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Once to Every Man, a novel by Larry Evans |
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Chapter 19 |
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_ CHAPTER XIX It was a white night--a night so brilliant that the village lights far below in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance of that huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the single lamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place on the hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast. Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching light she could even make out great patches where the rotting sheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the framework beneath naked and gaunt and bare. It was scarcely two months since the day when she had gone herself to Judge Maynard with her offer to sell that unkempt acre or so which he had fought so long and bitterly to force into the market. And it had been a strange one, too--that interview. His acceptance had been quick--instantaneously eager--but the girl was still marvelling a little over his attitude throughout that transaction, whenever her mind turned back to it. When she mentioned the mortgage which Young Denny had secured only a few days before, he had seemed to understand almost immediately why she had spoken of it, without the explanation which she meant to give. Once again she found him a different Judge Maynard from all the others she had known, and he had in the years since she could remember, been many different men to her imagination. It puzzled her almost as much as did his opinion upon the value of the old place, which, somehow, she could not bring herself to believe was worth all that he insisted upon paying. But then, too, she did not know either that the town's great man had been riding a-tilt at his own soul, for several days on end, and just as Old Jerry had done, was seizing upon the first opportunity to salve the wounds resultant. And yet this was the first day that the girl had seen him so much as inspect his long-coveted property; the first time she had known him to set foot within the sagging gate since he had placed in her hands that sum of money which was greater than any she had ever seen before. Under his directions men had commenced clearing away the rank shrubbery that afternoon--commenced to tear down the house itself. Time after time since morning she had entered the front room to stand and peer out across the valley at this new activity which the Judge himself was directing with an oddly suppressed lack of his usual violent gestures. There was something akin to apology in his every move. It brought a little homesick ache into the girl's throat; it set her lips to curving--made her eyes go damp with pity and tenderness for the little white-haired figure bending over his bench. He had clung so bravely, so stubbornly, to that battered bit of a house; to his garden which he had never realized had long since ceased to be anything but a plot of waist-high bushes and weeds. Once when she recollected those countless rows of poignantly wistful faces on the shelves of that back-room workshop she wondered if she had not been disloyal, after all. And she had argued it out with herself aloud as she went from task to task in that afternoon's gathering twilight. "But it was because of her that he stayed," she reassured herself. "It was because of her that he kept it, all these years. And--and so he couldn't mind--not very much, I think, now that they don't need it any longer, if I sold it so that I could keep this place--for him!" They had been long, those hours of waiting. Not a minute of those entire two days since Old Jerry's departure but had dragged by on laggard feet. And yet now, with nightfall of that third day she became jealous of every passing minute. She hated to have them pass; dreaded to watch the creeping hands of the clock on the kitchen wall as they drew up, little by little, upon that hour which meant the arrival of the night train in the village. One moment she wondered if he would come--wondered and touched dry lips with the tip of her tongue. And the very next, when somehow she was so very, very sure that there was no room for doubt, she even wondered whether or not he would be glad--glad to find her there. The gaunt skeleton of a framework showing through the torn sides of John Anderson's cottage almost unnerved her whenever that thought came, and sent her out again into the lighted back room. "What if he isn't?" she whispered, over and over again. "Why, I--I never thought of that before, did I? I just thought I had to be here when he came. But what if he--isn't glad?" An hour earlier, when the thought had first come to her, she had carried a big, square package out to the table before the kitchen window and untied with fluttering fingers the string that bound it. The little scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt, alive with tinsel that glinted under the light, still lay there beside the thin-heeled slippers and filmy silk stockings. She bent over them, patting them lovingly with a slim hand, her eyes velvety dark while she considered. "Oh, you're pretty--pretty--pretty!" she said in a childishly hushed voice, "the prettiest things in the world!" The next instant she straightened to scan soberly the old shiny black skirt she was wearing, and the darned stockings and cracked shoes. "And--and you would help, I think," she went on musing. "I know you would, but then--then it wouldn't be me. It would be easy for any one to care for you--almost too easy. I--I think I'll wear them for him--some other time, maybe--if he wants me to." But she turned the very next moment and