Norton had ridden down to Belle Plain ostensibly to view certain of those improvements that went so far toward embittering Tom Ware's existence. Gossip had it that he kept the road hot between the two places, and this was an added strain on the planter. But Norton did not go to Belle Plain to see Mr. Ware. If that gentleman had been the sole attraction, he would have made just one visit suffice; had it preceded his own, he would have attended Tom's funeral, and considered that he had done a very decent thing. On the present occasion he and Betty were strolling about the rehabilitated grounds, and Norton was exhibiting that interest and enthusiasm which Betty always expected of him.
“You are certainly making the old place look up!” he said, as they passed out upon the terrace. He had noted casually when he rode up the lane half an hour before that a horse was tied near Ware's office; a man now issued from the building and swung himself into the saddle. Norton turned abruptly to Betty. “What's that fellow doing here?” he asked.
“I suppose he comes to see Tom,” said Betty.
“Is he here often?”
“Every day or so.” Betty's tone was indifferent. For reasons which had seemed good and sufficient she had never discussed Captain Murrell with Norton.
“Every day or so?” repeated Norton. “But you don't see him, Betty?”
“No, of course I don't.”
“Tom has no business allowing that fellow around; if he don't know this some one ought to tell him!” Norton was working himself up into a fine rage.
“He doesn't bother me, Charley, if that's what you're thinking of. Let's talk of something else.”
“He'd better not, or I'll make it a quarrel with him.”
“Oh, you mustn't think of that, Charley, indeed you mustn't!” cried Betty in some alarm, for young Mr. Norton was both impulsive and hot-headed.
“Well, just how often is Murrell here?” he demanded.
“I told you—every few days. He and Tom seem wonderfully congenial.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Tom always sees him in his office,” explained Betty. She might have made her explanation fuller on this point had she cared to do so.
“That's the first decent thing I ever heard of Tom!” said Norton with warmth. “But he ought to kick him off the place the first chance he gets.”
“Do you think Belle Plain is ever going to look as it did, Charley?—as we remember it when we were children?” asked Betty, giving a new direction to the conversation.
“Why, of course it is, dear, you are doing wonders!”
“I've really been ashamed of the place, the way it looked—and I can't understand Tom!”
“Don't try to,” advised Norton. “Look here, Betty, do you remember it was right on this terrace I met you for the first time? My mother brought me down, and I arrived with a strong prejudice against you, young lady, because of the clothes I'd been put into—they were fine but oppressive.”
“How long did the prejudice last, Charley?”
“It didn't last at all, I thought you altogether the nicest little girl I'd ever seen—just what I think now, I wish you could care for me, Betty, just a little; just enough to marry me.”
“But, Charley, I do care for you! I'm very, very fond of you.”
“Well, don't make such a merit of it,” he said, and they both laughed. “I'm at an awful disadvantage, Betty, from having proposed so often. That gives it a humorous touch which doesn't properly reflect the state of my feeling at all—and you hear me without the least emotion; so long as I keep my distance we might just as well be discussing the weather!”
“You are very good about that—”
“Keeping my distance, you mean?—Betty, if you knew how much resolution that calls for! I wonder if that isn't my mistake—” And Norton came a step nearer and took her in his arms.
With her hands on his shoulders Betty pushed him back, while the rich color came into her cheeks. She was remembering Bruce Carrington, who had not kept his distance.
“Please, Charley,” she said half angrily, “I do like you tremendously, but I simply can't bear you when you act like this—let me go!”
“Betty, I despair of you ever caring for me!” and as Norton turned abruptly away he saw Tom Ware appear from about a corner of the house. “Oh, hang it, there's Tom!”
“You are very nice, anyway, Charley—” said Betty hurriedly, fortified by the planter's approach.
Ware stalked toward them. Having dined with Betty as recently as the day before, he contented himself with a nod in her direction. His greeting to Norton was a more ambitious undertaking; he said he was pleased to see him; but in so far as facial expression might have indorsed the statement this pleasure was well disguised, it did not get into his features. Pausing on the terrace beside them, he indulged in certain observations on the state of the crops and the weather.
