BOOK II

A RAINY SEASON

I

Mrs. Jane Dudley Webb was a lady who supported an impossible present

upon an important past. She had once been heard to remark that if she

had not something to look back upon she could not live: and, as her

retrospective view was racial rather than individual, the consolation

attained might be considered disproportionate to the needs of the case.

The lines of her present had fallen in a white frame house in the main

street of Kingsborough; those of her past began with the first Dudley

who swung a lance in Merry England, to end with irascible old William of

the name, who slept in the family graveyard upon James River.

Mrs. Webb herself was straight and elegant, and inclined to the

ironical, when, as Jane Dudley, the belle of the country-side, she fired

the fancy of young Julius Webb, an officer in the cavalry of the United

States. He danced a minuet with her at a ball in Washington, was heard

to swear an oath by her eyes at punch before the supper was over; and

proceeded the following week to spur his courtship upon old William as

daringly as he had ever spurred his horse upon an Indian wigwam.

The last Dudley of the Virginian line withstood, through several stormy

years, the united appeals of his daughter and her lover. In the end he

yielded, subdued by opposition and gout, retaining the strength to

insert but a single stipulation in the marriage contract, to the effect

that his daughter should drop the name of Jane and be known as Dudley in

her husband's household. To this the dashing bridegroom acquiesced with

readiness, and when, within a year of the wedding, his wife presented

him with a son, he called the boy, as he called the mother, by her

maiden name.

He was a jovial young buck, who lived in his cards and his cups and

loathed a quarrel as he loved a fight.

When the war between the States arose he went with Virginia, caring

little for either cause, but conscious that his heart was where his home

was. So he kissed the young mother and the boy at her side and rode

lightly away with a laugh upon his lips, to fall as lightly in the mad

charge of cavalry at Brandy Station.

When the news came Jane Dudley listened to it in silence, her hands

clasping the worsteds she was winding. After the words were spoken she

laid the worsteds carefully aside, stooping to pick up a fallen ball.

Then she crossed the room and went upstairs.

She said little, refusing herself alike to consolation and to

acquaintances, spending her days in the shuttered house with her boy

beside her. When he fretted at the restraint she tied a band of crêpe on

his little jacket and sent him to play on the green, while she took up

her worsteds again and finished the muffler she had been crocheting. If

she wept it was in secret, when the lights were out.

Some years later the house was sold over her head, but when she stood,

penniless, upon the threshold it was to cross it as haughtily as she had

done as a bride. The stiff folds of her black silk showed no wavering

ripple, the repose of her lips betrayed no tremor. The smooth, high

pompadour of her black hair passed as proudly beneath the arched doorway

as it had done in the days of her wifehood and Julius Webb.

Her neighbours opened their wasted stores to her need, and out of their

poverty offered her abundance, but she put aside their proffered

assistance and undertook, unaided, the support and education of her

child, maintaining throughout the struggle her air of unflinching irony.

She moved into a small white frame house opposite the church, and let

out her spare rooms to student boarders. Her pride was never lowered and

her crêpe was never laid aside. She sat up far into the night to darn

the sleeves of her black silk gown, but the stitches were of such

exquisite fineness that in the dim light of her drawing-room they seemed

but an added gloss.

From behind the massive coffee urn at the head of her table she regarded

her boarders as so many beneficiaries upon her bounty. When she passed a

cup of coffee she seemed to confer an honour; when she returned a

receipted bill it was as if she repulsed an insult. People said that she

had been born to greatness and that she had never adapted herself to the

obscurity that had been thrust upon her--but they said it when her back

was turned. To her face the subject was never broached, and her former

prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty. Of her own

sorrows she, herself, made no mention. When she spoke from the depths of

her bitterness of the war and the ruin it had left, her resentment was

general rather than personal. Above the mantel in her room hung the

sword of Julius Webb, sheathed under the tattered colours of the

Confederate States. At her throat she wore a button that had been cut

from a gray coat, and, once, after the close of the war, she had pointed

to it before a Federal officer, and had said: "Sir, the women of the

South have never surrendered!" The officer had looked at the face above

the button as he answered: "Madam, had the women of the South fought its

battles, surrender would have been for the men of the North." But Jane

Webb had smiled bitterly in silence. To her the Federal officer was but

an individual member of a national army of invasion, and the rights of

the victors, the wrongs of Virginia.

Her neighbours regarded her with almost passionate pride--rebuking their

more generous natures by the sight of her unbowed beauty and her

solitary revolt. When young Dudley grew old enough to attend school the

general and the judge called together upon his mother and offered, with

hesitancy, to undertake his education.

"He is only a year or two older than my Tom," began the judge, tripping

in his usually steady speech. "I assure you it will give me pleasure to

have the boys thrown together."

Mrs. Webb bowed in unaffirmative fashion.

"On my life, ma'am, I can't forget that Julius Webb fell at Brandy

Station," put in the general hotly. "Your husband died for Virginia, and

your boy shall not want while I have a penny in my pocket. I'll send him

to college with Bernard, and feel it to be a privilege!"

Mrs. Webb bowed again.

"A great privilege, ma'am," protested the general, uneasily.

Mrs. Webb smiled.

"The greatest privilege of my life, ma'am!" cried the general, his face

flushing and his eyes growing round with agitation.

In the end they gained their point, and Mrs. Webb consented, but with a

reluctance of reserve which caused the general to choke with

embarrassment and the judge to become speechless from perplexity. When

they rose to leave both thanked her with effusion and both bowed

themselves out as gratefully as if it were a royal drawing-room and they

had received the honours of knighthood.

"She is a remarkable woman!" exclaimed the general, wiping his eyes on

his white silk handkerchief as they descended the steps. "A most unusual

woman! Why, I feel positively unworthy to sit in her presence. Her

manner brings all my past indiscretions to mind. It is an honour to have

such a character in the community, sir!"

The judge acquiesced silently.

The interview had tried his Epicurean fortitude, and he was wondering if

it would be necessary to repeat the call before Christmas.

"If Julius Webb had lived she would have made a man of him," continued

the general enthusiastically, the purple flush slowly fading from his

flabby face. "A creature who could live with that woman and not be made

a man of wouldn't be human; he'd be a hound. There is dignity in every

inch of her, sir. I will allow no man to question my respect for our

immortal Lee--but if Jane Webb had been the commander of our armies, we

should be standing now upon Confederate soil--"

"Or upon the ashes of it," suggested the judge, adding apologetically,

"she is indeed a woman in a thousand."

He held it to be a lack of courtesy to dissent from praise of any woman

whose chastity was beyond impeachment, as he held it to be an absence of

propriety to unite in admiration of one who was wanting in the supremest

of the feminine virtues. His code was an obvious one, and he had never

seen cause to depart from it.

"I hope the boy will be worthy of her," he said. "It is a good name that

he bears."

The general took off his straw hat and mopped his brow.

"Worthy of her!" he exclaimed. "He's got to be worthy of her, sir. If he

takes any notion in his head not to be, I'll thrash him within an inch

of his life. Let him try it, the young scamp!"

The judge laughed easily, having regained his self-possession. "Well,

well, there's no telling," he said; "but he's as bright as a steel trap.

I wish Tom had half his sense." Then he turned past the church on his

way home, and the general, declining an invitation to dinner, went on to

the post-office, where he awaited his carriage.

From this time Dudley Webb attended classes at the judge's house and

became the popular tyrant of his little schoolroom. He was a dark,

high-bred looking boy, with a rich voice and a nature that was generous

in small things and selfish in large ones. There was a convincing air of

good-fellowship about him, which won the honest heart of slow-witted Tom

Bassett, and a half-veiled regard for his own youthful pleasures, which

aroused the wrath of Eugenia.

"I can't abide him," she had once declared passionately to Sally

Burwell. "Somehow, he always gets the best of everything."

When, after the first few years, Nicholas Burr entered the schoolroom

and took his place upon one of the short green benches, Mrs. Webb called

upon the judge in person and demanded an explanation.

"My boy has been carefully brought up," she said; "he is a gentleman,

and he will not submit to association with his inferiors. His

grandfather would not have done so before him."

The judge quailed, but it was an uncompromising quailing--a surrender of

the flesh, not the spirit.

"My dear lady," he began in his softest voice, "your son is a fine,

spirited fellow, but he is a boy, and he doesn't care a--a--pardon me,

madam--a continental whether anybody else is his inferior or not. No

wholesome boy does. He doesn't know the meaning of the word--nor does

Tom--and I shan't be the one to teach him. Amos Burr's son is a clever,

hard-working boy, and if he will take an education from me, he shall

have it."

The judge was firm. Mrs. Webb was firm also.

The judge assumed his legal manner; she assumed her hereditary one.

"It is folly to educate a person above his station," she said.

"Men make their stations, madam," replied the judge.

He sat in his great arm-chair and looked at her with reverent but

determined eyes. His head was slightly bent, in deference to her

dissenting voice, and his words wavered, but his will did not. In his

attitude his respect for her sexually and individually was expressed,

but he had argued the opposing interests in his mind, and his decision

was judicial.

"I am deeply pained, my dear lady," he said, "but I cannot turn the boy

away."

Mrs. Webb did not reply. She gathered up her stiff skirt and departed

with folded lips.

After she had gone the judge paced his study nervously for a half-hour,

giving uncertain glances towards the hall door, as if he expected the

advent of an incarnate thunderbolt. In the afternoon he sent over a

bottle of his best Madeira as a peace-offering. Mrs. Webb acknowledged

the Madeira, not the truce. The following day General Battle called upon

the judge and requested in half-hearted tones the withdrawal of Amos

Burr's son. He looked excited and somewhat alarmed, and the judge

recognised the hand of the player.

"My dear Tom Battle," he said soothingly, "you do not wish the poor

child any harm."

"'Fore God, I don't, George," stammered the general.

"He's a quiet, unoffending lad."

The general fingered his limp cravat with agitated plump fingers. "I

never passed him on the road in my life that he didn't touch his hat,"

he admitted, "and once he took a stone out of the gray mare's shoe."

"He has a brain and he has ambition. Think what it is to be born in a

lower class and to have a mind above it."

The general's great chest trembled.

"I wouldn't injure the little chap for the world George; on my soul, I

wouldn't."

"I know it, Tom."

"My own great-grandfather Battle raised himself, George."

The judge waved the fact aside as insignificant.

"Of course, Mrs. Webb is a woman," he said with sexual cynicism, "and

her views are naturally prejudiced. You can't expect a woman to look at

things as coolly as we do, Tom."

The general brightened.

"'Tisn't nature," he declared. "You can't expect a woman to go against

nature, sir."

"And Mrs. Webb, though an unusual woman (the general nodded), is still a

woman."

The general nodded again, though less emphatically.

"On my soul, she's wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Why, damme, sir, if I had

that woman to brace me up I shouldn't need a julep."

