"Suppose you try it," suggested Maria pleasantly."It would please Aunt Saidie.""It ain't to please her," sourly responded Fletcher, as he drove the knife with a lunge into the yellow loaf."She's a thriftless, no-account housekeeper, and I'll tell her so tomorrow."Still holding the knife in his clenched fist, he sat munching the cake with a relish which brought a smile to Maria's tired eves.
"Yes, I've a powerful sweet tooth myself," he added, as he cut another slice.
CHAPTER VII.Will Faces Desperation and Stands at Bay Rising at daybreak next morning, Will's eyes lighted in his first glance from the window on Christopher's blue-clad figure commanding the ploughed field on the left of the house.In the distance towered the black pines, and against them the solitary worker was relieved in the slanting sunbeams which seemed to arrest and hold his majestic outline.The split basket of plants was on his arm, and he was busily engaged in "setting out" Will's neglected crop of tobacco.
Leaving Molly still asleep, Will dressed himself hurriedly, and, putting the diamond brooch in his pocket, ran out to where Christopher was standing midway of the bare field.
"So you're doing my work again," he said, not ungratefully.
"If I didn't I'd like to know who would," responded Christopher with rough kindliness, as he dropped a wilted plant into a hole.
"You're up early this morning.Where are you off to?"Will drew the brooch from his pocket and held it up with a laugh.
"Maria gave me this," he explained, "and I'm going to town to turn it into money.""Well, I'll keep an eye on the place while you are away,"returned Christopher, without looking at the trinket."Go about your business, and for heaven's sake don't stop to drink.Some men can stand liquor; you can't.It makes a beast of you.""And not of you, eh?"
"It never gets the chance.I know when to stop.That's the difference between us.""Of course that's the difference," rejoined Will a little doggedly."I never know when to stop about anything, I'll be hanged if I do.It's my cursed luck to go at a headlong gait.""And some day you'll get your neck broken.Well, be off now, or you'll most likely miss the stage."He turned away to sort the young plants in his basket, while Will started at a brisk pace for the cross-roads.
The planting was tedious work, and it was almost evening before Christopher reached the end of the field and started home along the little winding lane.He had eaten a scant dinner with Molly, who had worried him by tearful complaints across the turnip salad.She had never looked prettier than in her thin white blouse, with her disordered curls shadowing her blue eyes, and he had never found her more frankly selfish.Her shallow-rooted nature awakened in him a feeling that was akin to repulsion, and he saw in imagination the gallant resolution with which Maria would have battled against such sordid miseries.At the first touch of her heroic spirit they would have been sordid no longer, for into the most squalid suffering her golden nature would have shed something of its sunshine.Beauty would have surrounded her, in Will's cabin as surely as in Blake Hall.And with the thought there came to him the knowledge, wrung from experience, that there are souls which do not yield to events, but bend and shape them into the likeness of themselves.No favouring circumstance could have evolved Maria out of Molly, nor could any crushing one have formed Molly from Maria's substance.The two women were as far asunder as the poles, united only by a certain softness of sex he found in them both.
The sun had dropped behind the pines and a gray mist was floating slowly across the level landscape.The fields were still in daylight, while dusk already enshrouded the leafy road, and it was from out the gloom that obscured the first short bend that he saw presently emerge the figure of a man who appeared to walk unsteadily and with an effort.
For an instant Christopher stopped short in the lane; then he went forward at a single impetuous stride.
"Will!" he cried in a voice of thunder.
Will looked up with dazed eyes, and, seeing who had called him, burst into a loud and boisterous laugh.
"So you'll begin with your darn preaching," he remarked, gaping.
For reply, Christopher reached out, and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him roughly to his senses.
"What's the meaning of this tomfoolery?" he demanded."Do you mean to say you've made a beast of yourself, after all?"Partly sobered by the shock, Will gazed back at him with a dogged misery which gave his face the colour of extreme old age.
"I'm not so drunk as I look," he responded bitterly."I wish to Heaven I were! There are worse things than being drunk, though you won't believe it.I say," he added, in a sudden, hysterical exclamation, "you're the only friend I have on earth!""Nonsense.What have you been doing?"
"Oh, I couldn't help it--it wasn't my fault, I'll be blamed if it was! I did sell the breastpin and get the money, and wrapped it in the list of things that Molly wanted.I put them in my pocket," he finished, touching his coat, "the money and the list together.""And where is it?"
For a moment Will did not reply, but stood shaking like a blade of grass in a high wind.Then removing his hat, he mopped feebly at the beads of sweat upon his forehead.His eyes had the dumb appeal of a frightened animal's."I haven't had a morsel all day," he whimpered, "and the effect of the whisky has all worn off.""Speak up, man," said Christopher kindly."I can't eat you.""Oh, it's not you," returned Will desperately; "it's Molly.I'm afraid to go home and look Molly in the face.""Pish! She doesn't bite."
"She does worse; she cries."
