CHAPTER IV
A STRANGER AT THE GATE
Rain overtook Isom as he was driving home from town that evening, andrain was becoming one of the few things in this world from which hewould flee. It aggravated the rheumatism in his knotted toes and stabbedhis knee-joints with awl-piercing pains.
For upward of forty-five years Isom had been taking the rains as theycame wherever they might find him. It made him growl to turn tail tothem now, and trot to shelter from every shower like a hen.
So he was in no sweet humor as he drew near his own barn-yard gate withthe early autumn downpour already finding its way through his coat. Itcame to him as he approached that portal of his domain that if he had ason the boy would be there, with the gate flung wide, to help him. Itwas only one of the thousand useful offices which a proper boy couldfill around that place, thought he; but his wives had conspired inbarrenness against him; no son ever would come to cheer his decliningdays.
Even if he had the kind of a wife that a man should have, reflected he,she would be watching; she would come through rain and hail, thunder andwild blast, to open the gate and ease him through without thattroublesome stop.
Matrimony had been a profitless investment for him, said he inbitterness. His first wife had lived long and eaten ravenously, and hadworn out shoes and calico slips, and his second, a poor unwilling hand,was not worth her keep.
So, with all this sour summing up of his wasted ventures in his mind,and the cold rain spitting through his years-worn coat, Isom was in nohumor to debate the way with another man when it came to entering intohis own property through his own wide gate.
But there was another man in the road, blocking it with his top-buggy,one foot out on the step, his head thrust around the side of the hoodwith inquiring look, as if he also felt that there should be somebody athand to open the gate and let him pass without muddying his feet.
"Ho!" called Isom uncivilly, hailing the stranger as he pulled up histeam, the end of his wagon-tongue threatening the hood of the buggy;"what do you want here?"
The stranger put his head out a bit farther and twisted his neck to lookbehind. He did not appear to know Isom, any more than Isom knew him, butthere was the surliness of authority, the inhospitality of ownership, inIsom's mien, and it was the business of the man in the buggy to know menat a glance. He saw that Isom was the landlord, and he gave him a nodand smile.
"I'd like to get shelter for my horse and buggy for the night, andlodging for myself," said he.
"Well, if you pay for it I reckon you can git it," returned Isom. "Pileout there and open that gate."
That was the way that Curtis Morgan, advance agent of the divine lightof literature, scout of knowledge, torch-bearer of enlightenment intothe dark places of ignorance, made his way into the house of Isom Chase,and found himself in due time at supper in the low-ceiled kitchen, withpretty Ollie, like a bright bead in a rusty purse, bringing hot biscuitsfrom the oven and looking him over with a smile.
Curtis Morgan was a slim and limber man, with a small head and a bigmouth, a most flexible and plastic organ. Morgan wore a mustache whichwas cut back to stubs, giving his face a grubby look about the nose. Hislight hair was short and thick, curling in little love-locks about hisears.
Morgan sold books. He would put you in a set of twenty-seven volumes ofthe _History of the World_ for fifty-three dollars, or he would open hisvalise and sell you a ready-reckoner for six bits. He carried _HouseholdCompendiums of Useful Knowledge_ and _Medical Advisers_; he had poultryguides and horse books, and books on bees, and if he couldn't sell youone thing he would sell you another, unless you were a worm, or agreased pig, and able, by some extraordinary natural or artificialattribute, to slip out of his hands.
As has been the case with many a greater man before him, Morgan's mostprofitable business was done in his smallest article of trade. In thecountry where men's lives were counted too short for all the work theyhad to do, they didn't have any time for histories of the world and nointerest in them, anyhow. The world was to them no more than they couldsee of it, and the needs of their lives and their longings--save in someadventurer who developed among them now and then--went no farther thanthe limit of their vision.
