with half a dozen "follies" "for sale," each with its small bunch of
workmen's cottages, some empty, some full, alas! and all treeless and
grassless under the blazing sun. Far beyond to the right, shading away
from green to blue, rose the hills of Widewood--lost Widewood!--hiding
other "tied-up capital" and more stranded labor. For scattered through
those lovely forests were scores, hundreds, of peasants from across
seas, to every separate one of whom the scowling patient in this room,
with fierce tears perpetually in his throat, believed he owed
explanation and restitution.
Garnet!--owned half of Widewood! March's confinement here dated from the
night when he had at length unearthed the well-hid truth of how the
stately Major had acquired it. No sooner had Ravenel and Garnet got the
Land Company into its living grave, than Gamble and Bulger, with Leggett
looming mysteriously in their large shadows, forced the Construction
Company into liquidation by a kind demand upon Mattox, Crickwater, and
Pettigrew for certain call loans of two years' standing, accepted in
settlement their shares of the Widewood lands wrested from the Land
Company, and then somehow privately induced Garnet to take those
cumbersome assets off their hands at a round cash price. That was the
day before March had got home and Bulger had cleared out. Gamble had
departed much more leisurely. Whenever money was at stake Gamble had the
courage of a bear with whelps. Whenever he said, "I can't afford to stay
here," it meant that his milk-pail was full and the cow empty. This time
it meant he had, as Shotwell put it, "broken the record of the three
counties--pulled the wool over Jeff-Jack's eyes;" for he had sold his
railroad to a system hostile to the fortunes of Suez.
The other half of Widewood was public domain.
"Thank Heaven for that!" said March, lying dressed on his bed.
"Suez thanks Mr. Ravenel," melodiously responded his mother. Parson
Tombs had brought her up here and slipped out again on creaking tiptoe.
"Why, mother, it was I made it so in my original plan!"
"O my beloved boy, it was in Mr. Ravenel's original plan when he lent
your poor father the money to send you to school. I have it on good
authority."
The son gave a vexed laugh. "O, as to that, why Cornelius Leggett
suggested it when----"
"John! forbear!" Mrs. March was not prejudiced. She could admit the name
of a colored person in a discussion; but _that_ miscreant had lured her
trusted Jane to the altar and written back that she was one of the best
wives he had had for years.
John forbore. He was profoundly distressed, but tried to speak more
lightly. "Law! mother, one reason urged by Major Garnet for our
privately reserving that trifling scrap of sixty acres on the west side
of the creek was so's to make each half of the company's tract an even
fifty thousand acres, one for the three counties and the other--O!
there's another thing. I never thought to tell you because it was hardly
worth remembering. On Major Garnet's suggestion, and so's to never get
it mixed up with the Company's lands--you know how carelessly our county
records are kept--I made a relinquishment to you of my half of your and
my joint interest in those sixty acres. I never supposed I was going to
make it one day the only piece of Widewood left you."
"Ah!" sighed the hearer, "half as many dollars would be far better for a
helpless widow."
John was scowling in another direction and did not see her pretty blush.
His voice deepened with indignation. "I'll give you double--right
here--now--cash!"
"Will you write the receipt for me to sign?" she sweetly asked.
He started up, wrote, paid, and smiled as he shut his empty purse. His
mother sighed in amiable pensiveness, saying, "This is a mystery to me,
my son."
"No more than it is to me," dryly responded John, angered by this new
sting from his old knowledge of her ways. It was her policy always to
mystify those who had the best right to understand her. "I shall try to
solve it," he added.
"I should rather not have you speak of it at once," she replied, almost
hurriedly. "You'll know why in a few days." Her blush came again. This
time John saw it and marvelled anew. He tossed himself back on his bed,
fevered with irritation.
"Mother"--he fiercely shifted his pillows and looked at the
ceiling--"the chief mystery to me is that you seem to care so little for
the loss of our lands!"
"I thought you told me that Major Garnet considered those sixty acres as
almost worthless."
"I believe he does."
Her voice became faint. "I would gladly explain, son, if you were only
well enough to hear me--patiently."
He lay rigidly still, with every nerve aching. His hands, locked under
his head, grew tight as he heard her rise and draw near. He shut his
eyes hard as she laid on his wrinkling forehead a cold kiss moistened
with a tear, and melted from the room.
