Chapter 8

Once again he found Janet at the milking; or rather, she had just turned the cows into the pasture, and as she waited for him by the bars, Saunders thought he had never seen her at worse advantage. The sharp morning air had blued her nose, and he was dimly conscious that the color did not suit her freckles.

“Why, no!” she said, answering his question as to whether or no he had not acted a bit foolish the night before. “You just speired me to marry on you. Said I'd been in your eye this thirty years.”

In a sense this was true. He had cleared from her path like a bolting rabbit, but gallantry forbade that manifest explanation. “'Twas the whuskey talking,” he pleaded. “Ye'll no hold me til a drunken promise?”

But he saw, even before she spoke, that she would.

“'Deed but I will!” she exclaimed, tossing her head. “An' them says ye were drunken will ha' to deal wi' me. Ye were sober as a sermon.”

Though disheartened, Saunders tried another tack. “Janet,” he said, solemnly, “I dinna think as a well-brought lass like you wad care to marry on a man like me. I'm terrible i' the drink. I might beat ye.”

Janet complacently surveyed an arm that was thick as a club from heavy choring. “I'll tak chances o' that.”

Saunders's heart sank into his boots; but, wiping the sweat from his brow, he made one last desperate effort: “But ye're promised to the--the--Apoos-tate.”

“I am no. Father broke that off.”

Saunders shot his last bolt. “I believe I'm fickle, Janet. There'll be a sair heart for the lass that marries me. I wouldna wonder if I jilted ye.”

“Then,” she calmly replied, “I'll haul ye into the justice coort for breach o' promise.”

With this terrible ultimatum dinging in his ears Saunders fled. Zorra juries were notoriously tender with the woman in the case, and he saw himself stripped of his worldly goods or tied to the apron of the homeliest girl in Zorra. One single ray illumined the dark prospect. That evening he called on Timmins, whom he much astonished by the extent and quality of his advice and encouragement. He even went so far as to invite the Englisher to his own cabin, thereby greatly scandalizing his housekeeper--a maiden sister of fifty-two, who had forestalled fate by declaring for the shelf at forty-nine.

“What'll he be doing here?” the maiden demanded, indicating Timmins with accusatory finger on the occasion of his first visit. But his meekness and the propitiatory manner in which he sat on the very edge of his chair, hat gripped between his knees, mollified her so much that she presently produced a bowl of red-cheeked apples for his refreshment.

But her thawing did not save Saunders after the guest was gone. “There's always a fule in every family,” she cried, when he had explained his predicament, “an' you drained the pitcher.”

“But you'll talk Janet to him,” Saunders urged, “an' him to her? She's that hard put to it for a man that wi' a bit steering she'll consent to an eelopement.”

But, bridling, Jeannie tossed a high head. “'Deed, then, an' I'll no do ither folk's love-making.”

“Then,” Saunders groaned, “I'll ha' the pair of ye in this hoose.”

This uncomfortable truth gave Jeannie pause. The position of maiden sister carried with it more chores than easements, and Jeannie was not minded to relinquish her present powers. For a while she seriously studied the stove, then her face cleared; she started as one who suddenly sees her clear path, and giving Saunders a queer look, she said: “Ah, weel, you're my brother, after all. I'll do my best wi' both. Tell the Englisher as I'll be pleased to see him any time in the evening.”

Matters were at this stage when Elder McCakeron's cows committed their dire trespass on Neil McNab's turnips.

Who would imagine that such unlike events as Saunders McClellan's lapse from sobriety, the death of Elder Duncan, and the trespass of McCakeron's cows could have any bearing upon one another? Yet from their concurrence was born the most astounding hap in the Zorra chronicles. Even if Elder McCakeron had paid Neil's bill of damage instead of remarking that he “didna see as the turnips had hurt his cows,” the thing would have addled in the egg; and his recalcitrancy, so necessary to the hatching, has caused many a wise pow to shake over the inscrutability of Providence. But the elder did not pay, and in revenge Neil placed Peter Dunlop, the elder's ancient enemy, in nomination for Tammas Duncan's eldership.

It was Saunders McClellan who carried the news to the McCakeron homestead. According to her promise, Jeannie had visited early and late with Janet; and dropping in one evening to check up her report of progress, Saunders found the elder perched on a stump.

Saunders discharged him of his news, which dissipated the elder's calm as thunder shatters silence.

