VII In Which Hero and Villain Appear as One
A month later Christopher’s conversation with Carraway returned to him, when, coming one morning from the house with his dogs at his heels and his squirrel gun on his shoulder, he found Will Fletcher and a troop of spotted foxhound puppies awaiting him outside the whitewashed gate.
“I want to speak to you a moment, Mr. Blake,” began the boy, in the assured tones of the rich man to the poor. The Blake hounds made a sudden rush at the puppies, to be roughly ordered to heel by their master.
“Well, fire away,” returned the young man coolly. “But I may as well warn you that it’s more than likely it will be a clear waste of breath. I’ll have nothing to do with you or your sort.” He leaned on his gun and looked indifferently over the misty fields, where the autumn’s crop of lifeeverlasting shone silver in the sunrise.
“I don’t see why you hate me so,” said the boy wonderingly, checking the too frolicsome adventures of the puppies in the direction of the hounds. “I’ve always liked you, you know, even before you saved my life—because you’re the straightest shot and the best trainer of hounds about here. Grandpa says I mustn’t have anything to do with you, but I will anyway, if I please.”
“Oh, you will, will you?” was Christopher’s rejoinder, as he surveyed him with the humorous contempt which the strong so often feel for the weak of the same sex. “Well, I suppose I’ll have my say in the matter, and strangely enough I’m on your grandfather’s side. The clearer you keep of me the better it will be for you, my man.”
“That’s just like grandpa all over again,” protested the boy; and when it comes to that, he needn’t know anything about it—he doesn’t know half that I do, anyway; he blusters so about things.”
Christopher’s gaze returned slowly from the landscape and rested inquiringly upon the youthful features before him, seeking in them some definite promise of the future. The girlish look of the mouth irritated him ludicrously, and half-forgotten words of Carraway’s awoke within his memory.
“Fletcher loves but one thing on this earth, and his ambition is that the boy shall be respected in the county.” A Fletcher respected in the very stronghold of a Blake! He laughed aloud, and then spoke hurriedly as if to explain the surprising mirth in his outburst.
“So you came to pay a visit to your nearest neighbour and are afraid your grandfather will find it out? Then you’ll get a spanking, I dare say.”
Will blushed furiously, and stood awkwardly scraping up a pile of sand with the sole of his boot. “I’m not a baby,” he blurted out at last, “and I’ll go where I like, whatever he says.”
“He keeps a pretty close watch over you, I reckon. Perhaps he’s afraid you’ll become a man and step into his shoes before he knows it.”
“Oh, he can’t find me out, all the same,” said the boy slyly. “He thinks I’ve gone over to Mr. Morrison’s now to do my Greek—he’s crazy about my learning Greek, and I hate it—and, you bet your life, he’ll be hopping mad if he finds I’ve given him the slip.”
“He will, will he?” remarked Christopher, and the thought appeared to afford him a peculiar satisfaction. For the first time the frown left his brow and his tone lost its insolent contempt. Then he came forward suddenly and laid his hand upon the gate. “Well, I can’t waste my morning,” he said. “You’d better run back home and play the piano. I’m off.”
“I don’t play the piano—I’m not a girl,” declared the boy; “and what I want is to get you to train my hounds for me. I’d like to go hunting with you to-day.”
“Oh, I can’t be bothered with babies,” sneered Christopher in reply. “You’d fall down, most likely, and scratch your knees on the briers, and then you’d run straight home to blab to Fletcher.”
“I won’t!” cried Will angrily. “I’ll never blab. He’d be too mad, I tell you, if he found it out.”
“Well, I don’t want you anyhow, so get out of my way. You’d better look sharp after your pups or the hounds will chew them up.”
The boy stood midway of the road, kicking the dust impatiently ahead of him. His lips quivered with disappointment, and the expression gave them a singularly wistful beauty. “I’ll give you all my pocket money if you’ll take me with you,” he pleaded suddenly, stretching out a handful of silver.
With a snarl Christopher pushed his arm roughly aside. “Put up your money, you fool,” he said; “I don’t want it.”
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you?” taunted the other, raging with wounded pride. “Why, grandpa says you’re as poor as Job’s turkey after it was plucked.”
