The Crucial Moment | Page 2

the place here.
He expected to see a group of the Major's "quality friends" in the building but as he ascended the steps leading directly to the door, he perceived that the man he sought was alone. Major Jeffrey was engaged in idly knocking the balls about in some skilful fancy shots, his cigar in his mouth, and a black velvet smoking-jacket setting off to special advantage his dense, snowy hair, prematurely white, his long mustache, and his pointed imperial. His heavy white eyebrows drew frowningly together over arrogant dark eyes as he noted the man at the entrance.
Despite Hoxer's oft-reiterated sentiment that he was "as good as anybody and would take nothing off nobody, and cared for no old duck just because he was rich," he could not speak for a moment as he felt Major Jeffrey's inimical eyes upon him. He lost the advantage in losing the salutation.
"Did you get my check?" Major Jeffrey asked curtly.
"Yes," Hoxer admitted; "but----"
"The amount was according to contract."
Hoxer felt indignant with himself that he should have allowed this interpretation to be placed on his presence here; then he still more resented the conjecture.
"I have not come for extra money," he said. "That point of the transaction is closed."
"All the points of the transaction are closed," said Major Jeffrey, ungraciously. There was more than the flush of the waning western sky on his face. He had already dined, and he was one of those wine-bibbers whom drink does not render genial, "I want to hear no more about it."
He turned to the table, and with a skilful cue sent one ball caroming against two others.
"But you must hear what I have got to say, Major Jeffrey," protested Hoxer. "I built that cross-levee for you to join your main levee, and done it well."
"And have been well paid."
"But you go and say at the store that I deviated from the line of survey and saved one furlong, seven poles, and five feet of levee."
"And so you did."
"But you know, Major, that Burbeck Lake had shrunk in the drought at the time of the survey, and if I'd followed the calls for the south of the lake, I'd had to build in four feet of water, so I drew back a mite--you bein' in Orleans, where I couldn't consult you, an' no time to be lost nohow, the river bein' then on the rise, an'----"
"Look here, fellow," exclaimed Major Jeffrey, bringing the cue down on the table with a force that must have cut the cloth, "do you suppose that I have nothing better to do than to stand here to listen to your fool harangue?"
The anger and the drink and perhaps the consciousness of being in the wrong were all ablaze in the Major's eyes.
The two were alone; only the darkling shadows stood at tiptoe at the open windows, and still the flushed sky sent down a pervasive glow from above.
Hoxer swallowed hard, gulping down his own wrath and sense of injury. "Major," he said blandly, trying a new deal, "I don't think you quite understand me."
"Such a complicated proposition you are, to be sure!"
Hoxer disregarded the sarcasm, the contempt in the tone.
"I am not trying to rip up an old score, but you said at Winfield's store--at the store--that I did not build the cross levee on the surveyor's line; that I shortened it----"
"So you did."
"But as if I had shortened the levee for my own profit, when, as you know, it was paid for by the pole----"
"You tax me with making a false impression?"
An extreme revulsion of expectation harassed Hoxer. He had always known that Jeffrey was an exception to the general rule of the few large land-owners in the community, who were wont to conserve and, in fact, to deserve the pose of kindly patron as well as wealthy magnate. But even Jeffrey, he thought, would not grudge a word to set a matter straight that could cost him nothing and would mean much to the levee-contractor. Though of large experience in levee-building, Hoxer was new to the position of contractor, having been graduated into it, so to speak, from the station of foreman of a construction-gang of Irishmen. He had hoped for further employ in this neighborhood, in building private levees that, in addition to the main levees along the banks of the Mississippi, would aid riparian protection by turning off overflow from surcharged bayous and encroaching lakes in the interior. But, unluckily, the employer of the first enterprise he had essayed on his own responsibility had declared that he had deviated from the line of survey, usually essential to the validity of the construction, thereby much shortening the work; and had made this statement at Winfield's store--at the store!
Whatever was said at the store was as if proclaimed through the