CHAPTER VTHE SECRET OF THE CLOVER

84CHAPTER VTHE SECRET OF THE CLOVER

Until the time he had entered Isom Chase’s house, temptation never had come near Joe Newbolt. He never had kissed a maiden; he never had felt the quickening elixir of a soft breast pressed against his own. And so it fell that the sudden conception of what he had unwittingly come to, bore on him with a weight which his sensitive and upright mind magnified into an enormous and crushing shame. While his intention could bear arraignment and come away with acquittal, the fact that he had been perverted enough in the grain, as he looked at it, to drift unknowingly into love with another man’s wife, galled him until his spirit groaned.Isom did not return that evening; the conclusion of his household was that he had been chosen on a jury. They discussed it at supper, Ollie nervously gay, Morgan full of raucous laughter, Joe sober and grudging of his words.Joe never had borne much of a hand at the table-talk since Morgan came, and before his advent there was none to speak of, so his taciturnity that evening passed without a second thought in the minds of Ollie and her guest. They had words enough for a house full of people, thought Joe, as he saw that for every word from the lips they sent two speeding from their eyes. That had become a language to which he had found the Rosetta Stone; it was as plain to him now as Roman text.Perhaps Morgan regarded her with an affection as sincere as his own. He did not know; but he felt that it could not be as blameless, for if Joe had desired her in the uninterpreted85passion of his full young heart, he had brought himself up to sudden judgment before the tribunal of his conscience. It would go no farther. He had put his moral foot down and smothered his unholy desire, as he would have stamped out a flame.It seemed to Joe that there was something in Morgan’s eyes which betrayed his heart. Little gleams of his underlying purpose which his levity masked, struck Joe from time to time, setting his wits on guard. Morgan must be watched, like a cat within leaping distance of an unfledged bird. Joe set himself the task of watching, determined then and there that Morgan should not have one dangerous hour alone with Ollie again until Isom came back and lifted the responsibility of his wife’s safety from his shoulders.For a while after supper that night Joe sat on the bench beside the kitchen door, the grape-vine rustling over his head, watching Ollie as she went to and fro about her work of clearing away. Morgan was in the door, his back against the jamb, leisurely smoking his pipe. Once in a while a snoring beetle passed in above his head to join his fellows around the lamp. As each recruit to the blundering company arrived, Morgan slapped at him as he passed, making Ollie laugh. On the low, splotched ceiling of the kitchen the flies shifted and buzzed, changing drowsily from place to place.“Isom ought to put screens on the windows and doors,” said Morgan, looking up at the flies.“Mosquito bar, you mean?” asked Ollie, throwing him a smile over her shoulder as she passed.“No, I mean wire-screens, everybody’s gettin’ ’em in now; I’ve been thinkin’ of takin’ ’em on as a side-line.”“It’ll be a cold day in July when Isom spends any money just to keepfliesout of his house!” said she.Morgan laughed.86“Maybe if a person could show him that they eat up a lot of stuff he’d come around to it,” Morgan said.“Maybe,” said Ollie, and both of them had their laugh again.Joe moved on the bench, making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife’s discussion of his traits with a stranger.Ollie had cleared away the dishes, washed them and placed them in the cupboard, on top of which the one clock of that household stood, scar-faced, but hoarse-voiced when it struck, and strong as the challenge of an old cock. Already it had struck nine, for they had been late in coming to supper, owing to Joe’s long set-to with his conscience at the edge of the hazel-copse in the woods.Joe got up, stretching his arms, yawning.“Goin’ to bed, heh?” asked Morgan.“No, I don’t seem to feel sleepy tonight,” Joe replied.He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, his elbows on the board, his head in his hands, as if turning over some difficult problem in his mind. Presently he fell to raking his shaggy hair with his long fingers; in a moment it was as disorderly as the swaths of clover hay lying out in the moonlight in the little stone-set field.Morgan had filled his pipe, and was after a match at the box behind the stove, with the familiarity of a household inmate. He winked at Ollie, who was then pulling down her sleeves, her long day’s work being done.“Well, do you think you’ll be elected?” he asked, lounging across to Joe, his hands in his pockets.Morgan wore a shirt as gay-striped as a Persian tent, and he had removed his coat so the world, or such of it as was present in the kitchen, might behold it and admire. Joe withdrew his hands from his forelock and looked at Morgan87curiously. The lad’s eyes were sleep-heavy and red, and he was almost as dull-looking, perhaps, as Morgan imagined him to be.“What did you say?” he asked.“I asked you if you thought you’d be elected this fall,” repeated Morgan, in mock seriousness.“I don’t know what you mean,” said Joe, turning from him indifferently.“Why, ain’t you runnin’ for President on the squash-vine ticket?” asked Morgan. “I heard you was the can’idate.”Joe got up from the table and moved his chair away with his foot. As he was thus occupied he saw Ollie’s shadow on the wall repeat a gesture of caution which she made to Morgan, a lifting of the hand, a shaking of the head. Even the shadow betrayed the intimate understanding between them. Joe went over and stood in the door.“No use for you to try to be a fool, Morgan; that’s been attended to for you already,” said he.There wasn’t much heart in Morgan’s laugh, but it would pass for one on account of the volume of sound.“Oh, let a feller have his joke, won’t you, Joe?” said he.“Go ahead,” granted Joe, leaning his shoulder against the jamb, facing out toward the dark.Morgan went over and put his hand on the great lad’s shoulder, with a show of friendly condescension.“What would the world be without its jokes?” he asked. And then, before anybody could answer: “It’d be like home without a mother.”Joe faced him, a slow grin spreading back to his ears.“Or a ready-reckoner,” said he.Morgan’s laugh that time was unfeigned.“Joe, you’ve missed your callin’,” said he. “You’ve got no business foolin’ away your time on a farm. With that solemn, long-hungry look of yours you ought to be sellin’88consumption cure and ringbone ointment from the end of a wagon on the square in Kansas City.”“Or books, maybe,” suggested Joe.“No-o-o,” said Morgan thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t just say you’re up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you’d cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I’ll fly up to roost. I’ve got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. Good night, folks.”“I don’t suppose Isom’ll be home tonight,” Ollie ventured, as Morgan’s feet sounded on the stairs.“No, I guess not,” Joe agreed, staring thoughtfully at the black oblong of the door.“If he does come, I don’t suppose it’ll hurt him to eat something cold,” she said.“I’ll wait up a while longer. If he comes I can warm up the coffee for him,” Joe offered.“Then I’ll go to bed, too,” she yawned wearily.“Yes, you’d better go,” said he.Ollie’s room, which was Isom’s also when he was there, was in the front of the house, upstairs. Joe heard her feet along the hall, and her door close after her. Morgan was still tramping about in the room next to Joe’s, where he slept. It was the best room in the house, better than the one shared by Isom and his wife, and in the end of the house opposite to it. Joe sat quietly at the table until Morgan’s complaining bed-springs told him that the guest had retired. Then he mounted the narrow kitchen stairs to his own chamber.Joe sat on the edge of his bed and pulled off his boots, dropping them noisily on the floor. Then, with shirt and trousers on, he drew the quilt from his bed, took his pillow under his arm, and opened the door into the hall which divided the house from end to end.The moon was shining in through the double window in the89end toward Ollie’s room; it lay on the white floor, almost as bright as the sun. Within five feet of that splash of moonlight Joe spread his quilt. There he set his pillow and stretched his long body diagonally across the narrow hall, blocking it like a gate.Joe roused Morgan next morning at dawn, and busied himself with making a fire in the kitchen stove and bringing water from the well until the guest came down to feed his horse. Morgan was in a crusty humor. He had very little to say, and Joe did not feel that the world was any poorer for his silence.“This will be my last meal with you,” announced Morgan at breakfast. “I’ll not be back tonight.”Ollie was paler than usual, Joe noticed, and a cloud of dejection seemed to have settled over her during the night. She did not appear to be greatly interested in Morgan’s statement, although she looked up from her breakfast with a little show of friendly politeness. Joe thought that she did not seem to care for the agent; the tightness in his breast was suddenly and gratefully eased.“You haven’t finished out your week, there’ll be something coming to you on what you’ve paid in advance,” said she.“Let that go,” said Morgan, obliterating all claim with a sweep of his hand.“I think you’d better take back what’s coming to you,” suggested Joe.Morgan turned to him with stiff severity.“Are you the watch-dog of the old man’s treasury?” he sneered.“Maybe I am, for a day or two,” returned Joe, “and if you step on me I’ll bite.”He leveled his steady gray eyes at Morgan’s shifting orbs, and held them there as if to drive in some hidden import of his words. Morgan seemed to understand. He colored,90laughed shortly, and busied himself buttering a griddle-cake.Ollie, pale and silent, had not looked up during this by-passage between the two men. Her manner was of one who expected something, which she dreaded and feared to face.Morgan took the road early. Joe saw him go with a feeling of relief. He felt like a swollen barrel which had burst its close-binding hoops, he thought, as he went back to the place where he dropped his scythe yesterday.As he worked through the long morning hours Joe struggled to adjust himself to the new conditions, resulting from the discovery of his own enlargement and understanding. It would be a harder matter now to go on living there with Ollie. Each day would be a trial by fire, the weeks and months a lengthening highway strewn with the embers of his own smoldering passion. Something might happen, almost any day, youth and youth together, galled by the same hand of oppression, that would overturn his peace forever. Yet, he could not leave. The bond of his mother’s making, stamped with the seal of the law, held him captive there.At length, after spending a harrowing morning over it, he reached the determination to stand up to it like a man, and serve Isom as long as he could do so without treason. When the day came that his spirit weakened and his continence failed, he would throw down the burden and desert. That he would do, even though his mother’s hopes must fall and his own dreams of redeeming the place of his birth, to which he was attached by a sentiment almost poetic, must dissolve like vapor in the sun.It was mid-afternoon when Joe finished his mowing and stood casting his eyes up to the sky for signs of rain. There being none, he concluded that it would be safe to allow yesterday’s cutting to lie another night in the field while he put in the remainder of the day with his scythe in the lower orchard plot, where the clover grew rank among the trees.91Satisfied that he had made a showing thus far with which Isom could find no fault, Joe tucked the snath of his scythe under his arm and set out for that part of the orchard which lay beyond the hill, out of sight of the barn and house, and from that reason called the “lower orchard” by Isom, who had planted it with his own hand more than thirty years ago.There noble wine-sap stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and there no clover grew. But in the open spaces between the rows it sprang rank and tall, troublesome to cut with a mower because of the low-swinging, fruit-weighted limbs.Joe waded into this paradise of fruit and clover bloom, dark leaf and straining bough, stooping now and then to pick up a fallen apple and try its mellowness with his