The Prodigal Judge

CHAPTER XX
THE WARNING

Norton had ridden down to Belle Plain ostensibly to view certain of those improvements that went so far toward embittering Tom Ware's existence. Gossip had it that he kept the road hot between the two places, and this was an added strain on the planter. But Norton did not go to Belle Plain to see Mr. Ware. If that gentleman had been the sole attraction, he would have made just one visit suffice; had it preceded his own, he would have attended Tom's funeral, and considered that he had done a very decent thing. On the present occasion he and Betty were strolling about the rehabilitated grounds, and Norton was exhibiting that interest and enthusiasm which Betty always expected of him.

"You are certainly making the old place look up!" he said, as they passed out upon the terrace. He had noted casually when he rode up the lane half an hour before that a horse was tied near Ware's office; a man now issued from the building and swung himself into the saddle. Norton turned abruptly to Betty. "What's that fellow doing here?" he asked.

"I suppose he comes to see Tom," said Betty.

"Is he here often?"

"Every day or so." Betty's tone was indifferent. For reasons which had seemed good and sufficient she had never discussed Captain Murrell with Norton.

"Every day or so?" repeated Norton. "But you don't see him, Betty?"

"No, of course I don't."

"Tom has no business allowing that fellow around; if he don't know this some one ought to tell him!" Norton was working himself up into a fine rage.

"He doesn't bother me, Charley, if that's what you're thinking of. Let's talk of something else."

"He'd better not, or I'll make it a quarrel with him."

"Oh, you mustn't think of that, Charley, indeed you mustn't!" cried Betty in some alarm, for young Mr. Norton was both impulsive and hot-headed.

"Well, just how often is Murrell here?" he demanded.

"I told you—every few days. He and Tom seem wonderfully congenial."

They were silent for a moment.

"Tom always sees him in his office," explained Betty. She might have made her explanation fuller on this point had she cared to do so.

"That's the first decent thing I ever heard of Tom!" said Norton with warmth. "But he ought to kick him off the place the first chance he gets."

"Do you think Belle Plain is ever going to look as it did, Charley?—as we remember it when we were children?" asked Betty, giving a new direction to the conversation.

"Why, of course it is, dear, you are doing wonders!"

"I've really been ashamed of the place, the way it looked—and I can't understand Tom!"

"Don't try to," advised Norton. "Look here, Betty, do you remember it was right on this terrace I met you for the first time? My mother brought me down, and I arrived with a strong prejudice against you, young lady, because of the clothes I'd been put into—they were fine but oppressive."

"How long did the prejudice last, Charley?"

"It didn't last at all, I thought you altogether the nicest little girl I'd ever seen—just what I think now, I wish you could care for me, Betty, just a little; just enough to marry me."

"But, Charley, I do care for you! I'm very, very fond of you."

"Well, don't make such a merit of it," he said, and they both laughed. "I'm at an awful disadvantage, Betty, from having proposed so often. That gives it a humorous touch which doesn't properly reflect the state of my feeling at all—and you hear me without the least emotion; so long as I keep my distance we might just as well be discussing the weather!"

"You are very good about that—"

"Keeping my distance, you mean?—Betty, if you knew how much resolution that calls for! I wonder if that isn't my mistake—" And Norton came a step nearer and took her in his arms.

With her hands on his shoulders Betty pushed him back, while the rich color came into her cheeks. She was remembering Bruce Carrington, who had not kept his distance.

"Please, Charley," she said half angrily, "I do like you tremendously, but I simply can't bear you when you act like this—let me go!"

"Betty, I despair of you ever caring for me!" and as Norton turned abruptly away he saw Tom Ware appear from about a corner of the house. "Oh, hang it, there's Tom!"

"You are very nice, anyway, Charley—" said Betty hurriedly, fortified by the planter's approach.

Ware stalked toward them. Having dined with Betty as recently as the day before, he contented himself with a nod in her direction. His greeting to Norton was a more ambitious undertaking; he said he was pleased to see him; but in so far as facial expression might have indorsed the statement this pleasure was well disguised, it did not get into his features. Pausing on the terrace beside them, he indulged in certain observations on the state of the crops and the weather.

"You've lost a couple of niggers, I hear?" he added with an oblique glance.

