“Kid, you look like you’d seen a snake,” said he.
“You let that woman alone–you’ve got to let her alone, I tell you!” said Joe with explosive suddenness, his passion out of hand.
Morgan’s face grew red.
“Mind your own business, you sneakin’ skunk!” said he.
“I am minding it,” said Joe; “but maybe not as well as I ought to ’a’ done. Isom left me here in his place to watch and look after things, but you’ve sneaked in under my arm like a dirty, thieving dog, and you’ve–you’ve––”
Morgan thrust his fist before Joe’s face.
“That’ll do now–that’ll do out of you!” he threatened.
Joe caught Morgan’s wrist with a quick, snapping movement, and slowly bent the threatening arm down, Morgan struggling, foot to foot with him in the test of strength. Joe held the captured arm down for a moment, and they stood breast to breast, glaring into each other’s eyes. Then with a wrench that spun Morgan half round and made him stagger, Joe flung his arm free.
“Now, you keep away from here–keep away!” he warned, his voice growing thin and boyish in the height of his emotion, as if it would break in the treble shallows.
“Don’t fool with me or I’ll hurt you,” said Morgan. “Keep your nose––”
“Let her alone!” commanded Joe sternly, his voice sinking again even below its accustomed level, gruff and deep in his chest. “I heard you–I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it–and I know what you’re up to tonight. Don’t come around here tonight after her, for I’m not going to let her go.”
“Ya-a, you pup, you pup!” said Morgan nastily.
“It’s a hard life for her here–I know that better than you do,” said Joe, passing over the insult, “but you can’t give her any better–not as good. What you’ve done can’t be undone now, but I can keep you from dragging her down any further. Don’t you come back here tonight!”
“If you keep your fingers out of the fire,” said Morgan, looking at the ground, rolling a fallen apple with his toe, “you’ll not get scorched. You stick to your knittin’ and don’t meddle with mine. That’ll be about the healthiest thing you can do!”
“If Isom knew what you’ve done he’d kill you–if he’s even half a man,” said Joe. “She was a good woman till you came, you hound!”
“She’s a good woman yet,” said Morgan, with some feeling, “too good for that old hell-dog she’s married to!”
“Then let her stay good–at least as good as she is,” advised Joe.
“Oh, hell!” said Morgan disgustedly.
“You can’t have her,” persisted Joe.
“We’ll see about that, too,” said Morgan, his manner and voice threatening. “What’re you goin’ to do–pole off and tell the old man?”
“I’ll do what Isom left me here to do, the rest of the time he’s away,” said Joe. “Ollie shan’t leave the house tonight.”
“Yes, you flat-bellied shad, you want her yourself–you’re stuck on her yourself, you fool! Yes, and you’ve got just about as much show of gittin’ her as I have of jumpin’ over that tree!” derided Morgan.
“No matter what I think of her, good or bad, she’d be safe with me,” Joe told him, searching his face accusingly.
“Yes, of course she would!” scoffed Morgan. “You’re one of these saints that’ll live all your life by a punkin and never poke it with your finger. Oh, yes, I know your kind!”
“I’m not going to quarrel with you, Morgan, unless you make me,” said Joe; “but you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I don’t want her, not the way you do, anyhow.”
Morgan looked at him closely, then put out his hand with a gesture of conciliation.
“I’ll take that back, Joe,” said he. “You’re not that kind of a kid. You mean well, but you don’t understand. Look-a here, let me tell you, Joe: I love that little woman, kid, just as honest and true as any man could love her, and she thinks the world and all of me. I only want to take her away from here because I love her and want to make her happy. Don’t you see it, kid?”
“How would you do that? You couldn’t marry her.”
“Not for a while, of course,” admitted Morgan. “But the old possum he’d get a divorce in a little while.”
“Well, I’m not going to let her go,” Joe declared, turning away as if that settled the matter for good and all. “You’ve done–I could kill you for what you’ve done!” said he, with sudden vehemence.
Morgan looked at him curiously, his careless face softening.
“Now, see here, don’t you look at it that way, Joe,” he argued. “I’m not so bad; neither is Ollie. You’ll understand these matters better when you’re older and know more about the way men feel. She wanted love, and I gave her love. She’s been worked to rags and bones by that old devil; and what I’ve done, and what I want to do, is in kindness, Joe. I’ll take her away from here and provide for her like she was a queen, I’ll give her the love and comradeship of a young man and make her happy, Joe. Don’t you see?”
“But you can’t make her respectable,” said Joe. “I’m not going to let her leave with you, or go to you. If she wants to go after Isom comes back, then let her. But not before. Now, you’d better go on away, Morgan, before I lose my temper. I was mad when I started after you, but I’ve cooled down. Don’t roil me up again. Go on your way, and leave that woman alone.”
“Joe, you’re a man in everything but sense,” said Morgan, not unkindly, “and I reckon if you and I was to clinch we’d raise a purty big dust and muss things around a right smart. And I don’t know who’d come out on top at the finish, neither. So I don’t want to have any trouble with you. All I ask of you is step to one side and leave us two alone in what we’ve started to do and got all planned to carry out. Go to bed tonight and go to sleep. You’re not supposed to know that anything’s due to happen, and if you sleep sound you’ll find a twenty-dollar bill under your hat in the morning.”
