CHAPTER XI
Clotilda Pinnott had not been very definitely sensitive to the dull disfavour with which the public had received hitherto her song-and-dance. In her own mind she accorded it scarcely more appreciation. She perceived, of course, that the other artists enjoyed a boisterous enthusiasm of applause, the snake-eater, the winged lady, the high diver, and their confrères, but their meed of praise seemed but just, since the merits of their respective turns were so great in her primitive estimation. Singing and dancing in her rustic garb were but everyday matters, and she sustained no great mortification that her turn should be regarded with scant interest. She had not lost her relish for the performance, however; the praise that Lloyd accorded it was sweet in her ears, though she secretly thought him a fool to care for such folly. It brought him near to her the only moments in the day when he had been accessible. And this had been both a surprise and a grief; she could only see him at a distance, coming and going, absorbed with a thousand anxious details, she knew not what, nor wherefore; she had fancied that at the street fair he would be continually at her side, for the love of the beauty of that face and form he extolled so enthusiastically, that joy in the endowment of voice and motion he had found so poetic. Only a few moments before the turn did he appear, stepping lightly on the stage behind the drawn curtain, his hat on the back of his head, his face, of which she dimly appreciated the beauty of contour and chiselling, hot and moist, flushed and a bit anxious; giving a word of direction here and there to the "supes," charged with the management of the simple scene; critically surveying her as she stood ready for the rising of the curtain. He always spoke gently to her; she vaguely realised that he was sharply disappointed by the public reception of the attraction, and that he sympathised with her in the downfall of her presumable hopes. She cared for naught else, when his eyes kindled as he surveyed her in the rising glow of the lime light.
"You're a peach!" he would exclaim, "and don't you forget it! The fools out there don't know their heads from a hole in the ground!"
The joy of his approbation surged through her whole being as she looked shyly at him while he stood at gaze, his hands in his pockets, and his hat on the back of his head. Her cheeks blazed under the rouge, laid on for the broad effects of the lime-light; her eyes shone with a radiance that embellished and vitalised her youthful beauty; she trembled from head to foot in a quiver of humble adoration, of gratified vanity, of the ecstasy of loving and believing herself beloved. Once he noticed her agitation.
"I thought you were going to pull through without a touch of stage fright," he said casually. "Don't think of the house—soon over."
"Reg'lar buck ager," Tom Pinnott remarked. One or another, sometimes several of the Pinnott men made a point of being present at the performance, and there were persons at the street fair unsophisticated enough to believe that it was the discovery of the Thespian genius in their household, and their pride and solicitude in her achievements, that had brought the Pinnott family as a unit down from their mountain fastnesses to attend the fair. But these credulous wights hailed from the furthest coves, and had never indeed heard that whisky could be procured by any means save by placing in a designated hollow tree a jug, with a half dollar mortised into a corn-cob stopper, and after an interval returning to find the money absorbed and the jug gurgling with tipsy delight. That the ardent could be found in a store or a saloon, or dispensed at a lunch stand was an idea that, unassisted, could never have entered their minds.
"Fust time," continued Tom Pinnott vivaciously, "I ever tuk sight at a buck running on a deer path, by a stand, my finger shuk so on the trigger, an' my aim war so contrarious that the bullet glanced out to the middle of the ruver, an' the beastis war humpin' hisself along so fast that he beat it thar, an' it tuk him right a-hint the ear, and killed him. Left ear, 'twar."
"Skiddoo!" said Lloyd, laughing slightly at this veracious chronicle. "Clear the stage! The public is too well used to liars to want to hear you. Now, Heart's Delight! listen for the orchestra, and mind you go on at the third beat of the fourth measure, or you'll get thrown out. Count! Count!"
On this immemorial day, when in the storm of applause that thundered upon her disappearance and clamoured for her return, she stood in the little nook that served as wings, stunned, stolidly surprised, overwhelmed, forgetful of all she had been taught to observe for this contingency, she did not shiver, nor tremble, nor sob half hysterically, till he found her there.
"What did I tell you?" he exclaimed, elated, full of pride in the success of the unique attraction he had devised. But she apprehended a reproach.
"I furgot—I furgot! An', oh, I'd ruther die than spite you so! Lis'n—lis'n——" as the gusts of applause came with a roar. "They sound like painters an' wolves of a stormy night in the woods."
"I told you they'd catch on! I told you how 'twould be. Now look out. The third beat of the fourth bar—count—count—now go'n!"