“You've lost a couple of niggers, I hear?” he added with an oblique glance.
“Yes,” said Norton.
“Got on the track of them yet?” Norton shook his head. “I understand you've a new overseer?” continued Ware, with another oblique glance.
“Then you understand wrong—Carrington's my guest,” said Norton. “He's talking of putting in a crop for himself next season, so he's willing to help me make mine.”
Betty turned quickly at the mention of Carrington's name. She had known that he was still at Thicket Point, and having heard him spoken of as Norton's new overseer, had meant to ask Charley if he were really filling that position. An undefined sense of relief came to her with Norton's reply to Tom's question.
“Going to turn farmer, is he?” asked Ware.
“So he says.” Feeling that the only subjects in which he had ever known Ware to take the slightest interest, namely, crops and slaves, were exhausted, Norton was extremely disappointed when the planter manifested a disposition to play the host and returned to the house with them, where his mere presence, forbidding and sullen, was such a hardship that Norton shortly took his leave.
“Well, hang Tom!” he said, as he rode away from Belle Plain. “If he thinks he can freeze me out there's a long siege ahead of him!”
Issuing from the lane he turned his face in the direction of home, but he did not urge his horse off a walk. To leave Belle Plain and Betty demanded always his utmost resolution. His way took him into the solemn twilight of untouched solitudes. A cool breath rippled through the depths of the woods and shaped its own soft harmonies where it lifted the great branches that arched the road. He crossed strips of bottom land where the water stood in still pools about the gnarled and moss-covered trunks of trees. At intervals down some sluggish inlet he caught sight of the yellow flood that was pouring past, or saw the Arkansas coast beyond, with its mighty sweep of unbroken forest that rose out of the river mists and blended with the gray distance that lay along the horizon.
He was within two miles of Thicket Point when, passing about a sudden turn in the road, he found himself confronted by three men, and before he could gather up his reins which he held loosely, one of them had seized his horse by the bit. Norton was unarmed, he had not even a riding-whip. This being the case he prepared to make the best of an unpleasant situation which he felt he could not alter. He ran his eye over the three men.
“I am sorry, gentlemen, but I reckon you have hold of the wrong person—”
“Get down!” said one of the men briefly.
“I haven't any money, that's why I say you have hold of the wrong person.”
“We don't want your money.” The unexpectedness of this reply somewhat disturbed Norton.
“What do you want, then?” he asked.
“We got a word to say to you.”
“I can hear it in the saddle.”
“Get down!” repeated the man, a surly, bull-necked fellow. “Come—hurry up!” he added.
Norton hesitated for an instant, then swung himself out of the saddle and stood in the road confronting the spokesman of the party.
“Now, what do you wish to say to me?” he asked.
“Just this—you keep away from Belle Plain.”
“You go to hell!” said Norton promptly. The man glowered heavily at hire through the gathering gloom of twilight.
“We want your word that you'll keep away from Belle Plain,” he said with sullen insistence.
“Well, you won't get it!” responded Norton with quiet decision.
“We won't?”
“Certainly you won't!” Norton's eyes began to flash. He wondered if these were Tom Ware's emissaries. He was both quick-tempered and high-spirited. Falling back a step, he sprang forward and dealt the bullnecked man a savage blow. The latter grunted heavily but kept his feet. In the same instant one of the men who had never taken his eyes off Norton from the moment he quitted the saddle, raised his fist and struck the young planter in the back of the neck.
“You cur!” cried Norton, blind and dizzy, as he wheeled on him.
“Damn him—let him have it!” roared the bullnecked man.
Afterward Norton was able to remember that the three rushed on him, that he was knocked down and kicked with merciless brutality, then consciousness left him. He lay very still in the trampled dust of the road. The bull-necked man regarded the limp figure in grim silence for a moment.
“That'll do, he's had enough; we ain't to kill him this time,” he said. An instant later he, with his two companions, had vanished silently into the woods.
