He had been prepared, he supposed, to judge Whitcomb fairly; but his late brief interview with his successful rival had left him bitterly antagonistic to the younger man. David’s very physical beauty infuriated him. He recalled the level glances of his blue eyes, the curve of his lips, the carriage of his handsome head upon his broad shoulders, with a sense of blind, barbaric anger. His frequent references to Barbara, his cool assumption of triumph, his braggart self-assertion, his open disdain of concealment—all were abhorrent, intolerable to Jarvis. But none the less, he fought with and subdued himself.
“I am unjust,” he told himself flatly, “because I am jealous.”
And he despised himself the more, because recognizing the patent fact he still hated David; still longed to fling him out of his path as he had flung many a stronger man in the past. For the first time in all the years of his life he had become dimly aware of the beauty of self-sacrifice, and of its relations to a pure and true affection. Even while the primal man within foamed under his iron grip, he compelled himself to think tenderly of Barbara, of her loveless youth, of her loneliness, of her heroism. Then he remembered with shame his own persecutions of her woman’s weakness; for so it had come to look to him now. He recalled his brutal insistence, his threats, his unrelenting hardness, sparing himself in nothing, compelling his memory to flash before him every picture which contained them both.
He had travelled many miles before he roused to a realization of the lateness of the hour. The long summer twilight had fallen, like a roseate veil, over the rich landscape; the shadows had disappeared with the sun, and the great disk of a silver moon swam in the rosy light reflected from the sunset, which by now burned in crimson and amber splendors behind the misty purple of the hills.
His horse appeared jaded and weary, and Jarvis recalled vaguely that he had been driving at his old furious rate of speed. He leaned back against the cushions with a sigh, conscious of his own exceeding weariness, and allowed the mare to take her own gait. Out of the seething alembic of his thoughts had crystallized a single definite resolution. He would deal with Whitcomb as that son of God who was called Satan was permitted to deal with Job, and later with the recalcitrant apostle. He would sift David as wheat in the close-meshed sieve of his own love for Barbara. He would scrutinize his past, he would examine his present; he would hold him under the lens of purity, of probity, of honor. If Whitcomb stood the test, Jarvis swore by all that he held holy that he would stand back and allow him to marry the woman both loved. If not,—his strong fingers unconsciously tightened on the reins, and the obedient mare quickened her pace.
