Part 8

Trench swung around. “I will go with you,” he said at once, “if you will permit me.”

But at that moment Jacob Eaton came up. As he recognized Trench, he stopped short and stared. Then he joined Diana without acknowledging her companion. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, “but the old fool was deaf. We may as well go on, Diana.”

But Diana stood still. “This is Mr. Trench,” she said.

The two men looked at each other. Eaton had just heard more of what Caleb Trench thought of the Land Company, but he knew Diana.

“How d’ye do,” he said curtly.

Trench made no reply. Diana gathered up the soft white folds of her skirt and took two steps away. “Good-night, Jacob,” she said sweetly, “Mr. Trench will see me home. Tell Cousin Jinny I’ll bring over the terrapin recipe in the morning.”

Jacob said nothing, and Trench whistled to Shot. The dog came bounding and followed his master and Miss Royall down the path.

Jacob stood stock-still and regarded what seemed to him the beginning of miracles. Was it possible that Diana was in open rebellion against society? That Diana should be in open rebellion against him was not amazing. She was wont to let him know that he was a mere speck on the horizon, but that he regarded as pretty coquetry, and of no consequence, because he intended to marry Diana. But that Diana should, a second time, prefer Caleb Trench to him was beyond belief, and that she should do it after certain revelations that he had just heard, was adding insult to injury, for Jacob had suddenly found that the poor Yankee shopkeeper lawyer was a foe worthy of his steel. He remained a long time motionless, his heavy lids drooping over his eyes and his brows meditative. He was, after all, a gentleman of resources, and it was merely a question of how to use them.

XIII

IT was midnight and storming hard when Dr. Cheyney stopped at Caleb’s door. Trench heard the wheels and opened it as the old man climbed down from his high buggy.

“Caleb, I’ve come for brandy; got any?” the doctor said briefly, coming in with his head bent in the rain; his rubber coat was drawn up to his ears, and the tails of it flapped against his thin legs.

Trench had been reading late, and there was a fire in the stove in the kitchen. “Go in and get dry a moment, Doctor,” he said, “while I get brandy. It’s no night for you, and at this hour too; your friends must remonstrate.”

“Damn it, sir, am I not the doctor?” said the old man, lowering.

“You’re that and something more, I take it,” Caleb replied, smiling.

“More?” Dr. Cheyney was out of temper. “Nay, nay, I’m just a plain doctor, and I can take care of both your big toes. These new-fangled ones can’t, sir, that’s all! It’s the fashion now to have a doctor for your nose and another for your toes and a third for your stomach. Very good, let ’em! I do it all and don’t get paid for it; that’s the difference.”

“They do,” said Caleb, producing a flask of brandy.

The doctor took it and thrust it deep into his big outside pocket. “I’ll pay you when I get ready,” he said dryly.

Trench laughed. He heard the swirl of the rain against the window-panes; it was nearly as bad as the day he had sheltered Diana. He looked keenly at the worn little old man and saw the streams of water that had streaked his coat. “I have a great mind to shut you up and keep you all night,” he remarked.

“For a ransom?” said the doctor grimly; “you wouldn’t get it. Caleb, that poor girl, Jean Bartlett, is dying.”

Trench was startled. “I didn’t know she was ill,” he replied; “Zeb came here and whined for money when the grandmother died so suddenly, but he said nothing of Jean.”

“He never does,” said Dr. Cheyney, “the young brute!”

“Are you going there now?” Caleb asked.

“Yep,” replied the doctor briefly; “I wanted more brandy, for I’m like to catch my death, but I must be about,--she’s dying. She may pull through until morning. Pneumonia--a cold that last bad storm. She lay out in the field half the night. She’s done it a hundred times when they harried her; this time it’s killed her. She’s not twenty.”

Caleb reached for his hat. “I’m going with you,” he said simply.

Dr. Cheyney threw him one of his shrewd looks. “Afraid to trust me alone in the wet?” he asked dryly.

Caleb smiled. “To tell you the truth I was thinking of Sammy. The poor little dirty beggar appeals to me, he’s thoroughly boy, in spite of his curious clothes, and Zeb is a drunken brute.”

The doctor grunted and went out, making room for Caleb at his side in the buggy. “I’m going to send Sammy to St. Vincent’s,” he said.

“Poor Sammy!” said Caleb.

The doctor clucked, and old Henk moved off, splashing through muddy water up to his fetlocks. The road was dark, and the doctor had swung a lantern between the back-wheels, a custom dear to rural communities; it swung there, casting a dismal flare under the buggy, which looked like a huge lightning-bug, with fire at its tail.

