Ross was rubbing a rough cheek with thoughtful fingers, looking sidewise at the storekeeper.
“I’m a-goin’ to git married to-night,” he murmured. “Looks like I need a clean shave. They tell me you’re a master hand at shavin’ folks. Will ye shave me?”
Beath’s chair dropped forward with a slam, but neither of the men started or turned. The black eyes burned deep into the blue; the blue were unfathomable. Behind a mask of primitive civility the two men interrogated savagely each other’s motives. Jabe was the first to speak.
“Why, shorely, shorely,” he said with what seemed to Beath ominous relish. “Set down on that thar cheer that’s got a high back to it, so’s you can lean yo’ head right. Sam,”—Beath leaped as though he had been struck,—“bring me the wash-pan an’ soap an’ a towel. I’ll git the lather-brush.”
Beath finally arrived with the required articles. His shaking hand had spilled half the water from the basin; his eyes gloated. He put the things down on a box and retired once more to his chair, seating himself with the air of a man at a play.
Ross leaned back, found a comfortable rest for his head, and closed his eyes. The strong, brown young throat exposed by the turned-down collar of his shirt fascinated Beath so that he could not look away from it.
Jabe took the towel and put it about his customer’s neck with expert fingers. As he did so, Beath’s hand began to play about his own throat, and there was a click as it nervously contracted. Turrentine dipped his brush in the water and whirled it on the soap-cake, lathering Ross’s face silently and with a preoccupied manner. Beath’s glance flickered from the man in the chair to the man who worked over him. When Jabe took up the razor, passed it once or twice across the strop and approached it to Ross’s cheek, Beath swallowed so noisily that the sound of it was loud in the silent room.
Suavely—the old man was grace itself—the operation of shaving the bridegroom was begun. Placidly it progressed, with a murmured word between the two men, the deft turning of the inert head by the amateur barber, an occasional deep-toned request.
Yet always the onlooker shook with anticipation of the sweep of old Jabe’s arm which must come. Continually Beath figured to himself the sudden jetting out of crimson from that artery in the neck that was beating evenly and calmly under old Jabe’s touch. Perhaps the end might have arrived then and there, and swiftly, had those fingers felt the swell of excitement in the blood of a possible victim. But Ross had closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. Jabe made an excellent job of it.
“Thar—I believe that’s about all you need,” he remarked at length.