IV.
But week after week went by without his daring to make his resolution good. He determined many times to ask permission to call, but somehow he never did.
He seemed to see her rather less than at first; and, on her part, there was a change. She seemed to have lost her first eager and frank curiosity about him, and did not always smile now when she met him.
Then, again, he could not in working dress ask to call; it would seem so incongruous to stand before her to make such a request covered with perspiration and dust. It was hard to be dignified under such circumstances; he must be washed and dressed properly.
In the meantime, the men had discovered how matters stood, and some of them made very free with the whole situation. Two of them especially hated him.
These two men had drifted to the farm from the mines somewhere, and were rough, hard characters. They would have come to blows with him, only they knew something of the power lying coiled in his long arms.
One day he overheard one of the men speaking of Edith, and his tone stopped the blood in Arthur's heart. When he walked among the group of men his face was white and set.
"You take that back!" he said in a low voice. "You take that back, or I'll kill you right where you stand!"
"Do him up, Tim!" shouted the other ruffian; but Tim hesitated. "I'll do him, then," said the other man. "I owe him one myself."
He caught up a strip of board which was lying on the ground near, but one of the Norwegian workmen put his foot on it, and before he could command his weapon, Arthur brought a pail which he held in his right hand down upon his opponent's head.
The man fell as if dead, and the pail shattered into its original staves. Arthur turned then to face Tim, his hands doubled into mauls; but the other men interfered, and the encounter was over.
Arthur waited to see if the fallen man could rise, and then turned away reeling and breathless. For an hour afterward his hands shook so badly that he could not go on with his work.
At first he determined to go to Richards, the foreman, and demand the discharge of the two tramps, but as he thought of the explanation necessary, he gave it up as impossible.
He almost wept with shame and despair at the thought of her name having been mixed in the tumult. He had meant to kill when he struck, and the nervous prostration which followed showed him how far he had gone. He had not had a fight since he was thirteen years of age, and now everything seemed lost in the light of his murderous rage. It would all come out sooner or later, and she would despise him.
He went to see the man just before going to supper, and found him in his barracks, sitting near a pail of cold water from which he was splashing his head at intervals.
He looked up as Arthur entered, but went on with his ministrations; after a pause he said:
"That was a terrible lick you give me, young feller—brought the blood out of my ears."
"I meant to kill you," was Arthur's grim reply.
"I know you did. If that darned Norse hadn't put his foot on that board you'd be doing this." He lifted a handful of water to his swollen and aching head.
"What did you go to that board for? Why didn't you stand up like a man?"
"Because you were swinging that bucket."
"Oh, bosh! You were a coward as well as a blackguard."
The man looked up with a gleam in his eye.
"See here, young feller—if this head——"
Arthur's face darkened, and the man stopped short.
"Now listen, Dan Williams, I want to tell you something. I'm not going to report this. I'm going to let you stay here till you're well, and then I want this thing settled with Richards looking on; when I get through with you, then, you'll want a cot in some hospital."
The man's eyes sullenly fell, and Arthur turned toward the door. At the doorway he turned and a terrible look came into his face.
"And, more than that, if you say another word about—her, I'll brain you, sick or well!"
As he talked, the old, wild fury returned, and he came back and faced the wounded man.
"Now, what do you propose to do?" he demanded, his hands clinching.
The other man looked at him, with a curious frown upon his face.
"Think I'm a damned fool!" he curtly answered, and sopped his handkerchief in the water again.
The rage went out of Arthur's eyes, and he almost smiled, so much did that familiar phrase convey, with its subtle inflections. It was cunning and candid and chivalrous all at once. It acknowledged defeat and guilt and embodied a certain pride in the victor.
"Well, that settles that," said Arthur. "One thing more—I don't want you to say what made the row between us."
"All right, pard; only, you'd better see Tim."
In spite of his care, the matter came to the ears of Richards, who laughed over it and told his wife, who stared blankly.
"Good land! When did it happen?"
"A couple of days ago."
"Wal, there! I thought there was a nigger in the fence. Dan had a head on him like a bushel basket. What was it about?"
"Something Tim said about Edith."
"I want to know! Wal, wal! An' here they've been going around as peaceful as two kittens ever since."
"Of course. They pitched in and settled it man fashion; they ain't a couple of women who go around sniffin' and spittin' at each other," said Richards, with brutal sarcasm. "As near as I can learn, Tim and Dan come at him to once."
"They're a nice pair of tramps!" said Mrs. Richards indignantly. "I told you when they come they'd make trouble."
