THE FAIR MISSISSIPPIAN
[Illustration: HONORIA]
THE FAIR
MISSISSIPPIAN
_A NOVEL_
BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
[Illustration: [Logo]]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
=The Riverside Press Cambridge=
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY MARY N. MURFREE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1908_
THE FAIR MISSISSIPPIAN
CHAPTER I
The simplest fact of this life of ours is subject to manifold and
diverse interpretations. It was the faithful belief of Edward Desmond,
and his inward protest, that he did not care for money. He had the true
scholar’s disdain of the froth and fret of fashion that can but scantily
disguise the mental shallowness of society. He was not fond of luxury.
He had an ardor for hard work and a passionate ambition for achievement.
He desired but a modest competence and the opportunity for mental
development along the lines which his expanding capacities gave promise
of compassing. Nevertheless, at twenty-four years of age, his elaborate
education at length complete, in the prime of his intellectual powers,
tingling with the consciousness of ability, he found that he had become
suddenly solicitous in small matters of social precedence; he
experienced a pained deprecation of the presence of wealth; he winced
with a sensitive realization of poverty; he had acquired a wavering yet
proud self-assertion, consciously futile.
The change had been wrought in a time of grievous tragedy, full of
poignancies scarcely to be adequately appreciated by the practical
world. For less sensitive men have suffered more bitter woes. It was a
trite tragedy, with no traits of dramatic potentialities. On the sudden
death of his father ensued the revelation of a shattered estate, the
usual frantic, useless effort to avert total wreck, final defeat
culminating in the forced sale of an old home with all its
appurtenances. The memories, the dreams, the traditions, the broken
hopes that had hallowed the old chattels were too immaterial even for
the cormorant-like comprehensiveness of the inventories, and these
sanctities were all that was left for the heir.
His friends, however, took an optimistic view. When the struggle was
over,—brief, but hopeless and conclusive,—they found solace in the
completeness of his equipment; his education was at length finished; he
had returned to his Maryland home only the previous June from an
elaborate course of study abroad; the world was before him. As to the
profession of the law for which he had been destined, they cheerfully
argued that the preliminary training and the necessary library would be
expensive, success uncertain,—and he must needs live pending its
delay,—the tardy emoluments disproportioned to the labor and ability
involved. Since there seemed no vacancy in the professorial ranks of the
small western colleges, where they had hoped he might find a chair, they
spoke of him as having fallen upon his feet when the unusual brilliancy
of his scholastic record brought him the offer of the tutorship of the
three sons in a wealthy family, dwelling in the isolation of a secluded
Mississippi plantation, the opportunity coming at the ultimate crisis of
the painful financial emergency. For although the salary was small, in
comparison with the allowance which the generosity of his father had
heretofore afforded an only son, his prospective earnings would have
abashed the honoraria of a fledgeling lawyer’s professional labors, even
had he already attained admission to the bar. Thus, followed by few
regrets, the last month of the year found him arrived at the scene of
his pedagogical work.
“It is Mrs. Faurie’s chief desire that her sons shall be adequately
prepared for college. She is a great believer in individual instruction
by a thoroughly competent educator, who can discern and—ah—strengthen
the weaknesses, and—ah—develop special capacities in the mind of
youth,—ah, yes! She fears that our frequent and extended tours abroad
have cultivated their powers of superficial observation and love of
travel at the expense of their love of study, and—ah—capacity to absorb
theories and to concentrate their thoughts, and to take an interest in
books, and—ah—that is the reason,—_one_ of the reasons,”—with a bow and
smile,—“why we esteem ourselves so fortunate,—so _very_ fortunate to
have you with us.” Nothing could be more suave than the old gentleman
beaming upon him from the foot of the table, but Edward Desmond, after
an effort at a receptive and grateful smile, looked down at his fork and
turned it aimlessly in his hand, without a word in response.