"Mother!" he called, appeasingly, as the door was closing; but it
clicked to; she floated down the stairs. He turned his face into the
pillow and clenched his hands. By and by he turned again and exclaimed,
as from some long train of thought, "'Better off without Widewood than
with it,' am I? On my soul! I begin to believe it. But if you can see
that so clearly, O! my poor little unsuspicious mother, why can't you
even now understand that they were thieves and robbed us?
Who--who--_what_--can have so blinded you?"
He left the bed and moved to his most frequent seat, the north window.
Thence, in the western half of the view, he could see the three
counties' "mother of learning and useful arts," fair, large-grown
Rosemont, glistening on her green hills in each day's setting sun, a
lovely frontispiece to the ever-pleasant story of her master's redundant
prosperity. Her June fledglings were but just gone and she was in the
earliest days of her summer rest. "Enlarged and superbly equipped and
embellished," the newspapers said of her in laudatory headlines, and it
was true that "no expense had been spared." Not any other institution in
Dixie spread such royal feasts of reason and information for her
children, at lavish cost to herself, low price to them, and queenly
remuneration to the numerous members of the State Legislature who came
to discourse on Agriculture, Mining, Banking, Trade, Journalism,
Jurisprudence, Taxation, and Government.
How envied was Garnet! Gamble and Bulger were thrifty and successful,
but Gamble and Bulger had fled and envy follows not the fleeing.
Halliday had attained his ambition; was in the United States Senate; but
the boom had sent him there, "regardless of politics," to plead for a
deeper channel in the Swanee, a move that was only part of one of
Ravenel's amusing "deals," whereby he had procured at last the political
extinction of Cornelius Leggett. Moreover, for all the old General's
activities he had kept himself poor; almost as poor as he was
incorruptible; who could envy him? And Ravenel; Ravenel was still the
arbiter of political fortune, but it was part of his unostentatious
wisdom never to let himself be envied. But Garnet, amid all this
business depression upon which March looked down from his sick-room,
wore envy on his broad breast like a decoration. There were spots of
tarnish on his heavy gilding; not merely the elder Miss Kinsington, but
Martha Salter as well, had refused to say good-by to Mademoiselle
Eglantine on the eve of her final return to France; Fanny Ravenel had,
with cutting playfulness, asked Mrs. Proudfit, as that sister was
extolling the Major's vast public value, if she did not know perfectly
well that Rosemont was a political "barrel." And yet it was Garnet who
stood popularly as the incarnation of praiseworthy success.
John March, begrudged him none of his triumphs--at their price. Yet it
was before _this_ window-picture his heart sunk under the heaviest and
cruelest of his exasperations. Other bafflements tormented him; here
alone stood the visible, beautiful emblem of absolute discomfiture. For
here was the silent, lifted hand which forbade him pursue his
defrauders. Follow their man[oe]uvres as he might, always somewhere
short of the end of their windings he found this man's fortune and
reputation lying square across the way like a smooth, new fortification
under a neutral flag. Seven times he had halted before them disarmed and
dumb, and turned away with a chagrin that burnt his brain and gnawed his
very bones.
There came a footstep, a rap at the door, and Parson Tombs entered,
radiant with tidings. "John!" he began, but his countenance and voice
fell to an anxious tenderness; "why, Brother March, I--I didn't
suspicion you was this po'ly, seh. Why, John, you hadn't ought to try to
sit up until yo' betteh!"
"It rests me to get out of bed a little while off and on. How are you,
these days, sir? How's Mrs. Tombs?"
"Oh, we keep a-goin', thank the Lawd. Brother March, I've got pow'ful
good news."
"Is it something about my mother? She was here about an hour ago."
"Yass, it is! The minute she got back to ow house--and O, John, it jest
seems to me like her livin' with us ever since Widewood was divided up
has been a plumb provi_dence_!--I says, s'I, 'Wha'd John say?' and when
she said she hadn't so much as told you, 'cause you wa'n't well enough,
we both of us, Mother Tombs and me, we says, s'I, 'Why, the sicker he is
the mo' it'll help him! Besides, he's sho' to hear it; the ve'y wind'll
carry it; which he oughtn't never to find it out in that hilta-skilta
wa-ay! Sister March, s'I, 'let me go tell him!' And s'she, jestingly,
'Go--if you think it's safe.' So here I am!" The old man laughed
timorously.
"Well?" John kept his hands in his lap, where each was trying to wrench
the fingers off the other. "What is it?"
"Why, John, the Lawd has provided! For one thing and even that the
smallest, Sister March's Widewood lands air as good as hers again!"
