and they quickened their homeward step.
John went to tea at the Tombses in no mood to do himself credit as a
guest. His mother was still reminding him of it next day when they
alighted at home. "I little thought my son would give me so much
trouble."
But his reply struck her dumb. "I've got lots left, mother, and will
always have plenty. I make it myself."
XXX.
ANOTHER ODD NUMBER
Fannie expressed to Barbara one day her annoyance at that kind of
men--without implying that she meant any certain one--who will never
take no for an answer.
"A lover, Barb, if he's not of the humble sort, is the most
self-conceited thing alive. He can no more take in the idea that your
objection to him is _he_ than a board can draw a nail into itself.
You've got to hammer it in."
"With a brickbat," quoth Barbara, whose notions of carpentry were
feminine, and who did not care to discuss the matter. But John March, it
seemed, would not take no from fate itself.
"I don't believe yet," he mused, as he rode about his small farm, "that
Jeff-Jack will get her. She's playing with him. Why not? She's played
with a dozen. And yet, naturally, somebody'll get her, and he'll not be
worthy of her. There's hope yet! She loves me far more than she realizes
right now. That's a woman's way; they'll go along loving for years and
find it out by accident--You, Hector! What the devil are you and Israel
over in that melon-patch for instead of the corn-field?
"I've been too young for her. No, not too young for her, but too young
to show what I can do and be. She waited to see, for years. The
intention may not have been conscious, but I believe it was there! And
then she got tired of waiting. Why, it began to look as though I would
never do anything or be anybody! Great Caesar! You can't expect a girl to
marry an egg in hopes o' what it'll hatch. O let me make haste and show
what I am! what I can--'Evermind, Israel, I see you. Just wait till we
get this crop gathered; if I don't kick you two idle, blundering,
wasting, pilfering black renters off this farm--as shore's a gun's iron!
"No, she and Jeff-Jack'll never marry. Even if they do he'll not live
long. These political editors, if somebody doesn't kill 'em, they break
down, all at once. Our difference in age will count for less and less
every year. She's the kind that stays young; four years from now I'll
look the older of the two--I'll work myself old!"
A vision came to the dreamer's fancy: Widewood's forests filled with
thrifty settlers, mines opened, factories humming by the brooksides, the
locomotive's whistle piercing the stony ears of the Sleeping Giant; Suez
full of iron-ore, coal, and quarried stone, and Fannie a widow, or
possibly still unwed, charmed by his successes, touched by his
constancy, and realizing at last the true nature of what she had all
along felt as only a friendship.
"That's it! If I give men good reason to court me, I'll get the woman I
court!"--But he did not, for many weeks, give men any irresistible good
reason to court him.
"Ah me! here's November gone. Talk of minutes slipping through the
fingers--the months are as bad as the minutes! Lord! what a difference
there is between planning a thing and doing it--or even beginning to do
it!"
Yet he did begin. There is a season comes, sooner or later, to all of
us, when we must love and love must nest. It may fix its choice
irrationally on some sweet ineligible Fannie; but having chosen, there
it must nest, spite of all. Now, men may begin life not thus moved; but
I never knew a man thus moved who still did not begin life. Love being
kindled, purpose is generated, and the wheels in us begin to go round.
They had gone round, even in John's father; but not only were time,
place, and circumstance against the older man, but his love had nested
in so narrow a knot-hole that the purposes and activities of his gentle
soul died in their prison.
"Yes, that's one thing I've got to look out for," mused John one day,
riding about the northwestern limits of his lands where a foaming brook
kept saying, "Water-power!--good fishing!--good fishing!--water-power!"
He dismounted and leaned against his horse by the brook's Widewood side,
we may say, although just beyond here lay the odd sixty acres by which
Widewood exceeded an even hundred thousand. The stream came down out of
a steeply broken region of jagged rocks, where frequent evergreens and
russet oaks studded the purple gray maze of trees that like to go naked
in winter. But here it shallowed widely and slipped over a long surface
of unbroken bed-rock. On its far side a spring gushed from a rocky
cleft, leapt down some natural steps, ran a few yards, and slid into the
brook. Behind it a red sun shone through the leafless tree-tops. The
still air hinted of frost.
Suddenly his horse listened. In a moment he heard voices, and by an
obscure road up and across the brook two riders came briskly to the
water's edge, splashed into the smooth shallow and let their horses
drink. They were a man and a maid, and the maid was Barbara Garnet. She
was speaking.