He had had full range of the pastures, and the harness galled him. Yet
logically he could not find aught of fault in this smooth courtesy and
tone of appreciation. It so became even a quasi-employer, though
conscious of his magnanimity and sense of _noblesse oblige_. The fact
that Desmond had grown gradually aware that Mr. Stanlett was but basking
in the reflection of his niece’s splendors, and, although having some
indeterminate income of his own, was content to spend the evening of his
days in her embellished entourage, scarcely mitigated his secret
displeasure. He felt that the old gentleman assumed a patronage which he
had no right to exercise. Yet this resentment was inconsistent with his
own theory that mere money had no title to homage from him. Thus Mr.
Stanlett’s patronage, poor, should not have been less acceptable than
Mr. Stanlett’s patronage, rich. Mrs. Faurie had not hastened to make
Desmond welcome, but indeed he had been in the house only for an hour or
so, and Mr. Stanlett’s urbanity was surely expansive enough to atone. He
gave the newcomer his choice of excuses in Mrs. Faurie’s behalf: first
the fatigue of a long drive, and again he mentioned a sore throat as her
reason for not joining the group at the dinner-table. “She will see you
later in the evening,” Mr. Stanlett promised.
If the lady did not choose to appear at her own board for any reason
which might seem to her good and sufficient, Desmond was in no position
to cavil, but the old gentleman’s inadvertences in the matter gave him
an impression of insincerity about the methods of the household which
grated on his exacting and sensitive mood. Even the manners of the
domestics, smooth, and deft, and obsequious in the extreme, were
incongruous with the veiled scorn of the stranger, as a man of scant
means, which he subtly detected in their eyes, for, the servitors of
wealth and large pretensions, they had slight toleration of poverty out
of their own rank of life. He perceived, too, the relish which Joel, the
antiquated negro butler, took in the elaboration of the details of the
daily dinner service, especially the old-fashioned custom of removing
the cloth with each successive course, which was so deftly accomplished,
revealing the fresh one spread below, that it seemed a prandial miracle.
Mr. Stanlett, however, apologized in some sort.
“We keep up the old style, you see. My niece says she despairs of ever
inducing Joel to condescend to one cloth for the table at dinner, though
she brought some very fancy centrepieces and such gimcracks from Paris
expressly to stimulate his ambition for novelty.”
Desmond felt little drawn toward his prospective pupils, one seated
beside him and the other two opposite. They were of a type with which he
had scant sympathy. They were younger, too, than he had reason to expect
from the amount of the salary and his own scholastic pretensions, and
his consequence seemed further diminished in that he should be called
upon to teach in effect mere children. While they were not handsome of
feature, they were extremely handsomely built and tall for their
respective ages; but he perceived with disapproval that they lacked
muscle. They were very apt and delicate in all the usages of the table,
and in their elegant nicety of attire “mamma’s darling” was writ large.
They all had good eyes, and they held up their heads in a frank,
gentlemanlike way; but their cosmopolitan air, their easy assurance,
their ready phrasings far beyond their years, though evidently the
superficial result of their travels and their precocious relations with
the world, did not serve to commend them to one who loved a boy for his
crude boyishness. These seemed little men of the world, and they sat
smug and silent and looked at their great-uncle with faces of filial
gravity when, under the influence of too much old port, he began to show
traits of the ridiculous, albeit in a genteel and refined fashion. Yet
Desmond admitted to himself that he would not have thought it becoming
that they should laugh. The clear pallor of the old gentleman’s lean
face grew delicately flushed. His white hair was sparse on his long
head, showing its bony structure. He had a white mustache, and a
factitious idea of youth was suggested by the gleam of a very natural
set of false teeth beneath it. Presently he began to hum, as if
absent-minded, and at length he sang out:—
“My girl so fair, my friend so rare,
With these what mortal could be richer?
Give me but these,—a fig for care,
My sweet girl, my friend, and pitcher.”
It was the echo of what had been a very pretty tenor voice in its prime,
and its resonant vibrations reached and roused a parrot asleep in a
cage, hanging in a broad, deep bay-window. The bird suddenly fluffed its
feathers and sent out a sharp, harsh cry; then, twisting on its perch
and swinging inverted by one claw, it sang with a painfully realistic
imitation and with all the taunting effect of mockery:—
“My sweet girl, my friend, and pitcher.”
It was too much for the decorum of the youngest of the three boys. He
broke into an irresistible puerile cackle, and the old man, catching
suddenly to his senses and his sobriety, flushed deeply, the crimson
stealing through his sparse white hair and all along his polished white
scalp.
The eldest of the boys, a lad of fourteen, came at once to the rescue
with the tact of a Chesterfield, as smooth as cream.
“The idea of Polly remembering your old ‘pitcher-song,’ Uncle
Clarence,—that’s quite a compliment. And after so long an absence.”
“Very true,—very true,” said the old gentleman, readily reassured.
“Pretty Polly,”—smiling blandly at the accomplished fowl. “Want a
cracker?”
“My pitcher,” repeated Polly, as if with the intention of prompting the
nature of the refreshment.
“Why, we have been away—let me see—my memory fails me about these little
details. How long were we in Europe this time, Reginald?—how long is it
since Polly heard that song?”
“Eighteen months, Uncle Clarence. I shouldn’t have thought Polly capable
of such an effort. May we be excused, sir?”
“Certainly—by all means.” Then, turning to Desmond, “I don’t care to see
young boys linger at the table after the cloth is drawn and the bottle
is stirring over the mahogany.”
The disaffected Desmond thought a continuance here might prove a
salutary object-lesson as to the pernicious effects of vinous
indulgence, and his eyes followed with no great favor the little
gentlemen as, prettily bowing, they nattily made their exit. Somehow he
was reassured to hear a clumsy shuffling of feet in the hall as, to
judge by auricular evidence, they engaged in a scuffle outside the
closed door. Suddenly one of them was thrown with a great bang against
it,—then an abrupt and awe-stricken silence ensued.
“Eighteen months,” Mr. Stanlett repeated. “I did not realize the length
of our absence. In truth,” he added, with a spark of mischief kindling
the wine in his eyes, “we stayed as long as we could,—as long as our
money held out. My niece, Mrs. Faurie, said that she had run the full
length of her tether. You see, Mr. Desmond,”—his voice had a
confidential intonation,—“by the provisions of the will,”—he spoke as if
it were the sole and singular testamentary document in human
experience,—“Mrs. Faurie has a large income,—a very large income,—but
she cannot go beyond it,—she cannot touch the principal.”
Desmond flushed haughtily. He had had such close dealings with debts and
financial distresses and sheer poverty of late, nay, of rivings and
wrestings of possessions that seemed so inalienably his own as to give
their seizure the taint of robbery, that he had scant appetite to digest
the prosperity of others, and he was devoid of the vulgar vice of
curiosity which might otherwise have stimulated his interest. His dark
blue eyes were on the vast, murky spread of the Mississippi River, seen
through the window beyond a group of pecan trees, and the Arkansas bank
opposite, a dim line of dark gray against the fainter gray of the low
and clouded sky. His closely cut chestnut hair showed the contour of his
shapely head. His tall, strong figure, for he had a record in college
athletics as well as less esteemed branches of learning, had a supple
grace that lent an air of distinction to the well-fitting suit of gray
he wore, for at Great Oaks Plantation no one affected evening dress for
daily dinner. So quiet was Desmond that his attitude expressed an
attention which he did not really accord,—in fact, it was divided by a
fear that in Mr. Stanlett’s garrulity he was liable to trench too far on
the private affairs of the family. However, the old gentleman occupied
the position of host or employer, according to the viewpoint; he was
treated with filial deference by the youthful Fauries; he had received
the tutor with a happy blending of hospitality and authority, and
Desmond hardly knew how he might decorously evade disclosures of
bibulous candor which he was neither entitled nor expected to hear.
