The Bondboy Part 35

"No, I'd not say that such a light-headed creature would find much fodder in the ruminations and speculations and wise conclusions of our respected friend, Marcus," said he. "But a lad like Joe Newbolt, with a pair of eyes in his head like a prophet, will get a great deal of good, and even comfort, out of that book."

"We must get it from Judge Maxwell," said she conclusively.

"A strange lad, a strange lad," reflected the colonel.

"So tall and strong," said she. "Why, from the way his mother spoke of him, I expected to see a little fellow with trousers up to his knees."

She sat at the table and began cutting the leaves of a new magazine.

Colonel Price lifted his paper, smoothed the crumples out of it, adjusted the focus of his gla.s.ses, and resumed reading the county news.

They seemed contented and happy there, alone, with their fire in the chimney. Fire itself is a companion. It is like youth in a room.

There was between them a feeling of comrades.h.i.+p and understanding which seldom lives where youth stands on one hand, age on the other. Years ago Alice's mother had gone beyond the storms and vexations of this life.

Those two remaining of the little family had drawn together, closing up the s.p.a.ce that her absence had made. There seemed no disparity of years, and their affection and fidelity had come to be a community pride.

Alice was far from being the frivolous young thing that her father's banter indicated. She had a train of admirers, never thinning from year to year, to be certain, for it had been the regular fate of adolescent male Shelbyville to get itself tangled up in love with Alice Price ever since her high-school days. Many of the youngsters soon outgrew the affection; but it seemed to become a settled and permanent affliction in others, threatening to incapacitate them from happiness, according to their young view of it, and blast their ambitions in the face of the world.

Every girl, to greater or less extent, has her courtiers of that kind.

Nature has arranged this sort of tribute for the little queen-bees of humanity's hives. And so there were other girls in Shelbyville who had their train of beaus, but there was none quite so popular or so much desired as Alice Price.

Alice was considered the first beauty of the place. Added to this primary desirability was the fact that, in the fine gradations of pedigrees and the stringent exactions of blood which the patrician families of Shelbyville drew, Colonel Price and his daughter were the topmost plumes on the peac.o.c.k of aristocracy. Other young ladies seemed to make all haste to a.s.suage the pangs of at least one young man by marrying him, and to blunt the hopes of the rest by that decisive act.

Not so Alice Price. She was frank and friendly, as eager for the laughter of life as any healthy young woman should be, but she gave the young men kindly counsel when they became insistent or boresome, and sent them away.

Shelbyville was founded by Kentuckians; some of the old State's best families were represented there. A person's pedigree was his credentials in the society of the slumbering little town, nestled away among the blue hills of Missouri. It did not matter so much about one's past, for blood will have its vagaries and outflingings of youthful spirit; and even less what the future promised, just so there was blood to vouch for him at the present.

Blood had not done a great deal for Shelbyville, no matter what its excellencies in social and political life. The old town stood just about as it was finished, sixty years and more before that time. Upstart cities had sprung up not far away, throwing Shelbyville into hopeless shadow. The entire energies of its pioneers seemed to have been expended in its foundation, leaving them too much exhausted to transmit any of their former fire and strength to their sons. It followed that the sons of Shelbyville were not what their fathers had been.

Of course, there were exceptions where one of them rose once in a while and made a streak across the state or national firmament. Some of them were eminent in the grave professions; most of them were conductors of street cars in Kansas City, the nearest metropolis. There was not room in Shelbyville for all its sons to establish themselves at law, even if they had all been equipped, and if a man could not be a lawyer or a college professor, what was open to him, indeed, but conducting a street-car? That was a placid life.

It is remarkable how Kentuckians can maintain the breed of their horses through many generations, but so frequently fall short in the standard of their sons. Kentuckians are only an instance. The same might be said of kings.

Not understanding her exactions in the matter, nor her broader requirements, Shelbyville could not make out why Alice Price remained unmated. She was almost twenty, they said, which was coming very close to the age-limit in Shelbyville. It was nothing unusual for girls to marry there at seventeen, and become grandmothers at thirty-seven.

If she wanted better blood than she could find in Shelbyville, the old gentlemen said, twisting their white old heads in argumentative finality, she'd have to go to the n.o.bility of Europe. Even then she'd be running her chances, by Ned! They grew indignant when she refused to have their sons. They took it up with the colonel, they remonstrated, they went into pedigrees and offered to produce doc.u.ments.