And the judge, flinching from his friend's profanity, called Cæsar to

bring in the decanters.

Some time later the general left and Mr. Burwell appeared, to be met

and dispatched by the same arguments.

"Naturally my instincts prompt me to side with an unprotected widow,"

said Mr. Burwell.

"No Virginian could feel otherwise," admitted the judge in the slightly

pompous tone in which he alluded to his native State.

"But as I said to my wife," continued Mr. Burwell with convincing

earnestness, "these matters had best be left to men. There is no need

for our wives and daughters to be troubled by them. It is for us, who

are acquainted with the world and who have had wide experience, to

settle all social barriers."

The judge agreed as before.

"I am glad to say that my wife takes my view of it," the other went on.

"Indeed, I think she has expressed what I have said to Mrs. Webb."

"Your wife is an honour to her sex," said the judge, bowing.

Then Mr. Burwell left, and the judge spent another half-hour walking up

and down his study floor. He had gained the victory, but he would have

felt pleasanter had it been defeat. It was as if he had taken some

secret advantage of a woman--of a widow.

But the future of Amos Burr's son was sealed so far as it lay in the

judge's power to settle with circumstances, and each morning during the

school term Mrs. Webb frowned down upon his hurrying figure as it sped

along the street and turned the corner at the palace green. Sometimes,

when snow was falling, he would shoot by like an arrow, and Dudley would

say with quick compassion, as he looked up from his steaming cakes:

"It's because he hasn't any overcoat, mother. He runs to keep warm."

But Mrs. Webb's placid eyes would not darken.

When the boys grew too old for school Tom and Dudley went to King's

College for a couple of years, while Nicholas returned to the farm. The

judge still befriended him, and the contents of Tom's class books found

their way into his head sooner or later, with more information than

Tom's brain could hold. One of the instructors at the college--a

consumptive young fellow, whose ambitions had leaned towards the

bar--gave the boy what assistance he needed, and when the work of the

class-room and the farm was over, the two would meet in the dim old

library of the college and plod through heavy, discoloured pages, while

the portraits of painted aristocrats glowered down upon the intrusive

plebeian.

Despite the hard labour of spring ploughing and the cold of early winter

dawns, when he was up and out of doors, the years passed happily enough.

He beheld the future through the visions of an imaginative mind, and it

seemed big with promise. Sitting in the quaint old library, surrounded

by faded relics and colourless traditions, he felt the breath of hushed

oratory in the air, and political passion stirred in the surrounding

dust. There was a niche in a small alcove, where he spent the spare

hours of many a day, the words of great, long-gone Virginians lying

before him; behind him, through the small square window, all the

blue-green sweep of the college grounds ending where the Old Stage Road

led on to his father's farm.

He plodded ardently and earnestly, the consumptive young instructor

following his studies with the wistful eyes of one who sees another

striving where he has striven and failed. The students met him with

tolerant hilarity, and Tom Bassett, who would have kicked the

Declaration of Independence across the campus in lieu of a ball, watched

him with secret mirth and open championship. There had sprung up a

strong friendship between the two--one of those rare affections which

bend but do not break. Dudley Webb, the most brilliant member of his

class and the light of his mother's eyes, began life, as he would end

it, with the ready grasp of good-fellowship. He had long since outgrown

his artificial, childish distrust of Nicholas, and he had as long ago

forgotten that he had ever entertained it. As for Nicholas himself, he

had not forgotten it, but the memory was of little moment. He had a work

to do in life, and he did it as best he might. If it were the ploughing

of rocky soil, so much the worse; if the uprooting of dead men's

thoughts, so much the better. He slighted neither the one nor the other.

As he grew older he became tall and broad of chest, with shoulders which

suggested the athlete rather than the student. His hair had darkened to

a less flaming red, his eyes had grown brighter, and the freckles had

faded into a general gray tone of complexion.

"He will be the ugliest man in the State," said Mr. Burwell, inflating

his pink cheeks, with a return of youthful vanity, "but it is the

ugliness that attracts."

Nicholas had not heard, but, had he done so, the words would have left

a sting. He possessed an inherent regard for physical perfection,

rendered the greater by his own tormented childhood. He was strong and

vigorous and of well-knit sinews, but he would have given his muscle for

Dudley Webb's hands and his brains for the other's hair.

Once, as a half-grown boy, in a fit of jealousy inspired by Dudley's

good looks, he had called him "Miss Nancy," and knocked him down. When

his enemy had lain at his feet on the green he had raised him up and

made amends by standing motionless while Dudley lashed him with a small

riding-whip. The jealousy had vanished since then, but the smart was

still there.

At last the college days were over. Dudley was sent to the university of

the State; Tom Bassett and Bernard Battle soon followed, and Nicholas,

still plodding and still hopeful, was left in Kingsborough.

Then, upon his nineteenth birthday, the judge, who had left the bench

and resumed his legal practice, sent for him and offered to take him

into his office while he prepared himself for the bar.

II

When Nicholas descended the judge's steps he lingered for a moment in

the narrow walk. His head was bent, and the books which he carried under

his arm were pressed against his side. They seemed to contain all that

was needed for the making of his future--those books and his impatient

mind. His success was as assured as if he held it already in the hollow

of his hand--and with success would come honour and happiness and all

that was desired of man. It seemed to him that his lot was the one of

all others which he would have chosen of his free and untrammelled will.

To strive and to win; to surmount all obstacles by the determined dash

of ambition; to rise from obscurity unto prominence through the sheer

forces that make for power--what was better than this?

Still plunged in thought, he passed the church and followed the street

to the Old Stage Road. From the college dormitories a group of students

sang out a greeting, and he responded impulsively, tossing his hat in

the air. In his face a glow had risen, harmonising his inharmonious

features. He felt as a man feels who stands before a closed door and

knows that he has but to cross the threshold to grasp the fulness of his

aspiration. Yes, to-day he envied no one--neither Tom Bassett nor Dudley

Webb, neither the general nor the judge. He held the books tightly

under his arm and smiled down upon the road. His clumsy, store-made

boots left heavy tracks in the dust, but he seemed to be treading air.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon of a murky day in early November,

and the clouds were swollen with incoming autumnal rains. The open

country stretched before him in monotonous grays, the long road gleaming

pallid in the general drab of the landscape. As he passed along, holding

his hat in his hand, his uplifted head struck the single, high-coloured

note in the picture--all else was dull and leaden.

A farmer driving a cow to market neared him, and Nicholas stopped to

remark upon the outlook. The farmer, a thick-set, hairy man, whose name

was Turner, gave a sudden hitch to the halter to check the progress of

the cow, and nodded ominously.

"Bad weather's brewin'," he said. "The wind's blowin' from the

northeast; I can tell by the way that thar oak turns its leaves. It's a

bad sign, and if thar ain't a-shiftin' 'fore mornin', we're likely to

hev a spell."

Nicholas agreed.

"There hasn't been much rainfall lately," he added. "I reckon it has

come at last and for a long stretch." His eyes swept the western

horizon, where the clouds hung heavily above the pines.

"Yo' pa got his crops in?"

"Pretty much. The peanuts were harvested after the last frost."

"He ain't had much luck this year, I hear."

Nicholas shook his head.

"No less than usual. Last year he lost the brindle cow that was

calving. This season the mare died."

"Well, well! He never was much for luck, nohow. Seems like he worked too

hard to have Providence on his side. I allers said that Providence had

ruther you'd leave a share of the business to Him. Got through school

yet?"

"Yes; I'm reading law."

"Reading what?"

"I am going to study law in the judge's office--Judge Bassett, you

know."

"So you can keep a tongue in yo' head when those plagued cusses come

'bout the mortgage?"

"So I can take cases to court and earn a living."

"Why don't you stick to the land and make yo' bread honest?"

"The law's honest."

Turner shook his hairy head.

"It cheated me out o' twelve bushels of 'taters las' year," he said.

"Don't tell me 'bout yo' law. I know it."

Nicholas laughed.

"Come to me when I've set up, if you get in trouble," he rejoined, "and

I'll get you out."

The cow gave a lunge at the ropes, and the farmer went on his way. When

the man and cow had passed from sight Nicholas stopped and laughed

again. He wondered if he could be really of one flesh and blood with

these people--of one stuff and fibre. What had he in common with his own

father--hard-working, heavy-handed Amos Burr? No, he was not of them and

he had never been.

He had turned from the main road into the wood, when a girl on

horseback dashed suddenly towards him from the gray perspective. She was

riding rapidly, her short skirts flying, her hair blown darkly across

her face. A brown-and-white pointer ran at her side.

As she caught sight of Nicholas she half rose in her saddle, giving a

loud, clear call.

"Hello, Nick Burr! Hello!"

Nicholas stood aside and waited for her to come up, which she did in a

moment, panting from her exercise, her face flushing into a glowing

heat.

"I was looking for you," she said, waving a small willow spray in her

brown hand. "I went by the farm, but you weren't there. So, you are

nineteen to-day!" Her eyes shone as she looked at him. There was a

singular brilliance of expression in her face, due partly to the

exercise, partly to the restless animation of her features. She was at

the unbecoming age when the child is merging into the woman, but her

lack of grace was redeemed by her warmth of personality.

Nicholas laid his hand upon the bridle.

"Why, Genia, if I'd known you wanted me I'd have been hanging round

somewhere. What is it?"

"Let me look at you."

Nicholas flushed, turning his face away from her.

"God knows, I'm ugly enough," he said.

She leaned nearer, shaking back her straight, black hair, which fell

from beneath the small cap.

"I want to see if you have changed since yesterday."

He turned towards her.

"Have I?" he asked hopefully.

She regarded him gravely, though a smile played over her changeful lips.

"Not a bit. Not a freckle."

"Hang it all! I lost my freckles long ago."

"Then they've come back. There are one--two--three on your nose."

"Hold on! Let my looks alone, please."

Eugenia whistled softly, half grave, half gay.

"Down, darling!" she said to the pointer, and "be still, beauty!" to the

horse. Then she turned to Nicholas again.

"I've really and truly got something to tell you, Nick Burr."

"Out with it, then. Don't worry."

She swung her long legs idly from the saddle. "Suppose I don't."

"Then don't."

"Suppose I do."

"I'll be hanged if I care!"

"Oh, you do, you story. You're just dying to know--but it's serious."

She patted the horse's neck, watching Nicholas with child-like

eagerness.

"Well, I'm--I'm--there! I told you you were dying to know!"

"I'm not."

"Guess, anyway."

"Somebody coming on a visit?"

She shook her head.

"Try again, stupid."

"Miss Chris going to be married?"

"Oh, Lord, no. You aren't really a fool, Nick."

"Betsey got a baby?"

"Why, Tecumsey only came last June!"

"Then I give it up. Tell me."

"Say please."

"Please, Genia!"