Norton's horse trotted down the road. When it entered the yard at Thicket Point half an hour later, Carrington was on the porch.
“Is that you, Norton?” he called, but there was no response, and he saw the horse was riderless. “Jeff!” he cried, summoning Norton's servant from the house.
“What's the matter, Mas'r?” asked the negro, as he appeared in the open door.
“Why, here's Mr. Norton's horse come home without him. Do you know where he went this afternoon?”
“I heard him say he reckoned he'd ride over to Belle Plain, Mas'r,” answered Jeff, grinning. “I 'low the hoss done broke away and come home by himself—he couldn't a-throwed Mas'r Charley!”
“We'll make sure of that. Get lanterns, and a couple of the boys!” said Carrington.
It was mid-afternoon of the day following before Betty heard of the attack on Charley Norton. Tom brought the news, and she at once ordered her horse saddled and was soon out on the river road with a black groom trailing along through the dust in her wake. Tom's version of the attack was that Charley, had been robbed and all but murdered, and Betty never drew rein until she reached Thicket Point. As she galloped into the yard Bruce Carrington came from the house. At sight of the girl, with her wind-blown halo of bright hair, he paused uncertainly. By a gesture Betty called him to her side.
“How is Mr. Norton?” she asked, extending her hand.
“The doctor says he'll be up and about inside of a week, anyhow, Miss Malroy,” said Carrington.
Betty gave a great sigh of relief.
“Then his hurts are not serious?”
“No,” said Carrington, “they are not in any sense serious.”
“May I see him?”
“He's pretty well bandaged up, so he looks worse off than he is. If you'll wait on the porch, I'll tell him you are here,” for Betty had dismounted.
“If you please.”
Carrington passed on into the house. His face wore a look of somber repression. Of course it was all right for her to come and see Norton—they were old, old friends. He entered the room where Norton lay.
“Miss Malroy is here,” he said shortly.
“Betty?—bless her dear heart!” cried Charley rather weakly. “Just toss my clothes into the closet and draw up a chair... There-thank you, Bruce, that will do—let her come along in now.” And as Carrington quitted the room, Norton drew himself up on the pillows and faced the door. “This is worth several beatings, Betty!” he exclaimed as she appeared on the threshold. But much cotton and many bandages lent him a rather fearful aspect, and Betty paused with a little gasp of dismay. “I'm lots better than I look, I expect,” said Norton. “Couldn't you arrange to come a little closer?” he added, laughing.
He bent to kiss the hand she gave him, but groaned with the exertion. Then he looked up into her face and saw her eyes swimming with tears.
“What—tears? Tears for me, Betty?” and he was much moved.
“It's a perfect outrage! Who did it, Charley?” she asked.
“You sit down and I'll tell you all about it,” said Norton happily.
“Now tell me, Charley!” when she had seated herself.
“Who fetched you, Betty—old Tom?”
“No, I came alone.”
“Well, it's mighty kind of you. I'll be all right in a day or so. What did you hear?—that I'd been attacked and half-killed?”
“Yes—and robbed.”
“There were three of the scoundrels. They made me climb out of the saddle, and as I was unarmed they did as they pleased with me, which was to stamp me flat in the road—”
“Charley!”
“I might almost be inclined to think they were friends of yours, Betty—or at least friends of friends of yours.”
“What do you mean, Charley—friends of mine?”
“Well, you see they started in by stipulating that I should keep away from Belle Plain, and the terms they proposed being on the face of them preposterous, trouble quickly ensued—trouble for me, you understand. But never mind, dear, the next man who undertakes to grab my horse by the bit won't get off quite so easy.”
“Why should any one care whether you come to Belle Plain or not?”
“I wonder if my amiable friend, Tom, could have arranged this little affair; it's sort of like old Tom to move in the dark, isn't it?”
“He couldn't—he wouldn't have done it, Charley!” but she looked troubled, not too sure of this.
