When she had gone through the gate and across the little patch of
trodden grass into the sunken road, Christopher took up the ropes
and with a quick jerk of the buried ploughshare began his
plodding walk over the turned-up sod. The furrow was short, but
when he reached the end of it he paused from sheer exhaustion and
stood wiping the heavy moisture from his brow. The scene through
which he had just passed had left him quivering in every nerve,
as if he had been engaged in some terrible struggle against
physical odds. All at once he became aware that the afternoon was
too oppressive for field work, and, unhitching the horses from
the plough, he led them slowly back to the stable beyond the
house. As he went, it seemed to him that he had grown middle-aged
within the hour; his youth had departed as mysteriously as his
strength.
A little later, Tucker, who was sitting on the end of a big log
at the woodpile, looked up in surprise from the anthill he was
watching.
"Quit work early, eh, Christopher?"
"Yes; I've given out," replied Christopher, stopping beside him
and picking up the axe which lay in a scattered pile of chips.
"It's the spring weather, I reckon, but I'm not fit for a tougher
job than chopping wood."
"Well, I'd leave that off just now, if I were you."
Raising the axe, Christopher swung it lightly over his shoulder;
then, lowering it with a nerveless movement, he tossed it
impatiently on the ground.
"A queer thing happened just now, Uncle Tucker," he said, "a
thing you'll hardly believe even when I tell you. I had a visit
from Mrs. Wyndham, and she came to say--" he stammered and broke
off abruptly.
"Mrs. Wyndham?" repeated Tucker. "She's Bill Fletcher's
granddaughter, isn't she?"
"Maria Fletcher--you may have seen her when she lived here, five
or six years ago."
Tucker shook his head.
"Bless your heart, my boy, I haven't seen a woman except Lucy and
the girls for twenty-five years. But why did she come, I wonder?"
"That's the strange part, and you won't understand it until you
see her. She came because she had just heard--some one had told
her--about Fletcher's old rascality."
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Tucker beneath his breath. He gave
a long whistle and sat smiling at the little red anthill. "And
did she actually proffer an apology?" he inquired.
"An amendment, rather. The Hall will come to her at Fletcher's
death, and she walked over to say quite coolly that she wanted to
give it back to us. Think of that! To part with such a home for
the sake of mere right and justice."
"It is something to think about," assented Tucker, "and to think
hard about, too--and yet I cut my teeth on the theory that women
have no sense of honour. Now, that is pure, foolish, strait-laced
honour, and nothing else."
"Nothing else," repeated Christopher softly; "and if you'll
believe it, she cried--she really cried when I told her I
couldn't take it. Oh, she's wonderful!" he burst out suddenly,
all his awkward reserve dropping from him. "You can't be with her
ten minutes without feeling how good she is--good all through,
with a big goodness that isn't in the least like the little
prudishness of other women--"
He checked himself hastily, but not before Tucker had glanced up
with his pleasant smile.
"Well, my boy, I don't misunderstand you. I never knew a man yet
to begin a love affair with a panegyric on virtue. She's an
estimable woman, I dare say, and I presume she's plain."
"Plain!" gasped Christopher. "Why, she's beautiful--at least, you
think so when you see her smile."
"So she smiled through her tears, eh?"
Christopher started angrily. "Can you sit there on that log and
laugh at such a thing?" he demanded.
"Come, come," protested Tucker, "an honest laugh never turned a
sweet deed sour since the world began--and that was more than
sweet; it was fine. I'd like to know that woman, Christopher."
"You could never know her--no man could. She's all clear and
bright on the surface, but all mystery beneath."
"Ah, that's it; you see, there was never a fascinating woman yet
who was easy to understand. Wasn't it that shrewd old gallant,
Bolivar Blake, who said that in love an ounce of mystery was
worth a pound of morality?"
"It's like him: he said a lot of nonsense," commented
Christopher. "But to think," he added after a moment, "that she
should be Bill Fletcher's granddaughter!"
"Well, I knew her mother," returned Tucker, "and she was as
honest, God-fearing a body as ever trod this earth. She stood out
against Fletcher to the last, you know, and worked hard for her
living while that scamp, her husband, drank them both to death.
There are some people who are born with a downright genius for
honesty, and this girl may be one of them."
"I don't know--I don't know," said Christopher, in a voice which
had grown spiritless. Then after an instant in which he stared
blankly down at Tucker's ant-hill, he turned hurriedly away and
followed the little straggling path to the barn door.
>From the restlessness that pricked in his limbs there was no
escape, and after entering the barn he came out again and went
down into the pasture to the long bench beside the poplar spring.
Here, while the faint shadows of the young leaves played over
him, he sat with his head bent forward and his hands dropped
listlessly between his knees.
Around him there was the tender green of the spring meadows,
divided by a little brook where the willows shone pure silver
under the April wind. Near at hand a catbird sang in short,
tripping notes, and in the clump of briars by the spring a rabbit
sat alert for the first sound. So motionless was Christopher that
he seemed, sitting there by the pale gray body of a poplar,
almost to become a part of the tree against which he leaned--to
lose, for the time at least, his share in the moving animal life
around him.
At first there was mere blankness in his mind--an absence of
light and colour in which his thoughts were suddenly blotted out;
then, as the wind raised the hair upon his brow, he lifted his
eyes from the ground, and with the movement it seemed as if his
life ran backward to its beginning and he saw himself not as he
was to-day, but as he might have been in a period of time which
had no being.
Before him were his knotted and blistered hands, his long limbs
outstretched in their coarse clothes, but in the vision beyond
the little spring he walked proudly with his rightful heritage
upon him--a Blake by force of blood and circumstance. The world
lay before him--bright, alluring, a thing of enchanting promise,
and it was as if he looked for the first time upon the
possibilities contained in this life upon the earth. For an
instant the glow lasted--the beauty dwelt upon the vision, and he
beheld, clear and radiant, the happiness which might have been
his own; then it grew dark again, and he faced the brutal truth
in all its nakedness; he knew himself for what he was--a man
debased by ignorance and passion to the level of the beasts. He
had sold his birthright for a requital, which had sickened him
even in the moment of fulfilment.
To do him justice, now that the time had come for an
acknowledgment he felt no temptation to evade the judgment of his
own mind, nor to cheat himself with the belief that the boy was
marked for ruin before he saw him--that Will had worked out, in
vicious weakness, his own end. It was not the weakness, after
all, that he had played upon--it was rather the excitable passion
and the whimpering fears of the hereditary drunkard. He
remembered now the long days that he had given to his revenge,
the nights when he had tossed sleepless while he planned a
widening of the breach with Fletcher. That, at least was his
work, and his alone--the bitter hatred, more cruel than death,
with which the two now stood apart and snarled. It was a human
life that he had taken in his hand--he saw that now in his first
moment of awakening--a life that he had destroyed as deliberately
as if he had struck it dead before him. Day by day, step by step,
silent, unswerving, devilish, he had kept about his purpose, and
now at the last he had only to sit still and watch his triumph.
With a sob, he bowed his head in his clasped hands, and so shut
out the light.