"Say 'please, dear, good Genia.'"

"Please, dear, darling Genia."

"I didn't say 'darling.' I said 'good.'"

"It's the same thing."

She smiled at him with boyish eyes.

"Am I really a darling?"

"Do you really know something?"

"You bet I do."

"What is it?"

She laughed teasingly.

"It'll make you cry."

"Hurry up, Genia!"

"You'll certainly cry very loud."

"I'll shake you in a moment."

"It isn't polite to shake ladies."

"You aren't a lady. You're a vixen."

"Aunt Verbeny says I'm a limb of Satan. But will you promise not to weep

a flood of tears, so I can't cross home?"

She leaned still nearer, resting her hand upon his shoulder.

"I'm going away."

"What?"

"I'm going away to-morrow at daybreak. I'm going to school. I shan't

come back for a whole year. I'm--I'm going to leave papa and Aunt Chris

and Jim and you."

She began to sob.

"Don't," said Nicholas sharply.

"And--and you don't care a bit. You're just a stone. Oh, I don't want to

go to school!"

"I'm not a stone. I do care."

"No, you don't. And I may die and never come back any more, and you'll

forget all about me."

"I shan't. Don't, I say. Do you hear me, Genia, don't."

She looked for a handkerchief, and, failing to find one, wiped her eyes

on the horse's mane.

"What are you going to do when I am gone?"

"Work hard so you'll be proud of me when you come back."

"I shall be sixteen in two years."

"And I, twenty-one."

"You'll be a man--quite."

"You'll be a woman--almost."

"I don't think I shall like you so much then."

"I shall like you more."

"Why?" she asked quickly.

"Why? Oh, I don't know. Am I so awfully ugly, Genia?"

"Turn this way."

He obeyed her, flushing beneath her scrutiny.

"I shouldn't call you--awful," she replied at last.

"Am I so ugly, then?"

"Honour bright?"

"Of course," impatiently.

"Then you are--yes--rather."

He shook his head angrily.

"I didn't think you'd be mean enough to tell me so," he returned.

"But you asked me."

"I don't care if I did. You might have said something pleasant."

Her sensitive mouth drooped. "I never think of your being ugly when I'm

with you," she said. "It's a good, strong kind of ugliness, anyway. I

don't mind it."

He smiled again.

"Looks don't matter, anyway," she went on soothingly. "I'd rather a man

would be clever than handsome;" then she added conscientiously, "only

I'd rather be handsome myself."

He looked at her closely.

"I reckon you will be," he said. "Most women are. It's the clothes, I

suppose."

Eugenia looked down at him for an instant in silence; then she held out

her hands.

"I am going at daybreak," she said. "Will you come down to the road and

tell me good-bye?"

"Why, of course."

"But we must say good-bye now, too. Did we ever shake hands before?"

"No."

"Then, good-bye. I must go."

"Good-bye, dear--darling."

She touched her horse lightly with the willow, but promptly drew rein,

regarding Nicholas with her boyish eyes.

"Do you think it would make it any easier if we kissed?" she asked.

"Geriminy! I should say so!"

He caught her hands; she leaned over and he kissed her lips. She drew

back with the same frank laugh, but a flush burned his face and his

eyes were sparkling.

"More, Genia," he said, but she laughed and let the bridle fall.

"No--no--but it made me feel better. There, good-bye, dear, dear Nick

Burr, good-bye!"

Then she dashed past him, and a whirl of dust filled the solitary air.

He looked after her until she turned her horse into the Old Stage Road,

and the clatter of the hoofs was gone. When the stillness had fallen

again he went slowly on his way.

In the woods the pale bodies of the beeches seemed to melt into the

cloudy atmosphere. There was no wind among the trees, and the pervading

dampness had robbed the yellowed leaves of their silken rustle. They

fluttered softly, hanging limp from the drooping branches as if attached

by invisible threads. As he went on a deep bluish smoke issued from

among some far-off poplars where a farmer was burning brush in a

clearing. The smoke hung low above the undergrowth, assuming eccentric

outlines and varied tones of dusk. Presently the fires glimmered nearer,

and he saw the red tongues of the flames and heard the parched crackling

of consuming leaves. The figures of the workers were limned grotesquely

against the ruddy background with a startling and unreal absence of

detail. They looked like incarnate shadows--stalking between the dim

beeches and the blazing brush heaps. A few drops of rain fell suddenly,

and the fires began slowly to die away. At the foot of the crumbling

"worm" fence, skirting the edges of the wood, deep wind-drifts of

russet leaves stirred mournfully. Later they would be hauled away to

assist in the winter dressing of the fallows; now they beat helplessly

against the retarding rails like a vanquished army of invasion.

Nicholas left the wood and passed the field of broomsedge on his way to

the house. Beyond the barnyard he saw the long rows of pine staves that

had supported the shocks of peanuts, and from the direction of the field

he caught sight of his father, driven homeward by the threatening rain.

Sairy Jane, who was bringing a string of dried snaps from the outhouse,

called to him to hurry before the cloudburst. She was a lank, colourless

girl, with bad teeth and small pale eyes. Jubal, at the churn in the

hall, rested from his labours as Nicholas entered, and grinned as he

pointed to his mother in the kitchen. Marthy Burr was ironing. As

Nicholas crossed the threshold, she stopped in her passage from the

stove and looked at him, a flash of pride softening her pain-scarred

features.

"Lord, what a man you are, Nick!" she exclaimed with a kind of triumph.

"When I heard yo' step on the po'ch I could have swo'ed it was yo'

pa's."

Nicholas nodded at her abstractedly as he took off his hat.

"Where's pa?" he asked carelessly. "I thought he'd have got in before

me. I saw him as I came up."

"I reckon he won't git in befo' he gits a drench-in'," responded his

stepmother, glancing indifferently through the back window. "If he does

it'll be the first time sence he war born. 'Twarn't nothin' to be done

in the fields, nohow, an' so I told him, but he ain't never rested yet,

an' I don't reckon he's goin' to till I bury him."

As she spoke the rain fell heavily, and presently Amos Burr came in,

shaking the water from his head and shoulders.

"I told you 'twarn't no use yo' goin' to the fields befo' the rain,"

began his wife admonishingly. "But you're a man all over, an' it seems

like you're 'bliged to go yo' own way for the sheer pleasure of goin'

agin somebody else's. If I'd been pesterin' you all day long to go down

thar to look at that ploughin', you'd be settin' in yo' chair now, plum

dry."

Amos Burr crossed to the stove and turned his dripping back to the heat.

"Gimme a rubbin' down, Sairy Jane," he pleaded, and his daughter took a

dry cloth and began mopping off the water.

Marthy Burr placed an iron on the stove and took one off.

"Whar'd you git dinner, Nick?" she inquired suddenly.

"At the judge's."

"What did they have?" demanded Jubal from the hall, ceasing the clatter

of the churn. "Golly! Wouldn't I like a bite of something!"

"I shouldn't mind some strange cookin', myself," said Marthy Burr,

shaking her head at one of the children who had come into the kitchen

with muddy feet. "I ain't tasted anybody else's vittles for ten years,

an' sometimes I feel my mouth waterin' for a change of hand in the

dough."

She took one of her husband's shirts from the pile of freshly dried

clothes, spread it on the ironing-board, and sprinkled it with water.

Then she moistened her finger and applied it to the iron.

Amos Burr looked up from before the stove, where he still sat drying.

"You're a man now, Nick," he said slowly, as if the words had been

revolving in his brain for some time and he had just received the power

of speech.

"Yes, pa."

"Whatever he is, he don't git it from his pa," put in Marthy Burr as she

bent over the shirt. "He ain't got nothin' of yo'rn onless it's yo'

hair, an' that's done sobered down till you wouldn't know it."

Amos waited patiently until she had finished, and then went on heavily

as if the pause had been intentional, not enforced.

"You've got as much schoolin' as most city chaps," he said. "Much good

it'll do you, I reckon. I never saw nothin' come of larnin' yet, 'cep'n

worthlessness. But you'd set yo' mind on it, an' you've got it."

"Thar warn't none of yo' hand in that, Amos Burr," cried his wife,

checking him again before he had recovered breath from his last

sentence. "Many's the night I've wrastled with you till you war clean

wore out with sleeplessness, 'fo' you'd let the child keep on at his

books."

"I ain't never seen no good come of it," repeated Burr stolidly; then he

returned to Nicholas.

"I reckon you'll want to do somethin' for the family, now," he said,

"seein' yo' ma is well wore out an' the brindle cow died calvin', an'

Sairy Jane is a hard worker."

Nicholas looked at him without speaking.

"Yes?" he said inquiringly, and his voice was dull.

"I was talkin' to Jerry Pollard," continued his father, letting his slow

eyes rest upon his son's, "an' he said you war as likely a chap as thar

was roun' here, and he reckoned you'd be pretty quick in business."

"Yes?" said Nicholas again in the same tone.

Amos Burr was silent for a moment, and his wife filled in the pause with

a series of running interjections. When they were over her husband took

up his words.

"He wants a young fellow about his store, he says, as can look arter the

books an' the business. He's gittin' too old to keep up with the city

ways an' look peart at the ladies--he'll pay a nice little sum in cash

every week."

"Yes?" repeated Nicholas, still interrogatively.

"An' he wants to know if you'll take the place--you're jest the sort of

chap he wants, he says--somebody as will be bright at praisin' up the

calicky to the gals when they come shoppin'. Thar's nothin' like a young

man behind the counter to draw the gals, he says."

Nicholas shook his head impatiently, clasping the books tightly beneath

his arm. His gaze had grown harsh and repellent.

"But I am going into the judge's office," he answered. "I am going--"

Then he checked himself, baffled by the massive ignorance he confronted.

Amos Burr drew one shoulder from the fire and offered the other. A slow

steam rose from his smoking shirt, and the room was filled with the

odour of scorching cotton.

"Thar ain't much cash in that, I reckon," he said.

Nicholas took a step forward, still facing his father with obstinate

eyes. One of the books slipped from his arm and fell to the floor, with

open leaves, but he let it lie. He was watching his father's jaws as

they rose and fell over the quid of tobacco.

"No, there is not much cash in that," he repeated.

"Things have gone mighty hard," said Amos Burr. "It's been a bad year. I

ain't sayin' nothin' 'bout the work yo' ma an' Sairy Jane an' me have

done. That don't seem to count, somehow. But nothin' ain't come

straight, an' thar ain't a cent to pay the taxes. If we can't manage to

tide over this comin' winter thar'll have to be a mortgage in the

spring."

Sairy Jane began to cry softly. One of the children joined in.

"Give me time," said Nicholas breathlessly. "Give me time. I'll pay it

all in time." Then the sound of Sairy Jane's sobs maddened him and he

turned upon her with an oath. "Damn you! Can't you be quiet?"

It seemed to him that they were all closing upon him and that there was

no opening of escape.