“Couldn't he? Well, maybe he couldn't—but he's afraid you'll marry me—and I'm only afraid you won't. Betty, hasn't it ever seemed worth your while to marry me just to give old Tom the scare of his life?”
“Please, Charley—” she began.
“I'm in a dreadful state of mind when I think of you alone at Belle Plain—I wish you could love me, Betty!”
“I do love you. There is no one I care half so much for, Charley.”
Norton shook his bandaged head and heaved a prodigious sigh.
“That's merely saying you don't love any one.” He dropped back rather wearily on his pillow. “Does Tom know about this?” he added.
“Yes.”
“Was he able to show a proper amount of surprise?”
“He appeared really shocked, Charley.”
“Well, then, it wasn't Tom. He never shows much emotion, but what he does show he usually feels, I've noticed. I had rather hoped it was Tom, I'd be glad to think that he was responsible; for if it wasn't Tom, who was it?—who is it to whom it makes any difference how often I see you?”
“I don't know, Charley;” but her voice was uncertain.
“Look here, Betty; for the hundredth time, won't you marry me? I've loved you ever since I was old enough to know what love meant. You've been awfully sweet and patient with me, and I've tried to respect your wishes and not speak of this except when it seemed necessary—” he paused, and they both laughed a little, but he looked weak and helpless with his bloodless face showing between the gaps in the bandages that swathed him. Perhaps it was this sense of his helplessness that roused a feeling in Betty that was new to her.
“You see, Charley, I fear—I am sure I don't love you the way I should—to marry you—”
Charley, greatly excited, groaned and sat up, and groaned again.
“Oh, please, Charley-lie still!” she entreated.
“That's all right—and you needn't pull your hand away—you like me better than any one else, you've told me so; well, don't you see that's the beginning of really loving me?”
“But you wouldn't want to marry me at once?”
“Yes I would—right away—as soon as I am able to stir around!” said Charley promptly. “Don't you see the immediate necessity there is of my being in a position to care for you, Betty? I wasn't served this trick for nothing.”
“You must try not to worry, Charley.”
“But I shall—I expect it's going to retard my recovery,” said the young man gloomily. “I couldn't be worse off! Here I am flat on my back; I can't come to you or keep watch over you. Let me have some hope, dear—let me believe that you will marry me!”
She looked at him pityingly, and with a certain latent tenderness in her mood.
“Do you really care so much for me, Charley?”
“I love you, Betty!—I want you to say you will marry me as soon as I can stand by your side—you're not going?—I won't speak of this again if it annoys you, dear!” for she had risen.
“I must, Charley—”
“Oh, don't—well, then, if you will go, I want Carrington to ride back with you.”
“But I brought George with me—”
“Yes, I know, but I want you to take Carrington—the Lord knows what we are coming to here in West Tennessee; I must have word that you reach home safe.”
“Very well, then, I'll ask Mr. Carrington. Good-by, Charley, dear!”
Norton seemed to summon all his fortitude.
“You couldn't have done a kinder thing than come here, Betty; I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am—and as for my loving you—why, I'll just keep on doing that to the end. I can see myself a bent, old man still pestering you with my attentions, and you a sweet, old lady with snow-white hair and pink cheeks, still obdurate—still saying no! Oh, Lord, isn't it awful!” He had lifted himself on his elbow, and now sank back on his pillow.
Betty paused irresolutely.
“Charley—”
“Yes, dear?”
“Can't you be happy without me?”
“No.”
“But you don't try to be!”
“No use in my making any such foolish effort, I'd be doomed to failure.”
“Good-by, Charley—I really must go—”
He looked up yearningly into her face, and yielding to a sudden impulse, she stooped and kissed him on the forehead, then she fled from the room.
“Oh, come back—Betty—” cried Norton, and his voice rose to a wail of entreaty, but she was gone. She had been quite as much surprised by her act as Charley himself.
In the yard, Carrington was waiting for her. Jeff had just brought up Norton's horse, and though he made no display of weapons, the Kentuckian had fully armed himself.
“I am going to ride to Belle Plain with you, Miss Malroy,” he said, as he lifted her into her saddle.
