Cynthia threw out her hands with a despairing grasp of the air, as if she were reaching for the broken remnants of the family pride. "To marry a Weatherby!" she gasped. "Oh, mother! mother! Lila, is it possible that you can be so selfish?" But Lila had won her freedom too dearly to surrender it to an appeal.
"I want to be selfish," she said stubbornly. "I have never been selfish in my life, and I want to see what it feels like. Oh, you are cruel, all of you, and you will break my heart."
Christopher's face paled and grew stern.
"We must all think of mother's wishes, Lila," he said gravely.
For the first time the girl lost her high fortitude, and a babyish quiver shook her lips. Her glance wavered and fell, and with a pathetic gesture she turned from Christopher to Cynthia and from Cynthia to Tucker.
"Oh, you can't understand, Christopher!" she cried; "you have never been in love, nor has Cynthia. None of you can understand but Uncle Tucker!"
She ran to him sobbing, and he, steadying himself on a single crutch, folded his arm about her.
"I understand, child, thank God," he said softly.
An hour later Christopher was at work in the stable, when he heard a careless whistle outside, and Will Fletcher looked in at the open door.
"I say, Chris, take a turn off and come down to Tom Spade's," he urged.
Christopher, who was descending from the loft with an armful of straw, paused midway of the ladder and regarded his visitor with perceptible hesitation.
"I can't this evening," he answered; "the light is almost gone, and I've a good deal to get through with after dark. I'll manage better to-morrow, if I can. By the way, why didn't you show up at Weatherby's?"
Will came in and sat down on the edge of a big wooden box which contained the harness. In the four years he had changed but little in appearance, though his slim figure had shot up rapidly in height. His chestnut hair grew in high peaks from his temples and swept in a single lock above his small, sparkling eyes, which held an expression of intelligent animation. On the whole, it was not an unpleasing face, despite the tremulous droop of the mouth, already darkened by the faint beginning of a brown mustache.
"Oh, Molly Peterkin stopped me in the road," he replied readily. "I'd caught her eye once or twice before, but this was the first chance we'd had to speak. I tell you she's a peach, Christopher."
Christopher came down from the ladder and spread the straw evenly in the horses' stalls.
"So they say," he responded; "but I haven't much of an eye for women, you know. Now, when it comes to judging a leaf of tobacco, I'm a match for any man."
"Well, one can't be everything," remarked Will consolingly. He snatched at a piece of straw that had fallen on the lowest rung of the ladder and began idly chewing it. "As for me I know a blamed sight more about women than I do about tobacco," he added, with a swagger.
Christopher glanced up, and at sight of the boyish figure burst into a hearty laugh.
"Oh, you're a jolly old sport, I know, and to think that Tom Spade has been accusing me of leading you astray! Why, you are already twice the man that I am."
"Pshaw! That's just grandpa's chatter! The old man rails at me day and night about you until it's a mortal wonder he doesn't drive me to the dogs outright. I'd like to see another fellow that would put up with it for a week. Captain Morrison told him, you know, that I hadn't done a peg of study for a year, and it brought on a scene that almost shook the roof. Now he swears I'm to go to the university next fall or hang."
"Well, I'd go, by all means."
"What under heaven could I do there? All those confounded languages Morrison poured into my head haven't left so much as a single letter of the alphabet. Ad nauseam is all I learned of Latin. I tell you I'd rather be a storekeeper any time than a scholar—books make me sick all over—and, when it comes to that, I don't believe I know much more to-day than you do."
A smile crossed Christopher's face, leaving it very grim. The words recalled to him his own earlier ambition—that of the gentlemanly scholar of the old order—and there flickered before his eyes the visionary library, suffused with firelight, and the translation of the "Iliad" he had meant to finish.
"I always told you it wasn't worth anything," he said roughly."She'd love you any better if you could spurt Greek?"
Will broke into a pleased laugh, his mind dwelling upon the fancy the other had conjured up so skilfully.
"Did you ever see such lips in your life?" he inquired.
Christopher shook his head. "I haven't noticed them, but Sol's have a way of sticking in my memory."
"Oh, you brute! It's a shame that she should have such a father.He's about the worst I ever met."
"Some think the shame is on the other side, you know."
"That's a lie—she told me so. Fred Turner started the whole thing because she refused to marry him at the last moment. She found out suddenly that she wasn't in love with him. Girls are like that, you see. Why, Maria—" Christopher looked up quickly. "I've nothing to do with your sister," he observed. "I know that; but it's true, all the same. Maria couldn't tell her own mind any better. Why, one day she was declaring that she was over head and ears in love with Jack, and the next she was wringing her hands and begging him to go away." "What are you going to do down at the store?" asked Christopher abruptly. "Oh, nothing in particular—just lounge, I suppose; there's never anything to do. By the way, can't we have a hunt to-morrow?" "I'll see about it. Look here, is your grandfather any worse than usual? He stormed at me like mad yesterday because I wouldn't turn my team of oxen out of the road." "It's like blasting rock to get a decent word out of him. The only time he's been good-humoured for four years was the week we were away together. He offered me five thousand dollars down if I'd never speak to you again." "You don't say so!" exclaimed Christopher. He bent his head and stood looking thoughtfully at the matted straw under foot. "Well, you had a chance to turn a pretty penny," he said, in a tone of gentle raillery. "Oh, hang it! What do you mean?" demanded Will. "Of course, I wasn't going back on you like that just to please grandpa. I'd have been a confounded sneak if I had!" "You're a jolly good chap and no mistake! But the old man would have been pleased, I reckon?" Will grinned.
"You bet he would! I could twist him round my finger but for you, Aunt Saidie says." "It will be all the same in the end, though. The whole thing will come to you some day." "Oh, yes. Maria got her share, and Wyndham has made ducks and drakes of it." "Your grandfather's aging, too, isn't he?"