“Good enough for him!” continued the doctor bluntly, referring to Sammy and the foundling asylum.

“Plenty,” assented Caleb, unmoved.

This angered the doctor, as Caleb knew it would.

“Little brat!” growled William Cheyney fiercely, “what was he born for? Foundling asylum, of course!”

“Of course,” agreed Caleb, and smiled in the darkness.

“Damn!” said the doctor.

They traveled on through the night; the wind swept the boughs down, and the rain drove in their faces even under the hood.

“I can’t take him, drat it!” the old man broke out again fiercely. “I’ve boarded for sixty years; women are varmints, good women, I mean, and the Colfaxes wouldn’t take Sammy for a day to save his soul; he’s a child of shame.”

Caleb laughed silently; he felt the doctor’s towering wrath. “After all, wouldn’t it be a purgatory for a small boy to live with the Colfaxes?” he asked.

“Yep,” said the doctor, “it would. Miss Maria pins papers over the cracks in the parlor blinds to keep the carpet from fading, and Miss Lucinda dusts my office twice a day, for which she ought to be hung! I reckon they’d make divided skirts for Sammy and a frilled nightgown.”

“There are the Children’s Guardians in the city,” suggested Caleb thoughtfully.

“There’s the Reform School,” retorted the doctor bitingly.

Meanwhile old Henk traveled on, gaining in speed, for part of the road was on his way home and he coveted the flesh-pots of Egypt. The splashing of his feet in the mire kept time with the sob of the gale. Nearer and nearer drew the light in Jean Bartlett’s window.

“I told the Royalls she was dying,” Dr. Cheyney said, “and to-day Diana was there. She sat with her an hour and tried to quiet her. Jean was raving and, at last, I ordered the girl away; she’d no business worrying in such a scene as that; then she told me she would take Sammy! She--Diana!” the old man flung out his free hand and beat the air, “that girl! I wanted to shake her. Yet, it’s like her; she’s got heart.”

Caleb Trench, sitting back in his corner, summoned up a picture of the old man and Diana, and could not quite reconcile it with the Diana he knew. “You did not shake her,” he said; “what did you do?”

“Sent her home,” said the doctor bluntly, “drat it! Do you think a girl of her age ought to start a foundling asylum for charity’s sake? I told her her father would have her ears boxed, and she laughed in my face. David Royall worships her, but, Lordy, not even David would tolerate that!”

A low bough scraped the top of the carriage and they jogged on. Presently, old Henk stopped unwillingly and they got down, a little wet and stiff, and went silently into the house. It was stricken silent, too, except for the ticking of a clock in the kitchen, and that sounded to Caleb like a minute gun; it seemed to tick all through the house,--the three small rooms below, the rickety stairs and the attic above. There was a light in the kitchen, and there, on top of some old quilts in a packing box, lay Sammy asleep.

In the room beyond the kitchen, in the middle of the great, old-fashioned four-poster, that was worn and scratched and without a valance, lay Jean Bartlett. Her fair hair streamed across the pillow, her thin arms lay extended on either side, her chin was up, she lay as if on a cross, and she was dead.

From the far corner rose the woman whom the doctor had left to watch her. “She’s just gone, doctor,” she said laconically, without emotion.

Dr. Cheyney shot a look at her from under his eyebrows, and went over to look at Jean. The light from the poor little lamp fell full on her thin small-featured face and showed it calm; she was as pretty as a child and quite happy looking.

“Thank God!” said the doctor, “that’s over. Where’s Zeb?”

“Up-stairs, drunk,” said the woman; “if it warn’t raining so hard I’d go.”

The doctor looked over his spectacles. “Then you’ll take the child along,” he said gravely.

“That I won’t!” said she, “I’ve children of my own. I won’t have none such as him.”

“Oh, you won’t?” exclaimed the old man.

“I thought you’d take him,” said she, reddening.

“There are two women folks up at the house,” said the doctor dryly; “being a nameless child--out he goes!”

“Well, I don’t care,” said the nurse fiercely, “I feel so myself; there’s the foundling asylum.”

“He’ll fall on the stove here in the morning,” remarked the doctor.

The woman shut her mouth.

“Zeb’s drunk,” the old man added.

“I won’t take him,” she said flatly; “if I do, nobody’ll take him away. It’s the same with a baby as it is with a stray kitten, once you take it you keep it. I ain’t goin’ to take Jean Bartlett’s brat.”

“Don’t!” snapped the doctor, “for of such is the kingdom of heaven!”