thumb. They were all hard, and fit only for cider yet, but their rich colors beguiled the eye into betrayal of the palate. Joe fixed his choice upon a golden willow-twig. As he stood rubbing the apple on his sleeve, his eye running over the task ahead of him in a rough estimate of the time it would require to clean up the clover, he started at sight of a white object dangling from a bough a few rods ahead of him. His attention curiously held, he went forward to investigate, when a little start of wind swung the object out from the limb and he saw that it was a woman’s sun-bonnet, hanging basket-wise by its broad strings. There was no question whose it was; he had seen the same bonnet hanging in the kitchen not three hours before, fresh from the ironing board.Joe dropped his apple unbitten, and strode forward, puzzled a bit over the circumstance. He wondered what92had brought Ollie down there, and where she was then. She never came to that part of the orchard to gather wind-falls for the pigs–she was not gathering them at all during Isom’s absence, he had relieved her of that–and there was nothing else to call her away from the house at that time of the day.The lush clover struck him mid-thigh, progress through it was difficult. Joe lifted his feet like an Indian, toes turned in a bit, and this method of walking made it appear as if he stalked something, for he moved without noise.He had dropped his scythe with the apple, his eyes held Ollie’s swinging bonnet as he approached it as if it were some rare bird which he hoped to steal upon and take. Thus coming on, with high-lifted feet, his breath short from excitement, Joe was within ten yards of the bonnet when a voice sounded behind the intervening screen of clover and boughs.Joe dropped in his tracks, as if ham-strung, crouched in the clover, pressed his hands to his mouth to stifle the groan that rose to his lips. It was Morgan’s voice. He had come sneaking back while the watch-dog was off guard, secure in the belief that he had gone away. As Joe crouched there hidden in the clover, trembling and cold with anger, Morgan’s voice rose in a laugh.“Well, I wouldn’t have given him credit for that much sense if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes,” said he.“He’s smarter than he looks,” said Ollie, their voices distinct in Joe’s shamed ears, for it was as quiet in the orchard as on the first day.They both laughed over what she said.“He thinks I’m gone, he’ll go to bed early tonight,” said Morgan. “Don’t bother about bringing anything with you.”“Not even my diamonds?” she laughed.Morgan’s gruffer mirth joined her, and Joe found himself93straining to hear, although he despised himself for spying and eavesdropping, even on guilt.“We can get on without the diamonds,” said Morgan, “and I don’t suppose you’ve got any ball dresses or sealskin cloaks?”“Three calico wrappers that he’s bought me, and a dress or two that I had when I came,” said Ollie, bitterly.“You’ll have all you want in a day or two, honey,” said Morgan, in comforting voice.They were silent a while; then Joe heard her ask the time. Morgan told her it was half-past four.“Oh, I had no idea it was that late–time goes so fast when I’m with you! I must go back to the house now, Joe might come in and find me gone.”“Yes, I’d like to wring his damned neck!” said Morgan.“He’s a good boy, Curtis,” she defended, but with lightness, “but he’s a little––”She held her words back coquettishly.“Heh?” queried Morgan.“Jealous, you old goose! Can’t you see it?”Morgan had a great laugh over that. From the sound of his voice Joe knew that he was standing, and his whole body ached with the fear that they would discover him lying there in the clover. Not that he was afraid of Morgan, but that he dreaded the humiliation which Ollie must suffer in knowing that her guilty tryst had been discovered.“I’ll meet you at the gate, I’ll have the buggy on down the road a little ways,” Morgan told her. “There’s only a little while between you and liberty now, sweetheart.”Joe dared not look up nor move, but he needed no eyes to know that Morgan kissed her then. After that he heard her running away toward the house. Morgan stood there a little while, whistling softly. Soon Joe heard him going in the direction of the road.94Morgan was quite a distance ahead when Joe sprang out of his concealment and followed him, for he wanted to give Ollie time to pass beyond ear-shot of the orchard. As Joe made no attempt to smother the sound of his feet, Morgan heard him while he was still several yards behind him. He turned, stopped, and waited for Joe to come up.Joe’s agitation was plain in his face, his shocked eyes stared out of its pallor as if they had looked upon violence and death.“What’s the matter, kid?” inquired Morgan carelessly.“I’ve got something to say to you,” answered Joe thickly. He was panting, more from rage than exertion; his hands trembled.Morgan looked him over from boots to bandless hat with the same evidence of curiosity as a person displays when turning some washed-up object with the foot on the sands. It was as if he had but an abstract interest in the youth, a feeling which the incident had obtruded upon him without penetrating the reserve of his private cogitations.“Kid, you look like you’d seen a snake,” said he.“You let that woman alone–you’ve got to let her alone, I tell you!” said Joe with explosive suddenness, his passion out of hand.Morgan’s face grew red.“Mind your own business, you sneakin’ skunk!” said he.“I am minding it,” said Joe; “but maybe not as well as I ought to ’a’ done. Isom left me here in his place to watch and look after things, but you’ve sneaked in under my arm like a dirty, thieving dog, and you’ve–you’ve––”Morgan thrust his fist before Joe’s face.“That’ll do now–that’ll do out of you!” he threatened.Joe caught Morgan’s wrist with a quick, snapping movement, and slowly bent the threatening arm down, Morgan struggling, foot to foot with him in the test of strength. Joe95held the captured arm down for a moment, and they stood breast to breast, glaring into each other’s eyes. Then with a wrench that spun Morgan half round and made him stagger, Joe flung his arm free.“Now, you keep away from here–keep away!” he warned, his voice growing thin and boyish in the height of his emotion, as if it would break in the treble shallows.“Don’t fool with me or I’ll hurt you,” said Morgan. “Keep your nose––”“Let her alone!” commanded Joe sternly, his voice sinking again even below its accustomed level, gruff and deep in his chest. “I heard you–I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it–and I know what you’re up to tonight. Don’t come around here tonight after her, for I’m not going to let her go.”“Ya-a, you pup, you pup!” said Morgan nastily.“It’s a hard life for her here–I know that better than you do,” said Joe, passing over the insult, “but you can’t give her any better–not as good. What you’ve done can’t be undone now, but I can keep you from dragging her down any further. Don’t you come back here tonight!”“If you keep your fingers out of the fire,” said Morgan, looking at the ground, rolling a fallen apple with his toe, “you’ll not get scorched. You stick to your knittin’ and don’t meddle with mine. That’ll be about the healthiest thing you can do!”“If Isom knew what you’ve done he’d kill you–if he’s even half a man,” said Joe. “She was a good woman till you came, you hound!”“She’s a good woman yet,” said Morgan, with some feeling, “too good for that old hell-dog she’s married to!”“Then let her stay good–at least as good as she is,” advised Joe.“Oh, hell!” said Morgan disgustedly.96“You can’t have her,” persisted Joe.“We’ll see about that, too,” said Morgan, his manner and voice threatening. “What’re you goin’ to do–pole off and tell the old man?”“I’ll do what Isom left me here to do, the rest of the time he’s away,” said Joe. “Ollie shan’t leave the house tonight.”“Yes, you flat-bellied shad, you want her yourself–you’re stuck on her yourself, you fool! Yes, and you’ve got just about as much show of gittin’ her as I have of jumpin’ over that tree!” derided Morgan.“No matter what I think of her, good or bad, she’d be safe with me,” Joe told him, searching his face accusingly.“Yes, of course she would!” scoffed Morgan. “You’re one of these saints that’ll live all your life by a punkin and never poke it with your finger. Oh, yes, I know your kind!”“I’m not going to quarrel with you, Morgan, unless you make me,” said Joe; “but you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I don’t want her, not the way you do, anyhow.”Morgan looked at him closely, then put out his hand with a gesture of conciliation.“I’ll take that back, Joe,” said he. “You’re not that kind of a kid. You mean well, but you don’t understand. Look-a here, let me tell you, Joe: I love that little woman, kid, just as honest and true as any man could love her, and she thinks the world and all of me. I only want to take her away from here because I love her and want to make her happy. Don’t you see it, kid?”“How would you do that? You couldn’t marry her.”“Not for a while, of course,” admitted Morgan. “But the old possum he’d get a divorce in a little while.”“Well, I’m not going to let her go,” Joe declared, turning away as if that settled the matter for good and all. “You’ve done–I could kill you for what you’ve done!” said he, with sudden vehemence.97Morgan looked at him curiously, his careless face softening.“Now, see here, don’t you look at it that way, Joe,” he argued. “I’m not so bad; neither is Ollie. You’ll understand these matters better when you’re older and know more about the way men feel. She wanted love, and I gave her love. She’s been worked to rags and bones by that old devil; and what I’ve done, and what I want to do, is in kindness, Joe. I’ll take her away from here and provide for her like she was a queen, I’ll give her the love and comradeship of a young man and make her happy, Joe. Don’t you see?”“But you can’t make her respectable,” said Joe. “I’m not going to let her leave with you, or go to you. If she wants to go after Isom comes back, then let her. But not before. Now, you’d better go on away, Morgan, before I lose my temper. I was mad when I started after you, but I’ve cooled down. Don’t roil me up again. Go on your way, and leave that woman alone.”“Joe, you’re a man in everything but sense,” said Morgan, not unkindly, “and I reckon if you and I was to clinch we’d raise a purty big dust and muss things around a right smart. And I don’t know who’d come out on top at the finish, neither. So I don’t want to have any trouble with you. All I ask of you is step to one side and leave us two alone in what we’ve started to do and got all planned to carry out. Go to bed tonight and go to sleep. You’re not supposed to know that anything’s due to happen, and if you sleep sound you’ll find a twenty-dollar bill under your hat in the morning.”The suggestion brought a blush to Joe’s face. He set his lips as if fighting down hot words before he spoke.“If I have to tie her I’ll do it,” said Joe earnestly. “She shan’t leave. And if I have to take down that old gun from the kitchen wall to keep you away from here till Isom comes home, I’ll take it down. You can come to the gate tonight if you want to, but if you do––”98Joe looked him straight in the eyes. Morgan’s face lost its color. He turned as if to see that his horse was still standing, and stood that way a little while.“I guess I’ll drive on off, Joe,” said Morgan with a sigh, as if he had reached the conclusion after a long consideration.“All right,” said Joe.“No hard feelin’s left behind me?” facing Joe again with his old, self-assured smile. He offered his hand, but Joe did not take it.“As long as you never come back,” said Joe.Morgan walked to the fence, his head bent, thoughtfully. Joe followed, as if to satisfy himself that the wily agent was not going to work some subterfuge, having small faith in his promise to leave, much less in the probability that he would stay away.Joe stood at the fence, looking after Morgan, long after the dust of his wheels had settled again to the road. At last he went back to the place where he had dropped his scythe, and cut a swath straight through to the tree where Ollie’s bonnet had hung. And there he mowed the trampled clover, and obliterated her footprints with his own.The weight of his discovery was like some dead thing on his breast. He felt that Ollie had fallen from the high heaven of his regard, never to mount to her place again. But Isom did not know of this bitter thing, this shameful shadow at his door. As far as it rested with him to hold the secret in his heart, poison though it was to him, Isom should never know.

