Chapter V: Part 5

“I believe you said you wanted I should look after James’s education,” intoned the spinster. “If I am to stay here, I shall do it con-sci-en-tiously.”

She pronounced the last word with due regard to every syllable, it being a favorite adverb modifying every possible activity.

Barbara was turning over the pages of the book, several of which were quite covered with Jimmy’s scrawling characters in red ink.

“A Vallable Information ’bout getting mad [she read]. Dont get mad Ezy. It dont Do enny Good, an sum the tim it gets a fello in Trubble. Peg says this is portant.”

Barbara smiled as she shut the covers gently together.

“I shall give this book to Jimmy,” she said quietly, “and please, Miss Cottle, don’t take it away from him again. Jimmy is such a little boy, and I—he has always been loved. I hope you——”

“I don’t believe in sozzling over a child,” interrupted the woman severely. “I’ll see that the boy gets plenty of good bread and butter, and that he goes to school and Sabbath services regularly. By the time you get back I guess you’ll see quite a change in him. When do you expect to start, to-morrow?”

Miss Cottle’s tone expressed a growing impatience.

“I supposed you’d get off this afternoon. I see your trunk is packed and all. There’s no use of hanging back and procrastinating when there’s work to do. That’s one thing I shall teach James.”

She compressed her lips severely, as if anxious to begin.

“I am ready to go,” Barbara told her, with lips which trembled in spite of herself. “I hope you won’t be too severe with Jimmy—at first; he isn’t used to it.”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Cottle, with an acid smile, “it’s easy enough to see that you’ve spoiled the child completely. But I’ll soon straighten him out. My method with children has never been known to fail. Their wills want breaking the first thing; after that they’ll mind, I can tell you.”

“But I don’t want Jimmy’s will broken,” protested Barbara, “please don’t try to do that.”

Miss Cottle tossed her head majestically.

“I shall use my own judgment,” she said firmly, “and I don’t expect no interference; and that reminds me, I want to speak about that hired man of yours. He’s brought more truck into that back bedroom, where you said he was to sleep, than anybody could keep track of. I told him I wouldn’t have it, and he answered back in a way I’m not accustomed to hear. You’ll have to speak to him. Once you’re out the house, I’ll try to get things regulated. But if I should be sick—and I may as well tell you that I’m subject to bad spells of malaria—I shall have to send for my sister from New Hampshire. She’s a widow with one daughter; of course she’d have to bring Elvira along. I thought I’d tell you, because once you’re gone you won’t be able to get back. I suppose your idea is that I’ll do with everything the same as if it was my own for the five years?”

Miss Cottle’s voice held a rising inflection, and Barbara murmured something vaguely acquiescent.

“Of course I couldn’t do any other way,” pursued the spinster; “having left my own nice home to come here and do for you. The butter and egg money will be mine, I suppose, and the young chickens? I couldn’t think of doing any other way than what I’ve been used to. There! I hear that boy calling you. That sort of thing will have to be broken up, right in the beginning—once you’re out of the house to stay. A great big boy like that!”

Barbara fled upstairs, the little red book in her hand, to find Jimmy, in his white night-gown, standing at the top of the stairs. She caught the child in her strong young arms, cuddling his cold little body against her breast.

“I wanted you,” grieved the child, half strangling her with his eager kisses. “Why do we have that woman, Barb’ra? I don’t like her. She took my Vallable Inf’mation book, ’n’—’n’—I scwatched her, ’n’ she slapped me. Send her away, Barb’ra; we don’t want her; do we?”

The girl wrapped a blanket warmly about the child and sat down with him in a chair by the window. The iron of her new chain bade fair to eat into her very soul as she soothed and rocked into forgetfulness of his troubles the beloved little cause of all her perplexities. Why, after all, had she done this thing? Was there not a heavier debt than could be paid in money? And was she not bankrupt still in love and peace?

In that hour of darkness all the terrifying consequences of her attempt to break away from Jarvis crowded upon her mind. Unless the person who had paid four thousand dollars for five years of her life could be induced to release her, she must indeed pay heavily for Jimmy’s inheritance. Her baffled thoughts hovered about the unknown personality of this arbiter of her future.

“To-morrow,” she thought aloud, “I shall know.”

XIV

THE blossoms had fallen in showers of fragrant pink and white petals from the wide-spreading boughs of the Preston orchards and already Peg Morrison’s dreams of a great harvest were beginning to show faint promise of fulfilment in long lines of slender green onion shoots; yet Barbara found herself still waiting the summons of her unknown master. Her little trunk, locked and strapped, stood in the closet of her chamber; her shabby travelling cloak, hat, and gloves lay ready for instant use. Each morning she dressed Jimmy, brushed his yellow curls, and saw him off to school with smiles and kisses, not knowing whether he would find her upon his return; and each evening she lavished upon the little boy the hungry affection hoarded for a lonelier night in some distant city.

“You love me more’n you used to, don’t you, Barb’ra?” the child asked, puzzled by the look in her eyes. “You kiss me kind o’ hard.”

“I always loved you with all my heart, Jimmy,” she answered. “I couldn’t love you any more.”

“An’ I love you, Barb’ra,” declared the little boy, “I love you more’n anybody. But,” he added darkly, “I ’spise that Miss Cottle wiv all my insides an’ all my outsides. Make her go ’way, Barb’ra.”

“Miss Cottle is a good woman, Jimmy,” the girl told him seriously. “She would take care of you if—I should be obliged to go away.”

The child flung himself upon her with an inarticulate cry of protest.

“You wouldn’t go away an’ leave me, would you, Barb’ra?”

“I shouldn’t want to, precious; but—something—might—happen. You will be a good boy, won’t you, Jimmy? I want you to try and—love Miss Cottle.”

The child considered this difficult undertaking in grieved silence for a minute. Then he manfully swallowed something that arose in his throat and threatened to choke him.

