INCLINATION AGAINST CONSCIENCE.
The shock had affected Woodell very much as what is known as a
"knock-out" in sparring affects a man. Absolutely unconscious at
first, he recovered intelligence slowly, though practically uninjured.
Harlson stood beside the grotesquely trussed figure and watched the
return to consciousness with curiosity. The cool night air assisted
the restoration.
Woodell opened his eyes, seemed to be wondering where he was, and then,
as realization came, made an attempt to rise. The effort was
ridiculous, and he but flopped like a winged loon. The contortion of
his face was frightful as there came upon him full understanding of his
situation. He struggled fiercely once again, then lay quiet, looking
up at Harlson with malignant eyes.
Harlson's fit of rage had gone entirely. There had come upon him a
swift compunction. "Why did you try to murder me?" he asked.
"You know well enough, ---- you!" came from between the teeth of the
man on the ground.
"I do not. I can't understand it! Have I ever injured you?"
"Injured me? You dodging, lying thief! What are you quibbling for?
You know just how you have injured me. Why don't you finish the thing?
Get a club and knock out my brains! They won't hang you, for you can
say it was in self-defense, and my being here will prove it. Do it!
Have a complete job of what you have done this summer!"
The man, writhed in his ignoble position, and tears gushed from his
eyes. Harlson reached forward and withdrew the pitchfork handle.
Woodell scrambled to his feet ungracefully, for his hands were still
strapped together before him.
"Look here, Woodell," said Harlson, "let us go to the road and walk
down toward your place. I'll not unstrap your hands just yet. I think
I'll feel a trifle more comfortable having you as you are. I want to
talk with you. I want you to be fair with me. Was it because of Jenny
Bierce?"
"You know it was."
"But why haven't I as good a right to make love to Jenny as you or any
other man?"
Woodell turned fiercely: "More quibbling." Then in a tone of demand:
"Tell me this: Are you going to marry her?"
Harlson hesitated. "I don't know."
"You do know! You know you haven't any idea of such a thing. You are
just amusing yourself until you get your cursed fence built."
"What is that to you?"
"To me! She was engaged to be married to me, and we were happy
together until you came; and you've come, broken up two lives and done
no one any good, not even yourself, you hungry wolf! She cares more
for me to-day than she does for you. She is better suited to me! But
with your trick of words and your ways you tickled her fancy at first,
and, finally, you charmed her somehow as they say snakes do birds. And
she'll not be fit for anybody when you go away!" The big man sobbed
like a baby.
Harlson made no immediate reply. Was not what Woodell was saying but
the truth? Did he really care for Jenny or she for him? What had it
been but pastime? He could give her up. It would be a little hard, of
course. It is always so when a man has to surrender those close
relations with a woman which are so fascinating, and which come only
when there has been established that sympathy between them which, if
not love, is involuntarily considered by each something that way.
There was a struggle in his mind between the instinct to be honorable
and straight-forward and fair, and to do what was right, and the
impulse, on the other hand, to refuse anything demanded by an
assailant. But the would-be murderer was not a murderer, after all.
He was only a temporary lunatic whom Harlson himself had driven mad.
That was the just way to look at it. As for Jenny, she would not
suffer much. There had not been time enough. Not in a day does a man
or woman have that effect produced upon the heart which lasts forever.
So, were he to disappear from the affair, nothing very serious, nothing
affecting materially the whole of any life would follow. The odds were
against him, or rather against the worst side of him, in the reflection.
He acted promptly. "I don't know about it," he said; "I'm puzzled. I
don't care much. I don't know just where I stand, anyhow. I want to
be decent, but it seems to me I have some rights; I'm all tangled up.
I don't think you imagine I am afraid--I wasn't when I was a little boy
in school with you as a bigger one. You know that--and I'm not now.
But that doesn't count. I've been studying over a lot of things, and I
don't know what to do. I think you may be right, and that I have been
all wrong. I give it up. But I do know that a fellow can't make any
mistake if he tries to do what is right, and, in figuring out the
thing, takes the side that seems to be against him. He can fight, he
can do anything better after he feels that he has done that. Hold on."