crossed to the mirror on the wall--that square bit of glass before which Young Denny had stood and stared back into his own eyes and laughed. Oblivious to everything else she was critically scanning her own small reflection--great, tip-tilted eyes, violet in the shadow, and then cheeks and pointed chin--until, even in spite of her preoccupation, she became aware of the hungry tremulousness of the mouth of that reflected image--until the hoarse shriek of an engine's whistle leaped across the valley and brought her up sharp, her breath going in one long, quavering gasp between wide lips. It was that moment toward which she had been straining every hour of those two days; the one from which she had been shrinking every minute of those last two hours since dark. She hesitated a second, head thrown to one side, listening; she darted into that dark front room and pressed her face to the cold pane, and again that warning note came shrilling across the quiet from the far side of town. There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding her leaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs lay like patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watched its whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against its lighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had had time to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed, villageward. It wasn't a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a house under the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze from the road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simply because she couldn't watch any longer--not even for a minute or two--that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turn there was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picket fence--a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until it stood full in front of the sagging gate. And even as she watched Denny Bolton swung around from a long contemplation of that half-torn-down building to peer up at his own dark place on the hill--to peer straight back into the eyes of the girl whom he could not even see. She saw the bewilderment in that big body's poise; even at that distance she sensed his dumb, numbed uncomprehension. From bare white throat to the mass of tumbled hair that clustered across her forehead the blood came storming up into her face; and with the coming of that which set the pulses pounding in her temples and brought an unaccountable ache to her throat, all the doubt which had squired her that day slipped away. Before he had had time to turn back again she had flown on mad feet into the kitchen, swept the lamp from its bracket on the wall with heedless haste and raced back to that front window. And she placed it there behind a half-drawn shade--that old signal which they had agreed upon without one spoken word, years back. Crouching in the semi-gloom behind the lamp she watched. He stepped forward a pace and stopped; lifted one hand slowly, as though he did not believe what he saw. Bareheaded he waited an instant after that arm went back to his side. When he swung around and disappeared into the head of the path that led from the gate into the black shadow of the thicket in the valley's pit she lifted both arms, too, and stood poised there a moment, slender and straight and vividly unwavering as the lamp-flame itself, before she wheeled and ran. It was dark in the thick of the underbrush; dark and velvety quiet, save for the little moon-lit patch of a clearing where he waited. He stood there in the middle of that spot of light and heard her coming long before she reached him--long before he could see her he heard her scurrying feet and the whip of bushes against her skirt. But when she burst through the fringe of brush he had no time to move or speak, or more than lift his arms before her swift rush carried her to him. When her hands flashed up about his neck and her damp mouth went searching softly across his face and he strained her nearer and even nearer to him, he felt her slim body quivering just as it had trembled that other night when she had raced across the valley to him--the night when Judge Maynard's invitation had failed to come. After a time he made out the words that were tumbling from her lips, all incoherent with half hysterical bits of sobs, and he realized, too, that her words were like that of that other night. "Denny--Denny," she murmured, her small, gold-crowned head buried in his shoulder. "I'm here--I've come--just as soon as I could; Oh, I've been afraid! I knew you'd come, too--I knew you would tonight! I was sure of it--even when I was sure that you wouldn't." For a long time he was silent, because dry lips refused to frame the words he would have spoken. Minutes he stood and held her against him until the rise and fall of her narrow shoulders grew quieter, before he lifted one hand and held her damp face away, that he might look into it. And gazing back at him, in spite of all the wordless wonder of her which she saw glowing in his eyes, she read, too, the grave perplexity of him. "Why--you--you must have known I'd come," he said, his voice ponderously grave. "I--I told you so. I left word for you that I would be back--as soon as I could come." He felt her slim body slacken--saw the lightning change flash over her face which always heralded that bewildering swift change of mood. It wiped out all the tenseness of lip and line. There in the white light in spite of the shadows of her lashes which turned violet eyes to great pools of satin shadow, he caught the flare of mischief behind half-closed lids, before she tilted her head back and laughed softly, with utter joyous abandon straight up into his face. "He--he