"What has happened?" cried the pale youth.
"O, John, the best that ever could! What Mother Tombs and I and the
Sextons and the Coffins and the Graveses and sco'es o' lovin' friends
and relations have been a hopin' faw all this year an' last! Sister
March has engaged her hand to Brother Garnet!"
"I think I'll lie down," said John, beginning to rise. The frightened
Parson clutched him awkwardly, he reeled a step or two, said,
"Don't--trouble"--and fell across the bed with a slam that jarred the
floor. The old man moaned a helpless compassion.
"It's nothing," said March, waving him back. "Only my foot slipped." He
dragged himself to his pillow. "Good-by, sir. I prefer--good-by!" He
waved his visitor to the door. As it closed one of his hands crept under
the pillow. There it seemed to find and rest on some small thing, and
then a single throe wrenched his frame as of an anguish beyond all
tears.
At Rosemont, as night was falling, Doctor Coffin, March's physician, the
same who had attended him in boyhood when he was shot, stood up before
the new Rose of Rosemont, in the greatly changed reception-room where in
former years Bonaparte had tried so persistently to cross the Alps. She
had left the room and returned and was speaking of Johanna, as she said,
"She'll go with you. Have your seat, Doctor; she's getting ready and
will be here in a few minutes."
The Doctor made a glad gesture. "I know how hard it must be for you to
do without her," he said, "but if you can get along somehow for three or
four days, why--you know she's away yonder the best nurse in the three
counties--it'll make a world of difference to my patient."
"I hope he'll like her ways," replied the young mistress. "There's so
much in that."
"Don't fear!" laughed the Doctor. "He hasn't looked so pleased since he
first took sick as he did when I told him I was going to fetch her. By
the bye, how do you sleep since I changed yo' medicine this last time;
no better? Ain't yo' appetite improved any? I still think the secret of
all yo' trouble is malaria; I haven't a doubt you brought it with you
from the North! I wish I could find as good an explanation of yo'
father's condition.--I just declare it's an outrage on the rights of a
plain old family chills-and-fever doctor, for a lot of you folks to be
havin' these here sneakin' nerve and brain things that calomel an'
quinine can't--O! here's Johanna."
On his way through town again, with the black maid beside him in his
battered top buggy, he paused at the Tombses' gate, hailed by the fond
old Parson. "You haven't got her? Why, so you have!--'Howdy, Johanna,
you're a bless'n' here to-night,' as the hymn says. Doctor, I hope an'
trust an' pray Sister Proudfit's attack won't turn out serious----?"
The Doctor was surprised. "_I_ ain't been called to her; didn't know she
was sick."
"Well, I say!" exclaimed the Parson. "Why, it's all over town that you
_wuz_, and that you found her so prostrated with relaxation of the
nerves that her husband couldn't hold her still! You've heard, of co'se,
that he's got back at last? Isn't it pathetic? I've been talkin' about
it to Brother Garnet--you passed him just now, didn't you?--and as he
says, her husband goes off, a walkin' ruin, to be gone three months,
stays twelve, and arrives back totally unexpected on this mawnin's
six-o'clock train, a-callin' himself _cu'ud_! Brother Coffin, _you_
don't believe that, _do_ you? Why, as Brother Garnet says, the drinkin'
habit is as much a moral as a physical sickness, and the man that can
make common talk of it in his own case to ev'y Tom, Dick, and Harry, evm
down to the niggehs, ain't so much as tetched the deepest root uv his
trouble, much less cu'ud! Why, Doctor, Brother Garnet see him,
himself!--a-tellin' that C'nelius Leggett!--and pulled him away! Po'
Brother Garnet! Johanna, I wish, betwixt the Doctor an' you, you could
make him look betteh. His load of usefulness is too great. I declare,
Brother Coffin, he was that tiud this evenin' that evm here, where you'd
expect him to seem fresh and happy in his new joy, he looked as if, if
it wa'n't faw the wrong of the thing, he'd almost be willin' to call
upon the rocks and the mountains to fall on him and hide him.--But I
mustn't detain you!"
The physician drove on, and by and by was leaving directions with
Johanna and her protectors, Tom Hersey and his wife. "And, Tom, mind
you, _no visitors_. It's his own wish. Good-night.--O!--that young Mr.
