The Tavern "office" was crowded and hazy with acrid blue smoke. Behind
the chairs of the favored members of the old circle, who always sat in
nightly conclave about the stove, a long row of men lounged against
the wall, but the bitter controversies of other nights were still.
Instead, the entire room was leaning forward, hanging breathlessly
upon the words of the short fat man who was perched alone upon the
worn desk, too engrossed even to notice Young Denny's entrance that
night.
The boy stood for a moment, his hand still clasping the knob behind
him, while his eyes flickered curiously over the heads of the crowd.
Even before he drew the door shut behind him he saw that Judge
Maynard's chair was a good foot in advance of all the others, directly
in front of the stranger on the desk, and that the rest of the room
was furtively taking its cue from him--pounding its knee and laughing
immoderately whenever he laughed, or settling back luxuriously
whenever the Judge relaxed in his chair.
Subconsciously Young Denny realized that such had always been the
recognized order of arrangement, ever since he could remember. The
Judge always rode in front in the parades and invariably delivered
the Fourth of July oration. Undisputed he held the one vantage point
in the room, but over his amply broad back, as near as he dared lean,
bent Old Jerry, his thin face working with alternate hope and half
fearful uncertainty.
Denny Bolton would have recognized the man on the desk as the
"newspaper writer" from New York from his clothes alone, even without
the huge notebook that was propped up on his knees for corroborative
evidence. From the soft felt hat, pushed carelessly back from his
round, good-natured face, to the tips of his gleaming low shoes, the
newcomer was a symphony in many-toned browns. And as Young Denny
closed the door behind him he went on talking--addressing the entire
throng before him with an easy good-fellowship that bordered on
intimate _camaraderie_.
"Just the good old-fashioned stuff," he was saying; "the sort of thing
that has always been the backbone of the country. That is what I want
it to be. For, you see, it's like this: We haven't had a champion who
came from our own real old Puritan stock in years and years like
Conway has, and it'll stir up a whole lot of enthusiasm--a whole lot!
I want to play that part of it up big. Now, you're the only ones who
can give me that--you're the only men who knew him when he was a
boy--and right there let's make that a starter! What sort of a
youngster was he? Quite a handful, I should imagine--now wasn't he?"
The man on the desk crossed one fat knee over the other, tapping a
flat-heeled shoe with his pencil. He tilted the brown felt hat a
little farther back from his forehead and winked one eye at the Judge
in jovial understanding. And Judge Maynard also crossed his knees,
tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, and winked back with
equal joviality.
"Well, ye-e-s," he agreed, and the agreement was weightily deliberate.
"Ye-e-s, quite a handful was Jeddy."
One pudgy hand was uplifted in sudden, deprecatory haste, as though he
would not be misunderstood.
"Nothing really wrong, of course," he hurried to add with oratorical
emphasis. "Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneaking
about Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous--mischievous
and up and coming all the time. But there were folks," Judge Maynard's
voice became heavy with righteous accusation--"it's always that way,
you understand--and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy's own
village, who used to call him a bad egg. But I--I knew better!
Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits--that's what I always
thought. And I said it, too--many's the time I said----"
The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little.
He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face a
little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny
Bolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his
notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension.
"----That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?" he
interrupted knowingly.
The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth.
"Well, that's just about it--that's just about as near as words could
come to it," he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked,
too, and pounded its knee as one man.
The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil,
even while he was speaking.
"And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even when
he was a little shaver?" he suggested tentatively. "But then I don't
suppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world's
champion, right here at home, in the making, did you?"
The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgot
himself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyes
straining upon the Judge's face.
Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word.
"We-e-ll, no," he admitted. "I don't believe I can say that I
downright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe's
I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn't
anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than
once that he'd make the best of 'em hustle--ye-e-s, sir, the very best
of 'em, some day!"
The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if to
challenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one to
speak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But no
contradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge's
broad back, quavered breathlessly.
"That's jest it--that's jest as it was--right to a hair. It was system
done it--system right from the very beginning. And many's the time the
Judge says to me--says he----"
Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one hand
majestically and the little white-haired old man's eager corroboration
died on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lips
working wordlessly.
"As I was saying," the Judge then proceeded ponderously, "I recognized
he had what one could call--er----"
"Class?" the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile.
"Well, yes," the other continued, "or, as I was about to call it,
talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, of
course, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have been
the one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as a
little shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn't
tackle--absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference to
him--not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight----!"
Again he turned to the close-packed circle behind him as if mere words
were too weak things to do the question justice. And this time as he
turned his eyes met squarely those of the gray-shirted figure that was
staring straight back at him in a kind of fascination. For one
disconcerted instant Judge Maynard wavered; he caught his breath
before that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality he
threw up one pudgy hand.
"There's one of 'em right now," he cried. "There's Young Denny Bolton,
who went to school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jed
Conway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him," he leered around the room,
an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words.
Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. "But maybe he won't
tell--maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it
yet. Eh, Denny--just a little mite too sensitive?"
Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a new
quality in the Judge's chuckling statement--a certain hearty admission
of equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry's
eager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown lifted
inquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed the
direction of the Judge's outstretched finger. He was still grinning
expansively--and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smoke
the face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared.
Little by little Young Denny's body straightened until the slight
shoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gaze
never wavered from the Judge's face his eyes narrowed and his lips
grew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone,
too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting,
mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the
moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very
still.
It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he
spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke
instead in a low-toned directness.
"So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?" he asked gravely.
"Knew him when he was a kid?"
