an instant--sounds like----" He rose higher. Fair stepped to the west
window. Loud words were coming from the sidewalk under it. March started
eagerly. "That's Proudfit's----" Before he could finish the bang of a
pistol rang, evidently in the office door, another, farther within,
roared up through the house, and a third and fourth re-echoed it amid
the wailings of Johanna as she flew down the stairs crying:
"Mahs John Wesley! O Lawdy, Lawdy! Mahs John Wesley! Mahs John Wesley!"
At the same instant came Tom Hersey's voice, remote, but clear:
"Stop! Great God! Stop! Don't you see he's dying?"
Fair was already on the staircase and March was whipping on his boots,
when Shotwell, coming up by leaps, waved them back into the room. "It's
all ova, Mr. Fair. Po' Proudy's gone, John. He fi-ud an' missed, and got
Garnet's first bullet in his heart an' the othe's close to it. Garnet's
locked himself into Tom Hersey's private room an' sent for Fatheh Tombs,
to----"
"Fair!" interrupted March, "go! Go tell her he's safe and will not
be--interfered with! I'll make your word good; go, Fair, go!"
But Fair answered with hardly less emotion, "I cannot, March! It isn't a
man's errand! It isn't a man's errand!"
"Take Mrs. Ravenel!" cried March, and read quick assent in his friend's
face. "But make her go dressed as she is; you've got to outrun rumor!
Captain, go tell Tom to give him Firefly, won't you? She's mine, Fair,"
he continued, following to the stairs; "she's the mare I cured for
Bulger; perfectly gentle, only--Fair!--don't touch her with the whip!"
"If you do," drawled Shotwell to Fair, as they hurried down into the
lamplight, "you'll think the devil's inside of her with the jimjams.
Still, she's lovely as long as you don't. Ah me! this is no time to
jest! Po' Proudfit! He leaves a spotless characteh!"
Through the unnatural bustle, amid which Crickwater at the door of the
closed office stood answering or ignoring questions and showing his
intimates where Proudfit's wild shot had chopped out a large lock of his
hair, they went to Hersey's door and so on to the stable. "Garnet's the
man to pity, Mr. Fair. I couldn't say it befo' March, who's got family
reasons--through his motheh--faw savin' Garnet whateveh he can of his
splendid reputaation, but I'm mighty 'fraid they won't be a rag of it
left, seh, big enough for a gun-wad! Mr. Fair, you've got a hahd drive
befo' you, seh, an' if you'll allow me to suggest it, seh, I think it
would be only wise, befo' you staht, faw us to take a drink, seh."
"Thank you," said the Northerner, "I hardly think--Do you suppose Major
Garnet's firing those last two shots after----"
"Will ruin him? O Lawd, not that! We all know, and always have, that
he's perfectly cra-azy when he's enra-aged. No, my deah seh, Miz
Proudfit has confessed! She says----"
"Are you not surprised that Major Garnet was armed?" Fair interrupted.
"O! no, seh, Colonel Proudfit was too much of a gentleman to be lookin'
faw a man, with a gun, an' not send him word! And, besides, Miz
Proudfit's revela-a-tions----"
But the horse and buggy were ready, and at last March--to whom, as he
stood at his window fully dressed, the few moments had seemed an
hour--saw Fair drive swiftly by and fade into the gloom. Charlie
Champion came toward the hotel, bringing Parson Tombs. March put on his
hat, but for many minutes only paced the darkening room. Finally he
started for the stairs, and half way down them met the Doctor.
"Why, bless my soul, John," he good-naturedly cried, "this is quite
_too_ fast."
"I reckon not, Doctor; I believe I'm well. I don't understand it, but
it's so." He endured the Doctor's hand for a moment on his wrist and
temples.
"Why, I declare!" laughed the physician with noisy pleasure, "I believe
yo' right!" As they descended he explained how such recoveries are
possible and why they are so rare, citing from medical annals a case or
two whose mention John thought very unflattering.
"I should like to know what's become of Johanna," said March at the foot
of the stairs.
"Johanna? O they say she ran all the way to Fannie Ravenel's, and they
harnessed up the fast colt and put off for Rosemont, Johanna driving!"
"Why, of course! I might have known it! But"--John stopped--"Why, then,
where's Fair?"
"O I saw him. He drove on to overtake 'em. He'll have a job of it!"
"Firefly can do it," said March, picturing the chase to himself. "But
I--I wonder what--This is no time--Why--why, what did he want to do it
for?"
"O he may have had the best of reasons," said the amiable Doctor, and
departed.
Outside a certain door--"Why, John March!" murmured Tom Hersey. The
voices of Garnet and Parson Tombs could be heard within. They ceased as
the landlord modestly rattled the knob, and when he gave the visitor's
name Garnet's voice said:
"Ask him in."
As March entered, only Parson Tombs rose to meet him. He had a large
handkerchief in his fingers, his eyes were very red, and he gave his
hand in silence. Garnet, too, had been weeping. He shaded his downcast
eyes from the lamp. March had determined to give himself no time for
feelings, but his voice was suddenly not his own as he began, "Major
Garnet," and stopped, while Garnet slowly lifted his face until the
light shone on it. March stood still and felt his heart heave between
loathing and compassion; for on that lamp-lit face one hour of public
shame had written more guilt than years of secret perfidy and sin, and
the question rushed upon the young man's mind, Can this be the author of
all my misfortunes and the father of?--he quenched the thought and
driving back a host of memories said:
"Major, Doctor Coffin has just pronounced me well. I am at your
disposal, sir, for anything that ought to be done."
Garnet shaded his eyes again. "Thank you, John," was his subdued reply.
"It's such a clear case of self-defence--I hear there will be no arrest.
Still, I shall remain here to-night. Johanna's gone home, I believe.
There's only one thing, the deepest yearning of my heart, John; but
before I ask that boon, I want you to know, John, that I acknowledge my
sin! my awful, awful sin of years! O my God! my God! why did I do it?"
Parson Tombs wept again. "He's confessed everything, John," he said with
eager tenderness.
"God knows," responded Garnet, "God knows I never concealed it but to
save others from misery! and while I concealed it I could not master it!
Now I have purged my sin-blackened soul of all its hideous secret and
evil purpose! The thorn in my flesh is plucked out and I cast myself on
the mercy of God and the charity of his people!"
"Pra-aise Gawd!" murmured Parson Tombs, "no sinneh eveh done that in
va-ain!"
"O John," moaned Garnet, "God only knows what I've suffered and must
suffer! But it's all right! all right! I pray He may lop off every
unfruitful branch of my life--honors, possessions--till nothing is left
but Rosemont, the lowly work He called me to, Himself! Let Him make me
as one of his hired servants! But, John," he continued while March stood
dumb with wonder at his swift loss of subtlety, "I want you to know also
that I feel no resentment--I cannot--O I cannot--against her who shares
my guilt and shame!"
"Great Heaven!" murmured March, with a start as if to turn away.
"No, thank God! her vanity and jealousy can drive me to no more
misdeeds! She made me send Mademoiselle Eglantine to Europe, when she
knew I had to sell her husband's stock in both companies to bribe the
woman to go! John, the cause of her betraying me to him at last was my
faithful refusal to break off my engagement with your mother!"
"Major Garnet, I prefer----"
"Will you tell your mother that, John? It's the one thing you can do for
me! Tell her I beseech her in the name of a love----"
"Stop!" murmured March in a voice that quivered with repulsion.
"--A love that has dared all, and lost all, for hers----"
"Stop!" said John again, and Garnet turned a beseeching eye upon the
pastor.
"John," tearfully said the old man, "let us not yield to ow feelings
when the cry of a soul in shipwreck"--he stopped to swallow his
emotions. "Ow penitent brother on'y asks you to bear his message. It's
natu'al he should cling to the one pyo tie that holds him to us. O John,
'in wrath remembeh mercy!' An' yet you may be the nearest right, God
knows! O brethren, let's kneel and ask Him faw equal love an' wisdom!"
Garnet rose to kneel, but March put out a protesting hand. "I wouldn't
do that, sir." The tone was gentle, almost compassionate. "I don't
suppose God would strike you dead, but--I wouldn't do it, sir." He
turned to go, and, glancing back unexpectedly, saw on Garnet's face a
look so evil that it haunted him for years.
LXXVIII.
BARBARA FINDS THE RHYME
Barbara walked along the slender road in front of Rosemont's grove. The
sun was gone. Her father had not arrived yet with Johanna, but she
questioned every stir of the air for the sound of their coming. A
yearning which commonly lay very still in her bosom and ought in these
two long years to have got reconciled to its lovely prison, was up once
more in silent mutiny.
With slow self-compulsion she turned toward the house. The dim, vacated
dormitories grew large against the fading after-glow. The thrush's song
ceased. Remotely from the falling slope beyond the unlighted house the
voices of a negro boy and girl, belated in the milking-pen, came to
her ear more lightly than the gurgle of the shallow creek so near
her feet. Suddenly the cry of the whip-Will's-widow filled the
grove--"whip-Will's-widow! whip-Will's-widow! whip-Will's-widow!"--in
headlong importunity until the whole air sobbed and quivered with the
overcharge of its melancholy passion. Then as abruptly it was hushed,
the echoes died, and Barbara, at the grove gate, recalled the other
twilight hour, a counterpart of this in all but its sadness, when, on
this spot, she had bidden John March come the next day to show Widewood
to Henry Fair.