Until the time he had entered Isom Chase’s house, temptation never had come near Joe Newbolt. He never had kissed a maiden; he never had felt the quickening elixir of a soft breast pressed against his own. And so it fell that the sudden conception of what he had unwittingly come to, bore on him with a weight which his sensitive and upright mind magnified into an enormous and crushing shame. While his intention could bear arraignment and come away with acquittal, the fact that he had been perverted enough in the grain, as he looked at it, to drift unknowingly into love with another man’s wife, galled him until his spirit groaned.

Isom did not return that evening; the conclusion of his household was that he had been chosen on a jury. They discussed it at supper, Ollie nervously gay, Morgan full of raucous laughter, Joe sober and grudging of his words.

Joe never had borne much of a hand at the table-talk since Morgan came, and before his advent there was none to speak of, so his taciturnity that evening passed without a second thought in the minds of Ollie and her guest. They had words enough for a house full of people, thought Joe, as he saw that for every word from the lips they sent two speeding from their eyes. That had become a language to which he had found the Rosetta Stone; it was as plain to him now as Roman text.

Perhaps Morgan regarded her with an affection as sincere as his own. He did not know; but he felt that it could not be as blameless, for if Joe had desired her in the uninterpreted85passion of his full young heart, he had brought himself up to sudden judgment before the tribunal of his conscience. It would go no farther. He had put his moral foot down and smothered his unholy desire, as he would have stamped out a flame.

It seemed to Joe that there was something in Morgan’s eyes which betrayed his heart. Little gleams of his underlying purpose which his levity masked, struck Joe from time to time, setting his wits on guard. Morgan must be watched, like a cat within leaping distance of an unfledged bird. Joe set himself the task of watching, determined then and there that Morgan should not have one dangerous hour alone with Ollie again until Isom came back and lifted the responsibility of his wife’s safety from his shoulders.

For a while after supper that night Joe sat on the bench beside the kitchen door, the grape-vine rustling over his head, watching Ollie as she went to and fro about her work of clearing away. Morgan was in the door, his back against the jamb, leisurely smoking his pipe. Once in a while a snoring beetle passed in above his head to join his fellows around the lamp. As each recruit to the blundering company arrived, Morgan slapped at him as he passed, making Ollie laugh. On the low, splotched ceiling of the kitchen the flies shifted and buzzed, changing drowsily from place to place.

“Isom ought to put screens on the windows and doors,” said Morgan, looking up at the flies.

“Mosquito bar, you mean?” asked Ollie, throwing him a smile over her shoulder as she passed.

“No, I mean wire-screens, everybody’s gettin’ ’em in now; I’ve been thinkin’ of takin’ ’em on as a side-line.”

“It’ll be a cold day in July when Isom spends any money just to keepfliesout of his house!” said she.

Morgan laughed.86

“Maybe if a person could show him that they eat up a lot of stuff he’d come around to it,” Morgan said.

“Maybe,” said Ollie, and both of them had their laugh again.

Joe moved on the bench, making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife’s discussion of his traits with a stranger.

Ollie had cleared away the dishes, washed them and placed them in the cupboard, on top of which the one clock of that household stood, scar-faced, but hoarse-voiced when it struck, and strong as the challenge of an old cock. Already it had struck nine, for they had been late in coming to supper, owing to Joe’s long set-to with his conscience at the edge of the hazel-copse in the woods.

Joe got up, stretching his arms, yawning.

“Goin’ to bed, heh?” asked Morgan.

“No, I don’t seem to feel sleepy tonight,” Joe replied.

He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, his elbows on the board, his head in his hands, as if turning over some difficult problem in his mind. Presently he fell to raking his shaggy hair with his long fingers; in a moment it was as disorderly as the swaths of clover hay lying out in the moonlight in the little stone-set field.

Morgan had filled his pipe, and was after a match at the box behind the stove, with the familiarity of a household inmate. He winked at Ollie, who was then pulling down her sleeves, her long day’s work being done.

“Well, do you think you’ll be elected?” he asked, lounging across to Joe, his hands in his pockets.

Morgan wore a shirt as gay-striped as a Persian tent, and he had removed his coat so the world, or such of it as was present in the kitchen, might behold it and admire. Joe withdrew his hands from his forelock and looked at Morgan87curiously. The lad’s eyes were sleep-heavy and red, and he was almost as dull-looking, perhaps, as Morgan imagined him to be.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I asked you if you thought you’d be elected this fall,” repeated Morgan, in mock seriousness.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Joe, turning from him indifferently.

“Why, ain’t you runnin’ for President on the squash-vine ticket?” asked Morgan. “I heard you was the can’idate.”

Joe got up from the table and moved his chair away with his foot. As he was thus occupied he saw Ollie’s shadow on the wall repeat a gesture of caution which she made to Morgan, a lifting of the hand, a shaking of the head. Even the shadow betrayed the intimate understanding between them. Joe went over and stood in the door.

“No use for you to try to be a fool, Morgan; that’s been attended to for you already,” said he.

There wasn’t much heart in Morgan’s laugh, but it would pass for one on account of the volume of sound.

“Oh, let a feller have his joke, won’t you, Joe?” said he.

“Go ahead,” granted Joe, leaning his shoulder against the jamb, facing out toward the dark.

Morgan went over and put his hand on the great lad’s shoulder, with a show of friendly condescension.

“What would the world be without its jokes?” he asked. And then, before anybody could answer: “It’d be like home without a mother.”

Joe faced him, a slow grin spreading back to his ears.

“Or a ready-reckoner,” said he.

Morgan’s laugh that time was unfeigned.

“Joe, you’ve missed your callin’,” said he. “You’ve got no business foolin’ away your time on a farm. With that solemn, long-hungry look of yours you ought to be sellin’88consumption cure and ringbone ointment from the end of a wagon on the square in Kansas City.”

“Or books, maybe,” suggested Joe.

“No-o-o,” said Morgan thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t just say you’re up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you’d cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I’ll fly up to roost. I’ve got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. Good night, folks.”

“I don’t suppose Isom’ll be home tonight,” Ollie ventured, as Morgan’s feet sounded on the stairs.

“No, I guess not,” Joe agreed, staring thoughtfully at the black oblong of the door.

“If he does come, I don’t suppose it’ll hurt him to eat something cold,” she said.

“I’ll wait up a while longer. If he comes I can warm up the coffee for him,” Joe offered.

“Then I’ll go to bed, too,” she yawned wearily.

“Yes, you’d better go,” said he.

Ollie’s room, which was Isom’s also when he was there, was in the front of the house, upstairs. Joe heard her feet along the hall, and her door close after her. Morgan was still tramping about in the room next to Joe’s, where he slept. It was the best room in the house, better than the one shared by Isom and his wife, and in the end of the house opposite to it. Joe sat quietly at the table until Morgan’s complaining bed-springs told him that the guest had retired. Then he mounted the narrow kitchen stairs to his own chamber.

Joe sat on the edge of his bed and pulled off his boots, dropping them noisily on the floor. Then, with shirt and trousers on, he drew the quilt from his bed, took his pillow under his arm, and opened the door into the hall which divided the house from end to end.

The moon was shining in through the double window in the89end toward Ollie’s room; it lay on the white floor, almost as bright as the sun. Within five feet of that splash of moonlight Joe spread his quilt. There he set his pillow and stretched his long body diagonally across the narrow hall, blocking it like a gate.

Joe roused Morgan next morning at dawn, and busied himself with making a fire in the kitchen stove and bringing water from the well until the guest came down to feed his horse. Morgan was in a crusty humor. He had very little to say, and Joe did not feel that the world was any poorer for his silence.

“This will be my last meal with you,” announced Morgan at breakfast. “I’ll not be back tonight.”

Ollie was paler than usual, Joe noticed, and a cloud of dejection seemed to have settled over her during the night. She did not appear to be greatly interested in Morgan’s statement, although she looked up from her breakfast with a little show of friendly politeness. Joe thought that she did not seem to care for the agent; the tightness in his breast was suddenly and gratefully eased.

“You haven’t finished out your week, there’ll be something coming to you on what you’ve paid in advance,” said she.

“Let that go,” said Morgan, obliterating all claim with a sweep of his hand.

“I think you’d better take back what’s coming to you,” suggested Joe.

Morgan turned to him with stiff severity.

“Are you the watch-dog of the old man’s treasury?” he sneered.

“Maybe I am, for a day or two,” returned Joe, “and if you step on me I’ll bite.”

He leveled his steady gray eyes at Morgan’s shifting orbs, and held them there as if to drive in some hidden import of his words. Morgan seemed to understand. He colored,90laughed shortly, and busied himself buttering a griddle-cake.

Ollie, pale and silent, had not looked up during this by-passage between the two men. Her manner was of one who expected something, which she dreaded and feared to face.

Morgan took the road early. Joe saw him go with a feeling of relief. He felt like a swollen barrel which had burst its close-binding hoops, he thought, as he went back to the place where he dropped his scythe yesterday.

As he worked through the long morning hours Joe struggled to adjust himself to the new conditions, resulting from the discovery of his own enlargement and understanding. It would be a harder matter now to go on living there with Ollie. Each day would be a trial by fire, the weeks and months a lengthening highway strewn with the embers of his own smoldering passion. Something might happen, almost any day, youth and youth together, galled by the same hand of oppression, that would overturn his peace forever. Yet, he could not leave. The bond of his mother’s making, stamped with the seal of the law, held him captive there.

At length, after spending a harrowing morning over it, he reached the determination to stand up to it like a man, and serve Isom as long as he could do so without treason. When the day came that his spirit weakened and his continence failed, he would throw down the burden and desert. That he would do, even though his mother’s hopes must fall and his own dreams of redeeming the place of his birth, to which he was attached by a sentiment almost poetic, must dissolve like vapor in the sun.

It was mid-afternoon when Joe finished his mowing and stood casting his eyes up to the sky for signs of rain. There being none, he concluded that it would be safe to allow yesterday’s cutting to lie another night in the field while he put in the remainder of the day with his scythe in the lower orchard plot, where the clover grew rank among the trees.91

Satisfied that he had made a showing thus far with which Isom could find no fault, Joe tucked the snath of his scythe under his arm and set out for that part of the orchard which lay beyond the hill, out of sight of the barn and house, and from that reason called the “lower orchard” by Isom, who had planted it with his own hand more than thirty years ago.

There noble wine-sap stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and there no clover grew. But in the open spaces between the rows it sprang rank and tall, troublesome to cut with a mower because of the low-swinging, fruit-weighted limbs.

Joe waded into this paradise of fruit and clover bloom, dark leaf and straining bough, stooping now and then to pick up a fallen apple and try its mellowness with his thumb. They were all hard, and fit only for cider yet, but their rich colors beguiled the eye into betrayal of the palate. Joe fixed his choice upon a golden willow-twig. As he stood rubbing the apple on his sleeve, his eye running over the task ahead of him in a rough estimate of the time it would require to clean up the clover, he started at sight of a white object dangling from a bough a few rods ahead of him. His attention curiously held, he went forward to investigate, when a little start of wind swung the object out from the limb and he saw that it was a woman’s sun-bonnet, hanging basket-wise by its broad strings. There was no question whose it was; he had seen the same bonnet hanging in the kitchen not three hours before, fresh from the ironing board.