Slowly Denny Bolton's eyes traveled from the Judge's face. His lips
opened with equal deliberation.
"I reckon I knew him--pretty well," he admitted.
The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded
thoughtfully.
"Er--had a few set-to's with him, yourself, now and then?"
He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a
heavy silence before Young Denny replied.
Then, "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "Maybe I did."
The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard
wheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to pounding
his knee again in the excess of his appreciation.
"Maybe," he chortled, "maybe he did! Well--I--reckon!"
And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which
all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk,
saw that there was a white circle about the boy's tight mouth as Young
Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and
passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the
faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back
to the big notebook open on his knees--a vaguely unpleasant smile that
was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face.
For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned
upward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then he
turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house
on the hill--he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in
the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see.
It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had
failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he
recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been
ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic
fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn.
The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of the
night outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike a
light--he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in the
stalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched something
sleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively,
although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect his
face before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall by
the impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. A
moment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Then
he began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over the
great, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open across
his chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himself
erect.
"Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!" he soothed the dancing horse. "Steady, it's
only me, boy!" he stammered, and supporting himself against the wall
he groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day's
work.
It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily through
the door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching for
a light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against the
wainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a slopping
gurgle over the floor.
Then his fingers found the light. Holding himself with one hand, he
lifted the little lamp with its blackened chimney from its bracket and
raised it until it illuminated his features reflected in the small
square mirror that hung against the wall. For a long time he stood and
looked. The blood that oozed from the ugly bruise upon his chin was
splashing in warm drops to the floor; his face was paper white, and
strangely taut and twisted with pain, but the boy noticed neither the
one nor the other. Straight back into his own eyes he stared--stared
steadily for all that his big shoulders were swaying drunkenly. And
for the first time that he could ever recollect Young Denny Bolton
laughed--laughed with real mirth.
He placed the smoking lamp upon the bare board table and turned. As if
they could still hear him--the circle about the Tavern stove in the
valley below--he lifted both hard fists and tightened them until the
heavy muscles beneath his shirt bunched and quivered like live
things.
[Illustration: "DRYAD, IT'S ALL RIGHT--IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ALL RIGHT--WITH
US! THEY LIED--THEY LIED AND THEY KNEW THEY WERE LYING!"]
"Size never made any difference to him?" he repeated the Judge's word
aloud, with a drawling interrogation. "Size never made any difference
to him?"
He laughed again, softly, as if there were a newly discovered humor
about it all which must be jealously guarded.
"It never had to make any difference," the drawling voice went on, "it
didn't have to--because Jed Conway was always the biggest boy in the
school!"
His nostrils were dilating, twitching with the thin, sharp odor of the
overturned demijohn which was rising and thickening in the room. His
eyes fell and for the first time became conscious of it lying there at
his feet. And he stooped and picked it up, lifting it between both
hands until it was level with his face--until it was held at arm's
length high above his head. Then his whole body snapped forward and
the glass from the broken window pane jingled musically on the floor
as the jug crashed out into the night.
Young Denny stood and smiled, one side of his chin a gash of crimson
against the dead white of his face. Again he lifted his fists.
"He never whipped me," he challenged the lights in the hollow, "he
never whipped me--and he never tried but once! I--I--ain't never
been--whipped--yet!"
There had been no sound to herald her coming as she darted up to the
door. Reeling giddily there in the middle of the room, he had not even
heard the one low cry that she choked back as she stopped at the
threshold, but he half turned that moment and met the benumbed horror
of Dryad Anderson's eyes. Minute after minute he merely stood and
stared back at her stupidly, while bit by bit every detail of her
transformation began to penetrate his brain, still foggy with the
force of the blow that had laid his chin wide open. Her tumbled hair
was piled high upon her head; she was almost tall with the added
height of the high-heeled satin slippers; more slender than ever in
the bespangled clinging black skirt and sleeveless scarlet waist which
the old cloak, slipping unheeded from her shoulders, had disclosed.
As his brain began to clear Young Denny forgot the dripping blood that
made his white face ghastly, he forgot the stinging odor of the broken
demijohn, thick in the room--forgot everything but Judge Maynard's
face when the latter had looked up and found him standing at the
Tavern door. He knew now what the light was that had lurked in their
shifty depths; it was fear--fear that he--Young Denny--might speak up
in that moment and disclose all the hypocrisy of his suave lies. He
even failed to see the horror in the eyes of the girl before him.
Sudden, reckless laughter rang from his lips.
"Dryad," he cried out. "Dryad, it's all right--it's always been all
right--with us! They lied--they lied and they knew they were lying!"
She shrank back, as if all the strength had been drained from her
knees, as he lurched unsteadily across toward her and reached out
his arms. But at the touch of his hands upon her shoulders the power
of action came rushing back into her limbs. She shuddered and
whirled--and shook off his groping fingers. Her own hands flashed out
and held his face away from her.
"Don't you touch me!" she panted huskily. "Oh, you--you--don't you
even dare to come near me!"
He tried to explain--tried to follow her swift flight as she leaped
back, but his feet became entangled in the cloak on the floor and
brought him heavily to his knees. He even tried to follow her after
she had been swallowed up in the shadows outside, until he realized
dully that his shuffling feet would not go where his whirling head
directed them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back to
the kitchen door, and received no answer.
With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to the
top step and sat rocking gently to and fro.
"S'all right," he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'always
been all right!"
And he laughed aloud, a laugh of utter confidence in spite of all its
unsteadiness.
"Twelve thousand dollars," he said, "and--and he never whipped me! He
never could--not the best day he ever lived!"