Once to Every Man

“You dear,” she rushed on. “O, you dear, dear stubborn old fraud! I punished you, didn’t I? You were frightened–afraid I’d go! You know you were! As if I’d ever leave until–until–” She failed to finish that sentence. “But I’ll never, never tease you so again!”

Then there came that lightning-like change of mood which always left him breathless in his inability to follow it. The mirth went out of her eyes–her lips drooped and began to work strangely as she knelt and gazed up at him.

“I bought his mortgage,” she told him slowly. “I bought it from Judge Maynard a week ago with part of the money he gave me for our place there below his. He was very generous. Somehow I feel that he paid me–much more than it was worth. He’s always wanted it and–and I–there wasn’t any need for me to stay there any more, was there?”

Old Jerry had never seen a face so terribly earnest before–so hungrily wistful–but it was the light that glowed in that kneeling girl’s eyes that held him dumb. It left him completely incapable of coherent thought, yet mechanically his mind leaped back to that night, two weeks before, when Young Denny had stumbled and gone floundering to his knees before her, there on that very threshold. The boy’s own words had painted that picture for him too vividly for him to forget. And he knew, without reasoning it out, just from the world of pain there in her eyes, that she, too, at that moment was thinking of that limp figure–of the great red gash across its chin.

“I didn’t help him,” she went on, and now her voice was little more than a whisper. “I went and left him here alone–and hurt–when I should have stayed, that night when he went away. And so I bought it–I bought it because I thought some day he might come back–and need me even more. I thought if he did come–he’d feel as though he had just–come back home! And–and just to be here waiting, I thought, too, might somehow help me to have faith that he would come, some day–safe!”

The old man felt the fiercely tense little arms go slack then. Her head went forward and lay heavy, pillowed in her hands upon his knees. But he sat there for a full minute, staring down at the thick, shimmering mass of her hair, swallowing an unaccountable lump that bothered his breathing preparatory to telling her all that he had kept waiting for just that opportunity, before he realized that she was crying. And for an equally long period he cast desperately about for the right thing to say. It came to him finally–a veritable inspiration.

“Why, you don’t want to cry,” he told her slowly. “They–they ain’t nothing to worry about now! For if that’s the case–if you’ve gone to work and bought it, why, I ain’t got no more jurisdiction over it–none whatever!”

Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly at him, but Old Jerry’s face was only guilelessly grave. It was more than that–benevolent reassurance lit up every feature, and little by little her brimming eyes began to clear; they began to glisten with that baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slipped slowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knew then that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was at that moment.

“I wasn’t crying because I was worried,” she said, and she managed not to laugh. “I’ve been doing that every night, all night long, for two weeks. That was before I understood–things! But today–this afternoon I found something–read something–that made me understand better. I–I’m just crying a little tonight because I am so glad.”

Old Jerry couldn’t quite fathom the whole meaning of those last words of hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant to tell her right then of Young Denny’s departure once more went totally out of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of his first battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he felt it was very, very possible, for at each day’s end he had been leaving Denny’s roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home.

But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all. Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed to him a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the light that had glowed radiant in that girl’s eyes, he knew it was the only thing left to believe.

He talked it over with himself that night on the way home.

“She bought it so’s if he ever did want to come back, he’d feel as if he had come back home,” he repeated her words, and he pondered long upon them. There was only one possible deduction.

“She thought he wouldn’t have nothing left to buy it back when he did come–that he’d be started on the road all the rest of ’em traveled and pretty well–shot–to–pieces! That’s what she thought,” he decided.

He shook his head over it.

“And she didn’t know,” he marveled. “She didn’t know how that old jug really got broke–because I ain’t told her yet! But she’s waitin’ for him just the same–just a-waitin’ for him, no matter how he comes. Figurin’ on takin’ care of him, too–that’s what she was doin’–her that ain’t no bigger’n his little finger!”

The storm had blown over long before his buggy went rattling down that long hill, and he sat with the reins dangling neglected between his knees and squinted up at the stars.

“I always did consider I’d been pretty lucky,” he confided after a time to the plump mare’s lazily flopping ears, “never gettin’ mixed up in any matrimonial tangle, so to speak. But now–now I ain’t quite so sure.” A lonesome note crept into the querulous voice. “Maybe I’d hev kept my eyes open a little mite wider’n I did if I’d ever a-dreamed anybody could care like that… Don’t happen very often though, I reckon. Just about once in a lifetime, maybe. Maybe, if he ain’t too blind to see it when it does come … maybe once to every man!”

That next week marked the beginning of an intimacy unlike anything which Old Jerry had ever before known in all his life, for in spite of the girl’s absolute proprietorship he continued his daily trips up the long hill, not only for the purpose of leaving Young Denny’s bundle of papers and seed catalogues, but to attend to the stock which the boy had left in his care as well. It never occurred to him that that duty was only optional with him now.

He never again attempted either, after that night, to explain his delinquency and deliver Young Denny’s message to her. There seemed to him absolutely no need now to open a subject which was bound to be embarrassing to him. And then, too, a sort of tacit understanding appeared to have sprung up between them that needed no further explanation.