It was an old joke of Fletcher’s, who, in giving utterance to it, little thought of the purpose it would finally be made to serve, for Christopher, halting suddenly at the words, swung round in the cloud of dust and stood regarding the grandson of his enemy with a thoughtful and troubled look. The lawyer’s words sounded so distinctly in his ears that he glanced at the boy with a start, fearing that they had been spoken aloud: “His grandson is the sole living thing that Fletcher loves.” Again the recollection brought a laugh from him, which he carelessly threw off upon the frolics of the puppies. Then the frown settled slowly back upon his brow, and the brutal look, which Carraway had found so disfiguring, crept out about his mouth.
“I tell you honestly,” he said gruffly, “that if you knew what was good for you, you’d scoot back along that road a good deal faster than you came. If you’re such a headstrong fool as to want to come with me, however, I reckon you may do it. One thing, though, I’ll have no puling ways.”
The boy jumped with pleasure. “Why, I knew all the time I’d get around you,” he answered.
“I always do when I try; and may I shoot some with your shotgun?”
“I’ll teach you, perhaps.”
“When? Shall we start now? Call the dogs together—they’re nosing in the ditch.”
Without taking the trouble to reply, Christopher strode off briskly along the road, and after waiting a moment to assemble his scattered puppies, Will caught up with him and broke into a running pace at his side. As they swung onward the two shadows— the long one and the short one—stretched straight and black behind them in the sunlight.
“You’re the biggest man about here, aren’t you?” the boy asked suddenly, glancing upward with frank admiration.
“I dare say. What of it?”
“Oh, nothing; and your father was the biggest man of his time, Sol Peterkin says; and Aunt Mehitable remembers your grandfather, and he was the tallest man alive in his day. Who’ll be the biggest when you die, I wonder? And, I say, isn’t it a pity that such tall men had to live in such a little old house—I don’t see how they ever got in the doors without stooping. Do you have to stoop when you go in and out?”
Christopher nodded.
“Well, I shouldn’t like that,” pursued Will; “and I’m glad I don’t live in such a little place. Now, the doors at the Hall are so high that I could stand on your shoulders and go in without bending my head. Let’s try it some day. Grandpa wouldn’t know.”
Christopher turned and looked at him suddenly. “What would you say to going ’possum hunting one night?” he asked in a queer voice.
“Whoopee!” cried the boy, tossing his hat in the air. “Will you take me?”
“Well, it’s hard work, you know,” went on the other thoughtfully. “You’d have to get up in the middle of the night and steal out of the window without your grandfather’s knowing it.”
“I should say so!”
“We’d tramp till morning, probably, with the hounds, and Tom Spade would come along to bring his lanterns. Then when it was over we’d wind up for drinks at his store. It’s great sport, I tell you, but it takes a man to stand it.”
“Oh, I’m man enough by now.”
“Not according to your grandfather’s thinking.”
“What does he know about it? He’s just an old fogy himself.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see. If he wants to keep you tied to nurse’s strings too long, we must play him a trick. Why, when I was fourteen I could shoot with any man about here—and drink with him, too, for that matter. Nobody kept me back, you see.”
The boy looked up at Christopher with sparkling eyes, in which the eternal hero-worship of youth was already kindled.
“Oh, you’re splendid!” he exclaimed, “and I’m going to be just like you. Grandpa shan’t keep me a baby any longer, I can tell you. All this Greek, now—he’s crazy about my learning it—and I hate it. Do you know Greek?”
Christopher laughed shortly. “Where does he live?” he inquired mockingly.
For a moment the boy looked at him perplexed. “It’s a language,” he replied gravely; “and grandpa says it comes handy in a bargain, but I won’t learn it. I hate school, anyway, and he swears he’s going to send me back in two weeks. I hope I’ll fall ill, and then he can’t.”
“In two weeks,” repeated the other reflectively; “well, a good deal may happen, I reckon, in two weeks.”
“Oh, lots!” agreed the boy with enthusiasm; “you’ll let me chase rabbits with you every day—won’t you? and teach me to shoot? and we’ll go ’possum hunting one night and not get home till morning. It will be easy enough to fool grandpa. I’ll take care of that, and if Aunt Saidie finds it out she’ll never tell him—she never does tell on me. Here, let me take the gun awhile, will you?”
