Part 10

“You are,”—pursued David, “—or think you are—unable to move hand or foot for five years. Meanwhile you are waiting, waiting for a summons which may never come. Barbara, is there anyone you know who would be likely to—who might wish to help you, and who has taken this singular way to do it?”

She flashed a look of startled inquiry at him.

“The idea of the auction was your own—though how you came by it, I can’t understand—and it succeeded perfectly, as far as the price paid in money was concerned; but you’re likely to pay it out in something more valuable than money. You’ve grown thin and pale, Barbara; you’re being worn out with this infernal suspense. Now, I think it’s time we tracked your purchaser to earth; or else—look at me, Barbara! Why not marry me, and defy the fellow, whoever he is?”

“It wouldn’t be honorable,” she objected. “I’ve accepted the money.”

“But if we paid it back?” he urged.

“How can I pay it back, if—I don’t know who it is?”

David tipped his chair against the house with an impatient thud.

“See here,” he said strongly, “I’m going to find out who the person is, either with or without your permission. You’d like to know, I suppose?”

She hesitated, evading his eyes.

“I think I’d rather wait,” she said reluctantly. “Besides, you couldn’t find out.”

He watched her steadily for a minute, while she set half a dozen hasty stitches in the long ruffle she was hemming. Then he deliberately put his hand over hers.

“It’s too dark to sew,” he objected, “and I can’t talk to you when your eyes are glued to that piece of cloth.”

Barbara folded up her work with quick motions of her slim brown fingers. Then she raised her eyes to his.

“Well?” she said interrogatively.

“It isn’t anything new, Barbara,” he said. “Just the same old request. When will you marry me, dear?”

“I’ve told you, David, over and over. I can’t make any promises till—till——”

He frowned and shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“I know,” he interrupted quickly. “But why object on the score of that absurd contract? Why, Barbara, I’ll go with you and work for nothing. Two slaves will be better than one. I’m a husky chap, capable of trundling the lawnmower, shaking down the furnace, shovelling snow, or any little job of the sort. Don’t you think your widower would appreciate my free services?”

Barbara refused to smile.

“Why,” she asked, “should you suppose it is a man?”

“A sad mixture of pronouns,” he objected. “‘It’ might, as you suggest, as well be a widow or an old maid. But why ’its’ waste of money and valuable service? That is what I shall set myself to find out. But we’ll be married first, and then I’ll be in a position to defy him, her, or it, as the case may be. And if no one ever shows up, as I half believe—— Barbara, look at me!”

She obeyed, a mutinous pucker between her fine dark brows.

“There is no use,” she murmured, “of your talking that way. I consider myself bound; and I cannot——”

His face softened as he looked at her.

“Poor little girl,” he murmured, “it’s pretty rough sledding for you, and has been all along. But I’d like to ask you one thing. Has any other man asked you to marry him since I went away?”

Her eyes fled into the distance.

“Will you tell me who it was?”

Still she was dumb, struggling to escape the sudden turmoil of her thoughts.

“Why,” she stammered at last, “should you ask?”

“Is it a case of ’how happy could I be with either, were the other fair charmer away?’” he demanded, a wrathful crimson rising to his bronzed cheeks. “You’ve played fast and loose with me always, Barbara, first it was the brat and——”

He checked himself with an effort.

“Then you won’t tell me?” he said sulkily.

“It—was nothing,” she stammered. “I didn’t——”

“You didn’t accept him,” he finished for her. “That’s evident. Well, we’ll call it square if you’ll say to me, ‘David, I love you, and I’ll marry you as soon as we can straighten out this—what shall we call it?—this previous engagement.’ Will you say that, Barbara? Will you?”

She trembled, shrinking into herself under the fire of his gaze.

“I haven’t told you yet—what you asked.”

“Never mind that. Come, don’t put me off again!”

She looked at him, her eyes clouded with doubt and pain.

“You don’t trust me, Barbara. I see that,” he said bitterly.

“You—must make me—trust you,” she murmured, after a difficult silence. “I don’t know why—I can’t say—yes. But—I can’t—yet.”

“I know,” he said roughly. “You’re half in love with the other man. Damn him!”

He sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair.

“No—no!” she denied breathlessly. “It isn’t that. I refused him because”—her voice trailed off in a whisper—“I remembered you, David.”

He caught her in his arms with a triumphant laugh.

“You can’t escape me now, after that admission,” he told her. “You shall marry me, sweetheart; no one shall prevent it.”

She yielded to his eyes, his arms, his eager lips with a sense of mingled relief and terror.

“We must not speak of it, David,” she warned him, “nor—take too much for granted, till after we have found out about the contract. We may have to wait till——”

“Oh, damn the contract!” cried David exuberantly. “I’ll find that fellow Smith and make him tell me all he knows. I’ll fix it up, sweetheart; you’ll see!”

Jimmy’s rollicking laugh floated across the lawn. Peg Morrison had stacked the last wheelbarrow with the sweet lawn grass, topped it with the little boy, and was trundling his load toward the house with great pretence of exhaustion.

“Now’t I’ve got you aboard, Cap’n,” Barbara heard him saying, “it’s all I c’n make out. You’re turrible big an’ hefty.”

“You won’t ask me to leave him, David?” murmured Barbara. “I couldn’t do that; unless—” she added with quick remembrance—“I am forced to.”

“Little beggar!” quoth David good-humoredly; “he’s always been a dangerous rival of mine. But I’ll take him for a side partner this time, Barbara. How’ll that suit you?”

He turned and crushed her roughly in his arms.

“I’ve waited long enough,” he said, “now let everybody and everything get out of my way; I’m going to marry you within the month,” and stopped the words of protest on her lips with his kisses.

That same evening Martha Cottle wandered forth under the soft light of the rosy evening. She was dressed in a full-skirted gown of lilac calico, sprigged with white, and starched to rustling stiffness; over it flowed the wide expanse of a freshly ironed white apron. The labors of the day were concluded and Miss Cottle felt herself attuned to the soft influences of the hour. So when she chanced to come upon Peleg Morrison reposing himself in a battered wooden chair tipped against the barn door, she addressed him in terms of surprising amity.

“It’s a real pleasant evening,” observed Miss Cottle, with an agreeable smile.

“Yes, ma’am, it sure is,” replied Peg, in kind. In deference to the lady he shook the ashes out of his pipe, and rose from his chair.

“I suppose you and I’ll soon be left in charge here,” continued Miss Cottle, sighing. “For my part, I dr-read the responsibility.”

“Hes—Miss Barb’ry heard f’om——”

“No; not that I know of. And I call it strange—very str-range. Don’t you, Mr. Morrison?”

Peg removed his hat and thoughtfully fumbled the scanty locks behind his ears.

“‘Tis kind o’ queer; that’s so,” he agreed.

Miss Cottle bent forward, her lean features quivering with emotion.

“And to cap the climax,” she said, “the girl’s gone and engaged herself to be married.”

“Who? Not Miss Barb’ry?”

Miss Cottle nodded confirmation.

“To that young Whitcomb fellow,” she concluded acidly.

Mr. Morrison resumed his hat, pulling it low over his eyes. From this familiar shelter he viewed his informant cautiously.

“Did she—did Miss Barb’ry tell you? Mebbe she wouldn’t care to hev me know.”

“She didn’t choose to make a confidant of me,” the spinster said, tossing her head. “I chanced to be passing through the hall, and I—overheard ’em—spooning.”

Mr. Morrison coughed deprecatingly.

“It’s a vallable idee,” he said slowly, “not t’ hear what you ain’t meant t’ hear. Young Whitcomb—huh? Wall! Wall!”

XV

DAVID WHITCOMB sat in the dining-room of the Barford Eagle. It was fifteen minutes of eleven by the loud-ticking clock, with a calendar attachment proclaiming a new day, which hung against the wall in full view of the breakfaster, yet he appeared quite unabashed by the lateness of the hour as he attacked the platter of fried ham and eggs which the pink-cheeked waitress set before him. She was a pretty girl with curly light hair and wide open eyes of an innocent babyish blue.

“Here’s your toast, Mr. Whitcomb, nice an’ hot—jus’ as you like it,” she said, reaching over his shoulder to set a covered plate before him. “An’ I tried the coffee m’self this morning. That ol’ cook, she makes me good and tired! _She_ don’t care whether you like things or not.”

David flashed a brilliant smile at the waitress.

“You’re a nice little girl, Jennie,” he said, and tasted the steaming cup which she handed him. Then he made a wry face.

“Isn’t it good?” asked the girl, with a grieved droop of her full red lips. “I made it jus’s you said, with the egg an’ all, an’ it jus’ boiled up good once. I stood right over it for all o’ that nasty Sarah. She swatted me with her dish-towel, ’cause I wouldn’t——”

“It’s made well enough,” interrupted David; “but it’s a cheap brand of coffee, and—bring the coffee-pot here; will you?”

“The coffee-pot?”

“Yes. Bring it here; the one you make my coffee in.”

The girl disappeared kitchenward with a hasty rustling of her crisp blue gingham skirts. David leaned back in his chair and thrust both hands in his trousers pockets while he eyed the table service of coarse crockery and cheap glass with a cynical smile. Three or four flies hovered aimlessly about the plate of buttered toast, and one crawled into the half-filled cream jug where it buzzed helplessly, its wings spattered with the liquid.

“Damn!” muttered David, pushing back his chair and yawning. There were shrill voices in loud altercation in the not distant kitchen, the sound of a hard-shut door, and the waitress reappeared, red-cheeked and breathless, bearing a large black coffee-pot in her two hands held far in front of her.

“Here it is, Mr. Whitcomb,” she said. “That nasty ol’ cook was bound I shouldn’t bring it in ’ere. She threw dish-water on my clean apron. I could ’a’ killed her!”

She held the coffee-pot for his inspection and David lifted the lid, peered in, and sniffed disgustedly.

“Ugh!” he said. “I thought so. Now I like decent coffee, and I’ll buy a coffee-pot just to make my coffee in. Do you suppose you could keep it, so that termagant in the kitchen wouldn’t annex it?”

“You bet I can,” giggled the girl delightedly, “an’ I’ll do it, too, jus’ to spite Sarah. An’ I’ll make your coffee every morning. I’d love to, Mr. Whitcomb.”

“Good girl,” drawled David. He waved his hand toward the table. “You may as well take these things away,” he said. “I’m—er—not hungry this morning.”

The girl’s face fell; her full lips quivered and pouted like a child’s on the verge of sobbing.

“I made the toast,” she said. “I made it jus’ like you said. It—it’s good.”

David uncovered the plate hastily.

“It looks fine, Jennie; but you see it’s so near dinner-time—see here, my girl, you buy the coffee-pot for me; will you?—just a plain tin one, mind. And—er—keep the change.”

He threw a crisp bill on the table.

The girl took up the money and folded it together carefully. When she raised her blue eyes they were swimming in tears.

“I—I’ll do anythin’ you say,” she whimpered, “anythin’ you want me to.”

By way of answer, perhaps, David pushed back his chair with a harsh, scraping sound that echoed dismally through the empty room. Then he rose, clapped his straw hat on the back of his curly head, searched for his cigarette case and matches and stalked out to the piazza by way of the passage which, in country fashion, afforded an easy mode of transit between the bar and the dining-room. At one side of the passage was set a high, ink-spattered desk, and behind it a long-legged stool, upon which perched a fattish, elderly man intent upon a ledger. This individual appeared to feel the heat of the June morning exceedingly, for he mopped his face from time to time with a large handkerchief, in the intervals of setting down laborious lines of figures. He looked up as David Whitcomb approached, and his large face creased itself into a dubious smile.

“Good-morning, Sutton,” remarked David blandly. “Finding out how much the public owes you for your astonishing good cheer—eh?”

“Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” mumbled the Boniface. “Um—yes; I was sort of goin’ over m’ books. Warm mornin’, ain’t it?”

He eyed David closely, taking note apparently of the heavy ring of virgin gold on the third finger of his left hand and descending slyly to the polished toes of his tan Oxfords.

“How much do I owe you?” asked the young man nonchalantly, allowing a thin wreath of smoke to escape from his lips.

“‘Twon’t break ye, I guess,” hazarded Mr. Sutton, pushing a slip of pink paper across the desk with alacrity. “The’s a few extrys on this week’s bill,” he added, breathing heavily as he indicated with the handle of his pen various items annotated on the account.

David flung his half-smoked cigarette out of the open window and produced a roll of bills from his pocket, from which he detached one.

“Take it out of that,” he said carelessly. “I need some change.”

“Yes, sir; all right, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Sutton effusively.

He sucked in his lips in a windy whisper as he counted out the change in bills of smaller denominations and topped them with a little pile of silver.

“Hope you find everythin’ t’ your likin’ at the Eagle.”

David shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m used to roughing it.”

The hotel-keeper signed his name to the receipted bill with a heavy flourish.

“Heh?” he ejaculated.

Then he climbed hastily down from his perch.

“Come across,” he said hospitably, “an’ have one on me. Anythin’ you say, Mr. Whitcomb.”

“Something cold, if you have it,” David directed the bartender”—and bitter. No, no! not too much of that. Fill it up with water.”

