Mrs. Tayloe shook her hand off with a shriek of laughter.
"I believe you are afraid of him to this day. Hampton won't tell on us. It isn't the first secret he and I have kept from our lord and master. Open it!" to the grinning man. "Now fill two glasses—one for Miss Grigsby and one for me. Take yours, Flea! I'll give you a toast. Single blessedness forever, and confusion to all husbands!"
Her elbow was grasped from behind as she lifted the glass above her head. Flea had set hers down, untasted, having seen who was coming up through the hall from the back door. At the same moment David Grigsby hurried around the corner of the house. He had had a glimpse of Mr. Tayloe as he rode into the stable-yard by way of a plantation road, and hoped to reach the porch in season to get his sister away without encountering him.
THE YOUNG FARMER DRAGGED THE MASTER DOWN THE STEPS.
The youth stopped short, confounded by what he saw. The wife tried to rise from the table, but was held down in her chair by the hand pressed upon her shoulder. The other hand did not relax the clutch upon her elbow. The sleeve of her dress had fallen back when she raised the glass, and David saw the flesh whiten under the cruel fingers. Flea gathered up her skirt and retreated to the steps, pausing there as if reluctant to leave her friend in the power of the angry man. His face literally blackened; his eyes were livid; the sneer that drew the corners of his mouth upward lifted the lips from strong sharp teeth like a hound's.
"So-ho!" he hissed between them. "This is what goes on while I am away!"
He got no further. David and Flea never agreed in their accounts of what happened next. The brother thought that the wife's struggle was to free herself from the savage grip upon her elbow. Flea saw the look of hate and fear with which the frantic woman dashed glass and liquor into her husband's face. He did not move so much as to wipe the red streams from his eyes. He spoke slowly and in deadly calm: "You have been taking a lesson from your distinguished visitor, have you?" glancing with his evil smile at the horror-stricken girl. "Let her take one in return from this!"
He raised his hand to strike her, but David saw the motion, and bounded up the steps.
The young farmer dragged the master of the house by the collar down the steps, thence along the gravel walk to the road. A blind instinct of what was conventional in such cases warned him not to beat a man on his own premises. Once upon the highway David stayed hand and whip no longer. Holding the elder and smaller man down upon the ground, he then and there paid off old and new scores. His whip was new and tough, the arm that wielded it was lusty. Every lash from David's whip cut through the light cloth of coat and vest, and cut the shirt into ribbons down to the skin.