Marthy Burr put down her iron and came to where he stood, laying her

hand upon his sleeve.

"Don't mind 'em, Nick," she said, and her sharp voice broke suddenly.

"Go ahead an' make a man of yo'self, mortgage or no mortgage."

Nicholas lifted his gaze from the floor and looked into his

stepmother's face. Then he looked at her hand as it lay upon his arm.

That trembling hand brought to him more fully than words, more clearly

than visions, the pathos of her life.

"Don't you worry, ma," he said quietly at last. "It'll be all right.

Don't you worry."

Then he let her hand slip from his shoulder and left the room.

He passed out upon the back porch and stood gazing vacantly across the

outlook.

It rained heavily, the drops descending in horizontal lengths like a

fantastic fall of colourless pine needles. Overhead the clouds were

black, impenetrable.

Through the falling rain he looked at the view before him, at the

overgrown yard, at the manure heaps near the stable, at the grim rows of

staves in the peanut field, at the sombre and deserted landscape. A raw

wind blew in gusts from the northeast, and the distorted ailanthus tree

in the yard moaned and wrung its twisted limbs. Sharp, unpleasant odours

came from the pig-pen in the barnyard, where the rain was scattering the

slops in the trough. A bull bellowed in a far-off pasture. Before the

hen-house door several dripping fowls strutted with wilted feathers.

He saw it all in silence, with the dogged eyes of one whose gaze is

turned inward. He made no gesture, uttered no exclamation. He was as

motionless as the lintel of the door on which he leaned.

Suddenly a gust of wind whipped the rain into his face. He turned,

reëntered the house, closed the door carefully, and went upstairs.

III

The next morning Nicholas went into the judge's study and declined the

offer of the day before.

"I shan't read law, after all," he said slowly. "There is a business

opening for me here, and I'll take advantage of it." He spoke in set

phrases, as if he had rehearsed the sentences many times.

"Business!" echoed the judge incredulously. "Why, what business is going

on in Kingsborough?"

Nicholas flushed a deep red, but his glance did not waver.

"Jerry Pollard wants me in his store, sir."

The judge removed his glasses, wiped them deliberately on his silk

handkerchief, put them on again, and regarded the younger man

attentively.

"And you wish to go into Jerry Pollard's store?" he inquired.

"I think it is the best thing I can do."

"The best paying thing, I presume?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the judge testily. "What is the world coming

to? I suppose Tom will be writing me next that he intends to keep a

stall in market. Well, you know best, of course. You may do as you

please; but may I ask if you are going to bargain in Latin and multiply

by criminal law in Jerry Pollard's store?"

"No, sir."

"Then, what in the--what in the--I really feel the need of a strong

expression--what in the world did you take the trouble to educate

yourself for?"

Nicholas was looking at the floor, and he did not raise his eyes. His

face was hard and set.

"Because I was a fool," he answered shortly.

"And now, if I may ask?"

"A fool still--but I've found it out."

The judge leaned back in his chair and tapped the ledge of his desk

meditatively.

"Have you fully decided?" he asked.

Nicholas nodded.

"I have thought it over," he said quietly.

"Then there's nothing to be done, I suppose. I hope the compensation

will satisfy you. Jerry Pollard is said to be somewhat tight-fisted, but

your business instincts may be equal to his acquirements. Now, I have a

number of letters, so, if you don't mind, I will bid you good-day."

He bowed, and Nicholas left the study and went out of the house.

Rain was still falling, and small pools of water had formed on the

palace green. Straight ahead the lane of maples stretched like a line of

half-extinguished fires, and the ground beneath was strewn with wet, red

leaves. The slanting sheets of rain gave a sombre aspect to the town--to

the time-beaten buildings along the unpaved streets and to the commons,

where the water stood in grassy hollows. Beneath the gray sky the scene

assumed a spectre-like suggestion of death and decay--the death of

laughter that seemed still to echo faintly from the vanished stones--the

decay of royal charters and of kingly grants. The very air was

reminiscent of a yesterday that was perished; the red, wet leaves

painted the brown earth in historic colours.

Nicholas turned the corner at the church and passed on to Jerry

Pollard's store--a long, low structure fronting on the main street--and

entered by a single step from the sidewalk. The show windows on either

side the entrance displayed a motley selection from the varied

assortment of a "general" store--cheap silks and high-coloured calicos,

men's shirts and women's shoes, cravats and hairpins, suspenders and

corsets. On the sidewalk near the doorway there was a baby carriage, a

saddle, and a collection of farming implements. As Nicholas crossed the

threshold a pink-cheeked girl passed him, her arms filled with bundles,

and at the counter an old negro woman was pricing red flannel.

Jerry Pollard, a coarse-featured, full-bearded man of sixty years, was

behind the counter. Nicholas caught his persuasive tones as he leaned

over, holding the end of the bolt of flannel in his hands.

"Now, look here, Aunty, you ain't going to find such a bargain as this

anywhere else in town. Take my oath on that. Every thread wool and

forty-four inches wide. Only thirty cents a yard, too. I got it at an

auction in Richmond, or I couldn't let it go at double that price. How

much? All right."

The flannel was measured off with skilful manipulations of the yardstick

and the scissors, the parcel was handed to the old negro woman, and the

change was dropped into the till. Then Jerry Pollard came from behind

the counter and slapped Nicholas upon the shoulder.

"Hello, my boy!" he said. "So your pa has taken me at my word, and here

you are. Well, Jerry Pollard's word's his bond, and he ain't going back

on it. So, when you feel like it, you can step right in and get to

business. When'll you begin? To-day? No time like the present time's my

motto."

"To-morrow!" returned Nicholas hastily. "I've got some things to wind

up. I'll come to-morrow."

"All right. I'm your man. To-morrow at seven sharp?"

Then a purchaser appeared, and Jerry Pollard went forward, his business

smile returning to his face.

The purchaser was Mrs. Burwell, and, as Nicholas passed out, she looked

up from a pair of waffle-irons she was selecting and nodded pleasantly.

"I am glad to see you, Nicholas," she said. "Juliet was asking after you

in her last letter. You were always a favourite of Juliet's. I was

telling Mr. Burwell so only last night."

"She was very kind," returned Nicholas, and added: "Is Miss Juliet--Mrs.

Galt well?"

Juliet Burwell had married five years before, and he had not seen her

since.

Mrs. Burwell nodded cheerily. She was still fresh and youthful, her pink

cheeks and bright eyes giving the gray of her hair the effect of powder

sprinkled on her brown fringe.

"Yes, Juliet is well," she answered. "They are living in Richmond now.

Mr. Galt had to give up his practice in New York because the climate did

not suit Juliet's health. I told him she couldn't stand transplanting to

the north, and I was right. They had to move south again. Yes, Mr.

Pollard, the middle-size irons, please. I think they'll fit my stove. If

they don't, I'll exchange them for the small ones. What did you say,

Nicholas? Oh! good-morning."

She turned away, and Nicholas stepped over her dripping umbrella and

went out into the rain.

When he was once outside he shook the water from his shoulders and

walked rapidly in the direction of the old brick court-house, isolated

upon the larger green. The door and windows were closed, but he ascended

the stone steps and stood beneath the portico, looking back upon the way

that he had come.

The street was deserted, save for a solitary ox-cart rolling heavily

through the mud. In the distance the gray drops made a sombre veil,

through which the foliage of King's College showed in a blurred

discolouration. From the branches of trees a double fall of water

descended with a melancholy sound.

Presently the ox-cart neared him, and the driver nodded, eyeing him with

apathetic interest.

When the cart had passed Nicholas came down the steps and started up the

street at the same rapid walk. He was not thinking of his way, but the

impulse of action had seized upon him, and he was walking down the

ferment in his brain. He did not formulate the thought that with bodily

fatigue would come mental indifference; he merely felt that when he was

tired--dead tired--he would go home and sit down to dinner and face his

father and discuss Jerry Pollard's terms. He would do that when he was

too tired to care--not before.

When he reached the heavy iron gate of the college he swung it open and

entered the grounds. In the centre of the walk stood the statue of a

great Colonial governor, and he paused before it for an instant, staring

up into the battered features of the marble face. He realised suddenly

that he had never looked at it before. Daily, for twelve years, he had

passed the college campus, sometimes crossing it so that he might have

brushed the effigy of the great Englishman with a careless hand--but he

had never seen the face before. Then he looked through the falling rain

at the deserted archway of the old brick building. For the first time

those grim walls, which had been thrice overthrown and had arisen thrice

from their ashes, impressed him with the triumphant service they had

rendered in the culture of his kind. He saw it as it was--a sacred

skeleton, an honourable decay. The long line of illustrious hands that

had procured its ancient charter seemed to wave a ghostly benediction

over its ancient learning. Clergy and burgesses, council and governor,

planters of Virginia and bishops of London had stood by its birth. It

was the fruit of the union of the old world and the new, and it had

waxed strong upon the milk of its mother ere it turned rebel. Later, to

its younger country, it had sent forth its sons as statesmen who gave

glory to its name. And through all its history it had overcome calamity

and defied assault. Thrice it had fallen and thrice it had rearisen.

He recalled next the sheltered alcove in the dim library, where he had

studied with the consumptive young instructor, who was dead. The

creepers upon the wall were encroaching stealthily upon the alcove

window. Scarlet tendrils, like forked flames, licked the narrow ledge.

Several wet sparrows fluttered in and out among the leaves.

He turned hastily away, passed the great Englishman with unseeing eyes,

clanged the iron gate heavily behind him, and went on towards the house

of his father.

The family were at dinner when he entered, and he took his seat silently

in the empty chair at his stepmother's right hand.

As he sat down she reached out and felt his coat sleeve.

"I declar, Nick, you air soaked clean through," she said. "Anybody'd

think you'd been layin' out in the rain all night. You go up and change

your clothes an' I'll keep your dinner hot on the stove."

Nicholas went upstairs mechanically, and when he came down his father

had gone to the stable and his stepmother was alone in the kitchen.

She brought him his dinner, standing beside the table while he ate it,

watching him with an intentness that was almost wistful.

"Would you like some molasses on your corn pone?" she asked as he

finished and pushed his plate away. Then, as he shook his head, she

added hesitatingly, "It come from Jerry Pollard's store."

But he only shook his head again, following with his eyes the wave-like

design on the mahogany-coloured oilcloth that covered the table.

Marthy Burr set the jug aside, nervously clearing her throat.

"I reckon Jerry Pollard has got one of the finest stores anywhar

'bouts," she said suddenly.

Nicholas looked up quickly and met her eyes. She was holding a dish of

baked potatoes in one hand and the other was resting for support upon

the edge of the table. Her face was yellow and interlined, and a faint

odour of camphor came from the bandage about her cheek.

"Yes," he replied indifferently. "He does a very good business."