“I—guess I’ll be pretty good, Barb’ra,” he quavered, “if you want t’ go off an’ take a trip. She said you wanted to take a trip; but I told her you wouldn’t go anywhere an’ leave me. You wouldn’t, would you, Barb’ra?”

“Not unless I was forced to,” murmured Barbara, “for your sake, Jimmy; for your sake!”

She winked back the tears, smiling resolutely.

“Anyway, we won’t cross any bridges till we get to them, precious.”

“That’s in my book of Vallable Inf’mation,” Jimmy said proudly. “I copied it out o’ Peg’s. You have to get to bridges b’fore you cross ’em; you can’t get over any other way. I told that to Peg, ’n’ he said it was a Vallable Inf’mation, ’n’ he wrote it down in his book in red ink. We tell each other things to write down. I like Peg, an’ he likes me; but we don’t love Miss Cottle. Peg says, in his opinion, she’s an ornary female, even if she can spell. Peg says spellin’ ain’t everythin’.”

As the days passed, this particular bridge of Barbara’s own building loomed large in the landscape of her every day, always retreating mirage-like into the misty horizon of her to-morrow.

Martha Cottle was of the opinion that it was a mighty queer performance; she discussed the subject with Barbara with ever-recurring interest and poignancy in the intervals of her work. Miss Cottle was a woman bent upon an excruciating cleanliness and order, and the immaculate back steps and the painfully scoured kitchen floor uprose as altars upon which she daily offered oblations and sacrifices of all the gentler amenities of life.

“That young one,” as she began to call Jimmy, together with Peg Morrison, appeared to vie with one another in wanton profanation of these hallowed precincts.

“It’s enough,” the worthy spinster assured Barbara, her nose and eyes reddened with animosity, “to make a saint mad clear through. Once you’re out of the house for good I’ll see to it that they wipe their feet _before they eat_.”

The veiled threat in the last words was not lost on Mr. Morrison. “Me an’ the Cap’n hes et our victuals together more’n once in the loft t’ the barn,” he observed placidly. “‘N’ we kin do it ag’in on a pinch. I kin cook ’s well ’s some others I c’d name, an’ I will, if necessary.”

Barbara, with one foot on her bridge of passage, strove to reconcile these opposing forces.

“Miss Cottle,” she assured Peg, “is really a very conscientious woman. She’ll keep everything clean and comfortable for you and Jimmy.”

“You bet she’s conscientious, Miss Barb’ry,” acquiesced the old man dryly. “So’s a skunk. Y’ reelly can’t beat them animals fer a conscientious pufformance of their duty, es they see it. But it ain’t what you’d call reelly pleasant fer the dog.”

“But you’ll try, won’t you, Peg, to get along with Miss Cottle?” implored Barbara. “If she should leave you after I’m gone, I can’t think what Jimmy would do.”

“Now, Miss Barb’ry, don’t you worry none. Me an’ the Cap’n an’ Marthy Cottle ’ll git along like three kittens in a basket. You bet we will. I’ll kind o’ humor her, come muddy weather; an’ I’ll see t’ it that she don’t aggravate the Cap’n beyond what he can make out t’ bear. Mebbe it’ll stren’then his char’cter t’ put up with her ways. Viewed in th’ light of a Vallable Inf’mation I shouldn’t wonder if both me an’ the Cap’n ’ud git consid’able profit out o’ the experience, even ef we ain’t exac’ly hankerin’ fer it. Meanwhile the onions is comin’ on famous, likewise the apples. I never see a finer crop o’ young fruit set.”

To await the slow unfoldment of events, cultivating the while the cardinal virtues of tranquillity and faith is the task set before each human being; but there are times when the lesson becomes poignantly difficult. As one who awaits the coming of a delayed train endures the unfruitful minutes with scant patience, so Barbara lingered on the verge of her unknown experience, alternately dreading and longing for the summons which would put an end to the painful suspense. She found the days speeding by, gathering themselves into weeks, and the weeks, in their turn, rolling themselves up into months.

“I guess you’ve said to me about all there is to be said on the subject of this house and the care of that child,” Miss Cottle observed in tones of exasperation. “I’d never have come when I did if I hadn’t supposed you were going right off. I didn’t bargain to be your hired girl.”

And David Whitcomb, who had taken up his quarters in the village inn with the avowed intention of “having it out” with the owner and arbiter of Barbara’s future, expressed himself with still greater frankness on the subject.

“Has it occurred to you,” he asked Barbara, “that perhaps you’ll not be sent for at all?”

The two were sitting in the long, sweet twilight of a June evening, on the narrow, old-fashioned porch. The giant locusts in front of the house were in full bloom and the clouds of fragrance from their pendant white clusters mingled with the odorous breath of the honeysuckles. There was a whir of humming-bird moths among the vines, and a song-sparrow intent upon feeding her young ones while the daylight lasted darted in and out with anxious glances of her bright eyes.

“Hush!” warned Barbara, wincing. “Don’t let Jimmy hear you speak of my going.”

“Pooh!” said David; “the little beggar knows all about it. Did you suppose he didn’t?”

Barbara looked at him indignantly.

“Did you tell him?”

“No; but I daresay the Cottle person has. Besides, the auction is town talk. Everybody is wondering, and some are saying—— Do you want me to tell you what old Hewett asked me to-night?”

Barbara’s face, burning with shamed crimson, was turned away from his.

“No,” she said frigidly. “I don’t want to hear it.”

David passed his fingers through his thick, curling hair, with an impatient gesture.

“I am sorry I spoke of it, Barbara,” he said seriously; “but the fact is, whether you know it or not, you’ve been placed in a very unpleasant position.”

He waited for her to speak; but she was obstinately silent, her eyes fixed on Jimmy, who was helping Peg load a wheelbarrow with the dried grass left in the wake of the lawnmower.

