"Well, I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Christopher, aghast. "Mark my words, you'll be in an asylum yet."
The other chuckled softly.
"When you put me there you'll shut up the only wise man in the county," he returned. "If your sanity doesn't make you happy, I can tell you it's worth a great deal less than my craziness. Look at that dandelion, now—it has filled two hours chock full of thought and colour for me when I might have been puling indoors and nagging at God Almighty about trifles. The time has been when I'd have walked right over that little flower and not seen it, and now it grows yellower each minute that I look at it, and each minute I see it better than I did the one before. There's nothing in life, when you come to think of it—not Columbus setting out to sea nor Napoleon starting on a march—more wonderful than that brave little blossom putting up the first of all through the earth."
"I can't see anything in a dandelion but a nuisance," observed Christopher, sitting down on the bench and baring his head to the sunshine; "but you do manage to get interest out of life, that's certain."
"Interest! Good Lord!" exclaimed Tucker. "If a man can't find something to interest him in a world like this, he must be a dull fellow or else have a serious trouble of the liver. So long as I have my eyes, and there's a different sky over my head each day, and earth, and trees, and flowers all around me, I don't reckon I'll begin to whistle to boredom. If I were like Lucy, now, I sometimes think things would be up with me, and yet Lucy is one of the very happiest women I've ever known. Her brain is so filled with pleasant memories that it's never empty for an instant."
Christopher's face softened, as it always did at an allusion to his mother's blindness.
"You're right," he said; "she is happy."
"To be sure, she's had her life," pursued Tucker, without noticing him. "She's been a beauty, a belle, a sweetheart, a wife, and a mother—to say nothing of a very spoiled old woman; but all the same, I don't think I have her magnificent patience. Oh, I couldn't sit in the midst of all this and not have eyes to see."
With a careless smile Christopher glanced about him—at the bright blue sky seen through the bare trees, at the dried carrot flowers in the old field across the road, at the great pine growing on the little knoll.
"I hardly think she misses much," he said, and added after a moment, "Do you know I'd give twenty—no forty, fifty years of this for a single year of the big noisy world over there. I'm dog-tired of stagnation."
"Well, it's natural," admitted Tucker gently. "At your age I doubtless felt the same. The young want action, and they ought to have it, because it makes the quiet of middle age seem all the sweeter. You've missed your duels and your flirtations and your pomades, and you've been put into breeches and into philosophy at the same time. Why, one might as well stick a brier pipe in the mouth of a boy who is crying for his first gun and tell him to go sit in the chimney-corner and be happy. When I was twenty-five I travelled all the way to New York for the latest Parisian waistcoat, but I can't remember that I ever strolled round the corner to see a peach-tree in full bloom. I'm a lot happier now, heaven knows, in my homespun coat, than I was then in that waistcoat of satin brocade, so I sometimes catch myself wishing that I could see again the people I knew then—the men I quarrelled with and the women I kissed. I'd like to apologise for the young fool of thirty years ago."
Christopher stirred restlessly, and, clasping his hands behind his head, stared at a small white cloud drifting slowly above the great pine.
"Well, it's the fool part I envy you, all the same," he remarked.
"You're welcome to it, my boy," answered Tucker; then he paused abruptly and bent his ear. "Ah, there's the bluebird! Do you hear him whistling in the meadow? God bless him; he's a hearty fellow and has spring in his throat."
"I passed one coming up," said Christopher.
"The same, I reckon. He'll be paying me a visit soon, and I've got my crumbs ready." He smiled brightly and then sat with his chin on his crutch, looking steadily across the road. "You haven't had your chance, my boy," he resumed presently; "and a man ought to have several chances to look round him in this world, for otherwise the things he misses will always seem to him the only things worth having. I'm not much of a fellow to preach, you'll say—a hundred and eighty pounds of flesh that can't dress itself nor hobble about without crutches that are strapped on- -but if it's the last word I speak I wouldn't change a day in my long life, and if it came to going over it again I'd trust it all in the Lord's hands and start blindfolded. And yet, when I look back upon it now, I see that it wasn't much of a life as lives go, and the two things I wanted most in it I never got."
Christopher turned quickly with a question.
"Oh, you think I have always been a contented, prosaic chap," pursued Tucker, smiling, "but you were never more mistaken since you were born. Twice in my life I came mighty near blowing out my brains—once when I found that I couldn't go to Paris and be an artist, and the second time when I couldn't get the woman I wanted for my wife. I wasn't cut out for a farmer, you see, and I had always meant from the time I was a little boy to go abroad and study painting. I'd set my heart on it, as people say, but when the time came my father died and I had to stay at home to square his debts and run the place. For a single night I was as clean crazy as a man ever was. It meant the sacrifice of my career, you know, and a career seemed a much bigger thing to me then than it does to-day."
"I never heard that," said Christopher, lowering his voice.
"There's a lot we don't know even about the people we live in a little house with. You never heard, either, I dare say, that I was so madly in love once that when the woman threw me over for a better man I shut myself up in a cabin in the woods and did not speak to a human being for six months. I was a rare devil, sure enough, though you'd never believe it to see me now. It took two blows like that, a four years' war, and the surgeon's operating table to teach me how to be happy."
"It was Miss Matoaca Bolling, I suppose?" suggested Christopher, with a mild curiosity.
The old soldier broke into his soft, full laugh.
"Matoaca! Bless your soul, no. But to think that Lucy should have kept a secret for more than thirty years! Never talk to me again about a woman's letting anything out. If she's got a secret that it mortifies her to tell it will be buried in the grave with her, and most likely it will never see the light at judgment Day. Lucy was always ashamed of my being jilted, you know."
"It's a new story then, is it?"
"Oh, it's as old as the hills by now. What's the funny part, though, is that Lucy has always tried to persuade herself it was really Matoaca I cared for. You know, I sometimes think that a woman can convince herself that black is white if she only keeps trying hard enough—and it's marvellous that she never sees the difference between wanting to believe a thing and believing it in earnest. Now, if Matoaca had been the last woman on this earth, and I the last man, I could never have fallen in love with her, though I may as well confess that I had my share of fancies when I was young. It's no use attempting to explain a man's feelings, of course. Matoaca was almost as great a belle as Lucy, and she was the handsomest creature you ever laid eyes on—one of those big, managing women who are forever improving things around them. Why, I don't believe she could stay two seconds in a man's arms without improving the set of his cravat. Some men like that kind of thing, but I never did, and I often think the reason I went so mad about the other woman was that she came restful after Matoaca. She was the comforting kind, who, you might be sure, always saw you at your best; and no matter the mood you were in, she never wanted to pat and pull you into shape. Lucy always said she couldn't hold a candle to Matoaca in looks, and I suppose she was right; but, pretty or plain, that girl had something about her that went straight to my heart more than thirty years ago and stays there still. Strange to say, I've tried to believe that it was half compassion, for she always reminded me of a little wild bird that somebody had caught and shut up in a cage, and it used to seem to me sometimes that I could almost hear the fluttering of her soul. Well, whatever it was, the feeling was the sort that is most worth while, though she didn't think so, of course, and broke her great heart over another man. She married him and had six children and died a few years ago. He was a fortunate fellow, I suppose, and yet I can't help fancying that I've had the better part and the Lord was right. She was not happy, they said, and he knew it, and yet had to face those eyes of hers every day. It was like many other marriages, I reckon; he got used to her body and never caught so much as a single glimpse of her soul. Then she faded away and died to him, but to me she's just the same as when I first saw her, and I still believe that if she could come here and sit on this old bench I should be perfectly happy. It's a lucky man, I tell you, who can keep the same desire for more than thirty years."
He shook his head slowly, smiling as he listened to the bluebird singing in the road. "And now I'll be fetching my crumbs," he added, struggling to his crutches.
When he had helped Tucker to the house, Christopher came back and sat down again on the bench, closing his eyes to the sunshine, the spring sky, and the dandelion blooming in the mould. He was very tired, and his muscles ached from the strain of heavy labour, yet as he lingered there in the warm wind it seemed to him that action was the one thing he desired. The restless season worked in his blood, and he felt the stir of old impulses that had revived each year with the quickening sap since the first pilgrimage man made on earth. He wanted to be up and away while he was still young, and his heart beat high, and at the moment he would have found positive delight in any convulsion of the natural order, in any excuse for a headlong and impetuous plunge into life.
He heard the door open again, and Tucker shuffled out into the path and began scattering his crumbs upon the gravel. When Christopher passed a moment later, on his way to the house, the old soldier was merrily whistling an invitation to a glimpse of blue in a tree-top by the road.
The spring dragged slowly, and with June came the transplanting of the young tobacco. This was the busiest season of the year with Christopher, and so engrossed was he in his work that for a week at the end of the month he did not go down for the county news at Tom Spade's store. Fletcher was at home, he knew, but he had heard nothing of Will, and it was through the storekeeper at last that he learned definitely of the boy's withdrawal from the university. Returning from the field one afternoon at sunset, he saw Tom sitting beside Tucker in the yard, and in response to a gesture he crossed the grass and stopped beside the long pine bench.
"I say, Mr. Christopher, I've brought you a bit of news," called the storekeeper at the young man's approach.
"Well, let's have it," returned Christopher, laughing. "If you're going to tell me that Uncle Tucker has discovered a rare weed, though, I warn you that I can't support it."
"Oh, I'm not in this, thank heaven," protested Tucker; "but to tell the truth, I'm downright sorry for the boy—Fletcher or no Fletcher,"
"Ah," said Christopher under his breath, "so it's Will Fletcher?"
"He's in a jolly scrape this time, an' no mistake," replied Tom. "He's been leadin' a wild life at the university, it seems, an' to-day Fletcher got a telegram saying that the boy had been caught cheatin' in his examinations. The old man left on the next train, as mad as a hornet, I can tell you. He swore he'd bring the young scamp back an' put him to the plough. Well, well, thar are worse dangers than a pretty gal, though Susan won't believe it."
"Then he'll bring him home?" asked Christopher, blinking in the sunlight. At the instant it seemed to him that sky and field whirled rapidly before his eyes, and a strange noise started in his ears which he found presently to be the throbbing of his arteries.
"Oh, he's been given a hard push down the wrong road," answered Tom, "an' it's more than likely he'll never pull up till he gits clean to the bottom."
Two days later Fletcher's big new carriage crawled over the muddy road, and Christopher, looking up from his work in the field, caught a glimpse of the sullen face Will turned on the familiar landscape. The younger Fletcher had come home evidently nursing a grievance at his heart; his eyes held a look of dogged resentment, and the hand in which he grasped the end of the linen dust-robe was closed in an almost convulsive grip. When he met Christopher's gaze he glanced angrily away without speaking, and then finding himself face to face with his grandfather's scowl he jerked impatiently in the opposite direction. It was clear that the tussle of wills had as yet wrung only an enforced submission from the younger man.
Lifting his head, Christopher stood idly watching the carriage until it disappeared between the rows of flowering chestnuts; then, returning in a half-hearted fashion to his work, he found himself wondering curiously if Fletcher's wrath and Will's indiscretions were really so great as public rumour might lead one to suppose.
An answer to his question came the next evening, when he heard a light, familiar whistle outside the stable where he was at work, and a moment afterward Will appeared in the shadow of the doorway.
"So it wasn't a cut, after all?" said Christopher with a laugh, as he held out his hand.
"I'll be hanged if I know what it was," was Will's response, turning away after a limp grasp and seating himself upon the big box in the corner. "To tell the truth, grandpa has put me into such a fluster that I hardly know my head from my heels. There's one thing certain, though; if he doesn't take his eye off me for a breathing space he'll send me to the dogs before he knows it."
His face had lost its boyish freshness of complexion and his weak mouth had settled into lines of sullen discontent. Even his dress displayed the carelessness which is one of the outward marks of a disordered mind, and his bright blue tie was loosely knotted in unequal lengths.
"What's the trouble now?" demanded Christopher, coming from the stall and hanging his lantern from a nail beside the ladder, where the light fell full on Will's face. "Out with it and have done. I thought yesterday that you had been driving a hard bargain with the old man on my account."
"Oh, it's not you this time, thank heaven," returned Will. "It's all about that confounded scrape I got into at the university. I told him it would mean trouble if he sent me there, but he would do it whether or no. He dragged me away from here, you remember, and had me digging at my books with a scatter-brained tutor for a good six months; then when I knew just about enough to start at the university he hauled me there with his own hands and kept watch over me for several weeks. I'm quick at most things like that, so after he went away I thought I'd have a little fun and trust luck to make it up to me at the end—but it all went against me somehow, and then they stirred up that blamed rumpus about the examinations."
Yawning more in disgust than in drowsiness, he struck a match on the edge of the box and lighted a cigarette. His flippant manner was touched with the conscious resentment which still lingered in his eyes, and from the beginning to the end of his account he betrayed no hint of a regret for his own shabby part in the affair. When it was not possible to rest the blame upon his grandfather, he merely shrugged his shoulders and lightly tossed the responsibility to fate.
"This is one of the things I daren't do at the house," he remarked after a moment, inhaling a cloud of smoke and blowing it in spirals through his nostrils; "the old man won't tolerate anything more decent than a pipe, unless it happens to be a chew. Oh, I'm sick to death of the whole business," he burst out suddenly. "When I woke up this morning I had more than half a mind to break loose and go abroad to Maria. By the way, Wyndham's dead, you know; he died last fall just after we went away."
