broken carpet-bag between them. Glancing back down the campus avenue,
John hoped the unknown woman just entering its far gate was not
observing. So mild was the air here that the front door stood open. In
the hall a tall student, with a sergeant's chevrons on his gray sleeve,
came from a class-room and led them into a small parlor. Major Garnet
was in Suez, but Mrs. Garnet would see them.
They waited. On the mantel an extremely Egyptian clock--green and
gilt--whispered at its task in servile oblivion to visitors. John stared
at a black-framed lithograph, and his father murmured,
"That's the poet Longfellow, son, who wrote that nice letteh to yo' dear
motheh. This colo'ed picture's Napoleon crossing the Alps."
A footstep came down the hall, and John saw a pretty damsel of twelve or
thirteen with much loose red-brown hair, stop near the door of the
reception-room and gaze at someone else who must have been coming up the
porch steps. He could not hear this person's slow advance, but presently
a voice in the porch said, tenderly, "Miss Barb?" and gave a low nervous
laugh.
Barbara shrank back a step. The soft footfall reached the threshold. The
maiden retreated half a step more. Behind her sounded a faint patter of
crinoline coming down the hall stairs. And then there came into view
from the porch, bending forward with caressing arms, a slim, lithe
negress of about nineteen years. Her flimsy dress was torn by thorns,
and her hands were pitifully scratched. Her skirt was gone, the
petticoat bemired, and her naked feet were bleeding.
"Miss Barb," said the tender voice again. From the inner stairs a lady
appeared.
"What is it, son?" Judge March asked, and rising, saw the lady draw near
the girl with a look of pitying uncertainty. The tattered form stood
trembling, with tears starting down her cheeks.
"Miss Rose--Oh, Miss Rose, it's me!"
"Why, Johanna, my poor child!" Two kind arms opened and the mass of rags
and mud dashed into them. The girl showered her kisses upon the pure
garments, and the lady silently, tenderly, held her fast. Then she took
the black forehead between her hands.
"Child, what does this mean?"
"Oh, it means nothin' but C'nelius, Miss Rose--same old C'nelius! I
hadn't nowhere to run but to you, an' no chance to come but night."
"Can you go upstairs and wait a moment for me in my room? No, poor
child, I don't think you can!" But Johanna went, half laughing, half
crying, and beckoning to Barbara in the old-time wheedling way.
"Go, Barbara."
The child followed, while John and his father stood with captive hearts
before her whom the youths of the college loved to call in valedictory
addresses the Rose of Rosemont. She spent a few moments with them,
holding John's more than willing hand, and then called in the
principal's first assistant, Mr. Dinwiddie Pettigrew, a smallish man of
forty, in piratical white duck trousers, kid slippers, nankeen sack, and
ruffled shirt. Irritability confessed itself in this gentleman's face,
which was of a clay color, with white spots. Mr. Pettigrew presently
declared himself a Virginian, adding, with the dignity of a fallen king,
that he--or his father, at least--had lost over a hundred slaves by the
war. It was their all. But the boy could not shut his ear to the sweet
voice of Mrs. Garnet as, at one side, she talked to his father.
"Sir?" he responded to the first assistant, who was telling him he ought
to spell March with a final e, it being always so spelled--in Virginia.
The Judge turned for a lengthy good-by, and at its close John went with
his preceptor to the school-room, trying, quite in vain, to conceive how
Mr. Pettigrew had looked when he was a boy.
XVI.
A GROUP OF NEW INFLUENCES
All Rosemonters were required to sit together at Sunday morning service,
in a solid mass of cadet gray. After this there was ordinary freedom.
Thus, when good weather and roads and Mrs. March's strength permitted,
John had the joy of seeing his father and mother come into church; for
Rosemont was always ahead of time, and the Marches behind. Then followed
the delight of going home with them in their antique and precarious
buggy, and of a day-break ride back to Rosemont with his
father--sweetest of all accessible company. Accessible, for his mother
had forbidden him to visit Fannie Halliday, her father being a traitor.
He could only pass by her gate--she was keeping house now--and sometimes
have the ecstasy of lingeringly greeting her there.
"Oh, my deah, she's his teacheh, you know. But now, suppose that next
Sunday----"
"Please call it the sabbath, Powhatan."
"Yes, deah, the sabbath. If it should chance to rain----"
"Oh, Judge March, do you believe rain comes by chance?"
"Oh, no, Daphne, dear. But--if it should be raining hard----"
"It will still be the Lord's day. Your son can read and meditate."
