THE MAN WHO WON
Richard De Jarnette sat alone in the library at Elmhurst--the home of
his fathers for generations back. It was a gloomy room. The furniture
and the hangings were dark and massive. Everything spoke of a bygone age
and a lack of woman's touch. Faded moreen curtains hung over Venetian
blinds and shut out God's glorious sunlight. Both had been new when
Richard De Jarnette's mother was a bride. Nobody had ever thought it
worth while to change them.
In the center of the room the claw-footed mahogany table was piled with
books and papers. Mammy Cely kept the place beautifully clean, but she
was forbidden to touch the table.
The very books on the shelves belonged to another century,--the English
poets bound in sheep, Hume, Gibbon, Johnson's Dictionary--well worn,
Josephus, D'Aubigne's "History of the Reformation," and kindred sorts,
and on the lower shelves Scott's Bible--in many ponderous tomes, and the
"Comprehensive Commentary." On one shelf in the old-fashioned
"secretary" were a few volumes that spoke a woman's taste at a time when
women must not read the virile things their brothers found good food.
Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Sigourney in blue and gold, a Flora's Album, the
"Language of Flowers," and Gift Books and "Annuals" in resplendent
bindings that suggested the poverty within. These books had been
Richard's mother's, and they looked cowed and overshadowed by the
masculine array that lined the room. All the moneyed De Jarnettes had
been planters, but with the reading habit, and there had been a preacher
and a doctor in the family who, dying without issue, had bequeathed
their libraries to the shelves of Elmhurst. The red cover of the book
that Richard De Jarnette held in his hand seemed almost an impertinence
among this staid, respectable assemblage in sheep and calf. It looked so
new, and fresh and modern.
But while it was all this, it was not holding him to-night. It would
have taken more even than dear John Fiske to shut out from his ears the
echo of this day's doings--fragments from the attorney's pleas, Mrs.
Pennybacker's incisive whisper which reached his ear and lodged there,
"Who gave him that right?"
He tried to throw it all aside. It was over now and he had won. The
child was upstairs safe asleep. He was sick and tired of the subject. He
would get his mind on something else. It was for this that he had
brought out "Virginia and her Neighbors." And he turned resolutely to
the book.
But somehow the face of the woman he had defeated rose up between him
and the printed page. He could not see the words for it. For one brief
space he had held his vanquished enemy passive in his arms, her head
against his breast. He could not rid himself of the sight of her face as
she lay there.
He put the book down and threw his head back against the leather-covered
chair. His eyes encountered those of his mother fixed upon him--his
young mother whom he had never known. She looked down upon him from the
portrait over the mantel. With the hateful pertinacity that the eyes in
portraits sometimes show, they followed him whichever way he turned.
They were very sad eyes. He had never liked to look at the portrait on
that account. His mother had not been a happy woman. That he knew from
Mammy Cely, and he would have guessed it, he had sometimes thought, from
the character of the face that hung beside it. There was a sternness
about the features of his father that did not promise much for a woman's
happiness.
Richard De Jarnette was not an imaginative man, but there was something
about his mother's eyes that in all these years he had never seen
there--a questioning, reproachful look. They had never followed him
about as they did to-night. He moved impatiently, half turning away from
the portrait, and took up his book again. He read on resolutely, turning
page after page with clock-like regularity. He would not give up to such
folly!
Then all at once he perceived that what John Fiske was saying was, in a
voice of anguish,
"_The child is mine! I bore him!_"
He shut the book. He could not evade the thing. And after all what was
there to evade? He was right. The law had justified him in what he had
done. And the courts knew less about the case than he did too,--that was
another thing. He had not injured her reputation in any way. He had seen
to that. The world would know her always as an injured wife. He was
content that it should be so. It would know him as a hard-hearted
unnatural monster. He knew that because a candid man had eased an
over-wrought mind to-day by telling him so. Even Semple, his friend, his
own familiar friend,--he winced now as one does when a bare nerve is
touched,--had avoided him as they left the court-house. Only those who
have few friends could know how that cut.
Well, let the world think what it chose of him. He knew he was right. He
could have justified himself before them all, but it would have been at
her expense. That he did not choose to do. He had heeded his brother's
dying request and spared her. Victor, in shielding her with his latest
breath, had made what reparation he could for the wrong he had done her.
It was left to him to administer justice. And why should he not? he
asked himself with a sudden sense of bereavement. She had taken from him
his best beloved. He had done no more by her. And he knew and she knew
why he had done it. That was enough. Pity? No. Had she had pity?
Richard De Jarnette had the eyes of his mother, but his mouth, as it
tightened now, looked singularly like that of the man in the portrait
above him.
A knock broke in upon his perturbed thoughts and Mammy Cely's dark face
appeared.
"Marse Richard,--"
"Well?" He was impatient at the interruption.
"--I reckon, sir, you got to come up sta'rs to that chile. I can't do
nothin' with him."
"What's the matter with him? Is he sick?"
"He's wuss'n sick! He's homesick."
"Can't you quiet him some way--by rocking him or something of that
sort?" He had a vague idea that rocking was a panacea for all childish
ills.
"Marse Richard, that chile done pass the cradle age. And look lak he
don't crave nobody's lap but his ma's."
"Why don't you tell him stories? You know how to quiet a child."
"I done tole him all I know," said Mammy Cely,--which was not at all the
truth, for she had an unlimited supply and had purposely withheld
them,--"but he don't seem to take no _in_trus. He's in that ongodly
state of mind he don' keer _what_ turnt the robin's breas' red! No, sir!
He wants his ma!"
"Well, tell him he can't have her,--that she is sick and can't come."
"My Lord, Marse Richard! I done tole him that fifty times! But he don't
accep' the pronouncement. He say he's bleeged to see his ma."
Mr. De Jarnette scowled.
"It is a strange thing to me that you can't quiet a five-year old
child," he said, looking very straight at her.
Mammy Cely returned the look unflinchingly. Anybody that sought to
overawe her had entered upon a large contract.
"Marse Richard, is you ever tried to pacify a homesick chile?"
"No, you know I haven't, but--"
"Well, sho's you born, sir, 'taint no easy job."
"A child of five and a half is old enough to be reasoned with," he
declared.
"Marse Richard, you can't reason homesickness out of a grown person, let
alone a baby! I been discoursin' to him fur an hour on that tex' but he
don't seem to sense the argyments. Maybe he would ef they was white, but
he don't 'spond to the colored ones. No, sir! I done got to the end of
my rope. I don't know what to do. Look lak he gwine cry hisself to
death."
"He was all right this afternoon, wasn't he?"
"Yes, sir, long as daylight lasted. He tuk right smart _in_trus helpin'
me feed the chickens and put 'em in the hovels, but--Marse Richard, when
dark comes it's the nacher of a child to want its mother. They can't
he'p they nachers."
He did not answer her. In his ears the impassioned cry was sounding,
"And Nature's law is God's very own!"
In his perplexity--for Mammy Cely was persistently, though humbly,
waiting for instructions--Richard De Jarnette remembered the picture
that Bess had given him. With a faint spasm of hope he took it from his
pocket and put it in the hand of the old woman.
"Here, show him this. Let him take it to bed with him. That young girl
that came on with his mother gave it to me. She said it might help him
if he was homesick."
Mammy Cely took the photograph and looked at it with interest, shaking
her head and setting her lips together.
"That sholy is got the favor of Miss Margaret,--and Philip too. Jes'
look at the little thing with his face pressed up ag'in hers. That's
what he wants to do now! A chile don't want no mo' heaven than that.
Yes, sir,"--respectfully--"I reckon that'll do him a heap er good. That
young girl certainly was thoughtful! She was so."
There was the slightest drawing down of the corners of Mammy Cely's
mouth, as if to combat a tendency they had to go up.
Richard had not much more than settled himself again with John Fiske
when he heard Mammy Cely lumbering down the stairs.
"Marse Richard!"
"Well? What do you want now?"
His tone was decidedly irritated.
"I reckon you'll have to come. The picture don't 'pear to meet the case.
Hit's worse an' mo' of it! Soon as he seed his ma's face he busted right
out. He's jes' howlin' now."
Very reluctantly Mr. De Jarnette ascended to his nephew's room.
Frightful wails corroborated the truth of Mammy Cely's assertions and
the accuracy of her descriptive powers. The sounds stopped abruptly as
the gentleman entered the room, for a man was an unknown quantity in
Philip's experience, and his uncle was a stranger to him. But such a
tempest of lamentation cannot be shut off entirely at a moment's notice.
The child's breath came in convulsive sobs that threatened to disrupt
his little body.
"What is the matter, Philip?" asked Mr. De Jarnette, sitting down by the
bed. "What are you crying about?"
"I--I want--my--my--my _mama_!"
"You can't have your mama now. She isn't here."
"But--I--_want_ my mama!"
"Philip, didn't you hear me say your mama was not here?" Mr. De Jarnette
spoke rather sternly. Then, with full confidence in his nephew's
reasoning powers, he proceeded to explain that his mama was in the city,
miles and miles away from here--that even if he could see her in the
morning it would be impossible to do it to-night--that if he was a good
little boy, _maybe_--
There is no telling what imprudence he might have been led into by his
desire for peace, but at this juncture Philip, who had been quieted for
a while by the strangeness of a masculine voice, broke out afresh:
"I want--my ma-a-ma!"
"He's answerin' yo' argyments the same way he did mine, Marse Richard.
The color of 'em don't 'pear to make no diff'unce."
It didn't indeed. However forcible and logical was Mr. De Jarnette's
line of reasoning, however convincing it seemed temporarily, no sooner
was it ended than Philip, with a child's insistent iteration, made
reply:
"But I want my ma-a-ma!"
"You git a chile in that frame of mind," moralized Mammy Cely, "and hits
reasonin' powers is mighty weak. Jes' as well try to argue with a dose
of ipecac after it's down."
"Go on out of here!" commanded Mr. De Jarnette, pausing in his strides
across the room with Philip in his arms. And Mammy Cely retired, greatly
pleased with the turn affairs were taking.
At the sound of the closing door, Philip broke out into renewed
lamentations. His only friend was gone.
"Philip! Stop your crying! Stop, I say!"
In his desperation Mr. De Jarnette spoke far more sternly than he felt.
Philip stopped in sheer astonishment. But his mouth and chin puckered
themselves up in that most pitiful of all things--a child's attempts at
self control.
"I isn't been use--to--scolding," he said, reproachfully.
"I don't want to scold you," Mr. De Jarnette hastened to say, for there
were signs of another inundation. "You are going to be a good little boy
now and--"
"Is it bad to want my mama?" asked Philip.
"No, but it is foolish to keep on asking for what you can't have."
"Why can't I have my mama?"
"Because she's not here."
"Why ain't she here?"
"Because she is at the hospital."
"What for?"
"She's sick."
"What makes her sick?"
"Philip, if you will go to sleep now, I will bring you some candy in the
morning. Will you do it?"
Philip considered.
"Would it be gum dwops?"
"Yes. Or any other obtainable variety. And some peanuts too--and popcorn
balls."
"I'd rather have a jack-knife," said Philip, with faintly-reviving
interest.
"Well, you shall have a jack-knife too--and
some--fire-crackers,"--ransacking his memory for childish tastes.
"Is it going to be Christmas?" asked his nephew, beginning to feel that
life was still worth living.
"Yes. We have Christmas once a month at Elmhurst--oftener if needed."
"Are you Santa Claus?" asked Philip in an awed voice.
"I'm a friend of his," returned Richard gravely, with an odd sense that
this was a plagiarism which would be detected.
But there is nothing like the trustingness of childhood.
"Then can you get anything you want from Santa Claus for little boys?"
"Almost anything," said Mr. De Jarnette cautiously, remembering mothers.
It was a fruitful vein and Philip worked it for all it was worth. When
at last his eyelids closed over the bright eyes and the curly head lay
still against his uncle's breast, Santa Claus's friend stood committed
to a bushel of candy, a bag of peanuts, some pink lemonade, a balloon
(showing the connection of ideas), a dog, two white rabbits, a sure
enough engine, and a billy goat. He considered peace cheaply purchased
at that. He would have impoverished the exchequer rather than have had
another two hours of conflict.
"Is he likely to keep this up long?" he asked Mammy Cely whom he met in
the hall just as he had laid his young nephew on his bed and tip-toed
from the room. He wiped his brow nervously.
"Lord, Marse Richard, sometimes a homesick chile will carry on this way
for a month. Yes, sir, they will so."
The drops broke out on Richard's forehead.
"He won't be apt to have a return of it to-night, will he?"
"You can't never tell," said Mammy, cruelly. "He may have another spell
inside of an hour. Ef he does I'll call you. Seems lak you can pacify
him a heap better than what I can. Yes, sir."