He drank thirstily and set down the glass, lifting his eyes to look out of the window at a passing vehicle.

“That’s the Hon’rable S. Jarvis, _Es_quire,” pronounced his host, sucking his lips over the contents of his own glass. “Warm man, Jarvis.”

“By that you mean?” queried David, strolling toward the door.

“He’s got the rocks, Jarvis has; but my! ain’t he the screechin’ limit? I’ll bet you——”

Mr. Sutton waddled heavily after David, and seated himself comfortably in one of the big splint-bottomed chairs ranged along the piazza for the convenience of patrons.

“I’ll bet you,” he concluded, “he’s got half a million salted down, if he’s got a penny.”

“Is there a decent horse in the stable?” inquired David, after a silence, which Mr. Sutton filled in with various animal-like noises, expressive of his entire physical comfort.

“No; but I c’n git y’ one over to the livery stable. I’ll send over for it, if you say so,” Mr. Sutton responded.

“I want to find Bellows,” David said.

“Who? The auctioneer? Wall, y’ don’t need no livery hoss t’ locate Thomas. He’s over t’ Henry Maclin’s this mornin’, sellin’ out the stock. Hank’s concluded to go west. Thinks there’s more doin’ out there. But I dunno ’bout that. You mus’ know somethin’ ’bout the West?”

David was smoking a second cigarette with short, impatient puffs.

“I’ve been there,” he admitted, with a transient scowl.

“How’d you like it?” asked Mr. Sutton, folding his pudgy hands across his protuberant front. “What sort of a place is it? Gamblers—heh? Cowboys, shootin’ parties, sage brush, prairie fires, etcetery—heh?”

“You’ve named the principal features of the great West,” drawled David. “It’s all there, more particularly the et cetera. There’s lots of that roaming about.”

He pulled his hat over his eyes and stepped down from the veranda.

“I may not be back to dinner,” he said, “but I’d like a decent steak for supper, if you can get it in this centre of civilization.”

Mr. Sutton watched the young man’s muscular figure in its leisurely progress down the street. Then he went back to the barroom, where his underling, a slim, sallow young man, with oily black hair parted very particularly in the middle of his narrow head, was languidly arranging clean glasses on a tray.

“He’s hot stuff, ain’t he?” observed the bartender.

“Who?—Whitcomb?”

“Thinks he’s the whole thing, don’t he?”

Mr. Sutton frowned. “I ain’t made up my mind ’bout that young feller,” he said ponderously. “But I’m kind of watchin’ him. It strikes me he’ll bear—watchin’.”

David Whitcomb, walking slowly down the village street under the shade of the spreading maples, was experiencing that vague dissatisfaction which in individuals of his temperament is apt to follow the attainment of some hotly pursued desire. Barbara had long represented to his imagination the distant, unsealed peak, the untrodden wild, the unstaked, unexplored claim. He had come back from the West with no very fixed intention of marrying her; but with something of the languid curiosity the traveller feels regarding scenes long unvisited.

He had not felt at all sure that he would find Barbara the lovely vision that he had pictured her, in the infrequent intervals given to a vague remembrance of past days. But he had lost sight of his indifference in the excitement of the auction and his subsequent impulsive endeavors to break down the girl’s scruples. Now he had won her, fairly or unfairly, and he was thinking with some irritation of the future to which he had committed himself. The dull vista of a married life, spent in hard work on a farm, which in the end could not belong to him, appeared more and more intolerable the longer he dwelt upon it. He was in a thoroughly bad humor by the time he had reached the scene of Thomas Bellows’ latest activities.

Henry Maclin’s hardware, flour, and feed store was situated on the outskirts of the village. As David approached it he could hear the loud voice of the auctioneer upraised in the raucous monotone of his calling, and the dull thud of his hammer, as he proclaimed the sale of the various articles an assistant was rapidly passing up to him.

David sauntered up to the edge of the crowd and stood there, gloomily reviewing the events of the previous month. He glanced up suddenly to find a keen pair of eyes riveted upon him.

“Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” called Peg Morrison, as if he feared the young man might attempt to avoid him. “Thinkin’ o’ biddin’ in any o’ the stuff? The best of it’s gone b’ now. I got a good cross-cut saw, though. B’en wantin’ one fer quite a spell. The’s quite a lot o’ dead timber standin’ on th’ farm in diff’rent places ’at ought t’ come down.”

David was plainly indifferent, and after cautiously studying his unresponsive face Mr. Morrison went on.

