When Agnes leaned over to say, "Won"t you have some more tea, Will?" they nudged each other and grinned. "Aha! What did I tell you?"
Agnes saw at last that for some reason Will didn"t want her to show her regard for him, that be was ashamed of it in some way, and she was wounded. To cover it up, she resorted to the feminine device of smiling and chatting with the others. She asked Ed if he wouldn"t have another piece of pie.
"I will-with a fork, please."
"This is "bout the only place you can use a fork," said Bill Young, antic.i.p.ating a laugh by his own broad grin.
"Oh, that"s too old," said Shep Watson. "Don"t drag that out agin. A man that"ll eat seven taters-"
"Shows who docs the work."
"Yes, with his jaws," put in Jim Wheelock, the driver. "If you"d put in a little more work with soap "n" water before comin" in to dinner, it "ud be a religious idee," said David.
"It ain"t healthy to wash."
"Well, you"ll live forever, then."
"He ain"t washed his face sence I knew "im."
"Oh, that"s a little too tought! He washes once a week," said Ed Kinney.
"Back of his ears?" inquired David, who was munching a doughnut, his black eyes twinkling with fun.
"What"s the cause of it?"
"Dade says she won"t kiss "im if he don"t." Everybody roared.
"Good fer Dade! I wouldn"t if I was in her place."
Wheelock gripped a chicken leg imperturbably, and left it bare as a toothpick with one or two bites at it. His face shone in two clean sections around his nose and mouth. Behind his ears the dirt lay undisturbed. The grease on his hands could not be washed off.
Will began to suffer now because Agnes treated the other fellows too well. With a lover"s exacting jealousy, he wanted her in some way to hide their tenderness from the rest, but to show her indifference to men like Young and Kinney. He didn"t stop to inquire of himself the justice of such a demand, nor just how it was to be done. He only insisted she ought to do it.
He rose and left the table at the end of his dinner, without having spoken to her, without even a tender, significant glance, and he knew, too, that she was troubled and hurt. But he was suffering. It seemed as if he had lost something sweet, lost it irrecoverably.
He noticed Ed Kinney and Bill Young were the last to come out, just before the machine started up again after dinner, and he saw them pause outside the threshold and laugh back at Agnes standing in the doorway. Why couldn"t she keep those fellows at a distance, not go out of her way to bandy jokes with them?
Some way the elation of the morning was gone. He worked on doggedly now, without looking up, without listening to the leaves, without seeing the sunlighted clouds. Of course he didn"t think that she meant anything by it, but it irritated him and made him unhappy. She gave herself too freely.
Toward the middle of the afternoon the machine stopped for a time for some repairing; and while Will lay on his stack in the bright yellow sunshine, sh.e.l.ling wheat in his hands and listening to the wind in the oaks, he heard his name and her name mentioned on the other side of the machine, where the measuring box stood.
He listened.
"She"s pretty sweet on him, ain"t she? Did yeh notus how she stood around over him?"
"Yes; an" did yeh see him when she pa.s.sed the cup o" tea down over his shoulder?"
Will got up, white with wrath as they laughed.
"Some way he didn"t seem to enjoy it as I would. I wish she"d reach her arm over my neck that way."
Will walked around the machine, and came on the group lying on the chaff near the straw pile.
"Say, I want you fellers to understand that I won"t have any more of this talk. I won"t have it."
There was a dead silence. Then Bill Young rose up.
"What yeh goen" to do about it?" he sneered.
"I"m going to stop it."
The wolf rose in Young. He moved forward, his ferocious soul flaming from his eyes.
"W"y, you d.a.m.ned seminary dude, I can break you in two!"
An answering glare came into Will"s eyes. He grasped and slightly shook his fork, which he had brought with him unconsciously.
"If you make one motion at me, I"ll smash your head like an eggsh.e.l.l!" His voice was low but terrific. There was a tone in it that made his own blood stop in his veins. "If you think I"m going to roll around on this ground with a hyena like you, you"ve mistaken your man. I"ll kill you, but I won"t fight with such men as you are."