"Ah, is that so!" exclaimed Christopher. "She'll come home, then, will she?"
"That's the queer part—she won't, and nobody knows why. Wyndham turned out to be a regular scamp, of course; he treated her abominably and all that, but he no sooner died than she turned about and picked up one of his sisters to nurse and coddle. Oh, it's all foolishness, but I've half a mind to run away, all the same. A life like this will drive me crazy in six months, and I'll be hanged if it is my fault, after all. He knew I never had a head for books, but he drove me at them as if I were no better than a black slave. Things have all been against me from the start, and yet I used to think that I was born to be lucky—"
"What does he mean to do with you now?" inquired Christopher.
"Put me to the plough, he says; but I can't stand it—I haven't the strength. Why, this morning he made me hang around that tobacco field in the blazing sun for two mortal hours, minding those shiftless darkies. If I complain; or even go off to sit down in a bit of shade, he rushes up and blusters about kicking me out of doors unless I earn my bread. Oh, his temper is simply awful, and he gets worse every day. He's growing stingy, too, and makes us live like beggars. All the vegetables go to market now, and most of the butter, and this morning he blew Aunt Saidie's head off because she had spring chickens on the breakfast table. I don't dare ask him for a penny, and yet he's rich—one of the richest men in the State, they say."
"Well, it sounds jolly," observed Christopher, smiling.
"Oh, you can't imagine the state of things, and you'd never believe it if I told you. It's worse than any fuss you ever heard of or ever saw. I used to be able to twist him round my finger, you know, and now he hates me worse than he does a snake. He hasn't spoken a word to me since that scene we had at the university, except to order me to go out and watch the Negroes plant tobacco. If he finds out I want a thing he'll move heaven and earth to keep me from getting it—and then sit by and grin. He's got a devil in him, that's the truth, and there's nothing to do except keep out of his way as much as possible. I'm patient, too—Aunt Saidie knows it—and the only time I ever hit back was when he jumped on you the other day. Then I got mad and struck out hard, I tell you."
Christopher leaned over and began buckling and unbuckling a leather strap in the harness-box.
"Don't get into hot water on my account," he returned; "the more he abuses me, you know, the better I like it. But it's odd that after all these years he should want to turn you into an overseer."
"Well, he shan't do it; that's certain. It will be a cold day when he gets me masquerading in the family character. Let him go just one step too far and I'll shake him off for good, and strike out on a freight-train. Life couldn't be any worse than it is now, and it might be a great deal better. As to my hanging round like this much longer and swearing at a pack of worthless darkies—well, it's more than I bargain for, that's all."
"There's not much excitement in it, to be sure. I would rather be a freight-hand myself, I think, when all is said."
"Oh, you needn't joke. You were brought up to it and it doesn't come so hard."
"Doesn't it?"
"Not so hard as it does to me, at any rate. There's got to be some dash about life, I tell you, to make it suit my taste. I wasn't born to settle down and count my money and my tobacco from morning till night. It's spice I want in things, and—hang it! I don't believe there's a pretty woman in the county."
For a moment Christopher stared silently down at the matted straw. His face had grown dark, and the reckless lines about his mouth became suddenly prominent.
"Why, where's Molly Peterkin?" he asked abruptly, with a laugh that seemed to slip from him against his will.
The other broke into a long whistle and tossed the end of his cigarette through the doorway.
"You needn't think I've forgotten her," he replied; "she's the one bright spot I see in this barren hole. By the way, why do you think her a fool?"
"Because she is one."
"And you're a brute. What does a man want with brains in a woman, anyway. Maria had them and they didn't keep her from coming to shipwreck."
Christopher reached for the lantern.
"Well, I've got to go now," he broke in, "and you'd better be trotting home or you'll have the old man and the hounds out after you."
With the lantern swinging from his hand, he went to the door and waited for Will; then passing out, he turned the key in the lock, and with a short "Good-night!" started briskly toward the house.
Will followed him to the kitchen steps, and then keeping to the path that trailed across the yard, he passed through the whitewashed gate and went on along the sunken road which led by the abandoned ice-pond. Here he turned into the avenue of chestnuts, and with the lighted windows of the Hall before him, walked slowly toward the impending interview with his grandfather.
As he entered the house, Miss Saidie looked out from the dining-room doorway and beckoned in a stealthy fashion with the hen-house key.
"He has been hunting everywhere for you," she whispered, "and I told him you'd gone for a little stroll along the road."
An expression of anger swept over Will's face, and he made a helpless gesture of revolt.
"I won't stand it any longer," he answered, with a spurt of resolution which was exhausted in the feeble speech.
Miss Saidie put up her hand and straightened his necktie with an affectionate pat.
"Only for a little while, dear," she urged; "he's in one of his black humours, and it will blow over, never fear. Things are never so bad but there's hope of a mending some day. Try to please him and go to work as he wants you to do. It all came of the trouble at the university—he had set his heart on your carrying off the honours."
"It was his fault," said Will stubbornly. "I begged him not to send me there. It was his fault."
"Well, that can't be helped now," returned the little woman decisively. "All we can do is to make things as easy as we can, and if thar's ever to be any peace in this house again you must try to humour him. I never saw him in such a state before, and I've known him for sixty years and slept in a trundle-bed with him as a baby. The queerest thing about it, too, is that he seems to get closer and closer every day. Just now thar was a big fuss because I hadn't sent all the fresh butter to market, and I thought he'd have a fit when he found I was saving some asparagus for dinner to-morrow."
"Where is he now?" asked Will in a whisper.
"Complaining over some bills in his setting-room; and he actually told me a while ago, when I went in, that he had been a fool to give Maria so much money for Wyndham to throw away. Poor Maria! I'm sure she has had a hard enough time without being abused for something she couldn't help. But it really is a passion with him, thar's no use denying it. He spends his whole time adding up the cost of what we eat."
Then, as the supper-bell rang in the hall, she finished hurriedly, and assuming a cheerful manner, took her place behind the silver service.
Fletcher entered with a heavy step, his eyes lowering beneath his bushy eyebrows. The weight of his years appeared to have fallen upon him in a night, and he was no longer the hale, ruddy man of middle age, with his breezy speeches and his occasional touches of coarse humour. The untidiness of his clothes was still marked-his coat, his cravat, his finger nails, all showed the old lack of neatness.
"Won't you say grace, Brother Bill?" asked Miss Saidie, as he paused abstractedly beside his chair.
Bending his head, he mumbled a few hurried words, and then cast a suspicious glance over the long table.
