When Uncle Ben, or “Benjamin Daubigny, Esq.,” as he was already known in
the columns of the “Star,” accompanied Miss Cressy McKinstry on her
way home after the first display of attention and hospitality since
his accession to wealth and position, he remained for some moments in a
state of bewildered and smiling idiocy. It was true that their meeting
was chance and accidental; it was true that Cressy had accepted his
attention with lazy amusement; it was true that she had suddenly and
audaciously left him on the borders of the McKinstry woods in a way
that might have seemed rude and abrupt to any escort less invincibly
good-humored than Uncle Ben, but none of these things marred his fatuous
felicity. It is even probable that in his gratuitous belief that his
timid attentions had been too marked and impulsive, he attributed
Cressy's flight to a maidenly coyness that pleasurably increased his
admiration for her and his confidence in himself. In his abstraction of
enjoyment and in the gathering darkness he ran against a fir-tree very
much as he had done while walking with her, and he confusedly apologized
to it as he had to her, and by her own appellation. In this way
he eventually overran his trail and found himself unexpectedly and
apologetically in the clearing before the school-house.
“Ef this ain't the singlerest thing, miss,” he said, and then stopped
suddenly. A faint noise in the school-house like the sound of splintered
wood attracted his attention. The master was evidently there. If he was
alone he would speak to him.
He went to the window, looked in, and in an instant his amiable
abstraction left him. He crept softly to the door, tried it, and then
putting his powerful shoulder against the panel, forced the lock from
its fastenings. He entered the room as Seth Davis, frightened but
furious, lifted himself from before the master's desk which he had just
broken open. He had barely time to conceal something in his pocket and
close the lid again before Uncle Ben approached him.
“What mouut ye be doin' here, Seth Davis?” he asked with the slow
deliberation which in that locality meant mischief.
“And what mouut YOU be doin' here, Mister Ben Dabney?” said Seth,
resuming his effrontery.
“Well,” returned Uncle Ben, planting himself in the aisle before his
opponent, “I ain't doin' no sheriff's posse business jest now, but I
reckon to keep my hand in far enuff to purtect other folks' property,”
he added, with a significant glance at the broken lock of the desk.
“Ben Dabney,” said Seth in snarling expostulation, “I hain't got no
quar'll with ye!”
“Then hand me over whatever you took just now from teacher's desk and
we'll talk about that afterwards,” said Uncle Ben advancing.
“I tell ye I hain't got no quar'll with ye, Uncle Ben,” continued Seth,
retreating with a malignant sneer; “and when you talk of protectin'
other folks' property, mebbe ye'd better protect YOUR OWN--or what ye'd
like to call so--instead of quar'llin' with the man that's helpin'
ye. I've got yer the proofs that that sneakin' hound of a Yankee
school-master that Cress McKinstry's hell bent on, and that the old
man and old woman are just chuckin' into her arms, is a lyin',
black-hearted, hypocritical seducer”--
“Stop!” said Uncle Ben in a voice that made the crazy casement rattle.
He strode towards Seth Davis, no longer with his habitual careful,
hesitating step, but with a tread that seemed to shake the whole
school-room. A single dominant clutch of his powerful right hand on the
young man's breast forced him backwards into the vacant chair of the
master. His usually florid face had grown as gray as the twilight;
his menacing form in a moment filled the little room and darkened the
windows. Then in some inexplicable reaction his figure slightly drooped,
he laid one heavy hand tremblingly on the desk, and with the other
affected to wipe his mouth after his old embarrassed fashion.
“What's that you were sayin' o' Cressy?” he said huskily.
“Wot everybody says,” said the frightened Seth, gaining a cowardly
confidence under his adversary's emotion. “Wot every cub that sets yer
under his cantin' teachin', and sees 'em together, knows. It's wot you'd
hev knowed ef he and Roop Filgee hadn't played ye fer a softy all the
time. And while you've bin hangin' round yer fer a flicker of Cressy's
gownd as she prances out o' school, he's bin lyin' low and laffin' at
ye, and while he's turned Roop over to keep you here, pretendin' to give
ye lessons, he's bin gallivantin' round with her and huggin' and kissin'
her in barns and in the brush--and now YOU want to quar'll with me.”