"Rather," returned Will, with a curious mixture of amiable lightness and cool brutality. "He's gone off at least twenty years since that time I had pneumonia in your barn. That wrecked him, Aunt Saidie says, and all because he knew he'd have to put up with you when the doctor told him to let me have my way. His temper gets worse, too, all the time. I declare, he sometimes makes me wish he were dead and buried." "Oh, he'll live long enough yet, never fear—those wiry, cross-grained people are as tough as lightwood knots. It's a pity, though, he wants to bully you like that—it would kill me in a day." A flush mounted to Will's forehead. "I knew you'd think so," he said, "and it's what I tell him all the time. He's got no business meddling with me so much, and I won't stand it." "He ought to get a dog," suggested Christopher indifferently. "Well, I'm not a dog, and I'll make him understand it yet. Oh, you think I'm an awful milksop, of course, but I'll show you otherwise some day. I'd like to know if you could have done any better in my place?" "Done! Why, I shouldn't have been in your place long, that's all." "I shan't, either, for that matter; but I've got to humour him a little, you see, because he holds the purse-strings." "He'd never go so far as to kick you out, would he?" "Well, hardly. I'm all he has, you know. He doesn't like Maria because of her fine airs, much as he thinks of education. I've got to be a gentleman, he says; but as for him, he wouldn't give up one of his vulgar habits to save anybody's soul. His trouble with Maria all came of her reproving him for drinking out of his saucer. Now, I don't mind that kind of thing so much, but Maria used to say she'd rather have him steal, any day, than gulp his coffee. Why are you laughing so?" "Oh, nothing. Are you going to Tom's now? I've got to work." Will slid down from the big box and sauntered toward the door, pausing on the little wooden step to light a cigarette. "Drop in if you get a chance," he threw back over his shoulder, with a puff of smoke. In a few moments Christopher finished his work, and, coming outside, closed the stable door. Then he walked a few paces along the little path stopping from time to time to gaze across the darkening landscape. A light mist was wreathed about the tops of the old lilac-bushes, where it glimmered so indistinctly that it seemed as if one might dispel it by a breath; and farther away the soft evening colours had settled over the great fields, beyond which a clear yellow line was just visible above the distant woods. The wind was sharp with an edge of frost, and as it blew into his face he raised his head and drank long, invigorating drafts. From the cattle-pen hard by he smelled the fresh breath of the cows, and around him were those other odours, vague, familiar, pleasant, which are loosened at twilight in the open country. The time had been when the mere physical contact with the air would have filled him with a quiet satisfaction, but during the last four years he had lost gradually his sensitiveness to external things—to the changes of the seasons as to the beauties of an autumn sunrise. A clear morning had ceased to arouse in him the old buoyant energy, and he had lost the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten his labour in the fields. It was as if a clog fettered his simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his family. With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted. There were times, even, when he grew almost suspicious of Cynthia's patience, and at such moments his irritation was manifested in a sullen reserve. To himself he could give no explanation of his state of mind; he knew merely that he retreated day by day farther into the shadow of his loneliness, and that, while in his heart he still craved human sympathy, an expression of it even from those he loved was, above all, the thing he most bitterly resented. A light flashed in the kitchen, and he went on slowly toward the house. As he reached the back porch he saw that Lila was sitting at the kitchen window looking wearily out into the dusk. The firelight scintillated in her eyes, and as she turned quickly at a sound within the room he noticed with a pang that the sparkles were caused by teardrops on her lashes. His heart quickened at the sight of her drooping figure, and an impulse seized him to go in and comfort her at any cost. Then his severe constraint laid an icy hold upon him, and he hesitated with his hand upon the door.
"If I go in and speak to her, what is there for me to say?" he thought, overcome by his horror of any uncontrolled emotion. "We will merely go over the old complaints, the endless explanations. She will probably weep like a child, and I shall feel a brute when I look on and keep silent. In the first place, if I speak to her, what is there for me to say? If I simply beg her to stop crying, or if I rush in and urge her to marry Jim Weatherby to-morrow, what good can come of either course? She doesn't wait for my consent to the marriage, for she is as old as I am, and knows her own heart much better than I know mine. It is true that she is too beautiful to waste away like this, but how can I prevent it, or what is there for me to do?"
Again came the impulse to go in and fold her in his arms, but before he had taken the first step he yielded, as always, to his strange reserve, and he realised that if he entered it would be but to assume his customary unconcern, from the shelter of which he would probably make a few commonplace remarks on trivial subjects. The emotional situation would be ignored by them all, he knew; they would treat it absolutely as if it had no existence, as if its voice was not speaking to them in the silence, and they would break their bread and drink their coffee in apparent unconsciousness that supper was not the single thing that engrossed their thoughts. And all the time they would be face to face with the knowledge that they had demanded that Lila should sacrifice her life.
Presently Cynthia came out and called him, and he went in carelessly and sat down at the table. Lila left the window and slipped into her place, and when Tucker joined them she cut up his food as usual and prepared his coffee.
"Uncle Tucker's cup has no handle, Cynthia," she said with concern. "Let me take this one and give him another."
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Cynthia, bending over to examine the break with her near-sighted squint. "We'll soon have to begin using Aunt Susannah's set, if this keeps up. Uncle Boaz, you've broken another cup to-day."
Her tone was sharp with irritation, and the fine wrinkles caused by ceaseless small worries appeared instantly between her eyebrows. Christopher, watching her, remembered that she had worn the same expression during the scene with Lila, and it annoyed him unspeakably that she should be able to descend so readily, and with equal energy, upon so insignificant a grievance as a bit of broken china.
Uncle Boaz hobbled round the table and peered contemptuously at the cup which Lila held.
"Dar warn' no use bruckin' dat ar one," he observed, "'caze 'twuz bruck a'ready." " Oh, there won't be a piece left presently," pursued Cynthia indignantly; and Christopher felt suddenly that there was something contemptible in the passion she expended upon trifles. He wondered if Tucker noticed how horribly petty it all was to lament a broken cup when the tears were hardly dried on Lila's cheeks. Finishing hurriedly, he pushed back his chair and rose from the table, shaking his head in response to Cynthia's request that he should go in to see his mother. "Not now," he said impatiently, with that nervous avoidance of the person he loved best. "I'll be back in time to carry her to bed, but I've got to take a half-hour off and look in on Tom Spade." "She really ought to go to bed before sundown," responded Cynthia, "but nothing under heaven will persuade her to do so. It's her wonderful will that keeps her alive, just as it keeps her sitting bolt upright in that old chair. I don't believe there's another woman on earth who could have done it for more than twenty years." Taking down his hat from a big nail in the wall, Christopher stood for a moment abstractedly fingering the brim. "Well, I'll be back shortly," he said at last, and went out hurriedly into the darkness. At the instant he could not tell why he had so suddenly decided to follow Will Fletcher to the store, but, as usual, when the impulse came to him he proceeded to act promptly as it directed. Strangely enough, the boy was the one human being whom he felt no inclination to avoid, and the least oppressive moments that he knew were the reckless ones they spent together. While his daily companion was mentally and morally upon a lower plane than his own, the association was not without a balm for his wounded pride; and the knowledge that it was still possible to assume superiority to Fletcher's heir was, so far as he himself admitted, the one consolation that his life contained. As for his feeling toward Will Fletcher as an individual, it was the outcome of so curious a mixture of attraction and repulsion that he had long ceased from any attempt to define it as pure emotion. For the last four years the boy had been, as Tom Spade put it, "the very shadow on the man's footsteps," and yet at the end of that time it was almost impossible for Christopher to acknowledge either his liking or his hatred. He had suffered him for his own end, that was all, and he had come at last almost to enjoy the tolerance that he displayed. The hero worship—the natural imitation of youth— was at least not unpleasant, and there had been days during a brief absence of the boy when Christopher had, to his surprise, become aware of a positive vacancy in his surroundings. So long as Will made no evident attempt to rise above him—so long, indeed, as Fletcher's grandson kept to Fletcher's level, it was possible that the companionship would continue as harmoniously as it had begun. In the store he found Tom Spade and his wife—an angular, strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the reputation of a shrew with noisy honours. When he asked for Will, the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying and nodded toward the half-open door of the adjoining room.