"Yes," said Norton.

"Got on the track of them yet?" Norton shook his head. "I understand you've a new overseer?" continued Ware, with another oblique glance.

"Then you understand wrong—Carrington's my guest," said Norton. "He's talking of putting in a crop for himself next season, so he's willing to help me make mine."

Betty turned quickly at the mention of Carrington's name. She had known that he was still at Thicket Point, and having heard him spoken of as Norton's new overseer, had meant to ask Charley if he were really filling that position. An undefined sense of relief came to her with Norton's reply to Tom's question.

"Going to turn farmer, is he?" asked Ware.

"So he says." Feeling that the only subjects in which he had ever known Ware to take the slightest interest, namely, crops and slaves, were exhausted, Norton was extremely disappointed when the planter manifested a disposition to play the host and returned to the house with them, where his mere presence, forbidding and sullen, was such a hardship that Norton shortly took his leave.

"Well, hang Tom!" he said, as he rode away from Belle Plain. "If he thinks he can freeze me out there's a long siege ahead of him!"

Issuing from the lane he turned his face in the direction of home, but he did not urge his horse off a walk. To leave Belle Plain and Betty demanded always his utmost resolution. His way took him into the solemn twilight of untouched solitudes. A cool breath rippled through the depths of the woods and shaped its own soft harmonies where it lifted the great branches that arched the road. He crossed strips of bottom land where the water stood in still pools about the gnarled and moss-covered trunks of trees. At intervals down some sluggish inlet he caught sight of the yellow flood that was pouring past, or saw the Arkansas coast beyond, with its mighty sweep of unbroken forest that rose out of the river mists and blended with the gray distance that lay along the horizon.

He was within two miles of Thicket Point when, passing about a sudden turn in the road, he found himself confronted by three men, and before he could gather up his reins which he held loosely, one of them had seized his horse by the bit. Norton was unarmed, he had not even a riding-whip. This being the case he prepared to make the best of an unpleasant situation which he felt he could not alter. He ran his eye over the three men.

"I am sorry, gentlemen, but I reckon you have hold of the wrong person—"

"Get down!" said one of the men briefly.

"I haven't any money, that's why I say you have hold of the wrong person."

"We don't want your money." The unexpectedness of this reply somewhat disturbed Norton.

"What do you want, then?" he asked.

"We got a word to say to you."

"I can hear it in the saddle."

"Get down!" repeated the man, a surly, bull-necked fellow. "Come—hurry up!" he added.

Norton hesitated for an instant, then swung himself out of the saddle and stood in the road confronting the spokesman of the party.

"Now, what do you wish to say to me?" he asked.

"Just this—you keep away from Belle Plain."

"You go to hell!" said Norton promptly. The man glowered heavily at hire through the gathering gloom of twilight.

"We want your word that you'll keep away from Belle Plain," he said with sullen insistence.

"Well, you won't get it!" responded Norton with quiet decision.

"We won't?"

"Certainly you won't!" Norton's eyes began to flash. He wondered if these were Tom Ware's emissaries. He was both quick-tempered and high-spirited. Falling back a step, he sprang forward and dealt the bullnecked man a savage blow. The latter grunted heavily but kept his feet. In the same instant one of the men who had never taken his eyes off Norton from the moment he quitted the saddle, raised his fist and struck the young planter in the back of the neck.

"You cur!" cried Norton, blind and dizzy, as he wheeled on him.

"Damn him—let him have it!" roared the bullnecked man.

Afterward Norton was able to remember that the three rushed on him, that he was knocked down and kicked with merciless brutality, then consciousness left him. He lay very still in the trampled dust of the road. The bull-necked man regarded the limp figure in grim silence for a moment.

"That'll do, he's had enough; we ain't to kill him this time," he said. An instant later he, with his two companions, had vanished silently into the woods.

Norton's horse trotted down the road. When it entered the yard at Thicket Point half an hour later, Carrington was on the porch.

"Is that you, Norton?" he called, but there was no response, and he saw the horse was riderless. "Jeff!" he cried, summoning Norton's servant from the house.

"What's the matter, Mas'r?" asked the negro, as he appeared in the open door.

"Why, here's Mr. Norton's horse come home without him. Do you know where he went this afternoon?"