“No, sir,” Mr. Stanlett repeated, “by the will she cannot touch the
principal, but she has a large income,—a fixed sum, thirty thousand
dollars chargeable on the whole estate, and in addition the yield of
this Great Oaks Plantation, which varies according to the season,—a very
large income,—_so long as she remains a widow_. Yes, sir!—a widow she
is, and a widow she must continue! Mr. Faurie was a very arbitrary man
in point of temper—where are those boys?—and had a grudging against any
other man’s getting a chance to spend his money. Notwithstanding the
losses occasioned by the Civil War and the various fluctuations in
values since, Faurie was worth little short of a million dollars when he
died. He had a very level head. He made a remarkable will, a good, safe,
sound, able document.” Mr. Stanlett had an evident relish of the
provisions of that will,—a great respect for it.
“She could dissent,—she could break it, I suppose.” Desmond forced
himself to speak. He was not to have the typical tutor’s mental privacy,
apparently. By reason of the magnanimity his employers intended to
affect, treating him according to his former worldly station and as an
equal, a friend, an honored man of letters, he was to have the trial of
participating in their social life as at a Barmecide feast, really
sharing naught, a mere figment of fraternity and festivity.
“Break the will!” Mr. Stanlett skirled in dismay. “Impossible!—after
nearly seven years’ acquiescence. But if she could, she would only get
what the will gives her anyhow in the event of a second marriage,—simply
her dower rights in Tennessee,—one fourth of the personalty, a
life-interest in a third of the realty situated there, including his
town residence in Nashville,—just what the law would allow her had he
died intestate,—and in the Mississippi estate a child’s part in fee
simple, for ‘dower,’ you know, is abolished in this State, and the law
always follows the location of the realty. But, in fact, she has seemed
perfectly satisfied with the arrangement,—as indeed well she might be! I
fancy, too, that she has had about enough of matrimony. She likes her
own way, and Mr. Faurie was a self-willed, proud, dictatorial—are those
boys gone?—And what are _you_ doing there, Joel?” glimpsing the butler,
standing stiffly near the sideboard. “Gimme the brandy decanter. Have
some cognac, Mr. Desmond. Light those candles, Joel,—and take yourself
off. Want to wait on the table _all_ night?”
Then as the door closed noiselessly on the accomplished old
servant,—“That nigger has got ears as long as a mule’s,” Mr. Stanlett
commented in parenthesis, quaffed from his glass, sucked in his thin
lips with extreme relish, and continued his confidences.
“No,—my niece’s position under the will cannot dispose her greatly to a
second experiment in the holy estate of matrimony. Mr. Faurie was
considerably her senior,—in fact, he was quite an old bachelor, you
might say, when they were married. How much older he was _I_ never knew,
for _she_ would not tolerate any mention of the disparity in
years,—though Faurie himself, who was a very stylish, impressive man,
was too vain and arrogant to care one whit for it. Why,”—lowering his
voice sepulchrally,—“when he died, I couldn’t mention his age in
preparing the newspaper announcements because _I never knew it_.”
He looked hard at Desmond and nodded his head significantly. “Now, don’t
you know that people thought _that_ was funny?”
He paused to light a cigar, having pushed the tray over to Desmond.
“Yes,” he resumed puffingly, “as my niece says, we stayed in Europe as
long as our money lasted. We had a fine time, went everywhere, saw
everything, were fêted and made much of to our hearts’ content,—could
have married into the nobility more than once, for”—the candle-light
illumined the freakish slyness and glee in his senile smile—“people over
there don’t know how the will is fixed in regard to a second marriage.
No! pledge you my honor! They only saw the royal way in which Mrs.
Faurie _can spend_ money. Now,” he broke out into a chirping laugh of
relish of the incongruity, “my niece says that she doesn’t know how she
can make both ends meet till her next year’s income begins to accrue.
Ha! ha! We are to stay down here in the swamp till the hot weather runs
us out, and then we shall go down to the Gulf coast, find some cheap
little place near Biloxi or Pass Christian, and ah—ah”—he waved the
cloud of cigar smoke from above his venerable head—“and I for one wish
that time were come. You see plantation life is a sort of syncope at
best,—that is, hereabouts. Further down the river, though, things are
livelier. In Louisiana, now, the people are of a different disposition:
they go about, visit each other; they make festival occasions; they are
of French extraction; they have the light heart and the happy hand.
Nothing can subdue the old Gallic _gaieté de cœur_, not even the swamp
country. But all this upper region of ours was settled by people from
Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky,—about the time that the mania for
raising cotton in the bottom lands of Mississippi took hold on the
progressive planters of the Border States. We have got our inherited
English temperament to reckon with, our seriousness, our stolidity, our
inability to be amused by a trifle, like a kitten with a string, or a
Creole. And, too, it is a matter of neighborhood,—we are only a few
hundred miles from Memphis, counting by the crankings of the river, all
our associations are with the Border States, and we are out of earshot
of the lively Creoles. I am afraid you will find it very dull here, Mr.
Desmond, way down in the swamp.” He had evidently forgotten the fact
that his companion was not a guest.
“I am not here for pleasure, you know,” Desmond reminded him.
“True,—oh, yes,—very true,—the boys,—their education. But you are so
like”—Desmond thought that he was about to say “one of ourselves,” but
perhaps he was supersensitive—“ah—so very like a collegian yourself,
that I forget you occupy the reverend position of tutor. The boys have a
good start in the modern languages—that is, they can gabble fast
enough—their mother’s wanderings made them regular polyglots—they had
native teachers at every stoppage; but I reckon you will find them poor
shakes in the rudiments of natural science, mathematics, rhetoric,
Latin, and so forth, and I suppose that in spite of their colloquial
glibness, they know little of the construction of the foreign languages.
Mrs. Faurie is very anxious for their solid advancement. And she is
determined to make this enforced quiet recruit both her fortune and
their education. So glad to have you here, Mr. Desmond,—so glad to have
you with us.”
He hesitated, waved the smoke from his white head, and once more filled
his glass from the decanter. It was a small liqueur glass, but its size
was not commensurate with the potations to which it ministered, for it
was easily replenished, and of course he drank his Cognac neat. Desmond
began to have a shrewd idea, partly because the tiny glass had been
intended for a mere sip of Curaçoa, that had Mrs. Faurie been present at
dinner, the bibulous exercises would have been much curtailed. He was
experiencing some embarrassment in thus lingering over the potations,
for he had arrived only that afternoon, and had never met Mrs. Faurie,
having been employed by Mr. Keith, the guardian of her sons. Desmond was
solicitous lest the breach of etiquette and good manners be imputed to
his connivance. Perhaps Mr. Stanlett’s proclivity was known to his
niece, but he must seldom have such complete immunity from remonstrance
and caution. While the old gentleman’s vinous indulgence and senile
impairments would suggest that his preferences might with impunity be
set aside in such an emergency, the evident appreciation and deference
with which he was treated implied that he was a person to be reckoned
with. Desmond dared not himself propose to quit the table: the gaucherie
would undoubtedly offend the old gentleman as an intentional disrespect.
