A little before six Coffin stood hesitating at the gate in front of the
house. He, too, had some reasonable sense of embarrassment. As Trescot
walked across the front room he saw him, and, understanding, went out at
once, and said, “Come in; glad to see you.” Coffin advanced, with his
halting gait, until they met at the door. “No, Mr. Trescot; I don’t go
in till I’ve said my word. I was told you were a hard man and meant to
kick me out. I was bred up in the Tennessee mountains, and I’ve seen men
shot for less things than that. I’ve been on that ground, me and father,
eighteen years; and I just want to say right here that, believing what
that cuss told me, I was justified.”
“I see,” said Trescot; “but were you not a little hasty?”
“I don’t say I mightn’t of been, and I’m not a man that crawls easy; but
I’m that damn glad to-day I didn’t git you that if I was a prayin’ cuss
I’d be down on my knees and thank the Lord. That there woman of yours,
she’s a wonder.” Then Trescot understood, and liked it.
“Mr. Coffin,” he said, “I have a Confederate’s bullet in my shoulder,
and bear no malice. I certainly have none for the many who missed me. I
want to say that I stand by my wife’s bargain.”
“Then I’ll come in.”
The two men shook hands and passed into the library. When they were
seated, Trescot said: “Do you want it now in black and white?”
“No; if I trust a man, I trust him. I’ve got something to say to you
about those lands, and just you listen. You’ve got a good title to the
land I’m on; we all know that. A little money will clear off the other
squatters if I give up and go. I can settle them. I understand from
General Averill that it’s the big deep-water front below that’s the
trouble.”
“Yes, that is so. You will do me a great service if you can help us.”
“I can. The bounds were set by blazing trees. My father helped run that
line before ever we settled here. The blazed trees on the west was
washed away nigh ten years ago, clean gone down the river. Now, about
the ones back on the bluff that mark the bound to eastward—”
Trescot broke in: “No one can find the blazed trees where they ought to
be. There are no end of big ones, but no blaze on any of them.”
“Well, there’s ways of looking. Fact is, those blazes is growed over.
Why, it’s near on to forty years. The blazes leave a hollow like. The
bark grows over and hides them. I can find the trees; they’re oaks. Cut
them down and saw them up, and you have your blaze plain as day. One is
a walnut.”
“If you can do that when I’m ready, Mr. Coffin, you will get a bigger
farm than my wife promised; but, meanwhile, you must hold your tongue,
and tell no one, and not quarrel with Greyhurst. Did you tell him of
this?”
“No, I didn’t. It wasn’t any concern of mine, and I don’t like him none
too well. I’m your man, sir; and if you don’t mind a poor chap like me
saying it, I’m her man, too. I never saw no woman like her.”
“Nor I,” said Trescot, pleasantly. “And now she wants you here
to-morrow, about four o’clock, for her garden work.”
“I’ll come.”
Trescot knew the habits of the place too well to fail to say:
“Have a little bourbon, Mr. Coffin?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“Your health,” said Trescot.
“And yours, too.”
His host laughed.
“I see,” said Coffin, grinning; “I wasn’t wishing you much health last
night; but if you can afford to lay that to one side, I guess I can. And
I don’t want you to think I can’t shoot better than that. It was the
lightning bothered me.”
Much amused at this odd form of vanity, Trescot made a light reply,
laughed, and the woodsman went away, leaving him doubly at ease, and
astonished at the luck which had brought him the evidence so long
desired.
When it became plain to Constance that she had not only turned a foe
into a friend, but had also been the means of adding valuably to the
proof needed to insure her uncle’s title, she was overjoyed, and began
to make more sure the adhesion of her garden helper.
She explained to him with patience the work she required, helped with
such luxuries as were needed by the brother-in-law who was slowly dying,
and soon bound to her a man who had been unlucky, and had at last fallen
into a state of despondency and become reckless and vindictive.
One warm evening early in July, Trescot said to her, “I shall become
jealous of the general, Constance. He says you are capturing all these
old rebels.”
She laughed gaily. “Yes, men are easy game, but not their womankind. But
I did have my little triumph this afternoon. I walked in quite by chance
on their society meeting. It was at Mrs. Averill’s—something for the
orphans of Confederate soldiers. They were pretty cool, and I was all
sweetness. At last I got up and apologized for my intrusion, and said I
must go. But then the dear old lady asked me if I would not sing for
them while they sewed. One or two of them were civil enough to say they
would be glad to hear me. I sat down at that queer old piano, and what
do you think I did?”
“Heaven knows!”
“You could never guess.”