"I heard him say he reckoned he'd ride over to Belle Plain, Mas'r," answered Jeff, grinning. "I 'low the hoss done broke away and come home by himself—he couldn't a-throwed Mas'r Charley!"

"We'll make sure of that. Get lanterns, and a couple of the boys!" said Carrington.

It was mid-afternoon of the day following before Betty heard of the attack on Charley Norton. Tom brought the news, and she at once ordered her horse saddled and was soon out on the river road with a black groom trailing along through the dust in her wake. Tom's version of the attack was that Charley, had been robbed and all but murdered, and Betty never drew rein until she reached Thicket Point. As she galloped into the yard Bruce Carrington came from the house. At sight of the girl, with her wind-blown halo of bright hair, he paused uncertainly. By a gesture Betty called him to her side.

"How is Mr. Norton?" she asked, extending her hand.

"The doctor says he'll be up and about inside of a week, anyhow, Miss Malroy," said Carrington.

Betty gave a great sigh of relief.

"Then his hurts are not serious?"

"No," said Carrington, "they are not in any sense serious."

"May I see him?"

"He's pretty well bandaged up, so he looks worse off than he is. If you'll wait on the porch, I'll tell him you are here," for Betty had dismounted.

"If you please."

Carrington passed on into the house. His face wore a look of somber repression. Of course it was all right for her to come and see Norton—they were old, old friends. He entered the room where Norton lay.

"Miss Malroy is here," he said shortly.

"Betty?—bless her dear heart!" cried Charley rather weakly. "Just toss my clothes into the closet and draw up a chair... There-thank you, Bruce, that will do—let her come along in now." And as Carrington quitted the room, Norton drew himself up on the pillows and faced the door. "This is worth several beatings, Betty!" he exclaimed as she appeared on the threshold. But much cotton and many bandages lent him a rather fearful aspect, and Betty paused with a little gasp of dismay. "I'm lots better than I look, I expect," said Norton. "Couldn't you arrange to come a little closer?" he added, laughing.

He bent to kiss the hand she gave him, but groaned with the exertion. Then he looked up into her face and saw her eyes swimming with tears.

"What—tears? Tears for me, Betty?" and he was much moved.

"It's a perfect outrage! Who did it, Charley?" she asked.

"You sit down and I'll tell you all about it," said Norton happily.

"Now tell me, Charley!" when she had seated herself.

"Who fetched you, Betty—old Tom?"

"No, I came alone."

"Well, it's mighty kind of you. I'll be all right in a day or so. What did you hear?—that I'd been attacked and half-killed?"

"Yes—and robbed."

"There were three of the scoundrels. They made me climb out of the saddle, and as I was unarmed they did as they pleased with me, which was to stamp me flat in the road—"

"Charley!"

"I might almost be inclined to think they were friends of yours, Betty—or at least friends of friends of yours."

"What do you mean, Charley—friends of mine?"

"Well, you see they started in by stipulating that I should keep away from Belle Plain, and the terms they proposed being on the face of them preposterous, trouble quickly ensued—trouble for me, you understand. But never mind, dear, the next man who undertakes to grab my horse by the bit won't get off quite so easy."

"Why should any one care whether you come to Belle Plain or not?"

"I wonder if my amiable friend, Tom, could have arranged this little affair; it's sort of like old Tom to move in the dark, isn't it?"

"He couldn't—he wouldn't have done it, Charley!" but she looked troubled, not too sure of this.

"Couldn't he? Well, maybe he couldn't—but he's afraid you'll marry me—and I'm only afraid you won't. Betty, hasn't it ever seemed worth your while to marry me just to give old Tom the scare of his life?"

"Please, Charley—" she began.

"I'm in a dreadful state of mind when I think of you alone at Belle Plain—I wish you could love me, Betty!"

"I do love you. There is no one I care half so much for, Charley."

Norton shook his bandaged head and heaved a prodigious sigh.

"That's merely saying you don't love any one." He dropped back rather wearily on his pillow. "Does Tom know about this?" he added.

"Yes."

"Was he able to show a proper amount of surprise?"

"He appeared really shocked, Charley."

