第127章 The Ancient Law (21)

Among them he saw the comely, high-coloured features of that gallant cynic, Bolivar, the man who had stamped his beauty upon threegenerations, and his gaze lingered with a gentle ridicule on the blithe candour in the eyes and the characteristic touch of brutality about the mouth.Then he passed to his father, portly, impressive, a high liver, a generous young blood, and then to the classic Saint--Memin profile of Aunt Susannah, limned delicately against a background of faded pink.And from her he went on to his mother's portrait, painted in shimmering brocade under rose garlands held by smiling Loves.

He looked at them all steadily for a while, seeking from the changeless lips of each an answer to the question which he felt knocking at his own heart.In every limb, in every feature, in every fiber he was plainly born to be one of themselves, and yet from their elegant remoteness they stared down upon the rustic labourer who was their descendant.Degraded, coarsened, disinherited, the last Blake stood before them, with his poverty and ignorance illumined only at long intervals by the flame of a soul which, though darkened, was still unquenched.

The night dragged slowly on, while he paced the floor with his thoughts and Will moaned and tossed, a shivering heap, upon the sofa.

"Stop your everlasting cackle!" Christopher had once shouted angrily, forgetting Tucker, and for the space of a few minutes the other had lain silent, choking back the strangling sobs.But presently the shattered nerves revolted against restraint, and Will burst out afresh into wild crying.The yellow cat, grown suddenly restless, crossed the room and jumped upon the sofa, where she stood clawing at the cover, and he clung to her with a pathetic recognition of dumb sympathy--the sympathy which he could not wring from the careless indifference of Christopher's look.

"Speak to me--say something," he pleaded at last, stretching out his hands."If this keeps up I'll go mad before morning."At this Christopher came toward him, and, stopping in his walk, frowned down upon the sofa.

"You deserve everything you'd get;" he said angrily."You're as big a fool as ever trod this earth, and there's no reason under heaven why I should lift my hand to help you.There's no reason --there's no reason," he repeated in furious tones.

"But you'll do it--you'll get me out of it!" cried Will, grasping the other's knees.

"And two weeks later you'd be in another scrape.""Not a single drop--I'll never touch a drop again.Before God Iswear it!"

"Pshaw! I've heard that oath before."

Strangling a scream, Will caught him by the arm, dragging himself slowly into a sitting posture."I'll hang myself if you let them get me," he urged hysterically." I'll hang myself in gaol rather than let them do it.I can't face it all I can't--I can't.It isn't grandpa I mind; I'm not afraid of him.He was a devil.But it's the rest--the rest."Roughly shaking him off, Christopher left him huddled upon the floor and resumed his steady walk up and down the room.In his ears the incoherent phrases grew presently fainter, and after a time he lost entirely their frenzied drift."A little blow--just a little blow," ended finally in muffled sounds of weeping.

The habit of outward composure which always came to him in moments of swift experience possessed him so perfectly now that Will, lifting miserable eyes to his face, lowered them, appalled by its unfeeling gravity.

"I've been a good friend to you--a deuced good friend to you,"urged the younger man in a last passionate appeal for the aid whose direction he had not yet defined.

"What is this thought which I cannot get rid of?" asked Christopher moodily of himself."And what business is it of mine, anyway? What am I to the boy or the boy to me?" But even with the words he remembered the morning more than five years ago when he had gone out to the gate with his bird gun on his shoulder and found Will Fletcher and the spotted foxhound puppies awaiting him in the road.He saw again the boy's face, with the sunlight full upon it--eager, alert, a little petulant, full of good impulses readily turned adrift.There had been no evil upon it then--only weakness and a pathetic absence of determination.His own damnable intention was thrust back upon him, and he heard again the words of Carraway which had reechoed in his thoughts."The way to touch the man, then, is through the boy." So it was the way, after all.

He almost laughed aloud at his prophetic insight.He had touched the man vitally enough at last, and it was through the boy.He had murdered Bill Fletcher, and he had done it through the only thing Bill Fletcher had ever loved.From this he returned again to the memory of the deliberate purpose of that day--to the ribald jests, the coarse profanities, the brutal oaths.Then to the night when he had forced the first drink down Will's throat, and so on through the five years of his revenge to the present moment.Well, his triumph had come at last, the summit was put upon his life's work, and he was--he must be--content.

Will raised his head and looked at him in reviving hope.

"You're the only friend I have on earth," he muttered between his teeth.

The first streak of dawn entered suddenly, flooding the room with a thin gray light in which the familiar objects appeared robbed of all atmospheric values.With a last feeble flicker the lamp shot up and went out, and the ashen wash of daybreak seemed the fit medium for the crude ugliness of life.

Towering almost grotesquely in the pallid dawn, Christopher came and leaned above the sofa to which Will had dragged himself again.

"You must get out of this," he said, "and quickly, for we've wasted the whole night wrangling.Have you any money?"Will fumbled in his pocket and brought out a few cents, which he held in his open palm, while the other unlocked the drawer of the old secretary and handed him a roll of banknotes.