Joe dropped his apple unbitten, and strode forward, puzzled a bit over the circumstance. He wondered what92had brought Ollie down there, and where she was then. She never came to that part of the orchard to gather wind-falls for the pigs–she was not gathering them at all during Isom’s absence, he had relieved her of that–and there was nothing else to call her away from the house at that time of the day.

The lush clover struck him mid-thigh, progress through it was difficult. Joe lifted his feet like an Indian, toes turned in a bit, and this method of walking made it appear as if he stalked something, for he moved without noise.

He had dropped his scythe with the apple, his eyes held Ollie’s swinging bonnet as he approached it as if it were some rare bird which he hoped to steal upon and take. Thus coming on, with high-lifted feet, his breath short from excitement, Joe was within ten yards of the bonnet when a voice sounded behind the intervening screen of clover and boughs.

Joe dropped in his tracks, as if ham-strung, crouched in the clover, pressed his hands to his mouth to stifle the groan that rose to his lips. It was Morgan’s voice. He had come sneaking back while the watch-dog was off guard, secure in the belief that he had gone away. As Joe crouched there hidden in the clover, trembling and cold with anger, Morgan’s voice rose in a laugh.

“Well, I wouldn’t have given him credit for that much sense if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes,” said he.

“He’s smarter than he looks,” said Ollie, their voices distinct in Joe’s shamed ears, for it was as quiet in the orchard as on the first day.

They both laughed over what she said.

“He thinks I’m gone, he’ll go to bed early tonight,” said Morgan. “Don’t bother about bringing anything with you.”

“Not even my diamonds?” she laughed.

Morgan’s gruffer mirth joined her, and Joe found himself93straining to hear, although he despised himself for spying and eavesdropping, even on guilt.

“We can get on without the diamonds,” said Morgan, “and I don’t suppose you’ve got any ball dresses or sealskin cloaks?”

“Three calico wrappers that he’s bought me, and a dress or two that I had when I came,” said Ollie, bitterly.

“You’ll have all you want in a day or two, honey,” said Morgan, in comforting voice.

They were silent a while; then Joe heard her ask the time. Morgan told her it was half-past four.

“Oh, I had no idea it was that late–time goes so fast when I’m with you! I must go back to the house now, Joe might come in and find me gone.”

“Yes, I’d like to wring his damned neck!” said Morgan.

“He’s a good boy, Curtis,” she defended, but with lightness, “but he’s a little––”

She held her words back coquettishly.

“Heh?” queried Morgan.

“Jealous, you old goose! Can’t you see it?”

Morgan had a great laugh over that. From the sound of his voice Joe knew that he was standing, and his whole body ached with the fear that they would discover him lying there in the clover. Not that he was afraid of Morgan, but that he dreaded the humiliation which Ollie must suffer in knowing that her guilty tryst had been discovered.

“I’ll meet you at the gate, I’ll have the buggy on down the road a little ways,” Morgan told her. “There’s only a little while between you and liberty now, sweetheart.”

Joe dared not look up nor move, but he needed no eyes to know that Morgan kissed her then. After that he heard her running away toward the house. Morgan stood there a little while, whistling softly. Soon Joe heard him going in the direction of the road.94

Morgan was quite a distance ahead when Joe sprang out of his concealment and followed him, for he wanted to give Ollie time to pass beyond ear-shot of the orchard. As Joe made no attempt to smother the sound of his feet, Morgan heard him while he was still several yards behind him. He turned, stopped, and waited for Joe to come up.

Joe’s agitation was plain in his face, his shocked eyes stared out of its pallor as if they had looked upon violence and death.

“What’s the matter, kid?” inquired Morgan carelessly.

“I’ve got something to say to you,” answered Joe thickly. He was panting, more from rage than exertion; his hands trembled.

Morgan looked him over from boots to bandless hat with the same evidence of curiosity as a person displays when turning some washed-up object with the foot on the sands. It was as if he had but an abstract interest in the youth, a feeling which the incident had obtruded upon him without penetrating the reserve of his private cogitations.

“Kid, you look like you’d seen a snake,” said he.

“You let that woman alone–you’ve got to let her alone, I tell you!” said Joe with explosive suddenness, his passion out of hand.

Morgan’s face grew red.

“Mind your own business, you sneakin’ skunk!” said he.

“I am minding it,” said Joe; “but maybe not as well as I ought to ’a’ done. Isom left me here in his place to watch and look after things, but you’ve sneaked in under my arm like a dirty, thieving dog, and you’ve–you’ve––”

Morgan thrust his fist before Joe’s face.

“That’ll do now–that’ll do out of you!” he threatened.

Joe caught Morgan’s wrist with a quick, snapping movement, and slowly bent the threatening arm down, Morgan struggling, foot to foot with him in the test of strength. Joe95held the captured arm down for a moment, and they stood breast to breast, glaring into each other’s eyes. Then with a wrench that spun Morgan half round and made him stagger, Joe flung his arm free.

“Now, you keep away from here–keep away!” he warned, his voice growing thin and boyish in the height of his emotion, as if it would break in the treble shallows.

“Don’t fool with me or I’ll hurt you,” said Morgan. “Keep your nose––”

“Let her alone!” commanded Joe sternly, his voice sinking again even below its accustomed level, gruff and deep in his chest. “I heard you–I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it–and I know what you’re up to tonight. Don’t come around here tonight after her, for I’m not going to let her go.”

“Ya-a, you pup, you pup!” said Morgan nastily.

“It’s a hard life for her here–I know that better than you do,” said Joe, passing over the insult, “but you can’t give her any better–not as good. What you’ve done can’t be undone now, but I can keep you from dragging her down any further. Don’t you come back here tonight!”

“If you keep your fingers out of the fire,” said Morgan, looking at the ground, rolling a fallen apple with his toe, “you’ll not get scorched. You stick to your knittin’ and don’t meddle with mine. That’ll be about the healthiest thing you can do!”

“If Isom knew what you’ve done he’d kill you–if he’s even half a man,” said Joe. “She was a good woman till you came, you hound!”

“She’s a good woman yet,” said Morgan, with some feeling, “too good for that old hell-dog she’s married to!”

“Then let her stay good–at least as good as she is,” advised Joe.

“Oh, hell!” said Morgan disgustedly.96

“You can’t have her,” persisted Joe.

“We’ll see about that, too,” said Morgan, his manner and voice threatening. “What’re you goin’ to do–pole off and tell the old man?”

“I’ll do what Isom left me here to do, the rest of the time he’s away,” said Joe. “Ollie shan’t leave the house tonight.”

“Yes, you flat-bellied shad, you want her yourself–you’re stuck on her yourself, you fool! Yes, and you’ve got just about as much show of gittin’ her as I have of jumpin’ over that tree!” derided Morgan.

“No matter what I think of her, good or bad, she’d be safe with me,” Joe told him, searching his face accusingly.

“Yes, of course she would!” scoffed Morgan. “You’re one of these saints that’ll live all your life by a punkin and never poke it with your finger. Oh, yes, I know your kind!”

“I’m not going to quarrel with you, Morgan, unless you make me,” said Joe; “but you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I don’t want her, not the way you do, anyhow.”

Morgan looked at him closely, then put out his hand with a gesture of conciliation.

“I’ll take that back, Joe,” said he. “You’re not that kind of a kid. You mean well, but you don’t understand. Look-a here, let me tell you, Joe: I love that little woman, kid, just as honest and true as any man could love her, and she thinks the world and all of me. I only want to take her away from here because I love her and want to make her happy. Don’t you see it, kid?”

“How would you do that? You couldn’t marry her.”

“Not for a while, of course,” admitted Morgan. “But the old possum he’d get a divorce in a little while.”

“Well, I’m not going to let her go,” Joe declared, turning away as if that settled the matter for good and all. “You’ve done–I could kill you for what you’ve done!” said he, with sudden vehemence.97

Morgan looked at him curiously, his careless face softening.

“Now, see here, don’t you look at it that way, Joe,” he argued. “I’m not so bad; neither is Ollie. You’ll understand these matters better when you’re older and know more about the way men feel. She wanted love, and I gave her love. She’s been worked to rags and bones by that old devil; and what I’ve done, and what I want to do, is in kindness, Joe. I’ll take her away from here and provide for her like she was a queen, I’ll give her the love and comradeship of a young man and make her happy, Joe. Don’t you see?”

“But you can’t make her respectable,” said Joe. “I’m not going to let her leave with you, or go to you. If she wants to go after Isom comes back, then let her. But not before. Now, you’d better go on away, Morgan, before I lose my temper. I was mad when I started after you, but I’ve cooled down. Don’t roil me up again. Go on your way, and leave that woman alone.”

“Joe, you’re a man in everything but sense,” said Morgan, not unkindly, “and I reckon if you and I was to clinch we’d raise a purty big dust and muss things around a right smart. And I don’t know who’d come out on top at the finish, neither. So I don’t want to have any trouble with you. All I ask of you is step to one side and leave us two alone in what we’ve started to do and got all planned to carry out. Go to bed tonight and go to sleep. You’re not supposed to know that anything’s due to happen, and if you sleep sound you’ll find a twenty-dollar bill under your hat in the morning.”

The suggestion brought a blush to Joe’s face. He set his lips as if fighting down hot words before he spoke.

“If I have to tie her I’ll do it,” said Joe earnestly. “She shan’t leave. And if I have to take down that old gun from the kitchen wall to keep you away from here till Isom comes home, I’ll take it down. You can come to the gate tonight if you want to, but if you do––”98

Joe looked him straight in the eyes. Morgan’s face lost its color. He turned as if to see that his horse was still standing, and stood that way a little while.

“I guess I’ll drive on off, Joe,” said Morgan with a sigh, as if he had reached the conclusion after a long consideration.

“All right,” said Joe.

“No hard feelin’s left behind me?” facing Joe again with his old, self-assured smile. He offered his hand, but Joe did not take it.

“As long as you never come back,” said Joe.

Morgan walked to the fence, his head bent, thoughtfully. Joe followed, as if to satisfy himself that the wily agent was not going to work some subterfuge, having small faith in his promise to leave, much less in the probability that he would stay away.

Joe stood at the fence, looking after Morgan, long after the dust of his wheels had settled again to the road. At last he went back to the place where he had dropped his scythe, and cut a swath straight through to the tree where Ollie’s bonnet had hung. And there he mowed the trampled clover, and obliterated her footprints with his own.

The weight of his discovery was like some dead thing on his breast. He felt that Ollie had fallen from the high heaven of his regard, never to mount to her place again. But Isom did not know of this bitter thing, this shameful shadow at his door. As far as it rested with him to hold the secret in his heart, poison though it was to him, Isom should never know.