"We can't get so far out of the way if we can keep this"--she saw John
March rise into his saddle, caught a breath, and then cried:
"Why, it's Mr. March. Mr. March, we've missed our road!" Her laugh was
anxious. "In fact, we're lost. Oh! Mr. March, Mr. Fair." The young men
shook hands. Fair noted a light rifle and a bunch of squirrels at
March's saddle-bow.
"You've been busier than we."
"Mighty poor sign of industry. I didn't come out for game, but a man's
sure to be sorry if he goes into the woods without a gun. I mean, of
course, Miss Garnet, if he's alone!"
Barbara answered with a smile and a wicked drawl, "You've been enjoying
both ad-van-tag-es. I used to wish I was a squirrel, they're so
en-er-get-ic." She added that she would be satisfied now to remain as
she was if she could only get home safe. She reckoned they could find
the road if Mr. March would tell them how.
John smiled seriously. "Better let me show you." He moved down the
middle of the stream. "This used to be the right road, long time ago.
You know, Mr. Fair"--his voice rang in the trees, "our mountain roads
just take the bed of the nearest creek whenever they can. Our people are
not a very business people. But that's because they've got the rare
virtue of contentment. Now--"
"I don't think they're too contented, Mr. March," said Barbara,
defensively. "Why, Mr. Fair, how much this creek and road are like ours
at Rosemont!"
"It's the same creek," called March.
By and by they left it and rode abreast through woods. There was much
badinage, in which Barbara took the aggressive, with frequent hints at
Fannie that gave John delicious pain and convinced him that Miss Garnet
was, after all, a fine girl. Fair became so quiet that John asked him
two or three questions.
"O no!" laughed Fair, he could stay but a day or two. He said he had
come this time from "quite a good deal" of a stay in Texas and Mexico,
and his father had written him that he was needed at home. "Which is
absurd, you know," he added to Barbara.
"Per-fect-ly," she said. But he would not skirmish.
"Yes," he replied. "But all the same I have to go. I'm sorry."
"We're sorry at Rosemont."
"I shall be sorry at Widewood," echoed March.
"I regret it the more," responded Fair, "from having seen Widewood so
much and yet so little. Miss Garnet believes in a great future for
Widewood. It was in trying to see something of it that we lost----"
But Barbara protested. "Mr. Fair, we rode hap-hazard! We simply chanced
that way! What should I know, or care, about lands? You're confusing me
with pop-a! Which is doub-ly ab-surd!"
"Most assuredly!" laughed the young men.
"You know, Mr. March, pop-a's so proud of the Widewood tract that I
believe, positively, he's jealous of anyone's seeing it without him for
a guide. You'd think it held the key of all our fates."
"Which is triply absurd!"
"Superlatively!" drawled Barbara, and laughing was easy. They came out
upon the pike as March was saying to Fair:
"I'd like to show you my lands; they're the key of my fate, anyhow."
"They're only the lock," said Barbara, musingly. "The key
is--elsewhere."
John laughed. He thought her witty, and continued with her, though the
rest of the way to Rosemont was short and plain. Presently she turned
upon the two horsemen a pair of unaggressive but invincible eyes,
saying, languorously,
"Mr. March, I want you to show Widewood to Mr. Fair--to-morrow. Pop-a's
been talking about showing it to him, but I want him to see it with just
you alone."
To Fair there always seemed a reserve of merriment behind Miss Garnet's
gravity, and a reserve of gravity behind her brightest gayety. This was
one thing that had drawn him back to Rosemont. Her ripples never hid her
depths, yet she was never too deep to ripple. I give his impressions for
what they may be worth. He did not formulate them; he merely consented
to stay a day longer. A half-moon was growing silvery when John said
good-by at the gate of the campus.
"Now, in the morning, Mr. Fair, I'll meet you somewhere between here and
the pike. I wish I could say you'd meet my mother, but she's in poor
health--been so ever since the war."
* * * * *
That night Garnet lingered in his wife's room to ask--
"Do you think Barb really missed the road, or was that----"
"Yes, they took the old creek road by mistake."
"Has Fair--said anything to her?"
"No; she didn't expect or wish it----"
"Well, I don't see why."
--"And he's hardly the sort to do unexpected things."
"They've agreed to ride right after breakfast. What d'you reckon that's
for?"
"Not what you wish. But still, for some reason she wants you to leave
him entirely to himself."
College being in session breakfast was early.
"Barb, you'll have to take care of Mr. Fair to-day, I reckon. You might
take my horse, sir. I'll be too busy indoors to use him."
The girl and her cavalier took but a short gallop. They had nearly got
back to the grove gate when he ventured upon a personal speech; but it
was only to charge her with the art of blundering cleverly.
