Everybody's Chance by John Habberton (ebook pc reader TXT) 📕

"Yes, I dare you. I don't care a bit for your temper; you're a first-rate fellow in spite of it, and the woman who doesn't know that you love her shall know it at once if I can find out who she is."

Champ faced about, dropped his axe, controlled his face, and said, with manly dignity:

"She is Luce Grew."

"Luce!" exclaimed Charley, staggering backward.

"Yes, Luce. Now do you know why you won't tell her? It is because I love her, and want her to be happy, that I've thrown this job into your hands this morning. She has accepted you; well, that is her own business, and her own right, and no one else has the slightest use for complaining. But mark my words, young man. I never shall annoy her in any way, but I shall never cease to love her. On the other hand, if you fail to be to her everything that you've promised and everything that is in your power, you will have me to reckon with. She's one of your chances; this job of wood-chopping is another; if you don't take as industriously to this as you do to the other, don't ever speak to me again anywhere, in any circumstances, and be careful to keep out of my path Good-morning."

Although Luce had enjoined secrecy upon Charley, and protested against publicity being given by acts and manners any more than by words, she found Charley's society so pleasant that she had not the heart to forbid him to call frequently. She discouraged all attempts at effusive love-making; but she could not help being interested and cheered by the young man's enthusiasm, for the people of Brundy seldom found anything to be enthusiastic about, and as Luce was a great-hearted creature her lover's irrepressible spirits made good the lack of something which she often felt.

But how can any one keep a secret in a town where the people have only other people's affairs to occupy their leisure moments? Within a week everybody was telling everybody else that Charley Wurring had been three times-- some said four-- to the Grews' since the night of the lecture, and that it must mean something; as Luce was the only adult girl in the family, and there were no young men among her brothers, public opinion was not long in determining what the something was. Luce was not the kind of girl of whom girls in general ask leading questions, but it needs not direct statements to establish anything which a lot of gossips desire to believe, so that in less than another week all Brundy, despite Charley's evasions, regarded the couple as fully engaged, and discussed them accordingly at shops, the post-office, and wherever else men and women chanced to meet.

"It seems too bad," said one of the village pastors at a grocer's, where he chanced to meet old Pruffett. "I am not given to romance-- my calling forbids it, through the stern realities which I am obliged to encounter in the experiences of my flock; but that girl has always seemed to me to be worthy of far greater opportunities than our village affords, yet now she seems to have given herself to a young man who shows as few signs of rising as any one whom I know, and who has much, for which he is not responsible, to keep him down. Two young people more utterly unlike in nature I have seldom met."

"Ah, well," replied Pruffett, "let us hope that it is according to the designs of Providence. If like were always to marry like, the world would soon be full of petrified cranks, Dominie."

"I suppose," said the minister cautiously, "that you are right, on general principles, but I confess that the present application distresses me."

"Every one owes something to the community in which he lives," continued Pruffett. "If there is anything in this story which has no authority but common report-- perhaps it accounts for the wonderful change that has come over the entire Wurring family. Charley is working as hard as any farmer in the county, and his father is working with him, and seems to be taking no liquor."

"Charley's mother looks happier than I have seen her for years," admitted the minister; "I noticed it from the pulpit only last Sunday, and it inspired me in both preaching and praying. All of her children were at church, too-- an unusual occurrence."

"Wurring has picked up a good deal of manliness in some way," remarked the grocer. "I've had to refuse him credit very often of late years-- I hated to do it, for he used to be a good customer of mine; still, a man can't conduct a grocery business on bygones if he expects to pay his own bills. The other day, though, when he bought a small bag of flour, I told him he might as well take a barrel, and pay me out of the wood that he and Charley are clearing from that marsh for Champ and his father, but Wurring flushed up and said rather grandly that he couldn't do it, for the wood belonged entirely to Charley. It wasn't so long ago that he used to beg me for small credits, to be paid when Charley got his pay from the school board."

"Luce herself certainly looks happier than she used to," said the minister.

"Then I guess that everybody ought to be happy," said old Pruffett, although he doubted his own words as he thought of Champney Bruff and his dismal secret. He could not help recalling the days, that strung out sadly into months and years, in which he himself had tried to live down his disappointment at losing Luce's mother.

