"I was only asking for my own satisfaction, Gwynne. No doubt my friend has already consulted a lawyer and has been advised. I must be off. Sorry you can"t come with me."
Kenneth would have been surprised and disturbed if he could have known all that lay behind these casual questions. But it was not for him to know that Viola had repeated Mrs. Gwyn"s threat to her impatient, arrogant lover, nor was it for him to connect a simple question of law with the ugly plot that had been revealed to Isaac Stain by Moll Hawk.
After two nights of troubled thought, Barry Lapelle had hit upon an extraordinary means to circ.u.mvent Rachel Gwyn. With Machiavellian cunning he had devised a way to make Viola his wife without jeopardizing her or his own prospects for the future. No mother, he argued, could be so unreasonable as to disinherit a daughter who had been carried away by force and was compelled to wed her captor rather than submit to a more sinister alternative.
Shortly after the noon meal, Kenneth rode up to the old Gwyn house.
He found Zachariah beaming on the front door step.
"Yas, suh,--yas, suh!" was the servant"s greeting. "Right aroun"
dis way, Ma.r.s.e Kenny. Watch out, suh, ailse yo" sc.r.a.pe yo" hat off on dem branches."
He grasped the bit, after his master had dismounted in the weed-covered little roadway at the side of the house, and ceremoniously waved his hand toward the open door.
"Step right in, suh,--yas, suh,--an" make yo"self to home, suh.
Sit right down front of de fiah, Ma.r.s.e Kenny. Ah won"t be more"n two shakes, suh, stablin"--yas, suh! Come on hyar, yo" Brandy Boy!
Ise gwine show yo" whar yo"s gwine to be de happies" hoss in--yas, suh,--yas, suh!"
The young man looked long and searchingly through the trees before entering the house, but saw no sign of his neighbours. He thought he detected a slight movement of a curtain in one of the windows,--the parlor window, if his memory served him right.
It was late in the afternoon before he saw either of his relatives.
He had had occasional glimpses of the negro servant-girl and also of a gaunt stable-man, both of whom favoured his partially obscured abode with frank interest and curiosity. A clumsy, silent hound came up to the intervening fence several times during the afternoon and inspected the newcomers with seeming indifference, an att.i.tude which misled Zachariah into making advances that were received with alarming ill-temper.
Kenneth was on his front doorstep, contemplating with secret despair the jungle of weeds and shrubbery that lay before him, completely obliterating the ancient path down to the gate. The whole place was overgrown with long, broken weeds, battered into tangled ma.s.ses by the blasts of winter; at his feet were heaps of smitten burdocks and the dead, smothered stems of hollyhocks, geraniums and other garden plants set out and nurtured with tender care by Rachel Gwyn during her years of occupancy. The house needed painting, the roof required attention, the front gate was half open and immovably imbedded in the earth.
He was not aware of Viola"s presence on the other side of the fence dividing the two yards until her voice fell upon his ears. It was clear and sweet and bantering.
"I suppose you are wondering why we haven"t weeded the yard for you, brother Kenny."
As he made his way through the weeds to the fence, upon which she rested her elbows while she gazed upon him with a mocking smile in the eyes that lay far back in the shovel-like hood of her black quaker bonnet, he experienced a sudden riotous tumult in the region of his heart. Shaded by the dark, extended wings of the bonnet, her face was like a dusky rose possessed of the human power to smile.
The ribbon, drawn close under her chin, was tied in a huge bow-knot, while at the back of her head the soft, loose cap of the bonnet fitted snugly over hair that he knew would gleam with tints of bronze if exposed to the rays of the sinking sun.
"Not at all," he rejoined. "I am wondering just where I"d better begin."
"Did you find the house all right?"
"Yes. You have saved me a lot of trouble, Viola."
"Don"t give me credit for it. Mother did everything. I suppose you know that the furniture and other things belong to you by rights.
She didn"t give them to you out of charity."
"The last thing in the world I should expect would be charity from your mother," he said, stung by the obvious jibe.
She smiled tolerantly. "She is more charitable than you imagine.
It was only last night that she said she wished Barry Lapelle was half as good and upright as you are."
"That was very kind of her. But if such were the case, I dare say it never would have occurred to you to fall in love with him."
He had come up to the fence and was standing with his hand on the top rail. She met his ironic gaze for a moment and then lowered her eyes.
"I wish it were possible for us to be friends, Kenny," she surprised him by saying. "It doesn"t seem right for us to hate each other,"
she went on, looking up at him again. "It"s not our fault that we are who and what we are. I can understand mother"s att.i.tude toward you. You are the son of another woman, and I suppose it is only natural for her to be jealous. But you and I had the same father.
It--it ought to be different with us, oughtn"t it?"
"It ought to be,--and it shall be, Viola, if you are willing. It rests entirely with you."
"It is so hard to think of you as a brother. Somehow I wish you were not."
"It is pretty hard luck, isn"t it? You may be sure of one thing. If I were not your brother I would be Barry Lapelle"s most determined rival."
She did not laugh at this. On the contrary, her eyes clouded.
"The funny part of it is, Kenny, I have been wondering what would have happened if you had come here as a total stranger and not as my relation." Then she smiled whimsically. "Goodness knows poor Barry is having a hard enough time of it as it is, but what a time he would be having if you were some one else. You see, you are very good-looking, Kenny, and I am a very silly, frivolous, susceptible little goose."
"You are nothing of the kind," he exclaimed warmly, adding in some embarra.s.sment, "except when you say that I am good-looking."
"And I have also been wondering how many girls have been in love with you," she went on archly; "and whether you have a sweetheart now,--some one you are engaged to. You needn"t be afraid to tell me. I can keep a secret. Is there some one back in Kentucky or in the east who--"
"No such luck," whispered simple, honest Kenneth. "No one will have me."
"Have you ever asked anybody?" she persisted.
"No,--I haven"t."
"Then, how do you know that no one will have you?"
"Well, of course, I--I mean to say I can"t imagine any one caring for me in that way."
"Don"t you expect ever to get married?"
"Why,--er,--naturally I--" he stammered, bewildered at this astonishing attack.
"Because if you want to remain a bachelor, I would advise you not to ask any one of half a dozen girls in this town that I could mention. They would take you so quick your head would swim."
By this time he had recovered himself. Affecting grave solicitude, he inquired:
"Is there any one here that you would particularly desire as a sister-in-law?"
She shook her head, almost pensively. "I don"t want you to bring any more trouble into the family than you"ve already brought, and goodness knows THAT would be doing it. But I shouldn"t have said that, Kenny. There are lots of fine, lovely girls here. I wouldn"t know which one to pick out for you if you were to ask me to do your choosing."
"I will leave it entirely in your hands," said he, grinning boyishly.
"Pick me out a nice, amiable, rather docile young lady,--some one who will come the nearest to being a perfect sister-in-law, and I will begin sparking her at once. By the way, I hope matters are going more smoothly for you and Barry."
Her face clouded. She shot a suspicious, questioning look at him.
"I--I want to talk to you about Barry some day," she said seriously.
"You seemed to resent it most bitterly the last time I attempted to talk to you about him," said he, somewhat pointedly.
"You were horrid that day," said she. "I have a good deal to forgive.