When, still recalled, and she was to go on for her simple bow of thanks, she cared naught for the audience; she saw only him, the man who had found her fair and gifted, had opened vistas of undreamed-of splendours, and had brought an undiscovered world to her feet; she saw not the world, only him, and the pleasure in his eyes, and the pride and success to which she had ministered.
It was indeed a strange transition for the mountain girl, whose vicissitudes had been hitherto the incidents of the wood-pile and the cow pen. Perhaps only the physical freshness and vigour appurtenant to a life so stagnantly calm enabled her to sustain now the strenuous rush of sudden excitement. She felt more sensibly the dull reaction when all was at an end for the day. Lloyd had quickly left the tent when the experiment in photography was concluded, and the party from New Helvetia had returned to the hotel. Clotilda, looking after him with a keen jealous pang, was surprised and somehow consoled to perceive that he had not followed them thither. A check on the inrush of pride and gratification in her heart had ensued on the appearance of the two young ladies with the camera; but he had indifferently gone his way, and they had retraced their footsteps. Gradually as she slowly strolled along the road leading out of town and toward the encampment of the family, these two fluttering, flouncing white butterflies were less insistently in her mind than the details of her own great triumph, so tardily, so hardly won. "Heart's Delight!"—he had never before called her this and it seemed so apt, so dear a phrase; that it was slang, and absolutely without meaning, never occurred to her for a minute. She felt a great glow of satisfaction. How she had justified his faith in her—his admiration of her talents, her beauty and grace. The echo of the applause—no longer suggestive of the howling of wolves—sounded anew in sweetest flattery through the spaces of memory. Those elegant strangers, the sojourners of New Helvetia Springs, were as naught before the crowd in comparison with her, the central figure, dancing to dulcet music on the stage, all illumined with a burnished golden glow. Her lips curled as she remembered the sudden pang of jealous prescience she had experienced—so fair they were, so daintily bedight, holding themselves with such delicate hauteur and distance, embodying a superiority which she could not imagine and only vaguely felt. But how should she fear a contrast with aught? She remembered his descriptive phrases, not one of which she understood, but they were words of poesy and music on his lips, applied in enthusiastic admiration of her. An oread she was now, fresh from unimagined heights; and now a dryad, escaped from a tree; and once more the most ethereal bacchante that ever wreathed a vine. She conned them again and again as she strolled on. Sometimes she lifted shining, happy eyes to the river, red with the sunset, and here and there white with foam where a half-submerged boulder or a ledge of rock broke the currents into silver. Sunset lingered along the mountain tops and she hardly needed to mend her pace to be sure to reach the encampment before dark. Nevertheless, she looked sharply about her now and then, with vague apprehension. She met few wayfarers, now making their way into town; most of the inebriates, prominent last evening at the street fair, were sobered by this time, and the effects of strong liquor would not again be apparent until later. There was an interregnum in the sway of the Bacchus of the "moonshine." She could not formulate the uneasiness that possessed her, and once again she resolutely turned her mind to the recollection of her triumph, the manager's delight, the poetic justice that had so amply overtaken the cavillers who had derided and belittled the stunt. And still—suddenly she turned and looked behind her. It was an instinct, nothing more; the vigilance of an unnamed, causeless fear. The long red clay road stretched out here straight by the riverside for nearly a quarter of a mile. Silent, still it was, overhung on either hand by the heavily foliaged boughs of great forest trees. A waggon that had passed her a moment since was yet creaking its lumbering course toward the town, and the odour of tar on the hubs was discernible on the soft air. Nearer was the solitary figure of a pedestrian, an old man, to judge by the thick stick with which he supported his steps. At the distance she only noted the long grey coat and a limp broad-brimmed white hat. Turning, reassured, she walked on, conscious of the suave air, redolent of the scent of the forest, the freshness of the river and the pungency of the mint and water-side weeds; a bird—it was a thrush—was singing in the drooping boughs of a great beech; a star was whitely scintillating in the blue sky, seen in the space limited by the tops of the rows of tall trees on either side of the avenue. Suddenly a step sounded just behind her and a hand fell on her arm.
The scream on her lips was framed only in dumb show; her voice was paralysed by sudden terror. It was hardly annulled when her wondering gaze recognised the face—the young eyes under the flapping brim of the old white wool hat; the alert, trig, young mountaineer in the semblance of a slovenly, unkempt, hirpling old vagrant. There was something very sinister in the metamorphosis, and it may be doubted if ever heretofore she had heard of a man in disguise, still less found occasion to discern the traits of the fraud. She gazed with a fascinated horror at him, her cheeks blanched, her white lips still trembling, her eyes dilated and wildly shifting.
