Norton had ridden down to Belle Plain ostensibly to view certain of
those improvements that went so far toward embittering Tom Ware's
existence. Gossip had it that he kept the road hot between the two
places, and this was an added strain on the planter. But Norton did not
go to Belle Plain to see Mr. Ware. If that gentleman had been the sole
attraction, he would have made just one visit suffice; had it preceded
his own, he would have attended Tom's funeral, and considered that he
had done a very decent thing. On the present occasion he and Betty were
strolling about the rehabilitated grounds, and Norton was exhibiting
that interest and enthusiasm which Betty always expected of him.
“You are certainly making the old place look up!” he said, as they
passed out upon the terrace. He had noted casually when he rode up the
lane half an hour before that a horse was tied near Ware's office; a man
now issued from the building and swung himself into the saddle. Norton
turned abruptly to Betty. “What's that fellow doing here?” he asked.
“I suppose he comes to see Tom,” said Betty.
“Is he here often?”
“Every day or so.” Betty's tone was indifferent. For reasons which had
seemed good and sufficient she had never discussed Captain Murrell with
Norton.
“Every day or so?” repeated Norton. “But you don't see him, Betty?”
“No, of course I don't.”
“Tom has no business allowing that fellow around; if he don't know this
some one ought to tell him!” Norton was working himself up into a fine
rage.
“He doesn't bother me, Charley, if that's what you're thinking of. Let's
talk of something else.”
“He'd better not, or I'll make it a quarrel with him.”
“Oh, you mustn't think of that, Charley, indeed you mustn't!” cried
Betty in some alarm, for young Mr. Norton was both impulsive and
hot-headed.
“Well, just how often is Murrell here?” he demanded.
“I told you--every few days. He and Tom seem wonderfully congenial.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Tom always sees him in his office,” explained Betty. She might have
made her explanation fuller on this point had she cared to do so.
“That's the first decent thing I ever heard of Tom!” said Norton with
warmth. “But he ought to kick him off the place the first chance he
gets.”
“Do you think Belle Plain is ever going to look as it did, Charley?--as
we remember it when we were children?” asked Betty, giving a new
direction to the conversation.
“Why, of course it is, dear, you are doing wonders!”
“I've really been ashamed of the place, the way it looked--and I can't
understand Tom!”
“Don't try to,” advised Norton. “Look here, Betty, do you remember
it was right on this terrace I met you for the first time? My mother
brought me down, and I arrived with a strong prejudice against you,
young lady, because of the clothes I'd been put into--they were fine but
oppressive.”
“How long did the prejudice last, Charley?”
“It didn't last at all, I thought you altogether the nicest little girl
I'd ever seen--just what I think now, I wish you could care for me,
Betty, just a little; just enough to marry me.”
“But, Charley, I do care for you! I'm very, very fond of you.”
“Well, don't make such a merit of it,” he said, and they both laughed.
“I'm at an awful disadvantage, Betty, from having proposed so often.
That gives it a humorous touch which doesn't properly reflect the state
of my feeling at all--and you hear me without the least emotion; so long
as I keep my distance we might just as well be discussing the weather!”
“You are very good about that--”
“Keeping my distance, you mean?--Betty, if you knew how much resolution
that calls for! I wonder if that isn't my mistake--” And Norton came a
step nearer and took her in his arms.
With her hands on his shoulders Betty pushed him back, while the rich
color came into her cheeks. She was remembering Bruce Carrington, who
had not kept his distance.
“Please, Charley,” she said half angrily, “I do like you tremendously,
but I simply can't bear you when you act like this--let me go!”
“Betty, I despair of you ever caring for me!” and as Norton turned
abruptly away he saw Tom Ware appear from about a corner of the house.
“Oh, hang it, there's Tom!”
“You are very nice, anyway, Charley--” said Betty hurriedly, fortified
by the planter's approach.
Ware stalked toward them. Having dined with Betty as recently as the day
before, he contented himself with a nod in her direction. His greeting
to Norton was a more ambitious undertaking; he said he was pleased to
see him; but in so far as facial expression might have indorsed the
statement this pleasure was well disguised, it did not get into his
features. Pausing on the terrace beside them, he indulged in certain
observations on the state of the crops and the weather.
“You've lost a couple of niggers, I hear?” he added with an oblique
glance.
“Yes,” said Norton.
