the old lady and Aunt Dilsey hovered in the hall with frightened,
excited faces. Fear, vague, indefinite, but chilling, fell upon him.
He had spent half the night in thinking and planning; he had felt
assured that it needed only time and change of scene to restore Madeline
to her former brightness; but even if a cloud should always hang over
her, he wished to share its gloom. He could not fully appreciate her
position, because he could not look at it from her standpoint. He could
understand that it had been a cruel blow to her, but he could not
understand how tragical. He felt very hopeful as he walked over to her
home, but the face of the priest, those women in the background,
startled him.
"What is the matter?" he cried sharply.
"She is gone," said Father Vincent.
"Gone!" he echoed, paling suddenly, and half reeling.
"Yes."
"Where? In God's name, where?"
"That is what we do not know. She must have gone away on the early
train this morning."
The blood came back to the young man's face, a hideous fear lifted from
his mind.
"You do not think then--"
"No; a Capelle would never seek self-destruction."
Everett stood still and looked about the hall and through the open doors
into the silent rooms, yesterday filled with the sweet influence of her
presence, to-day empty, desolate, and a terrible sense of loss swept
over him. Her words, "You will know my decision to-morrow," came back
to his memory with crushing significance.
"Fool, fool that I have been!" he groaned aloud, and the priest took him
by the arm and led him into the parlor.
"The women think her mind has been upset by her mother's sudden death.
It is well; let all her friends think so. But we must find her, Mr.
Everett."
"Yes; I will go at once," said Roger, rousing himself. "It is to hide
from me that she has gone away; but I shall find her, I shall certainly
find her."
He spoke firmly and quietly, but the task before him proved very hard,
for she had left no written message, no clue to her plans or
destination.
It was a spring day in the year 1886 that Roger Everett turned aside
from the beaten track of the tourist in New Orleans to visit a school in
the old quarter of the city--a school maintained by a few New England
philanthropists for colored children exclusively. He lost his bearings
in the narrow streets among the quaint old-fashioned houses, and stopped
to make inquiries at a small building opening on the street. He rapped
on the half-closed wooden shutter with his stick, his eyes meanwhile
wandering up and down the silent, sunny street, absently noting the
scant, picturesque attire of some brown-faced children at play on the
sidewalk and the pathetic figure of an old negro sitting on a doorstep.
His failure to find Madeline Capelle had left its traces upon his face.
Five years had elapsed since her disappearance, and though he had not
ceased to look into every woman's face he met, he had given up hope of
finding her. A serene-eyed woman in a black gown and cap came to the
door, and he instantly recognized the dress as the uniform of some
religious order or sisterhood.
"Come in," she said in a gentle, subdued tone.
"I beg your pardon. I merely wished to--"
"It will not be an intrusion. Many have already come to-day to see her,
for you know many love her. This way, please," she said, and without
waiting for him to speak again, she turned and walked through two rather
bare, dusky rooms into a small one opening on a green, magnolia-shaded
court. He followed her, puzzled, but with a touch of curiosity,
wondering how he should explain himself; but the moment he crossed the
threshold he understood the mistake that she had made, for in the centre
of the room stood a white-draped bier, and through the unfolded linen he
could trace the outline of a rigid human form.
"See the flowers," his conductress whispered, pointing to the masses of
cape jasmines, roses, and smaller flowers. "Sister Christiana loved
them, but she loved all things beautiful and good. They were brought
this morning by negroes she has been kind to. To teach, to elevate, and
to nurse them has been her mission. No service seemed too humble, no
duty too hard for her. She did indeed 'belong to Christ.'"
Her mild eyes kindled, her hand instinctively sought the cross at her
side.
"She died calmly and with joy, and knew us until the last moment."
He followed her across the room, treading softly, as we always do in the
presence of death. With reverent hand she laid aside the shielding
linen, and he leaned forward--the past once more a vivid reality and not
a memory, not a dream vanishing from him, for the face he looked down
upon was the face of Madeline Capelle.
*AN OLD-TIME LOVE STORY.*
The Galers lived on the summit of a long hill sloping down to the brink
of the Chattahoochee River, and nearly opposite the small town of
Roswell. Above the house and below it stretched the fertile acres of a
fine plantation worked by many slaves; for old Jabez Galer was rich in
land and negroes, besides owning a large interest in a wool factory over
the river. Roswell was really the most important manufacturing town in
Georgia before the War, though it was scattered so picturesquely over
the river hills with no railroad market nearer than Atlanta.
