The Tobacco Tiller Part 12

After a few perfunctory words to the new-comer, Mr. Lindsay relapsed into a moody silence, replying in monosyllables only, when any portion of the morning's conversation, largely carried on by Mr. James in the absence of Miss Lucy in the kitchen, chanced to be directed at him. In the afternoon, when the family were all at liberty to entertain, Mr.

Brock, usually grumly taciturn, under the influence of Miss Lucy's kindly interest which he mistook for admiration, became surprisingly loquacious: it was Mr. Lindsay who sat afflicted of mien, maintaining his morning's att.i.tude of silent gloom.

"Mr. Brock looks like a preacher, he's fixed up so fine today!" Miss Lucy remarked, as she scrutinized the heavy chinchilla coat hanging on the rack. "You must expect to come out mighty well on your tobacco, Mr.

Brock, ef you can take to wearin' such a fine overcoat as this, jest to a neighbor's house. Ain't hit nice, Mr. Lindsay?" Mr. Lindsay's reply was not audible.

"I always come out tolerable well, Miss Lucy, and manage to have a check-book ahead I can draw on," Mr. Brock avouched.

"Castle offered to loan me some money along last spreng (as he does all his tobacco men) ef I needed it, but I was proud to be able to say: 'Mr.

Castle, I can loan you some, ef you want it,' and I've had more offers fer my tobacco this time, than I care to consider."

"Castle says thar hain't but one terbaccer man in the County, Mr. Brock, and he fetched _him_ over from Clarke," hinted Mr. James.

Four years before, Mr. Brock had come at the Castle behest from Clarke County. Mr. Brock smiled broadly.

"I don't claim to be the only terbaccer man in the County," he protested.

"You wuz one the _big_ terbaccer men over thar, Castle says," went on the old man: "he says him and his brother, Reed, come mighty nigh havin'

a fight over you when he fetched you over here. I told Castle when he said that to me that you must have been a sort of a Hawkins Speed among the terbaccer fellers over in Clarke.

"You knowed that triflin' Hawkins, he moved out in Oklahomy, and got to be a big feller. His Ma come back here and told hit that hit wuz a common theng to see from fifteen to twenty men ride up in Hawkins' barn lot ever' mornin' and h'ist theirselves up on the fence and set thar, ever' man waitin' his turn to be advised by Hawkins in business matters!"

"Now Pa," protested Miss Lucy, "don't poke fun at company!"

"I hain't, Lucy Ann, I'm entertainin',--that's more'n some o' the crowd's a doin'," retorted Mr. James with a covert wink at Mr. Brock.

Late in the afternoon, Mr. Brock suggested that his host show him his new pigs. When the two men came back to the house, the old man wore a look of ill humor that the subject under discussion (the pigs) did not warrant, and an angry suspicion entered Mr. Lindsay's mind.

"I do wish I could do somethin' for your cold, Mr. Brock," Miss Lucy said solicitously, as that gentleman, preparing to leave them, indulged in a rattling cough. "Ef you'll jest wait a minute, I'll hunt you up some boneset, and Aunt Jane can make you some strong tea, jest before you go to bed. Drink hit right hot and maybe hit'll break up your cold."

With the pockets of the chinchilla bulging with the boneset, and his mind at peace with the world, Mr. Brock stepped jauntily out to the road at the foot of the lawn, but when he reached it, instead of going in the direction of his home, unnoticed by any of the James household, he turned and walked briskly down the path that led to the Doggetts.

"Eph," Mrs. Doggett informed her husband when he came in about nine that evening, having tarried until after supper at the home of his sister, Mrs. Gumm: "Eph, Mr. Lindsay hain't got no chance with Miss Lucy James!"

"How did you git that in your head, Ann?"

"They wuz a person here this evenin' that saw another man there today, and he says that the treatment Miss Lucy give that man wuz the kind o'

treatment a woman don't give n.o.body but a man she thenks is the greatest feller on earth. Mr. Lindsay, he jest tucked his head after the man come, like a whooped dog, the person said, and Miss Lucy never give Lindsay nary look ner word o' notice the whole day! And when the other man started, she told _him_ she wisht he'd come ever' Sunday,--said her and Miss Nancy and their Pa jest set thar all day like three old owls a wis.h.i.+n' somebody'd come to keep 'em comp'ny!"

"Who told you all that, Ann,--did you git hit from Mr. Brock?" Mr.

Doggett inquired, as he wrestled with a tight sock.

"From n.o.body else!" exulted Mrs. Doggett. "He's the man o' Miss Lucy's choice!"

"Now, old lady," cautioned Mr. Doggett, as he covered the fire, "don't you let Mr. Brock pull the wool over your eyes! You never can tell what a woman will do, ner a man neither fer that matter, but hit hain't best to believe more'n a quarter o' what a courtin' feller'll tell about how fur he's a beatin' another feller's time!"

