第76章 THE REVENGE(18)

to-day Fletcher got a telegram saying that the boy had been caught cheatin' in his examinations.The old man left on the next train, as mad as a hornet, I can tell you.He swore he'd bring the young scamp back an' put him to the plough.Well, well, thar are worse dangers than a pretty gal, though Susan won't believe it.""Then he'll bring him home?" asked Christopher, blinking in the sunlight.At the instant it seemed to him that sky and field whirled rapidly before his eyes, and a strange noise started in his ears which he found presently to be the throbbing of his arteries.

"Oh, he's been given a hard push down the wrong road," answered Tom, "an' it's more than likely he'll never pull up till he gits clean to the bottom."CHAPTER VI.The Wages of Folly Two days later Fletcher's big new carriage crawled over the muddy road, and Christopher, looking up from his work in the field, caught a glimpse of the sullen face Will turned on the familiar landscape.The younger Fletcher had come home evidently nursing a grievance at his heart; his eyes held a look of dogged resentment, and the hand in which he grasped the end of the linen dust-robe was closed in an almost convulsive grip.When he met Christopher's gaze he glanced angrily away without speaking, and then finding himself face to face with his grandfather's scowl he jerked impatiently in the opposite direction.It was clear that the tussle of wills had as yet wrung only an enforced submission from the younger man.

Lifting his head, Christopher stood idly watching the carriage until it disappeared between the rows of flowering chestnuts;then, returning in a half-hearted fashion to his work, he found himself wondering curiously if Fletcher's wrath and Will's indiscretions were really so great as public rumour might lead one to suppose.

An answer to his question came the next evening, when he heard a light, familiar whistle outside the stable where he was at work, and a moment afterward Will appeared in the shadow of the doorway.

"So it wasn't a cut, after all?" said Christopher with a laugh, as he held out his hand.

"I'll be hanged if I know what it was," was Will's response, turning away after a limp grasp and seating himself upon the big box in the corner."To tell the truth, grandpa has put me into such a fluster that I hardly know my head from my heels.There's one thing certain, though; if he doesn't take his eye off me for a breathing space he'll send me to the dogs before he knows it."His face had lost its boyish freshness of complexion and his weak mouth had settled into lines of sullen discontent.Even his dress displayed the carelessness which is one of the outward marks of a disordered mind, and his bright blue tie was loosely knotted in unequal lengths.

"What's the trouble now?" demanded Christopher, coming from the stall and hanging his lantern from a nail beside the ladder, where the light fell full on Will's face."Out with it and have done.I thought yesterday that you had been driving a hard bargain with the old man on my account.""Oh, it's not you this time, thank heaven," returned Will."It's all about that confounded scrape I got into at the university.Itold him it would mean trouble if he sent me there, but he would do it whether or no.He dragged me away from here, you remember, and had me digging at my books with a scatter-brained tutor for a good six months; then when I knew just about enough to start at the university he hauled me there with his own hands and kept watch over me for several weeks.I'm quick at most things like that, so after he went away I thought I'd have a little fun and trust luck to make it up to me at the end--but it all went against me somehow, and then they stirred up that blamed rumpus about the examinations."Yawning more in disgust than in drowsiness, he struck a match on the edge of the box and lighted a cigarette.His flippant manner was touched with the conscious resentment which still lingered in his eyes, and from the beginning to the end of his account he betrayed no hint of a regret for his own shabby part in the affair.When it was not possible to rest the blame upon his grandfather, he merely shrugged his shoulders and lightly tossed the responsibility to fate.

"This is one of the things I daren't do at the house," he remarked after a moment, inhaling a cloud of smoke and blowing it in spirals through his nostrils; "the old man won't tolerate anything more decent than a pipe, unless it happens to be a chew.

Oh, I'm sick to death of the whole business," he burst out suddenly."When I woke up this morning I had more than half a mind to break loose and go abroad to Maria.By the way, Wyndham's dead, you know; he died last fall just after we went away.""Ah, is that so!" exclaimed Christopher."She'll come home, then, will she?""That's the queer part--she won't, and nobody knows why.Wyndham turned out to be a regular scamp, of course; he treated her abominably and all that, but he no sooner died than she turned about and picked up one of his sisters to nurse and coddle.Oh, it's all foolishness, but I've half a mind to run away, all the same.A life like this will drive me crazy in six months, and I'll be hanged if it is my fault, after all.He knew I never had a head for books, but he drove me at them as if I were no better than a black slave.Things have all been against me from the start, and yet I used to think that I was born to be lucky--""What does he mean to do with you now?" inquired Christopher.