think better of your ideas than I do. Don't you suppose really--" etc.
"You think you'll push it anyhow?"
"Yes, sir. In fact, I've got to."
After all others were gone one man still loitered furtively in the
cemetery. He came, now, from an alley of arborvitaes with that fantastic
elasticity of step which skilled drunkards learn. He had in hand a bunch
of limp flowers of an unusual kind, which he had that day ridden all the
way to Pulaski City to buy. He stood at the new grave's foot, sank to
one knee, wiped true tears from his eyes, pressed apart the evergreens
and chrysanthemums piled there, and laid in the midst his own bruised
and wilted offering of lilies.
As he reached the graveyard gate in departing his mood lightened.
"An' now gen'le_men_," he said to himself, "is come to pa-ass the ve-y
nick an' keno o' time faw a fresh staht. Frien' Gyarnit, we may be happy
yit."
He came up behind Fair and March. Fair was speaking of Fannie.
"But where was she? I didn't see her."
"Oh, she stayed at Rosemont to look after the house."
"The General tells me his daughter is to be married to Mr. Ravenel in
March."
John gave an inward start, but was silent for a moment. Then he said,
absently,
"So that's out, is it?" But a few steps farther on he touched Fair's
arm.
"Let's go--slower." His smile was ashen. "I--h--I don't know why in the
devil I have these sickish feelings come on me at f-funerals." They
stopped. "Humph! Wha'd' you reckon can be the cause of it--indigestion?"
Mr. Fair thought it very likely, and March said it was passing off
already.
"Humph! it's ridiculous. Come on, I'm all right now."
The man behind them passed, looked back, stopped and returned.
"Gen'le_men_, sirs, to you. Mr. Mahch, escuse me by pyo accident
earwhilin' yo' colloquial terms. I know e'zacly what cause yo' sick
transit. Yass, seh. Thass the imagination. I've had it, myseff."
March stopped haughtily, Fair moved out of hearing, and Cornelius spoke
low, with a sweet smile. "Yass, seh. You see the imagination o' yo' head
is evil. You imaginin' somepm what ain't happm yit an' jiss like as not
won't happm at all. But thass not why I seeks to interrup' you at this
junction.
"Mr. Mahch, I'm impudize to espress to you in behalfs o' a vas' colo'ed
constituency--but speakin' th'oo a small ban' o' they magnates with me
as they sawt o' janizary chairman--that Gen'l Halliday seem to be ti-ud
o' us an' done paass his bes' dotage, an' likewise the groun's an'
debasements on an' faw which we be proud to help you depopulate yo'
lan's, yass, seh, with all conceivable ligislation thereunto."
"What business is it of yours or your Blackland darkies what I do with
my woods?"
"Why, thass jess it! Whass nobody's business is ev'ybody's business, you
know."
March smiled and moved toward Fair. "I've no time to talk with you now,
Leggett."
"Oh! no, seh, I knowed you wouldn't have. But bein' the talk' o' the
town that you an' this young gen'leman"--dipping low to Fair--"is
projeckin' said depopulation I has cawdially engross ow meaju' in
writin' faw yo' conjint an' confidential consideration. Yass, seh, aw in
default whereof then to compote it in like manneh to the nex' mos'
interested."
"And, pray, who is the next most interested in my private property?"
"Why, Majo' Gyarnit, I reck'n--an' Mr. Ravenel, seein' he's the Djuke o'
Suez--p-he!"
March let his hand accept a soiled document, saying, "Well, he's not
Duke of me. Just leave me this. I'll either mail it to you or see you
again. Good-by."
The title of the document as indorsed on it was: "The Suez and Three
Counties Transportation, Immigration, Education, Navigation, and
Construction Co."
XXXIV.
DAPHNE AND DINWIDDIE: A PASTEL IN PROSE
"Professor" Pettigrew had always been coldly indifferent to many things
commonly counted chief matters of life. One of these was religion;
another was woman. His punctuality at church at the head of Rosemont's
cadets was so obviously perfunctory as to be without a stain of
hypocrisy. Yet he never vaunted his scepticism, but only let it exhale
from him in interrogative insinuations that the premises and maxims of
religion were refuted by the outcome of the war. To woman his heart was
as hard, cold, and polished as celluloid. Only when pressed did he admit
that he regarded her as an insipid necessity. One has to have a female
parent in order to get into this world--no gentleman admitted without a
lady; and when one goes out of it again, it is good to leave children so
as to keep the great unwashed from getting one's property.
Property!--humph! he or his father, at least--he became silent.