"I told you to use the butter with onions in it," he said, helping himself and tasting a little on the end of his knife. "This brings forty cents a pound in market, and I'll not have the waste."
"Oh, Brother Bill, the other is so bad," gasped Miss Saidie nervously.
"It's good enough for you and me, I reckon. We wan't brought up on any better, and what's good enough for us is good enough for my grandson." Then he turned squarely upon Will. "So you're back, eh? Whar did you go?" he demanded
Will tried to meet his eyes, failed, and stared gloomily at the white-and-red border of the tablecloth.
"I went out for a breath of air," he answered in a muffled voice."It's been stifling all day."
"You've got to get used to it, I reckon," returned the old man with a brutal laugh. "I'll have no idlers and no fancy men about me."
An ugly smile distorted his coarse features, and, laying down his knife and fork, he sat watching his grandson with his small, bloodshot eyes.
A fortnight passed before Will came to Christopher's again, and then he stole over one evening in the shadow of the twilight. Things were no better, he said; they were even worse than usual; the work in the tobacco field was simply what he couldn't stand, and his grandfather was growing more intolerable every day. Besides this, the very dullness of the life was fast driving him to distraction. He had smuggled a bottle of whisky from the town, and last night, after a hot quarrel with the old man, he had succeeded in drugging himself to sleep. "My nerves have gone all to pieces," he finished irritably, "and it's nothing on earth but this everlasting bickering that has done it. It's more than flesh and blood can be expected to put up with."
His hand shook a little when he lighted a cigarette, and his face, which was burned red from wind and sun, contracted nervously as he talked. It was the wildness in his speech, however, the suppressed excitement which ran in an undercurrent beneath his words, that caused the other to turn sharply and regard him for a moment with gathered brows.
"Well, take my advice and don't try that dodge too often," remarked Christopher in a careless tone.
"What in the deuce does it matter?" returned Will desperately. "It was the only quiet night I've had for three weeks: I slept like a log straight through until the breakfast-bell. Then I was late, of course, and he threatened to take an hour's time from my day's wages. By the way, he pays me now, you know, just as he does the other labourers."
For a time he kept up his rambling complaint, but, breaking off abruptly at last, made some trivial excuse, and started homeward across the fields. Christopher, looking after him, was hardly surprised when he saw him branch off into the shaded lane that led to Sol Peterkin's.
There followed a month when the two met only at long intervals, and then with a curious constraint of manner. Sometimes Christopher, stopping on his way to the pasture, would exchange a few words over the rail fence with Will, who lounged on the edge of his grandfather's tobacco crop; but the old intimacy had ceased suddenly to exist, and it was evident that a newer interest had distracted the boy's ardent fancy.
It was not until August that the meaning of the change was made clear to Christopher, when, coming one day to a short turn in a little woodland road upon his land, he saw Will and Molly Peterkin sitting side by side on a fallen log. The girl had been crying, and at the sight of Christopher she gave a frightened sob and pulled her blue gingham sunbonnet down over her forehead; but Will, inspired at the instant by some ideal of chivalry, drew her hand through his arm and came out boldly into the road.
"You know Molly," he said in a brave voice that was not without pathos, "but you don't know that she has promised to be my wife."
Whatever the purpose of the girl's tears, she had need of them no longer, for with an embarrassed little laugh she flushed and dimpled into her pretty smile.
"Your wife?" repeated Christopher blankly. "Why, you're no better than two children and deserve to be whipped. If I were in your place, I'd start to catching butterflies, and quit fooling."
He passed on laughing merrily; but before the day was over he began to wonder seriously if Will could be really sincere in his intention to marry Molly Peterkin—poor, pretty Molly, whose fame was blown to the four corners of the county.
By night the question had come to perplex him in earnest, and it was almost with relief that he heard a familiar rattle on his window-pane as he undressed, and, looking out, saw Will standing in the long grass by the porch.
"Well, it's time you turned up," he said, when he had slipped cautiously down the staircase and joined him in the yard.
"Get your lantern," returned Will, "and come on to the barn. There's something I must see you about at once," and while the other went in search of the light, he stood impatiently uprooting a tuft of grass as he whistled a college song in unsteady tones.
At the end of a minute Christopher reappeared, bearing the lantern, which he declared was quite unnecessary because of the rising moon.
"Oh, but I must talk indoors," responded Will; "the night makes me creepy—it always did."
"So there is something to say, and it's no nonsense? Are the skies about to fall, or has your grandfather got a grip on his temper?"
"Pshaw! It's not that. Wait till we get inside." And when they had entered the barn, he turned and carefully closed the door, after flashing the light over the trampled straw in the dusky corners. In the shed outside a new-born calf bleated plaintively, and at the sound he started and broke into an apologetic laugh. "You thought I was joking to-day," he said suddenly.
Christopher nodded.
"So I presumed," he answered, wondering if drink or love or both together had produced so extreme an agitation.
"Well, I wasn't," declared Will, and, placing the lantern on the floor, he raised his head to meet the other's look. "I was as dead in earnest as I am this minute—and if it's the last word I ever speak, I mean to marry Molly Peterkin."
His excitable nerves were plainly on the rack of some strong emotion, and as he met the blank amazement in Christopher's face he turned away with a gesture of angry reproach.
"Then you're a fool," said Christopher, with a shrug of his shoulders.
Will quivered as if the words struck him like a whip.
"Because she's Sol Peterkin's daughter?" he burst out.Christopher smiled.
"It's not her father, but her character, that I was thinking of," he answered, and the next instant fell back in sheer surprise, for Will, flinging himself recklessly upon him, struck him squarely in the mouth.
As they fell breathlessly apart Christopher was conscious that for the first time in his life he felt something like respect for Will Fletcher—or at least for that expression of courageous passion which in the vivid moments of men's lives appears to raise the strong and the weak alike above the ordinary level of their surroundings. For a second he stood swallowing down the anger which the blow aroused in him—an anger as purely physical as the mounting of the hot blood to his cheek—then he looked straight into the other's face and spoke in a pleasant voice.
"I beg your pardon; it was all my fault," he said.
"I knew you'd see it," answered Will, appeased at once by the confession, "and I counted on you to help us; that's why I came."
"To help you?" repeated Christopher, a little startled.
"Well, we've got to be married, you know—there's simply nothing else to do. All this confounded talk about Molly has come near killing her, and the poor child is afraid to look anybody in the face. She's so innocent, you know, that half the time she doesn't understand what their lies are all about."
"Good God!" said Christopher beneath his breath.
"And besides, what use is there in waiting?" urged Will. "Grandpa won't be any better fifty years from now than he is to-day, and by that time we'd be old and gray-haired. This life is more than I can stand, anyway, and it makes mighty little difference whether it ends one way or another. Just so I have Molly I don't care much what happens. "
"But you can't marry—it's simply out of the question. Why, you're not yet twenty."