“What?” he roared. “Yon scunner? Imph! I'd as lief ... as lief ... elect”--_the devil_ quivered back of his teeth, but as that savored of irreverence, he substituted “the Apoostate!”

Right here a devil entered in unto Saunders McClellan--the mocking devil whose mission it was to abase Zorra to the dust. But it did not make its presence known until, next day, Saunders carried the news of Elder McCakeron's retaliation to Cap'en McKay's pig-killing.

“He's going,” Saunders informed the cap'en and Neil McNab between pigs,--“he's going to run Sandy 'Twenty-One' against your candidate.”

Now between Neil and Sandy lay a feud which had its beginnings what time the latter _doctored_ a spavined mare and sold her for a price to the former's cousin Rab.

“Yon scunner?” Neil exclaimed, using the very form of the elder's words, “yon scunner? I'd as lief ... as lief ... elect ...”

“... the Apoos-tate,” said the Devil, though Neil thought that Saunders was talking.

“Ay, the Apoos-tate,” he agreed.

“It wad be a fine joke,” the Devil went on by the mouth of Saunders, “to run the Apoos-tate agin' his candidate. McCakeron canna thole the man.”

“But what if he was elected?” the mariner objected.

The Devil was charged with glib argument. “We couldna very weel. It's to be a three-cornered fight, an' Robert Duncan, brother to Tammas, has it sure.”

“'Twad be a good one on McCakeron,” Neil mused. “To talk up Dunlop, who doesna care a cent for the eldership, an' then spring the Apoos-tate on him.”

“'Twould be bitter on 'Twenty-One,'” the cap'en added. He had been diddled by Sandy on a deal of seed-wheat.

“It wad hit the pair of 'em,” McNab chuckled, and with that word the Devil conquered.

So far, as aforesaid, Saunders had been unconscious of the Devil, but going home the latter revealed himself in a heart-to-heart talk. “Ye're no pretty to look at,” Saunders said. “I'm minded to throw ye oot!”

The Devil chuckled. “Janet's so bonny. Fancy her on the pillow beside, ye--scraggy--bones--freckles. Hoots, man! a nightmare!”

Shuddering, Saunders reconsidered proceedings of ejectment. “But the thing is no posseeble?”

“You know your men,” the Devil answered. “Close in the mouth as they are in the fist. McCakeron will never get wind o' the business till they spring it on him in meeting.”

“That is so,” Saunders acknowledged. “'Tis surely so-a.”

“Then why,” the Devil urged,--“then why not rig the same game on him?”

“Bosh! He wouldna think o't.”

“Loving Dunlop as himself?” The Devil was apt at paraphrasing Scripture. “Imph!”

“It _would_ let me out?” Saunders mused.

“Ye can but fail,” argued the Devil. “Try it.”

“I wull.”

“This very night!” It is a wonder that the sparks did not fly, the Devil struck so hard on the hot iron. “To-night! Ye ken the election comes off next week.”

“To-night,” Saunders agreed.

Throughout that week the din of contending factions resounded beneath brazen harvest skies; for if there was a wink behind the clamor of any faction, it made no difference in the volume of its noise. Wherever two men foregathered, there the spirit of strife was in their midst; the burr of hot Scot's speech travelled like the murmur of robbed bees along the Side Lines, up the Concession roads, and even raised an echo in the hallowed seclusion of the minister's study. And harking back to certain eldership elections in which the breaking of heads had taken the place of “anointing with oil,” Elder McIntosh quietly evolved a plan whereby the turmoil should be left outside the kirk on election night.

But while it lasted no voice rang louder than that of Saunders McClellan's devil. Not a bit particular in choice of candidates, he roared against Dunlop, Duncan, or “Twenty-One” according to the company which Saunders kept. “Ye havna the ghaist of a show!” he assured Cap'en McKay, chief of the Dunlopers. “McCakeron drew three mair to him last night.” While to the elder he exclaimed the same day: “Yon crazy sailorman's got all the Duncanites o' the run. He has ye spanked, Elder. Scunner the deil!” So the Devil blew, hot and cold, with Saunders's mouth, until the very night before the election.

The morning of the election the sun heaved up on a brassy sky. It was intensely hot through the day, but towards evening gray clouds scudded out of the east, veiling the sun with their twisting masses; at twilight heavy rain-blots were splashing the dust. At eight o'clock, meeting-time, rain flew in glistening sheets against the kirk windows and forced its way under the floor. There was but a scant attendance--twoscore men, perhaps, and half a dozen women, who sat, in decent Scotch fashion, apart from the men--that is, apart from all but Joshua Timmins. Not having been raised in the decencies as observed in Zorra, he had drifted over to the woman's side and sat with Janet McCakeron and Jean McClellan, one on either side.

But if few in number, the gathering was decidedly formidable in appearance. As the rain had weeded out the feeble, infirm, and pacifically inclined, it was distinctly belligerent in character. Grim, dour, silent, it waited for the beginning of hostilities.

Nor did the service of praise which preceded the election induce a milder spirit. When the precentor led off, “Howl, ye Sinners, Howl! Let the Heathen Rage and Cry!” each man's look told that he knew well whom the psalmist was hitting at; and when the minister invoked the “blind, stubborn, and stony-hearted” to “depart from the midst,” one-half of his hearers looked their astonishment that the other half did not immediately step out in the rain. A heavy inspiration, a hard sigh, told that all were bracing for battle when the minister stepped down from the pulpit, and noting it, he congratulated himself on his precautions against disturbance.

“For greater convenience in voting,” he said, reaching paper slips and a box of pencils from behind the communion rail, “we will depart from the oral method and elect by written ballot.”

He had expected a protest against such a radical departure from ancestral precedent, but in some mysterious way the innovation seemed to jibe with the people's inclination.

“Saunders McClellan,” the minister went on, “will distribute and collect balloting-papers on the other aisle.”

“Give it to him, Cap'en!” Saunders whispered, as he handed him a slip. “He's glowering at ye.”

The elder was indeed surveying the mariner, McNab, and Dunlop with a glance of comprehensive hostility over the top of his ballot. “See what I'm aboot!” his look said, as he folded the paper and tossed it into Saunders's hat.

“The auld deevil!” McNab whispered, as the minister unfolded the first ballot. “He'll soon slacken his gills.”

“That'll be one of oor ballots,” the cap'en hoarsely confided.

The minister was vigorously rubbing his glasses for a second perusal of the ballot, but when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were added to the first, his face became a study in astonishment. And presently his surprise was reflected by the congregation. For whereas three candidates were in nomination, the ballots were forming but two piles.

Whispers ran through the kirk; the cap'en nudged McNab.

“McCakeron must ha' swung all the Duncanites?”

“Ah,” Neil muttered. “An' that wad account for the stiff look o' the reptile. See the glare o't.”

They would have stiffened in astonishment could they have translated the “glare.” “Got the Duncanites, did ye?” the elder was thinking. “Bide a wee, bide a wee! He laughs best that laughs last.”

Saunders McClellan and his Devil alone sensed the inwardness of those two piles, and they held modest communion over it in the back of the kirk. “You may be ugly, but ye've served me well,” Saunders began.

The Devil answered with extreme politeness: “You are welcome to all ye get through me. If no honored, ye are at least aboot to become famous in your ain country.”

“Infamous, I doobt, ye mean,” Saunders corrected. Then, glancing uneasily toward the door, he added, “I think as we'd better be leaving.”

“Pish!” the Devil snorted. “They are undone by their ain malignancy. See it oot.”

“That's so,” Saunders agreed. “That is surely so-a. Hist! The meenister's risen. Man, but he's tickled to death over the result. His face is fair shining.”

The minister did indeed look pleased. Stepping down to the floor that he might be closer to these his people, he beamed benevolently upon them while he made a little speech. “People of Scottish birth,” he said, closing, “are often accused of being hard and uncharitable to the stranger in their gates, but this can never be said of you who have extended the highest honor in your gift to a stranger; who have elected Brother Joshua Timmins elder in your kirk by a two-thirds majority.”

The benediction dissolved the paralysis which held all but Saunders McClellan; but stupefaction remained. Astounding crises are generally attended with little fuss, from the inability of the human intellect to grasp their enormous significance. As John “Death” McKay afterward put it, “Man, 'twas so extraordin'ry as to seem ordin'ry.” Of course neither Dunlopers nor “Twenty-One's” were in a position to challenge the election, and if the Duncanites growled as they pawed over the ballots, their grumbling was presently silenced by a greater astonishment.