Yet the tutor really felt that by thus lingering he jeopardized all his
prospects with that far more important personage, the lady of Great Oaks
and the head of the family. Distasteful as was his position to him, he
valued it exceedingly the moment it was threatened, as the only
opportunity that had offered at his utmost need. He had been positively
penniless at the crisis of his disasters. Even had he completed his law
course, he must have had means to live while he waited for a practice to
accrue. He had no commercial experience or aptitudes. He had no
available business connections. Perhaps few people realize the
difficulty of leaping into a paying position at a vault, instead of
growing and climbing up with it from the ground. All values seem
accessible only _per ambages_. A moment earlier he had been recoiling
from the employment, the situation he liked so ill, and now he was
asking himself if he were desirous of standing behind a dry goods
counter in a village store, that he could afford to make his entry into
Mrs. Faurie’s household under circumstances so inauspicious,—carousing
over the dinner-table with a man, not his host, obviously superannuated,
in a sort irresponsible, unable perhaps to justify his own dereliction,
much less the infringement of decorum by the tutor. The village
store,—quotha! No refuge awaited him there. He did not know insertion
from indigo. He had fallen into his niche, his proper place, and with a
sudden sense of prizing its values, he quitted his chair. Not to leave
the room abruptly and at once, however. The crisis had called his tact
into play. He walked toward the mantelpiece as if to scrutinize the
picture above it and thus pave the way to an easy withdrawal.
“Take the candle to it,—take the candle to it. That is Faurie himself
when he was about sixteen,—do not know how long ago it was painted,
though! But the length of that rifle is a dead give-away,” cried Mr.
Stanlett, from the table, his glass in his hand.
As Desmond lifted one of the candles, the light revealed a large
oil-painting executed in the florid portrait style of the middle
nineteenth century,—a crowded canvas it was, showing a fair, vigorous
young stripling leaning on his gun, a horse and foliage in the distance,
a deer, with only the fine head visible, gray and antlered, lying at the
sportsman’s feet;—the frame, inclosing all, very handsome. There were
some other pieces in the room, which was large, square, and high-ceiled,
all suggestive of game, and the fact that the late Mr. Faurie may have
been a bon-vivant. One, a dainty water-color sketch of a piscatorial
subject, the catfish of the Mississippi, bore the marks of the hand of a
clever amateur.
The wall-paper was dimly pictorial, after the style of even an earlier
day, a mélange of forest boughs and boles of great trees through which a
shadowy outline of the figures of a chase sped, with deer, hounds,
horsemen, huntsmen, and horns, of “elfland faintly blowing.” A great,
dark, mahogany press showed through small diamonded panes rows of silver
vessels, glistering in the dusk, which neither the flicker of the candle
nor the twilight glimmer from the great windows could annul. Several of
the large cups bore inscriptions, and he thought they looked at the
distance like trophies captured by some winner of the turf. As Desmond
turned to ask the question, he perceived that the old man had sunk back
in his tall armchair, his delicate face, still in slumber, keenly
outlined against the cushion of its head-rest in the clear, refined
light of the candle close at hand, his white hair gleaming frostily.
Desmond stood uncertain for a moment. He saw through the bay-window that
the night was falling fast without. But for the flicker of the moon, he
might not have known how the great Mississippi rippled and sparkled
under the currents of the wind. The passing of the first steamboat that
he had yet seen he marked by her chimney-lamps, red and green, swinging
high in the air, and their reflection, ruby and emerald, gemming the
water. As she sheered, she showed the long line of her side-lights, like
a string of yellow topazes. She did not turn nor approach, but sounded
her whistle as if for a landing, and he wondered at this. The boat was
saluting the place by way of compliment, for it was known that the queen
was in residence, so to speak, and Mrs. Faurie shipped much cotton from
the contemned and avoided plantation in the old way by water, for the
almost omnipresent railroads were still distant from Great Oaks Landing.
Presently the lights were quenched, the craft had passed beyond his
view, the moon was overcast, and only the gray night was visible from
the window. Desmond seized his opportunity for escape. He placed the
candle he held upon the table, and with a noiseless step and a furtive,
apprehensive eye, as if the exacting old gentleman might rouse to
displeasure and reproach at a mere rustle, he quitted the room, leaving
his companion, his empty glass still poised in his hand, asleep in his
chair.