He stopped, panting for breath, and stared malignantly in the gray face
of his hearer. But Uncle Ben only lifted his heavy hand mildly with
an awkward gesture of warning, stepped softly in his old cautious
hesitating manner to the open door, closed it, and returned gently:--
“I reckon ye got in through the winder, didn't ye, Seth?” he said, with
a labored affectation of unemotional ease, “a kind o' one leg over, and
one, two, and then you're in, eh?”
“Never you mind HOW I got in, Ben Dabney,” returned Seth, his hostility
and insolence increasing with his opponent's evident weakness, “ez long
ez I got yer and got, by G-d! what I kem here fer! For whiles all
this was goin' on, and whiles the old fool man and old fool woman was
swallowin' what they did see and blinkin' at what they didn't, and
huggin' themselves that they'd got high-toned kempany fer their darter,
that high-toned kempany was playin' THEM too, by G-d! Yes, Sir! that
high-toned, cantin' school-teacher was keepin' a married woman in
'Frisco, all the while he was here honey-foglin' with Cressy, and I've
got the papers yer to prove it.” He tapped his breast-pocket with a
coarse laugh and thrust his face forward into the gray shadow of his
adversary's.
“An' you sorter spotted their bein' in this yer desk and bursted it?”
said Uncle Ben, gravely examining the broken lock in the darkness as if
it were the most important feature of the incident.
Seth nodded. “You bet your life. I saw him through the winder only this
afternoon lookin over 'em alone, and I reckoned to lay my hands on 'em
if I had to bust him or his desk. And I did!” he added with a triumphant
chuckle.
“And you did--sure pop!” said Uncle Ben with slow deliberate admiration,
passing his heavy hand along the splintered lid. “And you reckon, Seth,
that this yer showin' of him up will break off enythin' betwixt him
and this yer--this yer Miss--Miss McKinstry?” he continued with labored
formality.
“I reckon ef the old fool McKinstry don't shoot him in his tracks
thar'll be white men enough in Injin Springs to ride this high-toned,
pizenous hypocrit on a rail outer the settlement!”
“That's so!” said Uncle Ben musingly, after a thoughtful pause, in
which he still seemed to be more occupied with the broken desk than his
companion's remark. Then he went on cautiously: “And ez this thing orter
be worked mighty fine, Seth, p'r'aps, on the hull, you'd better let me
have them papers.”
“What! YOU?” snarled Seth, drawing back with a glance of angry
suspicion; “not if I know it!”
“Seth,” said Uncle Ben, resting his elbows on the desk confidentially,
and speaking with painful and heavy deliberation, “when you first
interdoosed this yer subject you elluded to my hevin', so to speak,
rights o' preemption and interference with this young lady, and that
in your opinion, I wasn't purtectin' them rights. It 'pears to me
that, allowin' that to be gospel truth, them ther papers orter be in MY
possession--you hevin' so to speak no rights to purtect, bein' off the
board with this yer young lady, and bein' moved gin'rally by free and
independent cussedness. And ez I sed afore, this sort o' thing havin'
to be worked mighty fine, and them papers manniperlated with judgment, I
reckon, Seth, if you don't objeck, I'll hev--hev--to trouble you.”
Seth started to his feet with a rapid glance at the door, but Uncle Ben
had risen again with the same alarming expression of completely filling
the darkened school-room, and of shaking the floor beneath him at the
slightest movement. Already he fancied he saw Uncle Ben's powerful arm
hovering above him ready to descend. It suddenly occurred to him that if
he left the execution of his scheme of exposure and vengeance to Uncle
Ben, the onus of stealing the letters would fall equally upon their
possessor. This advantage seemed more probable than the danger of Uncle
Ben's weakly yielding them up to the master. In the latter case he,
Seth, could still circulate the report of having seen the letters which
Uncle Ben had himself stolen in a fit of jealousy--a hypothesis the more
readily accepted from the latter's familiar knowledge of the schoolhouse
and his presumed ambitious jealousy of Cressy in his present attitude
as a man of position. With affected reluctance and hesitation he put his
hand to his breast-pocket.
“Of course,” he said, “if you're kalkilatin' to take up the quar'll on
YOUR rights, and ez Cressy ain't anythin' more to me, YOU orter hev the
proofs. Only don't trust them into that hound's hands. Once he gets 'em
again he'll secure a warrant agin you for stealin'. That'll be his game.
