The Deliverance Part 25

CHAPTER II. Between Christopher and Will

An hour later Christopher was at work in the stable, when he heard a careless whistle outside, and Will Fletcher looked in at the open door.

"I say, Chris, take a turn off and come down to Tom Spade's," he urged.

Christopher, who was descending from the loft with an armful of straw, paused midway of the ladder and regarded his visitor with perceptible hesitation.

"I can't this evening," he answered; "the light is almost gone, and I've a good deal to get through with after dark. I'll manage better to-morrow, if I can. By the way, why didn't you show up at Weatherby's?"

Will came in and sat down on the edge of a big wooden box which contained the harness. In the four years he had changed but little in appearance, though his slim figure had shot up rapidly in height. His chestnut hair grew in high peaks from his temples and swept in a single lock above his small, sparkling eyes, which held an expression of intelligent animation. On the whole, it was not an unpleasing face, despite the tremulous droop of the mouth, already darkened by the faint beginning of a brown mustache.

"Oh, Molly Peterkin stopped me in the road," he replied readily.

"I'd caught her eye once or twice before, but this was the first chance we'd had to speak. I tell you she's a peach, Christopher."

Christopher came down from the ladder and spread the straw evenly in the horses' stalls.

"So they say," he responded; "but I haven't much of an eye for women, you know. Now, when it comes to judging a leaf of tobacco, I'm a match for any man."

"Well, one can't be everything," remarked Will consolingly. He s.n.a.t.c.hed at a piece of straw that had fallen on the lowest rung of the ladder and began idly chewing it. "As for me I know a blamed sight more about women than I do about tobacco," he added, with a swagger.

Christopher glanced up, and at sight of the boyish figure burst into a hearty laugh.

"Oh, you're a jolly old sport, I know, and to think that Tom Spade has been accusing me of leading you astray! Why, you are already twice the man that I am."

"Pshaw! That's just grandpa's chatter! The old man rails at me day and night about you until it's a mortal wonder he doesn't drive me to the dogs outright. I'd like to see another fellow that would put up with it for a week. Captain Morrison told him, you know, that I hadn't done a peg of study for a year, and it brought on a scene that almost shook the roof. Now he swears I'm to go to the university next fall or hang."

"Well, I'd go, by all means."

"What under heaven could I do there? All those confounded languages Morrison poured into my head haven't left so much as a single letter of the alphabet. Ad nauseam is all I learned of Latin. I tell you I'd rather be a storekeeper any time than a scholar--books make me sick all over--and, when it comes to that, I don't believe I know much more to-day than you do."

A smile crossed Christopher's face, leaving it very grim. The words recalled to him his own earlier ambition--that of the gentlemanly scholar of the old order--and there flickered before his eyes the visionary library, suffused with firelight, and the translation of the "Iliad" he had meant to finish.

"I always told you it wasn't worth anything," he said roughly.

"She'd love you any better if you could spurt Greek?"

Will broke into a pleased laugh, his mind dwelling upon the fancy the other had conjured up so skilfully.

"Did you ever see such lips in your life?" he inquired.

Christopher shook his head. "I haven't noticed them, but Sol's have a way of sticking in my memory."

"Oh, you brute! It's a shame that she should have such a father.

He's about the worst I ever met."

"Some think the shame is on the other side, you know."

"That's a lie--she told me so. Fred Turner started the whole thing because she refused to marry him at the last moment. She found out suddenly that she wasn't in love with him. Girls are like that, you see. Why, Maria--" Christopher looked up quickly.

"I've nothing to do with your sister," he observed. "I know that; but it's true, all the same. Maria couldn't tell her own mind any better. Why, one day she was declaring that she was over head and ears in love with Jack, and the next she was wringing her hands and begging him to go away." "What are you going to do down at the store?" asked Christopher abruptly. "Oh, nothing in particular--just lounge, I suppose; there's never anything to do.

By the way, can't we have a hunt to-morrow?" "I'll see about it.