“Do you think it necessary?” she asked, but she did not look at him.
“I hope not. I'll keep a bit in advance,” he added, as he mounted his horse, and all Betty saw of him during their ride of five miles was his broad back. At the entrance to Belle Plain he reined in his horse.
“I reckon it's all right, now,” he said briefly.
“You will return at once to Mr. Norton?” she asked. He nodded. “And you will not leave him while he is helpless?”
“No, I'll not leave him,” said Carrington, giving her a steady glance.
“I am so glad, I—his friends will feel so much safer with you there. I will send over in the morning to learn how he passed the night. Good-by, Mr. Carrington.” And still refusing to meet his eyes, she gave him her hand.
But Carrington did not quit the mouth of the lane until she had crossed between the great fields of waving corn, and he had seen her pass up the hillside beyond to the oak grove, where the four massive chimneys of Belle Plain house showed their gray stone copings among the foliage. With this last glimpse of her he turned away.
It WAS a point with Mr. Ware to see just as little as possible of Betty. He had no taste for what he called female chatter. A sane interest in the price of cotton or pork he considered the only rational test of human intelligence, and Betty evinced entire indifference where those great staples were concerned, hence it was agreeable to him to have most of his meals served in his office.
At first Betty had sought to adapt herself to his somewhat peculiar scheme of life, but Tom had begged her not to regard him, his movements from hour to hour were cloaked in uncertainty. The man who had to overlook the labor of eighty or ninety field hands was the worst sort of a slave himself; the niggers knew when they could sit down to a meal; he never did.
But for all his avoidance of Betty, he in reality kept the closest kind of a watch on her movements, and when he learned that she had visited Charley Norton—George, the groom, was the channel through which this information reached him—he was both scandalized and disturbed. He felt the situation demanded some sort of a protest.
“Isn't it just hell the way a woman can worry you?” he lamented, as he hurried up the path from the barns to the house. He found Betty at supper.
“I thought I'd have a cup of tea with you, Bet—what else have you that's good?” he inquired genially, as he dropped into a chair.
“That was nice of you; we don't see very much of each other, do we, Tom?” said Betty pleasantly.
Mr. Ware twisted his features, on which middle age had rested an untender hand, into a smile.
“When a man undertakes to manage a place like Belle Plain his work's laid out for him, Betty, and an old fellow like me is pretty apt to go one of two ways; either he takes to hard living to keep himself in trim, or he pampers himself soft.”
“But you aren't old, Tom!”
“I wish I were sure of seeing forty-five or even forty-eight again—but I'm not,” said Tom.
“But that isn't really old,” objected Betty.
“Well, that's old enough, Bet, as you'll discover for yourself one of these days.”
“Mercy, Tom!” cried Betty.
Mr. Ware consumed a cup of tea in silence.
“You were over to see Norton, weren't you, Bet? How did you find him?” he asked abruptly.
“The doctor says he will soon be about again,” answered Betty.
Tom stroked his chin and gazed at her reflectively.
“Betty, I wish you wouldn't go there again—that's a good girl!” he said tactfully, and as he conceived it, affectionately, even, paving the way for an exercise of whatever influence might be his, a point on which he had no very clear idea. Betty glanced up quickly.
“Why, Tom, why shouldn't I go there?” she demanded.
“It might set people gossiping. I reckon there's been pretty near enough talk about you and Charley Norton. A young girl can't be too careful.” The planter's tone was conciliatory in the extreme, he dared not risk a break by any open show of authority.
“You needn't distress yourself, Tom. I don't know that I shall go there again,” said Betty indifferently.
“I wouldn't if I were you.” He was charmed to find her so reasonable. “You know it isn't the thing for a young girl to call on a man, you'll get yourself talked about in a way you won't like—take my word for it! If you want to be kind and neighborly send one of the boys over to ask how he is—or bake a cake with your own hands, but you keep away. That's the idea!—send him something to eat, something you've made yourself, he'll appreciate that.”