"Oh, we can't marry here, of course, but we're going on to Washington to-morrow—all our plans are made, and that's why I came to see you. I want to borrow your horses to take us to the crossroads at midnight. "
Seizing him by the shoulder, Christopher shook him roughly in a powerful grasp.
"Wake up," he said impatiently; "you are either drunk or asleep, and you're going headlong to the devil. If you do this thing you'll be ashamed of it in two weeks." Then he released him, laughing as he watched him totter and regain his balance. "But if you're bent on being an ass, then, for heaven's sake, go and be one," he added irritably.
A shiver passed through Will, and he stuttered an instant before he could form his words.
"She told me you'd say that," he replied. "She told me you'd always hated her."
"Hate her? Nonsense! She isn't worth it. I'd as soon hate a white kitten. As far as that goes, I've nothing against the girl, and I don't doubt she'd be a much better wife than most men deserve. I'm not prating about virtue, mind you; I'm only urging common sense. You're too young and too big a fool to marry anybody."
"Well, you disapprove of her, at any rate—you're against her, and that's why I haven't talked about her before. She's the most beautiful creature alive, I tell you, and I wouldn't give her up if to keep her meant I'd be a beggar."
"It will mean that, most likely."
Turning away, Will drew a small flask from his pocket and, unscrewing the stopper, raised the bottle to his lips. "I'd go mad but for this," he said; "that's why I've carried it about with me for the last week. It's the only thing that drives away this horrible depression."
As he drank, Christopher regarded him curiously, noting that the whisky lent animation to his face and an unnatural luster to his eyes. The sunburn on his forehead appeared to deepen all at once, and there was a bright red flush across his cheeks.
"You won't take my advice," said Christopher at last, "but I can't help telling you that unless you're raving mad you'd better drop the whole affair as soon as possible."
"Not now—not now, " protested Will gaily, consumed by an artificial energy. "Don't preach to me while the taste of a drink is still in my mouth, for there's no heart so strong as the one whisky puts into a man. When I feel my courage oozing from my fingers I can reinforce it in less time than it takes to sneak away."
Growing boisterous, he assumed a ridiculous swagger, and broke into a fragment of a college song. Until morning he would not probably become himself again, and, knowing this, Christopher desisted helplessly from his efforts at persuasion.
"You will lend me the horses?" asked Will, keeping closely to his point.
"Are you steady enough?"
"Of course—of course, " he stretched out his hands and moved a pace or two away; "and besides, Dolly drives like old Nick."
"Well, I'll see," said Christopher, and going to the window, he flung back the rude shutter and looked out into the August night. The warm air touched his face like a fragrant breath, and from the darkness a big white moth flew over his shoulder to where the lantern burned dimly on the floor.
"I may take them?" urged Will again, pulling him by the sleeve.
At the words Christopher turned and walked slowly back across the barn.
"Yes, I'll lend them to you," he answered, without meeting the other's eyes.
"You're a jolly good chap; I always knew it, " cried Will heartily. "I'll take them out at midnight, when there's a good moon, and get Jerry Green to drive them back to-morrow. Hurrah! It's the best night's work you ever did!"
He went out hurriedly, still singing his college song, and Christopher, without moving from his place, stood watching the big white moth that circled dizzily about the lantern. At the instant he regretted that Will had appealed to him—regretted even that he had promised him the horses. He wished it had all come about without his knowledge—that Fletcher's punishment and Will's ruin had been wrought less directly by his own intervention. Next he told himself that he would have stopped this thing had it been possible, and then with the thought he became clearly aware that it was still in his power to prevent the marriage. He had but to walk across the fields to Fletcher's door, and before sunrise the foolish pair would be safely home again. Will would probably be sent off to recover, and Molly would go back to making butter and to flirting with Fred Turner. On the other hand, let the marriage but take place—let him keep silent until the morning—and the revenge of which he had dreamed since childhood would be accomplished at a single stroke. Bill Fletcher's many sins would find him out in a night.
The big moth, fluttering aimlessly from the lantern, flew suddenly in his face, and the touch startled him from his abstraction. With a laugh he shook the responsibility from his shoulders, and then, as he hesitated again for a breath, the racial instinct arose, as usual, to decide the issue.
Taking a dime from his pocket, he tossed it lightly in the air and waited for it to fall.
"Heads for me, tails for Fletcher."
The coin spun for an instant in the gloom above him and then dropped noiselessly to the floor. When he lifted the lantern and bent over it he saw that the head lay uppermost.
When he entered the house a little later Cynthia met him in the kitchen doorway with an anxious frown.
"I heard a noise, Christopher. What was it?"
"A man wanted me about something. How is mother resting?"
"Not well. Her dreams trouble her. She grows weaker every day, and the few hours she insists upon spending in her chair tire her dreadfully."
"There is nothing that she needs, you say?"
"No; nothing. She has never felt our poverty for an instant."
The furrow between his eyebrows grew deeper.
"And you?" he asked abruptly, regarding her fixedly with his intent gaze. "What under heaven are you up to at this hour?"
Glancing down at the ironing-board before her, she flushed painfully through the drawn grayness of her face.
"I had a little ironing to do," she answered, "and I wanted it all finished to-night. Mother needs me in the day."
Pushing her aside, he seized the iron and ran it in a few hasty strokes over the rough-dry garment which she had spread on the board. "Go to bed and leave these things alone," he insisted.
"Oh, Christopher, you'll spoil it!" cried Cynthia, clutching his arm.
He returned the iron to the stand and met her reproachful look with a gesture of annoyance. "Well, I'm going to sleep, if you aren't," he said, and treading as lightly as possible in his heavy boots, went along the little platform and upstairs to his garret room.
Once inside, he undressed hastily and flung himself upon the bed, but his thoughts spun like a top, and wild visions of Will, of Fletcher, and of Molly Peterkin whirled confusedly through his brain. When at last he lost consciousness for a time, it was to dream restlessly of the cry of a hare that the hounds had caught and mangled. The scream of the creature came to him from a thick wood, which was intersected by innumerable small green paths, and when he tried vainly to go to the rescue he lost himself again and again in the wilderness of trails. Back and forth he turned in the twilight, crushing down the underbrush and striking in a frenzy at the forked boughs the trees wrapped about him, while suddenly the piteous voice became that of a woman in distress. Then, with a great effort, he fought his way through the wood, to see the mangled hare change slowly into Maria Fletcher, who opened her eyes to ask him why he hunted her to death.
He awoke in a cold sweat, and, sitting up in bed, leaned for air toward the open window. A dull ache gnawed at his heart, and his lips were parched as if from fever. Again it seemed to him that Maria entreated him across the distance.