Only once was the temptation to confess to her the real reason for Denny’s sudden going almost stronger than he could resist. That was quite a month later, when the news of the boy’s second battle was flaunted broadcast by the same red-headlined sheet. Then for days he considered the advisability of such a move.

It was not some one to share his hot pride that he wanted; he had lived his whole life almost entirely within himself, and so his elation was no less keen because he had no second person with whom to discuss the victory. He wanted her opinion on a quite different question–a question which he felt utterly incapable of deciding for himself. It was no less a plan than that he should be present at the match which was already hinted at between “The Pilgrim” and Jed The Red–Jeddy Conway, from that very village.

There were days when he almost felt that she knew of this new perplexity of his, felt that she really had seen that account of Young Denny’s first fight and had been watching for the second, and at such times only a mumbled excuse and a hasty retreat saved him from baring his secret desire.

“She’d think I’d gone stark crazy,” he excused his lack of courage. “She’d say I was a-goin’ into my second childhood!”

Yet in the end it was the girl with the tip-tilted eyes who decided it for him.

Spring had slipped into early summer when the day came which made the gossip of “The Pilgrim’s” possible bid for the championship a certainty. It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Each fresh day’s issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison of the two men’s chances–of their strength and weaknesses. The technical discussion the old man skipped; it was undecipherable to him and enough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner.

And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, he began to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that daily column. At first it was only fleeting–too intangible for one to place one’s finger upon it. But by the end of another week it was openly inquiring whether “The Pilgrim” had as much as an even chance of winning after all.

It bewildered Old Jerry; it was beyond his comprehension, and had he not been so depressed himself he would have noted the change that came over the girl, too, these days. He never entered the big back kitchen now to hear her humming softly to herself, and sometimes he had to speak several times before she even heard him.

That continued for almost a week, and then there came a day, a scant three days before the date which he had hungrily underlined in red upon a mental calendar, which brought the whole vexing indecision to a precipitate head.

Old Jerry read that day’s column in the sporting extra with weazened face going red with anger–read it with fists knotted. Those others had been merely skeptical–doubtful of “The Pilgrim’s” willingness to meet the champion–and now it openly scoffed at him; it laughed at his ability, lashed him with ridicule. And, to cap it all, it accused him openly of having already “sold out” to his opponent.

When the little white-haired driver of the buggy reached the house on the hill that night he was as pale as he had been red, hours before, and he pleaded fatigue to excuse his too hasty departure. He did not see that she was almost as openly eager to have him go or that she almost ran across to the table under the light with the packet of papers as he turned away.

Had he noticed he would have been better prepared the next night for the scene that met him when he opened her door at dusk. One step was all he took, and then he stopped, wide-eyed, aghast. Dryad was standing in the middle of the room, her hair loose about her shoulders, lips drawn dangerously back from tight little teeth, fists clenched at her throat, and her eyes flaming.

Old Jerry had never before seen her in a rage; he had never before seen anybody so terribly, pallidly violent. As he entered her eyes shot up to his. He heard her breath come and go, come and go, between dry lips. And suddenly she lifted her feet and stamped upon the newspaper strewn about her on the floor–infinitesimal shreds which she had torn and flung from her.

“It’s a lie!” she gasped. “It’s a lie–a lie! They said he couldn’t win anyway; they said he had sold–sold his chance to win–and they lie! He’s never been whipped. He’s never–been–whipped–yet!”

It frightened him. The very straining of her throat and the mad rise and fall of her breast made him afraid for her. In his effort to quiet her he hardly reckoned what he was saying.

“Why, it–it don’t mean nothin’,” he stated mildly. “That newspaper trash ain’t no account, anyway you look at it.”

“Then why do they print it?” she stormed. “How do they dare to print it? They’ve been doing it for days–weeks!”

He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into his brain.

“They hev to, I reckon,” he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness. “If they didn’t maybe everybody’d be so sure he’d win that they wouldn’t even bother to go to see it.” And then, very carelessly, as though it was of little importance: “Don’t know’s I would hev thought of goin’ myself if it hadn’t been for that. It’s advertisin’ I reckon–just advertisin’!”

Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was that bewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. She even started toward him.

“Wouldn’t have thought of it!” she repeated. “Why–why, you don’t mean that you aren’t going?”

It was quite as though she had never considered the possibility of such a contingency. Old Jerry’s mouth dropped open while he stared at her.

“Go,” he stammered, “me go! Why, it’s goin’ to happen tomorrow night!”

She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment.

“You’ll have to leave on the early train,” she agreed, “and–and so I won’t see you again.”

She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she was fumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When she faced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretched hand.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come tonight,” she went on, “and it was hard waiting. That’s why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, will you–will you give him this for me–give it to him when he has won? You won’t have to say anything.” She hesitated. “I–I think he’ll understand!”

Old Jerry reached out and took it from her–a bit of a red silk bow, dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tucked it away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brain raced madly.

“Of course I figured on goin’,” he said, when his breath returned, “but I been a little undecided–jest a trifle! But I ought to be there; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn’t somebody from home. And I’ll give it to him then–I’ll give it to him when he’s won!”

He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy.