THE days that ensued were very anxious days, but with a stoicism
inconsistent enough with the impulsiveness of both father and daughter,
they sedulously repressed all manifestation of this anxiety, and life
in the maimed old house had to its guests as cheerful an aspect as
usual. The excitement occasioned by the fire gradually smouldered away
with its smouldering embers, but there were other incidents of the
evening that Marcia wondered should slip by so lightly.
She constantly expected her aunt to canvass, with all the fervor of
feminine curiosity, Captain Estwicke’s pointed requisition that she
should always think kindly of him now. As time wore on, and Mrs. Kirby
said nothing, Marcia was angry with herself for experiencing so vivid
a sensation of relief. In extenuation, she declared that if she were
asked she would not hesitate to--to--explain--and then she realized
suddenly how difficult it would be to unravel for a dispassionate
examination this tangle of thought and feeling--or rather this subtle
and sympathetic divination of feeling--in which she and a “strange
man”--for thus she called him--had contrived to involve themselves in
two short interviews.
She dwelt so much upon this episode, and the “strange man’s” part in
it, that the idea of him became familiar, and might have earned him the
right to be accounted an old acquaintance.
Oddly enough, Mrs. Kirby had forgotten it; but perhaps this was not
so odd after all, for the day after the fire she dined by appointment
with Mrs. Ridgeway, the gossip of the county, and there was greatly
entertained. When she came back, even before she got her shawl off,
she was absorbed in rehearsing to the family circle all she had heard.
The news was dramatized by the expressive play of her blue eyes and
her wrinkles, her airily waving curls, the explanatory gestures of
her plump, jewelled hands, and the animation of the swinging, swaying
veil that clung to the crown of her old black bonnet. Before these
excitements had fairly palled, a new interest occupied her.
“Antoinette,” she said, one afternoon, breaking a long silence, as the
two sat in the flicker of the library fire, and the ever-reddening
bars of sunlight that struck aslant through the dusky room, and set
all the motes to dancing, “Antoinette, you are reflective, I see; you
garner up your thoughts; I hope you make good use of them, my dear.
Now, with me,” she declared, with her gurgling laughter, “every trivial
subject cries, ‘_Largess!_’ and I am generous; yes, I fling away
my choicest ideas in words. Anybody may have them for the asking. So,
when solitude and silence pounce upon me unaware, I can’t think; I
haven’t an idea to solace me; I have talked them all away; yes, I’ve
nothing to fall back on, you see. And I’m destitute now, my dear; so
say something, do. Tell me what you were thinking about.”
Antoinette had raised a flushed, perplexed face. She seemed a
little confused, perhaps because the thread of her meditations had
been so suddenly broken, perhaps because she was conscious of her
conversational deficiencies.
“I was only thinking of a letter which I received yesterday--a letter
from Austin Travis, my step-brother, you know.”
Mrs. Kirby stared. She felt that girls were not so naïve in her
day! So he had written to her, had he? And he had come so far to
see her--yes, indeed! And he had brought her their sister’s diamond
cross, so interesting from its associations, and so beautiful! A
long vista of romantic possibilities was opening before Mrs. Kirby’s
contemplation. For this old lady was given over to reading novels,
and had a cultivated imagination. Despite her sixty odd years, all
that is delicate, and true, and tender in sentiment appealed to
her as vividly now as when this dull old world was freshly a-bloom
and she stood in her eighteenth summer. Thus she was exceedingly
susceptible--vicariously. Under normal circumstances she would have
regarded Mr. Travis only as a drawling dandy, and felt for him that
robust contempt with which the substantial provincial magnate favors
the superficial syllabub circles of fashionable life. The moment he
loomed above her mental horizon in the interesting guise of lover, he
had acquired all the dignity appertaining to the passion. Mrs. Kirby
was suddenly impressed with the conviction that he was a very handsome
man, well educated, of good style, according to the modern standard, of
excellent social position, and well endowed with this world’s goods.
He had known Antoinette all her life; doubtless this was an attachment
of long standing, and it would be a charming match. To be sure, people
said he was wild; yes, (regretfully) a _little_ wild. But then,
people said so many things. They talked; yes, they talked too much.
