Sometimes he let Chum go with him in these outings. Oftener of late he had said, as he started out:
"Not to-night, Chummie. Stay here."
Obediently the big dog would lay himself down with a sigh on the porch edge; his head between his white little forepaws; his sorrowful brown eyes following the progress of his master down the lane to the highroad.
But he grieved, as only a sensitive highbred dog can grieve--a dog who asks nothing better of life than permission to live and to die at the side of the man he has chosen as his G.o.d; to follow that G.o.d out into rain or chill; to starve with him, if need be; to suffer at his hands--in short, to do or to be anything except to be separated from him.
Link Ferris had gotten into the habit of leaving Chum alone at home, oftener and oftener of late, as his own evening absences from the farm grew more and more frequent.
He left Chum at home because She did not like dogs.
"She" was Dorcas Chatham, the daughter of Hampton"s postmaster and general storekeeper.
Old Man Chatham in former days would have welcomed Cal Whitson, the official village souse, to his home as readily as he would have admitted the ne"er-do-well Link Ferris to that sanctuary. But of late he had noted the growing improvement in Link"s fortunes, as evidenced by his larger store trade, his invariable cash payments and the frequent money orders which went in his name to the Paterson savings bank.
Wherefore, when Dorcas met Link at a church sociable and again on a straw ride and asked him to come and see her some time, her sire made no objection. Indeed he welcomed the bashful caller with something like an approach to cordiality.
Dorcas was a calm-eyed, efficient damsel, more than a little pretty, and with much repose of manner. Link Ferris, from the first, eyed her with a certain awe. When a mystic growing attraction was added to this and when it in turn merged into love, the sense of awe was not lost.
Rather it was strengthened.
In all his thirty-one lean and lonely years Link had never before fallen in love. At the age when most youths are sighing over some wonder girl, he had been too busy fighting off bankruptcy and starvation to have time or thought for such things.
Wherefore, when love at last smote him it smote him hard. And it found him woefully unprepared for the battle.
He knew nothing of women. He did not know, for example, what the average youth finds out in his teens--that grave eyes and silent aloofness and lofty self-will and icy pietism in a maiden do not always signify that she is a saint and that she must be worshiped as such.
Ferris had no one to tell him that far oftener these signs point merely to stupid narrowness and to lack of ideas.
Dorcas was clever at housework. She was quietly self-a.s.sured. She was good to look upon. She was not like any of the few girls Link had met.
Wherefore he built for her a sacred shrine in his innermost heart; and he knelt before her image there.
If Ferris found her different from the other Hampton girls, Dorcas found him equally different from the local swains she knew. She recognized his hidden strength. The maternal element in her nature sympathized with his loneliness and with the marks it had left upon his soul.
For the rest--he was neither a village cut-up like Con Skerly, nor a solemn ma.s.s of conceit like Royal Crews; nor patronizing like young Lawyer Wetherell; nor vaguely repulsive like old Cap"n Baldy Todd, who came furtively a-courting her. Link was different. And she liked him.
She liked him more and more.
Once her parents took Dorcas and her five-year-old sister, Olive, on a Sunday afternoon ramble, which led eventually to the Ferris farm. Link welcomed the chance callers gladly, and showed them over the place.
Dorcas"s housewifely eye rejoiced in the well-kept house, even while she frowned inwardly at its thousand signs of bachelor inefficiency.
The stock and the crops, too, spoke of solid industry.
But she shrank back in sudden revolt as a huge tawny collie came bounding toward her from the fold where he had just marshaled the sheep for the night. The dog was beautiful. And he meant her no harm. He even tried shyly to make friends with the tall and grave-eyed guest. Dorcas saw all that. Yet she shrank from him with instinctive fear--in spite of it.
As a child she had been bitten--and bitten badly--by a nondescript mongrel that had been chased into the Chatham backyard by a crowd of stone-throwing boys, and which she had sought to oust with a stick from its hiding place under the steps. Since then Dorcas had had an unconquerable fear and dislike of dogs. The feeling was unconquerable because she had made no effort to conquer it. She had henceforth judged all dogs by the one whose teeth marks had left a lifelong scar on her white forearm.
She had the good breeding not to let Ferris see her distaste for his pet that he was just then exhibiting so proudly to the guests. Her shrinking was imperceptible, even to a lover"s solicitous eye. But Chum noted it. And with a collie"s odd sixth sense he knew this intruder did not like him.
Not that her aversion troubled Chum at all; but it puzzled him. People as a rule were effusively eager to make friends with Chum. And--being ultraconservative, like the best type of collie--he found their handling and other attentions annoying. He had taken a liking to Dorcas, at sight. But since she did not return this liking Chum was well content to keep away from her.
He was the more content, because five-year-old Olive had flung herself, with loud squeals of rapture, bodily on the dog; and had clasped her fat little arms adoringly round his ma.s.sive furry throat in an ecstasy of delight.
Chum had never before been brought into such close contact with a child. And Link watched with some slight perturbation the baby"s onslaught. But in a moment Ferris"s mind was at rest.