The ready-reckoner was, therefore, the money-maker for Morgan, whoseemed to carry an inexhaustible supply. It told a farm-hand what hispay amounted to by days and hours down to the fraction of a cent; ittold the farmer what the interest on his note would be; it showed how tofind out how many bushels of corn there were in a crib without measuringthe contents, and how many tons of hay a stack contained; it told how todraw up a will and write a deed, and make liniment for the mumps.
Isom drew all this information out of his guest at supper, and it didnot require much effort to set the sap flowing.
Morgan talked to Isom and looked at Ollie; he asked Joe a question, andcocked his eye on Ollie's face as if he expected to find the answerthere; he pronounced shallow platitudes of philosophy aiming them atIsom, but looking at Ollie for approval or dissent.
Isom appeared to take rather kindly to him, if his unusual volubilityindicated the state of his feelings. He asked Morgan a great deal abouthis business, and how he liked it, and whether he made any money at it.Morgan leaned back on the hinder legs of his chair, having finished hissupper, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for his goose-quill pick. Hewinked at Isom on the footing of one shrewd man to another as he appliedthe quill to his big white teeth.
"Well, I pay my way," said he.
There was a great deal back of the simple words; there was an oilyself-satisfaction, and there was a vast amount of portentous reserve.Isom liked it; he nodded, a smile moving his beard. It did him good tomeet a man who could get behind the sham skin of the world, and take itby the heels, and turn it a stunning fall.
Next morning, the sun being out again and the roads promising to dryspeedily, Morgan hitched up and prepared to set out on his flaming pathof enlightenment. Before going he made a proposal to Isom to use thatplace as headquarters for a week or two, while he covered the countrylying about.
Anything that meant profit to Isom looked good and fitting in his eyes.The feeding of another mouth would entail little expense, and so thebargain was struck. Morgan was to have his breakfast and supper eachday, and provender for his horse, at the rate of four dollars a week,payable in advance.
Morgan ran over his compendiums and horse books, but Isom was firm forcash; he suggested at least one ready-reckoner on account, but Isom hadno need of that. Isom could guess to a hundredweight the contents of astack of hay, and there never was a banker in this world that couldoutfigure him on interest. He had no more need for a ready-reckoner thana centipede has of legs. Morgan, seeing that nothing but money wouldtalk there, produced the week's charge on the spot, and drove off to hisday's canvassing well satisfied.
Morgan had not been a paying guest in that house two days before thesomber domestic tragedy that it roofed was as plain to him as if he hadit printed and bound, and in his valise along with the compendiums ofhis valuable assortment.
He found it pleasant to return to the farm early of an afternoon and sitin the kitchen door with his pipe, and watch Ollie's face clear ofclouds as he talked. Consolation and cheer were strangers to her heart;it required no words from her to tell Morgan that.
Her blushing gratitude for small offices of assistance, such as fetchinga pail of water or a basket of garden greens, repaid Morgan all that hemissed in sales by cutting short his business day just for the pleasureof returning and talking with her.
Isom was too self-centered, and unconscious of his wife's uncommonprettiness, to be jealous or suspicious of Morgan's late goings or earlyreturns. If a man wanted to pay him four dollars a week for the pleasureof carrying up water, cutting stove-wood or feeding the calves, the foolwas welcome to do it as long as his money held.
So it was that old Isom, blind and deaf and money-mad, set with his ownhand and kindled with his own breath, the insidious spark which trustfulfools
before his day have seen leap into flame and strip them of honorbefore the eyes of men.
Morgan made a long stay of it in that section, owing to the density ofthe population, he claimed, and the proximity of several villages whichhe could reach in a few miles' drive. He was in his third week when Isomwas summoned on jury service to the county seat.
Twelve dollars had passed from the book agent's hands into Isom's, andIsom grinned over it as the easiest money that it ever had been hispleasure to collect. He put it away with his savings, which never hadearned interest for a banker, and turned the care of the farm over toJoe.