When he came down at sunrise he found Jerry Green awaiting him with the horses, and learned in answer to his questions that the lovers had taken a light wagon at the cross-roads and driven on to town.
"They were that bent on gittin' thar that they couldn't even wait for the stage, " the man told him. "Well, they're a merry pair, an' I hope good will come of it—seein' as 'tain't no harm to hope."
"Oh, they think so now, at any rate," Christopher replied, as he turned away to unharness the patient horses.
At breakfast, an hour or two later, he learned that his mother was in one of her high humours, and that, awaking early and prattling merrily of the past, she insisted that they should dress her immediately in her black brocade. When the meal was over he carried her from her bed to the old oak chair, in which she managed to keep upright among her pillows. Her gallant spirit was still youthful and undaunted, and the many infirmities of her body were powerless to distort the cheerful memories behind her sightless eyes.
Leaving her presently, after a careless chat about the foibles of Bolivar Blake, he took his hoe from an outhouse and went to "grub" the young weeds from the tobacco, which had now reached its luxuriant August height. By noon his day's work on the crop was over, and he was resting for a moment in the shadow of a locust tree by the fence, when he heard rapid footsteps approaching in the new road, and Bill Fletcher threw himself over the crumbling rails and came panting into the strip of shade. At sight of the man's face Christopher flung his hoe out into the field, where it bore down a giant plant, and bracing his body against the tree, prepared himself to withstand the shock of the first blow; but the other, after glaring at him for a breathless instant, fell back and rapped out a single thundering oath. "You hell-hound! This is all your doing!"
Throwing off the words with a gesture of his arm, Christopher stared coolly into the other's distorted face; then, yielding to the moment's vindictive impulse, he broke into a sneering laugh.
"So you have heard the good news?" he inquired lightly.
Before the rage in the old man's eyes—before the convulsed features and the quivering limbs—he felt a savage joy suddenly take possession of him.
"It's all your doing, every last bit of it," repeated Fletcher hoarsely, "and I'll live to pay you back if I hang for it in the end!"
"Go ahead, then," retorted Christopher; "you might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb, you know."
"Oh, you think I'm fooling?" said the other, wiping a fleck of foam from his mouth, "but you'll find out better some day, unless the devil gets you mighty quick. You've made that boy a scamp and a drunkard, and now you've gone and married him to a—" He swallowed the words and stood gasping above his loosened collar.
Christopher paled slightly beneath his sunburn; then, as he recovered his assurance, a brutal smile was sketched about his mouth.
"Come, come, go easy," he protested flippantly; "there's such a thing, you remember, as the pot calling the kettle black."
His gay voice fell strangely on the other's husky tones, and for the moment, in spite of his earth-stained hands and his clothes of coarse blue jean, he might have been a man of the world condescending to a peasant. It was at such times, when a raw emotion found expression in the primitive lives about him, that he realised most vividly the gulf between him and his neighbours. To his superficial unconcern they presented the sincerity of naked passion.
"You've made the boy what he is," repeated the old man, in a quiver from head to foot. "You've done your level best to send him to the devil."
"Well, he had a pretty good start, it seems, before I ever laid eyes on him."
"You set out to ruin him from the first, and I watched you," went on Fletcher, choking over each separate word before he uttered it; "my eye was on your game, and if you were anything but the biggest villain on earth I could have stopped it. But for you he'd be a decent chap this very minute."
"And the pattern of his grandfather," sneered Christopher.
Fletcher raised his arm for a blow and then let it fall limply to his side. "Oh, I'm done with you now, and I'm done with your gang," he said. "Play your devil's tricks as much as you please; they won't touch me. If that boy sets foot on my land again I'll horsewhip him as I would a hound. Let him see who'll feed him now when he comes to starve."
Catching his breath, Christopher stared at him an instant in silence; then he spoke in a voice which had grown serious.
"The more fool you, then," he said. "The chap's your grandson, and he's a better one than you deserve. Whatever he is, I tell you now, he's a long sight too good for such as you—and so is Molly Peterkin, for that matter. Heavens above! What are you that you should become a stickler for honesty in others? Do you think I've forgotten that you drove my father to his grave, and that the very land you live on you stole from me? Pshaw! It takes more than twenty years to bury a thing like that, you fool!"
Fletcher looked helplessly round for a weapon, and catching sight of the hoe, raised it in his hands; but Christopher, seizing it roughly from him, tossed it behind him in the little path.
"I'll have none of that," added the young man grimly.
"You're a liar, as your father was before you," burst out Fletcher, swallowing hard; "and as for that scamp you've gone and sent to hell, you can let him starve or not, jest as you please. He has made his choice between us, and he can stick to it till he rots in the poorhouse. Much good you'll do him in the end, I reckon."
"Well, just now it seems he hasn't chosen either of us," remarkedChristopher, cooling rapidly as the other's anger grew red hot."It rather looks as if he'd chosen Molly Peterkin."
"Damn you!" gasped Fletcher, putting up a nerveless hand to tear his collar apart, while a purple flush rose slowly from his throat to his forehead. "If you name that huzzy to me again I'll thrash you within an inch of your life!"
"Let's try it," suggested Christopher in an irritating drawl.
"Oh, I'm used to bullies like you," pursued the old man. "I know the kind of brute that thinks he can knock his way into heaven. Your father was jest sech another, and if you come to die a crazy drunkard like him it'll be about the end that you deserve!"
An impatient frown drew Christopher's brows together, and, picking up the hoe, he walked leisurely out into the field.
"Well, I can't stop to hear your opinion of me," he observed. "You'll have to keep it until another time," and breaking into a careless whistle, he strode off between the tobacco furrows on his way to bring the old mare from the pasture.
A little later, alone with the broad white noon and the stillness of the meadow, his gay whistle ended abruptly on his lips and the old sullen frown contracted his heavy brows. It was in vain that he tried to laugh away the depression of the moment; the white glare of the fields and the perfume of wild flowers blooming in hot sunshine produced in him a sensation closely akin to physical nausea—a disgust of himself and of the life and the humanity that he had known. What was it all worth, after all? And what of satisfaction was there to be found in the thing he sought? Fletcher's face rose suddenly before him, and when he tried to banish the memory the effort that he made brought but the more distinctly to his eyes the coarse, bloated features with the swollen veins across the nose. Trivial recollections returned to annoy him—the way the man sucked in his breath when he was angry, and the ceaseless twitching of the small muscles above his bloodshot eyes. "Pshaw! What business is it of mine?" he questioned angrily. "What am I to the man, that I cannot escape the disgust that he arouses? Is it possible that I should be haunted forever by a face I hate? There are times when I could kill him simply because of the repulsion that I feel. As for the boy—let him marry a dozen Molly Peterkins—who cares? Not I, surely. When he turns upon his grandfather and they fall to gnawing at each other's bones, the better I shall be pleased." He shook his head impatiently, but the oppression which in some vague way he associated with the white heat and the scent of wild flowers still weighed heavily upon his thoughts. "Is it possible that after all that has happened I am not yet satisfied?" he asked, with annoyance.
