Part 11 (2/2)
Jist as sure as shootin,' I'll kill that Wes'cott ef he tries to marry that angel. I don't want to marry her. I aint fit, mister, that's a fack.
Ef I was, I'd put in fer her. But I aint. And ef she marries a gentleman, I haint got not a bit of right to object. But looky hyer! Devils haint got no right to angels. Ef I kin finish up a devil jest about the time he gits his claws onto a angel and let the angel go free, why, I say it's wuth the doin'. Hey?”
Charlton, I am ashamed to say, did not at first think the death of Smith Westcott by violence a very great crime or calamity, if it served to save Katy. However, as he walked and talked with Gray, the thought of murder made him shudder, and he made an earnest effort to persuade the Inhabitant to give up his criminal thoughts. But it is the misfortune of people like George Gray that the romance in their composition will get into their lives. They have not mental discipline enough to make the distinction between the world of sentiment and the world of action, in which inflexible conditions modify the purpose.
”Ef I hev to hang fer it I'll hang, but I'm goin' to be her gardeen angel.”
”I didn't know that guardian angels carried pistols,” said Albert, trying to laugh the half-crazed fellow out of a conceit from which he could not drive him by argument.
”Looky hyer, Mr. Charlton,” said Gray, coloring, ”I thought you was a gentleman, and wouldn' stoop to make no sech a remark. Ef you're goin' to talk that-a-way, you and me don't travel no furder on the same trail. The road forks right here, mister.”
”Oh! I hope not, my dear friend. I didn't mean any offense. Give me your hand, and G.o.d bless you for your n.o.ble heart.”
Gray was touched as easily one way as the other, and he took Charlton's hand with emotion, at the same time drawing his sleeve across his eyes and saying, ”G.o.d bless you, Mr. Charlton. You can depend on me. I'm the gardeen, and I don't keer two cents fer life. It's a shadder, and a mush-room, as I writ some va.r.s.es about it wonst. Let me say 'em over:
”Life's a shadder, Never mind it.
A cloud kivers up the sun And whar is yer shadder gone?
Ye'll hey to be peart to find it!
”Life's a ladder-- What about it?
You've clim half-way t' the top, Down comes yer ladder ke-whop!
You can't scrabble up without it!
”Nothin's no sadder, Kordin to my tell, Than packin' yer life around.
They's good rest under the ground Ef a feller kin on'y die well.”
Charlton, full of ambition, having not yet tasted the bitterness of disappointment, clinging to life as to all, was fairly puzzled to understand the morbid sadness of the Poet's spirit. ”I'm sorry you feel that way, Gray,” he said. ”But at any rate promise me you won't do anything desperate without talking to me.”
”I'll do that air, Mr. Charlton,” and the two shook hands again.
CHAPTER XIX.
STANDING GUARD IN VAIN.
It was Isabel Marlay that sought Albert again. Her practical intellect, bothered with no visions, dazed with no theories, embarra.s.sed by no broad philanthropies, was full of resource, and equally full, if not of general, at least of a specific benevolence that forgot mankind in its kindness to the individual.
Albert saw plainly enough that he could not keep Katy in her present state of feeling. He saw how she would inevitably slip through his fingers. But what to do he knew not. So, like most men of earnest and half-visionary spirit, he did nothing. Unbeliever in Providence that he was, he waited in the belief that something must happen to help him out of the difficulty. Isa, believer that she was, set herself to be her own Providence.
Albert had been spending an evening with Miss Minorkey. He spent nearly all his evenings with Miss Minorkey. He came home, and stood a minute, as was his wont, looking at the prairie landscape. A rolling prairie is like a mountain, in that it perpetually changes its appearance; it is delicately susceptible to all manner of atmospheric effects. It lay before him in the dim moonlight, indefinite; a succession of undulations running one into the other, not to be counted nor measured. All accurate notions of topography were lost; there was only landscape, dim, undeveloped, suggestive of infinitude. Standing thus in the happiness of loving and being loved, the soft indefiniteness of the landscape and the incessant hum of the field-crickets and katydids, sounds which came out of the everywhere, soothed Charlton like the song of a troubadour.
”Mr. Charlton!”
Like one awaking from a dream, Albert saw Isa Marlay, her hand resting against one of the posts which supported the piazza-roof, looking even more perfect and picturesque than ever in the haziness of the moonlight.
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