Bill quailed and slunk away, muttering some epithet like "coward."
"I don"t care what you call me, but just remember what I say: you keep your tongue off that girl"s affairs."
"That"s the talk!" said David. "Stand up for your girl always, but don"t use a fork. You can handle him without that:"
"I don"t propose to try," said Will, as he turned away. As be did so, he caught a glimpse of Ed Kinney at the well, pumping a pail of water for Agnes, who stood beside him, the sun on her beautiful yellow hair. She was laughing at something Ed was saying as he slowly moved the handle up and down.
Instantly, like a foaming, turbid flood, his rage swept out toward her. "It"s all her fault," he thought, grinding his teeth. "She"s a fool.
If she"d hold herself in like other girls! But no; she must smile and smile at everybody." It was a beautiful picture, but it sent a shiver through him.
He worked on with teeth set, white with rage. He had an impulse that would have made him a.s.sault her with words as with a knife.
He was possessed with a terrible pa.s.sion which was. .h.i.therto latent in him, and which he now felt to be his worst self. But he was powerless to exorcise it. His set teeth ached with the stress of his muscular tension, and his eyes smarted with the strain.
He had always prided himself on being cool, calm, above these absurd quarrels that his companions had so often indulged in. He didn"t suppose he could be so moved. As he worked on, his rage settled down into a sort of stubborn bitterness-stubborn bitterness of conflict between this evil nature and his usual self. It was the instinct of possession, the organic feeling of proprietor-ship of a woman, which rose to the surface and mastered him. He was not a self-a.n.a.lyst, of course, being young, though he was more introspective than the ordinary farmer.
He had a great deal of time to think it over as he worked on there, pitching the heavy bundles, but still he did not get rid of the miserable desire to punish Agnes; and when she came out, looking very pretty in her straw hat, and came around near his stack, he knew she came to see him, to have an explanation, a smile; and yet he worked away with his hat pulled over his eyes, hardly noticing her.
Ed went over to the edge of the stack and chatted with her; and she-poor girl!-feeling Will"s neglect, could only put a good face on the matter, and show that she didn"t mind it, by laughing back at Ed.
All this Will saw, though he didn"t appear to be looking. And when Jim Wheelock-Dirty Jim-with his whip in his hand, came up and playfully pretended to pour oil on her hair, and she laughingly struck at him with a handful of straw, Will wouldn"t have looked at her if she had called him by name.
She looked so bright and charming in her snowy ap.r.o.n and her boy"s straw hat tipped jauntily over one pink ear that David and Steve and Bill, and even Shep, found a way to get a word with her, and the poor fellows in the high straw pile looked their disappoimment and shook their forks in mock rage at the lucky dogs on the ground. But Will worked on like a fiend, while the dapples of light and shade fell on the bright face of the merry girl.
To save his soul from h.e.l.l flames he couldn"t have gone over there and smiled at her. It was impossible. A wall of bronze seemed to have arisen between them. Yesterday, last night, seemed a dream.
The clasp of her hands at his neck, the touch of her lips, were like the caresses of an ideal in some dim reverie.
As night drew on, the men worked with a steadier, more mechanical action. No one spoke now. Each man was intent on his work. No one had any strength or breath to waste. The driver on his power changed his weight on weary feet, and whistled and sang at the tired horses. The feeder, his face gray with dust, rolled the grain into the cylinder so even, so steady, so swift that it ran on with a sullen, booming roar. Far up on the straw pile the stackers worked with the steady, rhythmic action of men rowing a boat, their figures looming vague and dim in the flying dust and chaff, outlined against the glorious yellow and orange-tinted clouds.
"Phe-e-eew-ee," whistled the driver with the sweet, cheery, rising notes of a bird. "Chk, chk, chk! Phe-e-eewee. Go on there, boys!
Chk, chk, chk! Step up, there Dan, step up! (Snap!) Phe-e-eew-ee!