The mansion at Great Oaks Plantation was as ill-lighted by night as are
most residences dependent still on candle and kerosene. Unless, indeed,
some festival occasion demanded extra brilliancy, only the gleam from
the chandelier in the main hall guided the exit from the dining-room
through a cross-hall, the entry, so called. Desmond had not the
necessity for wariness that might have befitted the steps of Mr.
Stanlett, but he paused in the dim entry, marking the subdued glow at
the intersection with the main hall, then carefully directed his steps
thither. Even thus he ran over the “bike” of one of the boys,
inadvertently placed where it might most opportunely trip the
unsuspecting pedestrian in these glooms, and threw it upon the floor
with a tremendous clatter. To his vexation he heard a door open in the
hall beyond and a feminine voice call out unintelligibly, whether in
inquiry or warning or commiseration he did not accurately discern in his
confusion. He hastily set the wheel out of harm’s way against the wall,
and with a swift, prompt step advanced up the lighted hall toward the
open door, which he perceived led into the parlor where he had been
received earlier in the afternoon. A large lamp on a high, old-fashioned
pedestal stood on a round, marble-topped centre table; a wood fire
blazed with a white light in the great chimney-place, and the brass
andirons and fender glittered responsively; an old-fashioned crimson
velvet carpet was on the floor, and long crimson satin damask curtains
hung over lace draperies at the windows. In the midst of this atmosphere
of glow and warmth the lady of Great Oaks stood with expectant mien,
awaiting him.
Somehow she was so different from his mental image, from what he was
prepared to see, that he was disconcerted for a moment. He had imagined
a middle-aged frump favored by fortune, portly, puffy, rubicund,
overfed, overdressed, bursting with self-importance, smiling in creases,
of husky voice and fixed opinions, and laying down the law. This was a
woman seemingly as young as himself; tall, slender, regal, with rich
brown hair in a high pompadour roll, an exquisitely white, delicate
complexion, luminous gray eyes, with a marvelous capacity for
expression, a clear, coercive glance delivered from beneath long black
eyelashes, and finely drawn black eyebrows, perfectly straight. She wore
a gown of thick, creamy lace, some fabric rich of effect though not of
commensurate cost, one of the pretty fads of the day, and about her slim
waist was twisted a soft, silken sash in Roman stripes of pink and azure
and amber, the long ends hanging knotted at one side. The sentiment of
youth that clung about her presence was oddly incongruous with her
assured address, replete with authority and the manner of seniority.
“This is Mr. Desmond,” she said, in a clear, dulcet, vibratory voice, as
she advanced and held out her hand. “So sorry not to have met you at
dinner! But I am sure the rest did what they could for you. We are all
so glad to have you here.”
He seated himself in the fauteuil she indicated, and she sank down into
one on the opposite side of the table in the blended light of lamp and
fire. She fixed her disconcerting eyes full upon him, as if utterly
unaware of their bewildering beauty, gravely scrutinizing him, evidently
“sizing him up,” taking her impressions of his mental quality and
personal fitness for the position.
“There are many places on the river which are very attractive. But we
are differently situated. We are so far from any neighbors,—quite
isolated. It really seems a godsend that you are willing to come to us
in the swamp.”
As she talked on her homely themes, he was irritated to be so
tongue-tied, but somehow he could not reconcile the situation; and as
she looked straight at him from beneath those level brows, he gazed
spellbound at her.
“My three big babies are too old for the nest, I know, and in fact they
are toppling out. But I can’t bear to send them off as yet, and I have
great faith in home influence and individual teaching.”
Desmond thought if he could but shut his eyes for one moment; he could
see the kind of frump whom her sage, staid discourse would befit.
“I think they can be prepared here for college, right here in the swamp
with me,—and then—why, we shall see what we shall see. And now,
good-night. I will not detain you.” She touched a bell, and as the brisk
young footman’s black face appeared in the door,—“See that the lamp is
lighted in Mr. Desmond’s room, and that the fire is burning well.”