“You are,”—pursued David, “—or think you are—unable to move hand or foot for five years. Meanwhile you are waiting, waiting for a summons which may never come. Barbara, is there anyone you know who would be likely to—who might wish to help you, and who has taken this singular way to do it?”

She flashed a look of startled inquiry at him.

“The idea of the auction was your own—though how you came by it, I can’t understand—and it succeeded perfectly, as far as the price paid in money was concerned; but you’re likely to pay it out in something more valuable than money. You’ve grown thin and pale, Barbara; you’re being worn out with this infernal suspense. Now, I think it’s time we tracked your purchaser to earth; or else—look at me, Barbara! Why not marry me, and defy the fellow, whoever he is?”

“It wouldn’t be honorable,” she objected. “I’ve accepted the money.”

“But if we paid it back?” he urged.

“How can I pay it back, if—I don’t know who it is?”

David tipped his chair against the house with an impatient thud.

“See here,” he said strongly, “I’m going to find out who the person is, either with or without your permission. You’d like to know, I suppose?”

She hesitated, evading his eyes.

“I think I’d rather wait,” she said reluctantly. “Besides, you couldn’t find out.”

He watched her steadily for a minute, while she set half a dozen hasty stitches in the long ruffle she was hemming. Then he deliberately put his hand over hers.

“It’s too dark to sew,” he objected, “and I can’t talk to you when your eyes are glued to that piece of cloth.”

Barbara folded up her work with quick motions of her slim brown fingers. Then she raised her eyes to his.

“Well?” she said interrogatively.

“It isn’t anything new, Barbara,” he said. “Just the same old request. When will you marry me, dear?”

“I’ve told you, David, over and over. I can’t make any promises till—till——”

He frowned and shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“I know,” he interrupted quickly. “But why object on the score of that absurd contract? Why, Barbara, I’ll go with you and work for nothing. Two slaves will be better than one. I’m a husky chap, capable of trundling the lawnmower, shaking down the furnace, shovelling snow, or any little job of the sort. Don’t you think your widower would appreciate my free services?”

Barbara refused to smile.

“Why,” she asked, “should you suppose it is a man?”

“A sad mixture of pronouns,” he objected. “‘It’ might, as you suggest, as well be a widow or an old maid. But why ’its’ waste of money and valuable service? That is what I shall set myself to find out. But we’ll be married first, and then I’ll be in a position to defy him, her, or it, as the case may be. And if no one ever shows up, as I half believe—— Barbara, look at me!”

She obeyed, a mutinous pucker between her fine dark brows.

“There is no use,” she murmured, “of your talking that way. I consider myself bound; and I cannot——”

His face softened as he looked at her.

“Poor little girl,” he murmured, “it’s pretty rough sledding for you, and has been all along. But I’d like to ask you one thing. Has any other man asked you to marry him since I went away?”

Her eyes fled into the distance.

“Will you tell me who it was?”

Still she was dumb, struggling to escape the sudden turmoil of her thoughts.

“Why,” she stammered at last, “should you ask?”

“Is it a case of ’how happy could I be with either, were the other fair charmer away?’” he demanded, a wrathful crimson rising to his bronzed cheeks. “You’ve played fast and loose with me always, Barbara, first it was the brat and——”

He checked himself with an effort.

“Then you won’t tell me?” he said sulkily.

“It—was nothing,” she stammered. “I didn’t——”

“You didn’t accept him,” he finished for her. “That’s evident. Well, we’ll call it square if you’ll say to me, ‘David, I love you, and I’ll marry you as soon as we can straighten out this—what shall we call it?—this previous engagement.’ Will you say that, Barbara? Will you?”

She trembled, shrinking into herself under the fire of his gaze.

“I haven’t told you yet—what you asked.”

“Never mind that. Come, don’t put me off again!”

She looked at him, her eyes clouded with doubt and pain.

“You don’t trust me, Barbara. I see that,” he said bitterly.

“You—must make me—trust you,” she murmured, after a difficult silence. “I don’t know why—I can’t say—yes. But—I can’t—yet.”

“I know,” he said roughly. “You’re half in love with the other man. Damn him!”

He sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair.

“No—no!” she denied breathlessly. “It isn’t that. I refused him because”—her voice trailed off in a whisper—“I remembered you, David.”

He caught her in his arms with a triumphant laugh.

“You can’t escape me now, after that admission,” he told her. “You shall marry me, sweetheart; no one shall prevent it.”

She yielded to his eyes, his arms, his eager lips with a sense of mingled relief and terror.

“We must not speak of it, David,” she warned him, “nor—take too much for granted, till after we have found out about the contract. We may have to wait till——”

“Oh, damn the contract!” cried David exuberantly. “I’ll find that fellow Smith and make him tell me all he knows. I’ll fix it up, sweetheart; you’ll see!”

Jimmy’s rollicking laugh floated across the lawn. Peg Morrison had stacked the last wheelbarrow with the sweet lawn grass, topped it with the little boy, and was trundling his load toward the house with great pretence of exhaustion.

“Now’t I’ve got you aboard, Cap’n,” Barbara heard him saying, “it’s all I c’n make out. You’re turrible big an’ hefty.”

“You won’t ask me to leave him, David?” murmured Barbara. “I couldn’t do that; unless—” she added with quick remembrance—“I am forced to.”

“Little beggar!” quoth David good-humoredly; “he’s always been a dangerous rival of mine. But I’ll take him for a side partner this time, Barbara. How’ll that suit you?”

He turned and crushed her roughly in his arms.

“I’ve waited long enough,” he said, “now let everybody and everything get out of my way; I’m going to marry you within the month,” and stopped the words of protest on her lips with his kisses.

