CHAPTER VII.
THE POOL OF DEATH.
Morning brought a pitcher of comfort with it on its gossamer wings. Who, at 17, can wake from restoring sleep to find the June sun on his face and elect to breakfast on bitter wormwood, with the appetizing fry of good country bacon caressing his nostrils through every chink of the boards? Indeed, I was not born to hate, or to any decided vice or virtue, but was of those who, taking a middle course, are kicked to the wall or into the gutter as the Fates have a fancy.
I was friendly with myself, with Jason—almost with Zyp, who had so bedeviled me. After all, I thought, the measure of her regard for me might be more in a winning friendliness than in embraces such as she had bestowed upon Modred.
Therefore I dressed in good heart, chatting amiably with Jason, who, I could not help noticing, was at some pains to study me curiously.
Such reactionary spirits are the heritage of youth. They decline with the day. My particular relapse happened, maybe, ungenerously early, for it was at breakfast I noticed the first tremulous vibrations of Zyp’s war trumpet. Clearly she had guessed the reason of the change in my manner toward her yesterday evening and was bent upon disabusing my mind of the presumptuous supposition that I held any monopoly whatsoever of her better regard. To this end she showered exaggerated attentions upon Modred and my father—even Jason coming in for his share. She had little digs at my silence and boorishness that hugely delighted the others. She slipped a corner of fat bacon into my tea and spilled salt over my bread and jam, and all the time I had to bear my suffering with a stoic heart and echo the merriment, which I did in such sardonic fashion as to call down fresh banter for my confusion. At our worst, it must be confessed, we were not a circle with a refined sense of humor. But when we rose, and Zyp brushed rudely by me with a pert toss of her head, I felt indeed as if life no longer held anything worth the striving after.
I walked out into the yard to be alone, but Jason followed me. Some tenderness for old comradeship sake stirred in him momentarily, I think, for his blue eyes were good as they met mine.
“What an ass you are, Renny,” he said; “to make such a to-do about the rubbish!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, in miserable resentment. “I’m making no to-do about anything.”
My chest felt like a stone, and I could have struck him or any one.
“Oh, I can see,” said he.