Jury service at the county seat was an uncertain thing. It might last aday, and then it might tie a man up for two or three weeks, but Isom wasable to leave home with a more comfortable feeling than ever before. Hehad a trustworthy servant to leave behind him, one in whose handseverything would be safe, under whose energy and conscientious effortnothing would drag or fall behind.
Isom felt that he could very well afford to spread on a littlesoft-soap, as flattery was provincially called, and invest Joe with agreater sense of his responsibility, if possible. When occasionrequired, Isom could rise to flattery as deftly as the best of them. Itwas an art at which his tongue was wonderfully facile, considering thefact that he mingled so seldom with men in the outside doings of life.His wits had no foil to whet against and grow sharp, save the hardsubstance of his own inflexible nature, for he was born with that shrewdfaculty for taking men "on the blind side," as they used to call thattrick in Missouri.
"I'm turnin' the whole farm over to you to look after like it was yourown while I'm away," said he, "and I'm doing it with the feeling thatit's in worthy hands. I know you're not the boy to shirk on me when myback's turned, for you never tried to do it to my face. You stand by me,Joe, and I'll stand by you; you'll never lose anything by it in theend.
"I may be a crabbed old feller once in a while, and snarl around some,but my bark's worse than my bite, you know that by this time. So I'llput everything in your hands, with a feeling that it'll be looked afterjust the same as if I was here."
"I'll do the best I can by you," promised Joe, his generous heartwarming to Isom a little in spite of past indignities, and the fact thatJoe knew very well the old man's talk was artful pretense.
"I know you will," said Isom, patting his shoulder in fatherlyapprobation. "In case I'm held over there a week, you keep your eye onthat agent, and don't let him stay here a day overtime without anotherweek's board in advance."
"I'll attend to him," promised Joe.
Isom's hand had lingered a minute on Joe's shoulder while he talked, andthe old man's satisfaction over the depth of muscle that he felt beneathit was great. He stood looking Joe over with quick-shifting, calculatingeyes, measuring him in every part, from flank to hock, like a farrier.He was gratified to see how Joe had filled out in the past six months.If he had paid for a colt and been delivered a draft-horse, his surprisewould not have been more pleasant.
As it was, he had bargained for the services of a big-jointed,long-boned lad, and found himself possessed of a man. The fine part ofit was that he had nearly two years more of service at ten dollars amonth coming from Joe, who was worth twenty of any man's money, andcould command it, just as he stood. That was business, that wasbargaining.
Isom's starved soul distended over it; the feeling was warm in hisveins, like a gill of home-made brandy. He had him, bound body and limb,tied in a corner from which he could not escape, to send and call, tofetch and carry, for the better part of two good, profitable years.
As Isom rode away he rubbed his dry, hard hands above his saddle-horn,feeling more comfortable than he had felt for many a day. He gloatedover the excellent bargain that he had made with the Widow Newbolt; hegrinned at the roots of his old rusty beard. If ever a man poked himselfin the ribs in the excess of self-felicitation, Isom Chase did it as herode along on his old buckskin horse that autumn morning, with the sunjust lifting over the hill.
It was an excellent thing, indeed, for a patriot to serve his countryonce in a while on a jury, thought Isom, especially when that patriothad been shrewd in his dealings with the widow and orphan, and had thussecured himself against loss at home while his country called himabroad. Jury duty was nothing but a pleasant season of relaxation insuch case.
There would be mileage and _per diem_, and the state would bear theexpense of lodging and meals in the event of his being drawn out of thepanel to serve in some long criminal case. Mileage and _per diem_ wouldcome in very nicely, in addition to the four dollars a week thatloose-handed book agent was paying. For the first time in his life whencalled upon for jury service, Isom went to meet it with no sourness inhis face. Mileage and _per diem_, but best of all, a great strong manleft at home in his place; one to be trusted in and depended upon; onewho would do both his master's work and his own.