"But if it should be fair, and something else should keep us fum church,
and he couldn't come up here, and should feel his loneliness----"
"Can't he visit some of our Suez friends--Mary and Martha Salter, Doctor
Coffin, or Parson Tombs, the Sextons, or Clay Mattox? I'm not
puritanical, nor are they. He's sure of a welcome from either Cousin
Hamlet Graves or his brother Lazarus. Heaven has spared us a few friends
still."
"Oh, yes, indeed. Dead loads of them; if son would only take to them.
And, Daphne, deah,"--the husband brightened--"I hope, yet, he will."
School terms came and went. Mrs. March attributed her son's failure to
inherit literary talent to his too long association with his father. He
stood neither first, second, nor last in anything. In spiritual
conditions he was not always sure that he stood at all. At times he was
shaken even in the belief that the love of fun is the root of all
virtue, and although he called many a droll doing a prank which the
law's dark lexicon terms a misdemeanor, for weeks afterward there would
be a sound in his father's gentle speech as of that voice from which
Adam once, in the cool of the day, hid himself. In church the sermons he
sat under dwelt mainly on the technical difficulties involved in a
sinner's salvation, and neither helped nor harmed him; he never heard
them. One clear voice in the midst of the singing was all that engaged
his ear, and when it carolled, "He shall come down like rain upon the
mown grass," the notes themselves were to him the cooling shower.
One Sabbath afternoon, after a specially indigestible sermon which
Sister Usher said enthusiastically to Major Garnet ought to be followed
by a great awakening--as, in fact, it had been--Barbara, slim, straight,
and fifteen, softly asked her mother to linger behind the parting
congregation for Fannie. As Miss Halliday joined them John, from the
other aisle, bowed so pathetically to his Sunday-school teacher that
when she turned again to smile on Barbara and her mother she laughed,
quite against her will. The mother and daughter remained grave.
"Fannie," said Mrs. Garnet, her hand stealing into the girl's, "I'm
troubled about that boy." Barbara walked ahead pretending not to hear,
but listening hard.
"Law! Cousin Rose, so'm I! I wish he'd get religion or something. Don't
look so at me, Cousin Rose, you _make_ me smile. I'm really trying to
help him, but the more I try the worse I fail. If I should meet him on
the straight road to ruin I shouldn't know what to say to him; I'm a
pagan myself."
XVII.
THE ROSEMONT ATMOSPHERE
About this time Barbara came into new surroundings. She had been
wondering for a month what matter of disagreement her father and mother
were trying to be very secret about, when one morning at breakfast her
father said, while her mother looked out the window:
"Barb, we've decided to send you to Montrose to stay." And while she was
still gazing at him speechlessly, a gulping sob came from behind her
mother's chair and Johanna ran from the room.
Barbara never forgot that day. Nor did her memory ever lose the picture
of her father, as he came alone to see her the next day after her
entrance into the academy, standing before the Misses Kinsington--who
were as good as they were thin, and as sweet as they were
aristocratic--winning their impetuous approval with the confession that
the atmosphere of a male college--even though it was Rosemont--was not
good for a young girl. While neither of the Misses Kinsington gave a
hand to him either for welcome or farewell, when Mademoiselle
Eglantine--who taught drawing, history, and French--happened in upon
father and daughter a second time, after they had been left to say
good-by alone, the hand of Mademoiselle lingered so long in his that
Barbara concluded he had forgotten it was there.
"She's quite European in her way, isn't she, Barb?"
The daughter was mute, for she had from time to time noticed several
women shake hands with her large-hearted father thus.
Twice a week Barbara spent an afternoon and night at Rosemont. Whether
her father really thought its atmosphere desirable for her or not, she
desired it, without ceasing and most hungrily. On Sunday nights, when
the house had grown still, there would come upon her door the wariest of
knocks, and Johanna would enter, choose a humble seat, and stay and
stay, to tell every smallest happening of the week.
Not infrequently these recitals contained points in the history of John
March.
* * * * *
Rosemont gave one of its unexpected holidays. John March and another
senior got horses and galloped joyously away to Pulaski City, where
John's companion lived. The seat of government was there. There, too,
was the Honorable Mr. Leggett, his party being still uppermost in
Blackland. He was still custodian, moreover, of the public school funds
for the three counties.
Very late that night, as the two Rosemonters were about to walk past an
open oyster saloon hard by the Capitol, John caught his fellow's arm.
They stopped in a shadow. Two men coming from an opposite direction went
into the place together.
"Who's that white man?" whispered John. The other named a noted
lobbyist, and asked,
"Who's the nigger?"
"Cornelius Leggett." John's hand crept, trembling, to his hip pocket.
His companion grasped it. "Pshaw, March, are you crazy?"