didn't deliver it," she stated naively. "It wasn't his fault entirely, though, Denny--although I did give him lots of chances, at first anyway. I almost made him tell--but he--he's stubborn." She stopped and laughed again--giggled shamelessly as she remembered. But her eyes grew grave once more. "I think he didn't quite approve of my attitude," she explained to him as he bent over her. "He thought I wasn't--sorry enough--to deserve it at first. And then--and then I never gave him any opportunity to speak. I would have stopped him if he had tried. You--you see, I just wanted to--wait." Head bowed she paused a moment before she continued. "But--but I sent him to you--two days ago, Denny. I sent something that I asked him to give you--when--when it was over. Didn't you--get it?" He fumbled in the pocket of his smooth black suit after she had disengaged herself and dropped to the ground at his feet. With her ankles curled up under her she sat in a boyish heap watching him, until he drew out the bit of a spangled crimson bow and held it out before him in the palm of one big hand. Then he swung down to the ground beside her. "I thought it must have been Old Jerry who brought it. I didn't see him, and no one could remember his name or knew where he had gone when they thought to look for him. They--they just described him to me." He turned the bow of silk over, touching it almost reverently. "Some one gave it to me," he continued slowly. "I don't know exactly how or when. It--it was just put into my hand--when I needed it most. I wasn't sure Old Jerry had brought it, but I knew it came from you, knew it when I didn't--know--much--else!" She was very, very quiet, content merely in his nearness. Even then she didn't understand it--the reason for his going that night, weeks before--for the papers which had told her a little had told her nothing of his brain's own reason. The question was on her lips when her narrow fingers, searching the shadow for his, found that bandaged wrist and knuckles. Almost fiercely she drew that hand up into the light. From the white cloth her gaze went to the discolored, bruised patches on face and chin--the same place where that long, ugly cut had been which dripped blood on the floor the night she had run from him in the dark--went to his face, and back again, limpid with pity. And she lifted it impulsively and tucked it under her chin, and held it there with small hands that trembled a little. "Then--then if you haven't seen Old Jerry--why--why you--he couldn't have told you anything at all yet, about me." The words trailed off softly and left the statement hanging interrogatively in midair. Denny nodded his head in the direction of John Anderson's house that had been. "About that?" he asked. She nodded her head. And then she told him; she began at the very beginning and told him everything from that night when she had watched him there under cover of the thicket. Once she tried to laugh when she related Old Jerry's panic, a week or two later, when he had come to find her packing in preparation to leave. But her mirth was waveringly unsteady. And when she tried to explain, too, how she had chanced to buy up the mortgage on his own bleak house on the hill, her voice again became suddenly, diffidently small. There was a new, sweet confusion in her refusal to meet his eyes and Denny, reaching out with his bandaged hand, half lifted her and swung her around until she needs must face him. "You--you mean you--bought it, yourself?" he marvelled. Then, face uplifted, brave-eyed, she went on a little breathlessly. "I bought it, myself," she said, "the week you went away." And, in a muffled whisper: "Denny, I didn't have faith--not much, at first. But I meant to be here when you did come, just--just because I thought you might need me--mighty badly. And waiting is hard, too, when one hasn't faith. And I did wait! That was something, wasn't it, Denny? Only--only now, today, I--I think I realized that my own need of you is greater than yours could ever be for me!" She sat, lips apart, quiet for his answer. An odd smile edged the boy's lips at her wistful earnestness. It was a twisted little smile which might have been born of the pain of stinging lids and dryer, aching throat. He could not have spoken at that moment had he tried. Instead he lifted her bodily and drew her huddled little figure into his arms. It was his first face to face glimpse of the wonder of woman. But he knew now something which she had only sensed; he knew that the big, lonesome, bewildered boy whom she had tried to comfort in his bitterness that other night when she had hidden her own hurt disappointment with the white square card within her breast, had come back all man. He looked down at her--marvelled at her very littleness as though it were a thing he had never known before. "And--and you still--would stay?" he managed to ask, at last. "You'd stay--even if it did mean being like them," he inclined his head toward the distant village, "like them, old and wrinkled and worn-out, before they have half lived their lives?" She nodded her head vehemently against his coat. He felt her thin arms tighten and tighten about him. "I'll stay," she repeated after him in a childishly small voice. "You--you see, I know what it is now to be alone, even just for a week or two. I think I'll stay, please!" There had been a bit of a teasing lilt in her half smothered words. It disappeared now. "I--I'd be pretty lonesome, all the rest of my life--man--if I didn't!" And long afterward she lifted her head from his arm and blinked at him from sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes. "Why, Denny?" she asked in drowsy curiosity. "Why did you go--why, really? Don't you realize that you haven't told me even yet?" He rose and lifted her to her feet, but that did not cover the slow flush that stained his face--the old, vaguely embarrassed flush that she knew so well. He groped awkwardly for words while he stared again at the bit of silk in his hand, before his searching fingers found the thick, crisp packet that had lain with it in his pocket. "The Pilgrim's share of the receipts amounted to $12,000," had been the tale of Morehouse's succinct last paragraph. Then, "It--took me almost two months to save fifteen dollars," Young Denny explained in painful self-consciousness. She understood. She remembered the scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt with its dots of tinsel, and the stockings and slim-heeled slippers. Her fingers touched his chin--the barest ghost of a caressing contact. "Denny--Denny," she murmured, "I told you that night that you didn't understand. And yet--and yet I'm glad that you couldn't. It was for me--you went. Don't you--didn't you know it was--just because of you--that I wanted them--at--all?" * * * * * The circle in the Boltonwood tavern convened early that night, and long after hope had all but died a death of stagnation the regulars stuck stubbornly to their places about the cheerlessly cold, fat-bellied stove. It was a session extraordinary, for even Dave Shepard, the patriarch of the circle itself, could not recall an occasion when they had foregathered there in such fashion so long after the last spring snow had surrendered to summer. Yet it was largely mild-voiced Dave's doing--this silent, sober gathering. For he alone of all of them had heeded Old Jerry's parting admonition that night, weeks before, when the servant of the Gov'mint had turned from his shrill defiance of the Judge to whip their whole ranks with scorn. Since then Dave had been following the papers with faithful and painstaking care--not merely the political news of the day which invariably furnished the key for each night's debate--but searching every inch of type, down to the last inconsequential advertisement. And he had been rewarded; he had penetrated, with the aid of that small picture inset at the column-head, the disguise of the colorful sobriquet which Morehouse had fastened upon Young Denny Bolton. More than that, he had been reading for weeks each step in that campaign of publicity which had so harrowed Old Jerry's peace of mind--and somehow he had kept it religiously to himself. Not until two days before, when Old Jerry's desertion from duty had become a town-wide sensation had he opened his mouth. The route back in the hills went mailless that day, and for that reason there were more than enough papers to go around when he finally gave the old guard which was waiting in vain for Old Jerry's appearance upon the top step of the post-office, the benefits of his wider reading. There had been a fierce factional debate raging when he came up late to take his unobtrusive place upon the sidewalk, but even before he added his voice to the din those who argued that the old mail-carrier's disappearance could be in no way connected with that of Young Denny Bolton, who had gone the way of all the others of his line, were in a hopeless minority. Their timidest member's announcement stunned them all to silence--left them hushed and speechless--not for an hour or two, but for the days that followed as well. Even the red-headlined account which had come with that morning's batch of news of Young Denny's victory and the fall of Jed The Red, whom they had championed under the Judge's able leadership, failed to stir up any really bitter wrangle. They sat in an apathetic circle, waiting for Old Jerry to come. But no one, not even Morehouse, knew when Old Jerry disappeared that night after Jed Conway had come hurtling from his corner, only to lift and whirl and go crashing back before the impact of The Pilgrim's leaping gloves. At first the plump newspaper man believed that the surging, shouting wave of humanity which had broken comber-like over the ropes to hail a newer favorite had separated the little, bird-faced man from him. Only a recollection of those vice-like fingers clinging to his arm a moment before made that probability seem unbelievable. It was a long time before The Pilgrim's brain had again become clear enough to grasp the meaning of the questions which Morehouse put to him, but Denny did not know even as much as did the round-faced reporter himself. He only recognized the description of the shrill voiced, beady-eyed mail carrier. To Old Jerry belonged the only comprehensive explanation for his sudden withdrawal from the scene, just at that moment when his own share in it might have been not inconsequential. And more than that, his resolution to keep it strictly and privately his own grew firmer and firmer, the more thought he gave to it. In those hours which intervened between the impulse which had resulted in his modest retreat from Morehouse's side, under cover of the crowd's wild demonstration, and the next morning when he boarded the train which was to carry him back to the hills, after a cautious reconnaissance that finally located Denny in the coach ahead of him, he once or twice sought to analyze his actions for an explanation less derogatory to his own self-respect. "They wan't no real sense ner reason in my hangin' around, jest gittin' under foot," he stated thoughtfully. "I done about all I was called on to do, didn't I? Why, I reckon when all's said and done, I jest about won that fight myself! For if I hadn't a-come he wouldn't never a-got that ribbon. And Godfrey, but didn't that wake him!" There was more than a little satisfaction to be gained in viewing himself in that light. With less to occupy his mind and unlimited