Woodell stopped, wonderingly. Harlson unbuckled the strap about the
man's hands and threw it into the bushes at the roadside.
The farmer straightened himself up, reached out his arms, clutched his
palms together, and looked at the other man. Harlson spoke bluntly.
"Yes, I know you want to try it again. But, as I feel now, it could
only end one way. I don't mind. I only wanted to loose you before I
say what I wanted to say, so that you wouldn't think I was making terms
on my own account."
"Go on," said Woodell, gruffly, still stretching his arms.
"Well, it is just this. I don't think I've been doing the right thing.
I am going to leave Jenny Bierce to you. She will not care much, and
it will be all right in a little time. That is all. No, not quite!
You tried to kill me. Maybe I would have been as big a fool, just such
a crazy, jealous man as you, if things had been the other way. I don't
know. But I do know this, that your coming here to-night, except that
it has made me think, has nothing to do with what I have made up my
mind to. Here we are in the road. I don't want to sleep uneasily in
the barn. You tried to kill me. I have tried to decide on what is
right, and I will do it. Now, I want it settled with you. Here I am!
Do you want to fight?"
Woodell's face had been something worth seeing while Harlson was
speaking. He had followed the words of his late antagonist closely.
He grasped in a general way the intent expressed. There was a radiance
on his rough features.
"Do you really mean that?"
"Of course I do. What should I say it for if I didn't?"
"Then it will be all right."
"But do you want to fight?"
"No, I don't. I won't say you could lick me. It was partly luck
before. I won't give up that way. But you might. That doesn't
matter. I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I was crazy. You would have
been, in my place. And you won't have anything to do with Jenny again?
Oh, Harlson!"
And the two shook hands, and Harlson went back to his bed on the
clover-mow. He thought he had done a great and philosophically noble
deed--remember, this was but a boy little over twenty--and he slept
like a lamb. And next evening he went over to Woodell's home and said
he wanted some supper, and after the meal laughed at Woodell, and said
he was going off to another farm to pitch quoits until it got too dark,
and the two young men walked down the road together and exchanged some
confidences, and when they parted each was on good terms with the
other. This was strange, following an attempted murder, but such
things happen in real life. And it may be that Woodell had the worst
of the bargain in that conversation.
He was better equipped for the winning of Jenny, but the troubled man
with whom he had been talking had reached out blindly for aid in
another direction. Not much satisfaction was the result. Woodell was
of the kind who, if religious at all, believe without much reasoning,
but Harlson had repeated to him the reasoning of the Hindoo skeptic.
Woodell had at least intelligence enough to follow the line of thought,
and, in after time, when he was a family man and deacon, the lines
would recur to vex him sorely.
And Jenny did not pine away and die because she saw little more of
Harlson. He met her and explained briefly that they had been doing
wrong, and that he and Woodell had talked. She turned pale, then red,
but said little. Of the struggle in the night Jenny never learned.
She inferred, of course, that her lover had gone in a straightforward
way to Harlson, and that his demands had been acceded to. She was
gratified, perhaps, that she had become a person of much importance.
She thought more of Woodell and less of Harlson, because of the issue
of the debate, as she understood it, and, when the first pique and
passion were over, became resigned enough to the outlook. She had been
on the verge of sin, but she was not the only woman in the world to
carry a secret. Woodell's pleadings were met with yielding, and the
wedding occurred within a month. Perhaps she made a better wife
because her husband did not know the truth in detail, and she felt the
burden of a debt, but that is doubtful. Though fair of feature, she
was not deep enough of mind to even brood. Of course, too, by this
standard should be lessened the real degree of all erring. Harlson,
wiser, was much the more guilty of the two and deserved some
punishment, but, as an equation, it could, at least, since he was
young, be said in his defense that as he was to Jenny so had Mrs.
Rolfston been to him. The person who had changed things was that same
fair animal of the town.
And shallow-minded legislatures will enact preposterous social laws for
the regulation of the morals of boys, and imagine they have placed
another paving-stone in the road to the millennium, while the Mrs.
Rolfstons are having a riotous time of it.