"No, are you? I'm not going to shoot; I was only thinking how easy I
could do it."
He stepped nearer the entrance. The lone keeper had followed the two men
into a curtained stall. His back was just in sight.
"Let's slip in and hear what they say," murmured John, visibly
disturbed. But when his companion assented he drew back. His fellow
scanned him with a smile of light contempt. There were beads of moisture
on his brow. Just then the keeper went briskly toward his kitchen, and
the two youths glided into the stall next to the one occupied.
"Yass, seh," Cornelius was tipsily remarking, "the journals o' the day
reputes me to have absawb some paucity o' the school funds. Well,
supposen I has; I say, jess _supposen_ it, you know. I antagonize you
this question: did Napoleon Bonapawt never absawb any paucity o' otheh
folks' things? An' yit he was the greates' o' the great. He's my
patte'n, seh. He neveh stole jiss to be a-stealin'! An' yit wheneveh he
found it assential of his _destiny_ to steal anything, he stole it!
"O' co'se he incurred and contracted enemies; I has mine; it's useless
to translate it. My own motheh's husban'--you riccolec' ole Unc'
'Viticus, don't you?--Rev'en' Leviticus Wisdom--on'y niggeh that eveh
refused a office!"--he giggled--"Well, he ensued to tu'n me out'n the
church. Yass, seh, faw nothin' but fallin' in love with his daughteh--my
step-sisteh--sayin' I run her out'n the county!
"But he couldn't p'ocure a sufficient concawdence o' my fellow-citizens;
much less o' they wives--naw evm o' mine! No, seh! They brought in they
verdic' that jess at this junction it'd be cal'lated to ungendeh strife
an' could on'y do hahm." He giggled again.
"My politics save me, seh! They always will. An' they ought to; faw they
as pyo as the crystial fountain."
The keeper brought a stew of canned oysters. The lobbyist served it, and
Mr. Leggett talked on.
"Thass the diffunce 'twixt me and Gyarnit. That man's afraid o' me--jess
as 'fraid as a chicken-hawk is of a gun, seh!--an' which nobody knows
why essep' him an' me. But thass jess the diff'ence. Nobody reputes him
to steal, an' I don't say he do. I ain't ready to say it yit, you
un'stan'; but his politics--his politics, seh; they does the stealin'!
An' which it's the low-downdest kind o' stealin', for it's stealin' fum
niggers. But thass the diff'ence; niggers steals with they claws, white
men with they laws. The claws steals by the pound; the laws steals by
the boatload!"
The lobbyist agreed.
"Jess so!" cried Mr. Leggett. "Ef Gyarnit'd vote faw the things o' one
common welfare an' gen'l progress an' program, folks--an' niggers
too--could affode faw him to vote faw somepm fat oncet in a while an' to
evm take sugar on his vote--an' would sen' him to the ligislatur' stid
o' me. Thass not sayin' I eveh did aw does take sugar on my vote. Ef I
wins a bet oncet in a while on whether a certain bill 'll pass, why,
that, along o' my official emoluments an' p'erequisites evince me a
sufficient plenty.
"Wife?--Estravagant?--No!--Oh! you thinkin' o' my secon' wife. Yes, seh,
she was too all-fired estravagant! I don't disadmire estravagant people.
I'm dreadful estravagant myseff. But Sophronia jess tuck the rag off'n
the bush faw estravagance. Silk dresses, wine, jewelry--it's true she
mos'ly spent her own green-backs, but thass jess it, you see; I jess had
to paht with her, seh! You can asphyxiate that yo'seff, seh.
"Now this wife I got now--eh? No, I ain't never ezac'ly hear the news
that the other one dead, but I suspicioned her, befo' she lef', o' bein'
consumpted, an'--O anyhow she's dead to me, seh! Now, the nex' time I
marries--eh?--O yes, but the present Mis' Leggett can't las' much
longeh, seh. I mistakened myseff when I aspoused her. I'm a man o' rich
an' abundant natu'e an' ought to a-got a spouse consistent with my joys
an' destinies. I may have to make a sawt o' Emp'ess Josephine o' her--ef
she lives.