At first touch of the baby"s fingers the collie had become once and for all Olive"s slave. He fairly reveled in the discomfortingly tight caress. The tug of the little hands in his sensitive neck fur was bliss to him. Wiggling all over with happiness he sought to lick the chubby face pressed so tight against his ruff. From that instant Chum had a divided allegiance. His human G.o.d was Ferris. But this fluffy pink-and-white youngster was a mighty close second in his list of deities.
Dorcas looked on, trembling with fear; as her little sister romped with the adoring dog. And she heaved a sigh of relief when at last they were clear of the farm without mishap to the baby. For Olive had been dearer to Dorcas, from birth, than anyone or anything else on earth. To the baby sister alone Dorcas ceased to be the grave-eyed and self-a.s.sured Lady of Quality, and became a meek and worshiping devotee.
When Link Ferris at last mustered courage to ask Dorcas Chatham to marry him his form of proposal would have been ruled out of any novel or play. It consisted chiefly of a mouthful of half-swallowed, half-exploded words, spoken all in one panic breath, to the accompaniment of a mortal fear that shook him to the marrow.
Any other words, thus mouthed and gargled, would have required a full college of languages to translate them. But the speech was along a line perfectly familiar to every woman since Eve. And Dorcas understood. She would have understood had Link voiced his proposal in the Choctaw dialect instead of a slurringly mumbled travesty on English.
The man"s stark earnestness of entreaty sent a queer flutter to the very depths of her calm soul. But the flutter failed to reach or to t.i.tillate the steady eyes. Nor did it creep into the level and self-possessed voice, as Dorcas made quiet answer:
"Yes. I like you better than any other man I know. And I"ll marry you, if you"re perfectly sure you care for me that way."
No, it was not the sort of reply Juliet made to the same question. It is more than doubtful that Cleopatra answered thus, when Antony offered to throw away the world for her sake. But it was a wholly correct and self-respecting response. And Dorcas had been rehearsing it for nearly a week.
Moreover, words are of use, merely as they affect their hearers. And all the pa.s.sion poetry of men and of angels could not have thrilled Link Ferris as did Dorcas"s correct and demure a.s.sent to his frenziedly gabbled plea. It went through the lovesick man"s brain and heart like the breath of G.o.d.
And thus the couple became engaged.
With only a slight diminishing of his earlier fear did Link seek out Old Man Chatham to obtain his consent to the match. Dizzy with joy and relief he listened to that village worthy"s ungracious a.s.sent also secretly rehea.r.s.ed for some days.
For the best part of a month thereafter Link Ferris floated through a universe of roseate lights and soft music.
Then came the jar of awakening.
It was one Sat.u.r.day evening, a week or so before the date set for the wedding. Dorcas broached a theme which had been much in her mind since the beginning of the engagement. She approached it very tactfully indeed, leading up to it in true feminine fashion by means of a cunningly devised series of levels which would have been the despair of a mining engineer. Having paved the way she remarked carelessly:
"John Iglehart was at the store to-day, father says. He"s crazy about that big collie of yours."
Instantly Link was full of glad interest. It had been a sorrow to him that Dorcas did not like dogs. She had explained her dislike--purely on general principles--early in their acquaintance, and had told him of its origin. Link was certain she would come to love Chum, on intimate acquaintance. In the interim he did not seek to force her liking by bringing the collie to the Chatham house when he called.
Link did not believe in crossing a bridge until he came to it. There would be plenty of time for Dorcas to make friends with Chum in the long and happy days to come. Yet, now, he rejoiced that she herself should have been the first to broach the subject.
"Father says John is wild about Chum," went on the girl unconcernedly; adding, "By the way, John asked father to tell you he"d be glad to pay you $100 for the dog. It"s a splendid offer, isn"t it! Think of all the things we can get for the house with $100, Link! Why, it seems almost providential, doesn"t it? Father says John is in earnest about it too.
He--"
"In earnest, hey!" snapped Ferris, finding his voice after an instant of utter amazement. "In EARNEST! Well, that"s real grand of him, ain"t it! I"d be in earnest, too, if I was to bid ten cents for the best farm in Pa.s.saic County. But the feller who owned the farm wouldn"t be in earnest. He"d be taking it as a fine joke. Like I do, when Johnny Iglehart has the nerve to offer $100 for a dog that wouldn"t be worth a cent less"n $600--even if he was for sale. Why, that collie of mine--"
"If he is worth $600," suggested Dorcas icily, "you"d better not lose any time before you find someone who will pay that for him. He"s no use to us. And $600 is too much money to carry on four legs. He--"
"No use to us?" echoed Link. "Why, Chum"s worth the pay of a hired man to me, besides all the fondness I"ve got for him! He handles the sheep, and he--"
"So you"ve told me," interposed Dorcas with no show of interest. "I remember the first few times you came to see me you didn"t talk of anything else, hardly, except that dog. Everybody says the same thing.
It"s a joke all through Hampton, the silly way you"re forever singing his praises."
"Why shouldn"t I?" demanded Link st.u.r.dily. "There"s not a dandier, better pal anywhere, than what Chum"s been to me. He--"
"Yes, yes," a.s.sented Dorcas, "I know. I don"t doubt it. But, after all, he"s only a dog, you know. And if you can get a good price for him, as you say, then the only thing to do is to sell him. In hard times like these--"