In a cane-bottomed chair beside the threshold of the post-office--a
flimsy board building owing all its distinction, like a dirty uniform,
to the magic influence of those two letters U.S.--sat Daddie Ingram
during that social hour preceding the arrival of the mail. He himself
owed much of his prestige to his association, as postmaster, with the
Federal Government--that vast power which makes its influence felt even
to the most remote hamlets. He had acquired a certain dignity because
of his affiliation with the Eagle Itself.
The hot sun had made the roads which centered here dusty. Even the
droning insects became half-hearted. Flies moved listlessly and became
lazily indifferent to the danger of hostile hands moving against them
with no spirit. Men slouched up to the weather-worn porch and sank
down with a grunt, drawing their knees up and tilting their hats down.
Some of them whittled, but none of them were sufficiently inspired to
attempt any creative effort, unless perhaps a long spindling toothpick
sharpened with extreme care to a needle point.
Over his befogged spectacles, Daddie Ingram’s faded blue eyes
brightened a trifle as they observed the approach of Mr. Howe down the
road. He spat and shifted his quid in order to be in readiness for a
conversation which he had anticipated for several hours. He introduced
his subject without preliminaries as soon as Howe was safely within
range.
“Hear that young man up at yo’ house had a sort of run-in with Bud
Childers last night.”
Howe was surprised--unpleasantly surprised. He had rather hoped the
affair might not become current gossip. The moment this became public
property it complicated matters a good deal.
“What did you hear?” questioned Howe without committing himself.
“Wull, I heard on two or three sides. Yes, suh, on two or three sides.”
Pausing a moment he added, as though after mature reflection:
“I heard it on two or three sides.”
“Childers been talking?”
“Ain’t no one heard him doin’ it,” replied Daddie cautiously. “Fust
pusson I seen who knowed anything ’bout it was little Tom Culley. Said
old Widder Kester giv’ him the devil this mornin’ for carryin’ a lie
’bout her bein’ sick. Tom said he told her who give him the message.
Tom he went to Bud an’ Bud was fightin’ mad--all riled up about it.
Then Tom ’lowed he was gonter cut up thet young man up to yo’ house.”
“Well?”
“Bud’s bad,” drawled Daddie Ingram. “Yessuh, he’s bad. Yessuh, he’s bad
medicine. That young man up to yo’ house might erve needed a gun and a
good un.”
Howe spoke deliberately now.
“Mr. Allston is just out of the army. He has a gun and he knows how to
use it.”
“Wull, he might erve needed a good un. Yessuh, he might erve.”
“He will use it--if it’s necessary. But he isn’t looking for any
trouble which isn’t forced on him.”
“Looks like an awful nice feller,” admitted Daddie. “That clever an’
friendly. I’m powerful glad he’s got a gun. Better carry it, too.”
Turge Calhoun, a dwarfed, fleshless little man who looked as though he
had been long hung upon a nail to dry, looked up with interest. Then he
broke out into uncanny laughter--a piercing falsetto.
“Turge--he knows Bud,” nodded Ingram phlegmatically.
Howe attended to his business inside and went back home frankly
disturbed. It was clear enough that this group, while not actually
hostile to Allston, looked forward with considerable pleasant
anticipation to a second run-in between him and Bud. They intended to
go even further--as far as it was possible by innuendo and goading
they would spur Bud on. There was both amusement and excitement in the
situation--just as in a cock or a dog fight. They were no more apt to
consider consequences than Bud was--less, in view of the fact that they
themselves were not in danger.
Anxious as Howe was, he felt quite helpless. He knew there was no
authority of the law he could invoke. Officers are powerless until
after a crime is committed. Moreover, it is doubtful if he would
find local officials sympathetic, anyway. It was even more doubtful
if he himself was in sympathy with any such method of procedure.
Difficulties of this nature could not be settled by law. Allston would
be the last man in the world to listen to such a proposal.
Obviously the simplest way out, if it could be managed, would be to
place the two men beyond reach of one another. But it was as much out
of the question to think of shifting Bud Childers as it was Green
Mountain or Big Laurel Cove or Caterpillar Ridge. As for moving Allston
out of danger, it seemed equally impossible except by resorting to some
ruse. This course was as distinctly against Howe’s own nature as he
knew it would be against that of his guest.
Howe did not repeat his conversation with Daddie Ingram either to his
daughter or to Allston. To do so would be only to frighten the former
and rouse, possibly to aggressive action, the latter. But he did
persuade Allston to keep his automatic always in his pocket and to make
sure it was loaded.
“Don’t pop away at any more squirrels,” he warned. “If you do, reload.
You’ll need a full hand the next time you call that man.”
Allston heeded the advice, although even now he was by no means
convinced that any such precaution was necessary. However, he had
toted a gun so much during the past two years that he found it no
great burden and this was an easy way to please his host. And Allston
was anxious, in every way, to please him. He felt, each day, under
a greater obligation. He had prolonged his visit with these amiable
people far beyond the limits the happy chance of his accidental
introduction to them warranted. And yet he stayed on, for every time
he suggested that he was straining his welcome he was met by such a
genuine protest from both father and daughter that he found it easy to
drift back into inaction.
