Then Ill Come Back to You | Page 6

thet you're askin' me that--why, then . . . then, I guess I don't
mind if I do!"
"That's what I mean," said Caleb.
And the little figure preceded him across his soft, cropped lawn.
CHAPTER II
THE LOGICAL CUSTODIAN

Caleb Hunter had never married, and even now, at the age of forty and
odd, in particularly mellow moments he was liable to confess that,
while matrimony no doubt offered a far wider field for both general
excitement and variety, as far as he himself was concerned, he felt that
his bachelor condition had points of excellence too obvious to be
treated with contumely. Perhaps the fact that Sarah Hunter, four years
his senior, had kept so well oiled the cogs of the domestic machinery of
the white place on the hill that their churnings had never been
evidenced may have been in part an answer to his contentment.
For Sarah Hunter, too, had never married. To the townspeople who had
never dared to try to storm the wall of her apparent frigidity, or been
able quite to understand her aloof austerity, she was little more than a
weekly occurence as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun
itself. Every Sunday morning a rare vision of stately dignity for all her
tininess, assisted by Caleb, she descended from the Hunter equipage to
enter the portals of the Morrison Baptist church. After the service she
reappeared and, having complimented the minister upon the sagacity of
his discourse, again assisted by Caleb, she mounted to the rear seat of
the surrey and rolled back up the hill.
That was as much as the townspeople ever saw of "Cal Hunter's maiden
sister" unless there happened to be a prolonged siege of sickness in the
village or a worse accident than usual. Then she came and camped on
the scene until the crisis was over, soft-voiced, soft-fingered and
serenely sure of herself. Sarah had never married, and even though she
had in the long interval which, year by year, had brought to Caleb a
more placid rotundity grown slender and slenderer still, and
flat-chested and sharp-angled in face and figure, Caleb knew that
underneath it all there had been no shrinkage in her soul--knew that
there were no bleak expanses in her heart, or edges to her pity.
They often joked each other about their state of single blessedness, did
Caleb and his sister. Often, hard upon his easy boast of satisfaction
with things as they were, she would quote the fable of the fox and the
high-hanging grapes, only to be taunted a moment later with her own
celibacy. But the taunt and the fable had long been stingless. For Sarah

Hunter knew that one end of Caleb's heavy gold watch chain still
carried a bit of a gold coin, worn smooth and thin from years of
handling; she knew that the single word across its back, even though it
had long ago been effaced so far as other eyes were concerned, was still
there for him to see. And Caleb, rummaging one day for some lost
article or other, in a pigeonhole in Sarah's desk in which he had no
license to look, had come across a picture of a tall and black-haired lad,
brave in white trousers and an amazing waistcoat. Caleb remembered
having been told that he had died for another with that same smile
which the picture had preserved--the tall and jaunty youngster. And so
their comprehension was mutual. They understood, did Caleb and his
sister.
But sure as he was of Sarah's fundamental kindness, Caleb experienced
a twinge of guilty uncertainty that August afternoon as he closed the
iron gate behind the grotesque little figure which had already started
across his lawn. For the moment he had forgotten that the sun was low
in the west; he had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the
Hunter establishment to sup early during the warm summer months.
But when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising,
from the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude
toward his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a
moment of too pronounced mellowness--stray human or feline or lost
yellow dog.
Sarah's gaze, however, was not for her brother at that moment. Her
eyes were fixed unswervingly upon the figure in the once-white drill
trousers and bobbed swallow-tail coat and shuffling boots. She was
staring from wide and, Caleb noted, rather horror-stricken eyes at the
huge steel trap above the blanket pack. But the boy who must have
received her glance full in his face had not faltered a step in his
advance. He went forward until he stood at the foot of the low steps
which mounted to the veranda; and there he stopped,