The Miller Of Old Church Part 14

"Well, it would take mo'n a man to do that, I reckon," she replied, amiably enough, "I saw through 'em early, an' when you've once seen through 'em it's surprisin' how soon the foolishness of men begins to look like any other foolishness on earth."

She was listened to with respectful and flattering attention by her guests, who leaned forward with pipes in hand and vacant, admiring eyes on her still comely features. It was a matter of gossip that she had refused half the county, and that her reason for marrying William had been that he wasn't "set," and would be easy to manage. The event had proved the prophecy, and to all appearance it was a perfectly successful mating.

Abel was the first to move under her gaze, and rising from his chair by the fire, he took up his hat, and made his way slowly through the group, which parted grudgingly, and closed quickly together.

"Take a night to sleep on yo' temper Abel," called Solomon after him, "and git a good breakfast inside of you befo' you start out to do anything rash. Well, I must be gittin' along, folks, sad as it seems to me. It's strange to think, now ain't it--that when Nannie was married to Tom Middles.e.x an' livin' six miles over yonder at Piping Tree, I couldn't have got over that road too fast on my way to her."

"You'd still feel like that, friend, if she were still married to Tom Middles.e.x," quavered old Adam. "'Tis the woman we oughtn't to think on that draws us with a hair."

"Now that's a case in p'int," replied Solomon, nodding after the vanis.h.i.+ng figure of Abel. "All his wits are in his eyes, as you can tell jest to look at him--an' for sech a little hop-o'-my-thumb female that don't reach nigh up to his shoulder."

"I can't see any particular good looks in the gal, myself," remarked Mrs. Bottom, "but then, when it's b'iled down to the p'int, it ain't her, but his own wishes he's chasin'."

"Did you mark the way she veered from him to Mr. Jonathan the other day?" inquired William Ming, "she's the sort that would flirt with a scarecrow if thar warn't anything else goin'."

"The truth is that her eyes are bigger than her morals, an' I said it the first time I ever seed her," rejoined old Adam. "My taste, even when I was young, never ran to women that was mo' eyes than figger."

Still discoursing, they stumbled out into the dusk, through which Abel's large figure loomed ahead of them.

"A man that's born to trouble, an' that of the fightin' kind--as the sparks fly upward," added the elder.

As the miller drove out of the wood, the rustle of the leaves under his wheels changed from the soft murmurs in the moist hollows to the crisp crackle in the open places. In the west Venus hung silver white over the new moon, and below the star and the crescent a single pine tree stood as clearly defined as if it were pasted on a grey background of sky.

Half a mile farther on, where his road narrowed abruptly, a voice hallooed to him as he approached, and driving nearer he discerned dimly a man's figure standing beside a horse that had gone lame.

"Halloo, there? Have you a light? My horse has got a stone or cast a shoe, I can't make out which it is."

Reaching for the lantern under his seat, Abel alighted and after calling "Whoa!" to his mare, walked a few steps forward to the stationary horse and rider in the dusk ahead. As the light shone on the man and he recognized Jonathan Gay, he hesitated an instant, as though uncertain whether to advance or retreat.

"If I'd known 'twas you," he observed gruffly, "I shouldn't have been so quick about getting down out of my gig."

"Thank you, all the same," replied Gay in his pleasant voice. "It doesn't seem to be a stone, after all," he added. "I'm rather afraid he got a sprain when he stumbled into a hole a yard or two back."

Kneeling in the road, Abel lifted the horse's foot, and felt for the injury with a practised hand.

"Needs a bandage," he said at last curtly. "I happen to have a bottle of liniment in the gig."

The light glided like a winged insect over the strip of corduroy road, and a minute later the pungent odour of the liniment floated to Gay's nostrils.

"Give me anything you have for a compress," remarked the miller, dropping again on his knees. "Pick a few of those Jimson weeds by the fence and lend me your handkerchief--or a couple of them would be still better. There, now, that's the best I can do," he added after a moment.

"Lead him slowly and be sure to look where you're going."

"I will, thank you--but can you find your way without the lantern?"

"Hannah can travel the road in the dark and so can I for that matter.