“I'm afraid he couldn't eat it if I did, Tom. It's plain you have no acquaintance with my cooking,” said Betty, laughing.
“Did Norton say if he had any idea as to the identity of the men who robbed him?” inquired Tom casually.
“Their object wasn't robbery,” said Betty.
“No?” Ware's glance was uneasy.
“It seems that some one objects to his coming here, Tom—here to Belle Plain to see me, I suppose,” added Betty. The planter moved uncomfortably in his seat, refusing to meet her eyes.
“He shouldn't put out a yarn like that, Bet. It isn't just the thing for a gentleman to do—”
“He isn't putting it out, as you call it! He has told no one, so far as I know,” said Betty quickly. Mr. Ware fell into a brooding silence. “Of course, Charley wouldn't mention my name in any such connection!” continued Betty.
“Who cares how often he comes here? You don't, and I don't. There's more back of this than Charley would want you to know. I reckon he's got his enemies; some one's had a grudge against him and taken this way to settle it.” The planter's tone and manner were charged with an unpleasant significance.
“I don't like your hints, Tom,” said Betty. Her heightened color and the light in her eyes warned Tom that he had said enough. In some haste he finished his second cup of tea, a beverage which he despised, and after a desultory remark or two, withdrew to his office.
Betty went up-stairs to her own room, where she tried to finish a letter she had begun the day before to Judith Ferris, but she was in no mood for this. She was owning to a sense of utter depression and she had been at home less than a month. Struggle as she might against the feeling, it was borne in upon her that she was wretchedly lonely. She had seated herself by an open window. Now, resting her elbows on the ledge and with her chin between her palms, she gazed off into the still night. A mile distant, on what was called “Shanty Hill,” were the quarters of the slaves. The only lights she saw were there, the only sounds she heard reached her across the intervening fields. This was her world. A half-savage world with its uncouth army of black dependents.
Tom's words still rankled. Betty's temper flared up belligerently as she recalled them. He had evidently meant to insinuate that Charley had lied outright when he told her the motive for the attack, and he had followed it up by that covert slur on his character. Charley's devotion was the thing that redeemed the dull monotony of existence. She became suddenly humble and tenderly penitent in her mood toward him; he loved her much better than she deserved, and she suspected that her own attitude had been habitually ungenerous and selfish. She had accepted all and yielded nothing. She wondered gravely why it was she did not love him; she was fond of him—she was very, very fond of him; she wondered if after all, as he said, this were not the beginning of love, the beginning of that deeper feeling which she was not sure she understood, not sure she should ever experience.
The thought of Charley's unwavering affection gave her a great sense of peace; it was something to have inspired such devotion, she could never be quite desperate while she had him. She must try to make him understand how possible an ideal friendship was between them, how utterly impossible anything else. She would like to have seen Charley happily married to some nice girl—“I wonder whom!” thought Betty, gazing deep into the night through her drooping lashes. She considered possible candidates for the happiness she herself seemed so willing to forego, but for one reason or another dismissed them all. “I am not sure I should care to see him marry,” she confessed under her breath. “It would spoil everything. Men are much nicer than girls!” And Charley possessed distinguished merits as a man; he was not to be too hastily disposed of, even for his own good. She viewed him in his various aspects, his character and disposition came under her critical survey. Nature had given the young planter a handsome presence; wealth and position had come to him as fortuitously. The first of these was no great matter, perhaps; Betty herself was sometimes burdened with a sense of possession, but family was indispensable.
In theory, at least, she was a thoroughgoing little aristocrat. A gentleman was always a gentleman. There were exceptions, like Tom, to be sure, but even Tom could have reached up and seized the title had he coveted it. She rarely forgot that she was the mistress of Belle Plain and a Malroy. Just wherein a Malroy differed from the rest of the sons of men she had never paused to consider, it sufficed that there was a hazy Malroy genealogy that went back to tidewater Virginia, and then if one were not meanly curious, and would skip a generation or two that could not be accounted for in ways any Malroy would accept, one might triumphantly follow the family to a red-roofed Sussex manor house. Altogether, it was a highly satisfactory genealogy and it had Betty's entire faith. The Nortons were every bit as good as the Malroys, which was saying a great deal. Their history was quite as pretentious, quite as vague, and as hopelessly involved in the mists of tradition.