Joe had no such pleasant cogitations to occupy his mind as he bent hislong back to assume the double burden when Isom went away. For many dayshe had been unquiet with a strange, indefinable unrest, like the yearnof a wild-fowl when the season comes for it to wing away to southernseas. Curtis Morgan was behind that strong, wild feeling; he was theurge of it, and the fuel of its fire.
Why it was so, Joe did not know, although he struggled in his reason tomake it clear. For many days, almost from the first, Joe had felt thatMorgan should not be in that house; that his pretext of lingering thereon business was a blind too thin to deceive anybody but Isom. Anybodycould deceive Isom if he would work his scheme behind a dollar. It was ashield beyond which Isom could not see, and had no wish to inquire.
Joe did not like those late starts which Morgan made of a morning, longafter he and Isom were in the field, nor the early homings, long beforethey came in to do the chores. Joe left the house each morning withreluctance, after Isom's departure, lingering over little things,finding hitherto undiscovered tasks to keep him about in the presence ofOllie, and to throw him between her and the talkative boarder, whoseemed always hanging at her heels. Since their talk at dinner on theday that Morgan came, Joe had felt a new and deep interest in Ollie, andheld for her an unaccountable feeling of friendliness.
This feeling had been fed, for a few days, by Ollie, who found oddminutes to talk with him as she had not talked before, and by smallattentions and kindnesses. She had greeted him in the morning withsmiles, where her face once wore the sad mask of misery; and she hadtouched his hand sometimes, with encouraging or commending caress.
Joe had yielded to her immediately the unreserved loyalty of hisunsophisticated soul. The lot of his bondage was lightened by this newtie, the prospect of the unserved term under Isom was not so forbiddingnow. And now this fellow Morgan had stepped between them, in some mannerbeyond his power to define. It was as one who beholds a shadow fallacross his threshold, which he can neither pick up nor cast away.
Ollie had no more little attentions for Joe, but endless solicitude forMorgan's comfort; no more full smiles for him, but only the reflectionsof those which beamed for the chattering lounger who made a pretense ofselling books while he made love to another man's wife.
It was this dim groping after the truth, and his half-conception of it,that rendered Joe miserable. He did not fully understand what Morgan wasabout, but it was plain to him that the man had no honest purpose there.He could not repeat his fears to Isom, for Isom's wrath and correctionwould fall on Ollie. Now he was left in charge of his master's house,his lands, his livestock, and _his honor_.
The vicarious responsibility rested on him with serious weight. Knowingwhat he knew, and seeing what he saw, should he allow things to proceedas they had been going? Would he be true to the trust that Isom hadplaced in him with his parting word in standing aside and knowinglypermitting this man to slip in and poison the heart of Isom's wife?
She was lonely and oppressed, and hungry for kind words, but it was notthis stranger's office to make green the barrenness of her life. He wasthere, the bondboy, responsible to his master fo
r his acts. She mightcome to him for sympathy, and go away with honor. But with this other,this man whose pale eyes shifted and darted like a botfly around ahorse's ear, could she drink his counsel and remain undefiled?
Joe thought it up and down as he worked in the field near the house thatmorning, and his face grew hot and his eyes grew fevered, and hisresentment against Morgan rose in his throat.
He watched to see the man drive away on his canvassing round, but thesun passed nine o'clock and he did not go. He had no right there, alonein the house with that woman, putting, who could say, what evil into herheart.
Ten o'clock and the agent's buggy had not left the barn. Joe couldcontain himself no longer. He was at work in a little stony piece oflate clover, so rough he did not like to risk the mower in it. For threehours he had been laying the tumbled swaths in winding tracks across thefield, and he had a very good excuse for going to the well, indeed.Coupled with that was the need of a whet-rock, and behind it all thejustification of his position. He was there in his master's place; hemust watch and guard the honor of his house.
Joe could not set out on that little trip without a good deal of moralcudgeling when it came to the point, although he threw down his scythewith a muttered curse on his lips for the man who was playing such anunderhanded game.