"I tole ye ez how I'd see you uns at the Fair, Puddin' Pie," Eugene Binley said, essaying a smile, but it was rather a grimace, for his mood was rancorous. He was ill at ease, too, agitated, suspicious, ever and anon looking over his shoulder, as if he feared an unheralded approach.
"But ye saidIwouldn't see you uns," she gasped, finding it still difficult to breathe. "And," she spoke slowly and significantly, "I wisht I hadn't—I wisht I hadn't."
The solemnity of her voice evidently increased his discomposure. But he laughed in a husky, raucous undertone—a sarcastic, unpleasant laugh.
"Ye'd feel freer to go flyin' round with a strange man, ye never heard tell on, ef ye 'lowed thar warn't an eye spyin' on ye."
She flushed indignantly. "I ain't been flyin' roun' with no men. An' I'll take Tom ter witness ter it," she said defiantly. Five brothers are a small standing army, if occasion should require. She was ashamed of the threat, and even more ashamed of him, as she noted its salutary effect. There was a distinct change of policy in his tone; he would avoid recourse to disparaging insinuation.
"Wa-al, what hev ye been doin'?" he demanded, and quickly again glanced around.
"Dancin' an' singin'—what I kem fur," she replied sullenly.
"And, oh, Lord, what a fool ye let them showmen make o' you uns," he groaned. "I wuz ter the tent an' seen ye—an' my sakes! I blushed ter the soles o' my boots fur ye!"
Her face flushed. "Let go my arm," she said in parenthesis.
He released his hold and stood in his old man attitude, leaning on his stick and looking at her with those dismaying young eyes that had a strangely daunting effect in their incongruity, like some frightful thing in a dream, trivial and all devoid of terror to the waking sense.
"If you uns hed been ter the tent terday," she continued, "ye mought hev saved some o' them blushes fur yer own misdoin's—ye need 'em." And she tossed her head with a bitter smile.
"Gosh, gal—warn't I thar! I sot right in front o' them town gals an' men from New Helveshy an' hearn 'em plottin' an' plannin' ter make a puffeck laughin' stock o' you uns, by clappin' an' stampin' an' makin' a c'mmotion, ez ef ye war doin' wonders. My cracky, Clotildy, what ails ye not ter sense that thar couldn't be sech a power o' diff'unce 'twixt terday an' yistiddy. Ain't the turn, as ye calls it, the same?"
Her satisfaction suddenly wilted. The logic of his proposition appealed to her solid sense. It was indeed a sudden, causeless, and most radical change. Her heart sank; her nerves, strong, normal, unstrained as they were, vibrated under this heavy stress; the tears welled up suddenly into her beautiful eyes, a moment ago so happy and lucently clear. Was the ovation indeed a burlesque, a scheme to try her foolish capacity for vainglory to the utmost; she remembered with a keen pain at the heart a certain light tinge of satire in the tone and manner of the young lady they called Ruth.
Then she remembered Lloyd, and his satisfaction.
"Wa-al—ef they all wuz ter make game o' hit, an' me, till they draps dead, every one, I'd think 'twar smart an' fine an' a good turn, kase that thar showman tole me so, an' I b'lieve him, every word."
He looked at her intently for a moment, as if he was minded to wring her neck, and canvassed within himself how to most effectively lay hold. Then he flung back his head with his mouth open in the dumb show of laughing extravagantly, the youthful demonstration seeming a great lapse from the personality of the old man, causing her to step back with a gesture of repellent distrust. She recognised him perfectly, yet she was constrained to look at him as at something uncouth, uncanny, strange.
"Wa-al, that's one o' the dernedest enjyments the town air gittin' out'n the street fair—the way that man makes you uns puffawm, 'lowin' ye air doin' so fine, an' till terday they didn't hev the heart ter jine in makin' game o' you uns."
Again that stricken look on her face—the facts so bore out the semblance of the interpretation his malignity had devised. And of herself she had no art to judge. It seemed indeed to her a slight thing to so arouse enthusiasm, ardour—the humble sporting beneath the orchard tree. But even against her own conviction she could not doubt Lloyd.
"He hev gin his word on it, an' it air a true word. An' I b'lieve him."