“I admit it as hopeless.”
“I sang ‘Dixie’ for them. Oh, George, I sang it as they never, never
heard it before. They quit sewing and just sat and listened. When I
turned half round on the stool some of them were crying. One old lady
came and kissed me, and they crowded around the piano thanking me. Then
another, a shy little old maid, said, ‘Would you mind playing “My
Maryland”?’ I had to say I did not know it—and then, George, I had an
inspiration. I turned to the piano, and broke out into that really fine
rebel song you like, and I sang—oh, I sang it well—‘Stonewall Jackson’s
Way.’ That time they really gave up. They clapped and praised me, and
were so surprised when I said you liked it.
“As I finished I saw the old general standing in the doorway. He, too,
thanked me with his fine, old-mannered way; and, George, I felt what an
awful hypocrite I was.”
“Oh, but you are not. You were not. Think what these people have
suffered, and what now have they left, except splendid memories and a
song? Think of their deaths, their poverty, the humiliation of defeat! I
have shared that feeling with a well-whipped army. Imagine it for a
whole people.”
“I know—I know; but they hate us. I have heard enough to know what is
said of you here. Coffin told me.”
“Oh, hang the fellow! We are doing better than I ever expected to do. If
your uncle had any sense we should have no trouble at all. I wrote to
him last night after you went to bed.”
“And you were positive?”
“I was; but this is my second letter to the same effect, and the first
was unanswered.”
“How like Uncle Rufus! That reminds me I have a letter from Susan. You
must hear it. There is a message for you; I will get it.”
While she was gone he reflected, not altogether pleasantly, upon the
strong feeling of dislike with which Constance still regarded the people
among whom they had chosen to live. He did not comprehend that it rested
very largely on her belief that they were hostile to him. Feeling as he
supposed her to feel, he did not quite like that for him or in his
interest she should do as she had done. In his own intercourse with the
men he met he had been simple and natural; and as most of them had been
soldiers, they met on a ground of common self-respect, avoiding
political discussions. That some of them, and all who had not fought,
were still embittered, he knew too well, and knowing, was careful,
kindly, and magnanimous.
Susan’s letter was laughingly discussed as they sat in the library.
“DEAR CONNY:
“Come soon and restore decent peace to this household. Imagine my
combination of mirth and satisfaction when uncle told me that General
Averill had written him he had seen you in church last Sunday and
thought you looking well. He was in one of his mild rages. You can
imagine a box-turtle angry. I advised him to write to you and
complain. He went away declaring he would alter his will. As he has
made three wills in a year, this need not alarm you. If there be a
disease of indecision, he has it.
“About George’s last letter I really had to fight. ‘There!’ he said;
‘read that. He wants me to pay squatters to leave; he thinks the suit
about my title ought to be compromised; he talks about the bad
feeling in the town because I will not spend money or improve my
property.’
“Then, as our old cook says, I just spoke up. I said George was
right, and that uncle ought to want to help his unlucky rebel friends
who had lost everything. This quite upset him. ‘Rebels! I presume you
to mean Confederates.’ I was advised to study the constitutional
history of the United States of America. You know his full phrases. I
advised him to read what George Washington wrote about State feeling.
I had not the most foggy idea what G. W. wrote, but it stopped him
and he went off again on my good brother-in-law. He declared that
George’s want of tact, and your opinions, and the general’s weak
ways, and George’s despotic management had been responsible for
making him, Rufus Hood, unpopular in that strange town of which you
write such amusing accounts. He had received the ‘St. Ann Herald’
with an article on absentee owners. Oh, my dear Conny, he was at his
loveliest worst. You were to blame, and if you had not gone to church
you would not have lost the little common sense you had, and would
have conciliated these people. Of course you had been exasperating,
and then it was George, George, etc., etc. At last I told him he was
like Aunt Nancy, who, as you may recall, fell ill of a plum-cake she
had made, and never could settle in her mind whether it was the
raisins, the currants, or the citrons. Uncle Rufus has a long-buried
fraction of a talent for seeing a joke, and, dear, he really laughed
till he looked five years younger, and until he remembered that his
mirth was suicidal, and began to go over it all again. At last I
said, ‘But you must do something.’ He said he would think it over and
write to George, and perhaps he had better go to St. Ann when you
return. He had been misunderstood. Some one named Greyhurst (isn’t he
one of the claimants?) had written to him about a compromise.”
“What a muddle!” said George. “Confound Greyhurst! Imagine Mr. Hood in
an attitude of conciliation! Well, what else?”