The suggestion brought a blush to Joe’s face. He set his lips as if fighting down hot words before he spoke.
“If I have to tie her I’ll do it,” said Joe earnestly. “She shan’t leave. And if I have to take down that old gun from the kitchen wall to keep you away from here till Isom comes home, I’ll take it down. You can come to the gate tonight if you want to, but if you do––”
Joe looked him straight in the eyes. Morgan’s face lost its color. He turned as if to see that his horse was still standing, and stood that way a little while.
“I guess I’ll drive on off, Joe,” said Morgan with a sigh, as if he had reached the conclusion after a long consideration.
“All right,” said Joe.
“No hard feelin’s left behind me?” facing Joe again with his old, self-assured smile. He offered his hand, but Joe did not take it.
“As long as you never come back,” said Joe.
Morgan walked to the fence, his head bent, thoughtfully. Joe followed, as if to satisfy himself that the wily agent was not going to work some subterfuge, having small faith in his promise to leave, much less in the probability that he would stay away.
Joe stood at the fence, looking after Morgan, long after the dust of his wheels had settled again to the road. At last he went back to the place where he had dropped his scythe, and cut a swath straight through to the tree where Ollie’s bonnet had hung. And there he mowed the trampled clover, and obliterated her footprints with his own.
The weight of his discovery was like some dead thing on his breast. He felt that Ollie had fallen from the high heaven of his regard, never to mount to her place again. But Isom did not know of this bitter thing, this shameful shadow at his door. As far as it rested with him to hold the secret in his heart, poison though it was to him, Isom should never know.
* * *
CHAPTER VI
BLOOD
Joe had debated the matter fully in his mind before going in to supper. Since he had sent her tempter away, there was no necessity
of taking Ollie to task, thus laying bare his knowledge of her guilty secret. He believed that her conscience would prove its own flagellant in the days to come, when she had time to reflect and repent, away from the debauching influence of the man who had led her astray. His blame was all for Morgan, who had taken advantage of her loneliness and discontent.
Joe now recalled, and understood, her reaching out to him for sympathy; he saw clearly that she had demanded something beyond the capacity of his unseasoned heart to give. Isom was to blame for that condition of her mind, first and most severely of all. If Isom had been kind to her, and given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in his insensibility to all human need of gentleness.
Joe even doubted, knowing him as he did, whether the gray old miser was capable of either jealousy or shame. He did not know, indeed, what Isom might say to it if his wife’s infidelity became known to him, but he believed that he would rage to insanity. Perhaps not because the sting of it would penetrate to his heart, but in his censure of his wife’s extravagance in giving away an affection which belonged, under the form of marriage and law, to him.
Joe was ashamed to meet Ollie at the table, not for himself, but for her. He was afraid that his eyes, or his manner, might betray what he knew. He might have spared himself this feeling of humiliation on her account, for Ollie, all unconscious of his discovery, was bright and full of smiles. Joe could not rise to her level of light-heartedness, and, there being no common ground between them, he lapsed into his old-time silence over his plate.
After supper Joe flattened himself against the kitchen wall where he had sat the night before on the bench outside the door, drawing back into the shadow. There he sat and thought it over again, unsatisfied to remain silent, yet afraid to speak. He did not want to be unjust, for perhaps she did not intend to meet Morgan at all. In addition to this doubt of her intentions, he had the hope that Isom would come very soon. He decided at length that he would go to bed and lie awake until he heard Ollie pass up to her room, when he would slip down again and wait. If she came down, he would know that she intended to carry out her part of the compact with Morgan. Then he could tell her that Morgan would not come.
Ollie was not long over her work that night. When Joe heard her door close, he took his boots in his hand and went downstairs. He had left his hat on the kitchen table, according to his nightly custom; the moonlight coming in through the window reminded him of it as he passed. He put it on, thinking that he would take a look around the road in the vicinity of the gate, for he suspected that Morgan’s submissive going masked some iniquitous intent. Joe pulled on his boots, sitting in the kitchen door, listening a moment before he closed it after him, and walked softly toward the road.
A careful survey as far as he could see in the bright moonlight, satisfied him that Morgan had not left his horse and buggy around there anywhere. He might come later. Joe decided to wait around there and see.
It was a cool autumn night; a prowling wind moved silently. Over hedgerow and barn roof the moonlight lay in white radiance; the dusty highway beyond the gate was changed by it into a royal road. Joe felt that there were memories abroad as he rested his arms on the gate-post. Moonlight and a soft wind always moved him with a feeling of indefinite and shapeless tenderness, as elusive as the echo of a song. There was a soothing quality in the night for him, which laved his bruised sensibilities like balm. He expanded under its influence; the tumult of his breast began to subside.
The revelations of that day had fallen rudely upon the youth’s delicately tuned and finely adjusted nature. He had recoiled in horror from the sacrilege which that house had suffered. In a measure he felt that he was guilty along with Ollie in her unspeakable sin, in that he had been so stupid as to permit it.
