AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER
And yet, the next time Chad saw Margaret, she spoke to him shyly but
cordially, and when he did not come near her, she stopped him on the
street one day and reminded him of his promise to come and see them.
And Chad knew the truth at once--that she had never asked her father
about him, but had not wanted to know what she had been told she must
not know, and had properly taken it for granted that her father would
not ask Chad to his house, if there were a good reason why he should
not come. But Chad did not go even to the Christmas party that Margaret
gave in town, though the Major urged him. He spent Christmas with the
Major, and he did go to a country party, where the Major was delighted
with the boy's grace and agility dancing the quadrille, and where the
lad occasioned no little amusement with his improvisations in the way
of cutting pigeon's wings and shuffling, which he had learned in the
mountains. So the Major made him accept a loan and buy a suit for
social purposes after Christmas, and had him go to Madam Blake's
dancing school, and promise to go to the next party to which he was
asked. And that Chad did--to the big gray house on the corner, through
whose widespread doors his longing eyes had watched Margaret and her
friends flitting like butterflies months before.
It intoxicated the boy--the lights, music, flowers, the little girls in
white--and Margaret. For the first time he met her friends, Nellie
Hunt, sister to Richard; Elizabeth Morgan, cousin to John Morgan; and
Miss Jennie Overstreet, who, young as she was, wrote poems--but Chad
had eyes only for Margaret. It was while he was dancing a quadrille
with her, that he noticed a tall, pale youth with black hair, glaring
at him, and he recognized Georgie Forbes, a champion of Margaret, and
the old enemy who had caused his first trouble in his new home. Chad
laughed with fearless gladness, and Margaret tossed her head. It was
Georgie now who blackened and spread the blot on Chad's good name, and
it was Georgie to whom Chad--fast learning the ways of
gentlemen--promptly sent a pompous challenge, that the difficulty might
be settled "in any way the gentleman saw fit." Georgie insultingly
declined to fight with one who was not his equal, and Chad boxed his
jaws in the presence of a crowd, floored him with one blow, and
contemptuously twisted his nose. Thereafter open comment ceased. Chad
was making himself known. He was the swiftest runner on the football
field; he had the quickest brain in mathematics; he was elected to the
Periclean Society, and astonished his fellow-members with a fiery
denunciation of the men who banished Napoleon to St. Helena--so fiery
was it, indeed, that his opponents themselves began to wonder how that
crime had ever come to pass. He would fight at the drop of a hat, and
he always won; and by-and-by the boy began to take a fierce joy in
battling his way upward against a block that would have crushed a
weaker soul. It was only with Margaret that that soul was in awe. He
began to love her with a pure reverence that he could never know at
another age. Every Saturday night, when dusk fell, he was mounting the
steps of her house. Every Sunday morning he was waiting to take her
home from church. Every afternoon he looked for her, hoping to catch
sight of her on the streets, and it was only when Dan and Harry got
indignant, and after Margaret had made a passionate defence of Chad in
the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the
matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It
was right that they should be kind to the boy--for Major Buford's sake,
if not for his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more
than a friendly intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the
truth. Immediately, when Chad next saw her, her honest eyes sadly told
him that she knew the truth, and Chad gave up then. Thereafter he
disappeared from sports and from his kind every way, except in the
classroom and in the debating hall. Sullenly he stuck to his books.
From five o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, he was at
them steadily, in his room, or at recitation except for an hour's walk
with the school-master and the three half-hours that his meals kept him
away. He grew so pale and thin that the Major and Caleb Hazel were
greatly worried, but protest from both was useless. Before the end of
the term he had mounted into college in every study, and was holding
his own. At the end he knew his power--knew what he COULD do, and his
face was set, for his future, dauntless. When vacation came, he went at
once to the Major's farm, but not to be idle. In a week or two he was
taking some of the reins into his own hands as a valuable assistant to
the Major. He knew a good horse, could guess the weight of a steer with
surprising accuracy, and was a past master in knowledge of sheep. By
instinct he was canny at a trade--what mountaineer is not?--and he
astonished the Major with the shrewd deals he made. Authority seemed to
come naturally to him, and the Major swore that he could get more work
out of the "hands" than the overseer himself, who sullenly resented
Chad's interference, but dared not open his lips. Not once did he go to
the Deans', and neither Harry nor Dan came near him. There was little
intercourse between the Major and the General, as well; for, while the
Major could not, under the circumstances, blame the General,
inconsistently, he could not quite forgive him, and the line of polite
coolness between the neighbors was never overstepped. At the end of
July, Chad went to the mountains to see the Turners and Jack and
Melissa. He wore his roughest clothes, put on no airs, and, to all
eyes, save Melissa's, he was the same old Chad. But feminine subtlety
knows no social or geographical lines, and while Melissa knew what had
happened as well as Chad, she never let him see that she knew.
Apparently she was giving open encouragement to Dave Hilton, a tawny
youth from down the river, who was hanging, dog-like, about the house,
and foolish Chad began to let himself dream of Margaret with a light
heart. On the third day before he was to go back to the Bluegrass, a
boy came from over Black Mountain with a message from old Nathan
Cherry. Old Nathan had joined the church, had fallen ill, and, fearing
he was going to die, wanted to see Chad. Chad went over with curious
premonitions that were not in vain, and he came back with a strange
story that he told only to old Joel, under promise that he would never
make it known to Melissa. Then he started for the Bluegrass, going over
Pine Mountain and down through Cumberland Gap. He would come back every
year of his life, he told Melissa and the Turners, but Chad knew he was
bidding a last farewell to the life he had known in the mountains. At
Melissa's wish and old Joel's, he left Jack behind, though he sorely
wanted to take the dog with him. It was little enough for him to do in
return for their kindness, and he could see that Melissa's affection
for Jack was even greater than his own: and how incomparably lonelier
than his life was the life that she must lead! This time Melissa did
not rush to the yard gate when he was gone. She sank slowly where she
stood to the steps of the porch, and there she sat stone-still. Old
Joel passed her on the way to the barn. Several times the old mother
walked to the door behind her, and each time starting to speak, stopped
and turned back, but the girl neither saw nor heard them. Jack trotted
by, whimpering. He sat down in front of her, looking up at her unseeing
eyes, and it was only when he crept to her and put his head in her lap,
that she put her arms around him and bent her own head down; but no
tears came.