TRAVIS was a man incapable of temporizing with lower conditions than
those of his ideal, and he was acutely conscious upon arriving at
Chattalla that it was not the town it ought to be. There was something
fiercely inconsequent in his criticism,--certainly regarded as the
terminus of a swift transition from London and Paris, the dingy little
village was, by comparison, nowhere. But although they did not enter
into his mental estimate the great fundamental facts of humanity
were here--crowded upon this narrow stage were roaring farces, and
sentimental melodramas, and elements of high tragedy, the actors all
sublimely unconscious of the defects of the accessories and for the
most part having known nothing better.
He was constitutionally dilatory and indolent in business, but the one
o’clock dinner served as a stimulant to his industry, and with the
determination never to eat another meal in Chattalla and to take the
train at nightfall, he promptly prepared to call on Miss St. Pierre.
He found egress from the hotel blocked by a surging crowd which filled
the adjacent section of the Square--a crowd with grave, absorbed, not
to say awe-stricken faces, all turned incongruously enough toward
a door bearing above it the festive sign--Saloon. He made several
attempts by the use of his elbows, and also a cane with which he now
and then rapped gently upon a brawny brown jeans shoulder, to force
his way down from the somewhat elevated porch, that seemed in great
requisition, for, jammed and creaking beneath the heavy weight, it
afforded special facilities for looking over the heads of the crowd
below. The cane and the elbows made scant impression upon the general
pre-occupation, but at length a country fellow turned with a savage
growl in response to a smart admonitory tap--as that free, enlightened
and democratic animal will sometimes do--and it occurred to Travis
to supplement his blandly reproving “Will you let me pass?” with the
inquiry, “What’s the row?”
“Why,” said the countryman, casting upon him an excited eye, “Toole’s
brother-in-law hev jes’ killed a man.”
Travis looked down to button his glove.
“Gratifying to Toole,” he murmured, softly.
“That’s him now,” said his interlocutor, leaning eagerly forward.
“That’s Toole.”
Travis, his progress effectually barred by the press, thought it
worth while to cast a glance in the direction indicated. The glance
lingered upon Tom Toole, standing in front of the groggery--a tall,
powerfully-built, splendidly proportioned figure, and the very ideal of
a trooper. His old wide-awake hat was pushed back, showing his tawny
hair and his grave, flushed face. His long tawny beard streamed down
over the breast of his brown jeans coat. His feet, encased in coarse
muddy boots, which were drawn up over his trousers, moved unsteadily,
and his blue eyes were deeply bloodshot. He exhibited that peculiar
phase of drunkenness when a man’s senses have been sobered by some
sudden shock, but the fire still streams through his veins and writhes
among his muscles.
Travis noticed his superb physique with a flippant allusion to the dead
man.
“I can’t sufficiently commend his caution in not tackling Toole.”
And so he fell smilingly once more to buttoning his glove, raising his
hand now and then with a deprecatory gesture when some man as tall as
himself jostled against him and threatened the equilibrium of his silk
hat, as it towered in aristocratic isolation above the multitude.
“Oh, shucks!” said the rustic, comprehending him. “This hyar Ryder
Winklegree, the man what war killed, air ez big ez Tom Toole. He war
able ter pertect hisself. An’ Graffy never done it a-purpus--’twar
self-defence, ye onderstand. Graffy never drawed a pistol till
Winklegree’s bowie-knife war at his throat. That’s what some say.
Though Winklegree’s father an’ brothers hev swore ter sweep the country
ter find Graffy--the prosecution air a-goin’ ter be mighty hot, now, ef
they kin compass it. But they hain’t fund him yet.”
“Bolted--eh?” said Travis, languidly, and even while speaking to the
man never looking at him and having the air of ignoring him.
“Flunged down his pistol an’ kited through the back door of the
groggery thar. So I hev been gin ter onderstand. The sheriff’s a-riding
now.”
A sudden violent commotion of the crowd swept Travis and his
acquaintance down the steps and upon the pavement where close at hand
a carriage, of a long by-gone fashion, awaited him. Far out into the
street the throng was dense, and after he had stepped into the vehicle
he was detained for some minutes, while the driver loudly and fervently
insisted on a pass-way.
“They couldn’t do nothin’ with a man like Graffy nohow--even ef they
makes out ter find him,” said one of the deeply interested upon the
curb-stone. “He is an idjit. Jes’ the looks of him would be enough for
a jury.”
“Graffy’s a sane man, though he looks like an idjit--thar’s su’thin the
matter with the leaders of his face so that he can’t hold it still fur
a minit,” declared Travis’s former interlocutor--a man of speculation,
for he presently added--“It always did seem ter me thar war a sorter
spite in that dispensation--ef a body mought git thar consent ter think
so. He’s a sane man, an’ he’s made ter look like an idjit. I know that
some folks ’low fur sartain ez he is one--an’ mebbe they’ll fetch that
up on the trial.”
“Nothing,” began Travis, lounging on the seat of the carriage, his
eyes on his gloves as he buttoned them at his ease--both men on the
curb-stone turned sharply; a touch of embarrassment was in their
manner; they were restive under the unwonted impertinence of being
spoken to with contemptuously averted eyes, but their respectful
attention was constrained by something peculiarly impressive in
Travis’s tone and bearing as if he were about to propound views of
importance--“Nothing,” he drawled, “is so efficacious as pleading
insanity.”