Then he went out, turning his collar up again to his ears. “I’m going for the undertaker, Caleb.”

They stopped as he spoke and looked down at Jean’s boy. He lay with his arm across his face; he had not been undressed and one foot hung pendent in a forlorn and heelless shoe.

“The end of the drama,” commented the doctor dryly, “the sufferer.”

Caleb stooped down and gently lifted the sleeping child; he wrapped the old quilt about him, and bore him to the door. The doctor followed, then he reached over and put his hand on the latch.

“What are you doing?” he asked sharply.

“I’ve taken him,” said Trench calmly; “open the door.”

“You’ve no one to care for him.” Dr. Cheyney eyed him keenly.

“No,” he replied; “so much the better, the place is lonely.”

“You know what they’ll say?”

The young man’s face stiffened. “What?”

“That he’s your child,” said the doctor.

“Open the door,” said Caleb Trench.

The doctor opened it, then Trench stood straight, Sammy’s tousled head on his shoulder.

“Dr. Cheyney,” he said sternly, “if every stone in Paradise Ridge rose up to accuse me, I’d still do as I pleased.”

William Cheyney smiled grimly. “I believe you would,” he said, “but let me tell you, Caleb, you’ve got your fate by the forelock now!”

Yet he helped Trench put the sleeping child into the carriage, and as they did it a new sound gurgled into the night, the voice of the tippler in the attic, who had been shut up there alone and frightened, but was sipping and sipping to keep up his spirits. Now he sang, one kind of spirits rising as the other kind went down. And the song that followed them through the night, as they drove away from the house of death, with the nameless child between them, was “After the Ball.”

“The Lord forgive us!” said the doctor musingly; “it’s ‘after the ball’ with most of us, and then the straight house! G’long with you, Henk!”

XIV

JUNIPER’S spouse, Aunt Charity, was in the habit of sweeping out Caleb’s office and washing his windows, and the morning after Jean Bartlett’s death was her morning for scouring the premises. She was a stout old woman, nearly black, with a high pompadour, the arms and shoulders of a stonemason, and “a mighty misery” in her side. She stopped five times in the course of sweeping the inner office and stood, leaning on her broom, to survey the bundle of indiscriminate clothes on the floor, which was Sammy.

The transfer had disturbed him so little that, after his first screams of surprise, he had renewed his insatiable demands for pennies, and having one clasped tightly in either fist he sat in the middle of the floor viewing the world in general, and Aunt Charity in particular, with the suspicion of a financier. On her side, suspicion was equally apparent.

“Fo’ de Lawd!” she said, and swept another half yard, then stopped and viewed the intruder. “Fo’ de Lawd!” she said again.

Sammy heard her and clasped his pennies tighter; he read enmity in her eye and doubted. Aunt Charity swept harder, her broom approaching the rear end of Sammy’s calico petticoat. “Git up, yo’ white trash, yo’,” she commanded, using the broom to emphasize her order.

“Won’t!” wailed Sammy, “won’t! Shan’t have my pennies!”

“Git up!” said Aunt Charity; “w’at yo’ heah for, ennyway?”

“Yow!” yelled Sammy, wriggling along before the broom and weeping.

On this scene entered Caleb Trench, grave, somewhat weary, and with a new stern look that came from a night’s wrestle with his own will. “What’s all this, Aunt Charity?”

“Ain’t noffin,” said she aggressively; “I’se sweepin’. I ain’t doin’ noffin an’ I ain’t gwine ter do noffin to dat pore white trash.”

“Yes, you will,” said Caleb calmly; “you’ll give him a bath and put some decent clothes on him.”

“N-o-o-o-o-o!” shrieked Sammy.

“’Deed I ain’t!” retorted Aunt Charity, with indignation. “Ain’t dat Jean Bartlett’s chile?”

Trench nodded, looking from the old black woman to the small aggressive bundle on the floor. Aunt Charity tossed her head. “I ain’t gwine ter touch him!”

A sudden fierce light shone in Caleb’s gray eyes, a light that had a peculiarly quelling effect on the beholder. Aunt Charity met it and cowered, clasping her broom. “You’ll do what I say,” he replied, without raising his voice.

“Fo’ de Lawd!” gasped Aunt Charity and whimpered; “yo’ sho ain’t gwine ter keep dat chile heah?”

“And why not?” asked Caleb.

“Lawsy me, suh, ain’t yo’ gwine ter know w’at folks’ll say? Dere’s gwine ter be a talkation.”