99CHAPTER VIBLOOD

Joe had debated the matter fully in his mind before going in to supper. Since he had sent her tempter away, there was no necessity of taking Ollie to task, thus laying bare his knowledge of her guilty secret. He believed that her conscience would prove its own flagellant in the days to come, when she had time to reflect and repent, away from the debauching influence of the man who had led her astray. His blame was all for Morgan, who had taken advantage of her loneliness and discontent.Joe now recalled, and understood, her reaching out to him for sympathy; he saw clearly that she had demanded something beyond the capacity of his unseasoned heart to give. Isom was to blame for that condition of her mind, first and most severely of all. If Isom had been kind to her, and given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in his insensibility to all human need of gentleness.Joe even doubted, knowing him as he did, whether the gray old miser was capable of either jealousy or shame. He did not know, indeed, what Isom might say to it if his wife’s infidelity became known to him, but he believed that he would rage to insanity. Perhaps not because the sting of it would penetrate to his heart, but in his censure of his wife’s extravagance in giving away an affection which belonged, under the form of marriage and law, to him.Joe was ashamed to meet Ollie at the table, not for100himself, but for her. He was afraid that his eyes, or his manner, might betray what he knew. He might have spared himself this feeling of humiliation on her account, for Ollie, all unconscious of his discovery, was bright and full of smiles. Joe could not rise to her level of light-heartedness, and, there being no common ground between them, he lapsed into his old-time silence over his plate.After supper Joe flattened himself against the kitchen wall where he had sat the night before on the bench outside the door, drawing back into the shadow. There he sat and thought it over again, unsatisfied to remain silent, yet afraid to speak. He did not want to be unjust, for perhaps she did not intend to meet Morgan at all. In addition to this doubt of her intentions, he had the hope that Isom would come very soon. He decided at length that he would go to bed and lie awake until he heard Ollie pass up to her room, when he would slip down again and wait. If she came down, he would know that she intended to carry out her part of the compact with Morgan. Then he could tell her that Morgan would not come.Ollie was not long over her work that night. When Joe heard her door close, he took his boots in his hand and went downstairs. He had left his hat on the kitchen table, according to his nightly custom; the moonlight coming in through the window reminded him of it as he passed. He put it on, thinking that he would take a look around the road in the vicinity of the gate, for he suspected that Morgan’s submissive going masked some iniquitous intent. Joe pulled on his boots, sitting in the kitchen door, listening a moment before he closed it after him, and walked softly toward the road.A careful survey as far as he could see in the bright moonlight, satisfied him that Morgan had not left his horse and buggy around there anywhere. He might come later. Joe decided to wait around there and see.101It was a cool autumn night; a prowling wind moved silently. Over hedgerow and barn roof the moonlight lay in white radiance; the dusty highway beyond the gate was changed by it into a royal road. Joe felt that there were memories abroad as he rested his arms on the gate-post. Moonlight and a soft wind always moved him with a feeling of indefinite and shapeless tenderness, as elusive as the echo of a song. There was a soothing quality in the night for him, which laved his bruised sensibilities like balm. He expanded under its influence; the tumult of his breast began to subside.The revelations of that day had fallen rudely upon the youth’s delicately tuned and finely adjusted nature. He had recoiled in horror from the sacrilege which that house had suffered. In a measure he felt that he was guilty along with Ollie in her unspeakable sin, in that he had been so stupid as to permit it.But, he reflected as he waited there with his hand upon the weathered gate, great and terrible as the upheaval of his day-world had been, the night had descended unconscious of it. The moonlight had brightened untroubled by it; the wind had come from its wooded places unhurried for it, and unvexed. After all, it had been only an unheard discord in the eternal, vast harmony. The things of men were matters of infinitesimal consequence in nature. The passing of a nation of men would not disturb its tranquillity as much as the falling of a leaf.It was then long past the hour when he was habitually asleep, and his vigil weighed on him heavily. No one had passed along the road; Morgan had not come in sight. Joe was weary from his day’s internal conflict and external toil. He began to consider the advisability of returning to bed.Perhaps, thought he, his watch was both futile and unjust. Ollie did not intend to keep her part in the agreement. She must be burning with remorse for her transgression.102He turned and walked slowly toward the house, stopping a little way along to look back and make sure that Morgan had not appeared. Thus he stood a little while, and then resumed his way.The house was before him, shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he, and repentant in her dreams.Joe felt that he might go to his rest with honesty. It would be welcome, as the desire of tired youth for its bed is strong. At the well he stopped again to look back for Morgan.As he turned a light flashed in the kitchen, gleamed a moment, went out suddenly. It was as if a match had been struck to look for something quickly found, and then blown out with a puff of breath.At once the fabric of his hopes collapsed, and his honest attempts to lift Ollie back to her smirched pedestal and invest her with at least a part of her former purity of heart, came to a painful end. She was preparing to leave. The hour when he must speak had come.He approached the door noiselessly. It was closed, as he had left it, and within everything was still. As he stood hesitating before it, his hand lifted to lay upon the latch, his heart laboring in painful lunges against his ribs, it opened without a sound, and Ollie stood before him against the background of dark.The moonlight came down on him through the half-bare arbor, and fell in mottled patches around him where he stood, his hand still lifted, as if to help her on her way. Ollie caught her breath in a frightened start, and shrank back.“You don’t need to be afraid, Ollie–it’s Joe,” said he.103“Oh, you scared me so!” she panted.Each then waited as if for the other to speak, and the silence seemed long.“Were you going out somewhere?” asked Joe.“No; I forgot to put away a few things, and I came down,” said she. “I woke up out of my sleep thinking of them,” she added.“Well!” said he, wonderingly. “Can I help you any, Ollie?”“No; it’s only some milk and things,” she told him. “You know how Isom takes on if he finds anything undone. I was afraid he might come in tonight and see them.”“Well!” said Joe again, in a queer, strained way.He was standing in the door, blocking it with his body, clenching the jamb with his hands on either side, as if to bar any attempt that she might make to pass.“Will you strike a light, Ollie? I want to have a talk with you,” said he gravely.“Oh, Joe!” she protested, as if pleasantly scandalized by the request, intentionally misreading it.“Have you got another match in your hand? Light the lamp.”“Oh, what’s the use?” said she. “I only ran down for a minute. We don’t need the light, do we, Joe? Can’t you talk without it?”“No; I want you to light the lamp,” he insisted.“I’ll not do it!” she flared suddenly, turning as if to go to her room. “You’ve not got any right to boss me around in my own house!”“I don’t suppose I have, Ollie, and I didn’t mean to,” said he, stepping into the room.Ollie retreated a few steps toward the inner door, and stopped. Joe could hear her excited breathing as he flung his hat on the table.104“Ollie, what I’ve got to say to you has to be said sooner or later tonight, and you’d just as well hear it now,” said Joe, trying to assure her of his friendly intent by speaking softly, although his voice was tremulous. “Morgan’s gone; he’ll not be back–at least not tonight.”“Morgan?” said she. “What do you mean–what do I care where he’s gone?”Joe made no reply. He fumbled for the box behind the stove and scraped a slow sulphur match against the pipe. Its light discovered Ollie shrinking against the wall where she had stopped, near the door.She was wearing a straw hat, which must have been a part of her bridal gear. A long white veil, which she wore scarf-wise over the front display of its flowers and fruits, came down and crossed behind her neck. Its ends dangled upon her breast. The dress was one that Joe never had seen her wear before, a girlish white thing with narrow ruffles. He wondered as he looked at her with a great ache in his heart, how so much seeming purity could be so base and foul. In that bitter moment he cursed old Isom in his heart for goading her to this desperate bound. She had been starving for a man’s love, and for the lack of it she had thrown herself away on a dog.Joe fitted the chimney on the burner of the lamp, and stood in judicial seriousness before her, the stub of the burning match wasting in a little blaze between his fingers.“Morgan’s gone,” he repeated, “and he’ll never come back. I know all about you two, and what you’d planned to do.”Joe dropped the stub of the match and set his foot on it.Ollie stared at him, her face as white as her bridal dress, her eyes big, like a barn-yard animal’s eyes in a lantern’s light. She was gathering and wadding the ends of her veil in her hands; her lips were open, showing the points of her small, white teeth.105“Isom–he’ll kill me!” she whispered.“Isom don’t know about it,” said Joe.“You’ll tell him!”“No.”Relief flickered in her face. She leaned forward a little, eagerly, as if to speak, but said nothing. Joe shrank back from her, his hand pressing heavily upon the table.“I never meant to tell him,” said he slowly.She sprang toward him, her hands clasped appealingly.“Then you’ll let me go, you’ll let me go?” she cried eagerly. “I can’t stay here,” she hurried on, “you know I can’t stay here, Joe, and suffer like he’s made me suffer the past year! You say Morgan won’t come––”“The coward, to try to steal a man’s wife, and deceive you that way, too!” said Joe, his anger rising.“Oh, you don’t know him as well as I do!” she defended, shaking her head solemnly. “He’s so grand, and good, and I love him, Joe–oh, Joe, I love him!”“It’s wrong for you to say that!” Joe harshly reproved her. “I don’t want to hear you say that; you’re Isom’s wife.”“Yes, God help me,” said she.“You could be worse off than you are, Ollie; as it is you’ve got aname!”“What’s a name when you despise it?” said she bitterly.“Have you thought what people would say about you if you went away with Morgan, Ollie?” inquired Joe gently.“I don’t care. We intend to go to some place where we’re not known, and––”“Hide,” said Joe. “Hide like thieves. And that’s what you’d be, both of you, don’t you see? You’d never be comfortable and happy, Ollie, skulking around that way.”“Yes, I would be happy,” she maintained sharply. “Mr. Morgan is a gentleman, and he’s good. He’d be proud of me, he’d take care of me like a lady.”106“For a little while maybe, till he found somebody else that he thought more of,” said Joe. “When it comes so easy to take one man’s wife, he wouldn’t stop at going off with another.”“It’s a lie–you know it’s a lie! Curtis Morgan’s a gentleman, I tell you, and I’ll not hear you run him down!”“Gentlemen and ladies don’t have to hide,” said Joe.“You’re lying to me!” she charged him suddenly, her face coloring angrily. “He wouldn’t go away from here on the say-so of a kid like you. He’s down there waiting for me, and I’m going to him.”“I wouldn’t deceive you, Ollie,” said he, leaving his post near the door, opening a way for her to pass. “If you think he’s there, go and see. But I tell you he’s gone. He asked me to shut my eyes to this thing and let you and him carry it out; but I couldn’t do that, so he went away.”She knew he was not deceiving her, and she turned on him with reproaches.“You want to chain me here and see me work myself to death for that old miserly Isom!” she stormed. “You’re just as bad as he is; you ain’t got a soft spot in your heart.”