Once to Every Man Part 21

The girl stood in the doorway smiling down at him. He couldn't meet her eyes. As it was he felt that their gaze went through and through him. And so he did not see her half lift her arms to him in a sudden quite wonderful gesture of contrite and remorseful rea.s.surance. He did not hear the first of the impulsive torrent of words which she barely smothered behind lips that trembled a little. His head was bowed so that he did not see her eyes, and if he could but have seen them and nothing else, he would have understood, without the words or the gesture.

Instead he stood there, plucking undecidedly at his sleeve.

"Because I--I wouldn't like to hev you go--without seein' you again,"

he went on slowly--"without a chance to tell you something--er--to tell you good-by."

He didn't wait for her answer. At the far bend in the road, when he looked back, she was still there in the doorway watching him.

He was not quite certain, but he thought she threw up one thin white arm to him as he pa.s.sed out of sight.

CHAPTER XVII

It rained that next day--a dull, steady downpour that slanted in upon a warm, south wind. Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leaden grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little better. There was much that needed readjusting.

Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaper spread flat upon his knees--the afternoon edition of the previous day, which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessary time nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hours old. At any other time the contents of that red-headlined sheet would have set his pulses throbbing in a veritable ecstasy of excitement.

For two whole weeks he had been watching for it, scanning every inch of type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny's first match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the column head, fell woefully flat so far as he was concerned.

Not that the plump newspaperman who had written the account of that first victorious bout had achieved anything but a masterpiece of sensationalism. Every line was alive with action, every phrase seemed to thud with the actual shock of contest. And there was that last paragraph, too, which hailed Denny--"The Pilgrim," they called him in the paper, but that couldn't deceive Old Jerry--as the newcomer for whom the public had been waiting so long, and, toward the end, so hopelessly.

It was really a perfect thing of its kind--but Old Jerry could not enjoy it that morning, even though it was Denny Bolton's first triumph, to be shared by him alone in equal proportion. Instead of sending creepy thrills chasing up and down his spine it merely intensified his doleful bitterness of spirit. Long before noon he breathed a leaden heavy sigh, refolded the sodden sheet and put it away in the box beneath the seat.

The old mare took her own pace that day. In a brain that was already burdened until it fairly ached there was no room for the image of the silver-haired stone-cutter which had made for speed on other occasions. He had plenty to occupy his mind which was of a strictly immediate nature.

A dozen times that morning Old Jerry asked himself what he would tell Dryad Anderson that night, when he stopped at the little drab cottage at the route's end, ostensibly to bid her good-by. He asked himself, in desperate reiteration, _how_ he would tell, for he knew that the long delay in the delivery of Denny's message was going to need more than a little explanation. And when he had wrestled with the question until his eyes stung and his temples throbbed, and still could find no solution for it, he turned helplessly to the consideration of another phase of the problem.

He fell to tormenting himself with the possibility of her having gone already. Everything in those bare rooms had been packed--there was no real reason for the girl to remain another hour. Perhaps she had reconsidered, changed her mind, and departed even earlier than she had planned, and if she had--if she had----

Whenever he reached that point, dumbly he bowed his head.

It was dark when he turned off the main road and started up the long hill toward the Bolton place--not just dark, but a blackness so profound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formless splotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of the place, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mental misery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe so much as one uneasy glance ahead until a glimmer of light which seemed to flash out from the rear of the house fairly shocked him into conscious recollection of it all.

He sprang erect then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brim in a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrilly staccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came to a standstill.

He tried to persuade himself it was a reflection of the village lights upon the window panes which had startled him, but it was only a half-hearted effort. No one could mistake the glow that filtered out of the black bulk of the rear of the house for anything save the thing it was. Half way up the hill he sat there, hunched forward in a hopeless huddle, his eyes protected by cupped palms, and stared and stared.

Once before, the evening of that day when the Judge's exhibition of Young Denny's bruised face had been more than his curiosity could endure, he had approached that bleak farmhouse in fear and trembling, but the trepidation of that night, half real, half a child of his own erratic imagination, bulked small beside the throat-tightening terror of this moment.

And yet he did not turn back. The thought that he had only to wheel his buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles would permit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit, driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, had at last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazy desperation, and bared its teeth.

"If he is up there," he stated doggedly, "if he is up there, a-putterin' with his everlasting lump o' clay, he ain't got no more right up there than I hev! He's just a-trespa.s.sin', that's what he's a-doin'. I'm the legal custodian of the place--it was put into my hands--and I'll tell him so. I'll give him a chance to git out--or--or I'll hev the law on him!"

The plump mare went forward again. There was something terribly uncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to the reins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top she slumped lazily to a standstill and fell contentedly to nibbling gra.s.s.

The light in the window was much brighter, viewed from that lessened distance--thin, yellow streaks of brightness that quivered a little from the edges of a drawn shade. An uneven wick might easily have accounted for the unsteadiness, but in that flickering pallor Old Jerry found something ominously unhealthy--almost uncanny.

But he went on. He clambered down from his high seat and went doggedly across--steadily--until his hand found the door-latch. And he gave himself no time for reconsideration or retreat. The metal catch yielded all too readily under the pressure of his fingers, and when the door swung in he followed it over the threshold.

