Part 12 (1/2)
Nevertheless, as with a muttered ”Good-morning” the young fellow turned away, she quietly brushed past her father, and followed him--with her hands still penitently behind her, and the rosy palms turned upward--as far as the gate. Her single long Marguerite braid of hair trailing down her back nearly to the hem of her skirt, appeared to accent her demure reserve. At the gate she shaded her eyes with her hand, and glanced upward.
”It don't seem to be a good day for arbitrating. A trifle early in the season, ain't it?”
”Good-morning, Miss McKinstry.”
She held out her hand. He took it with an affected ease but cautiously, as if it had been the velvet paw of a young panther who had scratched him. After all, what was she but the cub of the untamed beast, McKinstry? He was well out of it! He was not revengeful--but business was business, and he had given them the first chance.
As his figure disappeared behind the buckeyes of the lane, Cressy cast a glance at the declining sun. She re-entered the house, and went directly to her room. As she pa.s.sed the window, she could see her father already remounted galloping towards the tules, as if in search of that riparian ”kam” his late interview had disturbed. A few straggling bits of color in the sloping meadows were the children coming home from school. She hastily tied a girlish sun-bonnet under her chin, and slipping out of the back door, swept like a lissom shadow along the line of fence until she seemed to melt into the umbrage of the woods that fringed the distant north boundary.
CHAPTER IX.
Meanwhile, unaware of her husband's sudden relapse to her old border principles and of the visit that had induced it, Mrs. McKinstry was slowly returning from a lugubrious recital of her moods and feelings at the parson's. As she crossed the barren flat and reached the wooded upland midway between the school-house and the ranch, she saw before her the old familiar figure of Seth Davis lounging on the trail. In her habitual loyalty to her husband's feuds she would probably have stalked defiantly past him, notwithstanding her late regrets of the broken engagement, but Seth began to advance awkwardly towards her. In fact, he had noticed the tall, gaunt, plaid-shawled and holland-bonneted figure approaching, and had waited for it.
As he seemed intent upon getting in her way she stopped and raised her right hand warningly before her. In spite of the shawl and the sun-bonnet, suffering had implanted a rude Runic dignity to her att.i.tude. ”Words that hev to be took back, Seth Davis,” she said hastily, ”hev pa.s.sed between you and my man. Out of my way, then, that I may pa.s.s, too.”
”Not much betwixt you and me, Aunt Rachel,” he said with slouching deprecation, using the old household t.i.tle by which he had familiarly known her. ”I've nothin agin you--and I kin prove it by wot I'm yer to say. And I ain't trucklin' to yer for myself, for ez far ez me and your'n ez concerned,” he continued, with a malevolent glance, ”thar ain't gold enough in Caleforny to mak the weddin' ring that could hitch me and Cress together. I want to tell you that you're bein' played; that you're bein' befooled and bamboozled and honey-fogled. Thet while you're groanin' at cla.s.s-meetin' and Hiram's quo'llin' with Dad, and Joe Masters waitin' round to pick up any bone that's throwed him, that sneakin', hypocritical Yankee school-master is draggin' your daughter to h-ll with him on the sly.”
”Quit that, Seth Davis,” said Mrs. McKinstry sternly, ”or be man enough to tell it to a man. That's Hiram's business to know.”
”And what if he knows it well enough and winks at it? What if he's willin' enough to truckle to it, to curry favor with them sneakin'
Yanks?” said Seth malignantly.
A spasm of savage conviction seized Mrs. McKinstry. But it was more from her jealous fears of her husband's disloyalty than concern for her daughter's transgression. Nevertheless, she said desperately, ”It's a lie. Where are your proofs?”
”Proofs?” returned Seth. ”Who is it sneaks around the school-house to have private talks with the school-master, and edges him on with Cressy afore folks? Your husband. Who goes sneakin' off every arternoon with that same cantin' hound of a school-master? Your daughter. Who's been carryin' on together, and hidin' thick enough to be ridden out on a rail together? Your daughter and the school-master. Proofs?--ask anybody. Ask the children. Look yar--you, Johnny--come here.”
He had suddenly directed his voice to a blackberry bush near the trail, from which the curly head of Johnny Filgee had just appeared. That home-returning infant painfully disengaged himself, his slate, his books, and his small dinner-pail half filled with fruit as immature as himself, and came towards them sideways.
”Yer's a dime, Johnny, to git some candy,” said Seth, endeavoring to distort his pa.s.sion-set face into a smile.
Johnny Filgee's small, berry-stained palm promptly closed over the coin.
”Now, don't lie. Where's Cressy?”
”Kithin' her bo.”
”Good boy. What bo?”
Johnny hesitated. He had once seen the school-master and Cressy together; he had heard it whispered by the other children that they loved each other. But looking at Seth and Mrs. McKinstry he felt that something more tremendous than this stupid fact was required of him for grown-up people, and being honest and imaginative, he determined that it should be worth the money.
”Speak up, Johnny, don't be afeard to tell.”
Johnny was not ”afeard”--he was only thinking. He had it! He remembered that he had just seen his paragon, the brilliant Stacey, coming from the boundary woods. What more poetical and startlingly effective than to connect him with Cressy? He replied promptly:--
”Mithter Thtathy. He gived her a watch and ring of truly gold. Goin' to be married at Thacramento.”
”You lyin' limb,” said Seth, seizing him roughly. But Mrs. McKinstry interposed.
”Let that brat go,” she said with gleaming eyes. ”I want to talk to you.” Seth released Johnny. ”It's a trick,” he said, ”he's bin put up to it by that Ford.”