________________________________________________
_ Two days later Christopher met Fletcher in the little room behind
the store and paid down the three hundred dollars in the presence
of Sam Murray. Several loungers, who had been seasoning their
drinks with leisurely stories, hastily drained their glasses and
withdrew at Fletcher's entrance, and when the three men came
together to settle the affair of the mortgage they were alone in
the presence of the tobacco-stained walls, the square pine table
with its dirty glasses, and the bills of notice posted beside the
door. Among them Christopher had seen the public advertisement of
his farm--a rambling statement in large letters, signifying that
the place would be sold for debt on Monday, the twenty-fifth of
September, at twelve o'clock. "I want the money right flat down.
Are you sure you've got it?" were Fletcher's first words after
his start of angry surprise. For answer Christopher drew the roll
of bills from his pocket and counted them out upon the table.
"Here it is," he said, "and I am done with you for good and
all--with you and your rascally cheating ways," "Come, come,
let's go easy," warned Sam Murray, a fat, well-to-do farmer, who
was accustomed to act the part of a lawyer in small transactions.
Fletcher flushed purple and threw off his rage in a sneering
guffaw. "Now that sounds well from him, doesn't it?" he inquired
"when everybody knows he hasn't a beggarly stitch on earth but
that strip of land he thinks so much of." "And whose fault is
that, Bill Fletcher?" demanded the young man, throwing the last
note down. "Oh, well, I don't bear you any grudge," responded
Fletcher, with an abrupt assumption of goodnatured tolerance;
"and to show I'm a well-meaning man in spite of abuse, I'll let
the debt run on two years longer at the same interest if you
choose."
Christopher laughed shortly. "That's all right, Sam," he said,
without replying directly to the offer. "I owe him too much
already to hope to pay it back in a single lifetime." "Well,
you're a cantankerous, hard-headed fool, that's all I've got to
say," burst out Fletcher, swallowing hard, and the sooner you get
to the poorhouse along your own road the better it'll be for the
rest of us." "You may be sure I'll take care not to go along
yours. I'll have honest men about me, at any rate." "Then it's
more than you've got a right to expect."
Christopher grew pale to the lips. "What do you mean, you
scoundrel?" he cried, taking a single step forward. "Come, come,
let's go easy," said Sam Murray persuasively, rising from his
chair at the table. "Now that this little business is all settled
there's no need for another word. I haven't much opinion of words
myself, anyhow. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's
what I say." "What do you mean?" repeated Christopher, without
swerving from his steady gaze. Tom Spade glanced in at the open
door, and, catching Fletcher's eye, hurriedly retreated. A small
boy with a greasy face came in and gathered up the glasses with a
clanking noise. "What do you mean, you coward?" demanded
Christopher for the third time. He had not moved an inch from the
position he had first assumed, but the circle about his mouth
showed blue against the sunburn on his face. Fletcher raised his
hand and spoke suddenly with a snort. "Oh, you needn't kick so
about swallowing it," he said. "Everybody knows that your
grandfather never paid a debt he owed, and your father was mighty
little better. He was only saved from becoming a thief by being a
drunkard." He choked over the last word, for Christopher, with an
easy, almost leisurely movement, had struck him full in the
mouth. The young man's arm was raised again, but before it fell
Sam Murray caught it back. "I say, Tom, there's the devil to pay
here!" he shouted, and Tom Spade rushed hurriedly through the
doorway. "Now, now, that'll never do, Mr. Christopher," he
reasoned, with a deference he would never have wasted upon
Fletcher. "Why, he's old enough to be yo' pa twice over."
A white fleck was on Fletcher's beard, and as he wiped it away he
spoke huskily. "It's a clear case of assault and I'll have the
law on him," he said. "Sam Murray, you saw him hit me square in
the face."
"Bless your life, I wasn't looking, suh," responded Sam
pleasantly. "I miss a lot in this life by always happening to
look the other way."
"I'll have the law on you," cried Fletcher again, shaking back
his heavy eyebrows.
"You're welcome to have every skulking hound in the county on
me," Christopher replied, loosening Sam Murray's restraining
grasp. "If I can settle you I reckon I can settle them; but the
day you open your lying mouth to me again I'll shoot you down as
I would a mad dog--and wash my hands clean afterward!"
He looked round for his harvest hat, picked it up from the floor
where it had fallen, and walked slowly out of the room.
In the broad noon outside he staggered an instant, dazzled by the
glare.
"Had a drop too much, ain't you, Mr. Christopher?" a voice
inquired at his side, and, looking down, he saw Sol Peterkin
sitting on a big wooden box just outside the store.
