For Fletcher outwardly was but the common type of farmer, after all, with a trifle more intelligence, perhaps, than is met with in the average Southerner of his class."A plain man but honest, sir," was what one expected him to utter at every turn.It was written in the coarse open lines of his face, half-hidden by a bushy gray beard; in his small sparkling eyes, now blue, now brown; in his looselimbed, shambling movements as he crossed the room.His very clothes spoke, to an acute observer, of a masculine sincerity naked and unashamed--as if his large coffee-spotted cravat would not alter the smallest fold to conceal the stains it bore.Hale, hairy, vehement, not without a quality of Rabelaisian humour, he appeared the last of all men with whom one would associate the burden of a troubled conscience.
"Sorry to have kept you--on my word I am," he began heartily;"but to tell the truth, I thought thar'd be somebody in the house with sense enough to show you to a bedroom.Like to run up now for a wash before supper?"It was what one expected of him, such a speech blurted in so offhand a manner, and the lawyer could barely suppress a threatening laugh.
"Oh, it was a short trip," he returned, "and a walk of five miles on a day like this is one of the most delightful things in life.
I've been looking out at your garden, by the way, and--I may as well confess it--overhearing a little of your conversation.""Is that so?" chuckled Fletcher, his great eyebrows overhanging his eyes like a mustache grown out of place."Well, you didn't hear anything to tickle your ears, I reckon.I've been having a row with that cantankerous fool, Blake.The queer thing about these people is that they seem to think I'm to blame every time they see a spot on their tablecloths.Mark my words, it ain't been two years since I found that nigger Boaz digging in my asparagus bed, and he told me he was looking for some shoots for ole miss's dinner.""The property idea is very strong in these rural counties, you see," remarked the lawyer gravely."They feel that every year adds a value to the hereditary possession of land, and that when an estate has borne a single name for a century there has been a veritable impress placed upon it.Your asparagus bed is merely an item; you find, I fancy, other instances."Fletcher turned in his chair.
"That's the whole blamed rotten truth," he admitted, waving his great red hand toward the door; "but let's have supper first and settle down to talk on a full stomach.Thar's no hurry with all night before us, and that, to come to facts, is why I sent for you.No lawyer's office for me when I want to talk business, but an easy-chair by my own table and a cup of coffee beforehand."As he finished, a bell jangled in the hall, and the door opened to admit the girl whom Carraway had seen a little earlier upon the porch.
"Supper's a good hour late, Maria," grumbled Fletcher, looking at his heavy silver watch, "and I smelt the bacon frying at six o'clock."For an instant the girl looked as if she had more than half an intention to slap his face; then quickly recovering her self-possession, she smiled at Carraway and held out a small white hand with an air of quiet elegance which was the most noticeable thing in her appearance.
"I am quite a stranger to you, Mr.Carraway," she said, with a laugh, "but if you had only known it, I had a doll named after you when I was very small.Guy Carraway!--it seemed to me all that was needed to make a fairy tale."The lawyer joined in her laugh, which never rose above a carefully modulated minor."I confess that I once took the same view of it, my dear young lady," he returned, "so I ended by dropping the name and keeping only the initial.Your grandfather will tell you that I am now G.Carraway and nothing more.Icouldn't afford, as things were, to make a fairy tale of my life, you see.""Oh, if one only could!" said the girl, lowering her full dark eyes, which gave a piteous lie to her sullen mouth.
She was artificial, Carraway told himself with emphasis, and yet the distinction of manner--the elegance--was certainly the point at which her training had not failed.He felt it in her tall, straight figure, absurdly overdressed for a granddaughter of Fletcher's; in her smooth white hands, with their finely polished nails; in her pale, repressed face, which he called plain while admitting that it might become interesting; in her shapely head even with its heavy cable of coal-black hair.
What she was her education had made of her--the look of serene distinction, the repose of her thin-featured, colourless face, refined beyond the point of prettiness--these things her training had given her, and these were the things which Carraway, with his old-fashioned loyalty to a strong class prejudice, found himself almost resenting.Bill Fletcher's granddaughter had, he felt, no right to this rare security of breeding which revealed itself in every graceful fold of the dress she wore, for with Fletcher an honest man she would have been, perhaps, but one of the sallow, over-driven drudges who stare like helpless effigies from the little tumbledown cabins along country roadsides.
Fletcher, meanwhile, had filled in the pause with one of his sudden burly dashes into speech.
