Part 24 (2/2)
”Ther gospel-truth is, Jack, I don't know yit whether I loves ye or hates ye, an' I kain't help mistrustin' ye somehow. I mout es well tell ye ther truth es ter lie ter ye.”
”Mistrust me!” he echoed, incredulously. ”Ye knows full well I loves ye. Ye kain't mis...o...b.. thet!”
She shook her head. The sun was burnis.h.i.+ng her hair into an aura, and the clear light shone searchingly on the fresh bloom of her cheek, the violet of her eyes and the crimson of her lips--revealing no flaw. She was all lovely and young, and yet Brent thought, she was alarmingly, almost paradoxically clever.
”Ye acts like ye loves me,” was her seriously voiced response, ”but somehow thar seems ter be a kind of greediness erbout hit. Take Bud Sellers fer instance--he's jest ther opposite. Thar hain't no greed in him.”
Halloway might have retorted that also there was in Bud nothing to which her flaming personality could ever respond. His was the wors.h.i.+p of a dumb and faithful beast. But he held his peace while the girl went steadily on.
”I oft-times takes myself ter task fer thet suspicion, because hit don't seem far ter feel thet-a-way an' not know no reason.”
She looked at him questioningly and very gravely, as one resolved upon a full but difficult confession.
”I hain't nuver seed ye foller no reg'lar work. Ye hain't doin'
nothin' hyar now but jest hangin' around.” She became halting there, for she had reached the point of greatest embarra.s.sment, but she forced herself ahead.
”I hain't no millionaire myself, but we've got a good farm, and we don't owe no man nothin'.” Once more she broke off before, with an inflexible frankness, she finished up. ”Jack, thar's been times when I've wondered ef hit wasn't my bein' es well-fixed as I am thet made ye think so master much of me.”
Then indeed the sprites and goblins of ironic mirth rioted in Halloway's brain. The surge of laughter that sought outlet from his lips came near to smothering him, but he succeeded in smothering it--though the effort almost clicked him. He, with a wealth which would have seemed to her as the treasure of the Incas, was falling under suspicion as a lazy fortune-hunter, seeking haven in the meager opulence of a mountain farm! Yet he dared not confess that wealth now because such admission would stamp him an impostor.
”I reckon,” he said generously, though with just a touch of hurt pride.
”I kin live down that distrust. Does ye suspicion Jerry O'Keefe too--or jest me?”
”n.o.body couldn't suspicion Jerry,” she said softly. ”He's es straight es a poplar saplin' an' es plain ter see through es a clear spring-branch. He knows how ter gentle a woman, too.”
”He don't understand ye an' ye'd mighty soon sicken of jest bein'
gentled,” argued Halloway. ”He hain't got no idea of ther fires thet lays sleepin' in yore heart.”
”He's got an idee of ther fire in his own, I reckon,” replied Alexander.
It is the accepted rule of these mountains that when two men arrive to ”set up” with a girl at the same time, she must choose between them and send the less favored away. Both Halloway and Jerry avoided the issue that might spring from such a situation. They met on the high-road with a full seeming of their old accord, but perhaps the semblance was an empty sh.e.l.l--or fast becoming one. There was a tacit understanding between them that certain evenings at Alexander's house belonged to each.
In Jerry's good-natured, whimsical eyes there had settled of late an unaccustomed gravity and since he was level-headed enough to recognize in Halloway a man who loomed brightly above others, his fear of him as a rival was genuine. It was O'Keefe's way to walk boldly and evenly through life, but a strong and tireless man will flinch in his gait from the hurt of a stone-bruised foot, and with Jerry the stone bruise was about the heart--which is worse. But it was more in the casual meeting than by the formal call, that O'Keefe conducted his courts.h.i.+p.
He had a genius for materializing on the scene at the exact moment when he could perform some simple service, and of meeting Alexander by studious coincidence when she least expected him.
There was none-the-less the constant danger of a flareup because Halloway always bore himself with entire politeness yet with a courtesy which did not escape a sort of indulgent patronage; as though the serious thought of rivalry was absurd.
One day Bud Sellers came by the house. It was after he had been in jail and Alexander, who was standing on her porch, invited him in.
Slowly and somewhat dubiously he accepted the invitation.
”I hain't seed ye fer quite a spell, Bud,” began the girl smilingly, and with a brick red flush he answered. ”Hit took holt on me ergin, Alexander. Hit war jest actually a-burnin' me up.”
She did not ask what he meant by ”it.” She knew full well and she did not reproach him. She only inquired, ”What happened, Bud?”
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