She assured him that her blunders were all nature and her art accident.
"Whenever I want to be witty I get into a hurry, and haste is the
an-ti-dote of wit."
"Miss Garnet," he thought, as her eyes rested calmly in his, "your gaze
is too utterly truthful."
"Ah!" said Barbara, "here's Mr. March now."
Fair wished he might find out why Miss Garnet should be
out-man[oe]uvring her father.
XXXI.
MR. FAIR VENTURES SOME INTERROGATIONS
The air was full of joy that morning, and John boyishly open and hearty.
"Fact is, Mr. Fair, I don't care for young ladies' company. Half of them
are frauds and the rest are a delusion and a snare--ha-ha-ha! Miss
Garnet is new goods, as the boys say, and I'm not fashionable. Even our
mothers ain't very well acquainted yet; though my mother's always
regretted it; their tastes differ. My mother's literary, you know."
"They say Miss Garnet's a great romp--among other girls--and an
unmerciful mimic."
"Don't you rather like that?"
"Who, me? Lord, yes! The finest girl I know is that way--dances Spanish
dances--alone with other girls, of course. The church folks raised Cain
about it once. O I--you think I mean Miss Halliday--well I do. Miss
Garnet can tease me about her all she likes--ha, ha! it doesn't faze me!
Miss Fannie's nothing to me but a dear friend--never was! Why, she's
older than I am--h-though h-you'd never suspect it."
"Well, yes, I think I should have known it."
"O go 'long! Somebody told you! But I swear, Mr. Fair, I wonder, sir,
you're not more struck with Miss Halliday. Now, I go in for mind and
heart. I don't give a continental for externals; and yet--did you ever
see such glorious eyes as Fan--Miss Halliday's? Now, honest Ingin! _did_
you, _ever_?"
Mr. Fair admitted that Miss Halliday's eyes danced.
"You say they do? You're right! Hah! _they_ dance Spanish dances. I've
seen black eyes that went through you like a sword; I've seen blue eyes
that drilled through you like an auger; and I've seen gray ones that bit
through you like a cold-chisel; and I've seen--now, there's Miss
Garnet's, that just see through you without going through you at all--O
I don't like any of 'em! but Fannie Halliday's eyes--Miss Fannie, I
should say--they seem to say, 'Come out o' that. I'm not looking at all,
but I know you're there!' O sir!--Mr. Fair, don't you hate, sir, to see
such a creature as that get married to anybody? I say, to _anybody_! I
tell you what it's like, Mr. Fair. It's like chloroforming a butterfly,
sir! That's what it's like!"
He meditated and presently resumed--"But, Law' no! She's nothing to me.
I've got too much to think of with these lands on my hands. D'you know,
sir, I really speak more freely to you than if you belonged here and
knew me better? And I confess to you that a girl like F--Miss
Halliday--would be enough to keep me from ever marrying!"
"Why, how is that?"
"Why? O well, because!--knowing her, I couldn't ever be content with
less, and, of course, I couldn't get her or make her happy if I got her.
Torture for one's better than torture for two. Mind, that's a long ways
from saying I ever did want her, or ever will. I'm happy as I
am--confirmed bachelor--ha-ha-ha! What I do want, Mr. Fair, sir, is to
colonize these lands, and to tell you the truth, sir--h--I don't know
how to do it!"
"Are your titles good?"
"Perfect."
"Are the lands free from mortgage?"
"Free! ha-ha! they'd be free from mortgage, sir, but for one thing."
"What's that?"
"Why, they're mortgaged till you can't rest! The mortgages ain't so
mortal much, but they've been on so long we'd almost be afraid to take
them off. They're dried on sir!--grown in! Why, sir, we've paid more
interest than the mortgages foot up, sir!"
"What were they made for? improvements?"
"Impr--O yes, sir; most of 'em were given to improve the interior of our
smoke-house--sort o' decorate it with meat."
"Ah, you wasted your substance in riotous living!"
"No, sir, we were simply empty in the same old anatomical vicinity and
had to fill it. The mortgages wa'n't all made for that; two or three
were made to raise money to pay the interest on old ones--interest and
taxes. Mr. Fair, if ever a saint on earth lived up to his belief my
father did. He believed in citizenship confined to taxpayers, and he'd
pay his taxes owing for the pegs in his shoes--he made his own shoes,
sir."
"Who hold these mortgages?"
"On paper, Major Garnet, but really Jeff-Jack Ravenal. That's private,
sir."
"Yes, very properly, I see."
