The Deliverance Part 31

"Then he'll bring him home?" asked Christopher, blinking in the sunlight. At the instant it seemed to him that sky and field whirled rapidly before his eyes, and a strange noise started in his ears which he found presently to be the throbbing of his arteries.

"Oh, he's been given a hard push down the wrong road," answered Tom, "an' it's more than likely he'll never pull up till he gits clean to the bottom."

CHAPTER VI. The Wages of Folly

Two days later Fletcher's big new carriage crawled over the muddy road, and Christopher, looking up from his work in the field, caught a glimpse of the sullen face Will turned on the familiar landscape. The younger Fletcher had come home evidently nursing a grievance at his heart; his eyes held a look of dogged resentment, and the hand in which he grasped the end of the linen dust-robe was closed in an almost convulsive grip. When he met Christopher's gaze he glanced angrily away without speaking, and then finding himself face to face with his grandfather's scowl he jerked impatiently in the opposite direction. It was clear that the tussle of wills had as yet wrung only an enforced submission from the younger man.

Lifting his head, Christopher stood idly watching the carriage until it disappeared between the rows of flowering chestnuts; then, returning in a half-hearted fashion to his work, he found himself wondering curiously if Fletcher's wrath and Will's indiscretions were really so great as public rumour might lead one to suppose.

An answer to his question came the next evening, when he heard a light, familiar whistle outside the stable where he was at work, and a moment afterward Will appeared in the shadow of the doorway.

"So it wasn't a cut, after all?" said Christopher with a laugh, as he held out his hand.

"I'll be hanged if I know what it was," was Will's response, turning away after a limp grasp and seating himself upon the big box in the corner. "To tell the truth, grandpa has put me into such a fl.u.s.ter that I hardly know my head from my heels. There's one thing certain, though; if he doesn't take his eye off me for a breathing s.p.a.ce he'll send me to the dogs before he knows it."

His face had lost its boyish freshness of complexion and his weak mouth had settled into lines of sullen discontent. Even his dress displayed the carelessness which is one of the outward marks of a disordered mind, and his bright blue tie was loosely knotted in unequal lengths.

"What's the trouble now?" demanded Christopher, coming from the stall and hanging his lantern from a nail beside the ladder, where the light fell full on Will's face. "Out with it and have done. I thought yesterday that you had been driving a hard bargain with the old man on my account."

"Oh, it's not you this time, thank heaven," returned Will. "It's all about that confounded sc.r.a.pe I got into at the university. I told him it would mean trouble if he sent me there, but he would do it whether or no. He dragged me away from here, you remember, and had me digging at my books with a scatter-brained tutor for a good six months; then when I knew just about enough to start at the university he hauled me there with his own hands and kept watch over me for several weeks. I'm quick at most things like that, so after he went away I thought I'd have a little fun and trust luck to make it up to me at the end--but it all went against me somehow, and then they stirred up that blamed rumpus about the examinations."

Yawning more in disgust than in drowsiness, he struck a match on the edge of the box and lighted a cigarette. His flippant manner was touched with the conscious resentment which still lingered in his eyes, and from the beginning to the end of his account he betrayed no hint of a regret for his own shabby part in the affair. When it was not possible to rest the blame upon his grandfather, he merely shrugged his shoulders and lightly tossed the responsibility to fate.

"This is one of the things I daren't do at the house," he remarked after a moment, inhaling a cloud of smoke and blowing it in spirals through his nostrils; "the old man won't tolerate anything more decent than a pipe, unless it happens to be a chew.

Oh, I'm sick to death of the whole business," he burst out suddenly. "When I woke up this morning I had more than half a mind to break loose and go abroad to Maria. By the way, Wyndham's dead, you know; he died last fall just after we went away."

"Ah, is that so!" exclaimed Christopher. "She'll come home, then, will she?"

"That's the queer part--she won't, and n.o.body knows why. Wyndham turned out to be a regular scamp, of course; he treated her abominably and all that, but he no sooner died than she turned about and picked up one of his sisters to nurse and coddle. Oh, it's all foolishness, but I've half a mind to run away, all the same. A life like this will drive me crazy in six months, and I'll be hanged if it is my fault, after all. He knew I never had a head for books, but he drove me at them as if I were no better than a black slave. Things have all been against me from the start, and yet I used to think that I was born to be lucky--"

"What does he mean to do with you now?" inquired Christopher.

"Put me to the plough, he says; but I can't stand it--I haven't the strength. Why, this morning he made me hang around that tobacco field in the blazing sun for two mortal hours, minding those shiftless darkies. If I complain; or even go off to sit down in a bit of shade, he rushes up and bl.u.s.ters about kicking me out of doors unless I earn my bread. Oh, his temper is simply awful, and he gets worse every day. He's growing stingy, too, and makes us live like beggars. All the vegetables go to market now, and most of the b.u.t.ter, and this morning he blew Aunt Saidie's head off because she had spring chickens on the breakfast table. I don't dare ask him for a penny, and yet he's rich--one of the richest men in the State, they say."

"Well, it sounds jolly," observed Christopher, smiling.