Inexplicably enough, Betty found that her thoughts had wandered to Carrington; which was very singular, as she had long since formed a resolution not to think of him at all. Yet she remembered with satisfaction his manner that afternoon, it left nothing to be desired. He was probably understanding the impassable gulf that separated them—education, experience, feeling, everything that made up the substance of life but deepened and widened this gulf. He belonged to that shifting, adventurous population which was far beneath the slave-holding aristocracy, at least he more nearly belonged to this lower order than to any other. She fixed his status relentlessly as something to be remembered when they should meet again. At last, with a little puckering of the brows and a firm contraction of the lips, she dismissed the Kentuckian from her thoughts.
Betty complied with Tom's expressed wish, for she did not again visit Thicket Point, but then she had not intended doing so. However, the planter was greatly shocked by the discovery he presently made that she was engaged in a vigorous correspondence with Charley.
“I wish to blazes Murrell had told those fellows to kick the life clean out of him while they were about it!” he commented savagely, and fell to cursing impotently. Brute force was a factor to be introduced with caution into the affairs of life, but if you were going to use it, his belief was that you should use it to the limit. You couldn't scare Norton, he was in love with that pink-faced little fool. Keep away?—he'd never think of it, he'd stuff his pockets full of pistols and the next man who stopped him on the road would better look out! It made him sick—the utter lack of sense manifested by Murrell, and his talk, whenever they met, was still of the girl. He couldn't see anything so damn uncommon about that red-and-white chit. She wasn't worth running your neck into a halter for—no woman that ever lived was worth that.
The correspondence, so far as Betty was responsible for it, bore just on one point. She wanted Charley to promise that for a time, at least, he would not attempt to see her. It seemed such a needless risk to take, couldn't he be satisfied if he heard from her every day?
Charley was regretful, but firm. Just as soon as he could mount his horse he would ride down to Belle Plain. She was not to distress herself on his account; he had been surprised, but this should not happen again.
The calm manner in which he put aside her fears for his safety exasperated Betty beyond measure. She scolded him vigorously. Charley accepted the scolding with humility, but his resolution was unshaken; he did not propose to vacate the public roads at any man's behest; that would be an unwise precedent to establish.
Betty replied that this was not a matter in which silly vanity should enter, even if his life was of no value to himself it did not follow that she held it lightly. It required some eight closely written pages for Charley to explain why existence would be an unsupportable burden if he were denied the sight of her.
A week had intervened since the attack, and from Jeff, who always brought Charley's letters, Betty learned more of Charley's condition than Charley himself had seen fit to tell. According to Jeff his master was now able to get around pretty tolerable well, though he had a powerful keen misery in his side.
“That was whar' they done kicked him most, Miss,” he added. Betty shuddered.
“How much longer will he be confined to the house?” she asked.
“I heard him 'low to Mas'r Carrington, Miss, as how he reckoned he'd take a hossback ride to-morrow evenin' if the black and blue was all come out of his features—”
“Oh—” gasped Betty.
“Seems like they was mighty careless whar' they put their feet, don't it, Miss?” said Jeff.
It was this information she gleaned from Jeff that led Betty to desperate lengths, to the making of what her cooler judgment told her was a desperate bargain.
At Thicket Point Charley Norton, greatly excited, hobbled into the library in search of Carrington. He found him reading by the open window.
“Look here, Bruce!” he cried. “It's settled; she's going to marry me!”
The book slipped unheeded from Carrington's hand to the floor. For a moment he sat motionless, then he slowly pulled himself up out of his chair.
“What's that?” he asked a trifle thickly.
“Betty Malroy is going to marry me,” said Norton. Carrington gazed at him in silence.