"Several of the young fellows are in thar now," he remarked offhand, "an' I've jest had to go in an' git between Fred Turner an' Will Fletcher. They came to out an' out blows, an' I had to shake 'em both by the scuff of thar necks befo' they'd hish
snarlin'. Bless yo' life, all about a woman, too, every last word of it. Well, well, meanin' no disrespect to you, Susan, it's a queer thing that a man can't be born, married, or buried without a woman gittin' herself mixed up in the business. If she ain't wrappin' you in swaddlin' bands, you may be sho' she's measurin' off yo' windin'-sheet. Mark my words, Mr. Christopher, I don't believe thar's ever been a fight fought on this earth—be it a battle or a plain fisticuff—that it warn't started in the brain of somebody's mother, wife, or sweetheart an' it's most likely to have been the sweetheart. It is strange, when you come to study 'bout it, how sech peaceable-lookin' creaturs as women kin have sech hearty appetites for trouble."
"Well, trouble may be born of a woman, but it generally manages to take the shape of a man," observed Mrs. Spade from behind the counter, where she was filling a big glass jar with a fresh supply of striped peppermint candy. "And as far as that goes, ever sence the Garden of Eden, men have taken a good deal mo' pleasure in layin' the blame on thar wives than they do in layin' blows on the devil. It's a fortunate woman that don't wake up the day after the weddin' an' find she's married an Adam instid of a man. However, they are as the Lord made 'em, I reckon," she finished charitably, "which ain't so much to thar credit as it sounds, seein' they could have done over sech a po' job with precious little trouble."
"Oh, I warn't aimin' at you, Susan," Tom hastened to assure her, aware from experience that he entered an argument only to be worsted. "You've been a good wife to me, for all yo' sharp tongue, an' I've never had to git up an' light the fire sence the day I married you. Yes, you've been a first-rate wife to me, an' no mistake."
"I'm the last person you need tell that to," was Mrs. Spade's retort. "I don't reckon I've b'iled inside an' sweated outside for mo' than twenty years without knowin' it. Lord! Lord! If it took as hard work to be a Christian as it does to be a wife, thar'd be mighty few but men in the next world—an' they'd git thar jest by followin' like sheep arter Adam—"
"I declar', Susan, I didn't mean to rile you," urged Tom, breaking in upon the flow of words with an appealing effort to divert its course. "I was merely crackin' a joke with Mr. Christopher, you know."
"I'm plum sick of these here jokes that's got to have a woman on the p'int of 'em," returned Mrs. Spade, tightly screwing on the top of the glass jar. "I've always noticed that thar ain't nothin' so funny in this world but it gits a long sight funnier if a man kin turn it on his wife."
"Now, my dear—" helplessly expostulated Tom.
"My name's Susan, Tom Spade, an' I'll have you call me by it or not at all. If thar's one thing I hate on this earth it's a 'dear' in the mouth of a married man that ought to know better. I'd every bit as lief you'd shoot a lizard at me, an' you ain't jest found it out. If you think I'm the kind of person to git any satisfaction out of improper speeches you were never mo' mistaken in yo' life; an' I kin p'int out to you right now that I ain't never heard one of them words yit that I ain't had to pay for it. A 'dear' the mo' is mighty apt to mean a bucket of water the less. Oh, you can't turn my head with yo' soft tricks, Tom Spade. I'm a respectable woman, as my mother was befo' me, an' I don't want familiar doin's from any man, alive or dead. The woman who does, whether she be married or single, ain't no better than a female—that's my opinion!"
She paused to draw breath, and Tom was quick to take advantage of the intermission. "Good Lord, Mr. Christopher, those darn young fools are at it agin! " he exclaimed, darting toward the adjoining room.
With a stride, Christopher pushed past him and, opening the door, stopped uncertainly upon the threshold.
At the first glance he saw that the trouble was between Will and Fred Turner, and that Will, because of his slighter weight, had got very much the worst of the encounter. The boy stood now, trembling with anger and bleeding at the mouth, beside an overturned table, while Fred—a stout, brawny fellow—was busily pummelling his shoulders.
"You're a sneakin', puny-livered liar, that's what you are!" finished Turner with a vengeance.
Christopher walked leisurely across the room.
"And you're another," he observed in a quiet voice—the voice of his courtly father, which always came to him in moments of white heat. "You are exactly that—a sneaking, puny-livered liar." His manner was so courteous that it came as a surprise when he struck out from the shoulder and felled Fred as easily as he might have knocked over a wooden tenpin. "You really must learn better manners," he remarked coolly, looking down upon him.
Then he wiped his brow on his blue shirt-sleeve and called for a glass of beer.
Breakfast was barely over the next morning when Jim Weatherby appeared at the kitchen door carrying a package of horseshoe nails and a small hammer.
"I thought perhaps Christopher might want to use the mare early," he explained to Cynthia, who was clearing off the table. There was a pleasant precision in his speech, acquired with much industry at the little country school, and Cynthia, despite her rigid disfavour, could not but notice that when he glanced round the room in search of Lila he displayed the advantage of an aristocratic profile. Until to-day she could not remember that she had ever seen him directly, as it were; she had looked around him and beyond him, much as she might have obliterated from her vision a familiar shrub that chanced to intrude itself into her point of view. The immediate result of her examination was the possibility she dimly acknowledged that a man might exist as a well-favoured individual and yet belong to an unquestionably lower class of life.
"Well, I'll go out to the stable," added Jim, after a moment in which he had patiently submitted to her squinting observation. "Christopher will be somewhere about, I suppose?"
"Oh, I suppose so," replied Cynthia indifferently, emptying the coffee-grounds into the kitchen sink. The asperity of her tone was caused by the entrance of Lila, who came in with a basin of corn-meal dough tucked under her bared arm, which showed as round and delicate as a child's beneath her loosely rolled-up sleeve.
"Cynthia, I can't find the hen-house key," she began; and then, catching sight of Jim, she flushed a clear pink, while the little brown mole ran a race with the dimple in her check.
"The key is on that nail beside the dried hops," returned Cynthia sternly. "I found it in the lock last night and brought it in. It's a mercy that the chickens weren't all stolen."
Without replying, Lila took down the key, strung it on her little finger, and, going to the door, passed with Jim out into the autumn sunshine. Her soft laugh pulsed back presently, and Cynthia, hearing it, set her thin lips tightly as she carefully rinsed the coffee-pot with soda.
Christopher, who had just come up to the wellbrink, where Tucker sat feeding the hounds from a plate of scraps, gave an abrupt nod in the direction of the lovers strolling slowly down the hen-house path.
"It will end that way some day, I reckon," he said with a sigh, "and you know I'm almost of a mind with Cynthia about it. It does seem a downright pity. Not that Jim isn't a good chap and all that, but he's an honest, hard-working farmer and nothing more— and, good heavens! just look at Lila! Why, she's beautiful enough to set the world afire."
Smiling broadly, Tucker tossed a scrap of cornbread into Spy's open jaws; then his gaze travelled leisurely to the hen-house, which Lila had just unlocked. As she pushed back the door there was a wild flutter of wings, and the big fowls flew in a swarm about her feet, one great red-and-black rooster craning his long neck after the basin she held beneath her arm. While she scattered the soft dough on the ground she bent her head slightly sideways, looking up at Jim, who stood regarding her with enraptured eyes.