But, he reflected as he waited there with his hand upon the weathered gate, great and terrible as the upheaval of his day-world had been, the night had descended unconscious of it. The moonlight had brightened untroubled by it; the wind had come from its wooded places unhurried for it, and unvexed. After all, it had been only an unheard discord in the eternal, vast harmony. The things of men were matters of infinitesimal consequence in nature. The passing of a nation of men would not disturb its tranquillity as much as the falling of a leaf.
It was then long past the hour when he was habitually asleep, and his vigil weighed on him heavily. No one had passed along the road; Morgan had not come in sight. Joe was weary from his day’s internal conflict and external toil. He began to consider the advisability of returning to bed.
Perhaps, thought he, his watch was both futile and unjust. Ollie did not intend to keep her part in the agreement. She must be burning with remorse for her transgression.
He turned and walked slowly toward the house, stopping a little way along to look back and make sure that Morgan had not appeared. Thus he stood a little while, and then resumed his way.
The house was before him, shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he, and repentant in her dreams.
Joe felt that he might go to his rest with honesty. It would be welcome, as the desire of tired youth for its bed is strong. At the well he stopped again to look back for Morgan.
As he turned a light flashed in the kitchen, gleamed a moment, went out suddenly. It was as if a match had been struck to look for something quickly found, and then blown out with a puff of breath.
At once the fabric of his hopes collapsed, and his honest attempts to lift Ollie back to her smirched pedestal and invest her with at least a part of her former purity of heart, came to a painful end. She was preparing to leave. The hour when he must speak had come.
He approached the door noiselessly. It was closed, as he had left it, and within everything was still. As he stood hesitating before it, his hand lifted to lay upon the latch, his heart laboring in painful lunges against his ribs, it opened without a sound, and Ollie stood before him against the background of dark.
The moonlight came down on him through the half-bare arbor, and fell in mottled patches around him where he stood, his hand still lifted, as if to help her on her way. Ollie caught her breath in a frightened start, and shrank back.
“You don’t need to be afraid, Ollie–it’s Joe,” said he.
“Oh, you scared me so!” she panted.
Each then waited as if for the other to speak, and the silence seemed long.
“Were you going out somewhere?” asked Joe.
“No; I forgot to put away a few things, and I came down,” said she. “I woke up out of my sleep thinking of them,” she added.
“Well!” said he, wonderingly. “Can I help you any, Ollie?”
“No; it’s only some milk and things,” she told him. “You know how Isom takes on if he finds anything undone. I was afraid he might come in tonight and see them.”
“Well!” said Joe again, in a queer, strained way.
He was standing in the door, blocking it with his body, clenching the jamb with his hands on either side, as if to bar any attempt that she might make to pass.
“Will you strike a light, Ollie? I want to have a talk with you,” said he gravely.
“Oh, Joe!” she protested, as if pleasantly scandalized by the request, intentionally misreading it.
“Have you got another match in your hand? Light the lamp.”
“Oh, what’s the use?” said she. “I only ran down for a minute. We don’t need the light, do we, Joe? Can’t you talk without it?”
“No; I want you to light the lamp,” he insisted.
“I’ll not do it!” she flared suddenly, turning as if to go to her room. “You’ve not got any right to boss me around in my own house!”
“I don’t
suppose I have, Ollie, and I didn’t mean to,” said he, stepping into the room.
Ollie retreated a few steps toward the inner door, and stopped. Joe could hear her excited breathing as he flung his hat on the table.
“Ollie, what I’ve got to say to you has to be said sooner or later tonight, and you’d just as well hear it now,” said Joe, trying to assure her of his friendly intent by speaking softly, although his voice was tremulous. “Morgan’s gone; he’ll not be back–at least not tonight.”
“Morgan?” said she. “What do you mean–what do I care where he’s gone?”
Joe made no reply. He fumbled for the box behind the stove and scraped a slow sulphur match against the pipe. Its light discovered Ollie shrinking against the wall where she had stopped, near the door.
She was wearing a straw hat, which must have been a part of her bridal gear. A long white veil, which she wore scarf-wise over the front display of its flowers and fruits, came down and crossed behind her neck. Its ends dangled upon her breast. The dress was one that Joe never had seen her wear before, a girlish white thing with narrow ruffles. He wondered as he looked at her with a great ache in his heart, how so much seeming purity could be so base and foul. In that bitter moment he cursed old Isom in his heart for goading her to this desperate bound. She had been starving for a man’s love, and for the lack of it she had thrown herself away on a dog.
Joe fitted the chimney on the burner of the lamp, and stood in judicial seriousness before her, the stub of the burning match wasting in a little blaze between his fingers.
“Morgan’s gone,” he repeated, “and he’ll never come back. I know all about you two, and what you’d planned to do.”
Joe dropped the stub of the match and set his foot on it.
Ollie stared at him, her face as white as her bridal dress, her eyes big, like a barn-yard animal’s eyes in a lantern’s light. She was gathering and wadding the ends of her veil in her hands; her lips were open, showing the points of her small, white teeth.
“Isom–he’ll kill me!” she whispered.
The Bondboy Page 10