That same evening Martha Cottle wandered forth under the soft light of the rosy evening. She was dressed in a full-skirted gown of lilac calico, sprigged with white, and starched to rustling stiffness; over it flowed the wide expanse of a freshly ironed white apron. The labors of the day were concluded and Miss Cottle felt herself attuned to the soft influences of the hour. So when she chanced to come upon Peleg Morrison reposing himself in a battered wooden chair tipped against the barn door, she addressed him in terms of surprising amity.

“It’s a real pleasant evening,” observed Miss Cottle, with an agreeable smile.

“Yes, ma’am, it sure is,” replied Peg, in kind. In deference to the lady he shook the ashes out of his pipe, and rose from his chair.

“I suppose you and I’ll soon be left in charge here,” continued Miss Cottle, sighing. “For my part, I dr-read the responsibility.”

“Hes—Miss Barb’ry heard f’om——”

“No; not that I know of. And I call it strange—very str-range. Don’t you, Mr. Morrison?”

Peg removed his hat and thoughtfully fumbled the scanty locks behind his ears.

“‘Tis kind o’ queer; that’s so,” he agreed.

Miss Cottle bent forward, her lean features quivering with emotion.

“And to cap the climax,” she said, “the girl’s gone and engaged herself to be married.”

“Who? Not Miss Barb’ry?”

Miss Cottle nodded confirmation.

“To that young Whitcomb fellow,” she concluded acidly.

Mr. Morrison resumed his hat, pulling it low over his eyes. From this familiar shelter he viewed his informant cautiously.

“Did she—did Miss Barb’ry tell you? Mebbe she wouldn’t care to hev me know.”

“She didn’t choose to make a confidant of me,” the spinster said, tossing her head. “I chanced to be passing through the hall, and I—overheard ’em—spooning.”

Mr. Morrison coughed deprecatingly.

“It’s a vallable idee,” he said slowly, “not t’ hear what you ain’t meant t’ hear. Young Whitcomb—huh? Wall! Wall!”

XV

DAVID WHITCOMB sat in the dining-room of the Barford Eagle. It was fifteen minutes of eleven by the loud-ticking clock, with a calendar attachment proclaiming a new day, which hung against the wall in full view of the breakfaster, yet he appeared quite unabashed by the lateness of the hour as he attacked the platter of fried ham and eggs which the pink-cheeked waitress set before him. She was a pretty girl with curly light hair and wide open eyes of an innocent babyish blue.

“Here’s your toast, Mr. Whitcomb, nice an’ hot—jus’ as you like it,” she said, reaching over his shoulder to set a covered plate before him. “An’ I tried the coffee m’self this morning. That ol’ cook, she makes me good and tired! _She_ don’t care whether you like things or not.”

David flashed a brilliant smile at the waitress.

“You’re a nice little girl, Jennie,” he said, and tasted the steaming cup which she handed him. Then he made a wry face.

“Isn’t it good?” asked the girl, with a grieved droop of her full red lips. “I made it jus’s you said, with the egg an’ all, an’ it jus’ boiled up good once. I stood right over it for all o’ that nasty Sarah. She swatted me with her dish-towel, ’cause I wouldn’t——”

“It’s made well enough,” interrupted David; “but it’s a cheap brand of coffee, and—bring the coffee-pot here; will you?”

“The coffee-pot?”

“Yes. Bring it here; the one you make my coffee in.”

The girl disappeared kitchenward with a hasty rustling of her crisp blue gingham skirts. David leaned back in his chair and thrust both hands in his trousers pockets while he eyed the table service of coarse crockery and cheap glass with a cynical smile. Three or four flies hovered aimlessly about the plate of buttered toast, and one crawled into the half-filled cream jug where it buzzed helplessly, its wings spattered with the liquid.

“Damn!” muttered David, pushing back his chair and yawning. There were shrill voices in loud altercation in the not distant kitchen, the sound of a hard-shut door, and the waitress reappeared, red-cheeked and breathless, bearing a large black coffee-pot in her two hands held far in front of her.

“Here it is, Mr. Whitcomb,” she said. “That nasty ol’ cook was bound I shouldn’t bring it in ’ere. She threw dish-water on my clean apron. I could ’a’ killed her!”

She held the coffee-pot for his inspection and David lifted the lid, peered in, and sniffed disgustedly.

“Ugh!” he said. “I thought so. Now I like decent coffee, and I’ll buy a coffee-pot just to make my coffee in. Do you suppose you could keep it, so that termagant in the kitchen wouldn’t annex it?”

“You bet I can,” giggled the girl delightedly, “an’ I’ll do it, too, jus’ to spite Sarah. An’ I’ll make your coffee every morning. I’d love to, Mr. Whitcomb.”

“Good girl,” drawled David. He waved his hand toward the table. “You may as well take these things away,” he said. “I’m—er—not hungry this morning.”

The girl’s face fell; her full lips quivered and pouted like a child’s on the verge of sobbing.

“I made the toast,” she said. “I made it jus’ like you said. It—it’s good.”

David uncovered the plate hastily.

“It looks fine, Jennie; but you see it’s so near dinner-time—see here, my girl, you buy the coffee-pot for me; will you?—just a plain tin one, mind. And—er—keep the change.”

He threw a crisp bill on the table.

The girl took up the money and folded it together carefully. When she raised her blue eyes they were swimming in tears.

“I—I’ll do anythin’ you say,” she whimpered, “anythin’ you want me to.”

By way of answer, perhaps, David pushed back his chair with a harsh, scraping sound that echoed dismally through the empty room. Then he rose, clapped his straw hat on the back of his curly head, searched for his cigarette case and matches and stalked out to the piazza by way of the passage which, in country fashion, afforded an easy mode of transit between the bar and the dining-room. At one side of the passage was set a high, ink-spattered desk, and behind it a long-legged stool, upon which perched a fattish, elderly man intent upon a ledger. This individual appeared to feel the heat of the June morning exceedingly, for he mopped his face from time to time with a large handkerchief, in the intervals of setting down laborious lines of figures. He looked up as David Whitcomb approached, and his large face creased itself into a dubious smile.