"Well, I don't know that much good ever comes of setting anything afire," answered Tucker with his amiable chuckle; "the danger is that you're apt to cause a good deal of trouble somewhere, and it's more than likely you'll get singed yourself in putting out the flame. You needn't worry about Lila, Christopher; she's the kind of woman—and they're rare—who doesn't have to have her happiness made to order; give her any fair amount of the raw material and she'll soon manage to fit it perfectly to herself. The stuff is in her, I tell you; the atmosphere is about her- -can't you feel it—and she's going to be happy, whatever comes. A woman who can make over a dress the sixth time as cheerfully as she did the first has the spirit of a Caesar, and doesn't need your lamentations. If you want to be a Jeremiah, you must go elsewhere."
"Oh, I dare say she'll grow content, but it does seem such a terrible waste. She's the image of that Saint-Memin portrait of Aunt Susannah, and if she'd only been born a couple of generations ago she would probably have been the belle of two continents. Such women must be scarce anywhere."
"She's pretty enough, certainly, and I think Jim knows it. There's but one thing I've ever seen that could compare with her for colour, and that's a damask rose that blooms in May on an old bush in the front yard. When all is said, however, that young Weatherby is no clodhopper, you know, and I'm not sure that he isn't worthier of her than any highsounding somebody across the water would have been. He can love twice as hard, I'll wager, and that's the chief thing, after all; it's worth more than big titles or fine clothes—or even than dead grandfathers, with due respect to Cynthia. I tell you, Lila may never stir from the midst of these tobacco fields; she may be buried alive all her days between these muddy roads that lead heaven knows where, and yet she may live a lot bigger and fuller life than she might have done with all London at her feet, as they say it was at your Greataunt Susannah's. The person who has to have outside props to keep him straight must have been made mighty crooked at the start, and Lila's not like that."
Christopher stooped and pulled Spy's ears.
"That's as good a way to look at it as any other, I reckon," he remarked; "and now I've got to hurry the shoeing of the mare."
He crossed over and joined Lila and Jim before the henhouse door, where he put the big fowls to noisy flight.
"Well, you're a trusty neighbour, " he cried good-humoredly, striking Jim a friendly blow that sent him reeling out into the path.
Lila passed her hand in a sweeping movement round the inside of the basin and flirted the last drops of dough from her finger-tips.
"A few of your pats will cripple Jim for a week," she observed, "so you'd better be careful; he's too useful a friend to lose while there are any jobs to do."
"Why, if I had that muscle I could run a farm with one hand," said Jim. "Give a plough a single push, Christopher, and I believe it would run as long as there was level ground."
Cynthia, standing at the kitchen window with a cuptowel slung across her arm, watched the three chatting merrily in the sunshine, and the look of rigid resentment settled like a mask upon her face. She was still gazing out upon them when Docia opened the door behind her and informed her in a whisper that "Ole miss wanted her moughty quick."
"All right, Docia. Is anything the matter?"
"Naw'm, 'tain' nuttin' 'tall de matter. She's des got fidgetty."
"Well, I'll come in a minute. Are you better to-day? How's your heart?"
"Lawd, Miss Cynthia, hit's des bruised all over. Ev'y breaf I draw hits it plum like a hammer. I hyear hit thump, thump, thump all de blessed time."
"Be careful, then. Tell mother I'm coming at once."
She hung the cup-towel on the rack, and, taking off her blue checked apron, went along the little platform to the main part of the house and into the old lady's parlour, where the morning sunshine fell across the faces of generations of dead Blakes. The room was still furnished with the old rosewood furniture, and the old damask curtains hung before the single window, which gave on the overgrown front yard and the twisted aspen. Though the rest of the house suggested only the direst poverty, the immediate surroundings of Mrs. Blake revealed everywhere the lavish ease so characteristic of the old order which had passed away. The carving on the desk, on the book-cases, on the slender sofa, was all wrought by tedious handwork; the delicate damask coverings to the chairs were still lustrous after almost half a century; and the few vases scattered here and there and filled with autumn flowers were, for the most part, rare pieces of old royal Worcester. While it was yet Indian summer, there was no need of fires, and the big fireplace was filled with goldenrod, which shed a yellow dust down on the rude brick hearth.
The old lady, inspired by her indomitable energy, was already dressed for the day in her black brocade, and sat bolt upright among the pillows in her great oak chair.
"Some one passed the window whistling, Cynthia. Who was it? The whistle had a pleasant, cheery sound."
"It must have been Jim Weatherby, I think: old Jacob's son."
"Is he over here?"
"To see Christopher—yes."
"Well, be sure to remind the servants to give him something to eat in the kitchen before he goes back, and I think, if he's a decent young man, I should like to have a little talk with him about his family. His father used to be one of our most respectable labourers."
"It would tire you, I fear, mother. Shall I give you your knitting now?"
"You have a most peculiar idea about me, my child. I have not yet reached my dotage, and I don't think that a little talk with young Weatherby could possibly be much of an ordeal. Is he an improper person?"
"No, no, of course not; you shall see him whenever you like. I was only thinking of you."
"Well, I'm sure I am very grateful for your consideration, my dear, but there are times, occasionally, you know, when it is better for one to judge for oneself. I sometimes think that your only fault, Cynthia, is that you are a little—just a very little bit, you understand—inclined to manage things too much. Your poor father used to say that a domineering woman was like a kicking cow; but this doesn't apply to you, of course."
"Shall I call Jim now, mother?"
"You might as well, dear. Place a chair for him, a good stout one, and be sure to make him wipe his feet before he comes in. Does he appear to be clean?"
"Oh, perfectly."
"I remember his father always was—unusually so for a common labourer. Those people sometimes smell of cattle, you know; and besides, my nose has grown extremely sensitive in the years since I lost my eyesight. Perhaps it would be as well to hand me the bottle of camphor. I can pretend I have a headache."
"There's no need, really; he isn't a labourer at all, you know, and he looks quite a gentleman. He is, I believe, considered a very handsome young man."
Mrs. Blake waved toward the door and the piece of purple glass flashed in the sunlight. "In that case, I might offer him some sensible advice," she said. "The Weatherbys, I remember, always showed a very proper respect for gentle people. I distinctly recall how well Jacob behaved when on one occasion Micajah Blair—a dreadful, dissolute character, though of a very old family and an intimate friend of your father's—took decidedly too much egg-nog one Christmas when he was visiting us, and insisted upon biting Jacob's cheek because it looked so like a winesap. Jacob had come to see your father on business, and I will say that he displayed a great deal of good sense and dignity; he said afterward that he didn't mind the bite on his cheek at all, but that it pained him terribly to see a Virginia gentleman who couldn't balance a bowl of egg-nog. Well, well, Micajah was certainly a rake, I fear; and for that matter, so was his father before him."
"Father had queer friends," observed Cynthia sadly. "I remember his telling me when I was a little girl that he preferred that family to any in the county."
"Oh, the family was all right, my dear. I never heard a breath against the women. Now you may fetch Jacob. Is that his name?"
"No; Jim."
"Dear me; that's very odd. He certainly should have been called after his father. I wonder how they could have been so thoughtless."
Cynthia drew forward an armchair, stooped and carefully arranged the ottoman, and then went with stern determination to look for Jim Weatherby.
He was sitting in the stable doorway, fitting a shoe on the old mare, while Lila leaned against an overturned barrel in the sunshine outside. At Cynthia's sudden appearance they both started and looked up in amazement, the words dying slowly on their lips.