I'd show 'em to HER first--don't ye see?--and I reckon ef she's old
Ma'am McKinstry's darter, she'll make it lively for him.”
He handed the letters to the looming figure before him. It seemed to
become again a yielding mortal, and said in a hesitating voice, “P'r'aps
you'd better make tracks outer this, Seth, and leave me yer to put
things to rights and fix up that door and the desk agin to-morrow
mornin'. He'd better not know it to onct, and so start a row about bein'
broken into.”
The proposition seemed to please Seth; he even extended his hand in the
darkness. But he met only an irresponsive void. With a slight shrug of
his shoulders and a grunting farewell, he felt his way to the door
and disappeared. For a few moments it seemed as if Uncle Ben had also
deserted the schoolhouse, so profound and quiet was the hush that fell
upon it. But as the eye became accustomed to the shadow a grayish bulk
appeared to grow out of it over the master's desk and shaped itself into
the broad figure of Uncle Ben. Later, when the moon rose and looked in
at the window, it saw him as the master had seen him on the first day
he had begun his lessons in the school-house, with his face bent forward
over the desk and the same look of child-like perplexity and struggle
that he had worn at his allotted task. Unheroic, ridiculous, and no
doubt blundering and idiotic as then, but still vaguely persistent in
his thought, he remained for some moments in this attitude. Then rising
and taking advantage of the moonlight that flooded the desk, he set
himself to mend the broken lock with a large mechanical clasp-knife
he produced from his pocket, and the aid of his workmanlike thumb
and finger. Presently he began to whistle softly, at first a little
artificially and with relapses of reflective silence. The lock of the
desk restored, he secured into position again that part of the door-lock
which he had burst off in his entrance. This done, he closed the door
gently and once more stepped out into the moonlit clearing. In replacing
his knife in his pocket he took out the letters which he had not touched
since they were handed to him in the darkness. His first glance at the
handwriting caused him to stop. Then still staring at it, he began to
move slowly and automatically backwards to the porch. When he reached
it he sat down, unfolded the letter, and without attempting to read it,
turned its pages over and over with the unfamiliarity of an illiterate
man in search of the signature. This when found apparently plunged him
again into motionless abstraction. Only once he changed his position
to pull up the legs of his trousers, open his knees, and extend the
distance between his feet, and then with the unfolded pages carefully
laid in the moonlit space thus opened before him, regarded them with
dubious speculation. At the end of ten minutes he rose with a sigh
of physical and mental relaxation, refolded the letter, put it in his
pocket, and made his way to the town.
When he reached the hotel he turned into the bar-room, and observing
that it happened to be comparatively deserted, asked for a glass of
whiskey. In response to the barkeeper's glance of curiosity--as Uncle
Ben seldom drank, and then only as a social function with others--he
explained:--
“I reckon straight whiskey is about ez good ez the next thing for blind
chills.”
The bar-keeper here interposed that in his larger medical experience he
had found the exhibition of ginger in combination with gin attended
with effect, although it was evident that in his business capacity he
regarded Uncle Ben, as a drinker, with distrust.
“Ye ain't seen Mr. Ford hanging round yer lately?” continued Uncle Ben
with laborious ease.
The bar-keeper, with his eye still scornfully fixed on his customer, but
his hands which were engaged in washing his glasses under the
counter giving him the air of humorously communicating with a hidden
confederate, had not seen the school-master that afternoon.
Uncle Ben turned away and slowly mounted the staircase to the master's
room. After a moment's pause on the landing, which must have been
painfully obvious to any one who heard his heavy ascent, he gave two
timid raps on the door which were equally ridiculous in contrast with
his powerful tread. The door was opened promptly by the master.
“Oh, it's you, is it?” he said shortly. “Come in.”
Uncle Ben entered without noticing the somewhat ungracious form
of invitation. “It war me,” he said, “dropped in, not finding ye
downstairs. Let's have a drink.”
The master gazed at Uncle Ben, who, owing to his abstraction, had not
yet wiped his mouth of the liquor he had imperfectly swallowed, and was
in consequence more redolent of whiskey than a confirmed toper. He rang
the bell for the desired refreshment with a slightly cynical smile. He
was satisfied that his visitor, like many others of humble position, was
succumbing to his good fortune.
