A Man and a Woman, Stanley Waterloo [ebook reader 8 inch .TXT] 📗

Was it because of Jenny Bierce?"

"You know it was."

"But why haven't I as good a right to make love to Jenny as you or any other man?"

Woodell turned fiercely: "More quibbling." Then in a tone of demand: "Tell me this: Are you going to marry her?"

Harlson hesitated. "I don't know."

"You do know! You know you haven't any idea of such a thing. You are just amusing yourself until you get your cursed fence built."

"What is that to you?"

"To me! She was engaged to be married to me, and we were happy together until you came; and you've come, broken up two lives and done no one any good, not even yourself, you hungry wolf! She cares more for me to-day than she does for you. She is better suited to me! But with your trick of words and your ways you tickled her fancy at first, and, finally, you charmed her somehow as they say snakes do birds. And she'll not be fit for anybody when you go away!" The big man sobbed like a baby.

Harlson made no immediate reply. Was not what Woodell was saying but the truth? Did he really care for Jenny or she for him? What had it been but pastime? He could give her up. It would be a little hard, of course. It is always so when a man has to surrender those close relations with a woman which are so fascinating, and which come only when there has been established that sympathy between them which, if not love, is involuntarily considered by each something that way. There was a struggle in his mind between the instinct to be honorable and straight-forward and fair, and to do what was right, and the impulse, on the other hand, to refuse anything demanded by an assailant. But the would-be murderer was not a murderer, after all. He was only a temporary lunatic whom Harlson himself had driven mad. That was the just way to look at it. As for Jenny, she would not suffer much. There had not been time enough. Not in a day does a man or woman have that effect produced upon the heart which lasts forever. So, were he to disappear from the affair, nothing very serious, nothing affecting materially the whole of any life would follow. The odds were against him, or rather against the worst side of him, in the reflection.

He acted promptly. "I don't know about it," he said; "I'm puzzled. I don't care much. I don't know just where I stand, anyhow. I want to be decent, but it seems to me I have some rights; I'm all tangled up. I don't think you imagine I am afraid--I wasn't when I was a little boy in school with you as a bigger one. You know that--and I'm not now. But that doesn't count. I've been studying over a lot of things, and I don't know what to do. I think you may be right, and that I have been all wrong. I give it up. But I do know that a fellow can't make any mistake if he tries to do what is right, and, in figuring out the thing, takes the side that seems to be against him. He can fight, he can do anything better after he feels that he has done that. Hold on."

Woodell stopped, wonderingly. Harlson unbuckled the strap about the man's hands and threw it into the bushes at the roadside.

The farmer straightened himself up, reached out his arms, clutched his palms together, and looked at the other man. Harlson spoke bluntly.

"Yes, I know you want to try it again. But, as I feel now, it could only end one way. I don't mind. I only wanted to loose you before I say what I wanted to say, so that you wouldn't think I was making terms on my own account."

"Go on," said Woodell, gruffly, still stretching his arms.

"Well, it is just this. I don't think I've been doing the right thing. I am going to leave Jenny Bierce to you. She will not care much, and it will be all right in a little time. That is all. No, not quite! You tried to kill me. Maybe I would have been as big a fool, just such a crazy, jealous man as you, if things had been the other way. I don't know. But I do know this, that your coming here to-night, except that it has made me think, has nothing to do with what I have made up my mind to. Here we are in the road. I don't want to sleep uneasily in the barn. You tried to kill me. I have tried to decide on what is right, and I will do it. Now, I want it settled with you. Here I am! Do you want to fight?"

Woodell's face had been something worth seeing while Harlson was speaking. He had followed the words of his late antagonist closely. He grasped in a general way the intent expressed. There was a radiance on his rough features.

"Do you really mean that?"

"Of course I do. What should I say it for if I didn't?"

"Then it will be all right."

"But do you want to fight?"

"No, I don't. I won't say you could lick me. It was partly luck before. I won't give up that way. But you might. That doesn't matter. I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I was crazy. You would have been, in my place. And you won't have anything to do with Jenny again? Oh, Harlson!"

And the two shook hands, and Harlson went back to his bed on the clover-mow. He thought he had done a great and philosophically noble deed--remember, this was but a boy little over twenty--and he slept like a lamb. And next evening he went over to Woodell's home and said he wanted some supper, and after the meal laughed at Woodell, and said he was going off to another farm to pitch quoits until it got too dark, and the two young men walked down the road together and exchanged some confidences, and when they parted each was on good terms with the other. This was strange, following an attempted murder, but such things happen in real life. And it may be that Woodell had the worst of the bargain in that conversation.

He was better equipped for the winning of Jenny, but the troubled man with whom he had been talking had reached out blindly for aid in another direction. Not much satisfaction was the result. Woodell was of the kind who, if religious at all, believe without much reasoning, but Harlson had repeated to him the reasoning of the Hindoo skeptic. Woodell had at least intelligence enough to follow the line of thought, and, in after time, when he was a family man and deacon, the lines would recur to vex him sorely.

And Jenny did not pine away and die because she saw little more of Harlson. He met her and explained briefly that they had been doing wrong, and that he and Woodell had talked. She turned pale, then red, but said little. Of the struggle in the night Jenny never learned. She inferred, of course, that her lover had gone in a straightforward way to Harlson, and that his demands had been acceded to. She was gratified, perhaps, that she had become a person of much importance. She thought more of Woodell and less of Harlson, because of the issue of the debate, as she understood it, and, when the first pique and passion were over, became resigned enough to the outlook. She had been on the verge of sin, but she was not the only woman in the world to carry a secret. Woodell's pleadings were met with yielding, and the wedding occurred within a month. Perhaps she made a better wife because her husband did not know the truth in detail, and she felt the burden of a debt, but that is doubtful. Though fair of feature, she was not deep enough of mind to even brood. Of course, too, by this standard should be lessened the real degree of all erring. Harlson, wiser, was much the more guilty of the two and deserved some punishment, but, as an equation, it could, at least, since he was young, be said in his defense that as he was to Jenny so had Mrs. Rolfston been to him. The person who had changed things was that same fair animal of the town.

And shallow-minded legislatures will enact preposterous social laws for the regulation of the morals of boys, and imagine they have placed another paving-stone in the road to the millennium, while the Mrs. Rolfstons are having a riotous time of it.


CHAPTER XIII.

FAREWELL TO THE FENCE.

When the first frosts of autumn come the black ash swales are dry, and there is more life in them than in midsummer. Hickory trees grow in the swales, and the squirrels are very busy with the ripened nuts. The ruffed grouse, with broods well grown, find covert in the tops of fallen trees, or strut along decaying logs. There are certain berries which grow in the swales, and these have ripened and are sought by many birds. The leaves are turning slowly to soft colors. There is none of the blaze and glory of the ridges where the hard maples and beeches are, but there is a general brownness and dryness and vigor of scene. It is good. The fence was nearly done, and the money for its building was almost owned. The rails stretched away in a long line through the narrow lane hewed through the wood, the tree-tops meeting overhead, and a new highway was built for the squirrels, who made famous use of the fence in their many journeys. The woodpeckers patronized it much, and tested every rail for food, but only in a merely incidental way, for each woodpecker knew that every rail was green and tough, and sound and tenantless as yet. There was a general chirp and twitter and pleasant call, for all the young life of the year was out of nest and hole and hollow, and now entering upon life in earnest. It was a season for buoyant work.

The great maul, firm and heavy still, showed an indentation round its middle, where tens of thousands of impacts against the iron wedges had worn their way, and even the heads of the wedges themselves were rounded outward and downward with an iron fringe where particles of the metal had been forced from place. The huge hook at the end of the log chain was twisted all awry, though no less firm its grip. The fence, the implements and all about showed mighty work, something of mind, but more of muscle.

Most perfect of all tonics is physical, out-door labor, particularly in the forest, and it is as well for mind as body. It eliminates what may be morbid, and is healthful for a conscience. Why it is that, under most natural conditions which may exist,