For awhile he lingered by the little brook in the pasture, and then slipping the bridle on the old mare, returned slowly to the house. At the bars he met Sol Peterkin, who had hurried over in evident consternation to deliver his news.
"Good Lord, Mr. Christopher! What do you think that gal of mine has gone and done now?"
Christopher slid the topmost bar from its place and lifted his head
"Don't tell me that she's divorced already," he returned. "Why, the last I heard of her she had run off this morning to marry Will Fletcher."
"That's it, suh; that's it," said Sol. "I'm meanin' the marriage. Well, well, it does seem that you can't settle down an' begin to say yo' grace over one trouble befo' a whole batch lights upon you. To think, arter the way I've sweated an' delved to be honest, that a gal of mine should tie me hand an' foot to Bill Fletcher."
In spite of his moodiness, the humour of the situation struck home to Christopher, and throwing back his head he burst into a laugh.
"Oh, you needn't poke yo' fun, suh," continued Sol. "Money is a mighty good thing, but you can't put it in the blood, like you kin meanness. All Bill Fletcher's riches ain't soaked in him blood an' bone, but his meanness is, an' that thar meanness goes a long sight further than his money. Thar ain't much sto' set by honesty in this here world, suh, an' you kin buy a bigger chaw of tobaccy with five cents than you kin with all the virtue of Moses on his Mount; but all the same it's a mighty good thing to rest yo' head on when you go to bed, an' I ain't sure but it makes easier lyin' than a linen pillow-slip an' a white goose tick—"
"Oh, I dare say," interrupted Christopher; "but now that it's over we must make the best of it. She didn't marry Bill Fletcher, after all, you know—"
He checked himself with a start, and the bridle slipped from his arm to the ground, for his name was called suddenly in a high voice from the house, and as he swung himself over the bars Lila came running barehead across the yard.
"Christopher!" she cried; "we could not find you, and Bill Fletcher has talked to mother like a madman. Come quickly! She has fainted!"
Before she had finished, he had dashed past her and through the house into the little parlour, where the old lady sat erect and unconscious in her Elizabethan chair.
"I found her like this," said Lila, weeping. "We heard loud voices and then a scream, and when we rushed in the man left, and she sat looking straight ahead like this—like this."
Throwing himself upon his knees beside the chair, Christopher caught his mother to his breast and turned angrily upon the women.
"Has nothing been done? Where is the doctor?" he cried.
"Jim has gone for him. Here, let me take her," said Cynthia, unclasping his arms. "There, stand back. She is not dead. In a little while she will come to herself again."
Rising from the floor, he stood motionless in the center of the room, where the atmosphere was heavy with the fragrance of camphor and tea-roses. A broad strip of sunshine was at his feet, and in the twisted aspen beside the window a catbird was singing. These remained with him for years afterward, and with them the memory of the blind woman sitting stiffy erect and staring vacantly into his face.
"He has told her everything," said Cynthia—"after twenty years."
The road was steep, and Christopher, descending from the big, lumbering cart, left the oxen to crawl slowly up the incline. It was a windy afternoon in March, and he was returning from a trip to Farrar's mill, which was reached by a lane that branched off a half-mile or so from the cross-roads. A blue sky shone brightly through the leafless boughs above him, and along the little wayside path tufts of dandelion were blooming in the red dust. The wind, which blew straight toward him from the opening beyond the strip of wood in which he walked, brought the fresh scent of the upturned fields and of the swelling buds putting out with the warm sunshine. In his own veins he felt also that the blood had stirred, and that strange, quickening impulse, which comes with the rising sap alike to a man and to a tree, worked restlessly in his limbs at the touch of spring. Nature was alive again, and he felt vaguely that in the resurrection surrounding him he must have his part—that in him as well as in the earth the spirit of life must move and put forth in gladness. A flock of swallows passed suddenly like a streak of smoke on the blue sky overhead, and as his eyes followed them the old roving instinct pulled at his heart. To be up and away, to drink life to its dregs and come home for rest, were among the impulses which awoke with the return of spring.
The oxen moved behind him at a leisurely pace, and outstripping them in a little while, he had turned at a sudden opening in the trees into the main road, when, to his surprise, he saw a woman in black, followed by a small yellow dog, walking in front of him along the grassy path. As he caught sight of her a strong gust of wind swept down the road, wrapping her skirt closely about her and whirling a last year's leaf into her face. For a moment she paused and, throwing back her head, drank the air like water; then, holding firmly to her hat, she started on again at her rapid pace. In the ease with which she moved against the wind, in the self-possession of her carriage, and most of all in the grace with which she lifted her long black skirt, made, he could see, after the fashion of the outside world, he realised at once that she was a stranger to the neighbourhood. No woman whom he had known—not even Lila—had this same light yet energetic walk—a walk in which every line in her body moved in accord with the buoyant impulse that controlled her step. As he watched her he recalled instantly the flight of a swallow in the air, for her passage over the ground was as direct and beautiful as a bird's.
When he neared her she turned suddenly, and, as she flung back her short veil, he saw to his amazement that he faced Maria Fletcher.
"So you have forgotten me?" she said, with a smile. "Or have I changed so greatly that my old friends do not know me?"
She held out her hand, and while a tremor ran through him, he kept her bared palm for an instant in his own.
"You dropped from the sky," he answered, steadying his voice with an effort. "You have taken my breath away and I cannot speak."
Then letting her hand fall, he stood looking at her in a wonder that shone in his face, for to the Maria whom he had known the woman before him now bore only the resemblance that the finished portrait bears to the charcoal sketch; and the years which had so changed and softened her had given her girlish figure a nobility that belonged to the maturity she had not reached. It was not that she had grown beautiful—when he sought for physical changes he found only that her cheek was rounder, her bosom fuller; but if she still lacked the ruddy attraction of mere flesh-and-blood loveliness, she had gained the deeper fascination which is the outward accompaniment of a fervent spirit. Her eyes, her voice, her gestures were all attuned to the inner harmony which he recognised also in the smile with which she met his words; and the charm that she irradiated was that rarest of all physical gifts, the power of the flesh to express the soul that it envelops.