"Y'ought to see the nex' one!--Seh?--Engaged?--No, not yit; she as shy
as a crow an'--ezac'ly the same colo'!--I'm done with light-complected
women, seh.--But y'ought to see this-yeh one!--Shy as a pa't'idge! But
I'm hot on her trail. She put_tend_ to be tarrible shocked--well, o'
co'se thass right!--Hid away in the hills--at Rosemont. But I kin git
her on a day's notice. All I got to espress myself is--Majo' Gyarnit,
seh!--Ef you continues faw twenty-fo' hours mo' to harbor the girl
Johanna, otherwise Miss Wisdom, the Black Diana an' sim'lar names, I
shall imbibe it my jewty to the gen'l welfare an' public progress to
renovate yo' rememb'ance of a vas'ly diff'ent an' mo' financial matteh,
as per my letteh to you of sich a date about seven year' ago an' not
an's'd yit, _an' tell what I know about you_. Thass all I'll say. Thass
all I haf to say! An' mebbe I won't haf to say that. Faw I'm tryin' love
lettehs on her; wrote the fus' one this evenin'; on'y got two mo' to
write. My third inevasively fetches 'em down the tree, seh!"
The lobbyist revived the subject of politics, the publican went after
hot water for a punch, and the eavesdroppers slipped away.
Early the following week Mr. Leggett reclined in his seat in the House
of Representatives. His boots were on his desk, and he tapped them with
his sword-cane while he waited to back up with his vote a certain bet of
the Friday night before. A speaker of his own party was alluding to him
as the father of free schools in Blackland and Clear water; but he was
used to this and only closed his eyes. A page brought his mail. It was
small. One letter was perfumed. He opened it and sat transfixed with
surprise, and a-tremble between vanity and doubt, desire and
trepidation. He bent his beaded eyes close over the sweet thing and read
its first page again and again. It might--it _might_ be an imposture;
but it had come in a Rosemont envelope, and it was signed Johanna
Wisdom.
The House began to vote. He answered to his name; the bill passed, his
bet was won. Adjournment followed. He hurried out and away, and down in
a suburban lane entered his snug, though humble, "bo'd'n' house," locked
his door, and read again.
Two or three well-known alumni of Rosemont and two or three Northern
capitalists--railroad prospectors--were, on the following Friday, at the
Swanee Hotel to be the guests of the Duke of Suez, as Ravenel was fondly
called by the Rosemont boys. To show Suez at its best by night as well
as by day, there was to be a Rosemont-Montrose ball in the hotel
dining-room. Major Garnet opposed its being _called_ a ball, and it was
announced as a musical reception and promenade. Mr. Leggett knew quite
as well as Garnet and Ravenel that the coming visitors were behind the
bill he had just voted for.
Johanna, the letter said, would be at the ball as an attendant in the
ladies' cloak-room. It bade him meet her that night at eleven on the old
bridge that spanned a ravine behind the hotel, where a back street ended
at the edge of a neglected grove.
"Lawd, Lawd! little letteh, little letteh! is you de back windeh o'
heavm, aw is you de front gate o' hell? Th' ain't no way to tell but by
tryin'! Oh, how _kin_ I resk it? An' yit, how kin I he'p but resk it?
"Sheh! ain't I resk my life time an' time ag'in jess for my _abstrac'
rights_ to be a Republican niggeh?
"Ef they'd on'y shoot me! But they won't. They won't evm hang me;
they'll jess tie me to a tree and bu'n me--wet me th'oo with coal-oil,
tech a match--O Lawd!" He poured a tremendous dram, looked at it long,
then stepped to the window, and with a quaking hand emptied both glass
and bottle on the ground, as if he knew life depended on a silent tongue
in a sober head.
And then he glanced once more at the letter, folded it, and let it
slowly into his pocket.
"'Happy as a big sun-floweh,' is you? I ain't. I ain't no happier'n a
pig on the ice. O it's mawnstus p'ecipitous! But it's gran'! It's mo'n
gran'; it's muccurial! it's puffic'ly nocturnial!" With an exalted
solemnity of face, half ardor, half anguish, he stiffened heroically and
gulped out,
"I'll be thah!"
* * * * *
Friday came. John March and half-a-dozen other Rosemonters, a committee
to furnish "greens" for garlanding the walls and doorways, hurried about
in an expectancy and perturbation, now gay, now grave, that seemed quite
excessive as the mere precursors of an evening dance. They gathered
their greenery from the grove down beyond the old bridge and ravine,
where the ground was an unbroken web of honeysuckle vines.
On this old bridge, at the late night hour fixed in the letter,
Cornelius met a counterfeit, thickly-veiled Johanna, and swore to marry
her.
"Black as you is? Yass! The blackeh the betteh! An' yit I'd marry you ef
you wuz pyo white!--Colo' line!--I'll cross fifty colo' lines whenev' I
feels like it!"
By midnight every Rosemonter at the ball had heard this speech repeated,
and knew that it had hardly left the mulatto's throat before he had fled
with shrieks of terror from the pretended ghosts of his earlier wives,
and with the curses of a coward's rage from the vain clutches of his
would-be captors.--But we go too fast.