His stepmother put the dish of potatoes back upon the table and took up

the pitcher of buttermilk. Her hand was trembling nervously. There was a

slight gasp in her voice when she spoke.

"I don't know but what it's as big a thing to be in a fine store like

that as 'tis to be a lawyer," she said.

For a moment Nicholas did not answer. His eyes grew darker as she stood

before him, and a shadow closed upon his face. As in a frame, he saw the

outline of her figure defined against the square of falling rain between

the window sashes. Her shoulders, bent slightly forward as if crushed by

the bearing of heavy burdens, reminded him of a domestic animal, full of

years and labour.

His face softened and he smiled into her eyes.

"Yes, I don't know but what it is just as well," he responded

cheerfully. The next day he went into Jerry Pollard's store and began

his winter's work. He measured off unbleached cotton cloth for a servant

girl; sold a pair of shoes to a farmer, a cravat to a young fellow from

the grocery shop next door, and a set of garden tools to an elderly lady

who lived in the street facing the asylum and had a greenhouse. At odd

times he looked over Jerry Pollard's books, and after dark he dunned

several debtors for unpaid bills. He did it quietly and thoroughly,

neither shirking nor overelaborating the minutest detail. There are men

who have an immense capacity for taking pains that is rarer than genius,

and he was one of them. Whether he made a success or a failure of life,

he would do it with a conscientious use of opportunities, good or bad.

An eye that is trained to detect the values of circumstances, and a hand

that is quick to adjust them, have produced the mental forces that make

or unmake the race.

When the day was over he went home and ascended to his room in silence.

The work had left him with a curious irritating sense of its

distastefulness. The second day was as the first--the week was as the

month. There were no variations, no difficulties, no advancement. With

the round of monotony his irritation sharpened. When Jerry Pollard spoke

he responded in monosyllables; when Jerry Pollard's pretty daughter,

Bessie, smiled in from the doorway, he kept his eyes on the counter. At

home he was even less responsive. The impulse which had prompted him to

return a cheering falsehood to his stepmother passed quickly. He

sacrificed himself to the family interests, but he sacrificed himself

begrudgingly. His face assumed lines of sullen repression; the tones of

his voice were full of subdued resentment. He found satisfaction in

meeting their overtures with irony, their constraint with callousness.

Since he had given the one thing they required and he valued, he

justified himself in a series of petty tyrannies. He met his stepmother

with avoidance, his father with aversion. The children he swore at or

ignored. Amos Burr, gathering his slow wits together, regarded him with

a chuckle of self-congratulation. His sensibilities were not susceptible

to slight friction, and his son's attitude seemed to him of small

significance. He had got what he wanted, and that was sufficient unto

the hour.

After the first two months, Nicholas underwent a dogged and indifferent

adaptation. He ceased to think of the judge, of Juliet, of Eugenia. He

laughed at Jerry Pollard's jokes and he winked at Jerry Pollard's

daughter. His horizon narrowed to the four walls of the shop; he told

himself that he had a roof above his head and fuel for his stomach--that

Bessie Pollard had skin that was fairer than Eugenia's and lips as red.

What did it matter, after all?

Sometimes Mrs. Webb entered the store, sweeping him, as she swept the

counter, with her clear, cold glance, and once Sally Burwell ran in to

do an errand for her mother and nodded with distant pleasantness as she

met his eyes. At such times he flushed and ground his teeth, but after

Mrs. Webb came farmer Turner, who shook his hand and said:

"Wall, I'm proud of you, Nick Burr."

And after Sally Burwell pretty Bessie Pollard threw him a kiss from the

doorway. It was not that he was ashamed of his work. He knew that at the

close of the war better men than he sought and accepted gratefully such

a livelihood as he disdained--that women in whose veins ran good old

English blood left their wasted homes to teach in public schools, or

turned their delicate hands to the needle for support. He was ashamed of

his past ambition--of his vaunted aspiration--and he was ashamed of

Jerry Pollard and his service.

The winter wore gradually to spring. A brilliant April melted into a

watery May. Nicholas, coming to Kingsborough in the early mornings,

would feel the long spring rains in his face as he splashed through the

puddles in the road. In the wood the white blossoms of dogwood showed

through interlacing branches like stars in a network of closely wrought

iron. On their hardy shrubs the pale pink clusters of mountain laurel

were beaten into shapeless colour-masses by the wind-blown rains.

Sometimes, up above, where the fiery points of redbud trees shot

skyward, a thrush sang or a blue jay scolded--and the bird-notes were

laden, like the air, with the primal ripeness of spring.

Underfoot the earth was fecundating in dampness. Chill blue violets

emerged from beneath the spread of rotting leaves, and where the

washed-out sunlight had last shone it had left rays of wandering

dandelions straying from the open roadside to the edges of the wood.

And the spring passed into Nicholas also. The wonderful renewal of

surrounding life thrilled through the repression of his nature. With

the flowing of the sap the blood flowed more freely in his veins. New

possibilities were revealed to him; new emotions urged him into fresh

endeavours. All his powerful, unspent youth spurred on to manhood.

IV

At last the rains were over. The sun came out again, and with it the

growth of the season burst into abundance. There were bird-notes on the

air, fragrance in the stillness, bloom on the trees. In the thicket

dogwood massed itself in clouds of dead-white stars, like an errant

trail from the Milky Way, lighting the wooded twilight. Wild azalea, so

deeply rose that the hue seemed of the blood, wafted its sharp,

unearthly scent across the underbrush to the road. The woods were vocal

with the mating songs of their winged inhabitants. The music of the

thrush welled from the sheer forceful joy of living. "It is

good--good--good to be a lover!" he sang again and again with amorous

repetition and a full-throated flourish of improvisation. In the pauses

of the thrush sounded the cheery whistle of the redbird, the crying of

the catbird, the liquid tones of the song sparrow, and the giddy

exclamations of the pewee. Sometimes an oriole darted overhead in a

royal flash of black and yellow, a robin stood in the road and delivered

a hearty invitation, or a hawk flew past, pursued by martins.

With the spring planting came a chance of outdoor work, and Nicholas

would sometimes rise at dawn and do a piece of ploughing before

breakfast. He had driven the team out one morning across the brown, bare

earth, which the plough had ripped open in a jagged track, when

something in the silence and the scents of nature smote him suddenly as

with a vital force. Dropping the reins to the ground, he threw back his

head and breathed a keen, quick sense of exaltation. A warm mist, sweet

and fresh as the breath of a cow, overhung hill and field, road and

meadow. In a black-browed cedar tree a mocking-bird was singing.

With a sudden shout Nicholas voiced the glorification of toil--of honest

work well done. He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up

the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionise the

world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into

it, that counted--and the man who was not content to do small things

well would leave great things undone. The beasts before him did not

shirk their labour because it was clay and not gold dust that trailed

behind the plough; why should he? And where was happiness if it sprung

not from the soil? Where contentment if it dwelt not near to Nature? For

what was better than these things--the clear air of sunrise, the keen,

sweet smell of the fertile earth, the relaxation of tired muscles? Why

should he, who had been born to the soil, struggle forth to alien ends

as a sightless earthworm to the harrow's teeth?

On his way in from the fields he stopped an instant at the gate of the

barnyard to look at the red-and-white cow that was licking her little,

tottering calf. Some rollicking lambs were skipping near a dignified

group of ewes, that looked on with half-fearful, half-disapproving

faces.

At the pump he saw his stepmother filling a water bucket, and he took it

from her hands.

"I reckon it is too heavy for you to carry," he said timidly.

"'Tain't much to tote," returned Marthy Burr opposingly. "If I'd never

had nothin' more'n that to bear I'd have as straight a back as yo' pa's

got. 'Tain't the water buckets as bends a woman, nohow; it's the things

as the Lord lays on extry."

She relinquished the bucket and followed Nicholas resentfully to the

house.

"I never did care 'bout havin' folks come 'round interferin' with my

burdens," she murmured half-aggrievedly. "I ain't done for yet, an' when

I is I reckon I'll know it as soon as anybody--lessen it's yo' pa, who's

got powerful sharp eyes at seein' the failin's of other people--an'

powerful dull ones when it comes to recognisin' his own."

Then she set about preparing breakfast, and Nicholas flung himself into

a chair on the porch. Nannie, a pretty, auburn-haired girl, was grinding

coffee in a small mill, and he looked at her thoughtfully; then Jubal

came out, whittling a stick, and he turned his gaze inquiringly upon

him.

"What would you like to do in the world, Jubal?" he asked, "best of

all?"

Jubal looked up in perplexity, his fat forehead wrinkling.

"You ain't countin' in eatin', I s'pose?" he replied doubtfully.

Nicholas shook his head.

"No, leave out eating," he said.

"An' the splittin' open of that durn livered Spike Turner?"

"Yes, that too."

Jubal whittled slowly, his forehead wrinkling more deeply.

"Then I don't know whether it's to give ma a rest or to own Billy

Flinders's coon dog, Boss," he said.

Nicholas laughed for an instant, but the laugh softened into a smile.

At the table he asked his stepmother and Sairy Jane about the spring

chickens, and they answered with surprised eagerness.

"I am going to mark the lambs to-morrow," he said. "They're a nice lot."

And he added: "Some day I'll take the farm and make it pay."

"I don't see what you want to go steppin' in yo' pa's shoes for," put in

Marthy Burr. "When toes have got p'inted down-hill they ain't goin' no

other way. Don't you come back to raisin' things on this land. I ain't

never seen nothin' thrive on it yet, cep'n weeds, an' the Lord knows

they warn't planted."

Nicholas shook his head.

"Why, look at Turner," he said. "His land is as poor as this, and he

makes an easy living."

"A Turner ain't a Burr," returned his stepmother with uncompromising

logic, "an' a Burr ain't a Turner. Whar the blood runs the man follows,

an' yours ain't runnin' towards the farm. Jeb Turner can fling a handful

of corn in poor groun', an' thar'll come up a cornfield, an' yo' pa may

plant with the sweat of his brow an' the groanin' of his spirit, an' the

crows git it. A farmer's got to be born, same as a fool. You can't make

a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin' of it."

"That's so," admitted Amos Burr, laying down his knife and meeting his

wife's eyes. "That's so. You can't make a corn pone out of flour dough,

noways you turn it."

"Perhaps I'll try some day," said Nicholas with a laugh; and he rose and

went out of the house.

When he had reached the little gate he heard a voice behind him, and

turned to find his half-sister Nannie, her cheeks flushed like a damp,

wild rose above her faded dress.

"I want you to bring me something from the store, Nick," she stammered.

"I want a blue ribbon for my hair, it's--it's so worrisome."

She shook her auburn locks, and Nicholas realised suddenly that she must

be very good to look at--to men who were only in a Scriptural sense her

brothers. He felt a vague pride in her.

"Why, of course I will," he answered. "Blue let it be."

And he opened the gate and went on his way, leaving Nannie, still

flushed, in the path.

When he took down Jerry Pollard's shutters a half-hour later he stood

for an instant looking thoughtfully down upon the assortment in the

window. Then he leaned over and conscientiously set upright a blue-glass

vase before going behind the counter to unpin the curtains hanging

across the dry-goods shelves.

After breakfast Bessie Pollard came in and stood with her elbow resting

on the showcase as she flirted a small feather duster. She had just

released her hair from curl paper, and it hung in golden ringlets over

her forehead. Her face was ripe and red, like a well-sunned peach, and

the firm curves of her bosom swelled the gathers of her gown.

"You look real spry this morning," she said coquettishly; but he turned

from her in sudden distaste. Her tawdry refinement irritated the more

serious manner of his mood.

Presently she went back to her dusting, and he completed his daily

setting to rights of the shop before he drew up to the desk and made out

the bills that were due for the month. It was not until some hours later

that he looked up upon hearing a step on the threshold. At first he

stood up mechanically at the sight of a girl in a riding-habit. Then he

started and drew back, for the girl lifted her head, and he saw that it

was Eugenia Battle. In the same glance he saw also that there was a keen

surprise in her face.

"Why, Nick Burr!" she said breathlessly. She tripped over her long

riding-skirt and caught it hastily in one hand; in the other she carried

a small switch. She had grown tall and straight, and her hair was

gathered up from her shoulders.

For a moment they were both silent. In Eugenia's face the surprise gave

place to gladness, and the warmth of her personality gathered to her

eyes. She held out her ungloved hand.

"Why, Nick Burr!" she said again.

But Nicholas looked at her in silence. All the dogged bitterness of the

last six months welled to his lips--all his new-found philosophy

evaporated at the sting of wounded pride. He remembered with a start the

gray road on the afternoon in November, the sullen cast of the sky, the

hopeless trend of the wind among the trees, the leaping of the light

into Eugenia's face. She laughed now as she had laughed then--a hearty

little burst of surprise in the suddenness of the meeting.

He turned quickly from the outstretched hand.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, and his tone was like Jerry

Pollard's.

Eugenia's hand fell to her side, closing upon the folds of her skirt.

She caught her lip between her teeth with a petulant twitch. Then she

came forward and laid a small brown bit of cloth upon the counter.

"A spool of silk this shade," she said briskly. "Please match it very

carefully."

Nicholas pulled open the small drawers containing the silk, and compared

the sample with the row of spools. He made his selection, showing it to

Eugenia before wrapping it in brown paper.

"Is that all?" he asked grimly.

Eugenia nodded. He gave her the spool, and she lifted her skirt and went

out of the shop. A moment more, and she passed the door swiftly on the

brown mare. Nicholas closed the drawer and laid the torn sheet of

wrapping paper back in its place. A little girl came in for a card of

hooks and eyes for her mother, a dressmaker, and he gave them to her and

dropped the nickel in the till. When she went out he followed her to the

door and stood looking out into the gray dust of the street.

Across the way a lady was gathering roses from a vine that clambered

over her piazza, and the sunlight struck straight at her gracious

figure. From afar off came the sound of children laughing. Down the

street several mild-eyed Jersey cows were driven by a little negro to

the court-house green. In a near tree a wood-bird sang a score of

dreamy notes. Gradually the quiet of the scene wrought its spell upon

him--the insistent languor drugged him like a narcotic. On the wide,

restless globe there is perhaps no village of three streets, no

settlement that has been made by man, so utterly the cradle of

quiescence. From the listless battlefields, where grass runs green and

wild, to the little whiter washed gaol, where roses bloom, it is a

petrified memory, a perennial day dream.

The lady across the street passed under her rose vine, her basket filled

with creamy clusters. The cows filed lazily on the court-house green.

The wood-bird in the near tree sang over its dreamy notes. The clear

black shadows in the street lay like full-length figures across the

vivid sunlight.

The bitterness passed slowly from his lips. He turned, and was

reentering the shop, when his name was called sharply.

"Why, Nick Burr!"

The words were Eugenia's, but the voice was Tom Bassett's. He had come

up suddenly with the judge, and as Nicholas turned he caught his hand in

a hearty grasp.

"Well, I call this luck!" he cried. "I say, Nick, you haven't grown bald

since I saw you. Do you remember the time you shaved every strand of

hair off your head so we'd stop calling you 'Carrotty'?"

"I remember you called me 'Baldy,'" said Nicholas, running his hand

through his thick, red hair. Then he looked at the judge. "I hope you

are well, sir," he added.

The judge bowed with his fine-flavoured courtesy. "As I trust you are,"

he returned graciously.

"Well, all I've got to say," put in Tom, as his father finished, "is

that it's a shame--a confounded shame. What good will Nick's brains do

him in old Pollard's store? Old Pollard's a skinflint, anyway, and he

cuffed me once when I was a small chap."

Nicholas glanced back uncertainly into the shop.

"Oh, he isn't so bad when you know him," he said. "Most folks aren't."

"He seems to value Nicholas's services," added the judge politely.

Nicholas flushed. "I don't know about that," he returned awkwardly.

"I know one thing, though," said Tom with slow wrath, "and that is that

I'm not green enough to be fooled by Nick Burr, if other people are.

Father told me last night that it was Nick's own choice that took him to

Jerry Pollard's. Choice, the Dickens! Why, it's those blasted people of

his that put him here."

Tom was very red in the face, so was Nicholas. They looked at the judge,

and the judge looked back at them with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.

"My dear Tom," he said at last, "I never gave you credit for being a

Solomon, but some day your wit may put your father to shame."

Then he held out his hand to Nicholas.

"When you're a little older, my boy," he remarked, "you may learn that,

though an old fool may be the biggest fool, he's not the only one. Come

to see us when you feel like it, eh, Tom?"

They passed on together, and Nicholas stood looking after them until a

man came in to exchange a pair of shoes.

"They're a leetle too skimpy 'cross the toes," he said deprecatingly.

"The heels air first-rate, but the toes sorter seem to be made fur a

three-toed somebody. 'Tain't as if I could jest set aroun' in 'em, of

course; then they'd be a fine fit, but when I go ter stan' up they

pinches."

Nicholas gave him a larger size and put the box back upon the shelf. He

was thinking of Tom Bassett and the twinkle in the judge's eyes, and he

did not hear the man's rambling speech. It seemed to him that his

friendship with Tom and his father had been restored--that he might once

more go freely in and out of the judge's house.

When the day was over he walked slowly homeward along the deserted road,

his mind still busy with recollections of the morning. Yes, life was

decidedly endurable at worst. If he might not become celebrated, he

might at least become content. He was _not_ Tom Bassett, but he had Tom

Bassett's friendship. He would live a simple life in his own class among

his own people, and he would grow to be respected by those who were

above him.

He had entered the wood, when he remembered suddenly that he had

forgotten the ribbon for his sister Nannie. He turned quickly and

retraced his steps through the thickening twilight.

V

So Nicholas's first fight for his manhood was fought and won. He went

back to his books--went back because his intellect ordained it, and the

ordinance of intellect is fate--but bitterness had gone out of him, and

he had come into his own. From the stress of the last year he had found

security in acceptance. His life might not be such as he had planned

it--whose was?--his work might not be the thing he wanted--again, whose

was?--but life and work were with him, and it remained for him to make

the best of them. Fate might make him a shopkeeper; he would see to it

that it made him a successful one. Success read backwards spelt work,

and work was his inheritance--a heritage of sweat and labour.

He went to Jerry Pollard's an hour earlier that he might rearrange to

advantage the shelves. His employer had secured, below cost, a supply of

dry goods, and preparations were in the making for the first summer sale

in Kingsborough. Nicholas conducted the arrangements as conscientiously

as he might have conducted a legal argument. It was the thing before

him, and it must not fail.

But at night he found his greater hour. When supper was over and he had

helped his father with the odd jobs of the farm, he would take the smoky

kerosene lamp to his room and plunge into the pages of "The Federalist."

From his sharp, retentive memory nothing passed. He held his knowledge

with the same vital grip with which he held his friends.

He had the judge's library now and the judge's assistance. Evening after

evening he sat in the dim, ghost-hallowed room, the shining calf-bound

volumes girdling the walls, and absorbed the judge as the judge, in his

own time, had absorbed the men who were gone. From that rich storehouse

of high principles and simple deeds Nicholas's future was drawing

nourishment. Judge Bassett had lived his life in a village, but he had

lived it among statesmen. His book-shelves were green with their

inspiration, his memory fresh from their impress. In his youth he

himself had been one of the hopes of his State; in his age he was one of

her consolations.

He treated the younger man with that quaint courtliness which knew not

affectation. When he talked to him, as he often did, of the great legal

minds, it was always with the courtesy of their titles. He spoke of "Mr.

Chancellor Kent," of "Mr. Justice Blackstone," as he spoke of "President

Davis" or of "General Lee." To have alluded to them more familiarly he

would have held to be a breach of etiquette of unpardonable grossness.

One day he had started in Nicholas his old political dreams of

Jeffersonian lustre.

"Virginia is not dead but sleepeth," the judge had said, as a prelude to

denunciation of the Readjuster party then in power.

Nicholas was looking at a collection of autograph letters that lay on

the judge's desk. He glanced up with an impulsive start.

"Oh, but I should like to have lived then!" he exclaimed.

The older man shook his head.

"It is not the times, but the man," he answered. "The time makes the

man, the great man makes his time."

He leaned his massive old head against the carved back of his chair and

looked at the other in his kindly, unambitious optimism. He had lost

most that the world accounts of worth, but life had dealt gently by him,

on the whole, since it had never infringed upon the sensitiveness of his

self-esteem.

"It's rough on the man," Nicholas returned brusquely, and a little later

he went out into the night. He had his periods of depression, when

desire seemed greater than duty, as he had his periods of exaltation,

when duty seemed greater than desire. Neither affected, to outward

seeming, the course of his life, but each left its mark upon his mental

forces. The chief thing was that he did the work he hated as thoroughly

as he did the work he loved.

The spring ripened into summer and the summer chilled into autumn. He

had kept rigidly to his way and to his resolutions. From neither had he

swerved in one regard. His stepmother, fixing sharp, tired eyes upon him

mentally drafted, "After all's said an' done, the Lord knows best." She

believed him to be content, as she had reason to, for he gave no outward

uneasy sign. When his small savings had paid off Amos Burr's little

debt, and they started, unhandicapped, upon their shaky progress, it

seemed to her that she was justified in commending, for the second time,

the visible methods of Providence--a commendation which faltered only

before a threatening twinge of neuralgia.