Binley was raging inwardly, but he controlled the surging tempest for a time. He could hardly have mastered his emotions in a good cause, but enmity prevailed mightily within him. And he loved the girl in his way, and jealousy consumed him like a fire.
"When a gal wants ter be fooled, it's powerful easy ter make a lie seem like the truth," he moralised. "Look hyar, Clotildy; every woman that man hires, but you uns, air dressed up finer than a fiddle, the flying lady, an' the fat lady, an' all. But ye dances in yer shabby old everyday clothes! Lord, child, they talked all over town an' the cove bout'n it."
Again the cogent reasoning, the recurrent shock to her faith! And this she knew was the fact, for Lloyd himself had come to the camp and detailed the gossip; had expressed the doubt he had, lest his ardour for the fitness of the rustic turn had rendered her liable to criticism.
Still she believed in Lloyd against the confirmation of her own knowledge. "I know that man ain't a liar," she averred. "He's good an' he's true. He wouldn't fool a—a—frawg! He hev gin his word, an' I b'lieves him. Ef 'tain't a good stunt it's kase he dunno what a good stunt air."
There was a momentary silence of tremendous import to him. Both felt that the forces of the crisis were accumulated to an outburst.
"Look-a-hyar, Clotildy," he said in a low, tense voice, "you uns hev done fell in love with that thar showman." He brought out the asseveration with the force of an accusation.
It was not maidenly, and she blushed for the scandalous candour which she felt an admission involved, but she had contended and refuted and denied till the unwonted mental exertion had taxed her endurance—she was glad to be rid of sophisms—to stand on plain fact.
"Yes, I be in love with him, ef that's what you want to know," she said.
"But ye air promised ter me!"
"That war afore I seen him," she declared.
"An' ye'll keep that promise, by Gawd," he vociferated, "else that thar showman'll find out what sorter stunt the trigger o' my pistol can do."
The significance of the threat steadied her nerves and roused her flagging faculties. This was a desperate man. By blood already his hand was stained. In the rude experiences of the primitive mountain folk she knew that often one such crime was followed by another, a sort of desperate precedent rendering facile the consecutive deeds, till here and there a man could be found proud of his record of slain foes, the deeds, more or less foul and unprovoked. The law was slow; the place was remote; time wrought continual changes; and at length public sentiment accepted the criminal and in a measure condoned the crime—as if, when matters went awry, another murder might be expected as one of his little peculiarities.
She cared for naught now but to divert Binley's mind, to regain her sway, such as it was, to obliterate her confession of love for the showman. She broke out laughing suddenly with so natural a tone that it might have passed for genuine mirth with any but a jealous lover.
"Wa-al, sir, Eujeemes Binley!" she exclaimed—at the mention of his name in her clear, vibrant young voice he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder, reminding her of the cause he had to seek and to maintain disguise—"ye air too easy fooled yerself ter be laffin' at me fur bein' made game of. Do you reckon ef I was in love with the showman I'd bleat it out like that!"
In his turn logic played a deceptive part. But for his ever-vigilant jealousy he might have been convinced.
"That thar showman ain't never said a word o' love ter me,"—she noted the incredulity in his face,—"barrin' complimints on the stunt, an' sech. I ain't goin' ter dance fur nothin'—got ter hev sa-aft sawder from the public, or somebody."
Still he was silent, standing in the middle of the red clay road, leaning on his stick like an old man, with his fiery young eyes looking up at her from under the flapping brim of his old white hat.
"But that don't mean I be in love with you uns, Eujeemes," she said severely. "I ain't thinkin' much o' you uns, like I uster do. I be in no wise pleased with you uns."
He was doubtful; influenced, but not overcome.
"I dunno why," he said sullenly.
"Kase ye 'lowed ter me whenst we uns fust took ter courtin' ez when ye killed that man ye shot 'twar plumb desperation—else he'd hev killed you uns in another minit."
The crisis, the emergency had sharpened her wits. Heretofore he could never bear unmoved a reference to this incident, that had changed all the currents of his life. She noted that he did not wince now. Her heart sank as she drew the obvious conclusion—he was no longer sensitive to the imputation of crime, the terror of conscience. He only lowered at her and stolidly listened.
"You used ter say you even wisht it had been you uns, 'stead o' him; it was jest an accident you got the drap on him fust."
His silence was inexpressive; he waited the application of these reminiscences.