Then he leaned slightly out of the window.
“Now, driver,” he expostulated, with that affectation of familiarity
and good humor which is the most offensive form of condescension,
“can’t we trundle along?”
The door banged; the whip cracked; the good Tennessee horses stretched
their muscles.
His lightsome mood deserted him when he was alone in General Vayne’s
library awaiting the appearance of his step-sister. He walked the
length of the room with a swift, nervous step. The realization of the
magnitude of the interests involved weighed upon him heavily. The
project was clumsy at best. He was no tactician, and he knew it. How
could he bit and bridle his words, and harness them in with those
wayward coursers, the doubtful whims of a woman.
Perhaps it was the relief from suspense which enabled him, when the
door at last opened, to drop naturally and at once into his wonted
manner. It might be appropriately described as a silken manner, and
it combined with all those soft lustres acquired by the habit of good
society a certain brotherly ease as he approached the tall, slender
girl who stood upon the threshold.
“I hope, now, Antoinette, you are going to say you are glad to see me,”
he drawled softly, as he took her hand. “Stretch your conscience to
that extent; won’t you! A little exercise will benefit it, develop its
elasticity you see. A good conscience must have some elasticity or it
can’t be an easy fit. Take the advice of a man who experimented on his
conscience before you were born.”
She was evidently not quick at repartee. She looked at him with
smiling hesitation, as if at a loss for an appropriate rejoinder.
Then, as he laughed lightly, and, turning away, placed one of the
cumbrous arm-chairs for her before the fire, she replied, at last, with
conscious flatness,--
“I _am_ glad to see you; very glad.”
She spoke with a mellifluous, monotonous voice. She moved slowly toward
the chair, the soft material of her long, mourning dress sweeping
inaudibly over the gay carpet. She was so languid that in comparison
even Travis seemed alert. Except for the convention which accounts all
yellow-haired girls beautiful, she might be held as only pleasing.
Her hair, drawn in light, loose waves from her brow, and coiled in
smooth plaits at the back of her head, was of a paler, duller shade
than that of the true auriferous blonde. She had a fair complexion, a
ready flush, and a slender, delicate white throat, half concealed by
the black crape frilling clustered about it. Her features were small,
and singularly characterless and inexpressive. Despite its gentle
prettiness her face, in its unmeaning immobility, was like a mask.
He sat down near her, maintaining his usual careless, listless aspect,
but occasionally glancing toward her with furtive watchfulness, and
doubtfully. He could not now discuss their sister’s will with the
callous readiness he had displayed to Brennett. The consciousness
of the feelings which must naturally animate her induced in him a
repulsion for the part he was to enact in the little scene, in which
the two people who had profited by the death of a woman, presumably
dear to both, were to canvass the relative value of the property
she had left them. He did not expect open reproaches, it is true.
He knew she must be keenly sensible of the futility, as well as the
unbecomingness, involved in intimating to a man fifteen years her
senior that he failed in the respect due to his sister’s memory.
She would dread the counter-intimation that her grief had been so
handsomely gilded at his expense that she could afford to indulge it.
The situation, however, unsettled him; the more, because the desultory
conversation, on trivial topics, failed to suggest how he had best
approach the subject of his mission. Presently he was fain to lay hold
on his awkward project without the preliminary graces of an exordium.
“Do you know, Antoinette,” he said, “that this is a visit on business.”
Her smile might have meant anything or nothing.
“I should like to talk to you about the disposition which Laura made in
her will of her property.”
He had described Miss St. Pierre to Brennett as solidly sensible,
well-informed for her age and sex, and shrewd beyond either. But she
was certainly singularly inapt in conversation.
“I was very much surprised,” she said inappropriately enough. Then
she checked herself, hastily, with a deep flush. For the surprise she
had expressed might seem to refer to differences which had long ago
subsisted between her father and his step-daughter, while a member of
his household, and in which Travis had interfered to aid and abet his
sister. By reason of tender years Antoinette had been a non-combatant,
and she had later construed Mrs. Perrier’s infrequent letters, a
birthday gift now and then, or a morning call at long intervals when
in the same part of the country, rather as an acknowledgment of her
irresponsibility in these matters than as a manifestation of affection.
To Travis Mrs. Perrier had been the most devoted of sisters. In the
relation of step-children they had formed an alliance offensive and
defensive against all the world. Afterward his chosen friend had become
her husband, and to the day of her death the brother and sister were
on cordial terms and frequently together. The fact that Antoinette was
equally closely related to her she had ignored for so long that the
girl was genuinely astonished when this relationship was adequately
recognized by the terms of the codicil of the will.
Travis took instant advantage of her admission.
“And I was surprised, too,” he assented. Then, with his incongruous
sledge-hammer mode of phrasing, he softly drawled, “I was very harshly
treated.” He leaned back languidly in his chair, slipping the tips of
the fingers of his left hand into his trousers pocket as he glanced
about aimlessly at the gay carpet, at the showy, shattered mirror, the
flashing fender and andirons, and the glowing wood fire.
“The property which I received is inconvertible in the present state
of the country as compared with those houses. Now I am in need of
ready money, and I should like to make this proposition to you. Those
plantations are, as you know, completely cleared, in full operation,
and the levees are in perfect condition. Now don’t you think we might
make an exchange?”