“Yes, I’d rather see you stay here with Isom and do a nigger woman’s work, like you have been doing ever since you married him, than let you go away with Morgan for one mistaken day. What you’d have to face with him would kill you quicker than work, and you’d suffer a thousand times more sorrow.”“What do you know about it?” she sneered. “You never loved anybody. That’s the way with you religious fools–you don’t get any fun out of life yourselves, and you want to spoil everybody else’s. Well, you’ll not spoil mine, I tell you. I’ll go to Morgan this very night, and you can’t stop me!”“Well, we’ll see about that, Ollie,” he told her, showing a107little temper. “I told him that I’d keep you here if I had to tie you, and I’ll do that, too, if I have to. Isom––”“Isom, Isom!” she mocked. “Well, tell Isom you spied on me and tell the old fool what you saw–tell him, tell him! Tell him all you know, and tell him more! Tell the old devil I hate him, and always did hate him; tell him I’ve got out of bed in the middle of the night more than once to get the ax and kill him in his sleep! Tell him I wish he was dead and in hell, where he belongs, and I’m sorry I didn’t send him there! What do I care about Isom, or you, or anybody else, you spy, you sneaking spy!”“I’ll go with you to the road if you want to see if he’s there,” Joe offered.Ollie’s fall from the sanctified place of irreproachable womanhood had divested her of all awe in his eyes. He spoke to her now as he would have reasoned with a child.“No, I suppose you threatened to go after Isom, or something like that, and he went away,” said she. “You couldn’t scare him, he wouldn’t run from you. Tomorrow he’ll send me word, and I’ll go to him in spite of you and Isom and everything else. I don’t care–I don’t care–you’re mean to me, too! you’re as mean as you can be!”She made a quick tempestuous turn from anger to tears, lifting her arm to her face and hiding her eyes in the bend of her elbow. Her shoulders heaved; she sobbed in childlike pity for herself and the injury which she seemed to think she bore.Joe put his hand on her shoulder.“Don’t take on that way about it, Ollie,” said he.“Oh, oh!” she moaned, her hands pressed to her face now; “why couldn’t you have been kind to me; why couldn’t you have said a good word to me sometimes? I didn’t have a friend in the world, and I was so lonesome and tired and–and–and–everything!”108Her reproachful appeal was disconcerting to Joe. How could he tell her that he had not understood her striving and yearning to reach him, and that at last understanding, he had been appalled by the enormity of his own heart’s desire. He said nothing for a little while, but took her by one tear-wet hand and led her away from the door. Near the table he stopped, still holding her hand, stroking it tenderly with comforting touch.“Never mind, Ollie,” said he at last; “you go to bed now and don’t think any more about going away with Morgan. If I thought it was best for your peace and happiness for you to go, I’d step out of the way at once. But he’d drag you down, Ollie, lower than any woman you ever saw, for they don’t have that kind of women here. Morgan isn’t as good a man as Isom is, with all his hard ways and stinginess. If he’s honest and honorable, he can wait for you till Isom dies. He’ll not last more than ten or fifteen years longer, and you’ll be young even then, Ollie. I don’t suppose anybody ever gets too old to be happy any more than they get too old to be sad.”“No, I don’t suppose they do, Joe,” she sighed.She had calmed down while he talked. Now she wiped her eyes on her veil, while the last convulsions of sobbing shook her now and then, like the withdrawing rumble of thunder after a storm.“I’ll put out the light, Ollie,” said he. “You go on to bed.”“Oh, Joe, Joe!” said she in a little pleading, meaningless way; a little way of reproach and softness.She lifted her tear-bright eyes, with the reflection of her subsiding passion in them, and looked yearningly into his. Ollie suddenly found herself feeling small and young, penitent and frail, in the presence of this quickly developed man. His strength seemed to rise above her, and spread round her,109and warm her in its protecting folds. There was comfort in him, and promise.The wife of the dead viking could turn to the living victor with a smile. It is a comforting faculty that has come down from the first mother to the last daughter; it is as ineradicable in the sex as the instinct which cherishes fire. Ollie was primitive in her passions and pains. If she could not have Morgan, perhaps she could yet find a comforter in Joe. She put her free hand on his shoulder and looked up into his face again. Tears were on her lashes, her lips were loose and trembling.“If you’d be good to me, Joe; if you’d only be good and kind, I could stay,” she said.Joe was moved to tenderness by her ingenuous sounding plea. He put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting way. She was very near him then, and her small hand, so lately cold and tear-damp, was warm within his. She threw her head back in expectant attitude; her yearning eyes seemed to be dragging him to her lips.“I will be good to you, Ollie; just as good and kind as I know how to be,” he promised.She swayed a little nearer; her warm, soft body pressed against him, her bright young eyes still striving to draw him down to her lips.“Oh, Joe, Joe,” she murmured in a snuggling, contented way.Sweat sprang upon his forehead and his throbbing temples, so calm and cool but a moment before. He stood trembling, his damp elf-locks dangling over his brow. Through the half-open door a little breath of wind threaded in and made the lamp-blaze jump; it rustled outside through the lilac-bushes like the passing of a lady’s gown.Joe’s voice was husky in his throat when he spoke.“You’d better go to bed, Ollie,” said he.110He still clung foolishly to her willing hand as he led her to the door opening to the stairs.“No, you go on up first, Joe,” she said. “I want to put the wood in the stove ready to light in the morning, and set a few little things out. It’ll give me a minute longer to sleep. You can trust me now, Joe,” she protested, looking earnestly into his eyes, “for I’m not going away with Morgan now.”“I’m glad to hear you say that, Ollie,” he told her, unfeigned pleasure in his voice.“I want you to promise me you’ll never tell Isom,” said she.“I never intended to tell him,” he replied.She withdrew her hand from his quickly, and quickly both of them fled to his shoulders.“Stoop down,” she coaxed with a seductive, tender pressure of her hands, “and tell me, Joe.”Isom’s step fell on the porch. He crashed the door back against the wall as he came in, and Joe and Ollie fell apart in guilty haste. Isom stood for a moment on the threshold, amazement in his staring eyes and open mouth. Then a cloud of rage swept him, he lifted his huge, hairy fist above his head like a club.“I’ll kill you!” he threatened, covering the space between him and Joe in two long strides.Ollie shrank away, half stooping, from the expected blow, her hands raised in appealing defense. Joe put up his open hand as if to check Isom in his assault.“Hold on, Isom; don’t you hit me,” he said.Whatever Isom’s intention had been, he contained himself. He stopped, facing Joe, who did not yield an inch.“Hit you, you whelp!” said Isom, his lips flattened back from his teeth. “I’ll do more than hit you. You–” He turned on Ollie: “I saw you. You’ve disgraced me! I’ll break every bone in your body! I’ll throw you to the hogs!”111“If you’ll hold on a minute and listen to reason, Isom, you’ll find there’s nothing at all like you think there is,” said Joe. “You’re making a mistake that you may be sorry for.”“Mistake!” repeated Isom bitterly, as if his quick-rising rage had sunk again and left him suddenly weak. “Yes, the mistake I made was when I took you in to save you from the poorhouse and give you a home. I go away for a day and come back to find you two clamped in each other’s arms so close together I couldn’t shove a hand between you. Mistake––”“That’s not so, Isom,” Joe protested indignantly.“Heaven and hell, didn’t I see you!” roared Isom. “There’s law for you two if I want to take it on you, but what’s the punishment of the law for what you’ve done on me? Law! No, by God! I’ll make my own law for this case. I’ll kill both of you if I’m spared to draw breath five minutes more!”Isom lifted his long arm in witness of his terrible intention, and cast his glaring eyes about the room as if in search of a weapon to begin his work.“I tell you, Isom, nothing wrong ever passed between me and your wife,” insisted Joe earnestly. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”Ollie, shrinking against the wall, looked imploringly at Joe. He had promised never to tell Isom what he knew, but how was he to save himself now without betraying her? Was he man enough to face it out and bear the strain, rush upon old Isom and stop him in his mad intention, or would he weaken and tell all he knew, here at the very first test of his strength? She could not read his intention in his face, but his eyes were frowning under his gathered brows as he watched every move that old Isom made. He was leaning forward a little, his arms were raised, like a wrestler waiting for the clinch.112Isom’s face was as gray as ashes that have lain through many a rain. He stood where he had stopped at Joe’s warning, and now was pulling up his sleeves as if to begin his bloody work.“You two conspired against me from the first,” he charged, his voice trembling; “you conspired to eat me holler, and now you conspire to bring shame and disgrace to my gray hairs. I trust you and depend on you, and I come home––”Isom’s arraignment broke off suddenly.He stood with arrested jaw, gazing intently at the table. Joe followed his eyes, but saw nothing on the table to hold a man’s words and passions suspended in that strange manner. Nothing was there but the lamp and Joe’s old brown hat. That lay there, its innocent, battered crown presenting to Joe’s eyes, its broad and pliant brim tilted up on the farther side as if resting on a fold of itself.It came to Joe in an instant that Isom’s anger had brought paralysis upon him. He started forward to assist him, Isom’s name on his lips, when Isom leaped to the table with a smothered cry in his throat. He seemed to hover over the table a moment, leaning with his breast upon it, gathering some object to him and hugging it under his arm.“Great God!” panted Isom in shocked voice, standing straight between them, his left arm pressed to his breast as if it covered a mortal wound. He twisted his neck and glared at Joe, but he did not disclose the thing that he had gathered from the table.“Great God!” said he again, in the same shocked, panting voice.“Isom,” began Joe, advancing toward him.Isom retreated quickly. He ran to the other end of the table where he stood, bending forward, hugging his secret to his breast as if he meant to defend it with the blood of his heart. He stretched out his free hand to keep Joe away.113“Stand off! Stand off!” he warned.Again Isom swept his wild glance around the room. Near the door, on two prongs of wood nailed to the wall, hung the gun of which Joe had spoken to Morgan in his warning. It was a Kentucky rifle, long barreled, heavy, of two generations past. Isom used it for hawks, and it hung there loaded and capped from year’s beginning to year’s end. Isom seemed to realize when he saw it, for the first time in that season of insane rage, that it offered to his hand a weapon. He leaped toward it, reaching up his hand.“I’ll kill you now!” said he.In one long spring Isom crossed from where he stood and seized the rifle by the muzzle.“Stop him, stop him!” screamed Ollie, pressing her hands to her ears.“Isom, Isom!” warned Joe, leaping after him.Isom was wrenching at the gun to free the breech from the fork when Joe caught him by the shoulder and tried to drag him back.“Look out–the hammer!” he cried.But quicker than the strength of Joe’s young arm, quicker than old Isom’s wrath, was the fire in that corroded cap; quicker than the old man’s hand, the powder in the nipple of the ancient gun.Isom fell at the report, his left hand still clutching the secret thing to his bosom, his right clinging to the rifle-barrel. He lay on his back where he had crashed down, as straight as if stretched to a line. His staring eyes rolled, all white; his mouth stood open, as if in an unuttered cry.