“It's settled, is it?” he asked at length. He saw his own hopes go down in miserable wreck; they had been utterly futile from the first. He had known all along that Norton loved her, the young planter had made no secret of it. He had been less frank.
“I swear you take it quietly enough,” said Norton.
“Do I?”
“Can't you wish me joy?”
Carrington held out his hand.
“You are not going to take any risks now, you have too much to live for,” he said haltingly.
“No, I'm to keep away from Belle Plain,” said Norton happily. “She insists on that; she says she won't even see me if I come there. Everything is to be kept a secret; nothing's to be known until we are actually married; it's her wish—”
“It's to be soon then?” Carrington asked, still haltingly.
“Very soon.”
There was a brief silence. Carrington, with face averted, looked from the window.
“I am going to stay here as long as you need me,” he presently said. “She—Miss Malroy asked me to, and then I am going back to the river where I belong.”
Norton turned on him quickly.
“You don't mean you've abandoned the notion of turning planter?” he demanded in surprise.
“Well, yes. What's the use of my trying my hand at a business I don't know the first thing about?”
“I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to decide finally on that point,” urged Norton.
“It has decided itself,” said Carrington quietly.
But Norton was conscious of a subtle change in their relation. Carrington seemed a shade less frank than had been habitual with him; all at once he had removed his private affairs from the field of discussion. Afterward, when Norton considered the matter, he wondered if it were not that the Kentuckian felt himself superfluous in this new situation that had grown up.
Charley Norton's features recovered their accustomed hue, but he did not go near Belle Plain; with resolute fortitude he confined himself to his own acres. He was tolerably familiar with certain engaging little peculiarities of Mr. Ware's; he knew, for instance, that the latter was a gentleman of excessively regular habits; once each fortnight, making an excuse of business, he spent a day in Memphis, neither more nor less. Norton told himself with satisfaction that Tom was destined to return to the surprise of his life from the next of these trips. This conviction was the one thing which sustained Charley for some ten days. They were altogether the longest ten days he had ever known, and he had about reached the limit of his endurance when Betty's groom arrived with a letter which threw him into a state of ecstatic happiness. The sober-minded Tom would devote the morrow to Memphis and business. This meant that he would leave Belle Plain at sun-up and return after nightfall.
“You may not like Tom, but you can always count on him,” said Norton. Then he ordered his horse and rode off in the direction of Raleigh, but before leaving the house, he scribbled a line or two to be handed Carrington, who had gone down to the nearest river landing.
It was nightfall when the Kentuckian returned, Hearing his step in the hall, Jeff came from the dining-room, where he was laying the cloth for supper.
“Mas'r Charley has rid to Raleigh, Sah,” said he; “but he done lef' this fo' me to han' to yo”—extending the letter.
Carrington took it. He guessed its contents. Breaking the seal he read the half dozen lines.
“To-morrow—” he muttered under his breath, and slowly tore the sheet of note-paper into thin ribbons. He turned to Jeff. “Mr. Charley won't be home until late,” he said.
“Then I 'low yo' want yo' supper now, Sar?” But Carrington shook his head.
“No, you needn't bother, Jeff,” he said, as he turned toward the stairs.
Ten minutes later and he had got together his belongings and was ready to quit Thicket Point. He retraced his steps to the floor below. In the hall he paused and glanced about him. He seemed to feel her presence—and very near—to-morrow she would enter there as Norton's wife. With his pack under his arm he entered the dining-room in search of Jeff.
“Tell your master I have gone to Memphis,” he said briefly.
“Ain't yo' goin' to have a hoss, Mas'r Carrington?” demanded Jeff in some surprise. He had come to regard the Kentuckian as a fixture.
“No,” said Carrington. “Good-by, Jeff,” he added, turning away.
But when he left Thicket Point he did not take the Memphis road, but the road to Belle Plain. Walking rapidly, he reached the entrance to the lane within the hour. Here he paused irresolutely, it was as if the force of his purpose had already spent itself. Then he tossed his pack into a fence corner and kept on toward the house.