He did not wait for a reply, but began to argue the question in
his reasonable, plausible style, which so impressed strangers. He
especially endeavored to prove that the investment was safe, and dwelt
particularly on the fact that her income would be trebled, as the
plantations produced phenomenally in comparison with the market value
of the lands.
“I know that you are thinking it is odd I wish to get rid of the
plantations when they pay so well,” he said with his light laugh.
She merely smiled in her non-committal, conventional fashion.
“Let me remind you that I told you the plantations are not easy of
sale. You observe I _don’t_ say you might readily sell them, and
I tell you fairly, you can’t mortgage them nowadays.” He made this
stipulation in a weighty manner; it was the lesson of experience. “But
I do say that they will give more income than any other investment
whatever. Now I am in need of a considerable sum of money. I could
afford to let you have them at a great sacrifice, and I will tell you
why. I know of an opportunity by which I could make an immense fortune
if I had available capital, and I could raise money by a sale of those
houses, or mortgages. What do you think of the plan?”
“I don’t know just yet what to think,” she replied, slowly.
Travis seemed prepared for this.
“Now,” he drawled, placidly, “if you will permit me to advise, I
suggest that you shilly-shally as little as possible in getting rid of
those houses.”
She fixed her eyes suddenly upon him. “Why?” she asked, with a startled
intonation.
“There is an outstanding title to that property, which, if established,
would invalidate Laura’s title, and of course yours.”
She sat silent for a moment, looking intently into his tranquil face,
as if she were trying to extract more from it than he had told her in
words.
“Whose is it?” she asked concisely.
“His name is Fortescue; John Fortescue. You see, Laura, who was always
careless in matters of business, bought this property without having
the records examined, and knew nothing of his interest. If this claim
should be set up--and I suppose it will be, sooner or later--it would
involve the property in a suit that might last ten years, and in all
probability you would lose the whole of it. Isn’t it better to draw
every year the certain and large income from lands that can never
be spirited away by legal chicanery than to be wound up in endless
litigation like that?”
She made no reply for a time, and when at last she spoke it was
irrelevantly.
“Do you know Mr. Fortescue?” she asked, with a peculiar characteristic
hesitation, which might pass for mere girlish timidity, but in an older
woman would indicate habitual caution.
“No, I have never met him.”
“Does he know about this claim?”
“I should think not. If he knew, he would raise the question at once.
A friend of mine--or, rather, his lawyer--discovered it by accident in
examining some old records, and I suppose we are the only people aware
of its existence. I did not know it myself until a few days ago.”
“Who is this Fortescue?” she asked.
“Why, you ought to know who he is; your father was his second-cousin,”
said Travis, a trifle impatiently, for she was apparently disposed to
give her attention to small personal details rather than to the matter
of business submitted for her consideration.
“I have heard of him, but I never saw him. He used to live in New
Orleans.” Then, after a pause, “Where is he now?” she persisted.
“I don’t know. He has the reputation of being a wild fellow, and he has
lived a riotous, wandering life, chiefly in Europe, I think. I know he
has not been in New Orleans for many years now.”
She leaned her elbow on the arm of the chair, and gazed reflectively
into the fire. The cheap clock on the mantel-piece ticked off many
seconds, even minutes, as she sat thus, gravely silent. Travis, silent
too, stealthily watched her. His contemplative eyes were languid no
longer, when her head turned slowly toward him. She was about to speak,
and his heart beat quick with the hope that she would at least promise
to consider the proposition.
She hesitated, as she always did. Then, as in his eagerness he leaned
slightly toward her, she said, “Now that I think of it, I seem to have
heard that that man had two sisters, and a brother. How was it? And
where are they?”
He recoiled indignantly. He began to recognize in all this her
ill-regulated caution, and perhaps a touch of suspicion.
“Why, what has the man, himself, to do with the matter?” he broke out,
impatiently. “It is his vested remainder in the property that affects
you, Antoinette. You ought to have a lawyer to examine its validity,
and then decide about this exchange. The point of law is the question,
not the man’s relatives. Not even such a genealogist, such a respecter
of persons as you, can make anything by taking account of his ma’s pa
and his pa’s ma. _They_ are not kin to the St. Xantaines!”
He gave that sudden, short laugh which he seemed to keep for those rare
occasions when he perceived something which he fancied was a joke.
Her face was as inexpressive as ever, but a hot flush, rising to the
roots of her fair hair, warned him. This was hardly civil, certainly
impolitic.
“Forgive that fling into the family tree,” he said, with his careless,
fraternal air, “and I’ll tell you all I know about the man’s brother
and sisters, although they died in childhood, and have nothing whatever
to do with the affair. They were drowned in a steamboat accident on the
Mississippi River, when the Bellefontaine burned just above my father’s
plantation. Never shall forget how she looked swinging around the bend,
a tower of flames.”
“Oh, were _they_ the children drowned there! I remember that
dreadful story,” she said, with a little shudder.
He looked at her and laughed. “It was nearly thirty years ago,” he
cried.
There was a pause.
“How that family has thinned out,” said Travis, discursively. “His
father was an only child and his mother’s brother, Adolphe Duchene--you
remember that crusty old bachelor?--died ten or fifteen years ago. This
Fortescue is the last of them.”