He often saw Mrs. March in church, yet kept his heart. But one night a
stereoptican lecture was given in Suez. In Mrs. March's opinion such
things, unlike the deadly theatre, were harmful only when carried to
excess. To keep John from carrying this one to excess--that is, from
going to it with anybody else--she went with him, and they "happened"--I
suppose an agnostic would say--to sit next to Dinwiddie Pettigrew. John
being in a silent mood Daphne and Dinwiddie found time for much
conversation. The hour fixed for the lecture was half-past seven.
Promptly about half-past eight the audience began to arrive. At a
quarter of nine it was growing numerous.
"Oh! no," said General Halliday to the lecturer, "don't you fret about
them going home; they'll stay like the yellow fever"--and punctually
somewhere about nine "The Great Love Stories of History" began to be
told, and luminously pictured on a white cotton full moon.
With lights turned low and everybody enjoined to converse only in
softest whispers, the conditions for spontaneous combustion were
complete in many bosoms, and at the close of the entertainment Daphne
Dalrymple, her own asbestos affections warmed, but not ignited, walked
away with the celluloid heart of Dinwiddie Pettigrew in a light blaze.
XXXV.
A WIDOW'S ULTIMATUM
At the time of which we would here speak the lover had made one call at
Widewood, but had not met sufficient encouragement to embolden him to
ask that the lovee would give, oh, give him back a heart so damaged by
fire, as to be worthless except to the thief; though his manner was rank
with hints that she might keep it now and take the rest.
Mrs. March was altogether too sacred in her own eyes to be in haste at
such a juncture. Her truly shrinking spirit was a stranger to all manner
of auctioning, but she believed in fair play, and could not in
conscience quite forget her exhilarating skirmish with Mr. Ravenel on
the day of Susie's wedding.
It had not brought on a war of roses. Something kept him away from
Widewood. Was it, she wondered, the noble fear that he might subject her
to those social rumors that are so often all the more annoying because
only premature? Ah, if he could but know how lightly she regarded such
prattle! But she would not tell him, even in impersonal verse. On the
contrary, she contributed to the _Presbyterian Monthly_--a non-sectarian
publication--those lines--which caught one glance of so many of her
friends and escaped any subsequent notice--entitled,
"LOVE-PROOF.
"She pities much, yet laughs at Love
For love of laughter! Fadeless youth"--
But the simple fact is that Mr. Ravenel's flatteries, when rare chance
brought him and the poetess together, were without purpose, and
justified in his liberal mind by the right of every Southern gentleman
to treat as irresistible any and every woman in her turn.--"Got to do
something pleasant, Miss Fannie; can't buy her poetry."
On the evening when March received from Leggett the draft of An Act
Entitled, etc., the mother and son sat silent through their supper,
though John was longing to speak. At last, as they were going into the
front room he managed to say:
"Well, mother, Fair's gone--goes to-night."
He dropped an arm about her shoulders.
"Oh!--when I can scarcely bear my own weight!" She sank into her
favorite chair and turned away from his regrets, sighing,
"Oh, no, youth and health never do think."
The son sat down and leaned thoughtfully on the centre-table.
"That's so! They don't think; they're too busy feeling."
"Ah, John, you don't feel! I wish you could."
"Humph! I wish I couldn't." He smoothed off a frown and let his palm
fall so flat upon the bare mahogany that a woman of less fortitude than
Mrs. March would certainly have squeaked. "Mother, dear, I believe I'll
try to see how little I can feel and how much I can think."
"Providence permitting, my reckless boy."
"Oh, bless your dear soul, mother, Providence'll be only too glad! yes,
I've a notion to try thinking. Fact is, I've begun already. Now, you
love solitude----"
"Ah, John!"
"Well, at any rate, you can think best when you're alone."
"O John!"
"Well, father could. I can't. I need to rub against men. You don't."
"Oh!--h--h--John!" But when Mrs. March saw the intent was only
figurative she drew her lips close and dropped her eyes.
Her son reflected a minute and spoke again. "Why, mother, just that
Yankee's being here peeping around and asking his scared-to-death
questions has pulled my wits together till I wonder where they've been.
Oh, it's so! It's not because he's a Yankee. It's simply because he's in
with the times. He knows what's got to come and what's got to go, and
how to help them do it so's to make them count! He belongs--pshaw--he
belongs to a live world. Now, here in this sleepy old Dixie----"
"Has it come to that, John?"
