第64章 THE REVENGE(6)

She will probably weep like a child, and I shall feel a brute when I look on and keep silent.In the first place, if I speak to her, what is there for me to say? If I simply beg her to stop crying, or if I rush in and urge her to marry Jim Weatherby to-morrow, what good can come of either course? She doesn't wait for my consent to the marriage, for she is as old as I am, and knows her own heart much better than I know mine.It is true that she is too beautiful to waste away like this, but how can Iprevent it, or what is there for me to do?"Again came the impulse to go in and fold her in his arms, but before he had taken the first step he yielded, as always, to his strange reserve, and he realised that if he entered it would be but to assume his customary unconcern, from the shelter of which he would probably make a few commonplace remarks on trivial subjects.The emotional situation would be ignored by them all, he knew; they would treat it absolutely as if it had no existence, as if its voice was not speaking to them in the silence, and they would break their bread and drink their coffee in apparent unconsciousness that supper was not the single thing that engrossed their thoughts.And all the time they would be face to face with the knowledge that they had demanded that Lila should sacrifice her life.

Presently Cynthia came out and called him, and he went in carelessly and sat down at the table.Lila left the window and slipped into her place, and when Tucker joined them she cut up his food as usual and prepared his coffee.

"Uncle Tucker's cup has no handle, Cynthia," she said with concern."Let me take this one and give him another.""Well, I never!" exclaimed Cynthia, bending over to examine the break with her near-sighted squint."We'll soon have to begin using Aunt Susannah's set, if this keeps up.Uncle Boaz, you've broken another cup to-day."Her tone was sharp with irritation, and the fine wrinkles caused by ceaseless small worries appeared instantly between her eyebrows.Christopher, watching her, remembered that she had worn the same expression during the scene with Lila, and it annoyed him unspeakably that she should be able to descend so readily, and with equal energy, upon so insignificant a grievance as a bit of broken china.

Uncle Boaz hobbled round the table and peered contemptuously at the cup which Lila held.

"Dar warn' no use bruckin' dat ar one," he observed, "'caze 'twuz bruck a'ready." " Oh, there won't be a piece left presently,"pursued Cynthia indignantly; and Christopher felt suddenly that there was something contemptible in the passion she expended upon trifles.He wondered if Tucker noticed how horribly petty it all was to lament a broken cup when the tears were hardly dried on Lila's cheeks.Finishing hurriedly, he pushed back his chair and rose from the table, shaking his head in response to Cynthia's request that he should go in to see his mother."Not now," he said impatiently, with that nervous avoidance of the person he loved best."I'll be back in time to carry her to bed, but I've got to take a half-hour off and look in on Tom Spade." "She really ought to go to bed before sundown," responded Cynthia, "but nothing under heaven will persuade her to do so.It's her wonderful will that keeps her alive, just as it keeps her sitting bolt upright in that old chair.I don't believe there's another woman on earth who could have done it for more than twenty years." Taking down his hat from a big nail in the wall, Christopher stood for a moment abstractedly fingering the brim.

"Well, I'll be back shortly," he said at last, and went out hurriedly into the darkness.At the instant he could not tell why he had so suddenly decided to follow Will Fletcher to the store, but, as usual, when the impulse came to him he proceeded to act promptly as it directed.Strangely enough, the boy was the one human being whom he felt no inclination to avoid, and the least oppressive moments that he knew were the reckless ones they spent together.While his daily companion was mentally and morally upon a lower plane than his own, the association was not without a balm for his wounded pride; and the knowledge that it was still possible to assume superiority to Fletcher's heir was, so far as he himself admitted, the one consolation that his life contained.

As for his feeling toward Will Fletcher as an individual, it was the outcome of so curious a mixture of attraction and repulsion that he had long ceased from any attempt to define it as pure emotion.For the last four years the boy had been, as Tom Spade put it, "the very shadow on the man's footsteps," and yet at the end of that time it was almost impossible for Christopher to acknowledge either his liking or his hatred.He had suffered him for his own end, that was all, and he had come at last almost to enjoy the tolerance that he displayed.The hero worship--the natural imitation of youth-- was at least not unpleasant, and there had been days during a brief absence of the boy when Christopher had, to his surprise, become aware of a positive vacancy in his surroundings.So long as Will made no evident attempt to rise above him--so long, indeed, as Fletcher's grandson kept to Fletcher's level, it was possible that the companionship would continue as harmoniously as it had begun.In the store he found Tom Spade and his wife--an angular, strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the reputation of a shrew with noisy honours.When he asked for Will, the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying and nodded toward the half-open door of the adjoining room.