Chapter 17

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_ CHAPTER XVII

It rained that next day--a dull, steady downpour that slanted in upon a warm, south wind. Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leaden grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little better. There was much that needed readjusting.

Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaper spread flat upon his knees--the afternoon edition of the previous day, which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessary time nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hours old. At any other time the contents of that red-headlined sheet would have set his pulses throbbing in a veritable ecstasy of excitement.

For two whole weeks he had been watching for it, scanning every inch of type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny's first match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the column head, fell woefully flat so far as he was concerned.

Not that the plump newspaperman who had written the account of that first victorious bout had achieved anything but a masterpiece of sensationalism. Every line was alive with action, every phrase seemed to thud with the actual shock of contest. And there was that last paragraph, too, which hailed Denny--"The Pilgrim," they called him in the paper, but that couldn't deceive Old Jerry--as the newcomer for whom the public had been waiting so long, and, toward the end, so hopelessly.

It was really a perfect thing of its kind--but Old Jerry could not enjoy it that morning, even though it was Denny Bolton's first triumph, to be shared by him alone in equal proportion. Instead of sending creepy thrills chasing up and down his spine it merely intensified his doleful bitterness of spirit. Long before noon he breathed a leaden heavy sigh, refolded the sodden sheet and put it away in the box beneath the seat.

The old mare took her own pace that day. In a brain that was already burdened until it fairly ached there was no room for the image of the silver-haired stone-cutter which had made for speed on other occasions. He had plenty to occupy his mind which was of a strictly immediate nature.

A dozen times that morning Old Jerry asked himself what he would tell Dryad Anderson that night, when he stopped at the little drab cottage at the route's end, ostensibly to bid her good-by. He asked himself, in desperate reiteration, how he would tell, for he knew that the long delay in the delivery of Denny's message was going to need more than a little explanation. And when he had wrestled with the question until his eyes stung and his temples throbbed, and still could find no solution for it, he turned helplessly to the consideration of another phase of the problem.

He fell to tormenting himself with the possibility of her having gone already. Everything in those bare rooms had been packed--there was no real reason for the girl to remain another hour. Perhaps she had reconsidered, changed her mind, and departed even earlier than she had planned, and if she had--if she had----

Whenever he reached that point, dumbly he bowed his head.

It was dark when he turned off the main road and started up the long hill toward the Bolton place--not just dark, but a blackness so profound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formless splotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of the place, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mental misery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe so much as one uneasy glance ahead until a glimmer of light which seemed to flash out from the rear of the house fairly shocked him into conscious recollection of it all.

He sprang erect then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brim in a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrilly staccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came to a standstill.

He tried to persuade himself it was a reflection of the village lights upon the window panes which had startled him, but it was only a half-hearted effort. No one could mistake the glow that filtered out of the black bulk of the rear of the house for anything save the thing it was. Half way up the hill he sat there, hunched forward in a hopeless huddle, his eyes protected by cupped palms, and stared and stared.

Once before, the evening of that day when the Judge's exhibition of Young Denny's bruised face had been more than his curiosity could endure, he had approached that bleak farmhouse in fear and trembling, but the trepidation of that night, half real, half a child of his own erratic imagination, bulked small beside the throat-tightening terror of this moment.

And yet he did not turn back. The thought that he had only to wheel his buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles would permit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit, driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, had at last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazy desperation, and bared its teeth.

"If he is up there," he stated doggedly, "if he is up there, a-putterin' with his everlasting lump o' clay, he ain't got no more right up there than I hev! He's just a-trespassin', that's what he's a-doin'. I'm the legal custodian of the place--it was put into my hands--and I'll tell him so. I'll give him a chance to git out--or--or I'll hev the law on him!"

The plump mare went forward again. There was something terribly uncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to the reins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top she slumped lazily to a standstill and fell contentedly to nibbling grass.

The light in the window was much brighter, viewed from that lessened distance--thin, yellow streaks of brightness that quivered a little from the edges of a drawn shade. An uneven wick might easily have accounted for the unsteadiness, but in that flickering pallor Old Jerry found something ominously unhealthy--almost uncanny.

But he went on. He clambered down from his high seat and went doggedly across--steadily--until his hand found the door-latch. And he gave himself no time for reconsideration or retreat. The metal catch yielded all too readily under the pressure of his fingers, and when the door swung in he followed it over the threshold.