Look here, is your grandfather any worse than usual? He stormed at me like mad yesterday because I wouldn't turn my team of oxen out of the road." "It's like blasting rock to get a decent word out of him. The only time he's been good-humoured for four years was the week we were away together. He offered me five thousand dollars down if I'd never speak to you again." "You don't say so!" exclaimed Christopher. He bent his head and stood looking thoughtfully at the matted straw under foot. "Well, you had a chance to turn a pretty penny," he said, in a tone of gentle raillery. "Oh, hang it! What do you mean?" demanded Will. "Of course, I wasn't going back on you like that just to please grandpa. I'd have been a confounded sneak if I had!" "You're a jolly good chap and no mistake! But the old man would have been pleased, I reckon?" Will grinned.

"You bet he would! I could twist him round my finger but for you, Aunt Saidie says." "It will be all the same in the end, though.

The whole thing will come to you some day." "Oh, yes. Maria got her share, and Wyndham has made ducks and drakes of it." "Your grandfather's aging, too, isn't he?"

"Rather," returned Will, with a curious mixture of amiable lightness and cool brutality. "He's gone off at least twenty years since that time I had pneumonia in your barn. That wrecked him, Aunt Saidie says, and all because he knew he'd have to put up with you when the doctor told him to let me have my way. His temper gets worse, too, all the time. I declare, he sometimes makes me wish he were dead and buried." "Oh, he'll live long enough yet, never fear--those wiry, cross-grained people are as tough as lightwood knots. It's a pity, though, he wants to bully you like that--it would kill me in a day." A flush mounted to Will's forehead. "I knew you'd think so," he said, "and it's what I tell him all the time. He's got no business meddling with me so much, and I won't stand it." "He ought to get a dog," suggested Christopher indifferently. "Well, I'm not a dog, and I'll make him understand it yet. Oh, you think I'm an awful milksop, of course, but I'll show you otherwise some day. I'd like to know if you could have done any better in my place?" "Done! Why, I shouldn't have been in your place long, that's all." "I shan't, either, for that matter; but I've got to humour him a little, you see, because he holds the purse-strings." "He'd never go so far as to kick you out, would he?" "Well, hardly. I'm all he has, you know. He doesn't like Maria because of her fine airs, much as he thinks of education. I've got to be a gentleman, he says; but as for him, he wouldn't give up one of his vulgar habits to save anybody's soul. His trouble with Maria all came of her reproving him for drinking out of his saucer. Now, I don't mind that kind of thing so much, but Maria used to say she'd rather have him steal, any day, than gulp his coffee. Why are you laughing so?"

"Oh, nothing. Are you going to Tom's now? I've got to work." Will slid down from the big box and sauntered toward the door, pausing on the little wooden step to light a cigarette. "Drop in if you get a chance," he threw back over his shoulder, with a puff of smoke. In a few moments Christopher finished his work, and, coming outside, closed the stable door. Then he walked a few paces along the little path stopping from time to time to gaze across the darkening landscape. A light mist was wreathed about the tops of the old lilac-bushes, where it glimmered so indistinctly that it seemed as if one might dispel it by a breath; and farther away the soft evening colours had settled over the great fields, beyond which a clear yellow line was just visible above the distant woods. The wind was sharp with an edge of frost, and as it blew into his face he raised his head and drank long, invigorating drafts. From the cattle-pen hard by he smelled the fresh breath of the cows, and around him were those other odours, vague, familiar, pleasant, which are loosened at twilight in the open country. The time had been when the mere physical contact with the air would have filled him with a quiet satisfaction, but during the last four years he had lost gradually his sensitiveness to external things--to the changes of the seasons as to the beauties of an autumn sunrise. A clear morning had ceased to arouse in him the old buoyant energy, and he had lost the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten his labour in the fields. It was as if a clog fettered his simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his family. With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted. There were times, even, when he grew almost suspicious of Cynthia's patience, and at such moments his irritation was manifested in a sullen reserve. To himself he could give no explanation of his state of mind; he knew merely that he retreated day by day farther into the shadow of his loneliness, and that, while in his heart he still craved human sympathy, an expression of it even from those he loved was, above all, the thing he most bitterly resented. A light flashed in the kitchen, and he went on slowly toward the house. As he reached the back porch he saw that Lila was sitting at the kitchen window looking wearily out into the dusk. The firelight scintillated in her eyes, and as she turned quickly at a sound within the room he noticed with a pang that the sparkles were caused by teardrops on her lashes. His heart quickened at the sight of her drooping figure, and an impulse seized him to go in and comfort her at any cost. Then his severe constraint laid an icy hold upon him, and he hesitated with his hand upon the door.

"If I go in and speak to her, what is there for me to say?" he thought, overcome by his horror of any uncontrolled emotion. "We will merely go over the old complaints, the endless explanations.

She will probably weep like a child, and I shall feel a brute when I look on and keep silent. In the first place, if I speak to her, what is there for me to say? If I simply beg her to stop crying, or if I rush in and urge her to marry Jim Weatherby to-morrow, what good can come of either course? She doesn't wait for my consent to the marriage, for she is as old as I am, and knows her own heart much better than I know mine. It is true that she is too beautiful to waste away like this, but how can I prevent it, or what is there for me to do?"

Again came the impulse to go in and fold her in his arms, but before he had taken the first step he yielded, as always, to his strange reserve, and he realised that if he entered it would be but to a.s.sume his customary unconcern, from the shelter of which he would probably make a few commonplace remarks on trivial subjects. The emotional situation would be ignored by them all, he knew; they would treat it absolutely as if it had no existence, as if its voice was not speaking to them in the silence, and they would break their bread and drink their coffee in apparent unconsciousness that supper was not the single thing that engrossed their thoughts. And all the time they would be face to face with the knowledge that they had demanded that Lila should sacrifice her life.

Presently Cynthia came out and called him, and he went in carelessly and sat down at the table. Lila left the window and slipped into her place, and when Tucker joined them she cut up his food as usual and prepared his coffee.

"Uncle Tucker's cup has no handle, Cynthia," she said with concern. "Let me take this one and give him another."

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Cynthia, bending over to examine the break with her near-sighted squint. "We'll soon have to begin using Aunt Susannah's set, if this keeps up. Uncle Boaz, you've broken another cup to-day."

Her tone was sharp with irritation, and the fine wrinkles caused by ceaseless small worries appeared instantly between her eyebrows. Christopher, watching her, remembered that she had worn the same expression during the scene with Lila, and it annoyed him unspeakably that she should be able to descend so readily, and with equal energy, upon so insignificant a grievance as a bit of broken china.

Uncle Boaz hobbled round the table and peered contemptuously at the cup which Lila held.

"Dar warn' no use bruckin' dat ar one," he observed, "'caze 'twuz bruck a'ready." " Oh, there won't be a piece left presently,"

pursued Cynthia indignantly; and Christopher felt suddenly that there was something contemptible in the pa.s.sion she expended upon trifles. He wondered if Tucker noticed how horribly petty it all was to lament a broken cup when the tears were hardly dried on Lila's cheeks. Finis.h.i.+ng hurriedly, he pushed back his chair and rose from the table, shaking his head in response to Cynthia's request that he should go in to see his mother. "Not now," he said impatiently, with that nervous avoidance of the person he loved best. "I'll be back in time to carry her to bed, but I've got to take a half-hour off and look in on Tom Spade." "She really ought to go to bed before sundown," responded Cynthia, "but nothing under heaven will persuade her to do so. It's her wonderful will that keeps her alive, just as it keeps her sitting bolt upright in that old chair. I don't believe there's another woman on earth who could have done it for more than twenty years." Taking down his hat from a big nail in the wall, Christopher stood for a moment abstractedly fingering the brim.

"Well, I'll be back shortly," he said at last, and went out hurriedly into the darkness. At the instant he could not tell why he had so suddenly decided to follow Will Fletcher to the store, but, as usual, when the impulse came to him he proceeded to act promptly as it directed. Strangely enough, the boy was the one human being whom he felt no inclination to avoid, and the least oppressive moments that he knew were the reckless ones they spent together. While his daily companion was mentally and morally upon a lower plane than his own, the a.s.sociation was not without a balm for his wounded pride; and the knowledge that it was still possible to a.s.sume superiority to Fletcher's heir was, so far as he himself admitted, the one consolation that his life contained.