Christopher handed him the gun, and they went on rapidly along the old road under the honey locusts that grew beyond the bend. They were nearing the place where Christopher, as a child of twelve, had waited with his birdgun in the bushes to shoot Fletcher when he came in sight, and now as the recollection returned to him he unconsciously slackened his pace and cast his eyes about for the spot where he had stood. It was all there just as it had been that morning—the red clumps of sumach covered with gray dust, the dried underbrush piled along the fence, and the brown honeyshucks strewn in the sunny road. For the first time in his life he was glad at this instant that he had not killed Fletcher then—that his hand had been stayed that day to fall the heavier, it might be, at the appointed time. The boy still chatted eagerly, and when presently the hounds scented a rabbit in the sassafras beyond the fence, he started with a shout at the heels of the pursuing pack. Swinging himself over the brushwood, Christopher followed slowly across the waste of lifeeverlasting, tearing impatiently through the flowering net which the wild potato vine cast about his feet.
Through the brilliant October day they hunted over the ragged fields, resting at noon to eat the slices of bread and bacon which Christopher had brought in his pocket. As they lay at full length in the sunshine upon the lifeeverlasting, the young man’s gaze flew like a bird across the landscape—where the gaily decorated autumn fallows broke in upon the bare tobacco fields like gaudy patches on a homely garment—to rest upon the far-off huddled chimneys of Blake Hall. For a time he looked steadily upon them; then, turning on his side, he drew his harvest hat over his eyes and began a story of his early adventures behind the hounds, speaking in half-gay, half-bitter tones.
In the mild autumn weather a faint haze overhung the landscape, changing from violet to gray as the shadows rose or fell. Around them the unploughed wasteland swept clear to the distant road, which wound like a muddy river beside the naked tobacco fields. Lying within the slight depression of a hilltop, the two were buried deep amid the lifeeverlasting, which shed its soft dust upon them and filled their nostrils with its ghostly fragrance.
As he went on, Christopher found a savage delight in mocking the refinements of the boy’s language, in tossing him coarse expressions and brutal oaths much as he tossed scraps to the hounds, in touching with vulgar scorn all the conventional ideals of the household—obedience, duty, family affection, religion even. While he sank still lower in that defiant self-respect to which he had always clung doggedly until to-day, there was a fierce satisfaction in the knowledge that as he fell he dragged Will Fletcher with him—that he had sold himself to the devil and got his price.
This unholy joy was still possessing him when at nightfall, exhausted, dirty, brier-scratched, and bearing their strings of game, they reached Tom Spade’s, and Christopher demanded raw whisky in the little room behind the store. Sol Peterkin was there, astride his barrel, and as they entered he gave breath to a low whistle of astonishment.
“Why, your grandpa’s been sweepin’ up the county for you!” he exclaimed to Will.
“So he’s found out I wasn’t at the Morrisons’,” said the boy a little nervously. “I’d better be going home, I reckon, and get it over.”
Christopher drained his glass of whisky, and then, refilling it, pushed it across the table.
“What! Aren’t you man enough to swallow a thimbleful?” he asked, with a laugh. His face was flushed, and the dust of the roads showed in streaks upon his forehead, where the crown of his straw hat had drawn a circle around his moist fair hair. The hand with which he touched the glass trembled slightly, and his eyes were so reckless that, after an instants’ frightened silence. Peterkin cried out in alarm: “For the Lord’s sake, Mr. Christopher, you’re not yourself—it’s the way his father went, you know!”
“What of it?” demanded Christopher, turning his dangerous look upon the little man. “If there’s a merrier way to go, I’d like to know it.”
Peterkin drew over to the table and laid a restraining hold on the boy’s arm. “Put that down, sonny,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it, and you may be sure it’ll do you no good. It will turn your stomach clean inside out.”
“He took it,” replied the boy stubbornly, “and I’ll drink it if he says so.” He lifted the glass and stood looking inquiringly at the man across from him. “Shall I drink it?” he asked, and waited with a boyish swagger.
Christopher gave a short nod. “Oh, not if you’re afraid of it,” he responded roughly; and then, as Will threw back his head and the whisky touched his lips, the other struck out suddenly and sent the glass shivering to the floor. “Go home, you fool!” he cried, “and keep clear of me for good and all.”
A moment afterward he had passed from the room, through the store, and was out upon the road.