"Do you? Wha' do you see? Wish I could see something. Seems like I
can't."
"O, I only see as you do, no doubt, that any successful scheme to
improve your lands will have to be in part a public scheme, and be
backed by Mr. Ravenel's newspaper, and he can do that better if he's
privately interested and supposed not to be so, can't he?"
March stared, and then mused. "Well, I'll be--doggoned!"
"Of course, Mr. March, that needn't be unfair to you. Is it to
accommodate you, or him, that Major Garnet lends his name?"
"O me!--At least--O! they're always accommodating each other."
"My father told me of these lands before I came here. He thinks that the
fortunes of Suez, and consequently of Rosemont, in degree, not to
speak"--the speaker smiled--"of individual fates, _is_ locked up in
them."
"I know! I know! The fact grows on me, sir, every day and hour! But,
sir, the lands are my lawful inheritance, and although I admit that the
public----"
"You quite misunderstand me! Miss Garnet said--in play, I know--that the
key of this lock isn't far off, or words to that effect. Was she not
right? And doesn't Mr. Ravenel hold it? In fact--pardon my freedom--is
it not best that he should?"
"Good heavens, sir! why, Miss Garnet didn't mean--you say, does
Jeff-Jack hold that key? He was holding it the last time I saw him! O
yes. Even according to your meaning he thinks he holds it, and he thinks
he ought to. I don't think he ought to, and incline to believe he won't!
_Lift_ your miserable head!" he cried to his horse, spurred fiercely,
and jerked the curb till the animal reared and plunged. When he laughed
again, in apology, Fair asked,
"Do you propose to organize a company yourself to--eh--boom your lands?"
"Well, I don't--Yes, I reckon I shall. I reckon I'll have to. Wha' do
you think?"
"Might not Mr. Ravenel let you pay off your mortgages in stock?"
"I--he might. But could I do that and still control the thing? For, Mr.
Fair, I've got to control! There's a private reason why I mustn't let
Jeff-Jack manage me. I've got to show myself the better man. He knows
why. O! we're good friends. I can't explain it to you, and you'd never
guess it in the world! But there's a heavy prize up between us, and I
believe that if I can show myself more than a match for him in these
lists--this land business--I'll stand a chance for that prize. There,
sir, I tell you that much. It's only proper that I should. I've got to
be the master."
"Is your policy, then, to gain time--to put the thing off while you----"
"Good Lord, no! I haven't a day to spare! I'll show you these lands, Mr.
Fair, and then if you'll accept the transfer of these mortgages, I'll
begin the work of opening these lands, somehow, before the sun goes
down. But if I let Ravenel or Garnet in, I--" John pondered.
"Haven't you let them in already, Mr. March? I don't see clearly why it
isn't your best place for them."
March was silent.
XXXII.
JORDAN
Barbara lay on a rug in her room, reading before the fragrant ashes of a
perished fire. She heard her father's angry step, and his stern rap on
her door. Before she could more than lift her brow he entered.
"Barb!--O what sort of posture--" She started, and sat coiled on the
rug.
"Barb, how is it you're not with your mother?"
"Mom-a sent me out, pop-a. She thought if I'd leave her she might drop
asleep."
He smiled contemptuously. "How long ago was that?"
"About fifteen minutes."
"It was an hour ago! Barb, you've got hold of another novel. Haven't you
learned yet that you can't tell time by that sort of watch?"
"Is mom-a awake?" asked the girl, starting from the mantel-piece.
"Yes--stop!" He extended his large hand, and she knew, as she saw its
tremor, that he was in the same kind of transport in which he had
flogged Cornelius. In the same instant she was frightened and glad.
"I've headed him off," she thought.
"Barb, your mother's very ill--stop! Johanna's with her. Barb"--his
tones sank and hardened--"why did that black hussy try to avoid telling
me you were home and Fair had gone off with that whelp, John March?
What? Why don't you speak so I can hear? What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid we'll disturb mom-a. Johanna should have told you plainly."
"Oh! indeed! I tell you, if it hadn't been for your mother's presence
I'd have thrown her out of the window." An unintentional murmur from
Barbara exasperated him to the point of ecstasy. He paled and smiled.
"Barb, did you want to keep me from knowing that Fair was going to
Widewood?" They looked steadily into each others' eyes. "Which of us is
it you don't trust, that Yankee, or your own father? Don't--" he lifted
his palm, but let it sink again. "Don't move your lips that way again; I
won't endure it. Barbara Garnet, this is Fannie Halliday's work! So help
me, God, I'd rather I'd taken your little white coffin in my arms
eighteen years ago and laid it in the ground than that you should have
learned from that poisonous creature the effrontry to suspect me of
dishonest--Silence! You ungrateful brat, if you were a son, I'd shake
the breath out of you. Have you _ever_ trusted me? Say!"--he stepped
close up--"Stop gazing at me like a fool and answer my question! Have
you?"