It was on Ollie's account he hesitated. Ollie would think that hesuspected her, when there was nothing farther from his mind. It wasMorgan who would set the snare for her to trip into, and it was Morganthat he was going to send about his business. But Ollie might takeoffense and turn against him, and make it as unpleasant as she had shownthat she could make it agreeable.
But duty was stronger than friendship. It was stern and implacable, andthere was no pleasant road to take around it and come out with honor atthe other end.
Joe made as much noise as he could with his big feet--and that was noinconsiderable amount--as he approached the house. But near the buildingthe grass was long, and soft underfoot, and it bore Joe around to thekitchen window silently. His lips were too dry to whistle; his heart wasgoing too fast to carry a tune.
He paused a little way beyond the window, which stood open with the sunfalling through it, listening for the sound of their voices. It wasstrangely silent for a time when the book-agent was around.
Joe went on, his shadow breaking the sunbeam which whitened the kitchenfloor. There was a little quick start as he came suddenly to the kitchendoor; a hurried stir of feet. As he stepped upon the porch he saw Morganin the door, Ollie not a yard behind him, their hands just breakingtheir clasp. Joe knew in his heart that Morgan had been holding her inhis arms.
Ollie's face was flushed, her hair was disturbed. Her bosom rose andfell like troubled water, her eyes were brighter than Joe ever had seenthem. Even Morgan was different, sophisticated and brazen that he was. Aflash of red showed on his cheekbones and under his eyes; his thinnostrils were panting like gills.
Joe stood there, one foot on the porch, the other on the ground, asblunt as honesty, as severe as honor. There was nothing in his face thateither of them could read to indicate what was surging in his breast. Hehad caught them, and they wondered if he had sense enough to know.
Joe pushed his hat back from his sweating forehead and lookedinquiringly at Morgan.
"Your horse sick, or something?" he asked.
"No," said Morgan, turning his back on Joe with a little jerk ofcontempt in his shoulders.
"Well, I think he must be down, or something," said Joe, "for I heard aracket in the barn."
"Why didn't you go and see what was the matter?" demanded Morgancrossly, snatching his hat from the table.
Ollie was drowned in a confusion of blushes. She stood hanging her head,but Joe saw the quick turn of her eyes to follow Morgan as he went awayin long strides toward the barn.
Joe went to the tool-chest which stood in a corner of the kitchen andbusied himself clattering over its contents. Presently he looked atOllie, his hand on the open lid of the box.
"Did you see that long whetstone lying around anywhere, Ollie?" heasked.
She lifted her head with a little start. Joe never had called herfamiliarly by her name before. It always had been "Missis Chase,"distant and respectful.
"No, I haven't seen it, Joe," she answered, the color leaving hercheeks.
"All right, Ollie," said he, holding her eyes with steady gaze, untilshe shifted hers under the pain of it, and the questioning reproach.
Joe slammed down the lid of the tool-chest, as if with the intention ofmaking as much noise as possible.
There was something in the way he had spoken her name that was strangerthan the circumstance itself. Perhaps she felt the authority and theprotection which Joe meant that his voice should assume; perhaps sheunderstood that it was the word of a man. She was afraid of him at thatmoment, as she never had been afraid of Isom in all their married life.
"I suppose Isom put it away somewhere around the barn," said Joe.
"Maybe he did, Joe."
"I'll go down there and see if I can find it," he said.
Ollie knew, as well as Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone thevehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, butshe was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deepunderstanding of a man, or the domineering spirit of a crude lad,jealous of his passing authority.
The uncertainty troubled her. She watched him from the door and saw himapproach Morgan, where he was backing his horse into the shafts.
"All right, is he?" asked Joe, stopping a moment.
Morgan was distant.
"I guess he'll live another day, don't worry about him," said he, insurly voice.
"What time do you aim to be back today?" pursued Joe, entirely unmovedby Morgan's show of temper.
"Say, I'll set up a bulletin board with my time-table on it if you'vegot to have it, Mr. Overseer!" said Morgan, looking up from the bucklingof a shaft-strap, his face coloring in anger.
