At breakfast, an hour or two later, he learned that his mother was in one of her high humours, and that, awaking early and prattling merrily of the past, she insisted that they should dress her immediately in her black brocade.When the meal was over he carried her from her bed to the old oak chair, in which she managed to keep upright among her pillows.Her gallant spirit was still youthful and undaunted, and the many infirmities of her body were powerless to distort the cheerful memories behind her sightless eyes.
Leaving her presently, after a careless chat about the foibles of Bolivar Blake, he took his hoe from an outhouse and went to "grub" the young weeds from the tobacco, which had now reached its luxuriant August height.By noon his day's work on the crop was over, and he was resting for a moment in the shadow of a locust tree by the fence, when he heard rapid footsteps approaching in the new road, and Bill Fletcher threw himself over the crumbling rails and came panting into the strip of shade.At sight of the man's face Christopher flung his hoe out into the field, where it bore down a giant plant, and bracing his body against the tree, prepared himself to withstand the shock of the first blow; but the other, after glaring at him for a breathless instant, fell back and rapped out a single thundering oath."You hell-hound! This is all your doing!"Throwing off the words with a gesture of his arm, Christopher stared coolly into the other's distorted face; then, yielding to the moment's vindictive impulse, he broke into a sneering laugh.
"So you have heard the good news?" he inquired lightly.
Before the rage in the old man's eyes--before the convulsed features and the quivering limbs--he felt a savage joy suddenly take possession of him.
"It's all your doing, every last bit of it," repeated Fletcher hoarsely, "and I'll live to pay you back if I hang for it in the end!""Go ahead, then," retorted Christopher; "you might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb, you know.""Oh, you think I'm fooling?" said the other, wiping a fleck of foam from his mouth, "but you'll find out better some day, unless the devil gets you mighty quick.You've made that boy a scamp and a drunkard, and now you've gone and married him to a--" He swallowed the words and stood gasping above his loosened collar.
Christopher paled slightly beneath his sunburn; then, as he recovered his assurance, a brutal smile was sketched about his mouth.
"Come, come, go easy," he protested flippantly; "there's such a thing, you remember, as the pot calling the kettle black."His gay voice fell strangely on the other's husky tones, and for the moment, in spite of his earth-stained hands and his clothes of coarse blue jean, he might have been a man of the world condescending to a peasant.It was at such times, when a raw emotion found expression in the primitive lives about him, that he realised most vividly the gulf between him and his neighbours.
To his superficial unconcern they presented the sincerity of naked passion.
"You've made the boy what he is," repeated the old man, in a quiver from head to foot."You've done your level best to send him to the devil.""Well, he had a pretty good start, it seems, before I ever laid eyes on him.""You set out to ruin him from the first, and I watched you," went on Fletcher, choking over each separate word before he uttered it; "my eye was on your game, and if you were anything but the biggest villain on earth I could have stopped it.But for you he'd be a decent chap this very minute.""And the pattern of his grandfather," sneered Christopher.
Fletcher raised his arm for a blow and then let it fall limply to his side."Oh, I'm done with you now, and I'm done with your gang," he said."Play your devil's tricks as much as you please;they won't touch me.If that boy sets foot on my land again I'll horsewhip him as I would a hound.Let him see who'll feed him now when he comes to starve."Catching his breath, Christopher stared at him an instant in silence; then he spoke in a voice which had grown serious.
"The more fool you, then," he said."The chap's your grandson, and he's a better one than you deserve.Whatever he is, I tell you now, he's a long sight too good for such as you--and so is Molly Peterkin, for that matter.Heavens above! What are you that you should become a stickler for honesty in others? Do you think I've forgotten that you drove my father to his grave, and that the very land you live on you stole from me? Pshaw! It takes more than twenty years to bury a thing like that, you fool!"Fletcher looked helplessly round for a weapon, and catching sight of the hoe, raised it in his hands; but Christopher, seizing it roughly from him, tossed it behind him in the little path.
"I'll have none of that," added the young man grimly.
"You're a liar, as your father was before you," burst out Fletcher, swallowing hard; "and as for that scamp you've gone and sent to hell, you can let him starve or not, jest as you please.
He has made his choice between us, and he can stick to it till he rots in the poorhouse.Much good you'll do him in the end, Ireckon."
"Well, just now it seems he hasn't chosen either of us," remarked Christopher, cooling rapidly as the other's anger grew red hot.
"It rather looks as if he'd chosen Molly Peterkin.""Damn you!" gasped Fletcher, putting up a nerveless hand to tear his collar apart, while a purple flush rose slowly from his throat to his forehead."If you name that huzzy to me again I'll thrash you within an inch of your life!""Let's try it," suggested Christopher in an irritating drawl.
