"I know. I'll try, Laddoun. The more because Noanes tells me you're going to bring but a few of us in."
"Yes. A man's married but once, and he ought to have his own way about it. I'll treat the village afterwards; they sha'n't complain. But there's rough jokes made at our country weddings that I don't choose my wife to hear."
With the tender inflection in his tone, and quieting of his eye, there was a certain swelling defiance in his whole burly body, which to mild little Van Zeldt was thoroughly lordly. A man was in no mean sort a hero, who could put Manasquan at arm's length thus.
"You're the right sort, George," he said. "When you're settled and a landholder you'll bring matters up to the right standard hereabouts. They be to follow you like sheep the bell-wether—that they be."
"It won't be to their injury, then," frankly. "Things need cleaning and managing as they don't know. I'll do what I can for the place," loftily. "And for you, Van Zeldt," putting his hand on the smaller man's shoulder, as a prince might caress a favored courtier. "You'll not fail us on Thursday? I want none but true friends about me and Mary."
The pompous voice a little unsteady, and the florid face losing color. "I'm serious when I say that I mean to push your fortune, old boy," after a pause.
"There be'n't a day when you're not pushing some fellow along."
"So? You think that of me? Well, well! it's little I can do. But God help us! it sickens me to look down on any man below me in the mire; and it don't need money to give help, always. For you, I'll strengthen your trade up yonder. I'm not a man without mark in the great cities, Jim. The world's deep as well as wide, and one can dig secrets out of her in Manasquan, and make a name, as easily as where men crowd together. I like to think I'm here in the woods, dragging out of nature the means to fight death up yonder." The whole manner of the man altered; a generous glow flushed to his temples, his voice rang out earnestly.
"You mean them chemicals, Laddoun?" after a puzzled pause. "I thought that boy of yours did that work. He's put his soul into the herbs and black-drops he makes out of them. It's a pity, too. It's trifling work, and he be genooine," raising his voice, "Galbraith be; I've reason to know that. He be the kind of man to anchor to."
Laddown combed his whiskers with a pleased smile.
"Yes, he's good stuff. I discovered him. I made him."
Van Zeldt turned quickly, but was prudently silent. Laddoun was unwarily touching on a matter which hitherto had been held secret.
"Made him as entirely as you cut those decoy-birds out of poplar yonder"—then stopped, with a gulp for breath, as if checked by some inward sting. "Well, he's useful, as you say, to collect and sort materials under me. But a hand—a hand. It is the head that is needed in my trade," touching his narrow, high forehead with the forefinger, on which shone a round purple stone. "Good-bye, Van Zeldt. You will be down at the shop to-night?"
"Yes." Van Zeldt stood leaning over the trunk of the fallen cedar, a generous twinkle of admiration through all of his insipid face, as the stout, broad figure disappeared in the shadows of the woods. Laddoun was moulded out of such different clay from his own! There were men to command and men to serve, just as there were king-fish and clams in the sea yonder.
Even the cool Quaker, who had taken the bearings of most men's minds with those lightless blue eyes of his, had felt, against his will, a sort of magnetism in the young village hero under all his coarse, thin varnish; something which warmed the air about him, put a hearty, genial look on the face of things. Van Zeldt, therefore, was not to blame, if Laddoun, with his mysterious talk of cities, and of secrets dragged out of nature, crowned, too, with his lucky love-making in a quarter where he had failed, became to him a sort of demi-god; and if he watched even the yellow cotton
