At the foot of the staircase, the old man was standing in a patient attitude, resting upon his wooden leg, which was slightly in advance of his sound one. His fine bearded face might have been the face of a scholar, except for its roughened skin and the wistful, dog-like look in the eyes.
In response to Kesiah's greeting, he explained that he had come at once to acknowledge the gift of the overcoat and to "pay his respects."
"I am glad you like it," she answered, and because her heart was swelling with kindness, she stammered and grew confused while the anxious frown deepened between her eyebrows. A morbid horror of making herself ridiculous prevented her always from making herself understood.
"It will be very useful to me, ma'am, when I am out of doors in bad weather," he replied, wondering if he had offended her by his visit.
"We got it for that purpose," and becoming more embarrassed, she added hastily, "How is the red cow, Mr. Merryweather?"
"She mends slowly, ma'am. I am givin' her bran mash twice a day and keepin' her in the barn. Have you noticed the hogs? They're a fine lot this year and we'll get some good hams at the killin'."
"No, I hadn't looked at them, but I've been struck with the corn you've brought up recently from the low grounds."
For a minute or two they discussed the crops, both painfully ill at ease and uncertain whether to keep up the conversation or to let it trail off into silence. Then at the first laboured pause, Reuben repeated his message to Mrs. Gay and stamped slowly out of the back door into the arms of Jonathan, who was about to enter.
"Halloo! So it's you!" exclaimed the young man in the genial tone which seemed at once to dispel Kesiah's embarrassment. "I've wanted to talk with you for two days, but I shan't detain you now for I happen to know that your granddaughter is hunting for you already. I'll come up to-morrow and chat awhile in the barn."
Reuben bowed and passed on, a little flattered by the other's intimate tone, while Gay followed Kesiah into the drawing-room, and put a question to her which had perplexed him since the night of his arrival.
"Aunt Kesiah, was old Reuben Merryweather on friendly terms with my uncle?"
She started and looked at him with a nervous twitching of her eyelids.
"I think so, Jonathan, at least they appeared to be. Old Reuben was born on the place when the Jordans still lived here, and I am sure your uncle felt that it would be unjust to remove him. Then they fought through the war together and were both dangerously wounded in the same charge."
He gazed at her a moment in silence, narrowing his intense blue eyes which were so like the eyes of Reuben's granddaughter.
"Did my uncle show any particular interest in the girl?" he inquired, and added a little bitterly, "It's not fair to me that I shouldn't know just where I am standing."
"Yes, he did show a particular interest in her and was anxious that she should be educated above her station. She was even sent off to a boarding-school in Applegate, but she ran away during the middle of the second session and came home. Her grandfather was ill with pneumonia, and she is sincerely devoted to him, I believe."
"Was there any mention of her in Uncle Jonathan's will?"
"None whatever. He left instructions with Mr. Chamberlayne, however, which are to be made known next April on Molly's twenty-first birthday. It is all rather mysterious, but we only know that he owned considerable property in the far West, which he left away from us and in trust to his lawyer. I suppose he thought your mother would not be alive when the girl came of age; for the doctors had agreed that she had only a few years to live at the utmost."
"What in the devil did my poor mother have to do with it?"
She hesitated an instant, positively scowling in her perplexity.
"Only that I think—I believe your Uncle Jonathan would have married the girl's mother—Janet Merryweather—but for your mother's influence."
"How in the deuce! You mean he feared the effect on her?"
"He broke it to her once—his intention, I mean—and for several days afterwards we quite despaired of her life. It was then that she made him promise—he was quite distracted with remorse for he adored Angela—that he would never allude to it again while she was alive. We thought then that it would be only for a short while, but she has outlived him ten years in spite of her heart disease. One can never rely on doctors, you know."
"But what became of the girl—of Janet Merryweather, I mean?"
"That was the sad part, though it happened so long ago—twenty years—that people have almost forgotten. It seems that your uncle had been desperate about her for a time—before Angela came to live with him—and Janet counted rather recklessly upon his keeping his word and marrying her as he had promised. When her trouble came she went quite out of her mind—perfectly harmless, I believe, and with lucid intervals in which she suffered from terrible melancholia. Her child inherits many of her characteristics, I am told, though I've never heard any harm of the girl except that she flirts with all the clowns in the neighbourhood."
"Uncle Jonathan appears to have been too ready with his promises, but,
I suppose, he thought there was a difference between his obligation to
Janet Merryweather and to his brother's widow?"
"There was a difference, of course. Janet Merryweather could hardly have had Angela's sensitive feelings—or at least it's a comfort to think that, even if it happens not to be true. Before the war one hardly ever heard of that class, mother used to say, it was so humble and unpresuming—but in the last twenty-five or thirty years it has overrun everything and most of the land about here has passed into its possession."
She checked herself breathlessly, surprised and indignant that she should have expressed her feelings so openly.
"Yes, I dare say," returned Jonathan—"The miller Revercomb is a good example, I imagine, of just the thing you are speaking of—a kind of new plant that has sprung up like fire-weed out of the ashes. Less than half a century produced him, but he's here to stay, of that I am positive. After all, why shouldn't he, when we get down to the question? He—or the stock he represents, of course—is already getting hold of the soil and his descendants will run the State financially as well as politically, I suppose. We can't hold on, the rest of us—we're losing grip—and in the end it will be pure pluck that counts wherever it comes from."
"Ah, it's just that—pluck—but put the miller in the crucible and you'll find how little pure gold there is to him. It is not in prosperity, but in poverty that the qualities of race come to the surface, and this remarkable miller of yours would probably be crushed by a weight to which poor little Mrs. Bland at the post-office—she was one of the real Carters, you know—would hardly bend her head."
"Perhaps you're right," he answered, and laughed shortly under his breath, "but in that case how would you fix the racial characteristics of that little firebrand, Molly Merryweather?"
CHAPTER VII
GAY RUSHES INTO A QUARREL AND SECURES A KISS
At dawn next morning Jonathan Gay, who had spent a restless night in his uncle's room, came out into the circular drive with his gun on his shoulder, and strolled in the direction of the meadows beyond the haunted Poplar Spring at the end of the lawn. It was a rimy October morning, and the sun rising slowly above the shadowy aspens in the graveyard, shone dimly through the transparent silver veil that hung over the landscape. The leaves, still russet and veined with purple on the boughs overhead, lay in brown wind-rifts along