CHAPTER X.Powers of Darkness October dragged slowly along, and Christopher followed his work upon the farm with the gloomy indifference which had become the settled expression of his attitude toward life.Since the morning when he had seen Will drive by to the cross-roads he had heard nothing of him, and gradually, as the weeks went on, that last reckless night behind the hounds had ceased to represent a cause either of rejoicing or of regret.He had not meant to goad the boy into drinking--of this he was quite sure--and yet when the hunt was over and the two stood just before dawn in Tom Spade's room he had felt the devil enter into him and take possession.
The old mad humour of his blood ran high, and as the raw whisky fired his imagination he was dimly conscious that his talk grew wilder and that the surrounding objects swam before his gaze as if seen through a fog.Life, for the time at least, lost its relative values; the moment loomed larger in his vision than the years, and he beheld the past and the future dwarfed by the single radiant instant that was his own.It was as if he could pay back the score of a lifetime in that one minute.
"Is it possible that what was so difficult yesterday should have grown so easy to-day?" he asked himself, astonished."Why have Inever seen so clearly before? Why, until this evening, have Igone puling about my life as if such things as disgrace and poverty were sufficient to crush the strength out of a man? Let me put forth all my courage and nothing is impossible--not even the attainment of success nor the punishment of Fletcher.It is only necessary to begin at once--to hasten about one's task--and in a few short years it will be accomplished and done with.All will be as I wish, and I shall then be as happy as Tucker."Following this came the questions, How? When? Where shall Ibegin?--but he put them angrily aside and refilled his glass.Agreat good-humour possessed him, and, as he drank, all the unpleasant things of life--loss, unrest, heavy labour--vanished in the roseate glow that pervaded his thoughts.
What came of it was not quite clear to him next day, and this caused the uneasiness that lasted for a week.He had a vague recollection that Tom Spade took the boy home and rolled him through the window, and that he himself went whistling to his bed with the glorious sensation that he was riding the crest of a big wave.With the morning came a severe headache and the ineffectual effort to remember just how far it had all gone, and then a sharp anxiety, which vanished when he saw Will pass on his way to school.
"The boy was none the worse for it," Tom Spade told him later;"he had a drop too much, to be sure, but his legs were as steady as mine, an' he slept it off in an hour.He's a ticklish chap, Mr.Christopher," the storekeeper added after a moment, "an' I'd keep my hands from meddlin' with him, if I was you.That thing shan't happen agin at my place, an' it wouldn't have happened then if I'd been around at the beginnin'.You may tamper with yo'
own salvation as much as you please--that's my gospel, but I'll be hanged if you've got a right to tamper with anybody else's."Christopher wheeled suddenly about and gave him a keen glance from under his lowered eyelids.For the first time he detected a lack of deference in Tom Spade's tone, and a suspicion shot through him that the words were meant to veil a reprimand.
"Well, I reckon the boy's got as good a right to drink as Ihave," he retorted sneeringly, and a moment afterward went gaily whistling through the store.At the time he felt a certain pleasure in defying Tom's opinion--in setting himself so boldly in opposition to the conventional morality of his neighbours.The situation gave him several sharp breaths and that dizzy sense of insecurity in which his mood delighted.It had needed only the shade of disapproval expressed in the storekeeper's voice to lend a wonderful piquancy to his enjoyment--to cause him to toy in imagination with his hatred as a man does with his desire.Before Tom spoke he had caught himself almost regretting the affair--wondering, even, if his error were past retrieving--but with the first mere suggestion of outside criticism his humour underwent a startling change.
Between Fletcher and himself the account was still open, and the way in which he meant to settle it concerned himself alone--least of all did it concern Tom Spade.
He was groping confusedly among these reflections when, one evening in early November, he went upstairs after a hasty supper to find Cynthia already awaiting him in his room.At his start of displeased surprise she came timidly forward and touched his arm.
"Are you sick, Christopher? or has anything happened? You are so unlike yourself."He shook his head impatiently and her hand fell from his sleeve.
It occurred to him all at once, with an aggrieved irritation, that of late his family had failed him in sympathy--that they had ceased to value the daily sacrifices he made.Almost with horror he found himself asking the next instant whether the simple bond of blood was worth all that he had given--worth his youth, his manhood, his ambition? Until this moment his course had seemed to him the one inevitable outcome of circumstances--the one appointed path for him to tread; but even as he put the question he saw in a sudden illumination that there might have been another way--that with the burden of the three women removed he might have struck out into the world and at least have kept his own head above water.With his next breath the horror of his thought held him speechless, and he turned away lest Cynthia should read his degradation in his eyes.