"Well, you don't need to get huffy over it."
"Mind your business then," Morgan growled.
He didn't wait to discuss the matter farther, but got into the buggywithout favoring Joe with as much as another glance, gave his horse avindictive lash with the whip and drove off, leaving the gate openbehind him.
Joe shut it, and turned back to his mowing.
Many a time he paused that morning in his labor, leaning on the snath ofhis scythe, in a manner of abstraction and seeming indolence altogetherstrange to him. There was a scene, framed by the brown casing of thekitchen door, with two figures in it, two clinging hands, whichpersisted in its disturbing recurrence in his troubled mind.
Ollie was on dangerous ground. How far she had advanced, he did notknow, but not yet, he believed, to the place where the foulness ofMorgan had defiled her beyond cleansing. It was his duty as the guardianof his master's house to watch her, even to warn her, and to stop herbefore she went too far.
Once he put down his scythe and started to go to the house, his mindfull of what he felt it his duty to say.
Then there rose up that feeling of disparity between matron and youthwhich had held him at a distance from Ollie before. He turned back tohis work with a blush upon his sun-scorched face, and felt ashamed. Butit was not a thing to be deferred until after the damage had been done.He must speak to her that day, perhaps when he should go in for dinner.So he said.
Ollie seemed self-contained and uncommunicative at dinner. Joe thoughtshe was a little out of humor, or that she was falling back into her oldgloomy way, from which she had emerged, all smiles and dimples, like anew and youthful creature, on the coming of Morgan. He thought, too,that this might be her way of showing her resentment of the familiaritythat he had taken in calling her by her name.
The feeling of deputy-mastership was no longer important upon hisshoulders. He shrank down in his chair with a sense of drawing in, likea snail, while he burned with humiliation and shame. The pinnacle ofmanhood was too slippery for his clumsy feet; he had p
lumped down fromits altitudes as swiftly as he had mounted that morning under the spurof duty. He was a boy, and felt that he was a boy, and far, far frombeing anything nobler, or stronger, or better qualified to give savingcounsel to a woman older, if not wiser, than himself.
Perhaps it was Ollie's purpose to inspire such feeling, and to hold Joein his place. She was neither so dull, nor so unpractised in the arts ofcoquetry, to make such a supposition improbable.
It was only when Joe sighted Morgan driving back to the farm late in theafternoon that his feeling of authority asserted itself again, andlifted him up to the task before him. He must let her understand that heknew of what was going on between them. A few words would suffice, andthey must be spoken before Morgan entered the house again to pour hispoison into her ears.
Ollie was churning that afternoon, standing at her task close by theopen door. Joe came past the window, as he had crossed it that morning,his purpose hot upon him, his long legs measuring the ground in immense,swift steps. He carried his hat in his hand, for the day was one ofthose with the pepper of autumn in it which puts the red in the apple'scheeks.
Ollie heard him approaching; her bare arm stayed the stroke of thechurn-dasher as she looked up. Her face was bright, a smile was in hereyes, revealing the clear depths of them, and the life and the desiresthat issued out of them, like the waters of a spring in the sun. She wasmoist and radiant in the sweat of her labor, and clean and fresh andsweet to see.
Her dress was parted back from her bosom to bare it to the refreshmentof the breeze, and her skin was as white as the cream on the dasher, andthe crimson of her cheeks blended down upon her neck, as if the moistureof her brow had diffused its richness, and spread its beauty there.
She looked at Joe, halted suddenly like a post set upright in theground, stunned by the revelation of the plastic beauty of neck and barebosom, and, as their eyes met, she smiled, lifted one white arm andpushed back a straying lock of hair.
Joe's tongue lay cold, and numb as wood against his palate; no wordwould come to it; it would not move. The wonder of a new beauty in God'screated things was deep upon him; a warm fountain rose in him and playedand tossed, with a new and pleasurable thrill. He saw and admired, buthe was not ashamed.