Then ensued another interval of silence.
“What sort of claim is this?” asked Antoinette.
“Well, the man who sold to Laura made a fraudulent conveyance. He
had only a life estate in the property. That is now terminated and
Fortescue is the remainder-man. You can get all the details by having a
lawyer to examine the record.”
“If I should exchange with you,” she said, “you would have the same
difficulty about this claim. What would you do?”
“I am willing to take the risk. There is a probability that the claim
may never be set up. If it should be I could possibly compromise with
the claimant. A man in my financial position must make sacrifices.
But you--I should think you would want to avoid the losses and
uncertainties of litigation.”
She made no rejoinder.
“Remember,” persisted Travis, “this claim may be sprung at any moment,
and any lawyer will assure you that it is valid.”
“If I have no right to the property,” she exclaimed, hotly, and losing
for the first time her self-possession, “I don’t care to keep it.”
“I thought you were too sharp for that sort of sentimental nonsense,”
returned Travis, scornfully. “Don’t you see that Laura paid a full
value for the property and you can only be ousted by some legal
subtlety. But law is law, you know, and many people have lost property
through carelessness about titles. And, Antoinette, if I were in your
place I would not talk about this affair. The mere whisper of it will
cloud your title so that nothing can be done with that property for the
next thirty years. And Fortescue _may_ never move in the matter.
There is nothing underhand in keeping it quiet,” he added quickly as
a concession to feminine squeamishness. “It is all blazoned on the
record--as free to Fortescue as to anybody else.”
Once more there was a long pause.
“Take it all into consideration,” said Travis, rising. “I hope you will
determine on the safest course--the only safe course for you.”
He walked to the door, stopped as with an afterthought, then suddenly
turned back. He caught her countenance off its guard. She was looking
after him with perplexed anxiety and distrust in her eyes--a cold,
hard, calculating dubitation anomalously expressed itself in her
delicate infantile features. He was not a man of observant habit,
but the realization of the crisis sharpened his senses. So far, it
was evident, his mission had been a failure. An appreciation of this
fact gave his amiable, languid manner the added charm of a gentle
deprecation as he approached her once more.
“Ah, Antoinette,” he said, “I had almost forgotten.” Then with his
blunt habit of speech--“I have brought you something that I thought you
would like.”
Her eyebrows were elevated in doubting surprise.
“It really belongs more properly to you than to me--that old St.
Xantaine cross, you know.”
Her face changed; her color rose; her eyes were suddenly aglow; her
lips parted in a smile of unaffected pleasure.
“Oh, how kind of you--how kind and thoughtful! There is nothing in all
the world that I should so delight to possess.”
The genuine ring in her voice thrilled him. As he placed the gleaming
gaud in her hand there was a certain picturesque effect in their
attitudes. It might have seemed a moment of some splendid homage--the
man was so handsome and so intent upon pleasing; she was so graciously
pretty and so evidently agitated by a sweet emotion. The scene would
have suggested an episode in a romance. Surely there was no possible
intimation that the presentation of the cross was devised by a crafty
schemer to lubricate the stubborn machinery of a clumsy project.
Certainly all was much smoother now. The girl held up the diamond X all
a-glitter, and laughed with pleasure. Travis found it easy enough to
say in a casual, off-hand, brotherly fashion,--
“I’ll write to you about that matter of exchange, Antoinette, and give
you in detail all the points.”
“I shall always be glad to hear from you,” she replied, prettily, and
he was struck anew by the change in her voice.
“By the Lord Harry,” he said to himself as he stepped into the carriage
and was bowled rapidly away, “Maurice Brennett himself couldn’t have
managed that more adroitly.”
Then his flexible attention turned from the subject, and as he cast a
glance out of the window at the desolate waste that encompassed him on
every side, something in the terrible solemnity of its aspect smote
upon the chords of his trivial nature and set them all to jarring.
“Damn such a God-forsaken country!” he exclaimed with a sudden
unreasoning anger.
He struck a match, lighted his cigar, lifted his boots to the opposite
cushions, and thus as comfortably established as circumstances would
allow, gazed out upon it with a contemplative contempt into which
entered an element of self-gratulation that it was none of his.
And so he saw before him a bleak barren; he knew that it rained and
sleeted and hailed alternately; he heard the frozen drops of water
dashing against the glass, and he was chilled.
But did he see, as he passed, a spectral wavering in the haunted
thickets, where even the weeds were dead and sheeted with ice? Did the
wind bring to him from across the plain the shrill tones of a bugle,
piercing the clamor of some woful invisible rout? Did he quake with an
unnamed fear when he skirted a heavy work and the pallid mists came
suddenly down and interposed an impalpable but opaque barrier between
mortal eyes and some fierce assault upon the grim redoubt, which threw
the earth into a strong tremor and shook the air with a terrible sound?
Was he even aware of the presence of a woman, who heard and saw all
these things, as she stood in the rain, and the hail, and the sleet on
the steep slope of the great traverse in the midst of the terre-parade
plein of Fort Despair--or was his glance so cursory that he hardly
distinguished her among the bushes, and the mists, and the looming
works? Sometimes she turned her head slowly, fearfully, impelled to
look backward, yet hardly daring for the horror of what she might see.