The light blinded him for a moment--dazzled him--yet not so completely but that he saw, too clearly for any mistake, the figure that had turned from the stove to greet him. Dryad Anderson's face was pink-tinted from forehead to chin by the heat of the glowing lids--her lips parted a little until the small teeth showed white beyond their red fullness.

In her too-tight, boyish blouse, gaping at the throat, she stood there in the middle of the room, hands bracketed on delicate hips, and smiled at him. And behind her the lamp in its socket on the wall smoked a trifle from a too-high wick.

Old Jerry stood and gazed at her, one hand still clutching the door latch. In one great illuminating flash he saw it all--understood just what it meant--and with that understanding a hot wave of rage began to well up within him--a fierce and righteous wrath, borne of all that day's unnecessary agony and those last few minutes of fear.

It was a hoax on her part. She had been trifling with him the day before, just as she had been playing fast and loose with his peace of mind for days. An e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n bordering close upon actual profanity trembled upon his lips, but a draft of cold air sweeping in at the open doorway set the lamp flickering wildly and brought him back a little to himself. His eyes went again to the girl in the middle of the floor. She was rocking to and fro upon the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, every inch of her fairly pulsing with mocking, malicious delight.

She waited for him to speak, and he, stiff of back and grim of face, stood stonily silent. She seemed all innocently unaware of his unconcealed disgust. The quizzical smile only widened before the chilly threat of his beady eyes and ruffled forehead. And then, all in one breath, her little pouted chin went up and she burst into a low gurgle of utter enjoyment of the tableau.

"Well," she demanded, "aren't you ever going to say anything? Here I am! I--I decided to move today--there really wasn't any use of waiting. Aren't you surprised--just a little?"

The meekness of her voice, so wholly belied by her eyes and lips and swaying boy-like body, only tightened the old man's mouth. He was still reviewing all that long day's mental torment, counting the wasted hours which might have been applied to a soul-satisfying feast upon Morehouse's red-headlined account in the paper. No veteran had ever marched more hopelessly into a cannon's mouth than he had approached the door of that kitchen.

And yet a flood of thankfulness, the direct reflex of his first impotent rage, threatened to sweep up and drown the fires of his wrath. Already he wanted to slump down into a chair and rest weary body and wearier, relieved brain; he wanted a minute or two in which to realize that she was there--that his unfulfilled promise was still far from being actual catastrophe--and he would not let himself. Not yet!

She had been playing with him--playing with him cat-and-mouse fas.h.i.+on.

The birdlike features which had begun to relax hardened once more.

"Maybe I be," he answered her question with noncommittal grimness.

"Maybe I be--and maybe I ain't!" And then, almost belligerently: "Your lamp's a-smokin'!"

She turned and strained on tiptoe and lowered it.

"I thought you would be," she agreed, too gravely for his complete comfort, when she had accomplished the readjustment of the wick to her entire satisfaction. "For, you know, you seemed a little worried and--well, not just happy, yesterday, when I told you I was going to move I--I felt sure you would be glad to find that I hadn't gone far!"

Old Jerry remembered at that moment and he removed his soaked hat. He turned, too, and drew up a chair. It gave him an opportunity to avoid those moistly mirthful eyes for a moment. Seated and comfortably tilted back against the wall he felt less ill at ease--felt better able to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with.

For a moment her presence there had only confounded him--that was when the wave of righteous wrath had swept him--but at the worst he had counted it nothing more than a too far-fetched bit of fantastic mischief conceived to tantalize him.

Her last statement awakened in him a preposterously impossible suspicion which, now that he had a chance to glance about the room, was confirmed instantly--absolutely. It was astounding--utterly unbelievable--and yet on all the walls, in every corner, there were the indisputable evidences of her intention to remain indefinitely--permanently.

At least it gave him an opening.

"You don't mean to say," he began challengingly, "you don't mean to tell me that you're a-figurin' on stayin' here--for good?"

She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously at him until the loosened wisps of hair half hid her eyes. It was quite as though she were pleased beyond belief that he had got at the gist of it all so speedily.

"Yes, for good," she explained ecstatically, "or," more slowly, "or at least for quite a while. You see I like it here! It's just like home already--just like I always imagined home would be when I really had one, anyway. There's so much room--and it's warm, too. And then, the floors don't squeak, either. I don't think I care for squeaky floors--do you?"

A quick widening of those almost purple eyes accompanied the last question.

The little white-haired figure in the back-tilted chair snorted. He tried to disguise it behind a belated cough, but it was quite palpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn't fool him any longer--not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantile stare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare of mirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one way to deal with such shallowness--that was with firm and unmistakable severity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasis as Judge Maynard had often done.

"You can't do it!" he emphasized flatly, his thin voice almost gloatingly triumphant. "Whatever put it into your head I don't know--but don't you realize what you're a-doin', comin' up here like this and movin' in, high-handed, without speaking to n.o.body? Well, you've made yourself liable to trespa.s.s--that's what you've done!

Trespa.s.s and house-breaking, too, I guess, without interviewin' me first!"