"Ye useter say ye war no hardened crim'nal; ye acted in self-defence, as the law allows."
He did not even nod his head in acquiescence. He silently stared at her, as she stood very definitely outlined against a thicket of young willows on the bank, in the soft evening glow which was so golden on the river, so deep a daffodil tint in the sky, that she might have suggested to a cultivated imagination some bit of emblazonment or brilliant enamel painting, in her saffron gown and red petticoat, and with her rich auburn hair piled high on her delicate head. She had not the great clusters of fruits, for these were daily renewed, but now she plucked at the artistic draped folds of the yellow skirt in nervous embarrassment, keeping silence as a great hooded waggon rolled by, coming into town, laden with a farmer's household, frantic to see the fair, and reaching their journey's end with the dusk. The passengers looked curiously at the ill-assorted pair as they jolted past, but the team consisted of two strong mules who mended their pace as they approached town and fodder, and they were soon dwindling in the distance.
"You uns useter say ye was so sure ye war clear o' the sin o' murder in the sight o' God an' the eye o' the law that ye war willin' ter leave it ter men—ef only ye could be sure they'd act fair by ye!"
Still he awaited the gist of her recollections.
"An' I believed ye—else I'd never hev allowed ye ter talk love ter me. I know some folks see a differ in brawlin' an' slayin', an' ain't keerin' fur sech. But ter my mind blood is hard ter wash out."
"I dunno what you uns is drivin' at?" he said at last, goaded to seek to stimulate the climax.
"Ye'd know mighty well, ef yer mind warn't so perverted. They war lies ye tole me. Ye shot a man in a quar'l, for puer spite; an' hyar ye air ready ter shoot another fur puer spite with no quar'l. Ye hev got a crim'nal heart an' a bloodstained hand, an' they will never be jined with mine on no weddin' day, that we uns useter look to see in the good time comin'."
She tossed her head resolutely more than once as she sounded this knell to his hopes, but her dilated eyes were fixed eagerly upon him, as if she doubted the policy of so stringent a measure. She knew the man even better than she had thought. He stood unsteadily, shifting his weight from one to the other of the great slit boots he wore on his shapely feet; he hesitated, fumbling dully for a protest, while his thoughts evidently reviewed the successive reminders which had culminated in this untoward declaration.
"Ye knowed all the facts whenst ye promised ter marry me, Clotildy," he reproached her. "I never hid nuthin'."
"Ye couldn't hide it; the talk o' the mountings, like the buzzards o' the air, war a-peckin' an' a-circling 'bout yer crime. A body jes' needs ter look out'n the winder to know suthin's foul an' rotten, an' thar's death an' a bad deed."
His eyes shrank from meeting her stern gaze.
"I dunno what ails you uns ter go ter railin' at me that-a-way, Clotildy. I ain't no wuss'n I was whenst ye promised ter marry me, ef we could git yer dad ter agree ter it ennywise."
"I 'lowed the killin' war a plumb misfortin', an' no willin' fault. But hyar ye air, willin' ter dip yer hands in human blood the minit ye air crost—oh, the devil's grinnin' at ye from out his home in hell!"
She held up her hands at arms' length and drooped her head toward her shoulder, as if to evade the view of the frightful image she had suggested. He was insensibly, perhaps, more moved by her dramatic pose and the subtle influence of her agitation than repentance or fear or even credence in her crude personification of evil potency.
"'Twar jes' fur love o' you uns, Clotildy. I jes' said the word," he averred, quite conquered. His voice dropped to a dulcet cadence; his eyes plead with her.
"But ye meant the word; ye meant murder!" she shrilled out. "The deed was done in yer heart, a'ready—a'ready! Cain! Cain!"
"I swar it warn't, Clotildy," he urged vehemently, coming close to her. But she fended him off with both hands outstretched, with face averted, as she had evaded the grisly sight of the leering Satan she had limned in a word. His eagerness to recover her favour, his ardour, were redoubled by the obstacles she interposed. It was all that was left, to him,—so had his world narrowed,—hunted, proscribed, endangered, doomed as he was. He felt its value more in being thus dramatically snatched away from his grasp than if absence had dulled it, or it had grown chill in the lapse of time. He was moved to protest, to clutch at it anew, to stay the ethereal winged joy before it might rise beyond his reach.
"I swear ter you I was jes' talkin' ter be a-talk-in'," he declared. "I never meant him harm. I—I——" he could scarcely find words to frame the lie, so ready were his lips for threats and cursing at the very thought of his rival.