"Why, whatever is the matter, Cynthia?" cried Lila, as if in terror.
Cynthia came forward until she stood directly at the mare's head, where she delivered her message with a gasp:
"Mother insists upon talking to Jim. There's no help for it; he must come."
Weatherby dropped the mare's hoof and raised a breathless question to Cynthia's face, while Lila asked quickly:
"Does she know?"
"Know what?" demanded Cynthia, turning grimly upon her. "Of course she knows that Jim is his father's son."
The young man rose and laid the hammer down on the overturned barrel; then he led the mare back to her stall, and coming out again, washed his hands in a tub of water by the door.
"Well, I'm ready," he observed quietly. "Shall I go in alone?"
"Oh, we don't ask that of you," said Lila, laughing. "Come; I'll take you." She slipped her hand under his arm and they went gaily toward the house, leaving Cynthia to pick up the horseshoe nails lying loose upon the ground.
Hearing the young man's step on the threshold, Mrs. Blake turned her head with a smile of pleasant condescension and stretched out her delicate yellowed hand.
"This is Jim Weatherby, mother," said Lila in her softest voice."Cynthia says you want to talk to him."
"I know, my child; I know," returned Mrs. Blake, with an animated gesture. "Come in, Jim, and don't trouble to stand. Find him a chair, Lila. I knew your father long before you were born," she added, turning to the young man, "and I knew only good of him. I suppose he has often told you of the years he worked for us?"
Jim held her hand for an instant in his own, and then, bending over, raised it to his lips.
"My father never tires of telling us about the old times, and about Mr. Blake and yourself," he answered in his precise English, and with the simple dignity which he never lost. Lila, watching him, prayed silently that a miracle might open the old lady's eyes and allow her to see the kind, manly look upon his face.
Mrs. Blake nodded pleasantly, with evident desire to put him wholly at his ease.
"Well, his son is becoming quite courtly," she responded, smiling, "and I know Jacob is proud of you—or he ought to be, which amounts to the same thing. There's nothing I like better than to see a good, hard-working family prosper in life and raise its station. Not that I mean to put ideas into your head, of course, for it is a ridiculous sight to see a person dissatisfied with the position in which the good Lord has placed him. That was what I always liked about your mother, and I remember very well her refusing to wear some of my old finery when she was married, on the ground that she was a plain, honest woman, and wanted to continue so when she was a wife. I hope, by the way, that she is well."
"Oh, quite. She does not walk much, though; her joints have been troubling her."
To Lila's surprise, he was not the least embarrassed by the personal tone of the conversation, and his sparkling blue eyes held their usual expression of blithe good-humour.
"Indeed!" Mrs. Blake pricked at the subject in her sprightly way. "Well, you must persuade her to use a liniment of Jamestown weed steeped in whisky. There is positively nothing like it for rheumatism. Lila, do we still make it for the servants? If so, you might send Sarah Weatherby a bottle."
"I'll see about it, mother. Aren't you tired? Shall I take Jim away?"
"Not just yet, child. I am interested in seeing what a promising young man he has become. How old are you, Jim?"
"Twenty-nine next February. There are two of us, you know—I've a sister Molly. She married Frank Granger and moved ten miles away."
"Ah, that brings me to the very point I was driving at. Above all things, let me caution you most earnestly against the reckless marriages so common in your station of life. For heaven's sake, don't marry a woman because she has a pretty face and you cherish an impracticable sentiment for her. If you take my advice, you will found your marriage upon mutual respect and industry. Select a wife who is not afraid of work, and who expects no folderol of romance. Love-making, I've always maintained, should be the pastime of the leisure class exclusively."
"I'm not afraid of work myself," replied Jim, laughing as he looked boldly into the old lady's sightless eyes, "but I'd never stand it for my wife—not a—a lick of it!"
"Tut, tut! Your mother does it."
Jim nodded. "But I'm not my father," he mildly suggested.
"Well, you're a fine, headstrong young fool, and I like you all the better for it," declared Mrs. Blake. "You may go now, because I feel as if I needed a doze; but be sure to come in and see me the next time you're over here. Lila, put the cat on my knees and straighten my pillows."
Lila lifted the cat from the rug and placed it in the old lady's lap; then, as she arranged the soft white pillows, she bent over suddenly and kissed the piece of purple glass on the fragile hand.
Following his impulsive blow in defense of Will Fletcher, Christopher experienced, almost with his next breath, a reaction in his feeling for the boy; and meeting him two days later at the door of the tobacco barn, he fell at once into a tone of contemptuous raillery.
"So you let Fred smash you up, eh?" he observed, with a sneer.
Will flushed.
"Oh, you needn't talk like that," he answered; "he's the biggest man about here except you. By the way, you're a bully friend to a fellow, you know, and it's not a particle of use pretending you don't like me, because you can't help hitting back jolly quick when anybody undertakes to give me a licking."
"Why were you such a fool as to go at him?" inquired Christopher, glancing up at his evenly hanging rows of tobacco, and then coming outside to lock the door. "You'll never get a reputation as a fighter if you are always jumping on men over your own size. Now, next time I should advise you to try your spirit on Sol Peterkin."
"Oh, it was all about Molly," explained Will frankly. "I told Fred that he was a big blackguard to use the girl so, and then he called me a 'white-livered liar.'"
"I heard him," remarked Christopher quietly.
"Well, I don't care what he says—he is a blackguard. I'm glad you knocked him down, too; it was no more than he deserved."
"I didn't do it on Molly Peterkin's account, you know. Tobacco takes up quite enough of my time without my entering the lists as a champion of light women. But if you aren't man enough to fight your own battles, I suppose I'll have to keep my muscle in proper shape."
Will smarted from the words, and the corners of his mouth took a dogged droop.
"I don't see how you expect me to be a match for Fred Turner," he returned angrily.
"Why, I don't expect it," replied Christopher coolly, as he turned the key in the padlock, drew it out, and slipped it into his pocket. "I expect you merely to keep away from him, that's all."
Will stared at him in perplexity. "What a devil of a humour you are in!" he exclaimed.
"Am I?" Christopher broke into a laugh. "You are accustomed to the sunny temper of your grandfather. How is he to-day? In his usual cheerful vein?"
"Oh, he's awful," answered the boy, relieved at the change of subject. "If you could only have heard him yesterday! Somebody told him about the fight at the store, and, as luck would have it, he found out that Molly Peterkin was at the bottom of it all. When he called me into his room and locked the door I knew something was up; and sure enough, we had blood and thunder for two mortal hours. He threatened to sell the horses and the hounds, and to put me at the plough, if I ever so much as looked at the girl again—'gal,' he called her, and a 'brazen wench.' That is the way he talks, you know."
"I know," Christopher nodded gravely.
"But the funny part is, that the thing that made him hottest was your knocking over Fred Turner. That he simply couldn't stand. Why, he'd have paid Fred fifty dollars down to thrash me black and blue, he said. He called you—Oh, he has a great store of pet names!"
"What?" asked Christopher, for the other caught himself up suddenly.
"Nothing much—he's always doing it, you know."
"You needn't trouble yourself on my account. I'm familiar with his use of words."
"Oh, he called you 'a crazy pauper who ought to be in gaol.'"