Joe had debated the matter fully in his mind before going in to supper. Since he had sent her tempter away, there was no necessity of taking Ollie to task, thus laying bare his knowledge of her guilty secret. He believed that her conscience would prove its own flagellant in the days to come, when she had time to reflect and repent, away from the debauching influence of the man who had led her astray. His blame was all for Morgan, who had taken advantage of her loneliness and discontent.

Joe now recalled, and understood, her reaching out to him for sympathy; he saw clearly that she had demanded something beyond the capacity of his unseasoned heart to give. Isom was to blame for that condition of her mind, first and most severely of all. If Isom had been kind to her, and given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in his insensibility to all human need of gentleness.

Joe even doubted, knowing him as he did, whether the gray old miser was capable of either jealousy or shame. He did not know, indeed, what Isom might say to it if his wife’s infidelity became known to him, but he believed that he would rage to insanity. Perhaps not because the sting of it would penetrate to his heart, but in his censure of his wife’s extravagance in giving away an affection which belonged, under the form of marriage and law, to him.

Joe was ashamed to meet Ollie at the table, not for100himself, but for her. He was afraid that his eyes, or his manner, might betray what he knew. He might have spared himself this feeling of humiliation on her account, for Ollie, all unconscious of his discovery, was bright and full of smiles. Joe could not rise to her level of light-heartedness, and, there being no common ground between them, he lapsed into his old-time silence over his plate.

After supper Joe flattened himself against the kitchen wall where he had sat the night before on the bench outside the door, drawing back into the shadow. There he sat and thought it over again, unsatisfied to remain silent, yet afraid to speak. He did not want to be unjust, for perhaps she did not intend to meet Morgan at all. In addition to this doubt of her intentions, he had the hope that Isom would come very soon. He decided at length that he would go to bed and lie awake until he heard Ollie pass up to her room, when he would slip down again and wait. If she came down, he would know that she intended to carry out her part of the compact with Morgan. Then he could tell her that Morgan would not come.

Ollie was not long over her work that night. When Joe heard her door close, he took his boots in his hand and went downstairs. He had left his hat on the kitchen table, according to his nightly custom; the moonlight coming in through the window reminded him of it as he passed. He put it on, thinking that he would take a look around the road in the vicinity of the gate, for he suspected that Morgan’s submissive going masked some iniquitous intent. Joe pulled on his boots, sitting in the kitchen door, listening a moment before he closed it after him, and walked softly toward the road.

A careful survey as far as he could see in the bright moonlight, satisfied him that Morgan had not left his horse and buggy around there anywhere. He might come later. Joe decided to wait around there and see.101

It was a cool autumn night; a prowling wind moved silently. Over hedgerow and barn roof the moonlight lay in white radiance; the dusty highway beyond the gate was changed by it into a royal road. Joe felt that there were memories abroad as he rested his arms on the gate-post. Moonlight and a soft wind always moved him with a feeling of indefinite and shapeless tenderness, as elusive as the echo of a song. There was a soothing quality in the night for him, which laved his bruised sensibilities like balm. He expanded under its influence; the tumult of his breast began to subside.

The revelations of that day had fallen rudely upon the youth’s delicately tuned and finely adjusted nature. He had recoiled in horror from the sacrilege which that house had suffered. In a measure he felt that he was guilty along with Ollie in her unspeakable sin, in that he had been so stupid as to permit it.

But, he reflected as he waited there with his hand upon the weathered gate, great and terrible as the upheaval of his day-world had been, the night had descended unconscious of it. The moonlight had brightened untroubled by it; the wind had come from its wooded places unhurried for it, and unvexed. After all, it had been only an unheard discord in the eternal, vast harmony. The things of men were matters of infinitesimal consequence in nature. The passing of a nation of men would not disturb its tranquillity as much as the falling of a leaf.

It was then long past the hour when he was habitually asleep, and his vigil weighed on him heavily. No one had passed along the road; Morgan had not come in sight. Joe was weary from his day’s internal conflict and external toil. He began to consider the advisability of returning to bed.

Perhaps, thought he, his watch was both futile and unjust. Ollie did not intend to keep her part in the agreement. She must be burning with remorse for her transgression.102

He turned and walked slowly toward the house, stopping a little way along to look back and make sure that Morgan had not appeared. Thus he stood a little while, and then resumed his way.

The house was before him, shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he, and repentant in her dreams.

Joe felt that he might go to his rest with honesty. It would be welcome, as the desire of tired youth for its bed is strong. At the well he stopped again to look back for Morgan.

As he turned a light flashed in the kitchen, gleamed a moment, went out suddenly. It was as if a match had been struck to look for something quickly found, and then blown out with a puff of breath.

At once the fabric of his hopes collapsed, and his honest attempts to lift Ollie back to her smirched pedestal and invest her with at least a part of her former purity of heart, came to a painful end. She was preparing to leave. The hour when he must speak had come.

He approached the door noiselessly. It was closed, as he had left it, and within everything was still. As he stood hesitating before it, his hand lifted to lay upon the latch, his heart laboring in painful lunges against his ribs, it opened without a sound, and Ollie stood before him against the background of dark.

The moonlight came down on him through the half-bare arbor, and fell in mottled patches around him where he stood, his hand still lifted, as if to help her on her way. Ollie caught her breath in a frightened start, and shrank back.

“You don’t need to be afraid, Ollie–it’s Joe,” said he.103

“Oh, you scared me so!” she panted.

Each then waited as if for the other to speak, and the silence seemed long.

“Were you going out somewhere?” asked Joe.

“No; I forgot to put away a few things, and I came down,” said she. “I woke up out of my sleep thinking of them,” she added.

“Well!” said he, wonderingly. “Can I help you any, Ollie?”

“No; it’s only some milk and things,” she told him. “You know how Isom takes on if he finds anything undone. I was afraid he might come in tonight and see them.”

“Well!” said Joe again, in a queer, strained way.

He was standing in the door, blocking it with his body, clenching the jamb with his hands on either side, as if to bar any attempt that she might make to pass.

“Will you strike a light, Ollie? I want to have a talk with you,” said he gravely.

“Oh, Joe!” she protested, as if pleasantly scandalized by the request, intentionally misreading it.

“Have you got another match in your hand? Light the lamp.”

“Oh, what’s the use?” said she. “I only ran down for a minute. We don’t need the light, do we, Joe? Can’t you talk without it?”

“No; I want you to light the lamp,” he insisted.

“I’ll not do it!” she flared suddenly, turning as if to go to her room. “You’ve not got any right to boss me around in my own house!”

“I don’t suppose I have, Ollie, and I didn’t mean to,” said he, stepping into the room.

Ollie retreated a few steps toward the inner door, and stopped. Joe could hear her excited breathing as he flung his hat on the table.104

“Ollie, what I’ve got to say to you has to be said sooner or later tonight, and you’d just as well hear it now,” said Joe, trying to assure her of his friendly intent by speaking softly, although his voice was tremulous. “Morgan’s gone; he’ll not be back–at least not tonight.”

“Morgan?” said she. “What do you mean–what do I care where he’s gone?”

Joe made no reply. He fumbled for the box behind the stove and scraped a slow sulphur match against the pipe. Its light discovered Ollie shrinking against the wall where she had stopped, near the door.

She was wearing a straw hat, which must have been a part of her bridal gear. A long white veil, which she wore scarf-wise over the front display of its flowers and fruits, came down and crossed behind her neck. Its ends dangled upon her breast. The dress was one that Joe never had seen her wear before, a girlish white thing with narrow ruffles. He wondered as he looked at her with a great ache in his heart, how so much seeming purity could be so base and foul. In that bitter moment he cursed old Isom in his heart for goading her to this desperate bound. She had been starving for a man’s love, and for the lack of it she had thrown herself away on a dog.

Joe fitted the chimney on the burner of the lamp, and stood in judicial seriousness before her, the stub of the burning match wasting in a little blaze between his fingers.

“Morgan’s gone,” he repeated, “and he’ll never come back. I know all about you two, and what you’d planned to do.”

Joe dropped the stub of the match and set his foot on it.

Ollie stared at him, her face as white as her bridal dress, her eyes big, like a barn-yard animal’s eyes in a lantern’s light. She was gathering and wadding the ends of her veil in her hands; her lips were open, showing the points of her small, white teeth.105

“Isom–he’ll kill me!” she whispered.

“Isom don’t know about it,” said Joe.

“You’ll tell him!”

“No.”

Relief flickered in her face. She leaned forward a little, eagerly, as if to speak, but said nothing. Joe shrank back from her, his hand pressing heavily upon the table.

“I never meant to tell him,” said he slowly.

She sprang toward him, her hands clasped appealingly.

“Then you’ll let me go, you’ll let me go?” she cried eagerly. “I can’t stay here,” she hurried on, “you know I can’t stay here, Joe, and suffer like he’s made me suffer the past year! You say Morgan won’t come––”

“The coward, to try to steal a man’s wife, and deceive you that way, too!” said Joe, his anger rising.

“Oh, you don’t know him as well as I do!” she defended, shaking her head solemnly. “He’s so grand, and good, and I love him, Joe–oh, Joe, I love him!”

“It’s wrong for you to say that!” Joe harshly reproved her. “I don’t want to hear you say that; you’re Isom’s wife.”

“Yes, God help me,” said she.

“You could be worse off than you are, Ollie; as it is you’ve got aname!”

“What’s a name when you despise it?” said she bitterly.

“Have you thought what people would say about you if you went away with Morgan, Ollie?” inquired Joe gently.

“I don’t care. We intend to go to some place where we’re not known, and––”

“Hide,” said Joe. “Hide like thieves. And that’s what you’d be, both of you, don’t you see? You’d never be comfortable and happy, Ollie, skulking around that way.”

“Yes, I would be happy,” she maintained sharply. “Mr. Morgan is a gentleman, and he’s good. He’d be proud of me, he’d take care of me like a lady.”106

“For a little while maybe, till he found somebody else that he thought more of,” said Joe. “When it comes so easy to take one man’s wife, he wouldn’t stop at going off with another.”

“It’s a lie–you know it’s a lie! Curtis Morgan’s a gentleman, I tell you, and I’ll not hear you run him down!”

“Gentlemen and ladies don’t have to hide,” said Joe.

“You’re lying to me!” she charged him suddenly, her face coloring angrily. “He wouldn’t go away from here on the say-so of a kid like you. He’s down there waiting for me, and I’m going to him.”

“I wouldn’t deceive you, Ollie,” said he, leaving his post near the door, opening a way for her to pass. “If you think he’s there, go and see. But I tell you he’s gone. He asked me to shut my eyes to this thing and let you and him carry it out; but I couldn’t do that, so he went away.”

She knew he was not deceiving her, and she turned on him with reproaches.

“You want to chain me here and see me work myself to death for that old miserly Isom!” she stormed. “You’re just as bad as he is; you ain’t got a soft spot in your heart.”

“Yes, I’d rather see you stay here with Isom and do a nigger woman’s work, like you have been doing ever since you married him, than let you go away with Morgan for one mistaken day. What you’d have to face with him would kill you quicker than work, and you’d suffer a thousand times more sorrow.”