“I wanted to see ye, Mr. Ford,” he began, taking an unproffered chair
and depositing his hat after some hesitation outside the door, “in
regard to what I onct told ye about my wife in Mizzouri. P'r'aps you
disremember?”
“I remember,” returned the master resignedly.
“You know it was that arternoon that fool Stacey sent the sheriff and
the Harrisons over to McKinstry's barn.”
“Go on!” petulantly said the master, who had his own reasons for not
caring to recall it.
“It was that arternoon, you know, that you hadn't time to hark to
me--hevin' to go off on an engagement,” continued Uncle Ben with
protracted deliberation, “and”--
“Yes, yes, I remember,” interrupted the master exasperatedly, “and
really unless you get on faster, I'll have to leave you again.”
“It was that arternoon,” said Uncle Ben without heeding him, “when
I told you I hadn't any idea what had become o' my wife ez I left in
Mizzouri.”
“Yes,” said the master sharply, “and I told you it was your bounden duty
to look for her.”
“That's so,” said Uncle Ben nodding comfortably, “them's your very
words; on'y a leetle more strong than that, ef I don't disremember.
Well, I reckon I've got an idee!” The master assumed a sudden expression
of interest, but Uncle Ben did not vary his monotonous tone.
“I kem across that idee, so to speak, on the trail. I kem across it in
some letters ez was lying wide open in the brush. I picked em up and
I've got 'em here.”
He slowly took the letters from his pocket with one hand, while he
dragged the chair on which he was sitting beside the master. But with a
quick flush of indignation Mr. Ford rose and extended his hand.
“These are MY letters, Dabney,” he said sternly, “stolen from my desk.
Who has dared to do this?”
But Uncle Ben had, as if accidentally, interposed his elbow between the
master and Seth's spoils.
“Then it's all right?” he returned deliberately. “I brought 'em here
because I thought they might give an idee where my wife was. For them
letters is in her own handwrite. You remember ez I told ez how she was a
scollard.”
The master sat back in his chair white and dumb. Incredible,
extraordinary, and utterly unlooked for as was this revelation, he felt
instinctively that it was true.
“I couldn't read it myself--ez you know. I didn't keer to ax any one
else to read it for me--you kin reckon why, too. And that's why I'm
troublin' you to-night, Mr. Ford--ez a friend.”
The master with a desperate effort recovered his voice. “It is
impossible. The lady who wrote those letters does not bear your name.
More than that,” he added with hasty irrelevance, “she is so free that
she is about to be married, as you might have read. You have made a
mistake, the handwriting may be like, but it cannot be really your
wife's.”
Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. “It's her'n--there's no mistake. When
a man, Mr. Ford, hez studied that handwrite--havin', so to speak,
knowed it on'y from the OUTSIDE--from seein' it passin' like between
friends--that man's chances o' bein' mistook ain't ez great ez the man's
who on'y takes in the sense of the words that might b'long to everybody.
And her name not bein' the same ez mine, don't foller. Ef she got a
divorce she'd take her old gal's name--the name of her fammerly. And
that would seem to allow she DID get a divorce. What mowt she hev called
herself when she writ this?”
The master saw his opportunity and rose to it with a chivalrous
indignation, that for the moment imposed even upon himself. “I decline
to answer that question,” he said angrily. “I refuse to allow the name
of any woman who honors me with her confidence to be dragged into the
infamous outrage that has been committed upon me and common decency. And
I shall hold the thief and scoundrel--whoever he may be--answerable to
myself in the absence of her natural protector.”
Uncle Ben surveyed the hero of these glittering generalities with
undisguised admiration. He extended his hand to him gravely.
“Shake! Ef another proof was wantin', Mr. Ford, of that bein' my wife's
letter,” he said, “that high-toned style of yours would settle it. For,
ef thar was one thing she DID like, it was that sort of po'try. And one
reason why her and me didn't get on, and why I skedaddled, was because
it wasn't in my line. Et's all in trainin'! On'y a man ez had the Fourth
Reader at his fingers' ends could talk like that. Bein' brought up on
Dobell--ez is nowhere--it sorter lets me outer you, ez it did outer HER.
But allowin' it ain't the square thing for YOU to mention her name, that
wouldn't be nothin' agin' MY doin' it, and callin' her, well--Lou Price
in a keerless sort o' way, eh?”