"He did, did he? Well, for once in his life he drew it mild." Then he gave a long whistle and kicked away a rock in the path. " "'A crazy pauper who ought to be in gaol.' I've a pretty good-sized debt to settle with your grandfather, when I come to think of it."
"Just suppose you were in my place now," insisted Will. "Then I reckon you'd have cause forswearing, sure enough. I tell you I couldn't get out of that room yesterday until I promised him I'd turn over a new leaf—that I'd start in with Mr. Morrison to-morrow, and dig away at Latin and Greek until I go to the university next fall."
Christopher turned quickly.
"To-morrow?" he repeated. "Why, that's the day I had planned we'd go hunting. Make Morrison's Friday."
The boy wavered.
"Can't we go another day?" he asked. "He's so awfully set on to-morrow. I'd have to be mighty sharp to fool him again."
"Oh, well, but it's the only day I've free. There's a lot of fall ploughing to do; then the apples are ready to be gathered; and I must take some corn to the mill before the week's up. I've wasted too much time with you as it is. It's the only wealth I have, you see."
"Then I'll go—I'll go," declared Will, jumping to a decision. "There'll be a terrific fuss if he finds it out, but perhaps he won't. I'll bring my gun over to the barn to-night, and get Zebbadee to meet us with the hounds at the bend in the road. Well, I must get back now. I don't want him to suspect I've seen you to-day."
He started off at a rapid pace, and Christopher, turning in the other direction, went to bring the horses from the distant pasture. It was a mellow afternoon, and a golden haze wrapped the broad meadow, filled with autumn wild flowers, and the little bricked-up graveyard on the low, green hill. As he swung himself over the bars at the end of the path he saw Lila and Jim Weatherby gathering goldenrod in the center of the field. When they caught sight of him, Jim laid his handful of blossoms in a big basket on the ground and came to join him on his way to the pasture.
"They are for Mrs. Blake's fireplace," he remarked with a friendly smile, as he glanced back at Lila standing knee-deep amid the October flowers.
"It's a queer idea," observed Christopher, finding himself at a loss for a reply.
Jim strolled on leisurely, snatching at the heads of wild carrot as he passed.
"There's something I've wanted to tell you, Christopher," he said after a moment, turning his pleasant, manly face upon the other.
"Is that so?" asked Christopher, with a sudden desire to avert the impending responsibility. "Oh, but I hardly think I'm the proper person, " he added, laughing.
Jim met his eyes squarely.
"I'm a plain man," he said slowly, "and though I'm not ashamed of it, I know, of course, that my family have always been plain people. As things are, I had no business on earth to fall in love with your sister, but all the same it's what I've gone and done."
Christopher nodded and walked on.
"Well, I suppose it's what I should have done, too, in your place," he returned quietly.
"I've reproached myself for it often enough," pursued Jim; "but when all is said, how can a man prevent a thing like that? I might as well try to shut my eyes to the sun when it is shining straight on me. Why, everybody else seems dull and lifeless when I look at her—and I seem such a brute myself that I hardly dare touch her hand. All I ask is to be her servant until I die."
It took courage to speak such words, and Christopher, knowing it, stopped midway of the little path and regarded Jim with the rare smile which gave a boyish brightness to his face.
"By George, you are a trump!" he said heartily. "And as far as that goes, you're good enough for Lila or for anybody else. It isn't that, you see; it's only—"
"I know," finished Jim quietly and without resentment; "it's my grandfather. Your sister, Cynthia, told me, and I reckon it's all natural, but somehow I can't make myself ashamed of the old man— nor is Lila, for that matter. He was an honest, upright body as ever you saw, and he never did a mean thing in his life, though he lived to be almost ninety."
"You're right," said Christopher, flushing suddenly; "and as far as I'm concerned, I'd let Lila marry you to-morrow; but as for mother, she would simply never consent. The idea would be impossible to her, and we could never explain things; you must see that yourself."
"I see," replied Jim readily; "but the main point is that you yourself would have no objection to our marriage, provided it were possible."
"Not a bit; not a bit."
He held out his hand, and Jim shook it warmly before he picked up his basket and went to rejoin Lila.
Turning in the path, Christopher saw the girl, who was sitting alone on the lowered bars, rise and wave a spray of goldenrod above her head. Then, as the lovers met, she laid her hand upon Jim's arm and lifted her glowing face as if to read his words before he uttered them. Something in the happy surrender of her gesture, or in the brooding mystery of the Indian summer, when one seemed to hear the earth turn in the stillness, touched Christopher with a sudden melancholy, and it appeared to him when he went on again that a shadow had fallen over the brightness of the autumn fields. Disturbed by the unrest which follows any illuminating vision of ideal beauty, he asked himself almost angrily, in an effort to divert his thoughts, if it were possible that he was weakening in his purpose, since he no longer found the old zest in his hatred of Fletcher. The deadness of his emotions had then affected this one also—the single feeling which he had told himself would be eternal; and the old nervous thrill, so like the thrill of violent love, no longer troubled him when he chanced to meet his enemy face to face. To-day he held Will Fletcher absolutely in his hand, he knew; in a few year's at most his debt to Fletcher would probably be cancelled; the man and the boy would then be held together by blood ties like two snarling hounds in the leash—and yet, when all was said, what would the final outcome yield of satisfaction? As he put the question he knew that he could meet it only by evasion, and his inherited apathy enfeebled him even while he demanded an answer of himself.
As the months went on, his indifference to success or failure pervaded him like a physical lethargy, and he played his game so recklessly at last that he sometimes caught himself wondering if it were, after all, worth a single flicker of the candle. He still saw Will Fletcher daily; but when the spring came he ceased consciously, rather from weariness than from any nobler sentiment, to exert an influence which he felt to be harmful to the boy. For four years he had wrought tirelessly to compass the ruin of Fletcher's ambition; and now, when he had but to stretch forth his arm for the final blow, he admitted impatiently that what he lacked was the impulsive energy the deed required.
He was still in this mood when, one afternoon in April, as he was driving his oxen to the store, he met Fletcher in the road behind the pair of bays. At sight of him the old man's temper slipped control, and at the end of a few minutes they were quarrelling as to who should be the one to turn aside.
"Git out of the road, will you?" cried Fletcher, half rising from his seat and jerking at the reins until the horses reared. "Drive your brutes into the bushes and let me pass!"
"If you think I'm going to swerve an inch out of my road to oblige you, Bill Fletcher, you are almost as big a fool as you are a rascal," replied Christopher in a cool voice, as he brought his team to a halt and placed himself at the head of it with his long rawhide whip in his hand.
As he stood there he had the appearance of taking his time as lightly as did the Olympian deities; and it was clear that he would wait patiently until the sun set and rose again rather than yield one jot or tittle of his right upon the muddy road. While he gazed placidly over Fletcher's head into the golden distance, he removed his big straw hat and began fanning his heated face.
There followed a noisy upbraiding from Fletcher, which ended by his driving madly into the underbrush and almost overturning the heavy carriage. As he passed, he leaned from his seat and slashed his whip furiously into Christopher's face; then he drove on at a wild pace, bringing the horses in a shiver, and flecked with foam, into the gravelled drive before the Hall.