"Yes, it has, and it's cost a heap sight more than it's come to, because
I didn't let it come long ago. I wouldn't look plain truth in the face
for fear of going back on Rosemont and Suez, and all the time I've been
going back on Widewood!" The speaker smote the family Bible with
Leggett's document. His mother wept.
"Oh! golly," mumbled John.
"Oh! my son!"
"Why, what's the trouble, mother?"
Mrs. March could not tell him. It was not merely his blasphemies. There
seemed to be more hope of sympathy from the damaged ceiling, and she
moaned up to it,
"My son a Radical!"
He sprang to his feet. "Mother, take that insult back! For your own
sake, take it back! I hadn't a thought of politics. If my words implied
it they played me false!"
Mrs. March was anguished wonder. "Why, what else could they mean?"
"Anything! I don't know! I was only trying to blurt out what I've been
thinking out, concerning our private interests. For I've thought out and
found out--these last few days--more things that can be done, and must
be done, and done right off with these lands of ours----"
"O John! Is that your swift revenge?"
"Why, mother, dear! Revenge for what? Who on?"
"For nothing, John; on widowed, helpless me!"
"Great Scott! mother, as I've begged you fifty times, I beg you now
again, just tell me what to do or undo."
"Please don't mock me, John. You're the dictator now, by the terms of
the will. They give you the legal rights, and the legal rights are all
that count--with men. I'm in your power."
John laughed. "I wish you'd tell the dictator what to do."
"Too late, my son, you've taken the counsel of your country's enemies."
She rose to leave the room. The son slapped his thigh.
"'Pon my soul, mother, you must excuse me. Here's a letter.
"Has Jeff-Jack accepted another poem?" he asked, as she read. "I wish
he'd pay for it."
She did not say, though the missive must have ended very kindly, for in
spite of herself she smiled.
"Ah, John! your vanity is so large it can include even your mother. I
wish I had some of it; I might believe what my friends tell me. But
maybe it's vanity in me not to think they know best." She let John press
her hand upon his forehead.
"I wish I could know," she continued. "I yearn for wise counsel. O son!
why do we, both of us, so distrust and shun our one only common friend?
He could tell us what to do, son; and, oh, how we need some one to tell
us!"
John dropped the hand. "I don't need Jeff-Jack. He's got to need me."
"Oh, presumptuous boy! John, you might say Mr. Ravenel. He's old enough
to be your father."
"No, he's not! At any rate, that's one thing he'll never be!"
The widow flared up. "I can say that, sir, without your prompting."
"Why, mother! Why, I no more intended----"
"John, spare me! Oh, no, you were brutal merely by accident! I thank
you! I _must_ thank you for pointing your unfeeling hints at the most
invincib--I mean inveterate--bachelor in the three counties."
"Inveterate lover, you'd better say. He marries Fannie Halliday next
March. The General's telling every Tom, Dick and Harry to-day."
"John, I don't believe it! It can't be! I know better!"
"I wish you did, but they told me themselves, away last July, standing
hand in hand. Mother, he's got no more right to marry her----"
"Than you have! And he knows it! For John, John! There never was a more
pitiful or needless mismatch! Why, he could have--but it's none of my
business, only--" she choked.
"No, of course not," said the son, emotionally, "and it's none of mine,
either, only--humph!" He rose and strode about. "Why she could just as
easily----Oh, me!" He jostled a chair. Mrs. March flinched and burst
into tears.
"Oh, good heavens! mother, what have I done now? I know I'm coarse and
irreverent and wilful and surly and healthy, and have got the big-head
and the Lord knows what! But I swear I'll stop everything bad and be
everything good if you'll just quit off sniv--weeping!"
Strange to say, this reasonable and practicable proposition did not calm
either of them.
"I'll even go with you to Jeff-Jack and ask his advice--oh!
Jane-Anne-Maria! _now_ what's broke?"
"Only a mother's heart!" She looked up from her handkerchief. "Go seek
his advice if you still covet it; I never trusted him; I only feared I
might doubt him unjustly. But now I know his intelligence, no less than
his integrity, is beneath the contempt of a Christian woman. I leave you
to your books. My bed----"
"O mother, I wasn't reading! Come, stay; I'll be as entertaining as a
circus."
"I can't; I'm all unstrung. Let me go while I can still drag----"
John rose. A horse's tread sounded. "Now, who can that be?"
He listened again, then rolled up his fists and growled between his
teeth.
"Cawnsound that foo'--mother, go on up stairs, I'll tell him you've
retired."
"I shall do nothing so dishonorable. Why should you bury me alive? Is it
because one friend still comes with no scheme for the devastation of our
sylvan home?"