But it does not enter the province of this short sketch to give a
history of the old town with its factories scattered along short canals,
fed from the river, its traditions reaching back into the early days of
the settling of Georgia--its "lover's leap" on the brink of a wide
creek, a cliff of gray rocks with lovely maidenhair ferns growing
thickly around its base--but of the Galers living across the river from
it in the midst of their small kingdom, surrounded by their black
retainers, and of an old love story.
The house was big and white and squarely built, with the
piazzas--without which no Southern house would have seemed
complete--wide halls and large rooms belonging to a certain period of
colonial architecture. The lower hall was ornamented with the antlers
of a stag or two, some leopard-skin rugs, and with a stuffed owl perched
above the door. The rooms wrere sparely furnished after the stiff
fashion of the day, but linen closets and clothes-presses were full and
overflowing; for there wrere swift spinners and skillful weavers among
the negro women on the place, and a careful mistress to look after them.
In the rear of the main dwelling were the negro quarters, and off at one
side the barns and stables. The grassy lawn was shaded with fine old
oaks and mimosa trees. In the back yard the little negroes disported,
and a dozen hounds had their kennels; for Mr. Jabez Galer was fond of
riding forth over the river hills in the early dawn, with dogs and gun
and hunting-horn. His family consisted of himself, his meek, gentle
sister, Miss Jane, and his grand-daughter, fair Pamela.
Mr. Jabez Galer was a character in his day and generation. He was
impulsive and could be generous, but had a most tyrannical will and a
violent temper. He ruled his household like an autocrat. There was
something domineering in his very tread, the roll of his keen eye, the
fit of the white linen arraying his portly person. He was a rather
fine-looking old man, gray-haired and blue-eyed, and with evidences of
good living in every line of his clean-shaven face. No man could be
more genial than he when in a good humor, or appreciate a story or a
joke more keenly; and he was kind to his negroes. True, they did not
dare disobey him without expecting and receiving punishment, and they
worked hard; but they were well clothed, housed and fed, and enjoyed
their regular holidays and merrymakings.
Mr. Galer's doors were always open to the wandering prospector, the
trader, the itinerant preacher, or, indeed, to any one who claimed his
hospitality and seemed worthy of it, and his sister and granddaughter
were free to entertain or be entertained by the society of Roswell; but
his guests sometimes came in contact with his imperious will or his
temper. To show what manner of man he was one experience is herein
given:
A Kentucky horse-trader stopped at the house one night, and long after
the other members of the family had retired he sat in the dining-room
with his host drinking wine and telling stories. They both grew
somewhat excited as the mellow vintage warmed their fancies. They told
adventures of youthful gallantry. Mr. Galer had, in his time, figured
prominently in society as a beau, dancing and paying compliments; and
the Kentuckian admitted that he had also once felt proud of his
nimble-footedness in treading the cotillon. He was invited to give an
example of his skill, but declined. His host insisted, but he laughed
contemptuously at the idea. Old Jabez Galer's choler rose. He went to
the dining-room door and shouted for his own special servant, Elbert.
"Elbert, hey there! Elbert, you rascal, bring down your fiddle!"
An old negro man stumbled down the back stairway and into the room,
rubbing open his sleepy eyes, a much abused and battered violin under
his arm. He looked older than his master, his woolly head quite white,
a complex tracery of wrinkles covering his shrewd black face; but he
seemed active and strong, and betrayed not the slightest surprise at the
midnight summons.
"Mars Galer up tu some mischief, sho'," he muttered, sitting down, with
his feet drawn up under him, and beginning to tune the violin. He gave a
few preparatory scrapes across the strings, and then began to play the
old inspiring tunes his dusky people had danced to round many a brightly
blazing bonfire, or in the light of the full moon. Mr. Galer turned the
key in the door, reached down the gun resting in a rack above it, and
deliberately leveled it at his astonished guest.
"Now dance, or I'll put a bullet through your head."
The Kentuckian was not a coward, but he had no weapon--how he longed for
the pistols in his saddle-bags!--and realized that his host might do him
mischief if not humored.