"Not too much to mind my own business," was his curt reply.
"Oh, no harm's meant, suh, an' I hope none's taken," responded
the little man good-naturedly. "I saw you walk kinder crooked,
that was all, an'it came to me that you might be needin' an arm
toward home. Young gentlemen will be gentlemen, that's the truth,
suh, an' in my day I reckon I've steadied the legs of mo' young
beaux than you could count on your ten fingers. Good Lord, when
it comes to thinkin' of those Christmas Eve frolics that we had
befo' the war! Why, they use to say that you couldn't get to the
Hall unless you swam your way through apple toddy. Jest to think!
an' here I've been settin' an' countin' the bundles goin' up
thar now--"
"I'm looking for a box, Tom," said a clear voice at Christopher's
back, "a big paper hat-box that ought to have come by express--"
He turned quickly and saw Maria Fletcher in a little cart in the
road, with a strange young man holding the reins. As Christopher
swung round, she nodded pleasantly, but with a cool stare he
passed down the steps and out into the road, carrying with him a
distasteful impression of the strange young man. Yet from that
first hurried glimpse he had brought away only the picture of a
brown mustache.
"By George, I'd like to see that fellow in the prize ring," he
heard the stranger remark as he went by. "Do they have knock-outs
around here, I wonder?"
"Oh, I dare say he'd oblige you with one if you took the trouble
to tread on his preserves," was the girl's laughing rejoinder.
A massive repulsion swept over Christopher, pervading his entire
body--repulsion that was but a recoil from his exhausted rage. In
this new emotion there were both weariness and self-pity, and to
his mental vision there showed clearly, with an impersonal
detachment, his own figure in relation to the scenes among which
he moved. "That is I yonder," he might have said had he been able
to disentangle thought from sensation, "plodding along there
through the red mud in the road. Look at the coarse clothes,
smelling of axle-grease, the hands knotted by toil and stained
with tobacco juice, the face soiled with sweat and clay. That is
I, who was born with the love of ease and the weakness to
temptation in my blood, with the love, too, of delicate food, of
rare wines, and of beautiful women. Once I craved these things;
now the thought of them troubles me no longer, for I work in the
sun all day and go home to enjoy my coarse food. Is it because I
have been broken to this life as a young horse is broken to the
plough, or have all the desires I have known been swallowed up in
a single hatred--a hatred as jealous and as strong as love?"
It was his nightly habit, lying upon his narrow bed in the little
loft, to yield some moments before sleeping to his idle dreams of
vengeance--to plan exquisite punishments and impossible
retaliations. In imagination he had so often seen Fletcher drop
dead before him, had so often struck the man down with his own
hand, that there were hours when he almost believed the deed to
have been done--when something like madness gripped him, and his
hallucinations took the shape and colour of life itself. At such
times he was conscious of the exhilaration that comes in the
instants of swift action, when events move quickly, and one rises
beyond the ordinary level of experience. When the real moment
came--the supreme chance--he wondered if he would meet it as
triumphantly as he met his dreams? Now, plodding along the rocky
road, he went over again all the old schemes for the great
revenge.
The small cart whirled past him, scattering dried mud drops in
his face, and he caught the sound of bright girlish laughter.
Looking after it, he saw the flutter of cherry-coloured ribbons
coiling outward in the wind, and he remembered, watching the gay
streamers, that the only woman he had ever kissed was eating
cherries at the moment. Trivial as the recollection was, it
started other associations, and he followed the escaping memory
of that boyish romance, blithe and short-lived, which was killed
at last by a single yielded kiss. At sixteen it had seemed to him
that when he caught the girl of the cherries in his arms he
should hold veritable happiness; and yet afterward there was only
a great heaviness and something of the repulsion that he felt
to-day. Happiness was not to be found on a woman's lips he had
learned this in his boyhood; and then even as the knowledge
returned to him he found himself savagely regretting that he had
not kissed Maria Fletcher the day he found her on his land--a
kiss of anger, not of love, which she would have loathed all her
life--and have remembered! To have her utterly forget him--pass
on serenely into her marriage, hardly remembering that he hated
her--this was the bitterest thing he had to face; but with the
brutal wish, he softened in recalling the tremor of her lip as
she turned away--the indignant quiver of her eyelashes. Again
came the thought: "I know in spite of everything I might have
loved her, and yet I know still better that it is not love, but
hate I now feel." Her fragrance, floating in the sunshine, filled
his nostrils, and involuntarily he glanced over his shoulder,
half expecting to find a dropped handkerchief in the road. None
was there--only a scattered swarm of butterflies drifting like
yellow rose-leaves on the wind.
