SANDY’S JOB
Tessibel Skinner’s flight left
Ebenezer Waldstricker and Graves together on the ragged
rocks. The bigger man turned and surveyed the
other, scorn, anger and disgust struggling for expression
in his face. The latter, paying no apparent attention
to the enraged elder, leaned against an outcropping
gray rock and fixed his gaze on the lake, noting mechanically
the play of sunshine and shadow upon its dazzling bosom.
Through the elder’s seething
mind thoughts tumbled tumultuously. Could this
moody, pale-faced man be the same nice young fellow
that had married Madelene? How had he dared to
marry her, and having done so, what had compelled
him, after all this time, to acknowledge the Skinner
brat?
He walked forward a step or two, coughed
and began to speak. Frederick seemed not to hear
him.
“I said,” repeated Waldstricker,
“I’ve discovered what I’ve suspected
for four years.”
Frederick allowed his eyes to rest
an instant on his brother-in-law’s dark, passionate
face. Then, again, he turned his attention to
the lake.
“And I don’t intend to
allow my sister to suffer by this,” went on the
elder.
“I suppose you’ll tell
her, won’t you?” questioned the other,
foreseeing unpleasant complications and already regretting
the rashness that’d betrayed him.
“She won’t learn it from me,” promised
Ebenezer.
“Nor from me,” agreed
Frederick. “I’ve no wish to have a
whining woman hanging to my neck.”
Waldstricker muttered an oath under his breath.
“Well, of all the contemptible
pups in the world!” he snorted. “Talk
of ingratitude! Here’s a girl, a good girl,
too, and Madelene’s that ”
“No one said she wasn’t,”
snapped Graves. “But her goodness doesn’t
keep her from nagging, my dear Ebenezer.”
“Shut up!” snarled his
opponent, the last atom of his patience exhausted
by the speaker’s flippant criticism. “You
cur, you deserve a good thrashing, and I’m going
to give it to you, now!”
Jumping for him, he lifted his arm
to strike, but before the mighty fist descended, Frederick,
outworn by his long walk and the excitement of the
morning, slumped upon the rocks, a limp form at his
assailant’s feet. Stunned, the tall man
gazed down at the crumpled figure, and mechanically
lowered his arm. Then, he stooped, examined his
fallen foe and stretched him out upon the rocks.
Leaving him there, Waldstricker hurried to the lake
and filled his hat with water, and returning, bathed
the stricken man’s face and neck. In a few
moments, the faintness passed, and Frederick drew
himself to a sitting posture against the rocks.
“You great brute! It’s
like you to strike a sick man,” the white lips
taunted, as soon as their owner could speak.
The slurring words brought a hot blush
of shame to Ebenezer’s face.
“I’m sorry, Fred,”
he stammered at length. “I was so angry
I must’ve forgotten you’re not well.
I’m glad I didn’t strike you. But
what are we going to do, now?... If we don’t
tell Madelene, how about the Skinner girl?...
Won’t she make trouble for us?”
“No, she won’t say anything,
I’m sure!” Frederick’s voice was
low, but positive. “She doesn’t want
to have anything more to do with me. What she
said about not wanting me was true. She wouldn’t
stop to speak to me, even, until I threatened to tell
you.... I suppose Young’s made her so happy
she’s glad to forget me.”
“What gets me is how you and
Young, decent fellows, got mixed up with such a girl,”
Ebenezer growled meditatively.
“If you knew Tess as I do, ...
you’d understand,” wailed Frederick.
“She’s the dearest, bravest, sweetest girl
in the world.”
“Bosh!... Now, the question
is about getting you home. My buggy’s up
in the road. Do you think you can walk there?”
“I guess so.”
With his brother-in-law’s help,
Frederick got to his feet. Slowly, leaning on
the big man’s supporting arm, he made his way,
with many pauses for rest, to the waiting vehicle.
Waldstricker put his companion into
the carriage and unhitched the horse. Instead
of getting in beside him, he handed him the reins,
saying as he did so,
“You can drive all right, can’t
you? Old Ned knows the way back and will go home
if you let him alone. I want to see Young.”
Before turning away, the speaker chirruped
to the horse, which started obediently up the hill
toward Ithaca, drawing after him what cowardly selfishness
had left of Frederick Graves.