The bright flower-beds and the calm white pillars were all in sunshine, and Miss Saidie, with a little, green wateringpot in her hand, was sprinkling a tub of crocuses beside the steps.
"You look flustered, Brother Bill," she observed, as Fletcher threw the reins to a Negro servant and came up to where she stood.
"Oh, I've just had some words with that darned Blake," returned Fletcher, chewing the end of his mustache, as he did when he was in a rage. "I met him as I drove up the road and he had the impudence to keep his ox-cart standing plumb still while I tore through the briers. It's the third time this thing has happened, and I'll be even with him for it yet."
"I'm sure he must be a very rude person," remarked Miss Saidie, pinching off a withered blossom and putting it in her pocket to keep from throwing it on the trim grass. "For my part, I've never been able to see what satisfaction people git out of being ill-mannered. It takes twice as long as it does to be polite, and it's not nearly so good for the digestion afterward."
Fletcher listened to her with a scowl. "Well, if you ever get anything but curses from Christopher Blake, I'd like to hear of it," he said, with a coarse laugh.
Why, he was really quite civil to me the other day when I passed him," replied Miss Saidie, facing Fletcher with her hand resting on the belt of her apron. "I was in the phaeton, and he got down off his wagon and picked up my whip. I declare, it almost took my breath away, but when I thanked him he raised his hat and spoke very pleasantly."
"Oh, you and your everlasting excuses!" sneered Fletcher, going up the steps and turning on the porch to look down upon her. "I tell you I've had as many of 'em as I'm going to stand. This is my house, and what I say in it has got to be the last word. If you squirt any more of that blamed water around here the place will rot to pieces under our very feet."
Miss Saidie placed her watering-pot on the step and lifted to him the look of amiable wonder which he found more irritating than a sharp retort.
"I forgot to tell you that Susan Spade has been waiting to speak to you," she remarked, as if their previous conversation had been of the friendliest nature.
"Oh, drat her! What does she want?"
"She wouldn't tell me—it was for you alone, she said. That was a good half-hour ago, and she's been waiting in your setting-room ever sence. She's such a sharp-tongued woman I wonder how Tom manages to put up with her."
"Well, if he does, I won't," growled Fletcher, as he went in to meet his visitor.
Mrs. Spade, wearing a severe manner and a freshly starched purple calico, was sitting straight and stiff on the edge of the cretonne-covered lounge, and as he entered she rose to receive him with a visible unbending of her person. She was a lank woman, with a long, scrawny figure which appeared to have run entirely to muscle, and very full skirts that always sagged below the belt-line in the back. Her face was like that of a man— large-featured, impressive, and not without a ruddy masculine comeliness.
"It's my duty that's brought me, Mr. Fletcher," she began, as they shook hands. "You kin see very well yo'self that it's not a pleasure, as far as that goes, for if it had been I never should have come-not if I yearned and pined till I was sore. I never saw a pleasure in my life that didn't lead astray, an' I've got the eye of suspicion on the most harmless-lookin' one that goes. As I tell Tom—though he won't believe it—the only way to be sartain you're followin' yo' duty in this world is to find out the thing you hate most to do an' then do it with all yo' might. That rule has taken me through life, suh: it married me to Tom Spade, an' it's brought me here to-day. 'Don't you go up thar blabbin' on Will Fletcher,' said Tom, when I was tyin' on my bonnet. 'You needn't say one word mo' about it,' was my reply. 'I know the Lord's way, an' I know mine. I've wrastled with this in pra'r, an' I tell you when the Lord turns anybody's stomach so dead agin a piece of business, it means most likely that it's the very thing they've got to swallow down."
"Oh, Will!" gasped Fletcher, dropping suddenly into his armchair. "Please come to the point at once, ma'am, and let me hear what the rascal has done last."
"I'm comin', suh; I'm comin'," Mrs. Spade hastened to assure him. "Yes, Tom an' I hev talked it all down to the very bone, but I wouldn't trust a man's judgment on morals any mo' than I would on matchin' calico. Right an' wrong don't look the same to 'em by lamplight as they do by day, an' if thar conscience ain't set plum' in the pupils of thar eyes, I don't know whar 'tis, that's sho'. But, thank heaven, I ain't one of those that's always findin' an excuse for people—not even if the backslider be my own husband. Thar's got to be some few folks on the side of decency, an' I'm one of 'em. Virtue's a slippery thing—that's how I look at it—an' if you don't git a good grip on it an' watch it with a mighty stern eye it's precious apt to wriggle through yo' fingers. I'm an honest woman, Mr. Fletcher, an' I wouldn't blush to own it in the presence of the King of England
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Fletcher, with a brutal laugh; "do you mean to tell me the precious young fool has fallen in love with you?"
"Me, suh? If he had, a broomstick an' a spar' rib or so would have been all you'd ever found of him agin. I've never yit laid eyes on the man I couldn't settle with a single sweep, an' when a lone woman comes to wantin' a protector, I've never seen the husband that could hold a candle to a good stout broom. That's what I said to Jinnie when she got herself engaged to Fred Boxley. 'Married or single,' I said, 'gal, wife, or widow, a broom is yo' best friend.'"
Fletcher twisted impatiently in his chair.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, stop your drivelling," he blurted out at last, "and tell me in plain language what the boy has done."
"Oh, I don't know what he's done or what he hasn't," rejoined Mrs. Spade, "but I've watched him courtin' Molly Peterkin till I told Tom this thing had to stop or I would stop it. If thar's a p'isonous snake or lizard in this country, suh, it's that tow-headed huzzy of Sol Peterkin's; an' if thar's a sex on this earth that I ain't go no patience with, it's the woman sex. A man may slip an' slide a little because he was made that way, but when it comes to a woman she's got to w'ar whalebones in her clothes when I'm aroun'. Lord! Lord! What's the use of bein' honest if you can't p'int yo' finger at them that ain't? Virtue gits mighty little in the way of gewgaws in this world, an' I reckon it's got to make things up in the way it feels when it looks at them that's gone astray—"
"Molly Peterkin!" gasped Fletcher, striking the arm of his chair a blow that almost shattered it. "Christopher Blake was bad enough, and now it's Molly Peterkin! Out of the frying-pan right spang into the fire. Oh, you did me a good turn in coming, Mrs. Spade. I'll forgive you the news you brought, and I'll even forgive you your blasted chatter. How long has this thing been going on, do you know?"
"That I don't, suh, that I don't; though I've been pryin' an' peekin' mighty close. All I know is, that every blessed evenin' for the last two weeks I've seen 'em walkin' together in the lane that leads to Sol's. This here ain't goin' to keep up one day mo'; that's what I put my foot down on yestiddy. I'd stop it if I didn't have nothin' agin that gal but the colour of her hair. I don' know how 'tis, suh, but I've always had the feelin' that thar's somethin' indecent about yaller hair, an' if I'd been born with it I'd have stuck my head into a bowl of pitch befo' I'd have gone flauntin' those corn-tassels in the eyes of every man I met. Thar's nothin' in the looks of me that's goin' to make a man regret he's got a wife if I can help it; an' mark my word, Mr. Fletcher, if they had dyed Molly Peterkin's hair black she might have been a self-respectin' woman an' a hater of men this very day. A light character an' a light head go precious well together, an' when you set one a good sober colour the other's pretty apt to follow."