The light blinded him for a moment--dazzled him--yet not so completely but that he saw, too clearly for any mistake, the figure that had turned from the stove to greet him. Dryad Anderson's face was pink-tinted from forehead to chin by the heat of the glowing lids--her lips parted a little until the small teeth showed white beyond their red fullness.

In her too-tight, boyish blouse, gaping at the throat, she stood there in the middle of the room, hands bracketed on delicate hips, and smiled at him. And behind her the lamp in its socket on the wall smoked a trifle from a too-high wick.

Old Jerry stood and gazed at her, one hand still clutching the door latch. In one great illuminating flash he saw it all--understood just what it meant--and with that understanding a hot wave of rage began to well up within him--a fierce and righteous wrath, borne of all that day's unnecessary agony and those last few minutes of fear.

It was a hoax on her part. She had been trifling with him the day before, just as she had been playing fast and loose with his peace of mind for days. An ejaculation bordering close upon actual profanity trembled upon his lips, but a draft of cold air sweeping in at the open doorway set the lamp flickering wildly and brought him back a little to himself. His eyes went again to the girl in the middle of the floor. She was rocking to and fro upon the balls of her feet, every inch of her fairly pulsing with mocking, malicious delight.

She waited for him to speak, and he, stiff of back and grim of face, stood stonily silent. She seemed all innocently unaware of his unconcealed disgust. The quizzical smile only widened before the chilly threat of his beady eyes and ruffled forehead. And then, all in one breath, her little pouted chin went up and she burst into a low gurgle of utter enjoyment of the tableau.

"Well," she demanded, "aren't you ever going to say anything? Here I am! I--I decided to move today--there really wasn't any use of waiting. Aren't you surprised--just a little?"

The meekness of her voice, so wholly belied by her eyes and lips and swaying boy-like body, only tightened the old man's mouth. He was still reviewing all that long day's mental torment, counting the wasted hours which might have been applied to a soul-satisfying feast upon Morehouse's red-headlined account in the paper. No veteran had ever marched more hopelessly into a cannon's mouth than he had approached the door of that kitchen.

And yet a flood of thankfulness, the direct reflex of his first impotent rage, threatened to sweep up and drown the fires of his wrath. Already he wanted to slump down into a chair and rest weary body and wearier, relieved brain; he wanted a minute or two in which to realize that she was there--that his unfulfilled promise was still far from being actual catastrophe--and he would not let himself. Not yet!

She had been playing with him--playing with him cat-and-mouse fashion. The birdlike features which had begun to relax hardened once more.

"Maybe I be," he answered her question with noncommittal grimness. "Maybe I be--and maybe I ain't!" And then, almost belligerently: "Your lamp's a-smokin'!"

She turned and strained on tiptoe and lowered it.

"I thought you would be," she agreed, too gravely for his complete comfort, when she had accomplished the readjustment of the wick to her entire satisfaction. "For, you know, you seemed a little worried and--well, not just happy, yesterday, when I told you I was going to move I--I felt sure you would be glad to find that I hadn't gone far!"

Old Jerry remembered at that moment and he removed his soaked hat. He turned, too, and drew up a chair. It gave him an opportunity to avoid those moistly mirthful eyes for a moment. Seated and comfortably tilted back against the wall he felt less ill at ease--felt better able to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with.

For a moment her presence there had only confounded him--that was when the wave of righteous wrath had swept him--but at the worst he had counted it nothing more than a too far-fetched bit of fantastic mischief conceived to tantalize him.

Her last statement awakened in him a preposterously impossible suspicion which, now that he had a chance to glance about the room, was confirmed instantly--absolutely. It was astounding--utterly unbelievable--and yet on all the walls, in every corner, there were the indisputable evidences of her intention to remain indefinitely--permanently.

At least it gave him an opening.

"You don't mean to say," he began challengingly, "you don't mean to tell me that you're a-figurin' on stayin' here--for good?"

She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously at him until the loosened wisps of hair half hid her eyes. It was quite as though she were pleased beyond belief that he had got at the gist of it all so speedily.

"Yes, for good," she explained ecstatically, "or," more slowly, "or at least for quite a while. You see I like it here! It's just like home already--just like I always imagined home would be when I really had one, anyway. There's so much room--and it's warm, too. And then, the floors don't squeak, either. I don't think I care for squeaky floors--do you?"

A quick widening of those almost purple eyes accompanied the last question.