“I decline to answer further,” replied the master quickly, although his
color had changed at the name. “I decline to say another word on the
matter until this mystery is cleared up--until I know who dared to break
into my desk and steal my property, and the purpose of this unheard-of
outrage. And I demand possession of those letters at once.”
Uncle Ben without a word put them in the master's hand, to his slight
surprise, and it must be added to his faint discomfiture, nor was it
decreased when Uncle Ben added, with grave naivete and a patronizing
pressure of his hand on his shoulder,--“In course ez you're taken' it
on to yourself, and ez Lou Price ain't got no further call on ME, they
orter be yours. Ez to who got 'em outer the desk, I reckon you ain't got
no suspicion of any one spyin' round ye--hev ye?”
In an instant the recollection of Seth Davis's face at the window and
the corroboration of Rupert's warning flashed across Ford's mind. The
hypothesis that Seth had imagined that they were Cressy's letters, and
had thrown them down without reading them when he had found out his
mistake, seemed natural. For if he had read them he would undoubtedly
have kept them to show to Cressy. The complex emotions that had
disturbed the master on the discovery of Uncle Ben's relationship to the
writer of the letters were resolving themselves into a furious rage at
Seth. But before he dared revenge himself he must be first assured that
Seth was ignorant of their contents. He turned to Uncle Ben.
“I have a suspicion, but to make it certain I must ask you for the
present to say nothing of this to any one.”
Uncle Ben nodded. “And when you hev found out and you're settled in your
mind that you kin make my mind easy about this yer Lou Price, ez we'll
call her, bein' divorced squarely, and bein', so to speak, in the way o'
gettin' married agin, ye might let me know ez a friend. I reckon I won't
trouble you any more to-night--onless you and me takes another sociable
drink together in the bar. No? Well, then, good-night.” He moved slowly
towards the door. With his hand on the lock he added: “Ef yer writin' to
her agin, you might say ez how you found ME lookin' well and comf'able,
and hopin' she's enjyin' the same blessin'. 'So long.”
He disappeared, leaving the master in a hopeless collapse of
conflicting, and, it is to be feared, not very heroic emotions.
The situation, which had begun so dramatically, had become suddenly
unromantically ludicrous, without, however, losing any of its
embarrassing quality. He was conscious that he occupied the singular
position of being more ridiculous than the husband--whose invincible and
complacent simplicity stung him like the most exquisite irony. For an
instant he was almost goaded into the fury of declaring that he had
broken off from the writer of the letters forever, but its inconsistency
with the chivalrous attitude he had just taken occurred to him in time
to prevent him from becoming doubly absurd. His rage with Seth Davis
seemed to him the only feeling left that was genuine and rational, and
yet, now that Uncle Ben had gone, even that had a spurious ring. It was
necessary for him to lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that
the letters MIGHT have been Cressy's, and desecrated by that scoundrel's
touch. Perhaps he had read them and left them to be picked up by others.
He looked over them carefully to see if their meaning would, to the
ordinary reader, appear obvious and compromising. His eye fell on the
first paragraph.
“I should not be quite fair with you, Jack, if I affected to disbelieve
in your faith in your love for me and its endurance, but I should be
still more unfair if I didn't tell you what I honestly believe, that at
your age you are apt to deceive yourself, and, without knowing it, to
deceive others. You confess you have not yet decided upon your career,
and you are always looking forward so hopefully, dear Jack, for a change
in the future, but you are willing to believe that far more serious
things than that will suffer no change in the mean time. If we continued
as we were, I, who am older than you and have more experience, might
learn the misery of seeing you change towards ME as I have changed
towards another, and for the same reason. If I were sure I could keep
pace with you in your dreams and your ambition, if I were sure that I
always knew WHAT they were, we might still be happy--but I am not sure,
and I dare not again risk my happiness on an uncertainty. In coming to
my present resolution I do not look for happiness, but at least I know
I shall not suffer disappointment, nor involve others in it. I confess I
am growing too old not to feel the value to a woman--a necessity to her
in this country--of security in her present and future position. Another
can give me that. And although you may call this a selfish view of our
relations, I believe that you will soon--if you do not, even as you read
this now--feel the justice of it, and thank me for taking it.”
With a smile of scorn he tore up the letter, in what he fondly believed
was the bitterness of an outraged trustful nature, forgetting that for
many weeks he had scarcely thought of its writer, and that he himself in
his conduct had already anticipated its truths.