And now Henry Fair "some day soon," his unexpected letter said, was to
come again. And she was letting him come. One of his sweet mother's
letters--always so welcome--had ever so delicately hinted a hope that
she would do so, the fond mother affectionately imputing to the father's
wisdom the feeling that Henry's present life contained more
uncertainties than were good for his, or anyone's, future. He was coming
at last for her final word, and in her meditations, his patient
constancy, like a great ambassador, pleaded mightily in advance.
Henry Fair, gentle, strong, and true, will come; _the other_ never
comes. The explanation is very simple; she has made it to Johanna twice
within the year: a strained relation--it happens among the best of
men--between him and Rosemont's master. Besides, Mr. March, she says,
visits nowhere. He is, as Fannie herself testifies, more completely out
of all Suez's little social eddies than even the overtasked young
mistress of Rosemont, and does nothing day or night but buffet the flood
of his adversities. As she reminds herself of these things now, she
recalls Fannie's praise of his "indomitable pluck," and feels a new,
warm courage around her own heart. For as long as men can show valor,
she gravely reflects, surely women can have fortitude. How small a
right, at best--how little honest room--there is in this huge world of
strifes and sorrows for a young girl's heart to go breaking itself with
its own grief and longing.
The right thing is, of course, to forget. She should! She must! But--she
has said so every evening and morning for two years. Old man! old woman!
do you remember what two years meant when you were in the early
twenties? Even yet, with the two years gone, by hard crowding of the
hours with cares, as a ship crowds sail or steam, it seems at times as
if her forgetting were about to make headway; but just then the
unexpected happens--merely the unexpected. O why not the romantic? She
hears him praised or blamed; or, as now, he is ill; or she meets him in
a dream; or between midnight and dawn she cannot sleep; or, worst of
all, by some sad mischance she sees him, close by, in a throng or in a
public way--for an instant--and, when it is too late, knows by his
remembered look that he wanted to speak; and the flood lifts and sweeps
her back, and she must begin again. The daylight hours are the easiest;
there is so much to do and see done, and just the clear, lost,
silent-hearted mother's ways to follow. One can manage everything but
the twilights with their death of day, their hush of birds, the mind
gazing back into the past and the heart asking unanswerable questions of
the future. For the evenings there are books, though not all; especially
not Herrick, any more; nor Tennyson, for it opens of itself at
"Mariana," who wept, "I am aweary, aweary. Oh, God, that I were dead!"
Barbara walked again. Moving at a slow pace, so, one can more
soberly--She heard wheels. A quarter of a mile away they rumbled on a
small bridge and were unheard again, and while she still listened to
hear them on the ground others sounded on the bridge. She hurried back
to the steps of the house and had hardly reached them when Johanna drove
into the grove and Fannie's voice called,
"Is that you, Barb?"
"Yes. Where's pop-a? Has anything happened?"
"He's got to stay in town to-night. Barb," said the visitor, springing
to the ground, "Mr. Fair's just behind. He's only come so's to take me
back to my baby."
"Fannie, something's happened!"
"Yes, Barb, dear, come into the house."
About midnight--"Doctor, her head hasn't stopped that motion since it
touched the pillow," murmured Fannie. Fair had gone back and brought the
physician. But the patient was soon drugged to slumber, and Fannie and
Fair started for town to return early in the morning. The doctor and
Johanna watched out the night. At dawn Fair rose from a sleepless couch.
At sunrise he could hear no sound through March's door; but as he left
the hotel he saw Leggett come up from the train, tap at Garnet's door
and go in.
Barbara awoke in a still bliss of brain, yet wholly aware of what had
befallen.
"Johanna"--the maid showed herself--"has Miss Fannie gone home?"
"Yass'm. But she comin' back. She be here ve'y soon now, I reckon."
Barbara accepted a small cup of very black coffee. When it was drunk,
"Johanna," she said, with slow voice and gentle gaze, "were you in the
hotel?"
"Yass'm," murmured the maid. "I uz in Mr. March's room. He uz talkin'
wid Mr. Fair, an' knock' his suppeh by acci_dent_ onto de flo',
an'"--she withdrew into herself, consulted her conscience and returned.
"Miss Barb----"
"What, Johanna?"
Johanna told.
* * * * *
Long after she was done her mistress lay perfectly still gazing into
vacancy. But the moment Fannie was alone with her she dragged the kind
visitor's neck down to her lips and with unaccountable blushes mingled
her tears with bitter moanings.
By and by--"And Fannie, dear, _make_ them stay to breakfast. And thank
Mr. Fair for me, as sweetly as you can. I don't know how I can ever
repay him!"
"Don't you?" dryly ventured Fannie; but her friend's smile was so sad
that she went no farther. Tears sprang to her eyes, as Barbara, slowly
taking her hand, said,
"Of course pop-a can't keep Rosemont now. If he tries to begin a new
life, Fannie, wherever it is, I shall stay with him."
Fair gave the day mainly to the annual meeting of the trustees at Suez
University. The corner-stone was not to be laid until the morrow. March
reopened his office, but did almost no work, owing to the steady stream
of callers from all round the square coming to wish him well with
handshake and laugh, and with jests which more or less subtly implied
their conviction that he was somehow master of the hour. When Ravenel
came others slipped out, although he pleasantly remarked that they need
not, and those who looked in later and saw the two men sitting face to
face drew back. "That thing last night," said Weed to Usher, going to
the door of their store to throw his quid into the street, "givm the
_Courier_ about the hahdest kick in the ribs she evva got." But no one
divined Ravenel's errand, unless Garnet darkly suspected it as he waited
beside Jeff-Jack's desk for its owner's return, to ask him for ten
thousand dollars on a mortgage of his half of Widewood, with which to
quiet, he serenely explained, any momentary alarm among holders of his
obligations. And even Garnet did not guess that Ravenel would not have
telegraphed, as he did, to a bank in Pulaski City in which he was
director, to grant the loan, had not John March just declined his offer
of a third interest in the _Courier_.
At evening March and Fair dined together in Hotel Swanee. They took a
table at a window and talked but little, and then softly, with a placid
gravity, on trivial topics, keeping serious ones for a better privacy,
though all other guests had eaten and gone. Only Shotwell, unaware of
their presence, lingered over his pie and discussed Garnet's affair with
the head waitress, an American lady. He read to her on the all-absorbing
theme, from the Pulaski City _Clarion_; whose editor, while mingling
solemn reprobations with amazed regrets, admitted that a sin less dark
than David's had been confessed from the depths of David's repentance.
In return she would have read him the Suez _Courier's_ much fuller
history of the whole matter; but he had read it, and with a kindly smile
condemned it as "suspended in a circumaambient air of edito'ial
silence."
"I know not what co'se othe's may take, my dea' madam, but as faw me,
give me neither poverty naw riches; give me political indispensability;
the pa-apers have drawn the mantle of charity ove' 'im, till it covers
him like a circus-tent."
"Ah! but what'll his church do?" The lady bent from her chair and tied
her slipper.
"My dea' madam, what _can_ she do? She th'ows up--excuse the figgeh--she
th'ows up, I say, her foot to kick him out; he tearfully ketches it in
his ha-and an' retains it with the remahk, 'I repent!' What _can_ his
church do? She can do jest one thing!"
"What's that?" asked the lady, gathering his dishes without rising.
"Why she can make him marry Miz Proudfit!"
The lady got very red. "Captain Shotwell, I'll thaynk you not to allude
to that person to me again, seh!" She jerked one knee over the other and
folded her arms.
"My dea' madam! I was thoughtless! Fawgive me!" The Captain stood up.
"I'm not myself to-day. Not but what I'm sobeh; but I--oh, I'm in
trouble! But what's that to you?" He pulled his soft hat picturesquely
over his eyes, and starting out, discovered March and Fair. He looked
sadly mortified as he saluted them, but quickly lighted up again and
called March aside.
"John, do you know what Charlie Champion's been doin'? He's been tryin'
to get up a sort o' syndicate to buy Rosemont and make you its pres--O
now, now, ca'm yo'self, he's give it up; we all wish it, but you know,
John, how ow young men always ah; dead broke, you know. An' besides,
anyhow, Garnet may ruin Rosemont, but, as Jeff-Jack says, he'll neveh
sell it. It's his tail-holt. Eh--eh--one moment, John, I want to tell
you anotheh thing. You've always been sich a good friend--John, I've
p'posed to Miss Mahtha-r again, an' she's rejected me, as usual. I knew
you'd be glad to hear it." He smiled through his starting tears. "But
she cried, John, she did!--said she'd neveh ma' anybody else!"
"Ah, Shot, you're making a pretty bad flummux of it!"