"The truth is far from yer heart," she declared. "Now,now, this minit, yer shootin' iron is in yer boot leg, an' it's loaded with every ca'tridge it can kerry."
She pointed down at his left foot, and its uneasy movement was like a confession of discovery.
"Why, Clotildy," he lowered his voice mysteriously, "that's kase I mought meet up with—" he glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting to view an apparition of far greater terror to his quaking senses than the materialised horror of the principle of evil—"the sher'ff, ye know——"
"No sech fool ez ter use it, ef ye did," she sneered. "Ye know ye'd only make matters worse."
"Then I mought meet some o' that man's kin," he suggested.
"Air you uns layin' fur 'em?" she asked, "an' they don't even live in the county."
"Naw—naw," he muttered, at a loss for a subterfuge.
"What did ye kem hyar fur, in them scarecrow clothes?" she gazed contemptuously at him, her disgust for their unkempt condition, their rags, their dirt, which was suggested rather than seen, delineated in high disdain in every feature of her face.
He was pitiably conscious of his unpicturesque plight, and yet he had been proud of the completeness and efficiency of his disguise.
"You uns know I couldn't come lookin' like myself, Clotildy, though I'd mighty nigh ruther be drowned 'n let you see me 'pear so—so—common."
His humility might have been expected to disarm her.
"You kem hyar never expectin' me ter view you uns," she said sternly. "I 'member yer words an' how secret ye looked whenst ye said 'em. Ye kem hyar ter spy on me an' him—an' ef ye 'lowed I liked him most, ye'd draw that shootin' iron out yer boot that ye loaded a-purpose. That's what ye kem hyar fur, lookin' like the scum o' the yearth—ez ye air."
He flushed to the roots of his hair, shame for his poor habiliments so mastered him. He felt all in fault that he had revealed himself. He had not that control of his faculties, the possession of the situation, the normal ascendency of the man's mind over the woman's that he would have grasped under any other circumstances. He had only acquainted her with the dangerous secret of his presence here; with his jealousy, and his fell determination of revenge for the heart reft from him; with the fact that he went armed in search of the sweet opportunities of vengeance; with the identity of the malefactor in the event of a deed of violence, of some mystery of disaster. And for what? To receive her faint-hearted denials of her fickle faith; to be rated and upbraided as never before had he heard her—heard any of the submissive mountain women—lift her voice in arraignment of a man's deeds; to have her deliberately take back her promise, or as an alternative dictate terms; he felt that some hard compact was in contemplation. Yet this was his only resource to retrieve his mistake in revealing his identity, and if her terms did not suit him he too could keep or break a bargain. Nevertheless he did not dream of the condition when he said:
"Clotildy, believe me fur wunst. I jes' kem ter see you uns, honey-sweet. I pined so fur the sight o' ye—the sound o' yer voice. I resked all—the sher'ff, the jail, the man's kin—all, ter kem ter view ye, as all mought—but me—hid out in the wilderness. Believe me fur wunst, sweetheart. I only said it bekase I love ye so."
She hesitated, he thought, in a relenting mood. She came close to him and laid her hand on his ragged coat sleeve. She gazed up into his eyes under the drooping hat brim.
"I will—I will believe you uns," she said, "ef ye will do one thing."
He looked a keen, eager inquiry.
"Take that loaded shootin' iron outn' yer boot leg, an' leave it hyar with me," she hissed between her set teeth.
It was little the demonstration of a languishing, love-sick girl, seeking to protect her lover's safety against his own impulsive imprudence. But her histrionic intuitions, great as they were, had yet their hampering limitations. She was a presentation, rather, of some warlike feminine spirit, a Bellona, who, having conquered in a hard fight, inexorably dictates the sacrifices of the capitulation.
For a moment, so taken by surprise he was, he could find no words for answer. Then he broke out with oaths so crowding on his tongue that his utterance was for a time but an inarticulate mouthing of profanity.
Still close beside him she eyed him threateningly. "I hed hoped never ter lay my tongue ter sech a word," she declared, her eyelids narrowing. "But ef ye won't abide by my proof I'll believe the wust o' ye. I'll b'lieve ye threatened him in dead earnest. An' I'll gin the word who ye air to the sher'ff afore that star draps a-hint the rim o' the mountings." She lifted her eyes to the lucent splendours of the evening star, just slipping from a roseate haze to the tips of the firs darkly cut and finial-like against the clear horizon. Then once more she gazed sternly at him.