Fair. March tells me he's expecting him any time within the next few
days, to help lay the corner-stone of this new building up at the
colored college; Fair Hall, yes. Whenever he comes take him right up to
see March. I promised John you would!"
LXXVII.
"LINES OF LIGHT ON A SULLEN SEA"
From the first hour of Johanna's attendance March began to mend. Whence
she came, whither she went, as she moved in and out so pleasantly, he
never thought to ask, and never found out that her bed was a pallet laid
on the stair-landing just at his door.
The young bloods down in the street were keenly amused. "Doctor, if he
was anybody but John March aw she anybody but Johanna"--the rest was too
funny for words. "How is he to-day, anyhow? Improving rap'--well! good
fo' that! Come, gentlemen, let's--Come, Shot. Doctor, won't you--" And
as they went they all agreed that the dark maiden's invincible modesty
was like some "subtle emana-ation," as Shotwell expressed it, which
charmed all evil out of the grossest eye.
True it was in the convalescent's case, that while Johanna's mere doings
had their curative value, her simple presence had more. Yet her greatest
healing was in her words; in what she told him. She only answered
questions; but these he lightly plied on any and every trivial matter
that promised to lead up--or around--to one subject which seemed to
allure him without cessation. Yet always at her first pause after
entering upon any phase of this topic, he would say, "But that's not
what--hem!--I was speaking of," and starting once more, at any distance
away, would begin to steal yet another approach toward the same enticing
theme.
So the brief time of her appointed service came to its end, neither the
Doctor, nor the convalescent, nor even her young mistress, for one
moment imagining what dear delight, yet withal what saintly martyrdom to
Johanna, this three days' task had been.
In its last hour, when she, to end all well, prepared and brought up the
captive's evening meal, she found him sitting up in bed talking to Henry
Fair.
"Doctor thinks I can go down to my office Monday. Yes, I knew what ailed
me better than he did. I began to recover the moment I quit trying to
convince the Lord that He ought to run this world in my private
interest. Ah! Johanna, so this is the last, is it? I'm pow'ful sorry!
Mr. Fair, you remember Johanna, don't you?"
Mr. Fair remembered, the maid courtesied, and March, a trifle unduly
animated, ran on--"Johanna's the salt of the earth, Mr. Fair. Don't
often see best salt that color, do you?" Then dropping his tone--"O! you
know, if my chief concern were still, as it was at first, to recover my
fortunes, or even to vindicate my abilities, I reckon I could make out
to accept defeat--almost. For, really, I'm just about the only
sufferer--outwardly, at least. Of course, there's an awful shrinkage
here, but all our home people have made net gains--unless it is
Proudfit; I--eh--Johanna, you needn't stay in here; only don't go beyond
call."
The maid closed the door after her, took her accustomed rocking-chair
and needle on the stair-landing, and being quite as human as if she had
been white, listened. Fair's words were very indistinct, but March's
came through the thin door-panels as clean as rifle-balls. "O! yes," was
one of his replies, "I know that with even nothing left but the
experiences, I'm a whole world richer, in things that make a real
manhood and life, than when I was land-poor with my hundred thousand
acres. As far as _I_ am concerned, I can afford to deny myself all the
reprisals, and revenges too, that litigations could ever give me. I've
got sixty acres of Widewood to begin over with--By Jo'! Garnet, himself,
began with less!" He let go a feverish laugh.
"If I come to that," he added, "I've got, besides, a love of study and a
talent for teaching, two things he never had." Fair asked a question and
he laughed again. "O! no, it was only a passing thought. If anybody
'busts Rosemont wide open' it'll have to be Leggett. O! no, I----" He
played with his spoon.
Fair's response must have been complimentary. "Thank you," said March;
"why, thank you!" Then the visitor spoke again and the convalescent
replied:
"Ah! a 'diligent and vigilant patience'--yes, I don't doubt it would
serve me best--provided, my dear sir, it didn't turn out simply a virtue
of impotency; or, worse yet, what I once heard called 'the thrifty
discretion of a short-winded courage!'"
When Fair responded this time March let him speak long. Johanna bent her
ear anxiously. Her patient seemed to be neglecting his food; but as he
began to reply she resumed her needle.
"Fair," she heard him say, "--why--why, Fair, that's a mighty handsome
offer to come from such a prudent business man as you. My George! sir,
men don't often put such valuable freight into a boat that's aground.
Why--why, you spoil my talk; I positively don't know what--what to say!"
There was a choke in his voice. Fair made some answer which March
gratefully cut short.