The wind or the meeting with himself had brought a faint flush to her cheek, but without lowering her eyes she stood regarding him with her warm, grave smile. The pale oval of her face, framed in the loosened waves of her black hair, had for him all the remoteness that surrounded her memory; and yet, though he knew it not, the appeal she made to him now, and had made long ago, was that he recognised in her, however dumbly, a creature born, like himself, with the power to experience the fulness of joy or grief.
"So I have taken your breath away," she said; "and you have forgotten Agag."
"Agag?" he turned with a question and followed her glance in the direction of the dog. "It is the brute you saved?"
"Only he is not a brute—I have seen many men who were more of one. Look! He recognises you. He has followed me everywhere, but he doesn't like Europe, and if you could have seen his joy when we got out at the cross-roads and he smelt the familiar country! It was almost as great as mine."
"As yours? Then you no longer hate it?"
"I have learned to love it in the last six years," she answered, "as I have learned to love many things that I once hated. Oh, this wind is good when it blows over the ploughed fields, and yet between city streets it would bring only dust and discomfort."
She threw back her head, looking up into the sky, where a bird passed.
"Will you get into the cart now?" he asked after a moment, vaguely troubled by the silence and by the gentleness of her upward look, "or do you wish to walk to the top of the hill?"
She turned and moved quickly on again.
"It is such a little way, let us walk," she replied, and then with a laugh she offered an explanation of her presence. "I wrote twice, but I had no answer," she said; "then I decided to come, and telegraphed, but they handed me my telegram and my last letter at the cross-roads. Can something have happened, do you think? or is it merely carelessness that keeps them from sending for the mail?"
"I hardly know; but they are all alive, at least. You have come straight from—where?"
"From abroad. I lived there for six years, first in one place, then in another—chiefly in Italy. My husband died eighteen months ago, but I stayed on with his people. It seemed then that they needed me most, but one can never tell, and I may have made a mistake in not coming home sooner."
"I think you did," he said quietly, running the end of his long whip through his fingers.
She flashed a disturbed glance at him.
"Is it possible that you are keeping something from me? Is any one ill?"
"Not that I have heard of, but I never see any of them, you know, except your brother."
"And he is married. They told me so at the cross-roads. I can't understand why they did not let me know."
"It was very sudden—they went to Washington."
"How queer! Who is the girl, I wonder?"
"Her name was Molly Peterkin—old Sol's daughter; you may remember him."
She shook her head. "No; I've lived here so little, you see. What is she like?"
"A beauty, with blue eyes and yellow hair."
"Indeed? And are they happy?" He laughed. "They are in love—or were, six months ago."
"You are cynical. But do they live at the Hall?"
"Not yet. Your grandfather has not spoken to Will since the marriage, and that was last August."
"Where, under heaven, do they live, then?"
"On a little farm he has given them adjoining Sol's. I believe he means that they shall raise tobacco for a living."
She made a gesture of distress. "Oh, I ought to have come home long ago!"
"What difference would that have made: you could have done nothing. A thunderbolt falling at his feet doesn't sober a man when he is in love."
"I might have helped—one never knows. At least I should have been at my post, for, after all, the ties of blood are the strongest claims we have."
"Why should they be?" he questioned, with sudden bitterness. "You are more like that swallow flying up there than you are like any Fletcher that ever lived."
She smiled. "I thought so once," she answered, "but now I know better. The likeness must be there, and I am going to find it."
"You will never find it," he insisted, "for there is nothing of them in you—nothing."
"You don't like them, I remember."
"Nor do you."
A laugh broke from her and humour rippled in her eyes.
"So you still persist in the truth, and in the plain truth!" she exclaimed.
"Then it is so, you confess it?"
"No, no, no," she protested. "Why, I love them all—all, do you hear, and I love Will more than the rest of them put together."
He looked away from her, and then, turning, waited for the oxen to reach the summit of the hill.
"You'd better get in now, I think," he said; "there is a long walk ahead of us, and if my team is slow it is sure also."
As he brought the oxen to a halt, she laid her hand for an instant on his arm, and, mounting lightly upon the wheel, stepped into the cart.
"Now give me Agag," she said, and he handed her the little dog before he took up the ropes and settled himself beside her on the driver's seat. "You look like one of the disinherited princesses in the old stories mother tells," he observed.
A puzzled wonder was in her face as she turned toward him.
"Who are you? And what has Blake Hall to do with your family?" she asked.
"Only that it was named after us. We used to live there."
"Within your recollection?"
He nodded, with his eyes on the slow oxen.
"Then you have not always been a farmer?"
"Ever since I was ten years old."
"I can't understand, I can't understand," she said, perplexed. "You are like no one about here; you are like no one I have ever seen."
"Then I must be like you," he returned bluntly.
"Like me? Oh, heavens, no; you would make three of me—body, brain, and soul. I believe, when I think of it, that you are the biggest man I've ever known—and by that I don't mean in height— for I have seen men with a greater number of physical inches. Inches, somehow, have very little to do with the impression—and so has muscle, strong as yours is. It is simple bigness that I am talking about, and it was the first thing I noticed in you—"
"At the cross-roads?" he asked, and instantly regretted his words.
"No; not at the cross-roads," she answered, smiling. "You have a good memory; but mine is better. I saw you once on a June morning, when I was riding along the road with the chestnuts and you were standing out in the field."
"I did not see you or I should have remembered," he said quietly.
Silence fell between them, and he was conscious in every fiber of his body—that he had never been so close to her before—had never felt the touch of her arm upon his own, nor the folds of her skirt brushing against his knees. A gust of wind whipped the end of her veil into his face, and when she turned to recapture it he felt her warm breath on his cheek. The sense of her nearness pervaded him from head to foot, and an unrest like that produced by the spring wind troubled his heart. He did not look at her, and yet he saw her full dark eyes and the curve of her white throat more distinctly than he beheld the blue sky at which he gazed. Was it possible that she, too, shared his disquietude? he wondered, or was the silence that she kept as undisturbed as her tranquil pose?
"I should not have forgotten it," he repeated presently, turning to meet her glance.
She started and looked away from the landscape. "You have long memories in this county, I know," she said. "So few things happen that it becomes a religion to cherish the little incidents. It may be that I, too, have inherited something of this, for I remember very clearly the few months I spent here."
"You remembered them even while you were away?"
"Why not?" she asked. "It is not the moving about, the strange places one sees, nor the people one meets, that really count in life, you know."
"What is it?" he questioned abruptly.
She hesitated as if trying to put her thoughts more clearly into words.
"I think it is the things one learns," she said; "the places in which we take root and grow, and the people who teach us what is really worth while—patience, and charity, and the beauty there is in the simplest and most common lives when they are lived close to Nature."
"In driving the plough or in picking the suckers from a tobacco plant," he added scornfully.
"In those things, yes; and in any life that is good, and true, and natural."