"Well, then, it wasn't Tom. He never shows much emotion, but what he does show he usually feels, I've noticed. I had rather hoped it was Tom, I'd be glad to think that he was responsible; for if it wasn't Tom, who was it?—who is it to whom it makes any difference how often I see you?"

"I don't know, Charley;" but her voice was uncertain.

"Look here, Betty; for the hundredth time, won't you marry me? I've loved you ever since I was old enough to know what love meant. You've been awfully sweet and patient with me, and I've tried to respect your wishes and not speak of this except when it seemed necessary—" he paused, and they both laughed a little, but he looked weak and helpless with his bloodless face showing between the gaps in the bandages that swathed him. Perhaps it was this sense of his helplessness that roused a feeling in Betty that was new to her.

"You see, Charley, I fear—I am sure I don't love you the way I should—to marry you—"

Charley, greatly excited, groaned and sat up, and groaned again.

"Oh, please, Charley-lie still!" she entreated.

"That's all right—and you needn't pull your hand away—you like me better than any one else, you've told me so; well, don't you see that's the beginning of really loving me?"

"But you wouldn't want to marry me at once?"

"Yes I would—right away—as soon as I am able to stir around!" said Charley promptly. "Don't you see the immediate necessity there is of my being in a position to care for you, Betty? I wasn't served this trick for nothing."

"You must try not to worry, Charley."

"But I shall—I expect it's going to retard my recovery," said the young man gloomily. "I couldn't be worse off! Here I am flat on my back; I can't come to you or keep watch over you. Let me have some hope, dear—let me believe that you will marry me!"

She looked at him pityingly, and with a certain latent tenderness in her mood.

"Do you really care so much for me, Charley?"

"I love you, Betty!—I want you to say you will marry me as soon as I can stand by your side—you're not going?—I won't speak of this again if it annoys you, dear!" for she had risen.

"I must, Charley—"

"Oh, don't—well, then, if you will go, I want Carrington to ride back with you."

"But I brought George with me—"

"Yes, I know, but I want you to take Carrington—the Lord knows what we are coming to here in West Tennessee; I must have word that you reach home safe."

"Very well, then, I'll ask Mr. Carrington. Good-by, Charley, dear!"

Norton seemed to summon all his fortitude.

"You couldn't have done a kinder thing than come here, Betty; I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am—and as for my loving you—why, I'll just keep on doing that to the end. I can see myself a bent, old man still pestering you with my attentions, and you a sweet, old lady with snow-white hair and pink cheeks, still obdurate—still saying no! Oh, Lord, isn't it awful!" He had lifted himself on his elbow, and now sank back on his pillow.

Betty paused irresolutely.

"Charley—"

"Yes, dear?"

"Can't you be happy without me?"

"No."

"But you don't try to be!"

"No use in my making any such foolish effort, I'd be doomed to failure."

"Good-by, Charley—I really must go—"

He looked up yearningly into her face, and yielding to a sudden impulse, she stooped and kissed him on the forehead, then she fled from the room.

"Oh, come back—Betty—" cried Norton, and his voice rose to a wail of entreaty, but she was gone. She had been quite as much surprised by her act as Charley himself.

In the yard, Carrington was waiting for her. Jeff had just brought up Norton's horse, and though he made no display of weapons, the Kentuckian had fully armed himself.

"I am going to ride to Belle Plain with you, Miss Malroy," he said, as he lifted her into her saddle.

"Do you think it necessary?" she asked, but she did not look at him.

"I hope not. I'll keep a bit in advance," he added, as he mounted his horse, and all Betty saw of him during their ride of five miles was his broad back. At the entrance to Belle Plain he reined in his horse.

"I reckon it's all right, now," he said briefly.

"You will return at once to Mr. Norton?" she asked. He nodded. "And you will not leave him while he is helpless?"

"No, I'll not leave him," said Carrington, giving her a steady glance.

"I am so glad, I—his friends will feel so much safer with you there. I will send over in the morning to learn how he passed the night. Good-by, Mr. Carrington." And still refusing to meet his eyes, she gave him her hand.

But Carrington did not quit the mouth of the lane until she had crossed between the great fields of waving corn, and he had seen her pass up the hillside beyond to the oak grove, where the four massive chimneys of Belle Plain house showed their gray stone copings among the foliage. With this last glimpse of her he turned away.

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