________________________________________________
_ When he entered the house a little later Cynthia met him in the
kitchen doorway with an anxious frown.
"I heard a noise, Christopher. What was it?"
"A man wanted me about something. How is mother resting?"
"Not well. Her dreams trouble her. She grows weaker every day,
and the few hours she insists upon spending in her chair tire her
dreadfully."
"There is nothing that she needs, you say?"
"No; nothing. She has never felt our poverty for an instant."
The furrow between his eyebrows grew deeper.
"And you?" he asked abruptly, regarding her fixedly with his
intent gaze. "What under heaven are you up to at this hour?"
Glancing down at the ironing-board before her, she flushed
painfully through the drawn grayness of her face.
"I had a little ironing to do," she answered, "and I wanted it
all finished to-night. Mother needs me in the day."
Pushing her aside, he seized the iron and ran it in a few hasty
strokes over the rough-dry garment which she had spread on the
board. "Go to bed and leave these things alone," he insisted.
"Oh, Christopher, you'll spoil it!" cried Cynthia, clutching his
arm.
He returned the iron to the stand and met her reproachful look
with a gesture of annoyance. "Well, I'm going to sleep, if you
aren't," he said, and treading as lightly as possible in his
heavy boots, went along the little platform and upstairs to his
garret room.
Once inside, he undressed hastily and flung himself upon the bed,
but his thoughts spun like a top, and wild visions of Will, of
Fletcher, and of Molly Peterkin whirled confusedly through his
brain. When at last he lost consciousness for a time, it was to
dream restlessly of the cry of a hare that the hounds had caught
and mangled. The scream of the creature came to him from a thick
wood, which was intersected by innumerable small green paths, and
when he tried vainly to go to the rescue he lost himself again
and again in the wilderness of trails. Back and forth he turned
in the twilight, crushing down the underbrush and striking in a
frenzy at the forked boughs the trees wrapped about him, while
suddenly the piteous voice became that of a woman in distress.
Then, with a great effort, he fought his way through the wood, to
see the mangled hare change slowly into Maria Fletcher, who
opened her eyes to ask him why he hunted her to death.
He awoke in a cold sweat, and, sitting up in bed, leaned for air
toward the open window. A dull ache gnawed at his heart, and his
lips were parched as if from fever. Again it seemed to him that
Maria entreated him across the distance.
When he came down at sunrise he found Jerry Green awaiting him
with the horses, and learned in answer to his questions that the
lovers had taken a light wagon at the cross-roads and driven on
to town.
"They were that bent on gittin' thar that they couldn't even wait
for the stage, " the man told him. "Well, they're a merry pair,
an' I hope good will come of it--seein' as 'tain't no harm to
hope."
"Oh, they think so now, at any rate," Christopher replied, as he
turned away to unharness the patient horses.
At breakfast, an hour or two later, he learned that his mother
was in one of her high humours, and that, awaking early and
prattling merrily of the past, she insisted that they should
dress her immediately in her black brocade. When the meal was
over he carried her from her bed to the old oak chair, in which
she managed to keep upright among her pillows. Her gallant spirit
was still youthful and undaunted, and the many infirmities of her
body were powerless to distort the cheerful memories behind her
sightless eyes.
Leaving her presently, after a careless chat about the foibles of
Bolivar Blake, he took his hoe from an outhouse and went to
"grub" the young weeds from the tobacco, which had now reached
its luxuriant August height. By noon his day's work on the crop
was over, and he was resting for a moment in the shadow of a
locust tree by the fence, when he heard rapid footsteps
approaching in the new road, and Bill Fletcher threw himself over
the crumbling rails and came panting into the strip of shade. At
sight of the man's face Christopher flung his hoe out into the
field, where it bore down a giant plant, and bracing his body
against the tree, prepared himself to withstand the shock of the
first blow; but the other, after glaring at him for a breathless
instant, fell back and rapped out a single thundering oath. "You
hell-hound! This is all your doing!"
Throwing off the words with a gesture of his arm, Christopher
stared coolly into the other's distorted face; then, yielding to
the moment's vindictive impulse, he broke into a sneering laugh.
"So you have heard the good news?" he inquired lightly.
Before the rage in the old man's eyes--before the convulsed
features and the quivering limbs--he felt a savage joy suddenly
take possession of him.