“Got on the track of them yet?” Norton shook his head. “I understand
you've a new overseer?” continued Ware, with another oblique glance.
“Then you understand wrong--Carrington's my guest,” said Norton. “He's
talking of putting in a crop for himself next season, so he's willing to
help me make mine.”
Betty turned quickly at the mention of Carrington's name. She had known
that he was still at Thicket Point, and having heard him spoken of
as Norton's new overseer, had meant to ask Charley if he were really
filling that position. An undefined sense of relief came to her with
Norton's reply to Tom's question.
“Going to turn farmer, is he?” asked Ware.
“So he says.” Feeling that the only subjects in which he had ever known
Ware to take the slightest interest, namely, crops and slaves, were
exhausted, Norton was extremely disappointed when the planter manifested
a disposition to play the host and returned to the house with them,
where his mere presence, forbidding and sullen, was such a hardship that
Norton shortly took his leave.
“Well, hang Tom!” he said, as he rode away from Belle Plain. “If he
thinks he can freeze me out there's a long siege ahead of him!”
Issuing from the lane he turned his face in the direction of home, but
he did not urge his horse off a walk. To leave Belle Plain and Betty
demanded always his utmost resolution. His way took him into the solemn
twilight of untouched solitudes. A cool breath rippled through the
depths of the woods and shaped its own soft harmonies where it lifted
the great branches that arched the road. He crossed strips of bottom
land where the water stood in still pools about the gnarled and
moss-covered trunks of trees. At intervals down some sluggish inlet
he caught sight of the yellow flood that was pouring past, or saw the
Arkansas coast beyond, with its mighty sweep of unbroken forest that
rose out of the river mists and blended with the gray distance that lay
along the horizon.
He was within two miles of Thicket Point when, passing about a sudden
turn in the road, he found himself confronted by three men, and before
he could gather up his reins which he held loosely, one of them had
seized his horse by the bit. Norton was unarmed, he had not even a
riding-whip. This being the case he prepared to make the best of an
unpleasant situation which he felt he could not alter. He ran his eye
over the three men.
“I am sorry, gentlemen, but I reckon you have hold of the wrong
person--”
“Get down!” said one of the men briefly.
“I haven't any money, that's why I say you have hold of the wrong
person.”
“We don't want your money.” The unexpectedness of this reply somewhat
disturbed Norton.
“What do you want, then?” he asked.
“We got a word to say to you.”
“I can hear it in the saddle.”
“Get down!” repeated the man, a surly, bull-necked fellow. “Come--hurry
up!” he added.
Norton hesitated for an instant, then swung himself out of the saddle
and stood in the road confronting the spokesman of the party.
“Now, what do you wish to say to me?” he asked.
“Just this--you keep away from Belle Plain.”
“You go to hell!” said Norton promptly. The man glowered heavily at hire
through the gathering gloom of twilight.
“We want your word that you'll keep away from Belle Plain,” he said with
sullen insistence.
“Well, you won't get it!” responded Norton with quiet decision.
“We won't?”
“Certainly you won't!” Norton's eyes began to flash. He wondered
if these were Tom Ware's emissaries. He was both quick-tempered and
high-spirited. Falling back a step, he sprang forward and dealt the
bullnecked man a savage blow. The latter grunted heavily but kept his
feet. In the same instant one of the men who had never taken his eyes
off Norton from the moment he quitted the saddle, raised his fist and
struck the young planter in the back of the neck.
“You cur!” cried Norton, blind and dizzy, as he wheeled on him.
“Damn him--let him have it!” roared the bullnecked man.
Afterward Norton was able to remember that the three rushed on him,
that he was knocked down and kicked with merciless brutality, then
consciousness left him. He lay very still in the trampled dust of the
road. The bull-necked man regarded the limp figure in grim silence for a
moment.
“That'll do, he's had enough; we ain't to kill him this time,” he said.
An instant later he, with his two companions, had vanished silently into
the woods.
Norton's horse trotted down the road. When it entered the yard at
Thicket Point half an hour later, Carrington was on the porch.
“Is that you, Norton?” he called, but there was no response, and he saw
the horse was riderless. “Jeff!” he cried, summoning Norton's servant
from the house.
“What's the matter, Mas'r?” asked the negro, as he appeared in the open
door.
“Why, here's Mr. Norton's horse come home without him. Do you know where
he went this afternoon?”