Before John could reply sunshine lighted the inquirer's face and she
stepped forward elastically to give her hand to Mr. Dinwiddie Pettigrew.
When he was gone, Daphne was still as bland as May, for a moment, and
even John's gravity was of a pleasant sort. "Mother, you're just too
sweet and modest to see what that man's up to. I'm not. I'd like to tell
him to stay away from here. Why, mother, he's--he's courting!"
The mother smiled lovingly. "My son, I'll attend to that. Ah me!
suitors! They come in vain--unless I should be goaded by the sight of
these dear Widewood acres invaded by the alien." She sweetened like a
bride.
The son stood aghast. She lifted a fond hand to his shoulder. "John, do
you know what heart hunger is? You're too young. I am ready to sacrifice
anything for you, as I always was for your father. Only, I must reign
alone in at least one home, one heart! Fear not; there is but one thing
that will certainly drive me again into marriage."
"What's that, mother?"
"A daughter-in-law. If my son marries, I have no choice--I must!" She
floated upstairs.
XXXVI.
A NEW SHINGLE IN SUEZ
Next day--"John, didn't you rise very early this morning?"
"No, ma'am."
He had not gone to bed. Yet there was a new repose in his face and
energy in his voice. He ate breakfast enough for two.
"Millie, hasn't Israel brought my horse yet?"
He came to where his mother sat, kissed her forehead, and passed; but
her languorous eyes read, written all over him, the fact that she had
drawn her cords one degree too tight, and that in the night something
had snapped; she had a new force to deal with.
"John"--there was alarm in her voice--he had the door half open--"are
you so cruel and foolish as to take last evening's words literally?"
"That's all gay, mother; 'tain't the parson I'm going after, it's the
surveyor."
He shut the door on the last word and went away whistling. Not that he
was merry; as his horse started he set his teeth, smote in the spurs,
and cleared the paling fence at a bound.
The surveyors were Champion and Shotwell. John worked with them. To his
own surprise he was the life of the party. Some nights they camped. They
sang jolly songs together; but often Shotwell would say:
"O Champion, I'll hush if you will; we're scaring the wolves. Now, if
you had such a voice as John's--Go on, March, sing 'Queen o' my Soul.'"
John would sing; Shotwell would lie back on the pine-needles with his
eyes shut, and each time the singer reached the refrain, "Mary, Mary,
queen of my soul," the impassioned listener would fetch a whoop and cry,
"That's her!" although everybody had known that for years the only "her"
who had queened it over Shotwell's soul was John's own Fannie Halliday.
"Now, March, sing, 'Thou wert the first, thou aht the layst,' an' th'ow
yo' whole soul into it like you did last night!"
"John," said Champion once, after March had sung this lament, "You're a
plumb fraud. If you wa'n't you couldn't sing that thing an' then turn
round and sing, 'They laughed, ha-ha! and they quaffed, ha-ha!'"
"Let's have it!" cried Shotwell. "Paass tin cups once mo',
gen'le_men_!"--tink--tink--
"March," said Champion, "if you'll excuse the personality, what's
changed you so?"
John laughed and said he didn't think he was changed, but if he was he
reckoned it was evolution. Which did not satisfy Shotwell, who had
"quaffed, ha-ha!" till he was argumentative.
"Don't you 'scuse personal'ty 't all, March. I know wha's change' you.
'Tain't no 'sperience. You ain't been converted. You're gettin' _ripe_!
'S all is about it. Wha' changes green persimmons? 's nature; 'tain't
'sperience."
"Well, I'd like to know if sunshine an' frost ain't experiences,"
retorted Champion.
"Some experiences," laughed John, "are mighty hot sunshine, and some are
mighty hard frosts." To which the two old soldiers assented with more
than one sentimental sigh as the three rolled themselves in their
blankets and closed their eyes.
When the survey was done they made a large colored map of everything,
and John kept it in a long tin tube--what rare times he was not looking
at it.
"How short-sighted most men are! They'll have lands to dispose of and
yet not have maps made! How the devil do they expect ever"--etc.
Sometimes he smiled to himself as he rolled the gorgeous thing up, but
only as we smile at the oddities of one whom we admire.
He opened an office. It contained a mantel-piece, a desk, four chairs, a
Winchester rifle, and a box of cigars. The hearth and mantel-piece were
crowded with specimens of earths, ores, and building stones, and of
woods precious to the dyer, the manufacturer, the joiner and the
cabinet-maker. Inside the desk lay the map whenever he was, and a
revolver whenever he was not--"Out. Will be back in a few minutes."