"It's all your doing, every last bit of it," repeated Fletcher
hoarsely, "and I'll live to pay you back if I hang for it in the
end!"
"Go ahead, then," retorted Christopher; "you might as well hang
for a sheep as for a lamb, you know."
"Oh, you think I'm fooling?" said the other, wiping a fleck of
foam from his mouth, "but you'll find out better some day, unless
the devil gets you mighty quick. You've made that boy a scamp and
a drunkard, and now you've gone and married him to a--" He
swallowed the words and stood gasping above his loosened collar.
Christopher paled slightly beneath his sunburn; then, as he
recovered his assurance, a brutal smile was sketched about his
mouth.
"Come, come, go easy," he protested flippantly; "there's such a
thing, you remember, as the pot calling the kettle black."
His gay voice fell strangely on the other's husky tones, and for
the moment, in spite of his earth-stained hands and his clothes
of coarse blue jean, he might have been a man of the world
condescending to a peasant. It was at such times, when a raw
emotion found expression in the primitive lives about him, that
he realised most vividly the gulf between him and his neighbours.
To his superficial unconcern they presented the sincerity of
naked passion.
"You've made the boy what he is," repeated the old man, in a
quiver from head to foot. "You've done your level best to send
him to the devil."
"Well, he had a pretty good start, it seems, before I ever laid
eyes on him."
"You set out to ruin him from the first, and I watched you," went
on Fletcher, choking over each separate word before he uttered
it; "my eye was on your game, and if you were anything but the
biggest villain on earth I could have stopped it. But for you
he'd be a decent chap this very minute."
"And the pattern of his grandfather," sneered Christopher.
Fletcher raised his arm for a blow and then let it fall limply to
his side. "Oh, I'm done with you now, and I'm done with your
gang," he said. "Play your devil's tricks as much as you please;
they won't touch me. If that boy sets foot on my land again I'll
horsewhip him as I would a hound. Let him see who'll feed him now
when he comes to starve."
Catching his breath, Christopher stared at him an instant in
silence; then he spoke in a voice which had grown serious.
"The more fool you, then," he said. "The chap's your grandson,
and he's a better one than you deserve. Whatever he is, I tell
you now, he's a long sight too good for such as you--and so is
Molly Peterkin, for that matter. Heavens above! What are you that
you should become a stickler for honesty in others? Do you think
I've forgotten that you drove my father to his grave, and that
the very land you live on you stole from me? Pshaw! It takes more
than twenty years to bury a thing like that, you fool!"
Fletcher looked helplessly round for a weapon, and catching sight
of the hoe, raised it in his hands; but Christopher, seizing it
roughly from him, tossed it behind him in the little path.
"I'll have none of that," added the young man grimly.
"You're a liar, as your father was before you," burst out
Fletcher, swallowing hard; "and as for that scamp you've gone and
sent to hell, you can let him starve or not, jest as you please.
He has made his choice between us, and he can stick to it till he
rots in the poorhouse. Much good you'll do him in the end, I
reckon."
"Well, just now it seems he hasn't chosen either of us," remarked
Christopher, cooling rapidly as the other's anger grew red hot.
"It rather looks as if he'd chosen Molly Peterkin."
"Damn you!" gasped Fletcher, putting up a nerveless hand to tear
his collar apart, while a purple flush rose slowly from his
throat to his forehead. "If you name that huzzy to me again I'll
thrash you within an inch of your life!"
"Let's try it," suggested Christopher in an irritating drawl.
"Oh, I'm used to bullies like you," pursued the old man. "I know
the kind of brute that thinks he can knock his way into heaven.
Your father was jest sech another, and if you come to die a crazy
drunkard like him it'll be about the end that you deserve!"
An impatient frown drew Christopher's brows together, and,
picking up the hoe, he walked leisurely out into the field.
"Well, I can't stop to hear your opinion of me," he observed.
"You'll have to keep it until another time," and breaking into a
careless whistle, he strode off between the tobacco furrows on
his way to bring the old mare from the pasture.
A little later, alone with the broad white noon and the stillness
of the meadow, his gay whistle ended abruptly on his lips and the
old sullen frown contracted his heavy brows. It was in vain that
he tried to laugh away the depression of the moment; the white
glare of the fields and the perfume of wild flowers blooming in
hot sunshine produced in him a sensation closely akin to physical
nausea--a disgust of himself and of the life and the humanity
that he had known. What was it all worth, after all? And what of
satisfaction was there to be found in the thing he sought?
