to drink a few swallows. Then dipping his
handkerchief in the cattle trough outside, he bathed the boy's
face and hands, and, loosening his clothes, made him as
comfortable as he could. "This won't do, you know," he urged
presently, alarmed by Will's difficult breathing. "You are in for
a jolly little spell, and I must get you home. Your grandfather
will never bother you while you're sick."
At the words the boy clung to him deliriously, breaking into
frightened whimpers such as a child makes in the dark. "I won't
go back! I won't go back!" he repeated wildly; "he'll never
believe I'm ill, and I won't go back!"
"All right; that settles it. Lie quiet and I'll fetch you some
bedding from my room. Then I'll fix you a pallet out here, and
we'll put up as best we can till morning."
"Don't stay; don't stay," pleaded Will, as the other, leaving his
lantern on the floor, ran out into the moonlight.
Returning in a quarter of an hour, he threw a small feather-bed
down upon the straw and settled the boy comfortably upon it. Then
he covered him with blankets, and, after closing the door, came
back and stood watching for him to fall asleep. A slight draft
blew from the boarded window, and, taking off his coat, he hung
it carefully across the cracks, shading the lantern with his hand
that its light might not flash in the sleeper's face.
At his step Will gave a stifled moan and looked up in terror.
"I thought you'd left me. Don't go," he begged, stretching out
his hand until it grasped the other's. With the hot, nerveless
clutch upon him, Christopher was conscious of a quick repulsion,
and he remembered the sensation he had felt as a boy when he had
once suddenly brought his palm down on a little green snake that
was basking in the sunshine on an old log. Yet he did not shake
the hand off, and when presently the blanket slipped from Will's
shoulders he stooped and replaced it with a strange gentleness.
The disgust he felt was so evenly mingled with compassion that,
as he stood there, he could not divide the one emotion from the
other. He hated the boy's touch, and yet, almost in spite of
himself, he suffered it.
"Well, I'm not going, so you needn't let that worry you," he
replied. "I'll stretch myself alongside of you in the straw, and
if you happen to want me, just yell out, you know."
The weak fingers closed tightly about his wrist.
"You promise?" asked the boy.
"Oh, I promise," answered the other, raising the lantern for a
last look before he blew it out.
By early daybreak Will's condition was still more alarming, and
leaving him in a feverish stupor upon the pallet, Christopher set
out hurriedly shortly after sunrise to carry news of the boy's
whereabouts to Fletcher.
It was a clear, cold morning, and the old brick house, set midway
of the autumn fields, appeared, as he approached it, to reflect
the golden light that filled the east. Never had the place seemed
to him more desirable than it did as he went slowly toward it
along the desolate November roads. The somber colours of the
landscape, the bared majesty of the old oaks where a few leaves
still clung to the topmost boughs, the deserted garden filled
with wan specters of summer flowers, were all in peculiar harmony
with his own mood as with the stern gray walls wrapped in naked
creepers. That peculiar sense of ownership was strongly with him
as he ascended the broad steps and lifted the old brass knocker,
which still bore the Blake coat of arms.
To his astonishment the door opened instantly and Fletcher
himself appeared upon the threshold. At sight of Christopher he
fell back as if from a blow in the chest, ripping out an oath
with a big downward gesture of his closed fist.
"So you are mixed up in it, are you! Whar's the boy?" From the
dusk of the hall his face shone dead white about the eyes.
"If you want to get anything out of me you'd better curb your
tongue, Bill Fletcher," replied Christopher coolly, feeling an
animal instinct to prolong the torture. "If you think it's any
satisfaction to me to have your young idiot thrown on my hands
you were never more mistaken in your life. I've been up half the
night with him, and the sooner you take him away the better I'll
like it."
"Oh, you leave him to me and I'll settle him," responded
Fletcher, reaching for his hat. "Jest show me whar he is and I'll
git even with him befo' sundown. As for you, young man, I'll have
the sheriff after you yit."
"In the meantime, you'd better have the doctor. The boy's ill, I
tell you. He came to me last evening, run to death and with a
high fever. He slept in the barn, and this morning he is
decidedly worse. If you come, bring Doctor Cairn with you, and I
warn you now you've got to use a lot of caution. Your grandson is
mortally afraid of you, and he threatens to run away if I let you
know where he is. He wants me to sit at the door with a shotgun
and keep you off."
He delivered his blows straight out from the shoulder, lingering
over each separate word that he might enjoy to the full its
stupendous effect.
"This is your doing," repeated Fletcher hoarsely; "it's your
doing, every blamed bit of it."
Christopher laughed shortly. "Well, I'm through with my errand,"
he said, moving toward the steps and pausing with one hand on a
great white column. "The sooner you get him out of my barn the
better riddance it will be. There's one thing certain, though,
and that is that you don't lay eyes on him without the doctor.
He's downright ill, on my oath."
"Oh, it's the same old trick, and I see through it," exclaimed
Fletcher furiously. "It's pure shamming."
"All the same, I've got my gun on hand, and you don't go into
that barn alone." He hung for an instant upon the topmost step,
then descended hurriedly and walked rapidly back along the broad
white walk. It would be an hour, at least, before Fletcher could
follow him with Doctor Cairn, and after he had returned to the
barn and given Will a glass of new milk he fed and watered the
horses and did the numberless small tasks about the house. He was
at the woodpile, chopping some light wood splinters for Cynthia,
when the sound of wheels reached him, and in a little while more
the head of Fletcher's mare appeared around the porch. Doctor
Cairn, a frousy, white-bearded old man, crippled from rheumatism,
held out his hand to Christopher as he descended with some
difficulty between the wheels of the buggy.
Christopher motioned to the barn, and then, taking the reins,
fastened the horse to the branch of a young ailanthus tree which
grew near the woodpile. As he watched the figures of the two men
pass along the little path between the fringes of dead yarrow he
drew an uneasy breath and dug his boot into the rotting mould
upon the ground. The barn door opened and closed; there was a
short silence, and then a sudden despairing cry as of a rabbit
caught in the jaws of a hound. When he heard it he turned
impulsively from the horse's head and went quickly along the path
the men had taken. There was no definite intention in his mind,
but as he reached the barn door it shot open and Fletcher put out
a white face.
"The Doctor wants you, Mr. Christopher," he cried; "Will has gone
clean mad!"
Without a word, Christopher pushed by him and went into the great
dusky room, where the boy was struggling like a madman to loosen
the doctor's grasp. He was conscious at the moment that the air
was filled with fine chaff and that he sucked it in when he
breathed.
At his entrance Will lay quiet for a moment and looked at him
with dazed, questioning eyes.
"Keep them out, Christopher!" he cried, in anguish.
Christopher crossed the room and laid his hand with a protecting
gesture on the boy's head.
"Why, to be sure I will," he said heartily; "the devil himself
won't dare to touch you when I am by, " _
Read next: Book III - The Revenge: Chapter I. In Which Tobacco Is Hero
Read previous: Book II - The Temptation: Chapter IX. As the Twig Is Bent
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