All that he had come to say to her was forgotten, all that he had framedto speak as he bore hastily on toward the house had evaporated from hisheated brain. A new world turned its bright colors before his eyes, anew breadth of life had been revealed, it seemed to him. In the pleasureof his discovery he stood with no power in him but to tremble andstare.
The flush deepened in Ollie's cheeks. She understood what was moving inhis breast, for it is given to her kind to know man before he knowshimself. She feigned surprise to behold him thus stricken, staring andsilent, his face scarlet with the surge of his hot blood.
With one slow-lifted hand she gathered the edges of her dress together,withdrawing the revealed secret of her breast.
"Why, Joe! What are you looking at?" she asked.
"You," he answered, his voice dry and hoarse, like that of one who asksfor water at the end of a race. He turned away from her then, saying nomore, and passed quickly out of her sight beyond the shrubbery whichshouldered the kitchen wall.
Slowly Ollie lifted the dasher which had settled to the bottom of thechurn, and a smile broke upon her lips. As she went on with thecompletion of her task, she smiled still, with lips, with eyes, withwarm exultation of her strong young body, as over a triumphant ending ofsome issue long at balance and undefined.
Joe went away from the kitchen door in a strange daze of faculties. Forthat new feeling which leaped in him and warmed him to the core, andgave him confidence in his strength never before enjoyed, and anunderstanding of things hitherto unrevealed, he was glad. But at hearthe felt that he was a traitor to the trust imposed in him, and that hehad violated the sanctity of his master's home.
Now he knew what it was that had made his cheeks flame in anger and hisblood leap in resentment when he saw Ollie in the door that morning, allflushed and trembling from Morgan's arms; now he understood why he hadlingered to interpose between them in past days. It was the wild, deepfear of jealousy. He was in love with his master's wife! What had beengiven him to guard, he had looked upon with unholy hunger; that whichhad been left with him to treasure, he had defiled with lustful eyes.
Joe struck across the fields, his work forgotten, now hot with themounting fires of his newly discovered passion, now cold with theswelling accusation of a trust betrayed. Jealousy, and not a regard forhis master's honor, had prompted him to put her on her guard againstMorgan. He had himself coveted his neighbor's wife. He had looked upon awoman to lust after her, he had committed adultery in his heart. Betweenhim and Morgan there was no redeeming difference. One was as bad as theother, said Joe. Only this difference; he would stop there, in time,ashamed now of the offending of his eyes and the trespass of his heart.Ollie did not know. He had not wormed his way into her heart by pityingher unhappiness, like the false guest who had emptied his lies into herears.
Joe was able to see now how little deserving Isom was of any suchblessing as Ollie, how ill-assorted they were by nature, inclination andage. But God had joined them, for what pains and penances He alone knew,and it was not the work of any man to put them apart.
At the edge of a hazel coppice, far away from the farmhouse thatsheltered the object of his tender thoughts and furtive desires, Joe satamong the first fallen leaves of autumn, fighting to clear himself fromthe perplexities of that disquieting situation. In the agony of hisaching conscience, he bowed his head and groaned.
A man's burden of honor had fallen upon him with the disclosure of aman's desires. His boyhood seemed suddenly to have gone from him likethe light of a lamp blown out by a puff of wind. He felt old, andresponsible to answer now for himself, since the enormity of his offensewas plain to his smarting conscience.
And he was man enough to look after Morgan, too. He would proceed todeal with Morgan on a new basis, himself out of the calculationentirely. Ollie must be protected against his deceitful wiles, andagainst herself as well.
Joe trembled in his newer and clearer understanding of the danger thatthreatened her as he hastened back to the barn-yard to take up hisneglected chores. The thought that Morgan and Ollie were alone in thehouse almost threw him into a fever of panic and haste.
He must not be guilty of such an oversight again; he must stand like astern wall between them, and be able to account for his trust to Isomwith unclouded heart.
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