“Good-morning, Sutton,” remarked David blandly. “Finding out how much the public owes you for your astonishing good cheer—eh?”

“Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” mumbled the Boniface. “Um—yes; I was sort of goin’ over m’ books. Warm mornin’, ain’t it?”

He eyed David closely, taking note apparently of the heavy ring of virgin gold on the third finger of his left hand and descending slyly to the polished toes of his tan Oxfords.

“How much do I owe you?” asked the young man nonchalantly, allowing a thin wreath of smoke to escape from his lips.

“‘Twon’t break ye, I guess,” hazarded Mr. Sutton, pushing a slip of pink paper across the desk with alacrity. “The’s a few extrys on this week’s bill,” he added, breathing heavily as he indicated with the handle of his pen various items annotated on the account.

David flung his half-smoked cigarette out of the open window and produced a roll of bills from his pocket, from which he detached one.

“Take it out of that,” he said carelessly. “I need some change.”

“Yes, sir; all right, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Sutton effusively.

He sucked in his lips in a windy whisper as he counted out the change in bills of smaller denominations and topped them with a little pile of silver.

“Hope you find everythin’ t’ your likin’ at the Eagle.”

David shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m used to roughing it.”

The hotel-keeper signed his name to the receipted bill with a heavy flourish.

“Heh?” he ejaculated.

Then he climbed hastily down from his perch.

“Come across,” he said hospitably, “an’ have one on me. Anythin’ you say, Mr. Whitcomb.”

“Something cold, if you have it,” David directed the bartender”—and bitter. No, no! not too much of that. Fill it up with water.”

He drank thirstily and set down the glass, lifting his eyes to look out of the window at a passing vehicle.

“That’s the Hon’rable S. Jarvis, _Es_quire,” pronounced his host, sucking his lips over the contents of his own glass. “Warm man, Jarvis.”

“By that you mean?” queried David, strolling toward the door.

“He’s got the rocks, Jarvis has; but my! ain’t he the screechin’ limit? I’ll bet you——”

Mr. Sutton waddled heavily after David, and seated himself comfortably in one of the big splint-bottomed chairs ranged along the piazza for the convenience of patrons.

“I’ll bet you,” he concluded, “he’s got half a million salted down, if he’s got a penny.”

“Is there a decent horse in the stable?” inquired David, after a silence, which Mr. Sutton filled in with various animal-like noises, expressive of his entire physical comfort.

“No; but I c’n git y’ one over to the livery stable. I’ll send over for it, if you say so,” Mr. Sutton responded.

“I want to find Bellows,” David said.

“Who? The auctioneer? Wall, y’ don’t need no livery hoss t’ locate Thomas. He’s over t’ Henry Maclin’s this mornin’, sellin’ out the stock. Hank’s concluded to go west. Thinks there’s more doin’ out there. But I dunno ’bout that. You mus’ know somethin’ ’bout the West?”

David was smoking a second cigarette with short, impatient puffs.

“I’ve been there,” he admitted, with a transient scowl.

“How’d you like it?” asked Mr. Sutton, folding his pudgy hands across his protuberant front. “What sort of a place is it? Gamblers—heh? Cowboys, shootin’ parties, sage brush, prairie fires, etcetery—heh?”

“You’ve named the principal features of the great West,” drawled David. “It’s all there, more particularly the et cetera. There’s lots of that roaming about.”

He pulled his hat over his eyes and stepped down from the veranda.

“I may not be back to dinner,” he said, “but I’d like a decent steak for supper, if you can get it in this centre of civilization.”

Mr. Sutton watched the young man’s muscular figure in its leisurely progress down the street. Then he went back to the barroom, where his underling, a slim, sallow young man, with oily black hair parted very particularly in the middle of his narrow head, was languidly arranging clean glasses on a tray.

“He’s hot stuff, ain’t he?” observed the bartender.

“Who?—Whitcomb?”

“Thinks he’s the whole thing, don’t he?”

Mr. Sutton frowned. “I ain’t made up my mind ’bout that young feller,” he said ponderously. “But I’m kind of watchin’ him. It strikes me he’ll bear—watchin’.”

David Whitcomb, walking slowly down the village street under the shade of the spreading maples, was experiencing that vague dissatisfaction which in individuals of his temperament is apt to follow the attainment of some hotly pursued desire. Barbara had long represented to his imagination the distant, unsealed peak, the untrodden wild, the unstaked, unexplored claim. He had come back from the West with no very fixed intention of marrying her; but with something of the languid curiosity the traveller feels regarding scenes long unvisited.

He had not felt at all sure that he would find Barbara the lovely vision that he had pictured her, in the infrequent intervals given to a vague remembrance of past days. But he had lost sight of his indifference in the excitement of the auction and his subsequent impulsive endeavors to break down the girl’s scruples. Now he had won her, fairly or unfairly, and he was thinking with some irritation of the future to which he had committed himself. The dull vista of a married life, spent in hard work on a farm, which in the end could not belong to him, appeared more and more intolerable the longer he dwelt upon it. He was in a thoroughly bad humor by the time he had reached the scene of Thomas Bellows’ latest activities.

Henry Maclin’s hardware, flour, and feed store was situated on the outskirts of the village. As David approached it he could hear the loud voice of the auctioneer upraised in the raucous monotone of his calling, and the dull thud of his hammer, as he proclaimed the sale of the various articles an assistant was rapidly passing up to him.

David sauntered up to the edge of the crowd and stood there, gloomily reviewing the events of the previous month. He glanced up suddenly to find a keen pair of eyes riveted upon him.

“Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” called Peg Morrison, as if he feared the young man might attempt to avoid him. “Thinkin’ o’ biddin’ in any o’ the stuff? The best of it’s gone b’ now. I got a good cross-cut saw, though. B’en wantin’ one fer quite a spell. The’s quite a lot o’ dead timber standin’ on th’ farm in diff’rent places ’at ought t’ come down.”

David was plainly indifferent, and after cautiously studying his unresponsive face Mr. Morrison went on.

“Miss Barb’ry, she leaves mos’ everythin’ t’ me; but the’s times when I feel as ’o I’d like a man t’ go over the place with me. Course she’s got her idees, an’ some o’ ’em’s all right; but I d’clar’ I hate t’ see her botherin’ with outdoor work. Females had ought to keep house an’ sew an’ look after the cookin’, an’ not be tryin’ t’ do men’s work b’sides. That’s what I tell her, an’ I been thinkin’ ’at some day you’d go ’round with me, since you’re such a good friend o’ Miss Barb’ry’s.”

David frowned in an irritated fashion.

“I don’t understand farming, my good fellow,” he said coldly. “So I’m afraid my advice wouldn’t prove very valuable.”

“That’s jus’ what I was thinkin’,” was Peg’s incautious comment. “An’ mebbe fer that very reason, you’d better——”

He hesitated and stopped short under the steady stare of Whitcomb’s blue eyes.

“Y’—see,” he blundered on, “ef Miss Barb’ry hes to go ’way fer five years, I was thinkin’——”

“She won’t go away for five years, if I can help it,” said David. “I’m going to try and get her out of the mess she’s made of things.”

His eyes wrinkled at the corners and he laughed outright at the strange working of Peg’s untutored features.

“Don’t you bother your old head about Miss Barbara’s affairs,” he said carelessly, “nor”—his keen look threatened serious displeasure—“mine.”

He turned decidedly and made his way towards Bellows, who had just disposed of the last lot of merchandise and stepped down from his perch among the rapidly dispersing crowd.

But the auctioneer could not, when questioned, furnish the address of the small man in checked clothes, who had paid four thousand dollars for a hypothetical term of Barbara’s service. He shook his head vigorously when urged to a further explanation of what had immediately followed the event at the Preston farm.

“Nope,” he persisted. “I can’t help you none. I done all I was paid t’ do an’——”

David whipped out a yellow-backed bill from his vest-pocket.

“You had references,” he said in a cautious tone, “for I heard you say so. Who figured as referee?”

Mr. Bellows waved David’s hand aside.

“It’d cost me more’n you’ve got t’ tell you,” he said. “Nope. I ain’t a-goin’ t’ say nothin’ more. Anyway, what business is it of yours?”

David did not choose to acquaint the auctioneer with the reasons for his anxiety, and presently he found himself walking swiftly along the road leading to the Preston farm. He was uncomfortably hungry by this time, but with the unreason of the average man attributed his gloomy feelings to a higher source than his clamorous stomach.

Barbara met him at the door with an agitated face.

“I have heard from—the person who—— Oh, I was hoping you would come!”

“Do you mean the fellow who bought you?” he demanded sharply. Her apparent faith in himself he passed over without notice. “Has he been here?”

“No-o,” murmured Barbara. “But I had a letter.”

She put it into his hand, and watched him eagerly, timidly, while he read it. She had lain awake half the night, thinking of David, of his eyes, of the strong pressure of his arms, of the touch of his lips upon hers. Love had drawn near at last, and she bent her head meekly to his accolade, almost forgetting her chain in the rapture of the moment. But with the morning had come the painful recurrence of all her doubts and fears; and later, as if in answer to her agitated questionings, the letter.

David read it with frowning brows.

“There’s nothing in this,” he said impatiently, “to show you who the person is, nor when you’ll be called for.”

“No,” Barbara agreed faintly. “But you see——”

“It’s some mean dog-in-the-manger, who is watching you in secret, and——”

He stopped short.

“The boy is coming,” he said, and got to his feet.

“You’ll stay to dinner?” she begged him timidly. “I made cherry pies this morning. I think”—humbly—“that they’re that they’re very good.”

David put his arm around her, with a sudden untraced impulse of tenderness.

“Don’t worry about the letter,” he said magnificently. “I’ll—think it over.”

It was a very happy meal they ate together, in spite of the prying presence of Miss Cottle, who had assumed control of the teapot. There was stewed chicken, an abundance of fresh vegetables, strawberries and yellow cream, and, to top off with, the cherry pie of such unexampled excellence that David forgot the unpleasant doubts which had assailed him in the morning. As he sat, smoking a cigarette, on the shaded porch at the conclusion of the meal, it occurred to him that the farm was not, after all, so bad a place to live. His eyes wandered dreamily across the broad fields to the blue distance, and lingered there unseeingly.

Barbara came out presently and sat down at his side.

“I should be so happy,” she sighed, “if——”

“Eh—what?” he roused himself to say. He reached out and patted her hand. “Why be unhappy about anything—just now?” he murmured. He smiled dreamily into her eyes. “The dinner was perfect, sweetheart; as for the reminder from your unknown, why not be thankful that ’it’ contents itself with correspondence?”

Barbara turned her eyes away. An aching lump arose in her throat as if to choke her. When she finally answered him it was in a low, controlled voice.

“There will be other letters—other reminders; you saw that.”

David was at the moment languidly optimistic. It occurred to him to silence her grieving lips with a kiss; but he was too drowsily comfortable to move. He contented himself by again caressing her fingertips.

“Don’t poison our happiness by perpetual references to something neither of us can possibly help,” he murmured.