"Don't speak so loud."
"Don't tell me that, you little minx; you who have never half noticed
how sick your mother is. Barb"--the speaker's words came through his
closed teeth--"Mr. John March can distrust me and leave me out of his
precious company as much as he damn pleases--if you like his favorite
forms of speech--and so may your tomtit Yankee. But you--sha'n't! You
sha'n't repay a father's careful plans with suspicions of underhanded
rascality, you unregenerate--see here! Do those two pups know you didn't
want me to go? Answer me!"
She could not. Her lips moved as he had forbidden, and she was still
looking steadily into his blazing eyes, when, as if lightning had
struck, she flinched almost off her feet, her brain rang and roared, her
sight failed, and she knew she had been slapped in the face.
He turned his back, but the next instant had wheeled again, his face
drawn with pain and alarm. "I didn't mean to do that! Oh, good Lord! it
wa'n't I! Forgive me, Barb. Oh, Barb, my child, as God's my witness, I
didn't do it of my own free will. He let the devil use me. All my
troubles are coming together; your suspicions maddened me."
Her eyes were again in his. She shook her head and passed to her mirror,
saying, slowly, "God shall smite thee, thou whited wall." She glanced at
the glass, but the redness of its fellow matched the smitten cheek, and
she hurried to the door.
"Barb"--the tone was a deep whine--she stopped without looking back.
"Don't say anything to your mother to startle her. The slightest shock
may kill her."
Barbara entered the mother's chamber. Johanna was standing by a window.
The daughter beamed on the maid, and turned to the bed; but
consternation quenched the smile when she beheld her mother's face.
"Why, mom-a, sweet."
A thin hand closed weakly on her own, and two sunken blue eyes, bright
with distress, looked into hers. "Where is he?" came a feeble whisper.
"Pop-a? Oh, he's coming. If he doesn't come in a moment, I'll bring
him." The daughter's glance rested for refuge on the white forehead.
"Shall I go call him?"
The pallid lips made no reply, the sunken eyes still lay in wait.
Barbara racked her mind for disguise of words, but found none. There was
no escape. Even to avoid any longer the waiting eyes would confess too
much. She met them and they gazed up into hers in still anguish.
Barbara's answered, with a sweet, full serenity. Then without a word or
motion came the silent question,
"Did he strike you?"
And Barbara answered, audibly. "No."
She rose, adding, "Let me go and bring him." Conscience rose also and
went with her. Just outside the closed door she covered her face in her
hands and sank to the floor, moaning under her breath,
"What have I done? What shall I do? Oh God! why couldn't--why _didn't_ I
lie to _him_?" She ran down-stairs on tiptoe.
Her father, with Pettigrew at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a
Geometry class. "Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a
pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me--to any
uncorrupted mind--as perfect music to a perfect ear."
But hearing that his daughter was seeking him, he withdrew.
The two had half mounted the stairs, when a hurried step sounded in the
upper hall, and Johanna leaned wildly over the rail, her eyes streaming.
"Miss Barb! Miss Barb! run here! run! come quick, fo' de love of God!
Oh, de chariots of Israel! de chariots of Israel! De gates o' glory
lif'n up dey head!"
Barbara flew up the stairs and into her mother's room. Mr. Pettigrew
stood silent among the crystalline beauties of mathematical truth, and a
dozen students leaped to their feet as the daughter's long wail came
ringing through the house mingled with the cry of Johanna.
"Too late! Too late! De daughteh o' Zion done gone in unbeseen!"
Through two days more Fair lingered, quartered at the Swanee Hotel, and
conferred twice more with John March. In the procession that moved up
the cedar avenue of the old Suez burying-ground, he stepped beside
General Halliday, near its end. Among the headstones of the Montgomeries
the long line stopped and sang,
"For oh! we stand on Jordan's strand,
Our friends are passing over."
In the midst of the refrain, each time, there trembled up in tearful
ecstasy, above the common wave of song, the voices of Leviticus Wisdom
and his wife. But only once, after the last stanza, Johanna's yet
clearer tone answered them from close beside black-veiled Barbara,
singing in vibrant triumph,
"An' jess befo', de shiny sho'
We may almos' discoveh."
XXXIII.
THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT
Coming from the grave Fair walked with March.