The little white-haired figure in the back-tilted chair snorted. He tried to disguise it behind a belated cough, but it was quite palpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn't fool him any longer--not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantile stare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare of mirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one way to deal with such shallowness--that was with firm and unmistakable severity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasis as Judge Maynard had often done.

"You can't do it!" he emphasized flatly, his thin voice almost gloatingly triumphant. "Whatever put it into your head I don't know--but don't you realize what you're a-doin', comin' up here like this and movin' in, high-handed, without speaking to nobody? Well, you've made yourself liable to trespass--that's what you've done! Trespass and house-breaking, too, I guess, without interviewin' me first!"

The violet eyes flew wider. Old Jerry was certain that he caught a gleam of apprehension in them. She took one faltering step toward him and then stopped, irresolute, apparently. Somehow the mute appeal in that whole poise was too much, even for his outraged dignity. Maybe he had gone a little too far. He attempted to temper the harshness of it.

"Not a-course," he added deprecatingly, "meanin' that anything like that would be likely to happen to you. Seein' as you didn't exactly understand, I wouldn't take no steps against you." And, even more encouragingly, "I doubt if I'd hev any legal right to proceed against anybody without seeing Den--without seeing the rightful owner first."

He bit his tongue painfully in covering that slip, but Dryad had not seemed to notice it. She crossed back to the stove and in an absolute silence fell to prodding with a fork beneath steaming lids.

"I really should have thought of that myself," she murmured pensively. "After seeing you return from here every afternoon, I should have known he--the place had been left in your care."

It rather startled him--that half absent-minded statement of hers--it disturbed his confidence in his command of the situation. Sitting there he told himself that he should have realized long ago that she could easily watch the hill road from the door of the little drab cottage huddled at the end of Judge Maynard's acres.

He began to feel guilty again--began to wonder just how much his daily visits to Denny's place had led her to suspect. But Dryad did not wait for any reply. She had turned once more until she was facing him, her lips beginning to curl again, petal-like, at the corners.

"But you would have to interview the real owner first?" she inquired insistently. "You do think that would be necessary before you could make me leave, don't you?"

He nodded--nodded warily. Something in her bearing put him on his guard. And then, before he knew how it had happened, a little rush had carried her across the room and she was kneeling at his feet, her face upflung to him.

"Then you'll have to interview me,"--the words trembled madly, breathlessly, from her lips. "You'll have to interview me--because--because I own it all--all--every bit of it!"

And she laughed up at him--laughed with a queer, choking, strained note catching in her throat up into his blankly incredulous face. He felt her thin young arms tighten about him; he even half caught her next hysterical words in spite of his amazement, and for all that they were quite meaningless to him.

"You dear," she rushed on. "O, you dear, dear stubborn old fraud! I punished you, didn't I? You were frightened--afraid I'd go! You know you were! As if I'd ever leave until--until--" She failed to finish that sentence. "But I'll never, never tease you so again!"

Then there came that lightning-like change of mood which always left him breathless in his inability to follow it. The mirth went out of her eyes--her lips drooped and began to work strangely as she knelt and gazed up at him.

"I bought his mortgage," she told him slowly. "I bought it from Judge Maynard a week ago with part of the money he gave me for our place there below his. He was very generous. Somehow I feel that he paid me--much more than it was worth. He's always wanted it and--and I--there wasn't any need for me to stay there any more, was there?"

Old Jerry had never seen a face so terribly earnest before--so hungrily wistful--but it was the light that glowed in that kneeling girl's eyes that held him dumb. It left him completely incapable of coherent thought, yet mechanically his mind leaped back to that night, two weeks before, when Young Denny had stumbled and gone floundering to his knees before her, there on that very threshold. The boy's own words had painted that picture for him too vividly for him to forget. And he knew, without reasoning it out, just from the world of pain there in her eyes, that she, too, at that moment was thinking of that limp figure--of the great red gash across its chin.

"I didn't help him," she went on, and now her voice was little more than a whisper. "I went and left him here alone--and hurt--when I should have stayed, that night when he went away. And so I bought it--I bought it because I thought some day he might come back--and need me even more. I thought if he did come--he'd feel as though he had just--come back home! And--and just to be here waiting, I thought, too, might somehow help me to have faith that he would come, some day--safe!"

The old man felt the fiercely tense little arms go slack then. Her head went forward and lay heavy, pillowed in her hands upon his knees. But he sat there for a full minute, staring down at the thick, shimmering mass of her hair, swallowing an unaccountable lump that bothered his breathing preparatory to telling her all that he had kept waiting for just that opportunity, before he realized that she was crying. And for an equally long period he cast desperately about for the right thing to say. It came to him finally--a veritable inspiration.