For out of such evenings history is made. While the minister had held forth on the rights and duties of eldership, Saunders McClellan's gaze had wandered over to Margaret McDonald--a healthy, red-cheeked girl--and he had done a little moralizing on his own account. In the presence of such an enterprising spinsterhood, bachelorhood had become an exceedingly hazardous existence, and if a man must marry, he might as weel ha' something young an' fresh! Margaret, too, was reputed industrious as pretty! Of Janet's decision, Saunders had no doubts. Between himself and Jeannie, and Timmins--meek, mild, and unencumbered--there could be no choice. Still there was nothing like certainty; 'twas always best to be off wi' the old, an' so forth!

Rising, he headed for Janet, who, with her father, Jeannie, Timmins, and the minister, stood talking at the vestry door. As he made his way forward, he reaped a portion of the Devil's promised fame. As they filed sheepishly down the aisle, the Dunlopers gave him the cold shoulder, and when he joined the group, Elder McCakeron returned a stony stare to his greeting.

“But ye needna mind that,” the Devil encouraged. “He daurna tell, for his own share i' the business.”

So Saunders brazened it out. “Ye ha' my congratulations, Mr. McCakeron. I hear you're to get a son-in-law oot o' this?”

If Elder McCakeron had given Saunders the tempter the glare which he now bestowed on Saunders the successfully wicked, he had not been in such lamentable case.

“Why, what is this?” the minister exclaimed. “Cause for further congratulation, Brother Timmins?”

Saunders now shone as Cupid's assistant. “He was to ha' Janet on condeetion that he made the eldership,” he fulsomely explained.

The minister's glance questioned the elder.

“Well,” he growled, “I'm no going back on my word.”

Saunders glowed all over, and in exuberance of spirit actually winked at Margaret McDonald across the kirk. Man, but she was pretty!

“It's to your credit, Mr. McCakeron, that you should hold til a promise,” Jeannie was saying. “But ye'll no be held. A man may change his mind, and since you refused Joshua, he's decided to marry on me.”

Saunders blenched. He half turned to flee, but Janet's strong fingers closed on his sleeve; and as her lips moved to claim him before minister and meeting, he thought that he heard the Devil chuckling, a great way off.

IN THE INTERESTS OF CHRISTOPHER

BY MAY HARRIS

Mrs. Manstey's big country-house was temporarily empty of the guests she had gathered for a week-end in June when the two Eversley girls reached it, Saturday at noon. Their hostess met them at the door when the carriage wheels crunched on the gravelled curve of the drive before the house--a charming gray-haired woman of sixty, with a youthful face and a delicate girlish color.

“I've sent everybody away to explore--to ravage the country,” she gayly explained the emptiness of the large hall, where the grouped chairs seemed recently vacated and pleasantly suggestive of suspended tête-à-tête. “I've had Rose before,” Mrs. Manstey pursued, taking them up the stairs to their rooms, “but not _you!_” She gave Edith's shoulder an affectionate little pat. She thought the younger girl extremely beautiful--which she was, with a vivid, piquant face and charming eyes.

“I've had my day,” Rose Eversley acknowledged, with her usual air of jesting gravity, that, almost ironic, made one always a little unsure of her. “Dear Mrs. Manstey, you perfectly see--don't you?--that Edith is papa's image, and--”

“And he was my old sweetheart!” Mrs. Manstey completed, with humorous appreciation of her own repetition of an old story.

“Was he, really?” Edith wondered. “Mamma says you were _her_ friend.”

Mrs. Manstey laughed. “Couldn't I have been--both?” she gayly put it. “Friends are better than sweethearts--they last longer. Though of course you won't agree, at your age, to such heresy.”

“Sweethearts?” the girl pondered as she lifted her hands to take off her hat. “I--don't know. It's such a pretty word, but it doesn't mean much these days--there aren't any!” She shrugged her shoulders with a petulant pessimism her youth made amusing. “Papa was the last of the kind--he's a _love!_--and you let mamma have him!”

“I didn't 'let.'” Mrs. Manstey enjoyed it. “When he met your mother he forgot all about me. Think of it! I haven't seen either him or your mother in years, years, years!”

“_My_ years!” Edith said. “I was a baby, mamma says, when she saw you last.”

“So you were.”

A servant knocked, with a note for Mrs. Manstey. As she took it and turned to leave the room, her smile, caressingly including Rose, went past her and lingered a thought longer--as people's smiles had a way of doing--with Edith.

“I know you're tired,” she added to her smile. “Five hours of train--Get into something cool and rest. Luncheon isn't until two.”