Upon reaching the house he found that his mother had asked for
him, and running hastily up to change his clothes, he came down
and bent over the upright Elizabethan chair. "I have been
worrying a good deal about you, my son," she said, with a
sprightly gesture in which the piece of purple glass struck the
dominant note. "Are you quite sure that you are feeling perfectly
well? No palpitations of the heart when you go upstairs? and no
particular heaviness after meals? I dreamed about you all night
long, and though there's not a woman in the world freer from
superstition, I can't help feeling uneasy." Taking her hand, he
gently caressed the slender fingers. "Why, I'm a regular ox,
mother," he returned, laughing, --my muscle is like iron, and I
assure you I'm ready for my meals day or night. There's no use
worrying about me, so you'd as well give it up." "I can't
understand it, I really can't," protested Mrs. Blake, still
unconvinced. "I am an old woman, you know, and I am anxious to
have you settled in life before I die--but there seems to be a
most extraordinary humour in the family with regard to marriage.
I'm sure your poor father would turn in his grave at the very
idea of his having no grand-children to come after him." "Well,
there's time yet, mother; give us breathing space." "There's not
time in my day, Christopher, for I am very old, and half dead as
it is--but it does seem hard that I am never to be present at the
marriage of a child. As for Cynthia, she is out of the question,
of course, which is a great pity. I have very little patience
with an unmarried woman--no, not if she were Queen Elizabeth
herself though I do know that they are sometimes found very
useful in the dairy or the spinning-room. As for an old bachelor,
I have never seen the spot on earth--and I've lived to a great
age--where he wasn't an encumbrance. They really ought to be
taught some useful occupation, such as skimming milk or carding
wool." "I hardly think either of those pursuits would be to my
taste," protested Christopher, "but I give you leave to try your
hand on Uncle Tucker." "Tucker has been a hero, my son," rejoined
the old lady in a stately voice, "and the privilege of having
once been a hero is that nobody expects you to exert yourself
again. A man who has taken the enemy's guns single-handed, or
figured prominently in a society scandal, is comfortably settled
in his position and may slouch pleasantly for the remainder of
his life. But for an ordinary gentleman it is quite different,
and as we are not likely to have another war, you really ought to
marry. You are preparing to go through life too peacefully, my
son." "Good Lord!" exclaimed Christopher, "are you hankering
after squabbles? Well, you shan't drag me into them, at any cost.
There's Uncle Tucker to your hand, as I said before." "I'm sure
Tucker might have married several times had he cared about it,"
replied Mrs. Blake reprovingly. "Miss Matoaca Bolling always had
a sentiment for him, I am certain, and even after his misfortune
she went so far as to present him with a most elaborate slipper
of red velvet ornamented with steel beads. I remember well her
consulting me as to whether it would be better to seem
unsympathetic and give him two or to appear indelicate and offer
him one. I suggested that she should make both for the same
foot, which, I believe, she finally decided to do." "Well,
well, this is all very interesting, mother," said Christopher,
rising from his seat, "but I've promised old Jacob Weatherby to
pass my word on his tobacco. On the way down, however, I'll cast
my eyes about for a wife." "Between here and the Weatherbys'
farm? Why, Christopher!" "That's all right, but unless you expect
me to pick up one on the roadside I don't see how we'll manage.
I'll do anything to oblige you, you know, even marry, if you'll
find me a good, sensible woman." The old lady's eyelids dropped
over her piercing black eyes, which seemed always to regard some
far-off, ecstatic vision. Three small furrows ran straight up and
down her forehead, and she lifted one delicate white hand to rub
them out. "I don't like joking on so serious a subject, my son,"
she said. "I'm sure Providence expects every man to do his duty,
and to remain unmarried seems like putting one's personal
inclination before the intentions of the Creator. Your
grandfather Corbin used to say he had so high an opinion of
marriage that if his fourth wife --and she was very sickly--were
to die at once, he'd marry his fifth within the year. I remember
that Bishop Deane remarked it was one of the most beautiful
tributes ever paid the marriage state--especially as it was no
idle boast, for, as it happened, his wife died shortly afterward,
and he married Miss Polly Blair before six months were up." "What
a precious old fool he was!" laughed the young man, as he reached
the door, passing out with a horrified "What, Christopher! Your
own grandfather?" ringing in his ears. In the yard he found
Cynthia drawing water at the well, and he took the heavy bucket
from her and carried it into the kitchen. "You'd better change
your clothes," she remarked, eyeing him narrowly, "if you're
going
back to the field." "But I'm not going back; the axe handle has
broken again and I'll have to borrow Jim Weatherby's. There's no
use trying to mend that old handle any more. It'll have to lie
over till after tobacco cutting, when I can make a new one." "Oh,
you might as well keep Jim's altogether," returned Cynthia
irritably, loath to receive favours from her neighbours. "The
first thing we know he will be running this entire place." "I
reckon he'd make a much better job of it," replied Christopher,
as he swung out into the road. On the whitewashed porch of the
Weatherbys' house he found old Jacob--a hale, clearly old man
with cheeks like frosted winter apples--gazing thoughtfully over
his fine field of tobacco, which had grown almost to his
threshold. "The weather's going to have a big drop to-night," he
said reflectively; "I smell it on the wind. Lord! Lord! I reckon
I'd better begin on that thar tobaccy about sunup--and yet
another day or so of sun and September dew would sweeten it
consider'ble. How about yours, Mr. Christopher?" "I'll cut my
ripest plants to-morrow," answered Christopher, sniffing the air.