“Miss Barb’ry, she leaves mos’ everythin’ t’ me; but the’s times when I feel as ’o I’d like a man t’ go over the place with me. Course she’s got her idees, an’ some o’ ’em’s all right; but I d’clar’ I hate t’ see her botherin’ with outdoor work. Females had ought to keep house an’ sew an’ look after the cookin’, an’ not be tryin’ t’ do men’s work b’sides. That’s what I tell her, an’ I been thinkin’ ’at some day you’d go ’round with me, since you’re such a good friend o’ Miss Barb’ry’s.”

David frowned in an irritated fashion.

“I don’t understand farming, my good fellow,” he said coldly. “So I’m afraid my advice wouldn’t prove very valuable.”

“That’s jus’ what I was thinkin’,” was Peg’s incautious comment. “An’ mebbe fer that very reason, you’d better——”

He hesitated and stopped short under the steady stare of Whitcomb’s blue eyes.

“Y’—see,” he blundered on, “ef Miss Barb’ry hes to go ’way fer five years, I was thinkin’——”

“She won’t go away for five years, if I can help it,” said David. “I’m going to try and get her out of the mess she’s made of things.”

His eyes wrinkled at the corners and he laughed outright at the strange working of Peg’s untutored features.

“Don’t you bother your old head about Miss Barbara’s affairs,” he said carelessly, “nor”—his keen look threatened serious displeasure—“mine.”

He turned decidedly and made his way towards Bellows, who had just disposed of the last lot of merchandise and stepped down from his perch among the rapidly dispersing crowd.

But the auctioneer could not, when questioned, furnish the address of the small man in checked clothes, who had paid four thousand dollars for a hypothetical term of Barbara’s service. He shook his head vigorously when urged to a further explanation of what had immediately followed the event at the Preston farm.

“Nope,” he persisted. “I can’t help you none. I done all I was paid t’ do an’——”

David whipped out a yellow-backed bill from his vest-pocket.

“You had references,” he said in a cautious tone, “for I heard you say so. Who figured as referee?”

Mr. Bellows waved David’s hand aside.

“It’d cost me more’n you’ve got t’ tell you,” he said. “Nope. I ain’t a-goin’ t’ say nothin’ more. Anyway, what business is it of yours?”

David did not choose to acquaint the auctioneer with the reasons for his anxiety, and presently he found himself walking swiftly along the road leading to the Preston farm. He was uncomfortably hungry by this time, but with the unreason of the average man attributed his gloomy feelings to a higher source than his clamorous stomach.

Barbara met him at the door with an agitated face.

“I have heard from—the person who—— Oh, I was hoping you would come!”

“Do you mean the fellow who bought you?” he demanded sharply. Her apparent faith in himself he passed over without notice. “Has he been here?”

“No-o,” murmured Barbara. “But I had a letter.”

She put it into his hand, and watched him eagerly, timidly, while he read it. She had lain awake half the night, thinking of David, of his eyes, of the strong pressure of his arms, of the touch of his lips upon hers. Love had drawn near at last, and she bent her head meekly to his accolade, almost forgetting her chain in the rapture of the moment. But with the morning had come the painful recurrence of all her doubts and fears; and later, as if in answer to her agitated questionings, the letter.

David read it with frowning brows.

“There’s nothing in this,” he said impatiently, “to show you who the person is, nor when you’ll be called for.”

“No,” Barbara agreed faintly. “But you see——”

“It’s some mean dog-in-the-manger, who is watching you in secret, and——”

He stopped short.

“The boy is coming,” he said, and got to his feet.

“You’ll stay to dinner?” she begged him timidly. “I made cherry pies this morning. I think”—humbly—“that they’re that they’re very good.”

David put his arm around her, with a sudden untraced impulse of tenderness.

“Don’t worry about the letter,” he said magnificently. “I’ll—think it over.”

It was a very happy meal they ate together, in spite of the prying presence of Miss Cottle, who had assumed control of the teapot. There was stewed chicken, an abundance of fresh vegetables, strawberries and yellow cream, and, to top off with, the cherry pie of such unexampled excellence that David forgot the unpleasant doubts which had assailed him in the morning. As he sat, smoking a cigarette, on the shaded porch at the conclusion of the meal, it occurred to him that the farm was not, after all, so bad a place to live. His eyes wandered dreamily across the broad fields to the blue distance, and lingered there unseeingly.

Barbara came out presently and sat down at his side.

“I should be so happy,” she sighed, “if——”