She disappeared, and Rose looked at her sister, who, with her hat in her hand, was going into her room.

“Well--?” Rose lifted her voice in its faint drawl of interrogation.

Edith looked at her absently. “I don't know,” she said, drawing her straight brows into a puzzled frown. “I'm as far away as ever--I'm so perplexed.”

“Well--you'll _have_ to decide, you know.”

Edith shook her head impatiently and went into her room, closing the door. She hurried out of her dusty travelling things into cool freshness, and, settled in the most comfortable chair, gave herself up to an apparently endless fit of musing. She was so physically content that her mind refused to respond with any vigorous effort; to think at all was a crumpled rose-leaf.

From the lower hall the clock chimed one with musical vibrations. Edith leaned forward with her chin on her hand, driving her thoughts into a definite path. The curtains stirred in a breeze from the out-of-doors whose domain swept with country greenness and adventitious care away from the window under the high brilliance of the sun.

Close to the window a writing-table, with blotter, pens, and ink, made a focal-point for her gaze. At first a mere detail in her line of vision, it attained by degrees, it seemed, a definite relevancy to her train of thought. She looked in her portmanteau for her desk, and getting out some note-paper, went to the table and began to write a letter.

What she had to say seemed difficult to decide. She wrote a line, stared out of the window with fixity, and then wrote again--a flurry of quick, decisive strokes as if at determinate pressure. But a sigh struck across her mood, and almost against her will the puzzled crinkle returned to her brow. The curtain blew against her face, disarranging her hair, and as she lifted her hand to put back a straggling lock, the wind tossed the sheet of the letter she was writing out of the window. Her eyes, as she sprang up, followed its flight, but it whirled around the corner of the house and was lost to her desperate gaze.

Négligé, even of the most-becoming description, was not to be thought of in pursuing the loss, for the silence of the house had stirred to the sound of gay voices, the movement of feet.

Rose, also in négligé, opened the door between them and found her madly tearing off her pale-blue kimono. “What's the matter?” She paused, staring.

“Heavens! My shoes--please!--there by the table.” She kicked off her ridiculous blue slippers and pulled on the small colonials her sister in open wonder handed her. “If you had only been dressed,” she almost wailed, “you might have been able to get it.”

“Get what?”

“My letter!” Tragic, in spite of a mouthful of pins--which is a woman's undoubted preference, no matter how many befrilled pincushions entreat a division of spoils,--she turned her face with its import of sudden things to her sister in explanation. “I was writing a letter and it blew out of the window!”

“Well, if it did--”

“But, don't you see?--I was writing to _Christopher!_ I had been thinking and thinking, and at last I screwed up my courage to answer his letter. I had all but signed my name!”

Rose Eversley began to laugh helplessly; heartlessly, her sister thought.

“If you hadn't signed it--” she at last comforted her sister's indignant face that was reflected from the mirror, where she stood as she fastened the white stock at her throat and snapped the clasp of her belt.

“Signed it!” She was almost in tears. “What difference will that make when I claim the letter? I _must_ find it! But of course some one who knows me will be sure to find it. And _that_ letter, of all letters!”

“If I were you, Edith,” Rose advised, calmly, “I shouldn't--”

“Well?”--with her hand on the door-knob.

“--try to find it. It will be impossible to trace it to you, in that case.”

“But _don't_ you see--”

“Wait!” Rose caught and pulled her back. “How _could_ they know? You'll get in much deeper. What had you written?”

“I said, 'Dear Christopher'--”

Rose laughed. “I'm glad you didn't say 'Dear Mr. Brander.' In that case you'd have given _him_ away. But 'Christopher' is such an unusual name, they might--Sherlock Holmes could trace him by it alone.”

“You _are_ a Job's comforter--a perfect Eliphaz the Temanite! Oh, oh!” Her soft crescendo was again tragic.

“In effect you said: 'Dear Christopher, as you have so often entreated, I have at last decided to be thine. The tinkle of thy shekels, now that I am so nearly shekelless myself, has done its fatal worst. I am thine--'”

“Oh, let me go!” Edith cried, in a fury close to tears. “You haven't any feeling. You are not going to sacrifice _your_self!”

“To a good-looking young man who loves me exceedingly, and to something over a million? No, I am not!” Rose said, dryly.

“Oh, it's dreadful! Perfectly!” Edith cried, and on her indecision Rose hung another bit of wisdom: