ladder to the loft above his young master's room, his shoes in his hand so
as not to awaken him, the Colonel, who had been tossing on a sleepless bed
for hours, called out. Elias, who evidently regarded himself as a
conspirator, waited until he had reached the loft, and then whispered back,
“Hit's all right, Marse Bill,” and was instantly swallowed up in the
darkness.
It was one of those perfect June nights so often seen in Kentucky. The full
moon hung in a cloudless sky, filling the air with a soft white radiance.
There was not a movement in the still, warm atmosphere, and to Colonel
Bill, waiting beneath the shadows of the big oak-tree near the General's
gate, it seemed that all nature was waiting with him. The leaves above his
head, the gray old church steeple beyond the house, the long stretch of
deserted streets--they all wore a hushed, expectant look.
It was several minutes past the appointed hour, and Miss Braxton had not
come. He had begun to fear that perhaps her father, suspecting something,
had detained her, when he saw her figure, a white outline among the
rose-bushes, far up the walk. As she drew near he stepped out from the
shadows, and she gave a little cry of delight.
“I know I am late, but I was talking with father,” she said,
apologetically, and the brown eyes became troubled. “He was very restless
and nervous to-night and when he is in that condition he says I soothe
him.” They had slowly walked towards the tree as she was speaking, and when
she had finished they were completely hidden from any chance passer. She
glanced up, and even in the gloom she noticed how white and tense was his
face.
“Do you know,” he cried, abruptly, “if I go away from Lexington to-night it
will only be to return in a day, or two days? For weeks I have been able to
think of nothing, to dream of nothing, except you. I haven't come here
to-night to say good-bye to you,” he continued, passionately, “because I
cannot say good-bye to you, but to implore you to come with me--to marry
me--to-night--now.” She shrank back. “I have made all my arrangements,” he
continued, feverishly. “I have a cousin, a minister, living in Versailles.
Once a month he preaches in a little church on the 'pike near there. I sent
word by Elias last night for him to meet us there to-night, and he said he
would. Elias has the horses under the trees yonder; they will be here in a
moment, and in an hour we will be married. Come!” His arms were around her,
and while he spoke she was carried away by the rush of his passion, and
yielded to it with a feeling of languorous delight. Then there came the
thought of the lonely old man who would be left behind. She slipped gently
from her lover's arms and looked back at the house which had been her home
for so many years. She saw the light, in her father's room, and recalled
how she went there when she was a little girl to say her prayers at his
knee and kiss him good-night. He had always been so kind to her, so willing
to sacrifice himself for her pleasure, and he was so old. What would he do
when she had gone out of his life? No; she could not desert him. She
covered her face with her hands. “I cannot leave father,” she sobbed. “I
cannot; I must not.” They had moved out from the shadow of the tree into
the moonlight. He had taken her hand, and had begun to renew his appeals,
when they were both startled by the sound of footsteps on the gravelled
walk and the General's voice crying, “Sue! Sue, where are you?” At the same
moment Elias came up, leading two horses. The Colonel and Miss Braxton
stood just as they were, too surprised to move. They could not escape in
any event, for almost as soon as the words reached them the General came
into view. He saw them at once, and it required only a glance at the
approaching horses to tell him everything. With an inarticulate cry of
rage, his gray hair streaming behind him, he rushed wildly back to the
house. The Colonel looked after him, and then turned to Miss Braxton.
“He has gone to arm himself,” he said, quietly. “He will be back with your
brothers.”
The girl looked up in his face and shivered. Then she glanced towards the
house, where lights were flashing from room to room, and the doors were
being opened and shut, and she wrung her hands. In the stillness every
sound could be heard--the rush of footsteps down the stairs, the fierce
commands, the creaking of the great stable door in the rear of the house.
“They are getting out the horses,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he replied, calmly. “He thought we were running away.” There was not
a tremor in his voice. She was reared in a society where physical bravery
is the first of virtues, and even in that terrible moment she could not
help feeling a thrill of pride as she looked at him.
She never thought of asking him to fly. She could hear the horses as they
were led out of their stalls one by one, their hoofs echoing sharply on the
stone flagging. Her excited imagination supplied all the details. Now they
were putting on the bridles; now they were fastening the saddles; they were
mounted; the gate was being opened; in another moment they would sweep down
on them. Then she looked at her lover standing there so motionless,
waiting--for what? The thought of it was maddening.
“Quick! quick!” she cried, wildly, catching his arm; “I will go with you.”
Without a word he lifted her up in his arms and seated her on one of the
horses. He carefully tested the saddle, although the hoofs of their
pursuers' horses were already ringing on the street behind the house. Then
he swung himself easily into the saddle, and was hardly there before the
General and his two sons swept around the neighboring corner, not fifty
yards away.
“Good-bye, Elias,” called the Colonel, cheerfully, as they shot out into
the moonlit street; and Elias's “God bless you bofe, Marse Bill!” came to
them above the rush of the horses.
As they went clattering through the quiet streets and past the rows of
darkened houses, the horses, with their sinewy necks straightened out
speeding so swiftly that the balmy air blew a soft wind in their riders'
faces, Colonel Bill, with a slight shade of disappointment in his voice,
said:
“I guess you didn't get a good look at the horses, or you would have
recognized them. That's old Beau Brummel you're on, and this is Queen of
Sheba. They're both fit, although they haven't been particularly trained
for these free-for-all scrambles, owners' handicap, ten miles straightaway.
But I don't believe there's a horse in Kentucky can catch us to-night,” he
concluded, proudly patting the neck of his thoroughbred. He glanced over
his shoulder as he spoke, and noted that the distance between them and
their pursuers was constantly widening, until, turning a corner, they could
neither see nor hear them.
And now the Colonel's spirits fairly bubbled over. He was a superb rider,
and swinging carelessly in his saddle, his hands hardly touching the reins,
he kept up a running stream of jocular comment.
“It looks to me like the old gentleman's going to be distanced,” he cried,
with a chuckle, “He can't say a word, though, for he made the conditions of
this race. The start was a trifle straggling, as Jack Calloway told me once
when he left seven horses at the post in a field of ten, and perhaps the
Beau and the Queen didn't have the worst of it.”
In every possible way he sought to divert his companion's mind. Once or
twice she delighted him by faintly smiling a response to his speeches. They
had passed the last of the straggling houses, and the turnpike stretched
before them, a white ribbon winding through the green meadow-land. They had
to wait while a sleepy tollgate-keeper lifted his wooden bar, and straining
their ears, they could just catch the faint, far-away sound of galloping
horses.
“In another hour,” he cried, pressing her hand, and once more they were
off. A mile farther on they stopped again. Before them was a narrow lane
debauching from the turnpike.
“That lane,” he said, reflectively, “would save us a good two miles, for
the 'pike makes a big bend here. Elias told me that he heard it was closed
up, and we might get in there and not be able to get out. We can't afford
to take the chance,” he concluded, thoughtfully, and they continued on
their journey. For some time neither spoke. As they were about to enter the
wood through which the road passed they stopped to breathe their horses.
“I don't hear them,” said the girl. Then she added, joyfully, “Perhaps they
have turned back.”
He listened attentively. “Perhaps they have,” he said, at last.
As they rode forward more than once an anxious expression passed over his
face, although his conversation was as cheerful as ever. Miss Braxton, from
whose mind a great weight had been lifted, laughed and chatted as she had
not done since the journey began.
They had passed through the wood and were out in the open country again. As
they galloped on, only the distant barking of a watch-dog guarding some
lonely farm-house, or the premature crowing of a barn fowl, deceived by the
brilliancy of the moonlight into thinking that day had come, broke the
absolute silence. They might have been the one woman and the one man in a
new world, so profound was their isolation.
“Do you see that group of trees on the hill there just ahead of us,” he
asked, carelessly, as the horses slowed to a canter. “Well, just the other
side of those trees the lane we passed joins the 'pike again. Now it is
possible that instead of your amiable relatives going home, they may have
taken to the lane. If it hasn't been closed, they may be waiting there to
welcome us.” For a moment the girl was deceived by the lightness of his
manner; and then, as she realized what such a situation meant, she grew
white to the lips. “The chances are,” he continued, cheerfully, “that they
won't be there, but we had just as well be prepared. If they are there we
must approach them just as if we were going to talk to them, slowing up
almost to a walk. They will be on my side, and I will keep in the middle of
the 'pike. You remain as close to the fence as you can. When we get
opposite them I'll yell, 'Now!' You can give your horse his head, and
before they know what's happened we will be a hundred yards away. All my
horses have been trained to get away from the post, and these two are the
quickest breakers on the Western Circuit. Now let's go over the plan
again.” And the Colonel carefully repeated what he had said, illustrating
it as he went along. Yes, she understood him. It was very simple. How could
she forget it? As she told him this her frightened eyes never left his
face, and she followed his movements with such a look of pain that he swore
at her father, under his breath, with a vigor which did full justice to the
occasion.
A few minutes' ride brought them to the top of the hill, and they both
looked eagerly before them. A furlong away, standing perfectly still in the
middle of the lane, their horses' heads facing the turnpike, were three
mounted men. It required no second glance to identify the watchers. Colonel
Bill's eyes blazed, and his right hand went back instinctively to his empty
pistol-pocket. He regained his composure in a moment. “Go very slow,” he
whispered, “and don't make a move till I shout. Keep as far over to your
side as you can.” They approached the three grim watchers, their horses
almost eased to a walk. Not a word was spoken on either side. When they had
reached a point almost directly opposite their pursuers, Colonel Bill made
a pretence of pulling up his horse, only to catch the reins in a firmer
grip, and then, with a sudden dig of the spurs, he yelled, “Now!” and his
horse sprang forward like a frightened deer. At the same instant Miss
Braxton deliberately swung her horse across the road and behind his. Then
there came the sharp report of a pistol, followed by the rush of the
pursuing horses. But high above all other sounds rose General Braxton's
agonized voice: “My God, don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Before the Colonel
could turn in his saddle Miss Braxton was beside him.
“Why didn't you stay where you were?” he cried, sharply, the sense of her
peril setting his nerves on edge. As he realized that it was for his sake
she had come between him and danger, his eyes grew moist. “Suppose you had
been hurt?” he added, reproachfully. She did not reply, and they rode on at
full speed. They had once more left their pursuers behind; but as the
church was now only a few miles away, and they needed every spare moment
there, they urged their horses to renewed effort.
“There is the church now, and it's lighted up,” cried the Colonel,
joyfully, as they dashed around a bend in the road, pointing to a little
one-story building tucked away amid trees and under-brush beside the
turnpike. In the doorway the minister stood waiting for them--a tall young
man whose ruddy face, broad shoulders, and humorous blue eyes suggested the
relationship the Colonel had mentioned. As they pulled up, the young
minister came forward and was introduced by the Colonel as “My cousin, Jim
Bradley.” While they were both assisting Miss Braxton to dismount and
fastening the horses, the Colonel, in a few words, told of the pursuit and
of the necessity of haste. Mr. Bradley led the way into the church, the
lovers following arm in arm. It was a plain whitewashed little room, with
wooden benches for the worshippers, and a narrow aisle leading up to the
platform, where stood the preacher's pulpit. Half a dozen lamps with bright
tin reflectors behind them, like halos, were fastened to brackets high up
on the walls. The young couple stopped when they reached the platform, and
at Mr. Bradley's request joined their hands. He had opened the prayer-book
at the marriage service, and was beginning to read it, when he gave a
start. Far away down the turnpike, faint but unmistakable--now dying away
into a mere murmur, now rising clear and bold--came the sound of galloping
horses. The Colonel felt the girl's hand cold in his, and he whispered a
word of encouragement. Mr. Bradley hurried on with the ceremony. The
centuries-old questions, so often asked beneath splendid domes before
fashionable assemblages to the accompaniment of triumphant music, were
never answered with more truth and fervor than in that little roadside
church, with no one to hear them but the listening trees and the heart of
the night wind.
“Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife? Wilt thou love her, comfort
her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all
others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
How he pressed the trembling little hand in his, and how devotedly he
answered, “I will.”
“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband? Wilt thou obey him and
serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health, and
forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall
live?”
The downcast eyes were covered with the drooping lids, and the voice was
faint and low, but what a world of love was in the simple, “I will.”
As the young minister, very solemn and dignified now, paused for each
reply, there came ever nearer and ever louder the ringing of the
hoof-beats. Once he stole a hurried glance through the window which gave on
the turnpike. Not half a mile away, their figures black against the
sky-line, fiercely lashing their tired horses to fresh effort, were three
desperate riders. The couple before him did not raise their eyes.
And now the concluding words of the service had been reached, and the
minister had begun, “Those whom God hath joined together--” when the rest
of the sentence was lost in the old General's angry shout, as he flung
himself from his horse, and, with his sons at his heels, rushed into the
church. At the threshold they stopped with blanched faces, for, as they
entered, the girl, uttering a faint cry, her face whiter than her gown,
down which a little stream of blood was trickling, reeled and tottered, and
fell senseless into her husband's arms.
A few days later Major Johnson's Lexington _Chronicle_, under the heading
“Jarvis--Braxton,” contained the following:
“Colonel William Jarvis, the distinguisbed and genial young turfman, and
Miss Susan Braxton, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of General
Thomas Anderson Braxton, the hero of two wars, whose name is a household
word wherever valor is honored and eloquence is admired, were united in
marriage Monday night. With the romance of youth, the young couple
determined to avoid the conventionalities of society, and only the bride's
father and two brothers were present. Immediately preceding the ceremony
the lovely bride was accidentally injured by the premature explosion of a
fire-arm, but her hosts of friends will be delighted to learn that the
mishap was not of a serious character. The young couple are now the guests
of General Braxton at the historic Elms. We are informed, however, that
Colonel Jarvis contemplates retiring from the turf and purchasing a
stock-farm near Lexington. As a souvenir of his marriage he has promised
his distinguished father-in-law the first three good horses he raises.”
The Balance of Power
BY MAURICE THOMPSON
“I don't hesitate to say to you that I regard him as but a small remove in
nature from absolute trash, Phyllis--absolute trash! His character may be
good--doubtless it is; but he is not of good family, and he shows it. What
is he but a mountain cracker? There is no middle ground; trash is trash!”
Colonel Mobley Sommerton spoke in a rich bass voice, slowly rolling his
words. The bagging of his trousers at the knees made his straight legs
appear bent, as if for a jump at something, while his daughter Phyllis
looked at him searchingly, but not in the least impatiently, her fine gray
eyes wide open, and her face, with its delicately blooming cheeks, its
peach-petal lips, and its saucy little nose, all attention and
half-indignant surprise.
“Of course,” the Colonel went on, with a conciliatory touch in his words,
when he had waited some time for his daughter to speak and she spoke
not--“of course you do not care a straw for him, Phyllis; I know that. The
daughter of a Sommerton couldn't care for such a--”
“I don't mind saying to you that I do care for him, and that I love him,
and want to marry him,” broke in Phyllis, with tremulous vehemence, tears
gushing from her eyes at the same time; and a depth of touching pathos
seemed to open behind her words, albeit they rang like so many notes of
rank boldness in the old man's ears.
“Phyllis!” he exclaimed; then he stooped a little, his trousers bagging
still more, and he stood in an attitude almost stagy, a flare of choleric
surprise leaping into his face. “Phyllis Sommerton what _do_ you mean? Are
you crazy? You say that to me?”
The girl--she was just eighteen--faced her father with a look at once
tearfully saucy and lovingly firm. The sauciness, however, was superficial
and physical, not in any degree a part of her mental mood. She could not,
had she tried, have been the least bit wilful or impertinent with her
father, who had always been a model of tenderness. Besides, a girl never
lived who loved a parent more unreservedly than Phyllis loved Colonel
Sommerton.
“Go to your room, miss! go to your room! Step lively at that, and let me
have no more of this nonsense. Go! I command you!”
The stamp with which the Colonel's rather substantial boot just then shook
the floor seemed to generate some current of force sufficient to whirl
Phyllis about and send her up-stairs in an old-fashioned fit of hysteria.
She was crying and talking and running all at the same time, her voice made
liquid like a bird's, and yet jangling with its mixed emotions. Down fell
her wavy, long, brown hair almost to her feet, one rich strand trailing
over the rail as she mounted the steps, while the rustling of her muslin
dress told off the springy motion of her limbs till she disappeared in the
gilt-papered gloom aloft, where the windowless hall turned at right angles
with the stairway.
Colonel Sommerton was smiling grimly by this time, and his iron-gray
mustache quivered humorously.
“She's a little brick,” he muttered; “a chip off the old log--by zounds,
she is! She means business. Got the bit in her teeth, and fairly splitting
the air!” He chuckled raucously. “Let her go; she'll soon tire out.”
Sommerton Place, a picturesque old mansion, as mansions have always gone in
north Georgia, stood in a grove of oaks on a hill-top overlooking a little
mountain town, beyond which uprose a crescent of blue peaks against a
dreamy summer sky. Behind the house a broad plantation rolled its
billow-like ridges of corn and cotton.
The Colonel went out on the veranda and lit a cigar, after breaking two or
three matches that he nervously scratched on a column.
This was the first quarrel that he had ever had with Phyllis.
Mrs. Sommerton had died when Phyllis was twelve years old, leaving the
little girl to be brought up in a boarding-school in Atlanta. The widowed
man did not marry again, and when his daughter came home, six months before
the opening of our story, it was natural that he should see nothing but
loveliness in the fair, bright, only child of his happy wedded life, now
ended forever.
The reader must have taken for granted that the person under discussion in
the conversation touched upon at the outset of this writing was a young
man; but Tom Bannister stood for more than the sum of the average young
man's values. He was what in our republic is recognized as a promising
fellow, bright, magnetic, shifty, well forward in the neologies of society,
business, and politics, a born leader in a small way, and as ambitious as
poverty and a brimming self-esteem could make him. From his humble
law-office window he had seen Phyllis pass along the street in the old
Sommerton carriage, and had fallen in love as promptly as possible with her
plump, lissome form and pretty face.
He sought her acquaintance, avoided with cleverness a number of annoying
barriers, assaulted her heart, and won it, all of which stood as mere play
when compared with climbing over the pride and prejudice of Colonel
Sommerton. For Bannister was nobody in a social way, as viewed from the
lofty top of the hill at Sommerton Place; indeed, all of his kinspeople
were mountaineers, honest, it is true, but decidedly woodsy, who tilled
stony acres in a pocket beyond the first blue ridge yonder. His education
seemed good, but it had been snatched from the books by force, with the
savage certainty of grip which belongs to genius.
Colonel Sommerton, having unbounded confidence in Phyllis's aristocratic
breeding, would not open his eyes to the attitude of the young people until
suddenly it came into his head that possibly the almost briefless plebeian
lawyer had ulterior designs while climbing the hill, as he was doing
noticeably often, from town to Sommerton Place. But when this thought
arrived the Colonel was prompt to act. He called up the subject at once,
and we have seen the close of his interview with Phyllis.
Now he stood on the veranda and puffed his cigar with quick, short
draughts, as a man does who falters between two horns of a dilemma. He
turned his head to one side as if listening to his own thoughts, his tall,
pointed collar meantime fitting snugly in a crease of his furrowed jaw.
At this moment the shambling, yet in a way facile, footsteps of Barnaby,
the sporadic freedman of the household, were soothing. Colonel Sommerton
turned his eyes on the comer inquiringly, almost eagerly.
“Well, Barn, you're back,” he said.
“Yah, sah; I'se had er confab wid 'em,” remarked the negro, seating himself
on the top step of the veranda, and mopping his coal-black face with a red
cotton handkerchief; “an' hit do beat all. Niggahs is mos'ly eejits,
spacially w'en yo' wants 'em to hab some sense.”
He was a huge, ill-shapen, muscular fellow, old but still vigorous, and in
his small black eyes twinkled an unsounded depth of shrewdness. He had been
the Colonel's slave from his young manhood to the close of the war; since
then he had hung around Ellijay what time he was not sponging a livelihood
from Sommerton Place under color of doing various light turns in the
vegetable garden, and of attending to his quondam master's horses.