She read on:
“I really pity George Trescot. If I were he, I should do what seems
best, and take the chance of a back-down, or of my uncle yielding, as
he is pretty sure to do. Come soon, Conny; you must need our seaside
freshening. The roses say come, and so do I.
“Yours always,
“SUSAN HOOD.”
“Constance,” said Trescot, “Susan is right; soon or late, I must have my
way or give up a hopeless task.”
“Well, I have always said so; but don’t be in a hurry, George. I feel as
if now it will be all easy. The squatters you can manage with Coffin’s
help. You cannot try the land case until October. Then in August, when
you go home with me, together we can bring Uncle Rufus to some decent
sense of what is needed.”
“I hate to tell you, Constance; but I cannot go East this summer. The
general and Mrs. Averill are going to New York on the third of August
and will take care of you. He has asked me to remain in charge of his
own work, and on the tenth to go to New Orleans about a claim for
damaged cotton sent here last year. It is a great compliment and
involves the sharing of a large fee if I can settle the matter. I am
sorry.”
“Oh, George, how can I leave you?”
“I know, dear; I hesitated to tell you, but it is really a turning-point
in my career. If I win I shall oblige several people of importance and
make friends; and, Constance, I am sure that we need them, or that I do.
Right or wrong, the way people feel has much to do with the settlement
of land cases. Juries are human, and here, I fancy, they are far too
readily affected by public opinion. This is why I welcome every chance
of making friends.”
“I see; but I don’t like it. Could not you join us later?”
“No. On my return I must give myself up entirely to the land case. The
general will, of course, act as my senior, but he looks to me to collect
evidence. The man who surveyed the land is dead, and I have to go to
Indiana to see his widow and secure her evidence and his books. There is
really no more time than I require, and you would not wish me to fail.”
“I see perfectly,” she said. “I must go and you must stay. I am feeling
this moist heat, and you are, too.”
“No, even my wicked arm is less ill behaved. I really think the heat
suits it, and I never was better.”
Her intelligence was convinced, but not her heart. And with some people
it requires a good deal of head to keep the heart from revolt. That for
every reason it was best for him to remain was the one thing that aided
her to submit. Before she finally yielded, the increasing heat of July
made excuses difficult, and she began to feel, for the first time in her
life, a sense of languor which she had to acknowledge as a cry of the
body for her native air.
She had made up her mind that the summer plans, which for a time would
separate them, were such as to serve her husband’s interests. Had they
been able to do without what his profession began to bring in, her real
desire would have been to cut off his work entirely, and to leave him no
relations to life except those of a love which on her side she felt to
be boundlessly sufficient. She had been trained to certain habits which
passed for duties; but being without any ultimate beliefs by which to
test her actions when called upon by the unusual, the instincts of a too
natural creature were apt to be seen in what she did or felt. She would
possibly have denied even to herself that she had no interests in life
which did not consider George Trescot, and would have smiled at the idea
that her jealousy of whatever took him from her side might in the end
injure the man she loved, and would in time become selfishly exacting.
As Trescot expected to act only as junior counsel, he had, of course,
many consultations with Averill. On one of these occasions the general
said to him: “When I leave, you may have occasion to see and talk with
Greyhurst. He tells me that he has called on you.”
“Yes, but we were out. I returned his visit, but I have seen very little
of him. I suppose we shall try the case in October.”
“Yes, unless he contrives to put it off as he has done before. I think
he is doubtful—as, in fact, he ought to be. Is he waiting for some offer
from us? I think that likely.”
“He will not get it; but he would if I had my way.”
“Well, he will call on you about it. He said as much. Be a little
careful. He is like some of the rest of the bar, a trifle indifferent as
to the right or the wrong of his client’s case; but he did not suggest
this suit, and he is a better fellow outside of his profession than in
it.”
“Do you think he believes that Mr. Hood does not own that land?”
“Certainly not; but he is willing to make Mr. Hood pay for what the
river did when it ate away the Baptiste water-frontage. It is not a
highly moral attitude, and yet there is something to be said for it.”
“Yes, as to that I entirely agree with you,” said Trescot. “Considering
what we know and he does not, he ought to lose the suit. If Mr. Hood
were reasonable, I should like to put all our evidence before Greyhurst,
and then offer some form of compromise. As it is, we must try it, and
take the risk of failure.”
“Yes; but I do not feel quite so secure as you do. Well, that is all.
You will take care of our case this summer, while I am away, and you
will, of course, write to me if you need advice. And, my dear fellow, be
a little careful of our noon sun, and of the evening coolness.”
“Thanks, general. I have every reason to want both health and life.”