"Yes, John, I know I am--p'posin' by da-aylight! It don't work! But, you
know, when I wait until evenin' I ain't in any condition. Still, I'll
neveh p'pose to her by da-aylight again! I don't believe Eve would 'a'
ma'd Adam if he'd p'posed by da-aylight."
The kind Captain passed out. He spent the night in his room with our
friend, the commercial traveler, who, at one in the morning, was saying
to him for the tenth time,
"I came isstantly! For whareverss Garness's troubl'ss my trouble! I
can't tell you why; thass my secret; I say thass my secret! Fill up
again; this shocksh too much for me! Capm--want to ask you one thing:
_Muss_ I be carried to the skies on flow'ry bedge of ease while Garnet
_fighss_ to win the prise 'n' sails through bloody seas? Sing that,
Capm! I'll line it! You sing it!" Shotwell sang; his companion wept. So
they closed their sad festivities; not going to bed, but sleeping on
their arms, like the stern heroes they were.
"Why, look at the droves of ow own people!" laughed Captain Champion at
the laying of the corner-stone. And after it, "Yes, Mr. Fair's address
was fi-ine! But faw me, Miz Ravenel, do you know I liked just those few
words of John March evm betteh?"
"They wa'n't so few," drawled Lazarus Graves, "but what they put John on
the shelf."
The hot Captain flashed. "Politically, yes, seh! On the _top_ shelf,
where we saave up ow best men faw ow worst needs, seh!"
Fair asked March to take a walk. They went without a word until they sat
down on the edge of a wood. Then Fair said,
"March, I have a question to ask you. Why don't you try?"
"Fair, she won't ever let me! She's as good as told me, up and down, I
mustn't. And _now_ I can't! I'm penniless, and part of her inheritance
will be my lost lands. I can't ignore that; I haven't got the moral
courage! Besides, Fair, I know that if she takes you, there's an end of
all her troubles and a future worthy of her--as far as any future can
be. What sort of a fellow would I be--Oh, mind you! if I had the
faintest reason to think she'd rather have me than you, I George!
sir----" He sprang up and began to spurn the bark off a stump with a
strength of leg that made it fly. "Fair, tell me! Are you going to offer
yourself, notwithstanding all?"
"Yes. Yes; if the letter I expect from home to-morrow, and which I
telegraphed them to write, is what I make no doubt it will be; yes."
March gazed at his companion and slowly and soberly smiled. "Fair," he
softly exclaimed, "I wish I had your head! Lord! Fair, I wish I had your
chance!"
"Ah! no," was the gentle reply, "I wish one or the other were far
better."
* * * * *
A third sun had set before Barbara walked again at the edge of the
grove. Two or three hours earlier her father had at last come home, and
as she saw the awful change in his face and the vindictive gleam with
which he met her recognition of it, she knew they were no longer father
and daughter. The knowledge pierced like a slow knife, and yet brought a
sense of relief--of release--that shamed her until she finally fled into
the open air as if from suffocation. There she watched the west grow
dark and the stars fill the sky while thoughts shone, vanished, and
shone again in soft confusion like the fireflies in the grove. Only one
continued--that now she might choose her future. Her father had said so
with an icy venom which flashed fire as he added, "But if you quit
Rosemont now, so help me God, you shall never own it, if I have to put
it to the torch on my dying bed!"
She heard something and stepped into hiding. What rider could be coming
at this hour? John March? Henry Fair? It was neither. As he passed in at
the gate she shrank, gasped, and presently followed. Warily she rose up
the front steps, stole to the parlor blinds, and, peering in, saw her
father pay five crisp thousand dollar bills to Cornelius Leggett.
In her bed Barbara thought out the truth: that Cornelius still held some
secret of her father's; that in smaller degree he had been drawing hush
money for years; and that he had concluded that any more he could hope
to plunder from the blazing ruin of his living treasury must be got
quickly, and in one levy, ere it fell. But what that secret might be she
strove in vain to divine. One lurking memory, that would neither show
its shape nor withdraw its shadow, haunted her ringing brain. The clock
struck twelve; then one; then two; and then she slept.
And then, naturally and easily, without a jar between true cause and
effect, the romantic happened! The memory took form in a dream and the
dream became a key to revelation. When Johanna brought her mistress's
coffee she found her sitting up in bed. On her white lap lay the old
reticule of fawn-skin. She had broken the clasp of its inner pocket and
held in her hand a rudely scrawled paper whose blue ink and strutting
signature the unlettered maid knew at a glance was from her old-time
persecutor, Cornelius. It was the letter her father had dropped under
the chair when she was a child. Across its face were still the bold
figures of his own pencil, and from its blue lines stared out the
_secret_.