It was a curious scene, an extremely ludicrous one. The candles, set in
tall, brass candlesticks, sputtered and flared, the tallow melting down
in a little gutter on one side. They cast only an uncertain, flickering
light over the room, and the tall, awkward Kentuckian, in creaking
boots, shuffled over the bare floor until the house fairly trembled, and
Miss Jane turned on her high feather bed in a chamber above, wondering
what unseemly sport could be going on. But the victim of Mr. Galer's
whims was a wary man and given to dissimulation when occasion required.
He appeared to find such humor in the situation that his host was thrown
entirely off guard and allowed the gun to rest negligently on the table
in front of him. In a twinkling it was snatched from his loosened
grasp, and the Kentuckian stood between him and the door.
"Now you try your skill awhile, Mr. Galer, or you may play best man at
the funeral," he said, grimly.
It was a neat revenge, and instead of trying to rouse the household to
his protection Mr. Galer promptly began to keep time to the music with
slow, old-fashioned steps. But he had lost the lightness and skill of
his youth, and, soon exhausted, had to beg for mercy. Elbert's eyes
twinkled in secret glee over his master's discomfiture, and he played a
livelier strain than ever. Mr. Galer and the trader parted the next
morning in the friendliest manner, and he told the story of his defeat
with the keenest appreciation.
With such a disposition to override all opposition to his wishes and
desires, it is not to be supposed that his family had an easy life of it
when wills clashed. It was only by stratagem that they could ever
outwit him; and it was by stratagem that Pamela married the man she
loved. It happened in this wise:
Adjoining Mr. Galer's plantation was one even larger and richer,
belonging to Mr. Josiah Williamson, a man who had abundance of money,
and was amply able to take life easy. He went away annually on a trip
to the principal Northern cities, and even talked of some time going
abroad. He and old Jabez Galer were warm friends, and it had long been
understood between them that Pamela should become Mrs. Josiah Williamson
when she arrived at a suitable age. At the date of this story she had
reached eighteen, and her grandfather's plans for her future began to
take active shape. One morning he stamped into the hall, threw his hat
and riding-whip on a table, shouting in thundering tones:
"Permely! Per*me*ly! hey, Perme*lee!*"
The little negroes rolling in the sand in the back yard scampered away
behind the kitchen, Miss Jane dropped the fine linen she was mending in
the dining-room, and Elbert muttered over a half-polished boot: "Mars
Jabe in one o' his tantrums 'g'in, ez I live."
"What is it, grandpa?" inquired a youthful voice from the upper hall,
and Pamela stepped lightly down the broad, shallow stairs.
"Come here to me," he said, but in a softer tone; for she held the
tenderest place in his heart; and she was fair enough to disarm even
greater anger than his. She was a tall young person, with a certain
charming dignity of carriage, a rather pale but lovely face, fine, pale
brown hair, and steel-gray eyes. There was no vivid coloring about her,
though plenty of character lay under that soft, subdued beauty. She was
gowned in thin muslin befitting the summer day, with a narrow lace
collar turned down around her slender neck. Mr. Galer laid his hands
heavily on her shoulders, looking sternly into her clear eyes.
"What's this I hear about you and Sim Black?"
She looked down, and the whiteness of her face and throat turned to
rose.
"I _would_ hang my head," giving her a slight shake. "What do you
suppose that young beggar had the impudence to do this morning when I
went over to Roswell? to ask me for you--you--old Jabez Galer's
grand-daughter; declared that he had always loved you, and that it was
with your consent he came to me."
"Yes sir," she said, in a low tone, tracing a seam in the floor with the
toe of her neat little shoe.
He stamped the floor. "Well, he'll not get you, do you hear? Do you
think I raised you, educated you, to marry a miserable little lawyer
without a rood of land or a nigger to his name? No, sirrah!"
"I thought you always intended me to be happy, sir," paling again before
his wrath, but firm.
"So I do, but you'll be happy in my way, marry the man I have selected
for you, and his name is--Josiah Williamson."
She stared at him in a disconcertingly amazed, shocked way.
"_Why, grandpa!_"
"What's the matter, now?"
"He's as old as you are."
"He is not a year older than your aunt Jane."
"And I love Sim, dear grandpa," she pleaded.
"Don't you dare to think of him again! Williamson--"
"I will certainly not think of _him_," with a flash of her eyes.
"I have forbidden Black ever coming here again, and I'll wear him out
with a cowhide if I ever hear of your speaking to him."
"Brother, brother," remonstrated Miss Jane's exasperatingly gentle voice
from the dining-room door, her small person half hidden in an armful of
mending.