XVI

THERE is that which works secretly (call it what you will), everywhere transmuting the ugly into the beautiful, the seeming evil into acknowledged good, the mean and worthless into the rare and precious; moving upon the face of vasty deeps, upon inchoate planets; toiling in unknowable abysses, whirling in star-dust and nebulæ, and no less in the veiled darkness of the holiest place—the soul of man. And here, indeed, this pervasive life principle, this informing Mind, this toiling servant of universes and men (call it what you will), seeks chiefly to manifest its supernal powers. Give it entrance in any fashion; open to it the smallest crevice; entertain its mysterious presence ever so briefly, and in that lodgment it begins at once its wonder-working transmutations. For observe: this unseen, and often unsuspected, worker takes of the common things of life, of its base and ignoble things and turns them into shapes of imperishable beauty. And observe, also: this is accomplished without tumult of manufacture; neither smoke of his burning furnace, nor clang of hammer, nor noise of breaking stone is heard, though one listen with the fine ear of the magician in the fable. And observe for a third time (for all of this has to do with the tale that is told): that the blind desire of the one who is thus wrought upon in some mysterious fashion relates itself to the will of Him who works, so that they are in a way one and indissoluble. For such is the law of growth in all the universe, and such will it ever be.

To Stephen Jarvis, pursuing to all outward appearance the even tenor of a way long trodden, came slight intimation of the changes in himself—the self deep submerged beneath the surface of everyday life. He still loaned money on bond and mortgage, exacting, as was his custom, the highest legal rate of interest. As in the past, he looked sharply after his investments, foreclosing when foreclosure had become due and inevitable, and manipulating such conservative purchases of stocks and bonds as his accumulating capital appeared to require. He was conscious of but one thing, and that was that these procedures no longer afforded him pleasure. They were, on the contrary, in the nature of labor. After a little, the labor became grinding in its demands upon him. Gradually, too, he found that the heavy looks and sad faces of certain of his debtors had the power to hurt him. One day he actually yielded to the importunities of a poor widow, not openly, indeed, but through a trusted agent of his, restoring to her the home she had lost. Once indulged, this folly (as he called it), grew upon him stealthily. More and more frequently he found himself giving; still secretly, because in his mind giving still appeared to him a despicable weakness. Yet he continued to impart (where he must) with that keen discrimination and sound judgment which had always distinguished his operations in finance. As yet no one suspected him. To have incurred a suspicion of benevolence would have shamed him little less than a well-founded conjecture of crime on the part of those who had always known him.

Nevertheless, he who runs may read the legible handwriting of God on the faces of men. The cold, immobile features of the grasping money-getter changed subtly, as was indeed inevitable, into something more human; his eyes looked out from beneath his sternly modelled brows as keenly as ever, yet in their very penetration there was a veiled light not visible before.

Perhaps the creature who might have told the most unbelievable story of the change in Stephen Jarvis was his horse. He no longer drove under the lash and with the cowardly curb-bit. He simply did not care any longer for the sensation afforded by beating down an inferior intelligence with his own brute force. No other reason for this particular change in his habits had as yet occurred to him. He still used fast horses; but he ceased to abuse them.

Nearly two months had elapsed since his last visit to the Preston farm. On that occasion he had entreated Barbara not to shame him before the crowd assembled for the auction; and she had refused to listen. Then he had gone away. Something of what followed had been repeated to him. And since he had learned of the return of David Whitcomb from the West; of his spectacular part in the bidding, and of his subsequent visits to the farm.

It was of David he was thinking as he drove along the country roads on a day in early August. The fields were yellowing to the harvest and a great peace lay upon the face of Nature, veiled lightly with the long continued heat. When, therefore, he overtook the object of his thoughts walking along the dusty road with every appearance of discomfort, he drew up his horse and spoke to him.

“I haven’t seen you to speak with you, since your return, Mr. Whitcomb,” he said civilly. “Won’t you get in and ride with me? I shall be glad to—talk with you.”

David stared with undisguised astonishment; then a derisive gleam shone in his blue eyes.

“Why—er—certainly, Mr. Jarvis,” he said, and sprang in and seated himself with cool assurance. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask you for a ride,” he went on, “but I’m not sorry you offered to give me a lift. It’s deucedly unpleasant walking.”

Jarvis met his inquiring look gravely.

“You are making quite a stay in the East,” he said. “Do you mean to settle here?”

The quick blood rose in David’s face.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” he said. “I’m—er—just looking around a bit.”

Jarvis was silent, casting about in his mind for a suitable opening for what he wished to say.

David spared him the trouble. With his usual sensitiveness to the moods of his companions—a sensitiveness which at times amounted almost to divination—he looked sidewise at Jarvis, a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

“I’ve been to see Miss Preston,” he said confidentially, “at the farm.”

“Yes?” Jarvis observed non-committally.

“You know Miss Preston, I believe?” said David.

Jarvis hesitated.

“I have had business relations with Miss Preston,” he said coolly. He was beginning to feel an exceeding dislike of the well-dressed, smiling young man at his side.

“Yes,” agreed David, shrugging his shoulders. “she’s mentioned the fact to me.”

Jarvis tightened his grasp on the reins after his old choleric fashion, and the mare leaped forward as if expecting the cut of the ready lash.

“I understand Miss Preston has been relieved of—her anxieties somewhat,” he said evenly. “I—was glad to know it.”

David’s lip curled.

“Indeed!” he syllabled with a touch of insolence. “Well, I’ve no doubt Barbara—Miss Preston—will be duly grateful, when—er—I mention the fact of your interest in her affairs.”

“You’ll not mention it, I hope,” Jarvis said. After a brief silence he added, “You understand me, of course.”

“Well, no,” drawled David. “I don’t believe I do.”

He looked whimsically at Jarvis, as if expecting further elucidation.

But the older man was paying strict attention to his horse, his lips set in forbidding lines.

David yielded to one of his sudden impulses.

“Of course,” he burst out; “you won’t care; you’ve got your money out of it; but Barbara is deucedly unhappy.”

“Ah?”

Jarvis’s note of interrogation was barely audible.