Sometimes she rose to her full height and, panting with her exertions,
leaned upon her axe-handle and gazed far away at the billowy sweep of
the wire-weeds--all whitened with the hail and lashed by the wind into
a surf-like commotion, and stretching and stretching across the level,
until, though only weeds, they touched the blurred sky. Then she bent
once more to her work.
And it was strange work for a woman--and a slight, timorous, weakly
woman like this. She dug for the wood as well as cut it, for, although
others had been here before her on a like errand, the timbers of the
old powder-magazine still lay deeply embedded in the heart of the
great traverse. They would kindle more readily than the green, soaked,
ice-girt saplings close at hand, and make better fuel for supper. This
heavy, unaccustomed labor, and the terrors of the spectred place were
a check on some grief which beset her. It was only at long intervals
that she fell to sobbing, and dried her tears with the backs of her
hands, or upon the sleeve of her dark blue cotton dress, or upon the
red worsted tippet tied over her yellow hair, which hung down about
her neck after the country fashion, and glittered here and there with
frozen drops of water. Then with a tension of muscle and nerves that
sought to be substituted for strength she lifted the axe, and again
the burnished glimmer of the steel cleft the pallid mists. There was
a flash of a different kind struck out when the metal clashed sharply
upon a minie-ball, spent so long ago, and sunk into the clay, or a
curiously fashioned, flint arrowhead,--for often these implements of
warfare of far different ages and far different peoples are found lying
side by side, washed by the same rain, lighted by the same sunshine,
turned sometimes into the same peaceful furrow. Once there was
projected into the dim, gray atmosphere a fiery darting gleam, brighter
and fiercer than all the others. She drew back hastily, then she
stooped and took from the earth a great solid shot, and tossed it down
upon the terre-plein. “Ef that thar thing,” she said, as she watched it
break the ice in a standing pool, “ef that thar thing hed happened ter
be a bomb, the way that fire lept up mought hev busted it. An’”--with a
sudden change of countenance,--“I wish it hed! I wish it hed!”
And yet again her fears broke upon her weeping. Suddenly her eyes were
dilated with a new terror. She had become strongly conscious of a vague
presence near at hand. She fancied that it sometimes flitted to the
shapeless fissure where once was the door of the powder-magazine, but
as her glance turned thither it stole back silently into the glooms
within. With a morbid fascination she was continually peering over at
that black gap below, as she worked high up in the rain outside. She
saw only the mists shifting in and out of the useless vault-like place.
But when she averted her eyes she knew that something had slipped to
the door and was looking at her.
All the full-pulsed courage that had once beat so high here where
the battle was fought had ebbed away long ago, and there were those
stronger than she who avoided the place as if there were a ban upon
it. She only wondered now that she should have come at all, as she
hastily packed the wood she had cut into the barrow, and wheeled
it away through the outlet and into the midst of the battlefield,
along the road that the movements of mighty armies had worn,--a meek
successor to the flying artillery! But here the whirl of any wheel
was suggestive, and it roused the cavernous echoes. Even when it was
silenced by the distance the bright colors of her garments were visible
from the spot she had left--now a fitful gleam of red and blue against
the hail-whitened weeds, and now adding to the Protean illusions of the
place and flaunting like a battle-flag from a far away misty lunette.
And when it was gone at last a sound issued suddenly from the silence
of the old powder-magazine--a sound as of despairing hands struck
together. A man came out abruptly from the jagged fissure and stood
gazing wistfully at the point where she had disappeared,--a man with
a face such as one does not care to look upon twice, a face which
Nature seems to have intended as a flout at humanity. There was some
painful affection of its muscles which would not let it be still for an
instant. He mowed and grimaced like an idiot, and only the expression
of his eyes gave evidence of his sanity. He was further set apart by
the red brand of a birth-mark above his left eyebrow. His yellow hair,
of a deeper hue and a silkier texture, but like the woman’s, hung
down to the collar of his brown jeans coat. Here only was the hand of
Nature laid kindly upon him--even in the gray light of the sad day it
glimmered like burnished gold. When he spoke, each syllable was flung
out from his agitated muscles with the force of a projectile.
“Mirandy might have holped me some! Jes’ one word would have holped
me some! But I dilly-dallies ter the door--an’ then I dilly-dallies
back--too skeered ter let her know. An’ now she’s gone! An’ ef I war
to gin her a call to fotch her back, them ghostis would set up sech a
charging cheer I’d most drap dead ter hear it.”
He too glanced dubiously over his left shoulder, and his own mowing
face set in the pallid mists was as frightful an object as any he could
dread to see.
As he stood out hatless in the rain and the sleet he noted the
deepening gloom of the day. The early nightfall was close at hand, and
he welcomed the change.
“It’ll be cleverly dark by the time Mirandy gits ter her house,” he
said, unconsciously speaking aloud, the rural proclivity to soliloquy
strong upon him. “An’ along ’bout midnight I kin slip down thar an’ see
Tom an’ her--an’--” What to do then? Once more, with a realization of
the utter futility of scheming or effort, he held his despairing hands
above his head and smote them together.
Then he turned back into the old powder-magazine for safety. Sometimes
when the terrors of the law were strong upon him he lay silent,
motionless, scarcely daring to breathe, listening to detect some alien
sound in the surging wind, and the ceaseless rain, and the turmoil of
the ghostly forces that had died in the vain struggle to carry the
work, and vainly struggled still. Then there were times when fear
loosed its clutch upon him, and he rose up and strode about his narrow
bounds, the grotesque distortions of his mowing face more horrible than
ever in contrast with the misery expressed in his eyes--times when
he could take no comfort from the distinctions between murder, and
manslaughter, and excusable homicide. He only knew that there was blood
upon his hands. And he wrung them.
The woman wheeling the barrow had need of the guiding gleam of light
which she caught from far across the battlefield. It was like the
glister of some great, lucent, tremulous star, but it was charged with
a meaning foreign to cold sidereal glintings. It was the light of a
home and the fact can dignify a kerosene lamp and a log-cabin.
She burst into her ready tears as she saw it. “Thar’ll be a mighty
differ in that house arter this!” she exclaimed.
The red fire-light flared out into the night as the door was opened and
a burly shadow came forth to meet her.
“Gimme a holt o’ the handles o’ that thar barrow, Mirandy!” said Tom
Toole in penitent haste. “I clean forgot thar warn’t nothin’ lef at the
wood-pile.” He meant the place where the pile ought to be. “Did ye hev
ter go a-pickin’ up of doty wood off’n the groun’?”
“Thar warn’t no doty wood nowhar ter pick up,” sobbed Miranda. “I got
this off’n the old forts.”
Her husband turned and looked hard at her as she came into the light.
“Ye hev hearn ’bout it all,” he said, conclusively.
“They kem hyar a-sarchin’ fur him,” she replied.
“They ain’t fund him yit,” he said, breathing hard as he thrust his
hands into the pockets of his brown jeans trousers and strode heavily
up and down the floor. His wife had knelt upon the rough ill-adjusted
stones of the hearth, and was stirring the live coals with an old
bayonet kept in the chimney corner for the peaceful offices of
poker. But when he spoke she turned her head and looked after him
breathlessly, the bayonet still in her hand, her loose yellow hair
tossed back, a deep flush hot on her cheeks, her eyes wide and bright,
the kindling of a sudden hope revivifying the early faded youth in her
face. She had expected only a terrible tale of capture and despair. And
she had dreaded it.
Toole was a man of a discriminating conscience.
“Ef Graffy hed done it a-purpose I’d be the fust to say--‘Take him.’ An
ef Graffy hed done it in a fair fight I’d say--‘That’s agin the law.
Take him, too.’ But thar air mighty few men ez hev got the grit ter
stand still with the p’int of another feller’s bowie-knife ter thar
throat an’ be carved. Ev’ybody said ’twar no wonder that Graffy drawed
his pistol then. He’d hev been a dead man ef he hedn’t. Leastways, that
is the word they tell in town.”
Caution prompted this last stipulation, for Toole was conscious of
having been too drunk at the time of the occurrence for the evidence of
his senses to be of any value, even to himself.
His wife hesitated, the bayonet still poised above the glowing coals.
Then with suddenly developed cynicism she said--“Thar’s nothin’ like
humans. A man air obligated ter be mighty peart ter git away from
twelve other men a-settin’ in jedgment on him.”
“Waal,” said Toole, “he air fur enough away from hyar by now, I reckon.
’Twar self-defence, but ev’ybody ’lowed that the prosecution would hev
been mighty fierce.”
“How’d he git the money ter go?” asked the woman with an anxiously
knitted brow.
“Somebody mus’ hev lent it ter him, I reckon,” said Toole with
preposterous hopefulness.
Equally ignoring the probabilities she assented to this view and then
fell silent.
Every faculty was absorbed in brooding upon the various phases of
the event, and she went mechanically about her preparations for
supper--broiling the salt pork upon the live coals, and baking a johnny
cake on a square flat board propped up before the fire and thus exposed
to its heat. There was “salt risin’” bread in the oven with coals
beneath and upon the lid. This she lifted off now and then with the
bayonet-poker to judge how the baking was progressing. Once she let it
fall with a heavy crash.
“An’ whar he will go,” she cried, with a sharp note of anguish, “it
will all be strange to him. He air a man marked for a purpose by God
A’mighty--but what air the purpose nobody keers ter know. Thar’ll be
laffin’ an’ mockin’, an’ a-follerin’ of him always. An’ stones will be
flung at him in the streets. ’Pears like ter me ez I kin feel ’em now.
The Lord is mighty hard on some folks.”
Toole paused in his heavy striding to and fro. He looked upon his
wife as a sort of moral pilot, and he felt that he was now among the
breakers.
“That ain’t religion, Mirandy,” he said, severely. “An’ ye air
a-talkin’ of foolishness. Who hev got the moest friends--you, or me, or
him? Why, thar ain’t a yaller dog in the county that don’t wag his tail
when that man goes by the fence. An’ wharever he’ll drift to thar’ll be
the same pack o’ chillen, an’ idle, shiftless niggers, an’ no ’count
white trash a-hangin’ round ter hear him play on the fiddle, an’ beg
or borry his money--he can’t keep his money no more’n ef it ’twas red
hot--an’ git him to do ’em faviors. And they’ll traipse arter him jes’
like they done hyar. An’ he’ll crap--he’ll rent land from somebody. An’
he’ll go fishin’; he’ll go fishin’ of a Sat’day like he always done. He
ain’t so ’flicted, nohow; he hev been respected by all. An’ this thing
war self-defence. Lawyer Green was speakin’ ’bout it jes’ afore I kem
out’n Chattalla, an’ he said he thought so, jedgin’ from town talk an’
them that stood by. Law, Mirandy, he’ll go fishin’ all the same, an’
the chillen, an’ the dead-beats, white an’ black, all will hang round
him, an’ he’ll hev so many friends that they’ll hardly leave him a
nickel for himself.”