“Very likely, poor little devil!” Caleb retorted grimly, “and your tongue to help it, but you’d better hold it, Charity; you’re here to do what I want--or to go elsewhere, see?”

“Yass, suh,” she replied hastily, “I’se gwine ter do it, but I sure wishes yo’d let me take de chile where he b’longs.”

“Where he belongs?” Caleb turned sharply.

“I ain’t sayin’,” cried Aunt Charity, thoroughly frightened, “I ain’t saying--” Then she stopped with her mouth open, for she had seen the figure in the outer room that Caleb did not see.

Her look made him turn, however, to come face to face with Jacob Eaton. He went out and closed the door on the inner office sharply, not conscious that Aunt Charity promptly dropped on her knees and put her eye to the keyhole.

Meanwhile, the two men measured each other with peculiar enmity. Jacob thrust his hands into his pockets and stood smiling, a smooth face but not a pleasant one.

“I came to see you on a matter of business,” he drawled, “but I’m afraid I disturb you.” He had seen the scene in the inner room.

Caleb’s height was greater than his, and he looked down at him with an inscrutable face; his temper was quick, but he had the rare advantage of not showing it.

“I am quite at leisure,” he said coldly, without the slightest attempt at courtesy.

“I had the pleasure of reading your Cresset speech,” said Jacob amusedly, “and I regret that I didn’t hear it. I congratulate you, it was excellent reading.”

Trench looked at him keenly. “You didn’t come here this morning to tell me that,” he said. “Come, Mr. Eaton, what is it?”

“No,” said Jacob, still smiling, “I didn’t come for that, you’re right. I came to make a business proposition.”

There was a pause, and Trench made no reply. Jacob began to find, instead, that his silence was a peculiar and compelling weapon.

“You have made me the butt of your speeches,” he continued, with his first touch of anger, “and your attacks are chiefly aimed at the Land Company of which I am the president. I suppose you are fully aware of this?”

Caleb smiled involuntarily. “I could not be unaware,” he observed.

“Then, perhaps, you are not unaware of what I came for,” Jacob said.

“Possibly,” replied Trench, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall, and studying Eaton with a coolly indifferent scrutiny that brought the color to Jacob’s face.

“Ah, you have probably been expecting my visit?” he said; “in other words, I suppose you’ve had an object in stirring up this excitement, in directing this attack upon me.”

“I have undoubtedly had an object,” Caleb Trench replied, after a moment’s silence.

Jacob’s smile was a sneer. “We’re business men, Mr. Trench,” he said; “I’m here this morning to know the size of that object.”

Caleb moved slightly, but his arms were still folded on his breast and he still leant against the wall; his cool, unwinking gaze began to dash Eaton’s composure; he could not be the finished and superior gentleman he thought himself, under those relentless eyes. He shifted his own position restlessly, drawing nearer to his adversary.

“Come,” he said, “name your price.”

“My what?” demanded Trench.

“Your price,” Eaton sneered openly, his smooth face crimson. In some way, to his own consciousness, he seemed to be shrinking into insignificance before the other man’s strong personality, his force, his coolness.

“Do you suppose, because I have sold goods and handled merchandise, that I am also on a level with my trade?” Caleb asked coolly, so coolly that Jacob was blinded to his peril.

“You are a trader,” said he bitingly, “a petty tradesman and a petty politician; as such you have your price.”

Caleb turned his face full toward him, and suddenly Eaton realized the terrible light in his eyes. “You lie,” he said slowly, deliberately, each word like a slap in the face; “you are a liar.”

Jacob sprang at him, fury in his own face, and prudence gone. But as he sprang Trench met him with a blow straight from the shoulder. It caught Eaton fairly and sent him sprawling, full length on the floor.

“By the Lord Harry, you got it, Jacob!” cried Judge Hollis from the door, where he had appeared unheard.

As Jacob rose foaming, Caleb saw Aaron Todd’s head behind the judge, and after him Peter Mahan.

There was no time to speak. Eaton flew at him again, his head down, and for the second time Caleb landed him on his back. Then the judge intervened.

“That’s enough,” he said dryly. “I reckon he needed it, but he’s got it. Get up, Jacob, and keep quiet.”

But Jacob would not; he got up to his feet again and made a rush forward, only to find himself clasped tight in Aaron Todd’s strong arms.

“Be quiet,” said Todd, “you’ll go down again like a sack of salt, you idiot! You’re too full of booze to risk a blow on your solar plexis.”