This countryside was to his taste. He liked the contrast of rugged
hills with fertile valley; of the primeval mountain growth of huge
chestnut-oaks and laurel, with the luxuriant rhododendrons, tropical
in their leafy richness; of the cold streams and rough roads with the
formal orderliness of this well-kept summer place. He sensed something
of this dramatic contrast in these people who had come so unexpectedly
into his life. Bud and Roxie set against Howe and Wilmer heightened his
interest in both. They stood for two different periods. And yet for
all he knew the difference between them might not be as great as it
seemed.
That was the striking fact against which he was continually bumping
during the war; the amazing likeness of peoples he had always
considered so essentially different, and the amazing differences
between those he thought identical. This held true even of different
civilizations. It held true of different historical epochs. The past
and the present were all jumbled together over there just as the dead
and the living were. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish one
from the other. And they were easily interchangeable. He remembered
with particular vividness an old French town in which he had been
billeted--a town dating back, not years like towns at home, but
centuries. If anything might be thought to be deep-rooted and fixed in
its associations with the past, it was this stone village, gray and
heavy with age. And yet in a night Allston had seen a rude interruption
of its traditions. The inhabitants had been hurried away to escape
heavy gunfire when he and a few other officers entered the silent
streets. Only the empty shell of this ancient town remained. Yet doors
were open, tables set, beds in order. Even the old town clock was
going. It made him jump when it struck out with leisurely resonance and
indifferent concern each passing hour. But the population, boasting
kinship back to Cæsar, had vanished in a day to give place to a few
sprightly young officers bred in a country which three hundred years
before had been savage. These soldier cubs ate at the time-stained
tables, slept in the hallowed beds, while the night stars looked down
undisturbed.
It was not easy after this for Allston to believe that centuries
counted for much towards stability. It was still more difficult when
a little later he saw varying breeds of men tearing at each other’s
throats like jungle beasts. He was one of them and tore as hard as
any. And then--presto--this was over and the breeds became polite and
civilized again, and the ancient townsfolk returned to their abodes
and remade their beds and reset their tables and sent Allston and the
others--such of them as were not buried with the dead centurions--back
to their own young land.
An experience like this made a man cautious about fixing boundaries
either of time or space. It drove a man back of history to a primitive
brotherhood which discovered men and women, of whatever clime and of
whatever period, to be much alike.
And yet he was inclined even now to make an exception of Wilmer. It
was difficult for him to conceive any set of circumstances which could
affect the cultivated poise of her calm nature or disturb to any extent
her steady control based upon a fine intelligence. It amused him to
imagine how she would have acted under the conditions existing in that
little French town so suddenly shaken from its venerable security. He
could not picture her then as any other than she was now. She would
have remained had that been possible. If not she would have walked out
calmly, looking upon the interruption as an ugly interlude, but quite
unchanged by it. But she would be beautiful, with a sort of saintly
beauty, both in going and returning.
In many ways this steadiness, this assurance, this complete confidence
in herself, the product of a ripe development a little beyond her
years, appealed strongly to him. She stood out in his lately troubled
world like the North star over a stormy sea. He welcomed her because
she seemed to guide him back to that snug harbor in which he had ridden
so safely at anchor beneath a golden sun and an azure sky until the
war bade him set sail. In her presence he was able to dream pleasantly
and lazily again as he had in college. And rather sentimentally too.
This was an agreeable surprise. He thought all that had been burned out
of him. During those few days at home he had been astonished at how
unresponsive he had been to the pretty young faces about him. But they
had chattered about the war and his nerves had been more jumpy than
they now were.
He had steadied down a lot since then. He could thank Wilmer’s deep
brown eyes for that--and her soft, musical voice, never raised, but
clear and distinct as a silver bell. He liked to listen to it in the
evening as she read aloud to her father, though often he found himself
hearing nothing but the voice. He was quite sure that if interested in
the text he would do much better to read to himself. But he seldom was
interested. He much preferred talking with her when she had no book in
her hand.
He much preferred talking to her about--almost nothing at all. She was
a good walker, and they used to start on long tramps through the woods
for the neighboring hills. Always it was to some definite point like
Caterpillar Ridge. Never on these hikes did they succeed in reaching
their objective. Allston, at times, felt rather mean about that because
it seemed to disturb her. And it obliged him to adopt the rather
underhanded expedient of allowing her to believe that the bit of gas he
had once inhaled was responsible for his weakness, when, as a matter of
fact, it was nothing but the joy of sprawling out lazily at her feet.
He had never felt better in his life and he knew it.
He used to pick out the sunny places--tiny coves lying like pockets or
mountain nests at the foot of bold rocks. If he could find one near
a brook, so much the better, for this gave him the excuse of fishing
while the rippling tinkle of the falling water sang with her a duet. It
is not on record that he brought home any fish, but this was of minor
importance. Your true sportsman never fishes for the sake of fish.
But always he brought home something--if only the memory of a dimpling
smile caught unexpectedly in response to some bit of fooling. He liked
to make her smile unexpectedly. It was like angling in an untried
brook. Her eyes were the pools--so deep that one could not see bottom.
And like mountain pools continually filling with fresh water, her
thoughts ran through them. One could never tell when a smile, like a
quick trout, might flash into them from somewhere, and jump at his
bait. That was worth waiting for.
So they sat one afternoon just off the road leading to Big Laurel
Cove--not knowing except in a general way where they were. It would not
have mattered greatly to Allston had he realized he was within a short
distance of Bud Childers’s shack. As far as he was concerned at this
time Bud Childers did not exist.