On the desk's top were more specimens, three or four fat old books from
Widewood, and on one corner, by the hour, his own feet, in tight boots,
when he read Washington's Letters, Story on the Constitution, or the
Geology of Dixie. What interested Suez most of all was his sign. It
professed no occupation. "John March." That was all it proclaimed, for a
time, in gilt, on a field of blue smalts. But one afternoon when he
was--"Out of town. Will be back Friday"--some Rosemont boys scratched in
the smalts the tin word, Gentleman.
"Let it alone, John," said the next day's _Courier_. "It's a good ad.,
and you can live up to it." It stayed.
XXXVII.
WISDOM AND FAITH KISS EACH OTHER
It came to pass in those days that an effort to start a religious
revival issued from Suez "University." It seems the "Black-and-Tannery,"
as the Rosemont boys called it, was having such increase in numbers that
its president had thought well to give the national thanks-giving day
special emphasis on the devotional side. Prayer for gifts of grace to
crown these temporal good fortunes extended over into a second and third
evening, black young women and tan young men asked to be prayed for, the
president "wired" glad news to the board in New York, the board "wired"
back, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward!"--just
ten words, economy is the road to commendation--meetings were continued,
and the gray-headed black janitor, richest man in the institution,
leading in prayer, promised that if the Lord would "come down" then and
there, "right thoo de roof," he himself would pay for the shingles!
Since corner-stone day the shabby-coated president had not known such
joy. In the chapel, Sunday morning, he read the story of the two lepers
who found the Syrian camp deserted in the siege of Samaria; and preached
from the text, "We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and
we hold our peace.... So they came and called unto the porter of the
city." That afternoon he went to Parson Tombs. The pastor was cordial,
brotherly; full of tender gladness to hear of the "manifestations." They
talked a great while, were pleased with each other, and came to several
kind and unexpected agreements. They even knelt and prayed together. As
to the president's specific errand--his proposal for a week of union
revival meetings in Parson Tomb's church, with or without the town
congregation, the "university students" offering to occupy only the
gallery--the pastor said that as far as _he_ was concerned, he was much
disposed to favor it.
"Why, befo' the wa' ow slaves used to worship with us; I've seen ow
gallery half full of 'm! And we'd be only too glad to see it so
again--for we love 'em yet, seh--if they wouldn't insist so on mixin'
religion an' politics. I'll consult some o' my people an' let you know."
When he consulted his church officers that evening only two replied
approvingly. One of them was the oldest, whitest haired man in the
church. "Faw my part," he said, "I don't think the churches air
a-behavin' theyse'ves like Christians to the niggehs anywheres. I jest
know ef my Lawd an' Master was here in Dixie now he'd not bless a single
one of all these separations between churches, aw in churches, unless
it's the separation o' the sexes, which I'm pow'ful sorry to see that
broke up. I'm faw invitin' them people, dry-so, an' I don't give a cent
whether they set upstairs aw down"--which was true.
The other approving voice was young Doctor Grace.
"Brethren, I believe in separating worshippers by race. But when, as
now, this is so fully and amicably provided for, I would have all come
together, joined, yet separated, to cry with one shout, 'Lord, revive
us!' And he'll do it, brethren! I feel it right here!" He put his hand
on the exact spot.
Garnet spoke. "Brother Grace, you say the separation is fully provided
for--where'll the white teachers of our colored brethren sit? If they
sit down-stairs we run the risk of offending some of our own folks; if
they sit in the gallery that's a direct insult to the whole community.
It'll not be stood. When colored mourners come up to the
front--h-they'll come in troops--where'll you put 'em?"
"I'd put them wherever there's room for them," was the heroic reply.
"Oh, there'd be room for them everywhere," laughed Garnet, "for as far
as _our_ young folks are concerned, the whole thing would be a complete
frazzle. Why, you take a graceless young fellow, say like John March.
How are you going to get him to come up here and kneel down amongst a
lot of black and saddle-colored bucks and wenches?--I word it his way,
you understand. No, sir, as sure as we try this thing, we'll create
dissension--in a church where everything now is as sweet and peaceful as
the grave."
"Of course we mustn't have dissensions," said Parson Tombs.
Mr. Usher, who spoke last and very slowly, said but a word or two. He
agreed with Brother Garnet. And yet he believed this was a message from
on high to be up and a-doin'. "This church, brethren, has jest _got_ to
be replaastered, an' _I_ don't see how we goin' to do it 'ithout we have
a outpourin' o' the spirit that'll give us mo' church membehs."