The Miller Of Old Church Part 19

"Yes, that was three weeks ago."

The light died slowly out of his eyes as he looked at her.

"When you speak like that I begin to wonder if any good can ever come to us," he returned. "I've gone on breaking my heart over you ever since you were a little girl in short dresses, and I can't remember that I've ever had anything but misery from you in my life. It's d.a.m.nable the things I've stood and yet I've always forgotten them afterwards, and remembered only the times you were soft and gentle and had ceased to be shrewish. n.o.body on earth can be softer than you, Molly, when you want to, and it's your softness, after all, that has held me in spite of your treatment. Why, your mouth was like a flower when I kissed you, and parted and clung to me---"

"I wish you wouldn't talk about it. I hate to hear such things after they are over."

"Such things!" He stood flicking hopelessly with a small branch he carried at the carrot flowers in the field. "If you will tell me honestly that you were playing with me, Molly, I'll give you up this minute," he said.

The colour was high in her face and she did not look at him.

"I was playing with you, and I told you so the day afterwards," she replied.

"Yes, but you didn't mean it. I can't go any further because this is Mr.

Jonathan's land."

His eyes had in them the hurt reproachful look of a wounded dog's, and his voice trembled a little.

"I meant always--always to lead you on until I could hurt you--as I did the others--and then throw you over."

"And now that you can hurt me, you throw me over?" he asked.

Without speaking, she held out her hand for the basket, which he was about to fling from him.

"Then I'll never forgive you, Molly, so help me G.o.d," he added harshly; and turning away from her, struck out across the pasture in the direction of the mill.

For a moment she stood looking after him, her lips parted, her eyes wide and bright as if she were asking a question.

"I am hard--hard and cruel," she thought as she went slowly up the witch-hazel path that led by the Poplar Spring, "but I wonder--oh, I wonder if I treat Abel worst because I like him best?"

CHAPTER XI

A FLIGHT AND AN ENCOUNTER

When Abel had flung himself over the fence, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the collar from his neck and threw it away from him into the high gra.s.s of the meadow.

The act was symbolical not only of his revolt from the power of love, but, in a larger measure, of his rebellion against the tyranny of convention. Henceforth his Sunday clothes might hang in the closet, for he would never again bend his neck to the starched yoke of custom.

Everything had been for Molly forever. Her smiles or her frowns, her softness or her cruelty, would make no difference to him in the future--for had not Molly openly implied that she preferred Mr. Mullen?

So this was the end of it all--the end of his ambition, of his struggle to raise himself, of his battle for a little learning that she might not be ashamed. Lifting his head he could see dimly the one great pine that towered on the hill over its fellows, and he resolved, in the bitterness of his defeat, that he would sell the whole wood to-morrow in Applegate.

He tried to think clearly--to tell himself that he had never believed in her--that he had always known she would throw him over at the last--but the agony in his heart rose in his throat, and he felt that he was stifling in the open air of the pasture. His nature, large, impulsive, scornful of small complexities, was stripped bare of the veneer of culture by which its simplicity had been overlaid. At the instant he was closer to the soil beneath his feet than the civilization of his race.

As he neared the brook, which divided his pasture from the fields belonging to Jordan's Journey, the sound of angry voices came to his ears, and through the bared twigs of the willows, he saw Archie and Jonathan Gay standing a little apart, while the boy made threatening gestures with a small switch he carried.

"I've told him he was not to come on our land and he's laughed in my face!" cried Archie, turning to his brother.

"I'm not laughing, I merely said that the restriction was absurd,"

replied Jonathan in a friendly tone. "Why this pasture of yours juts in between my field and the road, and I'm obliged to cross it. I told you before I was awfully sorry about the quarrel when I first came, but as long as you leave my birds alone, you may walk over my land all day if you like and I shan't care a copper."

"d.a.m.n your birds! I don't take a blow from any man without paying him back," retorted Archie.

"Hold your tongue, Archie," said Abel sternly. "It's my farm, I reckon, and I manage it. I'm sorry, Mr. Jonathan," he added, "that you started the trouble, but we aren't people to sit down tamely and take a thras.h.i.+ng from you just because you happen to own Jordan's Journey. I'll stand by Archie because he's right, though if he were not right, I'd still stand by him because he's my brother. The best we can do is to keep clear of each other. We don't go on your place and you'd just as well take care to keep off ours."

A frown contracted Gay's brow, while he glanced anxiously over his shoulder at the crooked path which led in the direction of the mill.

"Do you mean to say that you object to my taking a stroll through your meadows?" he asked.

"Why on earth do you want to stroll over here when you've got two thousand acres on every other blessed side of you?"

When the other's reply came there was a curious hesitation about it.

"Well, a man has his fancies, you know. I've taken a liking to this path through the willows."

"All the same I warn you that if you keep it up, you'll very likely run into trouble. If Archie sets the dogs on you, I'll be obliged to stand by him."

Without waiting for a response, he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and pushed him over the brook into the path on the opposite side. To his surprise Blossom, dressed as though for church, appeared there at the instant.

"Why, where in thunder are you going?" he demanded, releasing Archie, who staggered back at the sudden withdrawal of the powerful grasp. He had always known that his niece was a handsome girl, but the bloom, the softness of her beauty came to him while he stood there, as vividly as if for the first time.

"I--I--have you seen grandma's cat?" she returned after the breathless suspense of a minute.

"No, I don't think you'll find her down there. Archie and Mr. Jonathan have quarreled loud enough to frighten her away."

"Quarreled again!" she said. "Oh, why have they quarreled again?"

"He must keep off our place," replied Archie, angrily. "I warned him I'll set the dogs on him the next time I find him on this side the fence!"

"How--how can you be so uncivilized?" she returned, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Uncivilized or not, he'll find he can't split my lip open for nothing,"

growled Archie, like a sullen child.

"You'd as well come back with us," said Abel, "the cat isn't down there--I'd take a look in the mill."

She turned her face away, stooping to pluck the withered frond of a fern that grew in the path. When she looked up at him again all the bloom and radiance had flown.

"Yes, I'll come back with you," she answered, and falling into step between them, walked languidly up the hill to the kitchen garden at the top. In his own misery Abel was hardly aware of her, and he heard as from a distance, Archie's muttered threats against Gay, and Blossom's palpitating responses. When they reached the house, Sarah's yellow and white cat squeezed herself through the door and came purring toward them.

"Why, the cat's got back!" exclaimed Archie.

"It must have been in the store-room all the time," returned Blossom quickly. "I forgot to look there. Now, I must go and pour out the b.u.t.ter milk for dinner before grandma scolds me."

She turned away, glanced back an instant later to make sure that they had entered the house, and then gathering up her Sunday skirt of blue Henrietta cloth, started in a rapid run back along the path to the willows. When she reached a sheltered nook, formed by a lattice of boughs, she found Gay walking impatiently back and forth, with his hands in his pockets and the anxious frown still on his forehead. At sight of her, his face cleared and he held out his arms.

"My beauty!--I'd just given you up. Five minutes more by my watch, and I should have gone."