As for his feeling toward Will Fletcher as an individual, it was the outcome of so curious a mixture of attraction and repulsion that he had long ceased from any attempt to define it as pure emotion. For the last four years the boy had been, as Tom Spade put it, "the very shadow on the man's footsteps," and yet at the end of that time it was almost impossible for Christopher to acknowledge either his liking or his hatred. He had suffered him for his own end, that was all, and he had come at last almost to enjoy the tolerance that he displayed. The hero wors.h.i.+p--the natural imitation of youth-- was at least not unpleasant, and there had been days during a brief absence of the boy when Christopher had, to his surprise, become aware of a positive vacancy in his surroundings. So long as Will made no evident attempt to rise above him--so long, indeed, as Fletcher's grandson kept to Fletcher's level, it was possible that the companions.h.i.+p would continue as harmoniously as it had begun. In the store he found Tom Spade and his wife--an angular, strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the reputation of a shrew with noisy honours. When he asked for Will, the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying and nodded toward the half-open door of the adjoining room.

"Several of the young fellows are in thar now," he remarked offhand, "an' I've jest had to go in an' git between Fred Turner an' Will Fletcher. They came to out an' out blows, an' I had to shake 'em both by the scuff of thar necks befo' they'd hish

snarlin'. Bless yo' life, all about a woman, too, every last word of it. Well, well, meanin' no disrespect to you, Susan, it's a queer thing that a man can't be born, married, or buried without a woman gittin' herself mixed up in the business. If she ain't wrappin' you in swaddlin' bands, you may be sho' she's measurin'

off yo' windin'-sheet. Mark my words, Mr. Christopher, I don't believe thar's ever been a fight fought on this earth--be it a battle or a plain fisticuff--that it warn't started in the brain of somebody's mother, wife, or sweetheart an' it's most likely to have been the sweetheart. It is strange, when you come to study 'bout it, how sech peaceable-lookin' creaturs as women kin have sech hearty appet.i.tes for trouble."

"Well, trouble may be born of a woman, but it generally manages to take the shape of a man," observed Mrs. Spade from behind the counter, where she was filling a big gla.s.s jar with a fresh supply of striped peppermint candy. "And as far as that goes, ever sence the Garden of Eden, men have taken a good deal mo'

pleasure in layin' the blame on thar wives than they do in layin'

blows on the devil. It's a fortunate woman that don't wake up the day after the weddin' an' find she's married an Adam instid of a man. However, they are as the Lord made 'em, I reckon," she finished charitably, "which ain't so much to thar credit as it sounds, seein' they could have done over sech a po' job with precious little trouble."

"Oh, I warn't aimin' at you, Susan," Tom hastened to a.s.sure her, aware from experience that he entered an argument only to be worsted. "You've been a good wife to me, for all yo' sharp tongue, an' I've never had to git up an' light the fire sence the day I married you. Yes, you've been a first-rate wife to me, an'

no mistake."

"I'm the last person you need tell that to," was Mrs. Spade's retort. "I don't reckon I've b'iled inside an' sweated outside for mo' than twenty years without knowin' it. Lord! Lord! If it took as hard work to be a Christian as it does to be a wife, thar'd be mighty few but men in the next world--an' they'd git thar jest by followin' like sheep arter Adam--"

"I declar', Susan, I didn't mean to rile you," urged Tom, breaking in upon the flow of words with an appealing effort to divert its course. "I was merely crackin' a joke with Mr.

Christopher, you know."

"I'm plum sick of these here jokes that's got to have a woman on the p'int of 'em," returned Mrs. Spade, tightly s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g on the top of the gla.s.s jar. "I've always noticed that thar ain't nothin' so funny in this world but it gits a long sight funnier if a man kin turn it on his wife."

"Now, my dear--" helplessly expostulated Tom.