"Don't 'brother' me! What have you been doing, not to look after this
girl? But women are contrary creatures, all of them, and enough to
drive a man distracted with their piety and sentimental foolishness!"
He went out upon the piazza, and sat down to let his vexation cool,
while Pamela was folded in her grandaunt's comforting little arms, to
the detriment of the linen, which received a copious shower of tears.
But if she wept she was also determined. As old Elbert had once
shrewdly said:
"Miss Pamely's er Galer, too, en got de Galer will, en de Galer temper,
en things gwinter fly to pieces when she en ole Mars come tugether."
Mr. Galer sat on the piazza; but he waxed wroth every time he thought of
young Black's presumption. Stretching afar before his eyes were his own
cotton-fields, girdled on one side by the winding curves of the
Chattahoochee, and on the other by deep, green forests, and through the
palpitant air of the summer noon floated a field song, chanted by the
joyous mellow voices of his slaves. His heart swelled with the pride of
riches. Sim Black, indeed! when Pamela could have the pick and choice
of the country, by right of her beauty and her dowry. What if the young
lawyer did possess a brilliant mind and an eloquent tongue, and culture
far beyond the average man in that region? he had sprung from obscure
origin, and his future honors were as yet but empty promises, while
Josiah Williamson's wealth and position were solid facts.
That afternoon, as Pamela sat in her room bending listlessly over some
gay patchwork, Mammy Susannah came in, and from under the kerchief
folded across her bosom, drew a little note.
"Honey, Elbert say, fo' de lub o' de Lawd not tu let old Mars know 'e
fetch dis."
Pamela sprang up, flushing and trembling, to receive her first
love-letter. It was brief:
"_Dearest:_--As your grandfather has forbidden me to enter his house
again, I shall walk by the althea hedge in your garden this evening
where, I pray you, meet me.
"Your devoted Lover,
"JOHN SIMPSON BLACK."
Mr. Josiah Williamson came a-wooing that evening just as twilight fell
and the whippoorwill began his plaintive serenade. The negroes
understood his errand, from the groom, who put up his horse, to the
pickaninny peeping around the corner of the house; and there were nods
and winks exchanged as he came nimbly up the piazza steps arrayed in his
finest broadcloth and newest, tightest neck-stock.
He and Mr. Galer sat on the piazza and chatted awhile of plantation
affairs, of the latest news from Washington, and of a public sale of
slaves which had recently occurred in Roswell; and Miss Jane sat in the
candle-lit parlor, knitting; but Pamela had disappeared.
"Can I--ahem--speak to Miss Permely, this evening?" Mr. Williamson at
last inquired. "Your note led me to hope so."
"Yes; I want that matter settled. I'll see if she's with her aunt."
But Miss Jane mused solitarily over the stocking heel, a great white
winged moth circling about her meek head or diving ever and anon toward
the flame of the candle.
"Where is Permely?" Mr. Galer inquired, frowning.
She dropped one of the long, shining needles with a clinking sound, and
stooped to grope around the edge of her skirts for it.
"Why, Jabez, I don't know; I thought--"
"Leave your thoughts out of the question, Jane, and go call her. She is
hiding somewhere about the house."
Miss Jane stood up and faced him, nerved to a fleeting courage.
"Brother, don't try to force the child into a loveless marriage. Think
how young she is; think--"
"Do as I tell you, Jane; I know what is best for Permely;" and she
silently obeyed.
But Mammy Susannah, hovering in the shadow of the stairway, had already
slipped out into the garden. It was a beauty's bower. The rising moon
shone on beds of tulip and mignonette, on rows of flaunting hollyhocks,
blue larkspur and yellow marigolds, on sweet pinks standing thickly in
the border of the walks, and roses bending earthward under the weight of
their own rich bloom and fragrance; its silvered light fell on the
althea hedge with its white and purple flowers, and on Pamela and her
lover slowly pacing the walk beyond.
"Miss Pemely, honey!" Susannah called, low and cautiously.
She hurriedly withdrew her hand from Sim's clasp.
"I must go; grandpa wants me."
But he threw his arms about her to detain her a moment longer, loth to
part from her so quickly. Their two young faces were almost on a level;
for Black was short and dark, though strongly built, and
square-shouldered, with keen black eyes, and a handsome, clean-shaven
face. His eyes were alight with love's soft fire as they rested on her
face.