“You know, I suppose, for it’s become town-talk long ago, that somebody bid her in—a thundering shame I call it—and then failed to show up. She considers herself bound, since she used the money—or part of it. I’d like mighty well to get hold of the person, male or female, who’s skulking behind the contract—as she persists in regarding it.”

“Why? What’s wrong with the transaction?”

Jarvis’s tone asked for information merely, but David flashed a suspicious look at him.

“Do you know anything about it?” he demanded.

“Do I—know anything about Miss Preston’s affairs?” echoed Jarvis. “Isn’t that a singular question for you to put to me?”

“It would be, if I hadn’t run every possible scent to earth already. I want to find the fellow.”

“For what purpose?” queried Jarvis, leaning forward to watch the even play of his mare’s hoofs.

“I want to pay him back and free the girl. It’s a damned outrage to hold a woman bound in this sneaking, secret fashion. It doesn’t give either of us any show.”

Jarvis appeared to ponder this statement in silence for a while.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, at last.

“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,” said David excitedly. “Of course I’m right! Here I’ve been hanging about for months, waiting for the person—whoever it is—to show up. I’m ready to settle the business by paying back the money.”

He met the other’s sharply inquiring look with a boastful grimace.

“I can do it; don’t make any mistake on that score!”

“And after you’ve made the transfer; what then?”

Jarvis’s tone was icy; his eyes searched the handsome, flushed face at his side mercilessly.

David met his gaze readily enough.

“Why,” he blustered, “you may as well know: I intend to marry Barbara. I’d do it, anyway; contract or no contract, and let that damned dog in the manger gnaw his bone till he’s tired of it; only Barbara—Miss Preston—objects. She’s like all women—sticks at a trifle, and yet is ready to swallow the earth, if you give ’em a chance.”

“Miss Preston doubtless supposes that her honor is involved. I can conceive that she might do so. A trifle, I believe you called it. And if you——”

“Oh, come; what’s the use of talking like that!” David interrupted impatiently. “I’m sick of all that sort of nonsense.” He pulled his hat over his eyes and stared morosely at the landscape. “If I didn’t care as much about the girl as I do, I’d cut the whole thing and go west again. This is no place for a man like me.”

“I’m disposed to agree with you,” observed Jarvis calmly. “Shall I set you down here?”

David recognized his surroundings with a start. They had reached the outskirts of the village, and Jarvis had stopped his horse in front of his own house.

“Oh, I may as well get out here, I suppose,” he said sullenly.

He turned and lifted his hat to Jarvis, with a sweeping bow.

“Much obliged for the delightful ride,” he said, with a sneering upward quirk of the mouth.

Jarvis sat motionless in his carriage watching the easy swing of the arrogantly youthful figure, as it passed down the street. He saw David go in at the front entrance of the Barford Eagle, yet still he sat silent, his brows drawn over brooding eyes.

His man, lounging in front of the stables, caught sight of the waiting equipage, and hurried down the driveway.

“Any orders, sir?” he asked. “Shall I take the horse, sir?”

Jarvis glanced at the man, something of his old irritability flaring up in his look.

“No,” he said shortly. “I’m not coming in now.”

He spoke sharply to his horse, turned abruptly, and drove rapidly away, past the pollarded willows, over the echoing bridge, and on into the country road beyond, muffled with the accumulated dust of a rainless midsummer. Presently he reached and passed the stone gateway of the Preston farm, and its orchards laden with unripe fruit. He looked at both with the sombre, unseeing intentness of a man who is at war with his deeper instincts.

He had been prepared, he supposed, to judge Whitcomb fairly; but his late brief interview with his successful rival had left him bitterly antagonistic to the younger man. David’s very physical beauty infuriated him. He recalled the level glances of his blue eyes, the curve of his lips, the carriage of his handsome head upon his broad shoulders, with a sense of blind, barbaric anger. His frequent references to Barbara, his cool assumption of triumph, his braggart self-assertion, his open disdain of concealment—all were abhorrent, intolerable to Jarvis. But none the less, he fought with and subdued himself.

“I am unjust,” he told himself flatly, “because I am jealous.”

And he despised himself the more, because recognizing the patent fact he still hated David; still longed to fling him out of his path as he had flung many a stronger man in the past. For the first time in all the years of his life he had become dimly aware of the beauty of self-sacrifice, and of its relations to a pure and true affection. Even while the primal man within foamed under his iron grip, he compelled himself to think tenderly of Barbara, of her loveless youth, of her loneliness, of her heroism. Then he remembered with shame his own persecutions of her woman’s weakness; for so it had come to look to him now. He recalled his brutal insistence, his threats, his unrelenting hardness, sparing himself in nothing, compelling his memory to flash before him every picture which contained them both.

He had travelled many miles before he roused to a realization of the lateness of the hour. The long summer twilight had fallen, like a roseate veil, over the rich landscape; the shadows had disappeared with the sun, and the great disk of a silver moon swam in the rosy light reflected from the sunset, which by now burned in crimson and amber splendors behind the misty purple of the hills.

His horse appeared jaded and weary, and Jarvis recalled vaguely that he had been driving at his old furious rate of speed. He leaned back against the cushions with a sigh, conscious of his own exceeding weariness, and allowed the mare to take her own gait. Out of the seething alembic of his thoughts had crystallized a single definite resolution. He would deal with Whitcomb as that son of God who was called Satan was permitted to deal with Job, and later with the recalcitrant apostle. He would sift David as wheat in the close-meshed sieve of his own love for Barbara. He would scrutinize his past, he would examine his present; he would hold him under the lens of purity, of probity, of honor. If Whitcomb stood the test, Jarvis swore by all that he held holy that he would stand back and allow him to marry the woman both loved. If not,—his strong fingers unconsciously tightened on the reins, and the obedient mare quickened her pace.