Wayside Courtships Part 36

As he grew to hate the man more, he began to entertain the suspicions, which Wilber confessed to in confidence, concerning the burning of the mill.

They had a cheerful meal together again, for Miner did not come in until one o'clock. During the nooning Morris finished spading the flower beds, in spite of Mrs. Miner's entreaties that he should rest. It gave him great pleasure to work there with her and the children.

"You see, I'm lonesome here," he explained. "Just out of school, and I miss the boys and girls. I don't know anybody except a few of the carpenters here, and so--well, I kind of like it. I always helped around the house at home. It's all fun for me, so don't you say a word. I've got lots o' muscle to spare, and you're welcome to it."

He spaded away without many words. The warm sun shone down upon them all, and they made a pretty group. Mrs. Miner, rake in hand, was pulverizing the beds as fast as he spaded, her face flushed and almost happy. The children were wrist-deep in the fresh earth, planting twigs and pebbles, their babble of talk some way akin to the cry of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, the laugh of the robin, the twitter of the sparrow, the smell of spring, and the merry downpour of suns.h.i.+ne.

Mrs. Miner was silent. She was thinking how different her life would have been if her husband had only taken an interest in her affairs. She did not think of any one else as her husband, but only Miner in a different mood.

Morris went back to work. As the work neared the end, his determination to punish the scoundrel husband grew. His inclination to charge him with burning the mill grew stronger. He wondered if it wouldn't serve as a club. "Now, sir," he said, meeting Miner as he came out of the barn that night, "I'm done on the barn, but I'm not done on you. I'm goin' to whale you till you won't know yourself. I ought 'o 'a done it that first day at dinner." He advanced upon Miner, who backed away, scared at something he saw in the young man's eyes and something he heard in his inflexible tone of voice.

He thrust out his palm in a wild gesture. "Keep away from me! I'll split your heart if you touch me!"

Morris advanced another step, his eyes looking straight into Miner's with the level look of a tiger's. "No, y' won't! You're too much of an infernal, sneaky little _whelp_!"

At the word whelp, he cuffed him with his hammerlike fist, and Miner went down in a heap. He was so abject that the young man could only strike him with his open hand.

He took him by the s.h.i.+rt collar with his left hand and began to cuff him leisurely and terribly with his right. His blows punctuated his sentences. "You're a little [whack] villain. I'll thrash you till you won't see out of your blasted eyes for a month! I can't stand a man [here he jounced him up and down with his left hand, apparently with infinite satisfaction] who bullies his wife and children as you do [here he cuffed him again], and I'll make it my business to even things up----"

The prostrate man began to scream for help. He was livid with fear. He fancied murder in the blaze of his a.s.sailant's eye.

"Help! help! Minnie!"

"Call her by her first name now, will yeh? will yeh? Call her out to help yeh! Do you think she will? I want to tell you, besides, I know something about that mill burning. It's just like your contemptible mustard-seed of a soul to burn that mill!"

Mrs. Miner came flying out. She could not recognize her husband in the bleeding, dirty, abject thing squirming under the young man's knee.

"Why, Mr. Morris, who--why--why, it's Tom!" she gasped, her eyes distended with surprise and horror.

Morris looked up at her coolly. "Yes, it's Tom." He then gave his attention to the writhing figure under him. "Crawl, you infernal whelp!

Lick the dust, confound you! Quick!" he commanded, growing each moment more savage.

Mrs. Miner clung to his arm. "Please don't," she pleaded. "You're killing him."

Morris did not look up. "Oh, no, I ain't. I'm giving him a little taste of his own medicine." He flopped Miner over on his face and dragged him around in the dust like an old sack. "Beg her pardon, or I'll thrash the ground with yeh!"

"Please don't," pleaded the wife, using her whole strength to stop him in his circuit with the almost insensible Miner.

"Beg!" he said again, "beg, or I'll cave your backbone in." There was a terrible upward inflection in his voice now, a half-jocular tone that was more terrible than the m.u.f.fled snarl in which he had previously been speaking.

"I beg! I beg!" cried Miner.

Morris released him, and he crawled to a sitting posture. Mrs. Miner fell on her knees by his side, and began wiping the blood from his face.

She was breathless with sobbing and the children were screaming. The tears streamed down her face, which was white and drawn into ghastly wrinkles.

"You've killed him!" she gasped.

Morris put his hands in his pockets and looked down on them both, with a curious feeling of having done something which he might repent of. He felt in a way cut off from the satisfactory ending of the thing he had planned.

"Oh, you've killed him!"

"Oh, no, I haven't. He's all right." He looked at them a moment longer to see if there were any rage remaining in the face of the husband, and then at the wife to discover her feeling concerning his action. Then he looked back at the husband again, and apparently justified himself for what he had done by the memory of the ineffable shame to which the wife had been subjected.

"Now, if I hear another word of your abuse," he said, as he shook the dust from his own clothes and prepared to go, "I'll give you another that will make you think that this is all fooling. More than that," he said, turning again, "I know something that will put you where the crows won't eat you!--If I can be of any service to you, Mrs. Miner, at any time while I'm here, I hope you'll let me know. Good-by."

Mrs. Miner did not reply, and when Morris reached the gate and looked back she was still kneeling by the side of her husband, the sunlight s.h.i.+ning down upon her graceful head. Some way the problem had increased in complexity. He felt a disgust of her weakness, mingled with a feeling that he was losing something very fine and tender which had but just come into his life.

He went back to his work on the other side of the river, where his crew was working. He was called home a few weeks later, and he never saw husband or wife again. He learned from Wilber, however, in a short letter that things were going much the same as ever.

"Dear Sir: I don't know much about Miner. Hees purty quiet I guess.

Dock Moss thinks hees a little off his nut. I don't. I think its pur cussidness."

OF THOSE WHO SEEK.

I. THE PRISONED SOUL.

The Capitol swarmed with people.

Groups of legislators tramped noisily along the corridors, laughing loudly, gesticulating with pointed fingers or closed fists.

Squads of ragged, wondering, and wistful-eyed negroes, splashed with orange-colored mud from the fields, moved timidly on from magnificence to magnificence, keeping close to each other, solemn and silent. When they spoke they whispered. Others from the city streets laughed loudly and swaggered along to show their contempt for the place and their knowledge of its public character; but their insolence was half a.s.sumed.

Lean and lank Southerners, with the imperial cut on their pale, brown whiskers, alternated with stalwart, slouch-hatted Westerners.

Clean-shaven, pale clerks hurried to and fro; groups of sightseers infested every nook, and wore the look of those determined to see it all. They were accompanied often by one whose certainty of accent gave evidence of his fitness to be their guide. The sound of his voice proclaimed his judgments as he pushed his dazed wordless victims about.

In a group in the center of the checkered marble floor of the rotunda, a powerful Indian, dressed in semi-civilized fas.h.i.+on, was standing, looking wonderingly down into the upturned face of a little girl. The circle of bystanders silently studied both man and maid.

She was about eleven years of age and was tastefully dressed, and seemed a healthy child. Her face was solemn, sweet, and inquisitive. She held one half-opened hand in the air; with the other she touched the Indian's dark, strongly molded cheek, and pressed his long hair which streamed from beneath his broad white hat.

No one smiled. She was deaf and dumb and blind.

In her raised rosy little palm, with lightning-swift motion, fluttered the hand of her teacher. By the teacher's side stood an Indian interpreter, dressed in hunting s.h.i.+rt and broad hat.

"I am Umatilla," said the chief, in answer to a question from the teacher. His deep voice was like the mutter of a lion; he stood with gentle dignity still looking wonderingly down into the girl's sweet, solemn, and eager face.

A bystander said, "Poor child!" in a low, tremulous tone, followed by a sigh.

The little one's hand, light, swift, and seeking, touched the Indian's ringed ears and pressed again his long hair, while her teacher's swift fingers said, "This strange man comes from a far-off land, from vast mountains and forests away toward the western sea. The wind and sun have made his face dark, and the long hair is a protection from the cold. He is a chief."

Under her broad hat the child's exquisite mouth, with its dimpled corners, remained calm but touchingly wistful. Her eyes were in shadow.

Her chin was a perfect oval, delicately beautiful, like the curving lines of a peach, with the clear transparency of color of a flower's chalice.

But the bystander said again, "Poor child!" as if a shudder of awe, of wordless compa.s.sion and bitterness, shook him.

She was so beautiful, so gifted in spirit, to be thus shut in! Her inclosing flesh was so fine and sweet, it seemed impossible it could be an impa.s.sable, almost impenetrable wall.