Eaton swore. “Let me go,” he said, “do you think I’ll take it from that fellow? You’re a prize-fighter!” he added between his teeth, lowering at Trench, and wriggling helplessly in Aaron’s arms, “you’re a common prize-fighter; if you were a gentleman you’d settle it with pistols!”

“Tut, tut!” said the judge.

“I will, if you like,” said Caleb coolly, his own wrath cooled by victory.

Jacob’s eyes flashed; he was a noted shot. “I’ll send some one to you later,” he said, the perspiration standing out on his forehead, as he wrenched himself from Todd’s arms.

“I’ve a mind to report you both to Judge Ladd,” said Judge Hollis, but his fiery old soul loved the smoke of battle.

Jacob, panting and disheveled, reached for his hat. “It will be to-morrow,” he said, “and with pistols--if you consent.”

Caleb looked at Todd and Mahan. “Will you represent me, gentlemen?” he asked quietly, something like a glint of humor in his eyes.

Todd nodded, and Peter Mahan, a keen-visaged Irish Yankee, beamed. To his soul a battle was the essence of life, and a duel was not unreasonable west of the Mississippi.

“Folly,” said Judge Hollis, secretly exultant, “rotten folly; let it drop.”

Jacob turned at the door, his face livid. “Not till I’ve sent him to hell,” he said, and walked out.

The judge brought his fist down on his knee. “By the Lord Harry,” he said, “it was this day twenty-odd years ago that Yarnall shot Jacob’s father.”

“I shan’t shoot Jacob,” said Caleb dryly.

Judge Hollis turned quickly. “What do you mean?” he began, but was interrupted.

The door between the rooms opened suddenly, after much restless but unnoticed wriggling of the knob, and Sammy, in his plaid petticoat and his brass-buttoned jacket, came in on wobbly legs. He stopped abruptly and viewed the group, finger in mouth.

“My God, what’s that?” exclaimed Judge Hollis blankly.

Caleb laughed. “My ward,” he said, and then he looked up and met three pairs of curious eyes. “It’s Jean Bartlett’s child,” he explained simply; “she died last night, and Dr. Cheyney threatened the Foundling Asylum, so I just brought the kid here; there’s room.”

Judge Hollis leaned forward, both hands on his knees, and viewed the child. “What did you do it for, Caleb?” he asked, in the midst of the pause.

“Heaven knows!” said Caleb, smiling, as he filled his pipe. “I fancy because the poor little devil had no home, and I’ve known what it was to want one.”

The judge rubbed his chin. “I’m beat!” he said.

The other two men looked on silently while Caleb lit his pipe. Sammy picked up the judge’s cane from the floor and tried slowly and solemnly to swallow the gold knob on the top of it. The judge sank slowly back into his chair, the old worn leather chair. “And there’ll be a duel to-morrow!” he remarked; then, looking at the child, he added feelingly, “It beats the band!”

XV

THE time for the duel was an hour before sunrise the following day, and to Caleb Trench, the Quaker, it was a gross absurdity. He had knocked down Jacob Eaton as he would have knocked down any man who insulted him, and he would have fought Jacob with his fists, but to shoot him down in cold blood was another matter; not that Trench was over merciful toward a man like Eaton, nor that he lacked the rancor, for an insult lingers in the blood like slow poison.

Eaton had selected two young men from the city, and the cartel had been delivered with all the care and joy of an unusual entertainment. To Aaron Todd, the farmer, it was a matter as ridiculous as it was to Trench, though he could understand two men drawing their weapons on each other in a moment of disagreement. But Peter Mahan loved it as dearly as did Willis Broughton, a grand-nephew, by the way, of old Judge Hollis. The place chosen was Little Neck Meadow, and the seconds made their arrangements without any personal qualms. A fight, after all, in that broad southwestern country was like the salt on a man’s meat.

Meanwhile the news that Caleb Trench had taken in Jean Bartlett’s child dropped like a stone in a still pool, sending the ripples of gossip eddying into wider circles until the edges of the puddle broke in muddy waves, for no one had ever really known who was the father of Jean’s boy. So, before Caleb rose at daybreak, to go to Little Neck Meadow, his adoption of Sammy was as famous as his Cresset speech, and as likely to bear unexpected fruits.

Old Judge Hollis had remonstrated against both the child and the duel, but not so warmly against the last as the first, and when he went away there was a new look in his eyes. After all, what manner of man was the shopkeeping lawyer of the Cross-Roads? The judge shook his head, wondering; wondering, also, that he loved him, for he did. The power of Caleb Trench lay deeper than the judge’s plummet, and, perhaps, it was that which lent the sudden sweetness to his rare smile.