第66章 THE REVENGE(8)

"I thought perhaps Christopher might want to use the mare early,"he explained to Cynthia, who was clearing off the table.There was a pleasant precision in his speech, acquired with much industry at the little country school, and Cynthia, despite her rigid disfavour, could not but notice that when he glanced round the room in search of Lila he displayed the advantage of an aristocratic profile.Until to-day she could not remember that she had ever seen him directly, as it were; she had looked around him and beyond him, much as she might have obliterated from her vision a familiar shrub that chanced to intrude itself into her point of view.The immediate result of her examination was the possibility she dimly acknowledged that a man might exist as a well-favoured individual and yet belong to an unquestionably lower class of life.

"Well, I'll go out to the stable," added Jim, after a moment in which he had patiently submitted to her squinting observation.

"Christopher will be somewhere about, I suppose?""Oh, I suppose so," replied Cynthia indifferently, emptying the coffee-grounds into the kitchen sink.The asperity of her tone was caused by the entrance of Lila, who came in with a basin of corn-meal dough tucked under her bared arm, which showed as round and delicate as a child's beneath her loosely rolled-up sleeve.

"Cynthia, I can't find the hen-house key," she began; and then, catching sight of Jim, she flushed a clear pink, while the little brown mole ran a race with the dimple in her check.

"The key is on that nail beside the dried hops," returned Cynthia sternly."I found it in the lock last night and brought it in.

It's a mercy that the chickens weren't all stolen."Without replying, Lila took down the key, strung it on her little finger, and, going to the door, passed with Jim out into the autumn sunshine.Her soft laugh pulsed back presently, and Cynthia, hearing it, set her thin lips tightly as she carefully rinsed the coffee-pot with soda.

Christopher, who had just come up to the wellbrink, where Tucker sat feeding the hounds from a plate of scraps, gave an abrupt nod in the direction of the lovers strolling slowly down the hen-house path.

"It will end that way some day, I reckon," he said with a sigh, "and you know I'm almost of a mind with Cynthia about it.It does seem a downright pity.Not that Jim isn't a good chap and all that, but he's an honest, hard-working farmer and nothing more--and, good heavens! just look at Lila! Why, she's beautiful enough to set the world afire."Smiling broadly, Tucker tossed a scrap of cornbread into Spy's open jaws; then his gaze travelled leisurely to the hen-house, which Lila had just unlocked.As she pushed back the door there was a wild flutter of wings, and the big fowls flew in a swarm about her feet, one great red-and-black rooster craning his long neck after the basin she held beneath her arm.While she scattered the soft dough on the ground she bent her head slightly sideways, looking up at Jim, who stood regarding her with enraptured eyes.

"Well, I don't know that much good ever comes of setting anything afire," answered Tucker with his amiable chuckle; "the danger is that you're apt to cause a good deal of trouble somewhere, and it's more than likely you'll get singed yourself in putting out the flame.You needn't worry about Lila, Christopher; she's the kind of woman--and they're rare--who doesn't have to have her happiness made to order; give her any fair amount of the raw material and she'll soon manage to fit it perfectly to herself.

The stuff is in her, I tell you; the atmosphere is about her--can't you feel it--and she's going to be happy, whatever comes.

A woman who can make over a dress the sixth time as cheerfully as she did the first has the spirit of a Caesar, and doesn't need your lamentations.If you want to be a Jeremiah, you must go elsewhere.""Oh, I dare say she'll grow content, but it does seem such a terrible waste.She's the image of that Saint-Memin portrait of Aunt Susannah, and if she'd only been born a couple of generations ago she would probably have been the belle of two continents.Such women must be scarce anywhere.""She's pretty enough, certainly, and I think Jim knows it.

There's but one thing I've ever seen that could compare with her for colour, and that's a damask rose that blooms in May on an old bush in the front yard.When all is said, however, that young Weatherby is no clodhopper, you know, and I'm not sure that he isn't worthier of her than any highsounding somebody across the water would have been.He can love twice as hard, I'll wager, and that's the chief thing, after all; it's worth more than big titles or fine clothes--or even than dead grandfathers, with due respect to Cynthia.I tell you, Lila may never stir from the midst of these tobacco fields; she may be buried alive all her days between these muddy roads that lead heaven knows where, and yet she may live a lot bigger and fuller life than she might have done with all London at her feet, as they say it was at your Greataunt Susannah's.The person who has to have outside props to keep him straight must have been made mighty crooked at the start, and Lila's not like that."Christopher stooped and pulled Spy's ears.

"That's as good a way to look at it as any other, I reckon," he remarked; "and now I've got to hurry the shoeing of the mare."He crossed over and joined Lila and Jim before the henhouse door, where he put the big fowls to noisy flight.

"Well, you're a trusty neighbour, " he cried good-humoredly, striking Jim a friendly blow that sent him reeling out into the path.

Lila passed her hand in a sweeping movement round the inside of the basin and flirted the last drops of dough from her finger-tips.