You needn't thank me, by the way. I wouldn't have troubled about you, but I've a liking for horses."

"A jolly good thing it was for me that you came up at the instant. I say, Revercomb, I'm sorry it was your brother I got into a row with this morning."

"Oh, that's another score. We haven't settled it yet," retorted the Miller, as he stepped into his gig. "You've warned us off your land, so I'll trouble you to keep to the turnpike and avoid the bridle path that pa.s.ses my pasture."

Before Gay could reply, the other had whistled to his mare and was spinning over the flat road into the star-spangled distance.

When the miller reached home and entered the kitchen, his mother's first words related to the plight of Archie, who sat sullenly nursing his bruised mouth in one corner.

"If you've got any of the Hawtrey blood in yo' veins you'll take sides with the po' boy," she said. "Thar's Abner settin' over thar so everlastin' mealy mouthed that he won't say nothin' mo' to the p'int than that he knew all the time it would happen."

"Well, that's enough, ain't it?" growled Abner; "I did know it would happen sure enough from the outset."

"Thar ain't any rousin' him," observed Sarah, with scorn. "I declar, I believe pa over thar has got mo' sperit in him even if he does live mostly on cornmeal mush."

"Plenty of sperit in me--plenty of sperit," chirped grandfather, alert as an aged sparrow that still contrives to hop stiffly in the suns.h.i.+ne.

"Oh, yes, he's sperit left in him, though he's three years older than I am," remarked grandmother, with bitterness. "_He_ ain't wo' out with work and with child bearin' befo' he was ninety. _He_ ain't bald, _he_ ain't toothless," she concluded pa.s.sionately, as if each of grandfather's blessings were an additional insult to her. "He can still eat hard food when he wants it."

"For pity's sake, be quiet, ma," commanded Sarah sternly, at which the old woman broke into sobs.

"Yes, I must be quiet, but _he_ can still talk," she moaned.

"Tell me about it, Archie," said Abel, drawing off his overcoat and sitting down to his supper. "I pa.s.sed Jonathan Gay in the road and he asked me to bind up his horse's sprain."

"He'd be d.a.m.ned befo' I'd bind up a sprain for him!" burst out Archie, with violence. "Met me with a string of partridges this morning and jumped on me, blast him, as if he'd caught me in the act of stealing.

I'd like to know if we hadn't hunted on that land before he or his rotten old uncle were ever thought of?"

"Ah, those were merry days, those were!" piped grandfather. "Used to go huntin' myself when I was young, with Mr. Jordan, an' brought home any day as many fine birds as I could carry. Trained his dogs for him, too."

"Thar was al'ays time for him to go huntin'," whimpered grandmother.

"What are you goin' to do about it, Abel?" asked Sarah, turning upon him with the smoking skillet in her hand.

At the question Blossom Revercomb, who was seated at work under the lamp, raised her head and waited with an anxious, expectant look for the answer. She was embroidering a pair of velvet slippers for Mr. Mullen--a task begun with pa.s.sion and now ending with weariness. While she listened for Abel's response, her long embroidery needle remained suspended over the toe of the slipper, where it gleamed in the lamp light.

"I don't know," replied Abel, and Blossom drew a repressed sigh of relief; "I've just ordered him to keep clear of our land, if that's what you're hintin' at."

"If you had the sperit of yo' grandpa you'd have knocked him down in the road," said Sarah angrily.

"Yes, yes, I'd have knocked him down in the road," chimed in the old man, with the eagerness of a child.

"You can't knock a man down when he asks to borrow your lantern,"

returned Abel, doggedly, on the defensive.

"Oh, you can't, can't you?" jeered Sarah. "All you're good for, I reckon, is to shuck corn or peel potatoes!"

For a minute Abel stared at her in silence. "I declare, mother, I don't believe you're any better than a heathen," he remarked sadly at last.

"Well, I'm not the kind of Christian you are, anyway," retorted Sarah, "I'd like to know whar you'll find anything in Scripture about not knockin' a man down because he asks you for a lantern. I thought I knew my Bible--but I reckon you are better acquainted with it--you an' yo'

Mr. Mullen."

"Of course, you know your Bible. I wasn't meanin' that."