“What do you know about it?” she sneered. “You never loved anybody. That’s the way with you religious fools–you don’t get any fun out of life yourselves, and you want to spoil everybody else’s. Well, you’ll not spoil mine, I tell you. I’ll go to Morgan this very night, and you can’t stop me!”

“Well, we’ll see about that, Ollie,” he told her, showing a107little temper. “I told him that I’d keep you here if I had to tie you, and I’ll do that, too, if I have to. Isom––”

“Isom, Isom!” she mocked. “Well, tell Isom you spied on me and tell the old fool what you saw–tell him, tell him! Tell him all you know, and tell him more! Tell the old devil I hate him, and always did hate him; tell him I’ve got out of bed in the middle of the night more than once to get the ax and kill him in his sleep! Tell him I wish he was dead and in hell, where he belongs, and I’m sorry I didn’t send him there! What do I care about Isom, or you, or anybody else, you spy, you sneaking spy!”

“I’ll go with you to the road if you want to see if he’s there,” Joe offered.

Ollie’s fall from the sanctified place of irreproachable womanhood had divested her of all awe in his eyes. He spoke to her now as he would have reasoned with a child.

“No, I suppose you threatened to go after Isom, or something like that, and he went away,” said she. “You couldn’t scare him, he wouldn’t run from you. Tomorrow he’ll send me word, and I’ll go to him in spite of you and Isom and everything else. I don’t care–I don’t care–you’re mean to me, too! you’re as mean as you can be!”

She made a quick tempestuous turn from anger to tears, lifting her arm to her face and hiding her eyes in the bend of her elbow. Her shoulders heaved; she sobbed in childlike pity for herself and the injury which she seemed to think she bore.

Joe put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t take on that way about it, Ollie,” said he.

“Oh, oh!” she moaned, her hands pressed to her face now; “why couldn’t you have been kind to me; why couldn’t you have said a good word to me sometimes? I didn’t have a friend in the world, and I was so lonesome and tired and–and–and–everything!”108

Her reproachful appeal was disconcerting to Joe. How could he tell her that he had not understood her striving and yearning to reach him, and that at last understanding, he had been appalled by the enormity of his own heart’s desire. He said nothing for a little while, but took her by one tear-wet hand and led her away from the door. Near the table he stopped, still holding her hand, stroking it tenderly with comforting touch.

“Never mind, Ollie,” said he at last; “you go to bed now and don’t think any more about going away with Morgan. If I thought it was best for your peace and happiness for you to go, I’d step out of the way at once. But he’d drag you down, Ollie, lower than any woman you ever saw, for they don’t have that kind of women here. Morgan isn’t as good a man as Isom is, with all his hard ways and stinginess. If he’s honest and honorable, he can wait for you till Isom dies. He’ll not last more than ten or fifteen years longer, and you’ll be young even then, Ollie. I don’t suppose anybody ever gets too old to be happy any more than they get too old to be sad.”

“No, I don’t suppose they do, Joe,” she sighed.

She had calmed down while he talked. Now she wiped her eyes on her veil, while the last convulsions of sobbing shook her now and then, like the withdrawing rumble of thunder after a storm.

“I’ll put out the light, Ollie,” said he. “You go on to bed.”

“Oh, Joe, Joe!” said she in a little pleading, meaningless way; a little way of reproach and softness.

She lifted her tear-bright eyes, with the reflection of her subsiding passion in them, and looked yearningly into his. Ollie suddenly found herself feeling small and young, penitent and frail, in the presence of this quickly developed man. His strength seemed to rise above her, and spread round her,109and warm her in its protecting folds. There was comfort in him, and promise.

The wife of the dead viking could turn to the living victor with a smile. It is a comforting faculty that has come down from the first mother to the last daughter; it is as ineradicable in the sex as the instinct which cherishes fire. Ollie was primitive in her passions and pains. If she could not have Morgan, perhaps she could yet find a comforter in Joe. She put her free hand on his shoulder and looked up into his face again. Tears were on her lashes, her lips were loose and trembling.

“If you’d be good to me, Joe; if you’d only be good and kind, I could stay,” she said.

Joe was moved to tenderness by her ingenuous sounding plea. He put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting way. She was very near him then, and her small hand, so lately cold and tear-damp, was warm within his. She threw her head back in expectant attitude; her yearning eyes seemed to be dragging him to her lips.

“I will be good to you, Ollie; just as good and kind as I know how to be,” he promised.

She swayed a little nearer; her warm, soft body pressed against him, her bright young eyes still striving to draw him down to her lips.

“Oh, Joe, Joe,” she murmured in a snuggling, contented way.

Sweat sprang upon his forehead and his throbbing temples, so calm and cool but a moment before. He stood trembling, his damp elf-locks dangling over his brow. Through the half-open door a little breath of wind threaded in and made the lamp-blaze jump; it rustled outside through the lilac-bushes like the passing of a lady’s gown.

Joe’s voice was husky in his throat when he spoke.

“You’d better go to bed, Ollie,” said he.110

He still clung foolishly to her willing hand as he led her to the door opening to the stairs.

“No, you go on up first, Joe,” she said. “I want to put the wood in the stove ready to light in the morning, and set a few little things out. It’ll give me a minute longer to sleep. You can trust me now, Joe,” she protested, looking earnestly into his eyes, “for I’m not going away with Morgan now.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Ollie,” he told her, unfeigned pleasure in his voice.

“I want you to promise me you’ll never tell Isom,” said she.

“I never intended to tell him,” he replied.

She withdrew her hand from his quickly, and quickly both of them fled to his shoulders.

“Stoop down,” she coaxed with a seductive, tender pressure of her hands, “and tell me, Joe.”

Isom’s step fell on the porch. He crashed the door back against the wall as he came in, and Joe and Ollie fell apart in guilty haste. Isom stood for a moment on the threshold, amazement in his staring eyes and open mouth. Then a cloud of rage swept him, he lifted his huge, hairy fist above his head like a club.

“I’ll kill you!” he threatened, covering the space between him and Joe in two long strides.

Ollie shrank away, half stooping, from the expected blow, her hands raised in appealing defense. Joe put up his open hand as if to check Isom in his assault.

“Hold on, Isom; don’t you hit me,” he said.

Whatever Isom’s intention had been, he contained himself. He stopped, facing Joe, who did not yield an inch.

“Hit you, you whelp!” said Isom, his lips flattened back from his teeth. “I’ll do more than hit you. You–” He turned on Ollie: “I saw you. You’ve disgraced me! I’ll break every bone in your body! I’ll throw you to the hogs!”111

“If you’ll hold on a minute and listen to reason, Isom, you’ll find there’s nothing at all like you think there is,” said Joe. “You’re making a mistake that you may be sorry for.”

“Mistake!” repeated Isom bitterly, as if his quick-rising rage had sunk again and left him suddenly weak. “Yes, the mistake I made was when I took you in to save you from the poorhouse and give you a home. I go away for a day and come back to find you two clamped in each other’s arms so close together I couldn’t shove a hand between you. Mistake––”

“That’s not so, Isom,” Joe protested indignantly.

“Heaven and hell, didn’t I see you!” roared Isom. “There’s law for you two if I want to take it on you, but what’s the punishment of the law for what you’ve done on me? Law! No, by God! I’ll make my own law for this case. I’ll kill both of you if I’m spared to draw breath five minutes more!”

Isom lifted his long arm in witness of his terrible intention, and cast his glaring eyes about the room as if in search of a weapon to begin his work.

“I tell you, Isom, nothing wrong ever passed between me and your wife,” insisted Joe earnestly. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

Ollie, shrinking against the wall, looked imploringly at Joe. He had promised never to tell Isom what he knew, but how was he to save himself now without betraying her? Was he man enough to face it out and bear the strain, rush upon old Isom and stop him in his mad intention, or would he weaken and tell all he knew, here at the very first test of his strength? She could not read his intention in his face, but his eyes were frowning under his gathered brows as he watched every move that old Isom made. He was leaning forward a little, his arms were raised, like a wrestler waiting for the clinch.112

Isom’s face was as gray as ashes that have lain through many a rain. He stood where he had stopped at Joe’s warning, and now was pulling up his sleeves as if to begin his bloody work.

“You two conspired against me from the first,” he charged, his voice trembling; “you conspired to eat me holler, and now you conspire to bring shame and disgrace to my gray hairs. I trust you and depend on you, and I come home––”

Isom’s arraignment broke off suddenly.

He stood with arrested jaw, gazing intently at the table. Joe followed his eyes, but saw nothing on the table to hold a man’s words and passions suspended in that strange manner. Nothing was there but the lamp and Joe’s old brown hat. That lay there, its innocent, battered crown presenting to Joe’s eyes, its broad and pliant brim tilted up on the farther side as if resting on a fold of itself.

It came to Joe in an instant that Isom’s anger had brought paralysis upon him. He started forward to assist him, Isom’s name on his lips, when Isom leaped to the table with a smothered cry in his throat. He seemed to hover over the table a moment, leaning with his breast upon it, gathering some object to him and hugging it under his arm.

“Great God!” panted Isom in shocked voice, standing straight between them, his left arm pressed to his breast as if it covered a mortal wound. He twisted his neck and glared at Joe, but he did not disclose the thing that he had gathered from the table.

“Great God!” said he again, in the same shocked, panting voice.

“Isom,” began Joe, advancing toward him.

Isom retreated quickly. He ran to the other end of the table where he stood, bending forward, hugging his secret to his breast as if he meant to defend it with the blood of his heart. He stretched out his free hand to keep Joe away.113

“Stand off! Stand off!” he warned.

Again Isom swept his wild glance around the room. Near the door, on two prongs of wood nailed to the wall, hung the gun of which Joe had spoken to Morgan in his warning. It was a Kentucky rifle, long barreled, heavy, of two generations past. Isom used it for hawks, and it hung there loaded and capped from year’s beginning to year’s end. Isom seemed to realize when he saw it, for the first time in that season of insane rage, that it offered to his hand a weapon. He leaped toward it, reaching up his hand.

“I’ll kill you now!” said he.

In one long spring Isom crossed from where he stood and seized the rifle by the muzzle.

“Stop him, stop him!” screamed Ollie, pressing her hands to her ears.

“Isom, Isom!” warned Joe, leaping after him.

Isom was wrenching at the gun to free the breech from the fork when Joe caught him by the shoulder and tried to drag him back.

“Look out–the hammer!” he cried.

But quicker than the strength of Joe’s young arm, quicker than old Isom’s wrath, was the fire in that corroded cap; quicker than the old man’s hand, the powder in the nipple of the ancient gun.

Isom fell at the report, his left hand still clutching the secret thing to his bosom, his right clinging to the rifle-barrel. He lay on his back where he had crashed down, as straight as if stretched to a line. His staring eyes rolled, all white; his mouth stood open, as if in an unuttered cry.

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