"Why, you don't want to cry," he told her slowly. "They--they ain't nothing to worry about now! For if that's the case--if you've gone to work and bought it, why, I ain't got no more jurisdiction over it--none whatever!"

Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly at him, but Old Jerry's face was only guilelessly grave. It was more than that--benevolent reassurance lit up every feature, and little by little her brimming eyes began to clear; they began to glisten with that baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slipped slowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knew then that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was at that moment.

"I wasn't crying because I was worried," she said, and she managed not to laugh. "I've been doing that every night, all night long, for two weeks. That was before I understood--things! But today--this afternoon I found something--read something--that made me understand better. I--I'm just crying a little tonight because I am so glad."

Old Jerry couldn't quite fathom the whole meaning of those last words of hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant to tell her right then of Young Denny's departure once more went totally out of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of his first battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he felt it was very, very possible, for at each day's end he had been leaving Denny's roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home.

But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all. Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed to him a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the light that had glowed radiant in that girl's eyes, he knew it was the only thing left to believe.

He talked it over with himself that night on the way home.

"She bought it so's if he ever did want to come back, he'd feel as if he had come back home," he repeated her words, and he pondered long upon them. There was only one possible deduction.

"She thought he wouldn't have nothing left to buy it back when he did come--that he'd be started on the road all the rest of 'em traveled and pretty well--shot--to--pieces! That's what she thought," he decided.

He shook his head over it.

"And she didn't know," he marveled. "She didn't know how that old jug really got broke--because I ain't told her yet! But she's waitin' for him just the same--just a-waitin' for him, no matter how he comes. Figurin' on takin' care of him, too--that's what she was doin'--her that ain't no bigger'n his little finger!"

The storm had blown over long before his buggy went rattling down that long hill, and he sat with the reins dangling neglected between his knees and squinted up at the stars.

"I always did consider I'd been pretty lucky," he confided after a time to the plump mare's lazily flopping ears, "never gettin' mixed up in any matrimonial tangle, so to speak. But now--now I ain't quite so sure." A lonesome note crept into the querulous voice. "Maybe I'd hev kept my eyes open a little mite wider'n I did if I'd ever a-dreamed anybody could care like that.... Don't happen very often though, I reckon. Just about once in a lifetime, maybe. Maybe, if he ain't too blind to see it when it does come ... maybe once to every man!"

* * * * *

That next week marked the beginning of an intimacy unlike anything which Old Jerry had ever before known in all his life, for in spite of the girl's absolute proprietorship he continued his daily trips up the long hill, not only for the purpose of leaving Young Denny's bundle of papers and seed catalogues, but to attend to the stock which the boy had left in his care as well. It never occurred to him that that duty was only optional with him now.

He never again attempted either, after that night, to explain his delinquency and deliver Young Denny's message to her. There seemed to him absolutely no need now to open a subject which was bound to be embarrassing to him. And then, too, a sort of tacit understanding appeared to have sprung up between them that needed no further explanation.

Only once was the temptation to confess to her the real reason for Denny's sudden going almost stronger than he could resist. That was quite a month later, when the news of the boy's second battle was flaunted broadcast by the same red-headlined sheet. Then for days he considered the advisability of such a move.

It was not some one to share his hot pride that he wanted; he had lived his whole life almost entirely within himself, and so his elation was no less keen because he had no second person with whom to discuss the victory. He wanted her opinion on a quite different question--a question which he felt utterly incapable of deciding for himself. It was no less a plan than that he should be present at the match which was already hinted at between "The Pilgrim" and Jed The Red--Jeddy Conway, from that very village.

There were days when he almost felt that she knew of this new perplexity of his, felt that she really had seen that account of Young Denny's first fight and had been watching for the second, and at such times only a mumbled excuse and a hasty retreat saved him from baring his secret desire.

"She'd think I'd gone stark crazy," he excused his lack of courage. "She'd say I was a-goin' into my second childhood!"

Yet in the end it was the girl with the tip-tilted eyes who decided it for him.

Spring had slipped into early summer when the day came which made the gossip of "The Pilgrim's" possible bid for the championship a certainty. It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Each fresh day's issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison of the two men's chances--of their strength and weaknesses. The technical discussion the old man skipped; it was undecipherable to him and enough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner.