"O! I wish I could! It hurts me all over and through to decline it. But
I must; I've got to! 'Think it over'--O! I've thought it over probably
before you ever thought of it at all! I know my capabilities. I'm not in
such a fierce hurry for things as I used to be, but I've got what brains
I ever had--and spine, too--and I know that even without your offer
there's a better chance for me North than here. But--O! it's no use,
Fair, I just can't go! I mustn't! Yes. Yes. O! yes, I know all that,
but, my dear sir, I can't afford--You know, this Suez soil isn't
something I can shake off my shoes as you might. George! I'm part of it!
I'm not Quixotic--not a bit! I'm only choosing between two sorts of
selfishness, one not quite so narrow as the other; but--I've got to stay
here."
Fair, after a short silence, asked if this was his only reason.
"Only reason? Why--why, yes, that's my only reason! To be sure, there's
a sense in which--why, conscience! isn't it enough? O! of course, I
could _think up_ other considerations, but they're not reasons--I don't
allow them to bias me at all! Fact is, I was never before quite so
foot-free. Why did you ask? Did you fancy I might be contemplating
marriage? O, go 'long! why, my good gracious, Fair, I--it's an honest
fact--I haven't even _been to see_ one marriageable girl since I came
back from Europe! No, the reason I give is _the_ reason. It covers
everything else.
"O! if you are thinking of debts, I could cancel them at least as fast
if I went as if I stayed. They're not large, the money debts. O! no;
it's--Fair--I spent a year in Europe coaxing men to leave their
mother-country for better wages in this. Of course, that was all right.
But it brought one thing to my notice: that when our value is not mere
wages, it isn't every man who's got the unqualified right to pick up and
put out just whenever he gets ready. Look out that window. There's the
college where for five years I got my education--at half price!--and
with money borrowed here in Suez! Look out this one. Mr. Fair, right
down there in those streets truth and justice are lying wounded and
half-dead, and the public conscience is being drugged! We Southerners,
Fair, don't believe one man's as good as another; we think one man in
his right place is worth a thousand who can't fill it. My place is
here!--No! let me finish; I'm not fatigued at all! How I'm to meet this
issue God only knows, but who'll even try to do it if I don't?
Halliday's too far off. Ravenel looks on as silent as a gallows!
Proudfit--poor old Proudfit hasn't been sober since the day he got home.
Father Tombs has grown timid and slow-sighted, and the whole people,
Fair, the whole people! have let themselves be seduced in the purse and
are this day betrayed as foully in their fortunes as in their souls!"
The speaker ended in a high key. He was trembling with nervous
exhaustion. In an effort to jerk higher in the pillow his knee struck
the tray, the crockery slid and crashed, and Johanna found him in the
middle of the room, fiercely shaking the skirt of his dressing-gown.
"O! never mind me; get the milk out of the bed!"
She saw how overwrought he was, yet turned to obey. Fair, to aid her,
snatched away the pillows. A small thing from under them fluttered out
upon the carpet and lay before the three. With a despairing murmur the
invalid picked it up, and the two men stood facing each other. Fair
colored slightly, March slowly crimsoned. Then Fair smiled. March smiled
too, but foolishly. Johanna made herself very busy with the bed, but she
saw all. Fair pushed forward a rocking-chair, into which March sank.
Then with gentle insistence he drew from March's hand the worn
photograph--for such it was--leaned against a window and gazed on it,
while March turned his brow into the cushioned back of his chair and
wept as comfortably as any girl.
Johanna took out the tray and its wreck, and in a moment was back with
fresh sheets. March had lain down on the bare mattress and, with his
cheek on a pillow, was smiling in mild amusement at Fair's account of a
brief talk he had had with Leggett while the train waited at Pulaski
City.
"Yes," said March, moving enough to let the bed be made, "he pretends to
keep a restaurant there now; but where he gets all the money he spends
is more than I can make out, unless it's from men who can't afford to
let him tell what he knows."
A servant of the house tapped at the door and said Major Garnet was in
the office, waiting for Johanna. March rose to his elbow and gave her a
hand.
"Why, I shan't ever know how to be sick without you any mo'!" he said,
as her dark fingers slipped timidly from his friendly hold.
"Johanna!--now--now, don't you go tellin' things you'd oughtn't to; will
you?"
"No, seh," came from the maid slowly, yet with a suspicious readiness
quite out of keeping with the limp diffidence of her attitude.