Fletcher rose from his chair and stood gripping the table hard.
"Have you any reason to think—does it look likely—that youngBlake has had a hand in this?" he asked.
"Who? Mr. Christopher? Why, I don't believe he could tell a petticoat from a pair of breeches to save his soul. He ain't got no fancy for corn-tassels and blue ribbons, I kin tell you that. It's good honest women that are the mothers of families that he takes to, an' even then it ain't no mo' than 'How are you, Mrs. Spade? A fine mornin'!'"
"Well, thar's one thing you may be sartain of," returned Fletcher, breaking in upon her, "and that is that this whole business is as good as settled. I leave here with the boy to-morrow morning at sunrise, and he doesn't set foot agin in this county until he's gone straight through the university. I'll drag him clean across the broad ocean before he shall do it."
Then, as Mrs. Spade took a noisy departure, he stood, without listening to her, gazing morosely down upon the pattern of the carpet.
Early in the following November, Jim Weatherby, returning from the cross-roads one rainy afternoon, brought Christopher a long, wailing letter from Will.
"Oh, I've had to walk a chalk-line, sure enough," he wrote, "since that awful day we left home in a pouring rain, with grandpa wearing a whole thunderstorm on his forehead. It has been cram, cram, cram ever since, I can tell you, and here I am now, just started at the university, with my head still buzzing with the noise of those confounded ancients. If grandpa hadn't gone when he did, I declare I believe he would have ended by driving me clean crazy. Since he left I've had time to take a look about me, and I find there's a good deal of fun to be got here, after all. How I'll manage to mix it in with Greek I don't see, but luck's with me, you know—I've found that out—so I shan't bother.
"By the way, I wish you would make Molly Peterkin understand how it was I came away so hastily. Tell her I haven't forgotten her, and give her the little turquoise pin I'm sending. It just matches her eyes. Be sure to let me know if she's as pretty as ever."
By the next mail the turquoise brooch arrived, and Christopher, putting it in his pocket, went over to Sol Peterkin's to bear the message to the girl. As it happened, she was swinging on the little sagging gate when he came up the lane, and at sight of him her eyebrows shot up under her flaxen curls, which hung low upon her forehead. She was a pretty, soulless little animal, coloured like peach-blossoms, and with a great deal of that soft insipidity which is usually found in a boy's ideal of maiden innocence.
"Why, I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw you," she said, arranging her curls over her left shoulder with a conscious simper.
The old Blake gallantry rose to meet her challenging eyes, and he regarded her smilingly a moment before he answered.
"Well, I could hardly believe mine, you know," he responded carelessly. "I thought for an instant that a big butterfly had alighted on the gate."
She pouted prettily.
"Won't you come in?" she asked after a moment, with an embarrassed air, as she remembered that he was one of the "real Blakes" for whom her father used to work.
A light retort was on his lips, but while he looked at her a little weary frown darkened her shallow eyes, and with the peculiar sympathy for all those oppressed by man or nature which was but one expression of his many-sided temperament he quickly changed the tone of his reply. At the instant it seemed to him that Molly Peterkin and himself stood together defrauded of their rightful heritage of life; and as his thought broadened he felt suddenly the pathos of her forlorn little figure, of her foolish blue eyes, of her trivial vanities, of her girlish beauty, soiled and worn by common handling. A look very like compassion was in his face, and the girl, seeing it, reddened angrily and kicked at a loose pebble in the path. When he went away a moment later he left a careless message for Sol about the tobacco crop, and the little white box containing the turquoise brooch was still in his pocket.
That afternoon the trinket went back to Will with a curt letter. "If you take my advice, you'll leave Molly Peterkin alone," he wrote in his big, unformed hand, "for as far as I can see you are too good a match to get on well together. She's a fool, you know, and from the way you're going on just now it looks very much as if you were one also. At any rate, I'm not your man for gallantries. I'd rather hunt hares than women, any day—and game's plentiful just now."
It was a long winter that year, and for the first time since her terrible illness Mrs. Blake was forced to keep her bed during a bitter spell of weather, when the raw winds whistled around the little frame house, entering the cracks at the doors and the loosened sashes of the windows. Cynthia grew drawn and pinched with a sickly, frost-bitten look, and even Lila's rare bloom drooped for a while like that of a delicate plant starving for the sunshine. Christopher, who, as usual, was belated in his winter's work, was kept busy hauling and chopping wood, shovelling the snow away from the porch and the paths that led to the well, the stable, and the barn. Once a day, most often after breakfast, Jim Weatherby appeared, smiling gaily beneath his powdering of snow; and sometimes, in defiance of Cynthia, he would take Lila for a sleigh-ride, from which she would return blossoming like a rose.
Mrs. Blake, from her tester bed, complained bitterly of the cold, and drew from the increasing severity of the winters, which she declared became more unbearable each year, warrant for her belief in the gradual "decline of the world as a dwelling-place."
"You may say what you please, Tucker," she remarked one morning when she had awakened with an appetite to find that her eggs had frozen in the kitchen, "but you can hardly be so barefaced as to compliment this weather. I'm sure I never felt anything like it when I was young."
"Well, at least I have a roof over my head now, and I didn't when I marched to Romney with old Stonewall," remarked Tucker from the hearth, where he was roasting an apple before the big logs. "Many's the morning I waked then with the snow frozen stiff all over me, and I had to crack through it before I could get up."
The old lady made a peevish gesture.
"It may sound ungrateful," she returned, "but I'm sometimes tempted to wish that you had never marched to Romney, or that General Jackson had been considerate enough to choose a milder spell. I really believe when you come to die you will console yourself with the recollection of something worse that happened in the war."
Tucker laughed softly to himself as he watched the apple revolving in the red heat on its bit of string. "Well, I'm not sure that I shan't, Lucy," he said.
"Habit's mighty strong, you know, and when you come to think of it there's some comfort in knowing that you'll never have to face the worst again. A man doesn't duck his head at the future when he's learned that, let be what will; it can't be so bad as the thing he's gone through with and yet come out on top. It gives him a pretty good feeling, after all, to know that he hasn't funked the hardest knock that life could give. Well, my birds are hungry, I reckon, and I'll hobble out and feed 'em while this apple is roasting to the core."
Raising himself with difficulty, he got upon his crutches and went to scatter his crumbs from the kitchen window.
By the first of March the thaw came, and the snow melted in a day beneath the lavish spring sunshine. It was a week later that Christopher, coming from the woods at midday, saw Tucker sitting on his old bench by the damask rose-bush, in which the sap was just beginning to swell. The sun shone full on the dead grass, and the old soldier, with his chin resting in the crook of his crutch, was gazing straight down upon the earth. The expression of his large, kindly face was so radiant with enjoyment that Christopher quickened his steps and slapped him affectionately upon the shoulder.
"Is Fletcher dead, Uncle Tucker?" he inquired, laughing.
"No, no; nobody's dead that I've heard of," responded Tucker in his cheerful voice; "but something better than Bill Fletcher's death has happened, I can tell you. Why, I'd been sitting out here an hour or more, longing for the spring to come, when suddenly I looked down and there was the first dandelion—a regular miracle—blooming in the mould about that old rose-bush."