Early in October the judge, whose practice was drawn largely from other

sections of the State, left home for an absence of several weeks. Upon

his return he sent for Nicholas in the early afternoon, an unusual

happening. The young man, dropping in at two o'clock, found him at work

in his library before the early dinner, a generous mint julep upon a

silver tray on his desk. Cæsar was an acknowledged artist in the mixing

of the beverage, and Mrs. Burwell had once exclaimed that "the judge was

prouder of Cæsar's fame at the bar than of his own."

"It is an art that is becoming extinct, madam," the judge had replied

sadly. "I should wager there are more men in the State to-day who can

make a speech than can mix a julep. Cæsar's distinction is greater than

mine."

To-day, as Nicholas entered, the judge greeted him hospitably and called

for another concoction. When Cæsar brought it, frosted and clear and

odorous, the judge raised his own goblet and bowed to his caller.

"To your future, my boy," he said graciously; then, as Nicholas blushed

and stammered, he asked kindly:

"How are you getting on now?"

"Very well."

"So well that you wouldn't like a change?"

Nicholas threw a startled look upon him. His pulse beat swiftly, and his

skin burned. By these physical reactions he realised the fluttering of

his hopes.

"A change!" he said slowly, holding himself in hand. "Yes,

I--should--like a change."

The judge sipped his julep, breathing with enjoyment the strong

fragrance of the mint.

"I have just seen my friend, Professor Hartwell, of the University," he

said, "and he mentioned to me that in the work of compiling his law-book

he found great need of a secretary. It at once occurred to me that it

was a suitable opening for you, and I ventured to suggest as much to

him--"

He paused an instant, gazing thoughtfully into his glass.

"And he?" urged Nicholas hurriedly.

"He would like some correspondence with you, I believe; but, if the

prospect pleases you, and you would care to undertake the work--"

"Care?" gasped the younger man passionately; "care! Why I--I'd sell my

soul for the chance."

The judge laughed softly.

"Such extreme measures are unnecessary, I think. No doubt it can be

arranged. I understand from your father that he has tided over his last

failures."

But Nicholas did not hear him; the words of release were ringing in his

ears.

* * * * *

The year that Nicholas Burr "worked" his way to a degree at the

University of the State Tom Bassett returned to Kingsborough and took up

that portion of the judge's practice which he termed "local"; and his

fellow citizens, whose daily existence was proof of their belief in

hereditary virtues, brought their legal difficulties to his door. He was

a stout, flaxen-haired young fellow, with broad shoulders and honest,

light-blue eyes, holding an habitual shade of perplexity. People said of

him that his heart outran his head, but they loved him not the less for

this--perhaps the more.

Upon his return to Kingsborough he applied himself conscientiously to

his cases, paid a series of social calls, and fell over head and ears in

love with Sally Burwell.

"There are two things which every respectable young man in Kingsborough

goes through with," remarked the rector's wife as she sat at breakfast

with her husband. "He becomes confirmed and he goes mad about Sally

Burwell. For my part it does not surprise me. She's not pretty, but no

man has ever found it out, and no man ever will. Did you notice that

muslin she had on in church last Sunday--all frills and tucks--"

"My mind was upon my sermon, dear," murmured the rector apologetically.

"But we've eyes as well as minds, and those of every man in the

congregation were on that dress of Sally's."

The rector meekly stirred his coffee.

"I have no doubt of it," he answered. "But what do you think of Tom's

chances, my dear?"

"They aren't worth a candle," returned his wife with an emphasis which

settled the question in the rector's mind.

Within a month Tom's chances were the topic of Kingsborough. They were

discussed at the post-office, at sewing societies, at church festivals.

Not a soul in the congregation but knew the number of times he had

accompanied her to evening services; not an inhabitant of the town but

was aware of the hour and the afternoon upon which they had last walked

through Lover's Lane.

When the state of affairs had gone the rounds of the community until

they were worn threadbare, they effected a final lodgment in the mind of

Mr. Burwell.

"I have made a little discovery," he announced one evening to his wife

as she was brushing her hair for the night.

Mrs. Burwell was all delighted attention.

"Why, what can it be?" she murmured with gratifying feminine curiosity.

"You may have noticed, my dear," began Mr. Burwell with a nervous glance

at Sally's chamber door across the hall, "that our friend Tom Bassett

has called frequently of late."

His wife nodded smilingly.

"Well, it has occurred to me from something I observed this evening that

it is Sally who attracts him."

Mrs. Burwell threw back her pretty head and laughed.

"Why, Mr. Burwell!" she exclaimed, "did you think that it was you--or

I--or your grandfather's portrait?"

Her husband looked slightly abashed.

"So you have observed it?" he asked in an injured tone.

Mrs. Burwell laid her brush aside and crossed the room to where he

stood.

"Everybody knows you are a very clever man, Mr. Burwell," she said. "I

have never pretended to have as much sense as a man, and I hope nobody

has ever accused me of anything so unwomanly--but there are some things

you can't teach your wife, with all your experience."

Mr. Burwell stroked the plump hand on his arm and smiled in returning

self-esteem.

"And you are quite sure he fancies Sally?" he inquired.

"I know it," replied his wife decisively.

"Would it not be wise to prepare her, my dear?"

"Prepare Sally?" gasped Mrs. Burwell, and she went back to her mirror

with dancing eyes.

VI

"I have learned all they can teach me here," wrote Eugenia from school

on her eighteenth birthday, "so I'll be home to-morrow."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the general, holding the letter above his

cakes and coffee. "The child's mad--clean mad! We must put a stop to

it."

"Write her to stay where she is," said Miss Chris decisively.

"I'll write her, the young puss!" returned the general angrily. "Giving

herself airs at her age, is she? Why, she's just left her bottle!"

"What else does she say, Tom?" inquired his sister as she passed him the

maple syrup.

The letter fluttered helplessly in the general's hand. "I can't stay

away any longer from my dear, bad-tempered, old dad," he read in a

breaking voice; then he added hesitatingly, "I don't reckon she's right

about knowing enough, eh, Chris?"

"Certainly not," responded Miss Chris severely. "The child's as

headstrong as a colt. Get that letter off in time for the train, and

I'll let Sampson carry it to town."

The general finished his breakfast and went to the old secretary in the

library to write his letter. When he had given it to Sampson he came

back to Miss Chris, who was washing the teacups in the pantry.

"I s'pose we might as well get her room ready," he suggested. "She may

come, anyway, you know."

Miss Chris looked up with a laugh from the delicate saucer she was

wiping.

"I know it," she admitted; "and I'll see to her room. But your letter

was positive, I hope?"

"Y-e-s," answered the general lamely, and he returned to the Richmond

papers with an eager flush in his face.

The next day when Eugenia reached Kingsborough she found the dilapidated

carriage awaiting her, with Sampson upon the driver's seat. With an

impetuous flutter she threw her arms about the necks of the old horses.

"Why, you dear things!" she cried; then she held out her hand to

Sampson. "I'm glad to see you, Sampson," she said. "But why didn't papa

come to meet me?"

Her animated eyes glanced joyously from side to side and her lips were

brimming with the delight of homecoming.

Sampson turned the wheel for her as she got into the carriage, and gave

her the linen lap-robe.

"You sho is growed, Miss Eugeny," he observed, and then in reply to her

question, "Marse Tom hev got pow'ful stiff-jinted recentelly. Hit seems

like he'd ruther sot right still den ease hisse'f outer his cheer. Sence

Ole Miss Grissel done drop down dead uv er political stroke, he ain'

step 'roun' mo'n he bleeged ter."

The carriage jolted through Kingsborough, and Eugenia bowed smilingly to

her acquaintances. Once she stopped to shake hands with the rector and

again to kiss Sally Burwell, who flew into her arms.

"Why, Eugie! you--you beauty!" she cried. Eugenia laughed delightedly,

her black eyes glowing.

"Am I good-looking?" she asked. "I'm so glad. But I'll never be as

pretty as you, you dear, sweet thing. I'm too big."

They laughed and kissed again, and Eugenia stepped from the carriage to

greet the judge, who was passing.

"This is a sight for sore eyes, my dear," said the judge, his fine old

face wreathed in smiles. Then, as his gaze ran over her full, straight

figure, "they make fine women these days," he added. "You're as tall as

your father--though you're your mother's child. Yes, I can see Amelia

Tucker in your eyes."

"Thank you--thank you," said the girl in a throaty voice. There was a

glow, a warmth, a fervour in her face which harmonised the chill black

and white of her colouring. Her expression was as a lamp to illumine the

mask of her features.

"I couldn't stay away," she went on breathlessly. "I love Kingsborough

better than the whole world."

"And Kingsborough loves you," returned the judge. "Yes, it is a good old

town and well worth dying in, after all."

He assisted Eugenia into the carriage, shook hands again, and the

lumbering old vehicle jogged on its way. In a moment another halt was

called, and Mrs. Webb came from her gate to give the girl welcome.

"This is a surprise," she said as she kissed her. "I dined at Battle

Hall last week, and they didn't tell me you were coming."

"They didn't know it," laughed Eugenia. "I come like a bolt from the

blue."

Mrs. Webb smiled coldly. She was just as the girl had known her in

childhood--only the high black pompadour was now white. She still wore

her stiff black silk gown, fastened at the throat by a Confederate

button set in a brooch.

"You are like yourself and no one else," said Eugenia simply. "But tell

me of Dudley--where is he?"

Mrs. Webb's face softened slightly.

"His practice is in Richmond now," she answered. "You know he studied

law and took great honours at college. But his ambitions, I fear, are

political. I don't like politics. They aren't for honest men."

Eugenia did not smile. She merely nodded assent and, saying good-bye

pleasantly, jolted out of Kingsborough into the Old Stage Road.

"When did Mrs. Webb dine at home, Sampson?" she asked suddenly after a

long silence.

"Hit wa'n' onc't en it wa'n' twice," said Sampson thoughtfully. "Mo'

like hit wuz tree times. She done been dar monst'ous often dis yer

winter, an' de mo' she come de mo' 'ristocratical she 'pear ter git. Dar

wa'n' no placin' her, nohow. We done sot 'er by Ole Mis' Grissel w'en

she wuz 'live, an' we done sot 'er by Miss Chris, an' we done sot 'er by

Marse Tom hisse'f, an', fo' de Lawd, I ain' never seen 'er congeal yit."

But Eugenia was seeking other information. "Is Uncle Ish well? And Aunt

Verbeny, and the dogs? and did you bury Jim in the graveyard?"

"Dey's all well," replied Sampson, flicking at a horsefly on the

sorrel's back, "an' Jim, he's well en buried. Marse Tom sot up er boa'd

des' like you tell 'im."

A little later they turned into the cedar avenue, and Eugenia could see

the large white pillars of the porch.

"There they are!" she cried excitedly, and before the carriage stopped

she was up the narrow walk and in the general's arms.

"Well, daughter! daughter!" said the general. His eyes were watery, and

when Eugenia fell upon Miss Chris, he blew his nose loudly with a

nervous wave of his silk handkerchief.