"I'm a goin' up to Jim Doggett's, Miss Lucy," Mr. Lindsay announced coolly after the supper that evening,--"to set ontel bedtime, and I want to ask you, ef you haven't got no objections, to jest leave the hall door onlocked ontel I come back: I can git in then without disturbin'

anybody."

"Why, Mr. Lindsay, of course I will," fluttered Miss Lucy, "but ef you ain't a goin' to stay late, I'll set up and have a fire for you to warm your feet by."

"I thank you, Miss Lucy," Mr. Lindsay answered in the same frigidly polite tones: "I won't be gone long, but I don't want to put n.o.body to any trouble fer me, what time I'll be here. I wish you good evenin'."

Miss Lucy stood in dumb wonderment on the porch until the splash of Mr.

Lindsay's feet in the melting snow no longer reached her ear. What was the matter with him that he spoke to her as one stranger to another?

Unheeding the mud puddles in which he set his feet, Mr. Lindsay neared the tiny cottage Vaughn Castle furnished Jim Doggett. An owl quavered in the top of one of the ragged elms, when he paused on the step to remove his overshoes, and the bird's weird cry was not more despondent than the silent wail of the man's heart.

"She's a settin' there, now," he chafed, "a smilin' in the coals, a thenkin' about old Brock!" But he was mistaken; Miss Lucy was crying in her pillow.

Jim and Henrietty made Mr. Lindsay kindly welcome, but the plump child with the exquisitely molded features drew back the dainty chin that reminded one of nothing so much as a rosy peach, and looked shyly at him through the long curling black lashes of her dreamy brown eyes.

"Have you gone back on me too, Katie?" Mr. Lindsay's look of reproach brought the baby flying to his chair to crawl up in his lap.

"Me love Missa Linney," she lisped: "is 'oo dot a pitty f'ower for Tatie?"

"You'll never lose out with Katie, Mr. Lindsay," laughed her father, as the child began ecstatically to kiss the rose pictured on the bit of pasteboard her friend fished from an inside pocket, "ef you keep on a brengin' her flowers and picturs of flowers."

"I didn't believe she'd go back on me too," Mr. Lindsay murmured, with his cheek on the little one's red-brown hair.

"Been anybody at your house today?" asked astute Henrietty.

"Jest old man Brock."

"Did he stay all day?"

"Yes, staid until milkin' time."

"Wuz he primped up?" persisted Henrietty, with a glance at Jim.

"Yes, in an inch of his life," scoffed Mr. Lindsay, with the high collar in mind: "ever'theng he had on, as fur as I could see, wuz new. Miss Lucy," he concluded with burning sarcasm, "she told him he looked like a preacher!"

"Must 'a' been a courtin' rig," reflected Jim.

"Well Jim," expostulated Henrietty, "and poor Callie not been in her grave more'n six months! Ef I wuz Mr. Brock, I'd let my wife's tracks rain out before I took to courtin'!"

Mr. Lindsay laughed--a mirthless jeering laugh.

"Miss Lucy didn't seem to make much o' his payin' sech disrespect to Callie, a sparkin' around, the way she treated him today! Old Brock'll never be tuck up fer bein' too sociable, but I wisht you could 'a' saw him today, a makin' up to the old man and Miss Lucy,--a settin' about with his lips primped up as innocent and delicate, like they'd never shet over nothin' stronger'n b.u.t.termilk in his life. He's tuck a cold--been over to Lexington this last week a layin' out drunk as is his common habit when he goes off on them trips, in fact, hit's what he goes fer,--and Miss Lucy wuz a honeyin' him up, a wis.h.i.+n' she could do somethin' fer his cold, and a huntin' up h.o.a.rhound and dried stuffs fer him to docter with. Made me sick!"

"O Mr. Lindsay," placated Henrietty, "Miss Lucy thenks ever'body's all right and good. I heerd Mrs. Preacher Avery a sayin' to her one day--and she wuz jest a goin' by what Miss Lucy'd told her about 'em--'How fortunate,' she says, 'Miss Lucy, that your brothers and sisters all married good people, and in such good famblies!'

"And that Grace that married the middle Jeemes boy, she's about as mean a person as anybody is allowed to be, to keep a livin'! She treated me and Jim's Ma, when we went to see Miss Lucy one day when she wuz a visitin' there, like we wuzn't no better'n the dirt under her feet.

'Lucy,' she says, and Ma and me heerd her when we wuz leavin' the yard, 'do you allow those tobacco people--those tenant people, to call on you?'

"And another day she come down on the creek fis.h.i.+n'--her and them three holy-terrer chillern o' hers, and they happened to throw in their lines not fur from where me and Joey and little Katie wuz a fis.h.i.+n'. As soon as she saw us she drawed in her line, and says: 'Come, children, less go to a better place. I smell poor folks here!' Like poor people, ef they have any pride about keepin' clean, smell any different from rich folks!"

"I reckon now," remarked Jim, dryly, "sence she's broke up her husband, so he had to quit his store and go to clerkin' in a meat-shop, she don't have to go outside her own door to 'smell poor folks'!" Henrietty laughed.