He must not be guilty of such an oversight again; he must stand like a stern wall between them, and be able to account for his trust to Isom with unclouded heart.

CHAPTER V

THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER

Until the time he had entered Isom Chase's house, temptation never had come near Joe Newbolt. He never had kissed a maiden; he never had felt the quickening elixir of a soft breast pressed against his own. And so it fell that the sudden conception of what he had unwittingly come to, bore on him with a weight which his sensitive and upright mind magnified into an enormous and crushing shame. While his intention could bear arraignment and come away with acquittal, the fact that he had been perverted enough in the grain, as he looked at it, to drift unknowingly into love with another man's wife, galled him until his spirit groaned.

Isom did not return that evening; the conclusion of his household was that he had been chosen on a jury. They discussed it at supper, Ollie nervously gay, Morgan full of raucous laughter, Joe sober and grudging of his words.

Joe never had borne much of a hand at the table-talk since Morgan came, and before his advent there was none to speak of, so his taciturnity that evening pa.s.sed without a second thought in the minds of Ollie and her guest. They had words enough for a house full of people, thought Joe, as he saw that for every word from the lips they sent two speeding from their eyes. That had become a language to which he had found the Rosetta Stone; it was as plain to him now as Roman text.

Perhaps Morgan regarded her with an affection as sincere as his own. He did not know; but he felt that it could not be as blameless, for if Joe had desired her in the uninterpreted pa.s.sion of his full young heart, he had brought himself up to sudden judgment before the tribunal of his conscience. It would go no farther. He had put his moral foot down and smothered his unholy desire, as he would have stamped out a flame.

It seemed to Joe that there was something in Morgan's eyes which betrayed his heart. Little gleams of his underlying purpose which his levity masked, struck Joe from time to time, setting his wits on guard.

Morgan must be watched, like a cat within leaping distance of an unfledged bird. Joe set himself the task of watching, determined then and there that Morgan should not have one dangerous hour alone with Ollie again until Isom came back and lifted the responsibility of his wife's safety from his shoulders.

For a while after supper that night Joe sat on the bench beside the kitchen door, the grape-vine rustling over his head, watching Ollie as she went to and fro about her work of clearing away. Morgan was in the door, his back against the jamb, leisurely smoking his pipe. Once in a while a snoring beetle pa.s.sed in above his head to join his fellows around the lamp. As each recruit to the blundering company arrived, Morgan slapped at him as he pa.s.sed, making Ollie laugh. On the low, splotched ceiling of the kitchen the flies shifted and buzzed, changing drowsily from place to place.

"Isom ought to put screens on the windows and doors," said Morgan, looking up at the flies.

"Mosquito bar, you mean?" asked Ollie, throwing him a smile over her shoulder as she pa.s.sed.

"No, I mean wire-screens, everybody's gettin' 'em in now; I've been thinkin' of takin' 'em on as a side-line."

"It'll be a cold day in July when Isom spends any money just to keep _flies_ out of his house!" said she.

Morgan laughed.

"Maybe if a person could show him that they eat up a lot of stuff he'd come around to it," Morgan said.

"Maybe," said Ollie, and both of them had their laugh again.

Joe moved on the bench, making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife's discussion of his traits with a stranger.

Ollie had cleared away the dishes, washed them and placed them in the cupboard, on top of which the one clock of that household stood, scar-faced, but hoa.r.s.e-voiced when it struck, and strong as the challenge of an old c.o.c.k. Already it had struck nine, for they had been late in coming to supper, owing to Joe's long set-to with his conscience at the edge of the hazel-copse in the woods.

Joe got up, stretching his arms, yawning.

"Goin' to bed, heh?" asked Morgan.

"No, I don't seem to feel sleepy tonight," Joe replied.

He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, his elbows on the board, his head in his hands, as if turning over some difficult problem in his mind. Presently he fell to raking his s.h.a.ggy hair with his long fingers; in a moment it was as disorderly as the swaths of clover hay lying out in the moonlight in the little stone-set field.

Morgan had filled his pipe, and was after a match at the box behind the stove, with the familiarity of a household inmate. He winked at Ollie, who was then pulling down her sleeves, her long day's work being done.

"Well, do you think you'll be elected?" he asked, lounging across to Joe, his hands in his pockets.

Morgan wore a shirt as gay-striped as a Persian tent, and he had removed his coat so the world, or such of it as was present in the kitchen, might behold it and admire. Joe withdrew his hands from his forelock and looked at Morgan curiously. The lad's eyes were sleep-heavy and red, and he was almost as dull-looking, perhaps, as Morgan imagined him to be.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I asked you if you thought you'd be elected this fall," repeated Morgan, in mock seriousness.

"I don't know what you mean," said Joe, turning from him indifferently.

"Why, ain't you runnin' for President on the squash-vine ticket?" asked Morgan. "I heard you was the can'idate."

Joe got up from the table and moved his chair away with his foot. As he was thus occupied he saw Ollie's shadow on the wall repeat a gesture of caution which she made to Morgan, a lifting of the hand, a shaking of the head. Even the shadow betrayed the intimate understanding between them. Joe went over and stood in the door.

"No use for you to try to be a fool, Morgan; that's been attended to for you already," said he.

There wasn't much heart in Morgan's laugh, but it would pa.s.s for one on account of the volume of sound.

"Oh, let a feller have his joke, won't you, Joe?" said he.

"Go ahead," granted Joe, leaning his shoulder against the jamb, facing out toward the dark.

Morgan went over and put his hand on the great lad's shoulder, with a show of friendly condescension.

"What would the world be without its jokes?" he asked. And then, before anybody could answer: "It'd be like home without a mother."

Joe faced him, a slow grin spreading back to his ears.

"Or a ready-reckoner," said he.

Morgan's laugh that time was unfeigned.

"Joe, you've missed your callin'," said he. "You've got no business foolin' away your time on a farm. With that solemn, long-hungry look of yours you ought to be sellin' consumption cure and ringbone ointment from the end of a wagon on the square in Kansas City."

"Or books, maybe," suggested Joe.

"No-o-o," said Morgan thoughtfully, "I wouldn't just say you're up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you'd cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I'll fly up to roost. I've got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. Good night, folks."

"I don't suppose Isom'll be home tonight," Ollie ventured, as Morgan's feet sounded on the stairs.

"No, I guess not," Joe agreed, staring thoughtfully at the black oblong of the door.

"If he does come, I don't suppose it'll hurt him to eat something cold,"

she said.

"I'll wait up a while longer. If he comes I can warm up the coffee for him," Joe offered.

"Then I'll go to bed, too," she yawned wearily.