There was Sh.e.l.ley Bryant's father, a fine, straight-backed old gentleman with beard as white as the plumage of a dove. His son was a small, red-faced, sandy-haired, pale-eyed chap with s.p.a.ces between his big front teeth. He traded in horses, and sometimes made as much as fifteen dollars on a Sat.u.r.day. His magnitude of glory and manly dignity as compared to his father's was about that of a tin pan to the sun.

When Alice refused Sh.e.l.ley, the old general--he had won the t.i.tle in war, unlike Colonel Price--went to the colonel and laid the matter off with a good deal of emphasis and flouris.h.i.+ng of his knotted black stick.

If a woman demanded blood, said the general, where could she aspire above Sh.e.l.ley? And beyond blood, what was there to be considered when it came to marrying and breeding up a race of men?

Champion that he was of blood and lineage, Colonel Price was nettled by the old gentleman's presumptuous urging of his unlikely son's cause.

"I am of the opinion, sir," Colonel Price replied, with a good bit of hauteur and heat, "that my daughter always has given, and always will give, the preference to brains!"

General Bryant had not spoken to the colonel for two months after that, and his son Sh.e.l.ley had proved his superiority by going off to Kansas City and taking a job reading gas-meters.

Colonel Price went to the mantel and filled his pipe from the tobacco-jar. He sat smoking for a little while, his paper on his knee.

"The lad's in deeper trouble, I'm afraid, than he understands," said he at last, as if continuing his reflections aloud, "and it may take a bigger heave to pull him out than any of us think right now."

"Oh, I hope not," said Alice, looking across at him suddenly, her eyes wide open with concern. "I understood that this was just a preliminary proceeding, a sort of formality to conform to the legal requirements, and that he would be released when they brought him up before Judge Maxwell. At least, that was the impression that he gave me of the case himself."

"Joe is an unsophisticated and honest lad," said the colonel. "There is something in the case that he refused to disclose or discuss before the coroner's jury, they say. I don't know what it is, but it's in relation to the quarrel between him and Isom Chase which preceded the tragedy. He seems to raise a point of honor on it, or something. I heard them say this afternoon that it was nothing but the fear that it would disclose his motive for the crime. They say he was making off with old Chase's money, but I don't believe that."

"They're wrong if they think that," said she, shaking her head seriously, "he'd never do a thing like that."

"No, I don't believe he would. But they found a bag of money in the room, old Chase had it clamped in the hook of his arm, they say."

"Well, I'm sure Joe Newbolt never had his hands on it, anyhow," said she.

"That's right," approved the colonel, nodding in slow thoughtfulness; "we must stand up for him, for his own sake as well as Peter's. He's worthy."

"And he's innocent. Can't you see that, father?"

"As plain as daylight," the colonel said.

The colonel stretched out his legs toward the blaze, crossed his feet and smoked in comfort.

"But I wonder what it can be that the boy's holding back?"

"He has a reason for it, whatever it is," she declared.

"That's as certain as taxes," said the colonel. "He's a remarkable boy, considering the chances he's had--bound out like a n.i.g.g.e.r slave, and beaten and starved, I'll warrant. A remark-able lad; very, very. Don't you think so, Alice?"

"I think he is, indeed," said she.

A long silence.

A stick in the chimney burned in two, the heavy ends outside the dogs dropped down, the red brands pointing upward. The colonel put his hand to his beard and sat in meditation. The wind was rising. Now and then it sounded like a groan in the chimney-top. Gray ashes formed, frost-like, over the ardent coals. The silence between them held unbroken.

Both sat, thought-wandering, looking into the fire....

CHAPTER XIII

UNTIL THE DAY BREAK

Although Isom Chase had been in his grave a week, and Judge Little had been cracking his coat-tails over the road between his home and the county-seat daily, the matter of the will and the administration of the estate remained as in the beginning.

Judge Little had filed the will for probate, and had made application for letters of administration, which the court had denied. Under the terms of the will, it was pointed out, he was empowered to act in that capacity only in case of the testator's death before the majority of the legatee. The date of the doc.u.ment proved that the heir was now long past his majority, and the only interest that remained to Judge Little in the matter seemed to be the discovery of the testator's unknown, unseen, and unbelieved-in son.

If Isom ever had fathered a son, indeed, and the child had died in infancy, the fact had slipped the recollection of the oldest settler.

Perhaps the proof of that mysterious matter lay in the hands of the two witnesses to Isom's will. They should know, if anybody knew, people said.

One of these witnesses, Thomas Cogshawl, had died long since, and there remained behind neither trace nor remembrance of him save a leaning, yellowed tombstone carrying the record of his achievements in this world. They were succinctly recounted in two words: Born and Died. His descendants were scattered, his family dispersed.