Fletcher's face rose suddenly before him, and when he tried to
banish the memory the effort that he made brought but the more
distinctly to his eyes the coarse, bloated features with the
swollen veins across the nose. Trivial recollections returned to
annoy him--the way the man sucked in his breath when he was
angry, and the ceaseless twitching of the small muscles above his
bloodshot eyes. "Pshaw! What business is it of mine?" he
questioned angrily. "What am I to the man, that I cannot escape
the disgust that he arouses? Is it possible that I should be
haunted forever by a face I hate? There are times when I could
kill him simply because of the repulsion that I feel. As for the
boy--let him marry a dozen Molly Peterkins--who cares? Not I,
surely. When he turns upon his grandfather and they fall to
gnawing at each other's bones, the better I shall be pleased." He
shook his head impatiently, but the oppression which in some
vague way he associated with the white heat and the scent of wild
flowers still weighed heavily upon his thoughts. "Is it possible
that after all that has happened I am not yet satisfied?" he
asked, with annoyance.
For awhile he lingered by the little brook in the pasture, and
then slipping the bridle on the old mare, returned slowly to the
house. At the bars he met Sol Peterkin, who had hurried over in
evident consternation to deliver his news.
"Good Lord, Mr. Christopher! What do you think that gal of mine
has gone and done now?"
Christopher slid the topmost bar from its place and lifted his
head
"Don't tell me that she's divorced already," he returned. "Why,
the last I heard of her she had run off this morning to marry
Will Fletcher."
"That's it, suh; that's it," said Sol. "I'm meanin' the marriage.
Well, well, it does seem that you can't settle down an' begin to
say yo' grace over one trouble befo' a whole batch lights upon
you. To think, arter the way I've sweated an' delved to be
honest, that a gal of mine should tie me hand an' foot to Bill
Fletcher."
In spite of his moodiness, the humour of the situation struck
home to Christopher, and throwing back his head he burst into a
laugh.
"Oh, you needn't poke yo' fun, suh," continued Sol. "Money is a
mighty good thing, but you can't put it in the blood, like you
kin meanness. All Bill Fletcher's riches ain't soaked in him
blood an' bone, but his meanness is, an' that thar meanness goes
a long sight further than his money. Thar ain't much sto' set by
honesty in this here world, suh, an' you kin buy a bigger chaw of
tobaccy with five cents than you kin with all the virtue of Moses
on his Mount; but all the same it's a mighty good thing to rest
yo' head on when you go to bed, an' I ain't sure but it makes
easier lyin' than a linen pillow-slip an' a white goose tick--"
"Oh, I dare say," interrupted Christopher; "but now that it's
over we must make the best of it. She didn't marry Bill Fletcher,
after all, you know--"
He checked himself with a start, and the bridle slipped from his
arm to the ground, for his name was called suddenly in a high
voice from the house, and as he swung himself over the bars Lila
came running barehead across the yard.
"Christopher!" she cried; "we could not find you, and Bill
Fletcher has talked to mother like a madman. Come quickly! She
has fainted!"
Before she had finished, he had dashed past her and through the
house into the little parlour, where the old lady sat erect and
unconscious in her Elizabethan chair.
"I found her like this," said Lila, weeping. "We heard loud
voices and then a scream, and when we rushed in the man left, and
she sat looking straight ahead like this--like this."
Throwing himself upon his knees beside the chair, Christopher
caught his mother to his breast and turned angrily upon the
women.
"Has nothing been done? Where is the doctor?" he cried.
"Jim has gone for him. Here, let me take her," said Cynthia,
unclasping his arms. "There, stand back. She is not dead. In a
little while she will come to herself again."
Rising from the floor, he stood motionless in the center of the
room, where the atmosphere was heavy with the fragrance of
camphor and tea-roses. A broad strip of sunshine was at his feet,
and in the twisted aspen beside the window a catbird was singing.
These remained with him for years afterward, and with them the
memory of the blind woman sitting stiffy erect and staring
vacantly into his face.
"He has told her everything," said Cynthia--"after twenty years." _
Read next: Book IV - The Awakening: Chapter I. The Unforeseen
Read previous: Book III - The Revenge: Chapter VII. The Toss of a Coin
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