27. CHAPTER XXVII.
A LOSS AND A GAIN.
DR. SMALL, silent, attentive, assiduous Dr. Small,
set himself to work to bind up the wounded
heart of Bud Means, even as he had bound up his
broken arm. The flattery of his fine eyes, which
looked at Bud's muscles so admiringly, which gave
attention to his lightest remark, was not lost on
the young Flat Creek Hercules. Outwardly at least Pete
Jones showed no inclination to revenge himself on Bud. Was
it respect for muscle, or was it the influence of Small? At
any rate, the concentrated extract of the resentment of Pete
Jones and his clique was now ready to empty itself upon the
head of Hartsook. And Ralph found himself in his dire
extremity without even the support of Bud, whose good resolutions
seemed to give way all at once. There have been many
men of culture and more favorable surroundings who have
thrown themselves away with less provocation. As it was,
Bud quit school, avoided Ralph, and seemed more than ever
under the influence of Dr. Small, besides becoming the intimate
of Walter Johnson, Small's student and Mrs. Matilda White's
son. They made a strange pair—Bud with his firm jaw and
silent, cautious manner, and Walter Johnson with his weak
chin his nice cravat-ties, and general dandy appearance.
To be thus deserted in his darkest hour by his only friend
was the bitterest ingredient in Ralph's cup. In vain he sought
an interview. Bud always eluded him. While by all the faces
about him Ralph learned that the storm was getting nearer and
nearer to himself. It might delay. If it had been Pete Jones
alone, it might blow over. But Ralph felt sure that the relentless
hand of Dr. Small was present in all his troubles.
And he had only to look into Small's eye to know how inextinguishable
was a malignity that burned so steadily and so
quietly.
But there is no cup of unmixed bitterness. With an innocent
man there is no night so dark that some star does not
shine. Beside his religious faith Ralph had one strong sheet-anchor.
On his return from Lewisburg on Monday Bud had
handed him a note, written on common blue foolscap, in round,
old-fashioned hand. It ran:
“Dear Sir: Anybody who can do so good a thing as you
did for our Shocky, can not be bad. I hope you will forgive
me. All the appearances in the world, and all that anybody
says, can not make me think you anything else but a good
man. I hope God will reward you. You must not answer
this, and you hadn't better see me again, or think any more of
what you spoke about the other night. I shall be a slave
for three years more, and then I must work for my mother
and Shocky; but I felt so bad to think that I had spoken so
hard to you, that I could not help writing this. Respectfully,
“Hannah Thomson.
“To Mr. R. Hartsook, Esq.”
Ralph read it over and over. What else he did with it I
shall not tell. You want to know if he kissed it, and put it
in his bosom. Many a man as intelligent and manly as Hartsook
has done quite as foolish a thing as that. You have
been a little silly perhaps—if it is silly—and you have acted in
a sentimental sort of a way over such things. But it would
never do for me to tell you what Ralph did. Whether he put
the letter in his bosom or not, he put the words in his heart,
and, metaphorically speaking, he shook that little blue billet,
written on coarse foolscap paper—he shook that little letter,
full of confidence, in the face and eyes of all the calamities
that haunted him. If Hannah believed in him, the whole
world might distrust him. When Hannah was in one scale
and the whole world in the other, of what account was the
world? Justice may be blind, but all the pictures of blind
cupids in the world can not make Love blind. And it was
well that Ralph weighed things in this way. For the time was
come in which he needed all the courage the blue billet could
give him.