“I heard him say he reckoned he'd ride over to Belle Plain, Mas'r,”
answered Jeff, grinning. “I 'low the hoss done broke away and come home
by himself--he couldn't a-throwed Mas'r Charley!”
“We'll make sure of that. Get lanterns, and a couple of the boys!” said
Carrington.
It was mid-afternoon of the day following before Betty heard of the
attack on Charley Norton. Tom brought the news, and she at once ordered
her horse saddled and was soon out on the river road with a black groom
trailing along through the dust in her wake. Tom's version of the attack
was that Charley, had been robbed and all but murdered, and Betty never
drew rein until she reached Thicket Point. As she galloped into the yard
Bruce Carrington came from the house. At sight of the girl, with her
wind-blown halo of bright hair, he paused uncertainly. By a gesture
Betty called him to her side.
“How is Mr. Norton?” she asked, extending her hand.
“The doctor says he'll be up and about inside of a week, anyhow, Miss
Malroy,” said Carrington.
Betty gave a great sigh of relief.
“Then his hurts are not serious?”
“No,” said Carrington, “they are not in any sense serious.”
“May I see him?”
“He's pretty well bandaged up, so he looks worse off than he is. If
you'll wait on the porch, I'll tell him you are here,” for Betty had
dismounted.
“If you please.”
Carrington passed on into the house. His face wore a look of somber
repression. Of course it was all right for her to come and see
Norton--they were old, old friends. He entered the room where Norton
lay.
“Miss Malroy is here,” he said shortly.
“Betty?--bless her dear heart!” cried Charley rather weakly. “Just
toss my clothes into the closet and draw up a chair... There-thank
you, Bruce, that will do--let her come along in now.” And as Carrington
quitted the room, Norton drew himself up on the pillows and faced the
door. “This is worth several beatings, Betty!” he exclaimed as she
appeared on the threshold. But much cotton and many bandages lent him
a rather fearful aspect, and Betty paused with a little gasp of dismay.
“I'm lots better than I look, I expect,” said Norton. “Couldn't you
arrange to come a little closer?” he added, laughing.
He bent to kiss the hand she gave him, but groaned with the exertion.
Then he looked up into her face and saw her eyes swimming with tears.
“What--tears? Tears for me, Betty?” and he was much moved.
“It's a perfect outrage! Who did it, Charley?” she asked.
“You sit down and I'll tell you all about it,” said Norton happily.
“Now tell me, Charley!” when she had seated herself.
“Who fetched you, Betty--old Tom?”
“No, I came alone.”
“Well, it's mighty kind of you. I'll be all right in a day or so. What
did you hear?--that I'd been attacked and half-killed?”
“Yes--and robbed.”
“There were three of the scoundrels. They made me climb out of the
saddle, and as I was unarmed they did as they pleased with me, which was
to stamp me flat in the road--”
“Charley!”
“I might almost be inclined to think they were friends of yours,
Betty--or at least friends of friends of yours.”
“What do you mean, Charley--friends of mine?”
“Well, you see they started in by stipulating that I should keep away
from Belle Plain, and the terms they proposed being on the face of them
preposterous, trouble quickly ensued--trouble for me, you understand.
But never mind, dear, the next man who undertakes to grab my horse by
the bit won't get off quite so easy.”
“Why should any one care whether you come to Belle Plain or not?”
“I wonder if my amiable friend, Tom, could have arranged this little
affair; it's sort of like old Tom to move in the dark, isn't it?”
“He couldn't--he wouldn't have done it, Charley!” but she looked
troubled, not too sure of this.
“Couldn't he? Well, maybe he couldn't--but he's afraid you'll marry
me--and I'm only afraid you won't. Betty, hasn't it ever seemed worth
your while to marry me just to give old Tom the scare of his life?”
“Please, Charley--” she began.
“I'm in a dreadful state of mind when I think of you alone at Belle
Plain--I wish you could love me, Betty!”
“I do love you. There is no one I care half so much for, Charley.”
Norton shook his bandaged head and heaved a prodigious sigh.
“That's merely saying you don't love any one.” He dropped back rather
wearily on his pillow. “Does Tom know about this?” he added.
“Yes.”
“Was he able to show a proper amount of surprise?”
“He appeared really shocked, Charley.”
“Well, then, it wasn't Tom. He never shows much emotion, but what he
does show he usually feels, I've noticed. I had rather hoped it was Tom,
I'd be glad to think that he was responsible; for if it wasn't Tom, who
was it?--who is it to whom it makes any difference how often I see you?”