As time went on, however, people began to whisper to one another that matters did not seem to be as they at first had been with Charley and Luce. The woodpiles multiplied rapidly in the Bruff marshland, and Charley himself grew more and more manly in appearance to those who saw him on his way to work in the morning or returning late at night. He went as often to the Grews', but Luce did not look as happy as usual when people chanced to see her. She certainly did not seem to have stopped liking Charley, for those church-goers who spent their time in looking at other people during service said that she had her eyes upon him almost all the while except during prayer time. Veteran gossips, experienced at cross-questioning in ways that would occasionally put the shrewdest and most self-contained natives off their guard, waylaid Luce's little brothers and sisters and asked many questions, but learned nothing; it was evident, therefore, that the young couple did not converse freely in the family circle. What could the matter be?

"Luce," Charley had said one evening, after the girl had several times rallied him on his unusual solemnity, "you do love me, don't you? I don't ask you to say that you care as much for me as I for you, because there's not as much of me to care for, but--"

"Love you? Indeed I do," murmured Luce, "as much as I know how to. You must remember that it is something new to me, while you say you have loved me a long time. I've never been in love before, nor thought much about it, but you know I am very, very fond of you."

"So fond that no one else could take you away from me?"

"You silly boy," said the girl, with a merry laugh. "What a question to ask. Don't you think you had better drop it and the thought of it, until some one else shows some signs of asking me?"

Charley looked as if he were not entirely sure that the question would keep so long, and Luce succeeded in changing the subject; she had read of such forebodings of lovers-- novels were full of them, and she detested most novels.

The next time he called, however, Charley reverted to the subject, and would not be diverted from it; by this time the girl's curiosity was aroused and she insisted upon knowing what the young man meant.

"Only this," was the reply. "There's a better man than I who has been in love with you a long time, and I don't believe he thinks of anything else."

"Then his mind might be better employed," promptly replied the girl. "But who is he?"

"His name is Champney Bruff," said Charley, looking keenly into Luce's eyes as he spoke. To his infinite relief, yet somewhat to his pain also, Luce burst into hearty laughter as she exclaimed:

"How ridiculous!"

"But it isn't ridiculous, my dear," replied Charley very gravely. "It's serious-- very serious."

"Why, Charley," said Luce, after another laugh-- a long, melodious laugh, with a little wonder in it-- "Champ Bruff never spoke to me more than twenty words in any one day in all his life. Whenever he was near me I felt uncomfortable, for he always looked-- why, really he looked as if he was afraid I would bite him, which I solemnly assure you I never once thought of doing."

"What strange creatures you girls are," said Charley, rather pettishly. "There are some of you at whom a man can't look more than half a minute before they suspect him of being in love with them, while others can't see anything but-- but what isn't."

"But what reason have you to be angry about it, you silly boy?" asked Luce. "One would think, to hear you talk, that you would like me to be grateful to Champ Bruff, and fall in love with him in return. If you really insist upon it, I suppose I could--"

"Stop! Stop, please-- at once"' exclaimed Charley hastily. "Still, I'm awfully sorry for Champ."

"Why should you be?" the girl asked merrily; she scarcely knew what she said or why she said it, for the disclosure had amazed her greatly, and she was not accustomed to being amazed. "Hasn't some poet-- a man poet, too, written, ''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'?"

"Has he? I didn't know it, and I don't exactly understand why he did it, but perhaps he had more experience than I in such matters. Don't make fun of Champ, though, please, because his disappointment has hurt him dreadfully."

"Disappointment? Why, he never said a word to me about anything of the kind, and if he had I--" Luce did not conclude the sentence, for she could not. Like all other women of the nobler order, she had not spent much time in dreaming about lovers and longing for them; she had supposed that some day, in the natural order of affairs, some man would propose to her, and she might love him and afterward marry him, but the idea of being loved by a man who, as she had said, had scarcely spoken to her except in the briefest manner, and with whom she had no interests in common-- why, it seemed almost shocking. How could the man have come by so silly a fancy?

"How did you come to know all this?" she asked Charley. "You've been hearing some gossip at the shops or the post-office, I'll