"I was obliged to come," explained Eugenia. "When I got your letter

saying I might, I was so happy."

"Tom!" murmured Miss Chris reproachfully, but her eyes were shining and

she laid an affectionate hand on her brother's arm.

The general blushed like a boy.

"I told her if she'd fully made up her mind to come, I'd--I'd let her,"

he stammered shamefacedly.

"Oh, I was coming anyway!" announced Eugenia cheerfully as she was

clasped upon the bosom of Aunt Verbeny.

"Ain't you des' yo' ma all over?" cried Aunt Verbeny enthusiastically.

"Is you ever see anybody so w'ite en' so' black in de same breff 'cep'n

Miss Meeley? Can't I see her now same ez 'twuz yestiddy, stannin' right

dar in dis yer hall en' sayin', 'You b'longs ter me, Verbeny, en' I'se

gwine ter take cyar you de bes' I kin.'"

Aunt Verbeny fixed her eyes upon the general and he quailed.

"Don't I take care of you, Aunt Verbeny?" he asked appealingly; but

Eugenia, having greeted the remaining servants, drew him with her into

the dining-room. When he sat down at last to the heavily laden table, he

seemed to have grown twenty years younger. As Eugenia hung over him with

domineering devotion, the irritable expression faded from his face and

he grew almost jovial. When she weakened his coffee, he protested

delightedly, and when she refused to allow him his nightly dole of

preserved quinces, he stormed with rapture. "She wants to starve me, the

tyrant," he declared. "She'll take the very bread from my mouth next."

Then his enthusiasm overcame him.

"That's the finest girl in the world, Chris! God bless her, her heart's

as warm as her eyes. Why, she'd damn herself to do a kindness."

Miss Chris appeared to remonstrate.

"I am surprised, Tom," she said disapprovingly, though why she was

surprised or what she was surprised at the general never knew.

When Eugenia went upstairs that night, she blew out her candle and

undressed by the full light of the moon as it shone through the giant

sycamore. Outside, the lawn lay like a sheet unrolled, rent by sharp

black shadows. All the dear, familiar objects were draped by the

darkness as by a curtain; the body of the sycamore assumed a spectral

pallor, and the small rockery near by was as mysterious as a tomb. From

the dusk beneath the window the fragrance of the mimosa tree floated

into the room.

Eugenia, in her long, white nightgown, fell upon her bed and slept.

The next day she went the rounds of the farm. "I'm coming back to take

you for exercise," she remarked to the general as she stood before him

in her sunbonnet.

The general, who was placidly smoking, groaned in protest.

"Then you'll kill me, Eugie," he urged. "Exercise doesn't suit me. I'm

too heavy."

"You'll get lighter," returned Eugenia reassuringly. "You don't move

about half enough, but I'll make you."

The general groaned again, and Miss Chris, pink and fresh in her linen

sacque, came out upon the porch.

"Bless the child!" she exclaimed. "Where on earth did she lay hands on

that bonnet? Don't stay out too long in the sun, Eugie, or you'll burn

black."

The general caught at the straw.

"I wish you'd tell her she ought to sit in the house, Chris. She wants

to drag me--me out in that heat." But Eugenia drew the sunbonnet over

her dark head and disappeared across the lawn.

* * * * *

Having inspected the farmyard and the stables, she crossed the ragged

field to the negro cabins, where she was received with hilarity.

"Ain't I al'ays tell you she uz de fines' lady in delan'?" demanded

Delphy of the retreating Moses. "Ain't I al'ays tell you dar wa'n't her

match in dese yer parts or outer dem? I ax you, ain't I?"

"Dat's so," admitted Moses meekly.

"Where's Betsey?" inquired Eugenia, twirling her sunbonnet. "Aunt

Verbeny told me the baby died. I am so sorry."

"De Lawd He give, en' de Lawd He teck," returned Delphy piously, "en' He

done been moughty open-handed dis long time. He done give er plum sight

mo'n He done teck, en' it ain' no use'n sayin' He ain'."

"So the others are well?" ventured Eugenia, and as a bow-legged crawler

emerged from beneath the doorstep she added: "Is that the youngest?"

Delphy snorted.

"Dat ar brat, Miss Euginney? He ain' Betsey's, nohow. He's Rindy's Lije,

en' he's de mos' out'n out pesterer sence Mose wuz born."

"Rindy!" exclaimed Eugenia in surprise, lightly touching the small black

body with her foot. "Why, I didn't know Rindy was married. She's working

at the house now."

Delphy seized the child and held him at arm's length while she applied a

sounding box. "Go 'way f'om yer, honey," she said. "Rindy ain' mah'ed.

He's des' an accident. Shet yo' mouth, you imp er darkness, fo' I shet

hit fur you."

"Don't hurt him, Delphy," pleaded the girl. "Rindy ought to be ashamed

of herself, but it isn't his fault. I'm going to send him some clothes.

He looks fat enough, anyhow."

"He's fitten ter bus'," retorted Delphy sternly.

"He don't do nuttin' fur his livin' but eat all day, en' den when night

come he don't do nuttin' but holler kaze de time ter leave off eatin'

done come. He ain' no mo' use'n a weazel."

Eugenia promised to befriend the baby, and left with Delphy's pessimism

ringing in her ears. "He ain' wuth yo' shoestring, he ain'," called the

woman after her.

The girl was as popular among the negroes as she had been as a small

tomboy in pinafores. Her impulsive generosity and, above all, her

cordial kindness, had not abated with years. She was as ready to serve

as be served, her heart was as open as her hand; and the shrewd,

childish race received her as a benignant providence. Her sweetness of

disposition became a proverb. "As sunshiny ez Miss Euginny," said Aunt

Verbeny of a clear day--and the general raised her wages.

During the early summer Bernard came home on a vacation. For several

years he had held a position in a bank in Lynchburg, and his visits to

Kingsborough took place at uncertain intervals. He was a slight,

insignificant young fellow, with complacent eyes and a beautiful,

girlish mouth. His temper was quicker than Eugenia's, and he was in

continual friction with the general, who had grown absent-minded and

irritable. He not only forgot his own opinions as soon as he expressed

them, but, what is still more annoying, he was apt to offer them as some

one's else in the course of a few hours.

"That young Burr's a scamp," he remarked one morning at breakfast, "a

regular scamp. Here he's setting up as a lawyer under George Bassett's

eye, when I happen to know that Jerry Pollard wouldn't have him in his

store if you paid him."

"My dear Tom," breathed the placid voice of Miss Chris, "I'm quite sure

you're mistaken. Why, Judge Bassett--"

"Mistaken!" persisted the general angrily. "Am I the man to make a

statement without authority? I tell you he's a scamp, ma'am--a regular

scamp! If you please to doubt my word--"

"That's rather rough on a chap, isn't it?" put in Bernard indifferently.

"He isn't a gentleman, but I shouldn't call him a scamp."

"Why should you call him anything, sir?" demanded the general. "It's no

business of yours, is it? If I choose to call him a--"

"Now, father," said Eugenia, and at her decisive tones the general broke

off and turned upon her round, inquiring eyes. "Now, father, you don't

mean one word that you're saying, and you know it." And she proceeded to

butter his cakes.

The general was suppressed, and after breakfast he got into the carriage

beside his daughter and drove slowly into town. When he returned to

dinner he met Miss Chris with triumphant eyes.

"By the way, Chris, you were mistaken this morning about that Burr boy.

He's quite a decent person. I don't see how you got it into your head

there was something wrong about him."

"I'm glad to hear it," responded Miss Chris good-humouredly. She had

never uttered a harsh word about anybody in her life, but she was a

long-suffering woman, and she philosophically accepted the accusation.

Twenty-four hours later the general had a passage at arms with Bernard.

"You can watch the threshing this morning, my boy," he remarked as he

sat down to breakfast. "You won't go in to town, I suppose?"

Bernard shook his head.

"I thought of riding in for the mail," he answered; "there's a letter

I'm looking for."

The general flushed and put out a preliminary feeler. "How are you

going?" he inquired; "not on one of my horses, I hope?"

Eugenia shook her head at Bernard, but he went on recklessly:

"Why, yes, I thought I'd take the gray mare."

The general shook his head until his flabby face grew purple.

"The gray mare!" he thundered. "You mean to take out my gray mare, do

you? Well, I'd like to see you, sir. Not a step does the gray mare

stir--not a step, sir."

"Oh, all right," agreed Bernard so quietly that the general's rage

increased. "Keep her in the stables, for all I care." And, having

finished his breakfast, he bowed to Miss Chris and left the table.

But an hour later, as he passed through the hall, he found the general

waiting. "Aren't you ready?" he asked irascibly. "Are you going to waste

the whole morning? Why aren't you in town?"

Bernard's temper was well enough as long as there was no reason it

should be better; but he couldn't stand his father, and he knew it.

"I'm not going," he returned sullenly.

"Not going!" cried the general hotly, "not going after all the fuss

you've raised? What do you mean by changing your mind every minute?"

Bernard took his hat from the old mahogany rack. "I've nothing to ride,"

he replied irritably, "and I don't choose to walk--that's what I mean."

But his answer only exasperated his hovering parent.

"Damme, sir, do you want to make me lose my temper?" he demanded. "Isn't

the stable full of horses? Where's the gray mare, I'd like to know,

sir?"

"Eugie!" called Bernard angrily, "come here." And as the girl appeared

he made a break from the house. He possessed an abiding faith in the

endurance of Eugenia's clannish soul that was proof against even the

suggestion that it might succumb. His father was unquestionably trying,

but Eugie was unquestionably strong, and she loved her people with a

passion which he felt to be romantically unsurpassable. Yes, Eugie was

the hope of the family, after all.

As for the girl, she put her arm about the general and drew him to his

chair. He was failing rapidly; this she saw and suffered at seeing.

There were wrinkles crossing and recrossing his hanging cheeks, and

swollen bluish pockets beneath his eyes. When he moved he carried his

great weight uneasily. During the day she hung over him with multiplied

caresses; as he sat upon the porch in the afternoon she read to him from

the Bible and Shakespeare, the only books his library contained.

"After God and Shakespeare, what was left for any man to write?" the

general had once demanded of the judge.

Now he asked the question of Eugenia, and she smiled and was silent. Her

eyes passed from the porch to the lawn and the walk and the immemorial

gloom of the great cedars. Sunshine lay over all the warm, sleepy land,

and sunshine lay across her white dress and across the senile droop of

the general's mouth.

"For He maketh sore, and bindeth up," read the girl slowly. "He woundeth

and His hands make whole."

"He shall deliver thee in six troubles;--yea, in seven there shall no

evil touch thee."

"In famine He shall redeem thee from death: and in war from the power of

the sword."

She stopped suddenly and looked up, for the general's eyes were full of

tears.