"Oh, you can't imagine the state of things, and you'd never believe it if I told you. It's worse than any fuss you ever heard of or ever saw. I used to be able to twist him round my finger, you know, and now he hates me worse than he does a snake. He hasn't spoken a word to me since that scene we had at the university, except to order me to go out and watch the Negroes plant tobacco. If he finds out I want a thing he'll move heaven and earth to keep me from getting it--and then sit by and grin.

He's got a devil in him, that's the truth, and there's nothing to do except keep out of his way as much as possible. I'm patient, too--Aunt Saidie knows it--and the only time I ever hit back was when he jumped on you the other day. Then I got mad and struck out hard, I tell you."

Christopher leaned over and began buckling and unbuckling a leather strap in the harness-box.

"Don't get into hot water on my account," he returned; "the more he abuses me, you know, the better I like it. But it's odd that after all these years he should want to turn you into an overseer."

"Well, he shan't do it; that's certain. It will be a cold day when he gets me masquerading in the family character. Let him go just one step too far and I'll shake him off for good, and strike out on a freight-train. Life couldn't be any worse than it is now, and it might be a great deal better. As to my hanging round like this much longer and swearing at a pack of worthless darkies--well, it's more than I bargain for, that's all."

"There's not much excitement in it, to be sure. I would rather be a freight-hand myself, I think, when all is said."

"Oh, you needn't joke. You were brought up to it and it doesn't come so hard."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not so hard as it does to me, at any rate. There's got to be some dash about life, I tell you, to make it suit my taste. I wasn't born to settle down and count my money and my tobacco from morning till night. It's spice I want in things, and--hang it! I don't believe there's a pretty woman in the county."

For a moment Christopher stared silently down at the matted straw. His face had grown dark, and the reckless lines about his mouth became suddenly prominent.

"Why, where's Molly Peterkin?" he asked abruptly, with a laugh that seemed to slip from him against his will.

The other broke into a long whistle and tossed the end of his cigarette through the doorway.

"You needn't think I've forgotten her," he replied; "she's the one bright spot I see in this barren hole. By the way, why do you think her a fool?"

"Because she is one."

"And you're a brute. What does a man want with brains in a woman, anyway. Maria had them and they didn't keep her from coming to shipwreck."

Christopher reached for the lantern.

"Well, I've got to go now," he broke in, "and you'd better be trotting home or you'll have the old man and the hounds out after you."

With the lantern swinging from his hand, he went to the door and waited for Will; then pa.s.sing out, he turned the key in the lock, and with a short "Good-night!" started briskly toward the house.

Will followed him to the kitchen steps, and then keeping to the path that trailed across the yard, he pa.s.sed through the whitewashed gate and went on along the sunken road which led by the abandoned ice-pond. Here he turned into the avenue of chestnuts, and with the lighted windows of the Hall before him, walked slowly toward the impending interview with his grandfather.

As he entered the house, Miss Saidie looked out from the dining-room doorway and beckoned in a stealthy fashion with the hen-house key.

"He has been hunting everywhere for you," she whispered, "and I told him you'd gone for a little stroll along the road."

An expression of anger swept over Will's face, and he made a helpless gesture of revolt.

"I won't stand it any longer," he answered, with a spurt of resolution which was exhausted in the feeble speech.

Miss Saidie put up her hand and straightened his necktie with an affectionate pat.

"Only for a little while, dear," she urged; "he's in one of his black humours, and it will blow over, never fear. Things are never so bad but there's hope of a mending some day. Try to please him and go to work as he wants you to do. It all came of the trouble at the university--he had set his heart on your carrying off the honours."

"It was his fault," said Will stubbornly. "I begged him not to send me there. It was his fault."

"Well, that can't be helped now," returned the little woman decisively. "All we can do is to make things as easy as we can, and if thar's ever to be any peace in this house again you must try to humour him. I never saw him in such a state before, and I've known him for sixty years and slept in a trundle-bed with him as a baby. The queerest thing about it, too, is that he seems to get closer and closer every day. Just now thar was a big fuss because I hadn't sent all the fresh b.u.t.ter to market, and I thought he'd have a fit when he found I was saving some asparagus for dinner to-morrow."

"Where is he now?" asked Will in a whisper.

"Complaining over some bills in his setting-room; and he actually told me a while ago, when I went in, that he had been a fool to give Maria so much money for Wyndham to throw away. Poor Maria!

I'm sure she has had a hard enough time without being abused for something she couldn't help. But it really is a pa.s.sion with him, thar's no use denying it. He spends his whole time adding up the cost of what we eat."

Then, as the supper-bell rang in the hall, she finished hurriedly, and a.s.suming a cheerful manner, took her place behind the silver service.

Fletcher entered with a heavy step, his eyes lowering beneath his bushy eyebrows. The weight of his years appeared to have fallen upon him in a night, and he was no longer the hale, ruddy man of middle age, with his breezy speeches and his occasional touches of coa.r.s.e humour. The untidiness of his clothes was still marked-his coat, his cravat, his finger nails, all showed the old lack of neatness.