And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, he began to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that daily column. At first it was only fleeting--too intangible for one to place one's finger upon it. But by the end of another week it was openly inquiring whether "The Pilgrim" had as much as an even chance of winning after all.

It bewildered Old Jerry; it was beyond his comprehension, and had he not been so depressed himself he would have noted the change that came over the girl, too, these days. He never entered the big back kitchen now to hear her humming softly to herself, and sometimes he had to speak several times before she even heard him.

That continued for almost a week, and then there came a day, a scant three days before the date which he had hungrily underlined in red upon a mental calendar, which brought the whole vexing indecision to a precipitate head.

Old Jerry read that day's column in the sporting extra with weazened face going red with anger--read it with fists knotted. Those others had been merely skeptical--doubtful of "The Pilgrim's" willingness to meet the champion--and now it openly scoffed at him; it laughed at his ability, lashed him with ridicule. And, to cap it all, it accused him openly of having already "sold out" to his opponent.

When the little white-haired driver of the buggy reached the house on the hill that night he was as pale as he had been red, hours before, and he pleaded fatigue to excuse his too hasty departure. He did not see that she was almost as openly eager to have him go or that she almost ran across to the table under the light with the packet of papers as he turned away.

Had he noticed he would have been better prepared the next night for the scene that met him when he opened her door at dusk. One step was all he took, and then he stopped, wide-eyed, aghast. Dryad was standing in the middle of the room, her hair loose about her shoulders, lips drawn dangerously back from tight little teeth, fists clenched at her throat, and her eyes flaming.

Old Jerry had never before seen her in a rage; he had never before seen anybody so terribly, pallidly violent. As he entered her eyes shot up to his. He heard her breath come and go, come and go, between dry lips. And suddenly she lifted her feet and stamped upon the newspaper strewn about her on the floor--infinitesimal shreds which she had torn and flung from her.

"It's a lie!" she gasped. "It's a lie--a lie! They said he couldn't win anyway; they said he had sold--sold his chance to win--and they lie! He's never been whipped. He's never--been--whipped--yet!"

It frightened him. The very straining of her throat and the mad rise and fall of her breast made him afraid for her. In his effort to quiet her he hardly reckoned what he was saying.

"Why, it--it don't mean nothin'," he stated mildly. "That newspaper trash ain't no account, anyway you look at it."

"Then why do they print it?" she stormed. "How do they dare to print it? They've been doing it for days--weeks!"

He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into his brain.

"They hev to, I reckon," he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness. "If they didn't maybe everybody'd be so sure he'd win that they wouldn't even bother to go to see it." And then, very carelessly, as though it was of little importance: "Don't know's I would hev thought of goin' myself if it hadn't been for that. It's advertisin' I reckon--just advertisin'!"

Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was that bewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. She even started toward him.

"Wouldn't have thought of it!" she repeated. "Why--why, you don't mean that you aren't going?"

It was quite as though she had never considered the possibility of such a contingency. Old Jerry's mouth dropped open while he stared at her.

"Go," he stammered, "me go! Why, it's goin' to happen tomorrow night!"

She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment.

"You'll have to leave on the early train," she agreed, "and--and so I won't see you again."

She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she was fumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When she faced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretched hand.

"I've been waiting for you to come tonight," she went on, "and it was hard waiting. That's why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, will you--will you give him this for me--give it to him when he has won? You won't have to say anything." She hesitated. "I--I think he'll understand!"

Old Jerry reached out and took it from her--a bit of a red silk bow, dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tucked it away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brain raced madly.

"Of course I figured on goin'," he said, when his breath returned, "but I been a little undecided--jest a trifle! But I ought to be there; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn't somebody from home. And I'll give it to him then--I'll give it to him when he's won!"

He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy.

"She had that all ready to give me," he said to himself as he climbed up to the high seat. Tentatively his fingers touched the little lump that the spangly bow of red made inside his coat. "She's had it all ready for me--mebby for days! But how'd she know I was a-goin'?" he asked himself. "How'd she know, when I didn't know myself?"

He gave it up as a feminine whimsicality too deep for mere male wisdom. Once on the way back he thought of the route that would go mailless the next day.

"'Twon't hurt 'em none to wait a day or so," he stated, and his voice was just a little tinged with importance. "Maybe it'll do 'em good. And there ain't no way out of it, anyhow--for I surely got to be there!" _

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