"A big drop's coming, sure enough, but I don't scent frost as
yet--the pines don't smell that way." They discussed the tobacco
for a time--the rosy, genial old man, whom age had mellowed
without souring--listening with a touching deference to his
visitor's casual words; and when at last Christopher, with the
axe on his shoulder, started leisurely homeward, "the drop" was
already beginning, and the wind blew cool and crisp across the
misty fields, beyond which a round, red sun was slowly setting.
Level, vast and dark, the tobacco swept clear to the horizon.
Between Weatherby's and the little store there was an abrupt bend
in the road, where it shot aside from a steep descent in the
ground; and Christopher had reached this point when he saw
suddenly ahead of him a farm wagon driven forward at a reckless
pace. As it neared him he heard the wheels thunder on the rocky
bed of the road, and saw that the driver's seat was vacant, the
man evidently having been thrown some distance back. The
horses--a young pair he had never seen before--held the bits in
their mouths; and it was with a hopelessness of checking their
terrible speed that he stepped out of the road to give them room.
The next instant he saw that they were making straight for the
declivity from which the road shot back, seeing in the same
breath that the driver of the wagon, not falling clear, had
entangled himself in the long reins and was being dragged rapidly
beneath the wheels. Tossing his axe aside, he sprang instantly at
the horses' heads, hanging with his whole powerful weight upon
their mouths. Life or death was nothing to him at the moment, and
he seemed to have only an impersonal interest in the multiplied
sensations. What followed was a sense of incalculable swiftness,
a near glimpse of blue sky, the falling of stars around him in
the road, and after these things a great darkness.
When he came to himself he was lying in a patch of short grass,
with a little knot of men about him, among whom he recognised Jim
Weatherby. "I brought them in, didn't I?" he asked, struggling
up; and then he saw that his coat sleeves were rent from the
armholes, leaving his arms bare beneath his torn blue shirt.
Cynthia's warning returned to him, and he laughed shortly. "Well,
I reckon you could bring the devil in if you put all your grip on
him," was Jim's reply; "as it is, you're pretty sore, ain't you?"
"Oh, rather, but I wish I hadn't spoiled my coat." He was still
thinking of Cynthia. "God alive, man, it's a mercy you didn't
spoil your life. Why, another second and the horses would have
been over that bank yonder, with you and young Fletcher under the
wagon."
Christopher rose slowly from the ground and stood erect.
"With me--and who under the wagon?--and who?" he asked in a
throaty voice.
Jim Weatherby whistled. "Why, to think you didn't know all
along!" he exclaimed. "It was Fletcher's boy; he made Zebbadee
let him take the reins. Fletcher saw it all and he was clean mad
when he got here--it took three men to hold him. He thinks more
of that boy than he does of his own soul. What's the matter, man,
are you hurt?"
Christopher had gone dead white, and the blue circle came out
slowly around his mouth. "And I saved him!" he gasped. "I saved
him! Isn't there some mistake? Maybe he's dead anyway!"
"Bless you, no," responded Jim, a trifle disconcerted. "The
doctor's here and he says it's a case of a broken leg instead of
a broken neck, that's all."
Looking about him, Christopher saw that there was another group
of men at a little distance, gathered around something that lay
still and straight on the grass. The sound of a hoarse groan
reached him suddenly--an inarticulate cry of distress--and he
felt with a savage joy that it was from Fletcher. He looked down,
drawing together his tattered sleeves. For a time he was silent,
and when he spoke it was with a sneering laugh.
"Well, I've been a fool, that's all," was what he said. _
Read next: Book II - The Temptation: Chapter V. The Glimpse of a Bride
Read previous: Book II - The Temptation: Chapter III. Fletcher's Move and Christopher's Counterstroke
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