Somehow the idea of this friendship, albeit of a dubious advantage,
made life seem more tolerable to Miranda. The fire flared joyously up
the wide chimney, casting a ruddy glow on the faces of the children
as they trooped in to supper, and conjuring up quaint shadows on
the dark walls and the rafters, from which depended strings of red
peppers, and hanks of blue and yellow and white yarn, and a picturesque
swinging-shelf where the humble store of groceries was kept safe from
the rats and mice. And there was the sound of childish laughter in
the house, that had been so sad to-day, and the baby grew excited
amidst the hurly-burly, and after the others were tucked into the
trundle-bed he was hard to get to sleep. But at last quiet came again.
Toole lounged in front of the fire smoking his cob pipe, and his wife,
her foot still on the rocker of the box-like cradle, sat in a low
chair mending the child’s clothes until, succumbing to the soporific
influences of the heat after her long cold tramp, she fell asleep over
her work. Very still it was within; you might have heard the drawing
of the wick in the kerosene lamp, for the oil was low. There was a bed
of pulsating coals where the hilarious flames had been. The gnawing of
a mouse among the rafters now and then annotated the silence. Without,
the rain fell in a low muffled roar--sometimes a volley dashed against
the shutterless window. The mists pressed their pallid cheeks close to
it and looked in. Far and faint a bugle sang out suddenly in the night
and the wind redoubled its force.
It was with a movement as if a galvanic thrill were all at once astir
in every fibre, that Tom Toole became conscious that something beside
the mist was looking in at the window. Roused to a wild alarm he sat
rigidly upright, his pipe in his hand and his eyes fixed, expectant of
the re-appearance of the vague presence of which he had only caught a
glimpse. It might have been hallucination, suggested by the subject
uppermost in his mind; it might have been the distortions of the rain
and the grimy glass; it might have been the strange uncanny effect of
the mist, but it was like a mowing human face. And he knew it when it
came again.
He cast a startled glance upon his wife; her sleeping head had sunk
down on the edge of the cradle, and her yellow hair streamed over
the baby’s torn red dress which she still held half mended in her
unconscious hand. No creature was awake in the house except himself
and the mouse gnawing among the rafters. He crept cautiously to the
door--so cautiously that the loose boards of the ill-floored room
scarcely creaked beneath his heavy weight. That short instant was
charged with the force of years. He always felt afterward that in
shutting himself out into the rain, and mist, and darkness, with the
man who awaited him there, he had shut himself off forever from all his
former life--a life so different from what was to come that it often
seemed to him that that other reckless, buoyant, undismayed self had
died when he closed the door.
Henceforth he was a changed man, for he carried a heavy secret. He
could not so much as be boisterously drunk of a Saturday evening,
according to the immemorial custom of the dwellers about Chattalla,
lest some fatal allusion escape him. He was of an unthinking habit of
speech, and the perpetual guard upon his tongue, even when alone with
his wife and children, was a perpetual effort. He actually feared that
he would tell in his sleep that a man whom the law sought, lurked in
hiding near at hand. He could scarcely support the strain of feigning,
when among his boon companions; speculation was rife as to Graffy’s
flight and refuge. Whenever his boat was in mid-stream, and he faced
the east, as he pulled on the ropes his heart waxed faint and his
sinews failed, and he labored hard in the old accustomed vocation that
used to be but a slight matter for his strength. He was aware, too,
of a change of countenance in nearing the cruel old redoubt, and grew
painfully conscious of the powder-magazine in the distance, where, as
in a cell, a man who had slain another in self-defence expiated a deed
that the law forgives.
Sometimes for the sake of the light and air, Graffy stole cautiously
out from the jagged fissure where once was the door of the
powder-magazine, and lay at length on the banquette. He could see far
across the battle-field through the outlet, narrow though it was. The
sun came out and shone upon the young ice-covered growth fringing the
long lines of earthworks, and then those grim parapets seemed overhung
by a glittering network of stellular scintillations. Even the humble
wire-weed was an incredibly magical and refulgent thing, and all the
level expanse was bestrewn with myriads of glancing frosty points of
light. The skies, vast as the skies above a sea, shoaled from blue to
orange, and thence to the purest green, in the midst of which the red
sun went down to the purple hills. There was much splendor before the
sad eyes so full of tears, and half unconsciously he missed it as the
thaw came on.
He grew very lonely after a time. He eagerly watched for Miranda as
she went back and forth from the house, and he was glad to know that
she thought he had miraculously secured the money to go far away, and
was safe somewhere, making a new life for himself in a new place. He
learned to look for the ferry-boat, slipping to and fro across the
river with some wagoner and his team, and he took an interest too in
the passengers. His idle gaze followed Tom’s motions as he cut the
wood, or fed the pigs, or pulled the boat and set the air vibrating
with his melodies.