The elder walked slowly up the path
to Young’s house, turning over in his mind to
what advantage he could best use his newly acquired
knowledge.
Coming out of the door hurriedly,
Deforrest Young met his brother-in-law face to face
as the latter rounded the corner of the house.
At the sight of this pompous person, whose meddling
threatened so much trouble to his dear ones, the indignation
which Tessibel’s words had in a measure quieted,
flared up anew. He wanted to fight, to pound,
and if possible to kill with his hands the man in
front of him.
“You’d better come no
farther,” he said between set teeth. “Just
stay where you are!... I shan’t be responsible
for my acts if you don’t.”
“So she’s told you,”
said Waldstricker, laughing loudly. “And
it hurts, eh? Now, you know what you’re
keeping?”
Trembling with suppressed passion,
the lawyer walked deliberately to the steps, his face
waxen-white.
“I told you to come no nearer.
I’d advise you to go away,” said he.
His low voice, contrasting sharply with his flushed
cheeks and blazing eyes, testified eloquently of the
tremendous curb imposed upon his temper.
“Yes, she told me, ...”
he continued in the same tone, “and the more
she told me, the more heartily I pitied her.
She told me of your threats, too, but I want you to
understand, the moment you turn your hands against
her, I’ll fix you.”
“Don’t forget my wife’s
your sister. I’ll see our family’s
honor upheld even if you’ve forgotten it.”
Waldstricker simulated a confidence he didn’t
quite feel.
Young’s fists knotted.
“You mind your business, Ebenezer, and let my
house alone.”
Waldstricker, kicking uneasily at
a stone in his path, thought a moment. At last
he looked up.
“I’ll let your house alone
all right, if you’ll get rid of that girl, and
that ”
He didn’t use the word he’d
intended. Deforrest didn’t give him time.
“My house is my own,”
he interjected. “If you watch yours, you’ll
have all you can ’tend to.”
“I’ll go,” said
the big man, hoarsely, “but I don’t say
I won’t come again, and I warn you, as I warned
that squatter girl, when the time comes ”
“Get out!” snarled Deforrest,
starting down the steps, “and get quick.”
And the elder, not daring to stay,
turned and went toward the pear orchard. It was
then, that he glanced up and saw Tessibel and her little
one at an upper window, watching with startled eyes
for his departure. The baby turned from the window
and raised his arms to some one within, and a hand
below a man’s rough coat sleeve clasped the boy
and lifted him up out of Waldstricker’s sight.
Walking along the road to Ithaca,
he reviewed the exciting events of the morning and
tried to consider and determine the complications they
involved. He was unable to find a motive for Frederick’s
dramatic announcement, although he did not for a moment
doubt its truth. It was queer though that, after
having kept still so long, he should blurt out his
secret in that fashion. He considered his promise
not to tell Madelene and concluded he’d been
wise. Probably Frederick wouldn’t live
long anyway, and in the natural course of things, Madelene
would soon be free and the Graves chapter ended.
He wondered what had kept Tess silent all these years.
How had she withstood his persecution even in her
betrayer’s presence and made no sign? He
was glad she had, but he couldn’t understand
why. Evidently the girl’s disclosure to
Young wasn’t going to make any difference in
his brother-in-law’s conduct. Suddenly,
like a bolt shot into the midst of his revery, rose
the question. Whose arm was that? Young
was on the porch, the girl and the baby in plain sight
at the window. But there was some one else, a
man. He had seen his arm and coat sleeve.
“That’s certainly peculiar,”
he ruminated. “I didn’t know Young
had any one else there. It may be all right,
of course, but it seems mighty suspicious.”
All the way home and all the evening,
the thing bothered him. In every way imaginable
he tried to account for that other man in Young’s
house. He canvassed the neighborhood. A
chance visitor wouldn’t be upstairs, and anyhow
he’d have looked out to see the row with Young.
But this man kept away from the window. He’d
only shown his hand and arm. Whoever he was,
he was hiding in Young’s home.
Was his brother-in-law a party to
it? A man couldn’t be kept for any length
of time in the house without his knowing it. Young
and Tess were hiding someone! At bed time he
decided that the next day he would find out who was
the other man in Young’s house. It might
give him a hold on his obstreperous brother-in-law
and the hateful squatter girl.