"I told you the cow'd eat up the grindstone," Richards replied with a grin, walking away.
The more Mrs. Richards thought of it, the finer it all appeared to her. She was deeply engaged now on Arthur's side, and was very eager to do something to help on in his "sparking," as she called it. She seized the first opportunity to tell Edith.
"Don't s'pose you heard of the little fracas we had t'other day," she began, in phrase which she intended to be delicately indirect.
Edith was sitting in the cart, and Mrs. Richards stood at the wheel, with her apron shading her head.
"Why, no. What was it?"
"Mr. Ramsey come mighty near gettin' killed." The old woman enjoyed deeply the dramatic pallor and distortion of the girl's face.
"Why—why—what do you mean?"
"Wal, if he hadn't a lammed one feller with a bucket he'd a been laid out sure. So Richards says; as it is, it's the other feller that has the head." She laughed to see the girl's face grow rosy again.
"Then—Mr. Ramsey isn't hurt?"
"Not a scratch! The funny part of it is, they've been going around here for a week, quiet as you please. I wouldn't have known anything about it only for Richards."
"Oh, isn't it dreadful?" said the girl.
"Yes, 'tis!" the elder woman readily agreed; "but why don't you ask what it was all about?"
"Oh, I don't want to know anything more about it; it's too terrible."
Mrs. Richards was approaching the climax.
"It was all about you."
The girl could not realize what part she should have with a disgraceful row in the barnyard of her uncle's farm.
"Yes, these men—they're regular tramps; I told Richards so the first time I set eyes on 'em—they made a little free with your name, and Art he overheard them and he went for 'em, and they both come at him, two to one, and he lammed both out in a minute—so Richards says. Now I call that splendid; don't you? A young feller that'll stand up for his girl ag'in two big tramps——"
The Major had been motioning for Edith to drive on down toward the gate, and she seized the chance for escape. Her lips quivered with shame and anger. It seemed already as if she had been splashed with mire.
"Oh, the vulgar creatures!" she said, in her throat, her teeth shut tight.
"There, isn't that a fine field?" asked the Major, as he pointed to the cabbages. "There is a chance for an American imitator of Monet—those purple-brown deeps and those gray-blue-pink pearl tints—What's the matter, my dear?" he broke off to ask. "Are you ill?"
"No, no, only let's go home," she said, the tears coming into her eyes.
He got in hastily.
"My dear, you are really ill. What's the matter? Has your old enemy the headache—" He put his arm about her tenderly.
"No, no! I'm sick of this place—I wish I'd never seen it! How could those dreadful men fight about me? It's horrible!"
The Major whistled.
"Oh, ho! that's got around to you, has it? I didn't know it myself until yesterday; I was hoping it wouldn't reach you at all. I wouldn't mind it, my dear. It's the shadow every lovely woman throws, no matter where she walks; it's only your shadow that has passed over the cesspool."
"But I can't even bear that; it seems like a part of me. What do you suppose they said of me?" she asked, in morbid curiosity.
"Now, now, dearest, to know that would be stepping into the muck after your shadow; the talk of such men is unimaginable to you."
"You don't mean Mr. Ramsey?"
"No; Mr. Ramsey is a different sort of man, and I don't suppose anything else would have brought him to blows with those rough men."
They sat looking straight forward.
"Oh, it's horrible, horrible!"
Her uncle tightened his arm about her.
"I suppose the knowledge of such lower deeps must come to you some day, but don't seek it now; I've told you all you ought to know. Ramsey meant well," he went on, after a silence, "but such things do little good, not enough to pay for the outlay of self-respect. He can't control their talk when he's out of hearing."
"But I supposed that if a woman was—good—I mean—I didn't know that men talked in that way about girls—like me. How could they?"
The abyss still fascinated her.
"My dear, such men are only half civilized. They have all the passions of animals, and all the vices of men. Ramsey was too hot-headed; their words do not count; they weren't worth whipping."
There was a little silence. They were nearing the mountains again, and both raised their eyes to the peaks deeply shadowed in Tyrian purple.
"I know how you feel, I think," the Major went on, "but the best thing to do is to forget it. I'm sorry Ramsey fought. To walk into a gang of rough men like that is foolish and dangerous too, for the ruffian is generally the best man physically, I'm sorry to say."
"It was brave, though, don't you think so?" she asked.
He looked at her quickly.
"Oh, yes; it was brave and very youthful."
She smiled a little for the first time.
"I guess I like youth."
"In that case I'll have to promote him for it," he said with a smile that made her look away toward the mountains again.