XVIII.
THE PANGS OF COQUETRY
Night fell. The hotel shone. The veranda was gay with Chinese lanterns.
The muffled girls were arriving. The musicians tuned up. There were
three little fiddles, one big one, a flageolet, and a bassoon.
"Twinkling stars are laughing, love,
Laughing on you and me"
--sang the flageolet and little fiddles, while the double bass and the
bassoon grunted out their corroborative testimony with melodious
unction. Presently the instruments changed their mood, the flageolet
pretended to be a mocking-bird, all trills, the fiddles passionately
declared they were dreaming now-ow of Hallie--tr-r-r-ee!--dear
Hallie--tr-r-r-ee!--sweet Hallie--tr-r-r-ee! and the bassoon and double
bass responded from the depths of their emotions, "Hmmh! hmmh!
hm-hm-hmmh!"
Ravenel and his guests appeared on the floor; Major Garnet, too. He had
been with them, here, yonder, all day. Barbara remained at home,
although her gowns were the full length now, and she coiled her hair.
General Halliday and Fannie arrived. Her dress, they said, was the
prettiest in the room. Jeff-Jack introduced everybody to the
Northerners. The women all asked them if Suez wasn't a beautiful city,
and the guests praised the town, its site, its gardens, "its
possibilities," its ladies--!--and its classic river.
Try to look busy or dignified as he might, all these things only harried
John March. He kept apart from Fannie. Indeed, what man of any
self-regard--he asked his mangled spirit--could penetrate the crowd that
hovered about her, ducking, fawning, giggling, attitudinizing--listening
over one another's shoulders, guffawing down each other's throats? It
hurt him to see her show such indiscriminating amiability; but he felt
sure he knew her best, and hoped she was saying to herself, "Oh, that
these sycophants were gone, and only John and I and the twinkling stars
remained to laugh together! Why does he stay away?"
"O my darling Nellie Gray, they have taken you away," wept the fiddles,
and "Who? who? who-who-who?" inquired the basses in deep solicitude.
Well, the first dance would soon come, now; the second would shortly
follow, and then he and Fannie could go out on the veranda and settle
all doubts. With certainty established in that quarter, whether it
should bring rapture or despair, he hoped to command the magnanimity to
hold over a terrified victim the lash of retribution, and then to
pronounce upon him, untouched, at last, the sentence of exile. He spoke
aloud, and looking up quickly to see if anyone had heard, beheld his
image in a mirror. He knew it instantly, both by its frown and by the
trick of clapping one hand on the front of the thigh with the arm
twisted so as to show a large seal-ring bought by himself with money
that should have purchased underclothes for his father. He jerked it
away with a growl of self-scorn, and went to mingle with older men, to
whom, he fancied, the world meant more than young women and old scores.
He stopped in a part of the room where two Northerners were laughing at
a keen skirmish of words between Garnet and Halliday. These two had
gotten upon politics, and others were drawing near, full of eager but
unplayful smiles.
"Never mind," said Garnet, in retort, "we've restored public credit and
cut the rottenness out of our government."
The Northerners nodded approvingly, and the crowd packed close.
"Garnet," replied the general, with that superior smile which Garnet so
hated, "States, like apples--and like men--have two sorts of rottenness.
One begins at the surface and shows from the start; the other starts
from the core, and doesn't show till the whole thing is rotten."
For some secret reason, Garnet reddened fiercely for an instant, and
then, with a forced laugh, addressed his words to one of the guests.
Another of the strangers was interested in the severe attention a
strong-eyed Rosemont boy seemed to give to Halliday's speech. But it was
only John March, who was saying, in his heart:
"She's got a perfect right to take me or throw me, but she's no right to
do both!"
Only the Northerners enjoyed Halliday. The Suez men turned away in
disdain.
The music struck a quadrille, sweetly whining and hooting twice over
before starting into doubtful history,
"In eighteen hundred and sixty-one--to the war! to the war!"
The dance springs out! Gray jackets and white trousers; tarlatan,
flowers, and fans; here and there a touch of powder or rouge; some black
broadcloth and much wrinkled doeskin. Jeff-Jack and Fannie move hand in
hand, and despite the bassoon's contemptuous "pooh! pooh! poo-poo-pooh!"
the fiddles declare, with petulant vehemence, that--
"In eighteen-hundred-and-sixty-one, the Yankees _they_ the war _begun_,
but we'll all! get! blind! drunk! when Johnnie comes marching home."
"You see we play the national--oh! no, I believe that's not one--but we
do play them!" said a native.