“I don't know, Charley;” but her voice was uncertain.
“Look here, Betty; for the hundredth time, won't you marry me? I've
loved you ever since I was old enough to know what love meant. You've
been awfully sweet and patient with me, and I've tried to respect your
wishes and not speak of this except when it seemed necessary--” he
paused, and they both laughed a little, but he looked weak and helpless
with his bloodless face showing between the gaps in the bandages that
swathed him. Perhaps it was this sense of his helplessness that roused a
feeling in Betty that was new to her.
“You see, Charley, I fear--I am sure I don't love you the way I
should--to marry you--”
Charley, greatly excited, groaned and sat up, and groaned again.
“Oh, please, Charley-lie still!” she entreated.
“That's all right--and you needn't pull your hand away--you like me
better than any one else, you've told me so; well, don't you see that's
the beginning of really loving me?”
“But you wouldn't want to marry me at once?”
“Yes I would--right away--as soon as I am able to stir around!” said
Charley promptly. “Don't you see the immediate necessity there is of my
being in a position to care for you, Betty? I wasn't served this trick
for nothing.”
“You must try not to worry, Charley.”
“But I shall--I expect it's going to retard my recovery,” said the young
man gloomily. “I couldn't be worse off! Here I am flat on my back;
I can't come to you or keep watch over you. Let me have some hope,
dear--let me believe that you will marry me!”
She looked at him pityingly, and with a certain latent tenderness in her
mood.
“Do you really care so much for me, Charley?”
“I love you, Betty!--I want you to say you will marry me as soon as I
can stand by your side--you're not going?--I won't speak of this again
if it annoys you, dear!” for she had risen.
“I must, Charley--”
“Oh, don't--well, then, if you will go, I want Carrington to ride back
with you.”
“But I brought George with me--”
“Yes, I know, but I want you to take Carrington--the Lord knows what we
are coming to here in West Tennessee; I must have word that you reach
home safe.”
“Very well, then, I'll ask Mr. Carrington. Good-by, Charley, dear!”
Norton seemed to summon all his fortitude.
“You couldn't have done a kinder thing than come here, Betty; I can't
begin to tell you how grateful I am--and as for my loving you--why, I'll
just keep on doing that to the end. I can see myself a bent, old man
still pestering you with my attentions, and you a sweet, old lady with
snow-white hair and pink cheeks, still obdurate--still saying no! Oh,
Lord, isn't it awful!” He had lifted himself on his elbow, and now sank
back on his pillow.
Betty paused irresolutely.
“Charley--”
“Yes, dear?”
“Can't you be happy without me?”
“No.”
“But you don't try to be!”
“No use in my making any such foolish effort, I'd be doomed to failure.”
“Good-by, Charley--I really must go--”
He looked up yearningly into her face, and yielding to a sudden impulse,
she stooped and kissed him on the forehead, then she fled from the room.
“Oh, come back--Betty--” cried Norton, and his voice rose to a wail of
entreaty, but she was gone. She had been quite as much surprised by her
act as Charley himself.
In the yard, Carrington was waiting for her. Jeff had just brought up
Norton's horse, and though he made no display of weapons, the Kentuckian
had fully armed himself.
“I am going to ride to Belle Plain with you, Miss Malroy,” he said, as
he lifted her into her saddle.
“Do you think it necessary?” she asked, but she did not look at him.
“I hope not. I'll keep a bit in advance,” he added, as he mounted his
horse, and all Betty saw of him during their ride of five miles was his
broad back. At the entrance to Belle Plain he reined in his horse.
“I reckon it's all right, now,” he said briefly.
“You will return at once to Mr. Norton?” she asked. He nodded. “And you
will not leave him while he is helpless?”
“No, I'll not leave him,” said Carrington, giving her a steady glance.
“I am so glad, I--his friends will feel so much safer with you there. I
will send over in the morning to learn how he passed the night. Good-by,
Mr. Carrington.” And still refusing to meet his eyes, she gave him her
hand.
But Carrington did not quit the mouth of the lane until she had crossed
between the great fields of waving corn, and he had seen her pass up
the hillside beyond to the oak grove, where the four massive chimneys
of Belle Plain house showed their gray stone copings among the foliage.
With this last glimpse of her he turned away.