FullReads

“Be you going to plow the south field?” Myrtle said, faintly.

“No, I ain’t.”

“Will you be back to dinner?”

“I don’t know — you needn’t worry if I’m not.” Suddenly Christopher did an unusual thing for him. He and Myrtle had lived together for years, and outward manifestations of affection were rare between them. He put his arm around her and kissed her.

After he had gone, Myrtle watched him out of sight down the road; then she sat down and wept. Jim Mason came slouching around from his station at the barn door. He surveyed Myrtle uneasily.

“Mr. Dodd sick?” said he at length.

“Not that I know of,” said Myrtle, in a weak quaver. She rose and, keeping her tear-stained face aloof, lifted the lid off the kettle on the stove.

“D’ye know am he going to plow to-day?”

“He said he wasn’t.”

Jim grunted, shifted his quid, and slouched out of the yard.

Meantime Christopher Dodd went straight down the road to the minister’s, the Rev. Stephen Wheaton. When he came to the south field, which he was neglecting, he glanced at it turning emerald upon the gentle slopes. He set his face harder. Christopher Dodd’s face was in any case hard-set. Now it was tragic, to be pitied, but warily, lest it turn fiercely upon the one who pitied. Christopher was a handsome man, and his face had an almost classic turn of feature. His forehead was noble; his eyes full of keen light. He was only a farmer, but in spite of his rude clothing he had the face of a man who followed one of the professions. He was in sore trouble of spirit, and he was going to consult the minister and ask him for advice. Christopher had never done this before. He had a sort of incredulity now that he was about to do it. He had always associated that sort of thing with womankind, and not with men like himself. And, moreover, Stephen Wheaton was a younger man than himself. He was unmarried, and had only been settled in the village for about a year. “He can’t think I’m coming to set my cap at him, anyway,” Christopher reflected, with a sort of grim humor, as he drew near the parsonage. The minister was haunted by marriageable ladies of the village.

“Guess you are glad to see a man coming, instead of a woman who has doubts about some doctrine,” was the first thing Christopher said to the minister when he had been admitted to his study. The study was a small room, lined with books, and only one picture hung over the fireplace, the portrait of the minister’s mother — Stephen was so like her that a question concerning it was futile.

Stephen colored a little angrily at Christopher’s remark — he was a hot-tempered man, although a clergyman; then he asked him to be seated.

Christopher sat down opposite the minister. “I oughtn’t to have spoken so,” he apologized, “but what I am doing ain’t like me.”

“That’s all right,” said Stephen. He was a short, athletic man, with an extraordinary width of shoulders and a strong-featured and ugly face, still indicative of goodness and a strange power of sympathy. Three little mongrel dogs were sprawled about the study. One, small and alert, came and rested his head on Christopher’s knee. Animals all liked him. Christopher mechanically patted him. Patting an appealing animal was as unconscious with the man as drawing his breath. But he did not even look at the little dog while he stroked it after the fashion which pleased it best. He kept his large, keen, melancholy eyes fixed upon the minister; at length he spoke. He did not speak with as much eagerness as he did with force, bringing the whole power of his soul into his words, which were the words of a man in rebellion against the greatest odds on earth and in all creation — the odds of fate itself.