He cast one furtive glance up and down the vacant road. Then he stooped and drew a long glittering weapon from the leg of his shapeless boot, pulled high over his baggy trousers. But he did not place it in the hand she held out eagerly. His eyes blazed with a light far more dangerous than the stern, steady, menacing gleam of hers, for it was the intemperate rage of a jealous lover, of a desperate gamester, losing all on the turn of the dice, of a duped and overreached schemer. He had hardly space for a step before him, to be taken of his own free will; he was driven, hounded, pursued, brought to bay.
"I'd be justified ter shoot ye dead, hyar in the road, Clotildy, an' before Gawd, I'll do it," she heard him gasp.
The dusk was deepening about them. She could scarcely discern the expression of his face, but she could see that it shone with thick drops of moisture that had sprung from every pore; he was in a cold sweat of excitement; his hand trembled as he held the weapon. There was a moment of intense suspense; the low rune of the river sounded its rhythmic measures through the solitude; the mighty forests did not stir, save once there came that strange, long-drawn breath, the sylvan sigh of the dreaming woods. A bat on noiseless wing went by with its sudden, shrill, mouse-like cry, as it almost brushed against the two still, silent figures; the star dropped down out of sight. Then she heard the metallic click once and again as the hammer of the pistol was drawn to full cock.
"Say yer pray'rs, gal," he hissed. "Before Gawd, ye hev goaded me ter this! Say yer pray'rs!"
She saw the weapon flash in his hand; there hardly seemed so much reserve of light in all the landscape, with the blurred sheen of the river, and the cloister pallor of the pure, aloof sky, and the deep glooms of the encompassing woods. "Say yer pray'rs," he growled again.
She could hardly imagine such terror as possessed her; her heart had dissolved; her hands, her feet were numb; her brain seemed as if paralysed; the roof of her mouth was dry and her stiff tongue clove to it; to her it was as if other lips framed the words, but she noted the thick falter of the voice when she said in tones near to tears:
"God will purtect me, 'thout waitin' ter be asked. The spar's don't pray, an' he heeds thar fall. But 'tain't the time fur prar'r now, nor murder, nuther. Ye dassent shoot me, Eujeemes Binley—it's too nigh the camp on one side, an the town on t'other. The crack of your pistol would help my blood to cry from the yearth till the neighbours, ez would roam the woods this night, would git ye fast an' sure by the scruff of yer neck. Hurt me, ef you dare! Ever'body would know who done the deed—an' why!"
The words seemed inspired, so definitely they broke the power of the threat. She was not helpless; she was not alone. That infinitely potent and turbulent force, the rage of a roused community, that she had prefigured as her avenger, terrified him as no other possibility might. He had skulked from the deliberate law, and from the busy officers, charged with its many behests, but he could never evade the neighbours, when every man was ready to usurp the functions of justice and the appointed minister of vengeance in the feuds of the community. He began to realise his precipitancy; the noose was drawing about his own neck. He regretted infinitely his outbreak; his ill-considered, intemperate threats against Lloyd; could he not have worked his will without even revealing his presence here? The man could have been shot in a crowd as if by accident, presumably by some silly, drunken lout among the spectators, or even by the accidental discharge of a weapon, he argued within himself. His alibi could have been easy to prove by the Pinnotts, themselves, if indeed his agency could have been suspected, for they had left him in the cave in the mountain, afraid, because of his previous troubles, to come to the Fair. Some less obvious fate might have been devised for the interloper—something that would better perplex and disconcert investigation. He had relied too implicity on his hold on this girl's heart; he had loved her with too confiding a devotion. But since he had lost her—yet perchance with this inter-meddler out of the way she might turn anew to him, as of yore—he would not sacrifice himself gratuitously.
He suddenly broke into a hollow, raucous peal of laughter, so at variance with his look, his attitude, his threats, that the girl nervously set both hands against her ears to shut out the sinister dissonance.
"Lawk-a-day, Clotildy," he mocked at her, "yer head is in an' about turned with yer play-actin', an' song an' dance, an' stunts, an' sech. I'm jes' a-funnin', seein' ez how I kin play-act, an' do stunts, an' sech, too. Toler'ble well, I reckon, seein' ez ye thunk the demonstration war genuyine. I wouldn't git myself tangled up in a snarl with shootin' that thar showman fur ten dozen sech flimsy leetle cattle ez you uns. An' I wouldn't harm a hair o' yer head fur a whole county o' sech ez him. Ye hev got a right ter a ch'ice 'mongst men. Make it ter suit yerse'f. Gawd knows I don't want no gal ez ain't powerful glad ter git me. I kem ter the Fair kase I war so dad-burned lonesome in the mountings, an' I war sure ez nobody would know me in this hyar rig—all the old clothes I could find in yer dad's roof-room. But you uns 'pear ter be a toler'ble long-headed leetle trick, an' I do b'lieve I be safer 'thout the pistol, like ye say, than with it. Hyar, take it—take it—ef ye want it! Wait—it's full cocked." His face changed visibly, even in the dusk, at this evidence of the deadliness of his pretended jocosity. "Thar now, it's half cocked. But handle it keer-ful, an' keep it out o' sight. Ef enny war ter ask ye whar ye got it 'pears like 'twould be a toler'ble awkward lie ye would hev ter tell!"
The revulsion of feeling, her astonishment at this sudden change, the amazing transition from mortal terror to the assurance of safety, so overwhelmed her faculties that for a moment in the reaction she was not far from fainting. She seemed more overwrought than in the instant of the immediate expectation of death. She leaned back against the bole of the great beech tree above her head; she was glad to brace her feet against the projecting roots; her face was white in the dusk; she could even feel the cold as the chill quivers ran over it. Yet never did she lose the grasp upon the pistol. She felt as if she had the whole earth in her hands, so dominant was her sense of power. Not for a moment did she credit her scheming lover's protest of innocent intention—he had meant to slyly, treacherously kill the man, and now it was impossible. He could not with his bare hands slay the stalwart athlete; he could not buy a weapon, he had neither the money, nor the courage to dare the suspicion this might provoke; he could not borrow it, for who would trust aught of value to so irresponsible an old vagrant as he seemed. Lloyd was safe, and she felt a sudden revivifying joy in the fact that it was she who had saved him.
There is no more invincible persuasion in the mind of a man than the overestimate of his hold on a woman's affection. With Lloyd out of the way, Binley argued, she would soon forget the showman, and her old lover would easily find his place anew.
"'Member, Dumplin'," he said with a tender intonation, odious now to her sensitive nerves, "ye promised ye'd b'lieve me ef I'd leave the shootin' iron. I kem hyar fur nuthin on yearth, precious dear, but ter see yer sweet eyes, an' kiss the hem o' yer frock."
He reached out his hand as if to lay hold on a plait of the draped skirt, but she shrank back in disgust and repulsion.
"Don't—don't," she said sharply. Then, to mask her aversion, "Somebody's kemin' now. Thar will be travellers soon, to an' fro to the town, an' it'll be remarked how long I stood hyar talkin' ter a ole rag'muffin. Somebody might suspect 'twould be more natchural ef he war a peart lookin' young man. 'Twould be better ef we war ter part."
She began to walk slowly along—she was languid, feeble—holding the pistol hidden in a fold of her dress.
"Time's slow, till I see you agin, Honey-sweet," he called after her, as he stood and watched her progress in the chasm-like rift the red clay road made in the midst of the dense forest.
"Time's forever, till I see you agin," she declared. Her gait suddenly gathered speed, and she fled like a deer, like the wind through the shadows, and was lost in their midst.
He stood, his face still looking toward the spot where she had disappeared, even after the iteration of the impact of her swift feet upon the ground had ceased to sound. He was silent as he listened, but at length he turned with a contemptuous laugh that yet partook of the characteristics of a malignant snarl. He shook his head to and fro with the prophetic triumph of an unspoken thought. Then he began to retrace his way toward the town, and though there were none to observe him, he leaned heavily on his thick stick, after the manner of an old man, walking with one step longer than the other, apparently feebler in one limb. He kept his head bowed as he approached Colbury, only now and then lifting it to gaze out from beneath the flapping brim of the old white hat, as the town gradually came into view, nestled—as it were—in the heart of the great hills. They loomed darkly, indistinguishably, above it at this hour, and the grey and purple mists were vaguely visible, outlining ravines. The courthouse tower arose with an impressive architectural effect in the dim night. Stars in the vague sky struck indefinite glimmers from the long shining steeples of the churches. Below trees interposed, but he could discern a sort of halo of illumination among the roofs that was the exponent of the kindling lights heralding the evening attractions of the Street Fair.