For with no appreciation of his voice, and no adequate appreciation
of his motive, Toole sang at his work, though his heart was heavy,
thinking the sound might give a sense of companionship to the solitary
wretch hidden away there in the empty powder-magazine. Even the
stern old rocks along the river were instinct with a wild, barbaric,
melodic spirit and responded in strophe and antistrophe. Sometimes
there were war-songs; sometimes quaint antiquated ditties which his
great-grandfather had brought here when he came and settled in the
cane among the Indians; often he sang a certain old hymn, and its
dominant iteration--“Peace--peace--be still!”--resounded in its strong
constraining intensity far and wide over the battlefield--echoing
from parapet to parapet, thrilling through the haunted thickets, and
breaking the silence with a noble pathos where the shadowy pickets
lurked and listened in the rifle-pits.
A long unseasonable drought succeeded the thaw, chill and calm, with a
clear sky, and a pale suffusion of wintry sunlight. The traffic on the
distant pike was slight, and the dust lay motionless. But more than
once on the battlefield when the earth was a-throb with that strange
tremor, and a vibratory blare rang faint in the distance, and a dull
weird clash as of arms pervaded the drear and lonely sunshine, Graffy
heard the swift wheels of artillery whirl by with a hollow whir, and he
saw the dust spring up from an old redan and, without a breath of air,
whirl too in a reeling column after the invisible battery. He had seen
often before this simple phenomenon of dry weather. But its coincidence
with the sound gave it a new meaning, and then he came to fear the dead
hardly less than the living.
And so when Tom Toole, under cover of the midnight, slipped down
into the old magazine with his tin pail of bits, stolen from his own
larder, and his canteen that had not yet forgotten a certain trick of
joviality, and a cartridge-box full of tobacco, he would find these
creature comforts disregarded by Graffy in his frantic importunacy for
the money to get away and be gone forever. A promise to “skeer up” all
the cash possible without exciting suspicion, supplemented by warnings
that an inadvertence would certainly precipitate capture while all the
world was yet on the alert for the reward offered, could reconcile
Graffy to the “harnts” for a time--so long in sooth as Toole lay there
and smoked his pipe, and talked in whispers, even though his topic was
not cheerful. For Toole grew prone to dwell upon the experience of
various malefactors who had fled from justice with an inadequate supply
of funds, and who were finally glad to choose between surrender and
starvation among strangers, fairly falling upon the sheriff’s neck for
joy when he came with the Governor’s requisition.
But when Tom was gone Graffy would relapse into his anguish of
loneliness. He pined for his friends--who, stimulated by the reward
offered for his apprehension, sought him by bush and brake. He pined
for the sound of his crazy old fiddle. He yearned for the light. One
afternoon when he crept out from his burrow he found that clouds had
gathered at last and portended rain. He hardly feared to lie here on
the tread of the banquette, for in these days there were no laborers
in the fields. The last “dog-tail,” as the frosted remnant of the
cotton is called, still hung on the black and withered stalk, and not a
plough was yet bedding up land for the new crop. In these early sunsets
the cattle that broke down the fences, or were surreptitiously let
through the bars by their enterprising owners that they might utilize
General Vayne’s fields as pasturage, came lowing by on their homeward
way. Sometimes an estray was sought with a loud, beguiling call of
“Suke!--Suke!”--which echoed far along the level stretch, and heralded
the cow-boy’s approach. Now, however, there was no sign nor sound of
life. The earth seemed as lonely as the lonely skies. As he smoked, a
coal fell from his pipe upon the ground, and in the very abandonment of
idleness he watched the golden thread, which emanated from it, steal
along the edges of a dead leaf and trace in a fiery arabesque all the
graces of the maple. Then, spark by spark, it died, and the leaf was a
cinder. Another had been touched by the coal--another and another. Here
and there a twig caught, too,--and at last a tiny blaze was kindled.
Its presence cheered him. It was a friendly, domestic thing. It seemed
instinct with the spirit of home. “It’s ez much company ez a human,
mighty nigh!” he exclaimed.
Somehow the sight of it deadened his fears. The sound of it lulled him.
As he lay on the ground beside it he dropped into a reverie--so deep
that even his morbidly sensitive nerves were not startled by the thud
of rapid hoofs until they had approached very near.
It was a terrible moment. He sprang to his feet. Then he seemed
stricken into stone--he could not move a muscle. He had no
consciousness save a repentance of his temerity. He understood nothing
but the imminence of his danger as he looked over the parapet at a
horseman galloping past close along the crest of the counterscarp. He
remembered afterward, rather than noted then, that this man’s face was
meditative, and that his downcast eyes were fixed absently upon the
ground, heedless of what he saw. The sweeping gallop bore him speedily
into the distance toward the great house looming up in the closing
twilight.
The fugitive from justice hastily flung a heavy stone upon the fire to
crush its life out. Then he skulked like a shadow, like the skulking
shadows whom he feared, through the jagged fissure and into the deep
glooms within the powder magazine, and his world of lunettes, and
redans, and redoubts, knew him no more.
The sky was gray. The earth was black. The wind was dead. The only
motion in all the still, sombre expanse was the upward curling of a
tiny wreath of luminous smoke from beside the heavy stone that had
served to smother the fire. Its fall had displaced a single coal. This
glowed, and flared, and reddened in the melancholy dusk encompassing it.
And the night came on very dark.