"I cannot let you go so soon, beloved," he protested, tenderly.
"Ah, but think of grandpa's anger, should he find you here."
"It would take a stout heart to face it, I acknowledge," he said
laughing. Then he took her face between his hands: "You'll not let them
take you from me, Pamela?"
"Indeed I will not, Sim."
Her sweet eyes and mouth were kissed, and then Black vaulted over the
low garden fence, while she hastened to the house, her light skirts
brushing the tell-tale dew from flower and seeded grass, her fine, soft
hair hanging damply around her throat and delicate ears.
It is not the purpose of this chronicle to give a minute account of Mr.
Josiah Williamson's wooing, nor of its failure. Mr. Galer lived in a
state of vexation from morning until night. He was nearly beside himself
with baffled rage when he found that with characteristic family spirit
Pamela declined to be cajoled or coerced into obedience. All his
ambitious plans threatened a total collapse; and that the obstinacy of a
slim young girl should be the cause made it all the more aggravating.
He thought of a hundred schemes by which he might overcome her contrary
spirit, but only one appeared feasible. He chuckled grimly over it, and
sent for Mr. Williamson to unfold his plan to him.
"I'll pretend to give my consent to her marriage with Black, set the
day, invite the guests, and then contrive to have Sim detained over in
Roswell, put in jail if it's necessary, but let Permely think he's
changed his mind. Girls are touchy creatures, and Permely is so proud
that she would marry you in a minute rather than not have a wedding at
all."
It was not a situation to Mr. Williamson's liking. He wanted no
unwilling bride; and Pamela had shown her aversion for him so plainly
that he was entirely disenchanted. But he dared not sav so. Like all of
Mr. Galer's friends, he stood in wholesome fear of that gentleman's
temper.
"Well, what do you say?" his friend impatiently demanded.
"It seems a little--er--don't you think--"
"Oh, if you don't wish to marry my grand-daughter, pray say so."
"But I do, I do," said Mr. Williamson, feeling himself a miserable
coward for not protesting against deceiving the girl.
When he went away it was with the understanding that the whole matter
must be kept a secret between them. But as he rode dejectedly around
the corner of the garden, who should step out in front of him but Miss
Jane Galer, such a sparkle of indignation in her eyes, such a flush on
her delicate face, that she looked positively young and pretty. He
stared at her, and she, without so much as a polite good-morning, said:
"I want to know, Josiah Williamson, if you are not ashamed of yourself
for plotting against a young girl's happiness?"
"Blame your brother, Miss Jane--blame your brother," he said, in
self-defense, having the grace to look very much ashamed of himself,
though.
"You know he'd almost sell his own soul for the privilege of having his
way; but you--I think you ought to have more pride than to want to marry
Permely through fraud. What peace or pleasure do you think there would
be in it?"
"Not much for me, I'll allow," he said, flicking the willow switch he
carried at the flies swarming about his horse's head. "Miss Permely
hasn't shown her best temper to me lately, and I don't know as I care to
marry her at all. I want somebody that'll take life quietly and
gently."
He looked down again at Miss Jane. She smoothed out her black silk
apron, still trembling with indignation.
"No better-tempered girl lives than Permely Galer; but think of the sore
trial of being pestered all the time about marrying one man while she is
in love with another. I heard all that brother Jabez said to you, and
if you don't give up the idea of this marriage I'll tell Permely and
Sim, and, more than that, I'll do all I can to help them if they want to
run away."
Mr. Williamson was fascinated by her unexpected fire and spirit.
"I didn't know you were so spunky, Jane," he said, admiringly. "We used
to go to school together, do you remember?"
"Why yes," she replied, surprised at the turn of his thoughts.
"You were a gentle little thing, but you had temper enough then. You
look, for all the world, as you did the day Eben Sanders gave me such a
thrashing."
She smiled faintly at the recollection. There were others hidden deep in
her heart. Nobody knew that in those school days she had cherished many
romantic fancies about Josiah Williamson, or what a blow it was to her
when he went off and married a girl from another settlement. She had
been on friendly terms with his wife, and had so far overcome her own
feelings as to feel deeply, sincerely grieved when she died. Mr.
Williamson dismounted and stood at her side.
"I don't know as I'd tell Jabez I overheard his plans if I were you.
Maybe we can fix up the matter without that," he said, persuasively.
"I cannot have Permely cheated out of her happiness," she said.