leisure for elaboration it could have served as the entire day's theme for thought. But so far as explaining his almost panic haste to get away the reasoning was palpably unsatisfactory--so unsatisfactory that he cringed guiltily behind the back of the seat in front of him whenever anyone entered the front door of the car. He gave quite the entire day to the problem and long before night hid the flying fences outside his window he decided that eventually there could be only one way out of it. Sooner or later he had to face the issue: he had to tell Young Denny that he had betrayed his trust. Even that damp wad of bills which the boy had pressed into his hand, that night before he left, still burned within his coat. Once or twice he rose, during the return journey and advanced with forced jauntiness as far as the door of the car ahead. But he always stopped there, after a moment's uneasy contemplation of Denny's back, turned a little sadly to the water-cooler, and returned slowly and unenthusiastically to his seat. Twice when it was necessary to change trains he made the transfer with a lightning precision that would have done honor to any prestidigitator. And when, hours after nightfall, the train came to a groaning standstill before Boltonwood's deserted station shed he waited his opportunity and dropped off in the dark--on the wrong side of the track! Denny had already become a dark blur ahead of him when he, too, turned in and took the long road toward town. Old Jerry followed the big-shouldered figure that night with heavily lagging feet--he followed heavy in spirit and bereft of hope. He was still behind him when Denny finally paused before the sagging gate of John Anderson's half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumb lack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complication dawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson's going--forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer the property of the man who had entrusted it to him. When the light behind that half-drawn shade flared up, far across on the crest of the opposite hill, and Young Denny wheeled to plunge into the black mouth of the path that led deeper into the valley, he too started swiftly forward. He swept off in desperate haste up the long hill road that led to the Bolton homestead. The light was still there in that front room when he poked a tentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in a dull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table top in the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house. But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then. Outside, buried in the shadow of Young Denny's squat, unpainted barn, he still waited doggedly--he waited ages and ages, a lifetime of apprehension. And then he saw them coming toward him, up out of the shadow of the valley into the moonlight that bathed the hill in silver. They paused and stood there--stood and stared out across the valley at Judge Maynard's great box of a house on the hill and that bit of a wedge-shaped acre of ruin that clung like an unsightly burr to the hem of his immaculate pastures. Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt the girl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watching with his head cocked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man's eyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny's right hand; once while he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face--saw the big, shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch the glory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before she turned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door. Then he started. He shrank farther back into the shadow and edged a noiseless way around the building. But with the tavern lights beckoning to him he waited an introspective moment or two. "Godfrey 'Lisha," he sighed thunderously, "but that takes a load offen my mind!" And he ruminated. "But what's the use of my tryin' to explain now? What's the use--when they ain't nothing to explain! It's all come out all right, ain't it? Well, then, hedn't I jest as well save my breath?" He straightened his thin shoulders and stretched his arms. "It couldn't a-been handled much neater, either," that one-sided conversation went on, "not anyway you look at it. I always did think that the best thing to do in them matters was to kinda let 'em take their own course. And now--now I guess I'll be gittin' along down!" * * * * * Before he opened the door of the Tavern office a scant half hour later, Denny Bolton stopped there on the steps a moment and, his hand on the latch, listened to the thin, falsetto voice that came from within. A slow smile crept up and wrinkled the corners of the boy's eyes after a while when he had caught the drift of those strident words. They had been waiting for him--the regulars. They had been waiting for him longer than Old Jerry knew. In the chair that had been the throne-seat of the town's great man the servant of the Gov'mint sat and faced his loyal circle. He had reached his climax--had hammered it home. Now he was rounding out his conclusion for those who hung, hungry-eyed, upon his eloquence. "I ain't begun to do it jestice yet," he apologized. "I ain't more'n jest teched on a good many things that needs to be gone into a trifle. Jest a trifle! It'll take weeks and weeks to do that. But as I was a-sayin'--I got there! I got there just when I was needed almighty bad. I ain't done that part of it jestice--but you'll see it all in the papers in a day or two--Sunday supplement, maybe--and pictures--and colors, too, I reckon!" [THE END] _ |
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