(Thus the crony of Mrs. Ridgeway.) She had an idea now to solace her,
and she experienced a little wistful curiosity, good soul, about the
contents of that letter. She sat silent, meditatively gazing down the
rich crimson and orange vistas of the fire, where the chips had burned
away between the logs, giving glimpses of the white heat beyond; here
and there a purple flame, completely detached in the air, quivered
with so lucent a gleam that it might seem the vivified spirit of an
amethyst; the red coals close to the hearth pulsated visibly, as if the
heart of the fire beat there. With these stimulants to her imagination,
she wrought out and shaped a letter, such as she wished it might be--so
eloquent, so tender, so delicately fervid, that Travis could not have
written its like were he to hang for it.
This aerial epistle was a great waste--and there was a great waste,
too, of her sweet sympathy. She looked with a motherly yearning at
the girl, who had always been lonely enough. An unwonted depth was in
the old lady’s blue eyes--a little moisture, too, perhaps. She was
so happy in her foolish fancy that others were happy. She refrained
from speaking, however. She said only to herself that the Balance of
Life swings at that delicately adjusted and perfect poise but once.
No word nor glance should jeopardize its equilibrium. Curiosity might
consume her first! And so she gazed once more at the fire and fell to
retouching her letter.
It was very different from Travis’s actual letter. He had inclosed
with it an abstract of the record which bore him out in all that he
had said concerning Fortescue’s claim to Antoinette’s property. To
the inexperienced girl the document had great impressiveness--her
title seemed far more shaky than before. Her appreciation of the value
of money, of a solid competence, of a provision for her future, had
been greatly sharpened in that short interval after her grandmother’s
death when she stood penniless face to face with the world. She was
ill-adapted alike by training and by her constitutional timidity
for its conflicts. She had no wild enthusiasms to serve merely in
underrating them. Inquiry and effort only proved how overcrowded
was the profession of teaching--that favorite recourse of reduced
gentlewomen, and for which alone she was well fitted--and dependence
or semi-dependence, the greatest dread of poverty and pride, was not
altogether below the horizon. The unexpected remembrance of her in her
half-sister’s will, after so many years of neglect, had changed the
aspect of the world for a time. But the knowledge that her title was
not indefeasible had reopened all these anxieties and possibilities.
Therefore she had concluded it would be best to risk nothing, to
exchange with Travis while his financial condition rendered this
desirable for him as well as for her. The plantations, it was true,
were cumbrous of management, of uncertain value, and impossible of
sale. But they gave a good income, and were not liable to be spirited
out of her possession by some technicality. As she reflected on this
she said to herself that it was high time she made her decision known
to Travis--that it would be well to have a lawyer at once examine the
state of the titles, both of the town property and the plantations,
and confer with her step-brother as to relative values and final
arrangements.
By a strange chance, however, which presently befell, her resolution
was suddenly reversed, and this came about in the simple routine of
life here, where the battle was fought.
On this same day these grave cogitations were still uppermost in her
mind when she and Marcia, according to their custom, started for an
afternoon walk along the quiet plantation road. The air was crisp and
cold, and as they descended the broad stone steps to the pavement,
rent here and there with its historic fissures, they heard, distinct in
the distance, the ringing thud of a horse’s hoofs. A moment more and a
swift equestrian figure appeared galloping along the serpentine drive,
and Marcia was first to recognize the “strange man.” As he rapidly
approached them, he was smiling and lifting his hat. Seen in the crude
light of the day, which was full upon the unique tints of his dark red
hair and beard, his bold, quickly-glancing, brown eyes, his tanned
complexion, and his clear-cut but irregular features, his face could
less than ever be called handsome, although it was notably striking.
There was a suggestion of great vitality and alertness in the pose of
his fine figure, but that air of dash and mettle owed something of its
effectiveness to the high-couraged animal he rode, for he was gallantly
mounted. Her father’s daughter could not look upon such a horse save
with emotion.
He threw himself from the saddle and walked up the bomb-riven pavement
to meet them.
“Adopt Bishop Berkeley’s theory, I beg,” he cried, gayly, “I’m
no matter--and therefore can’t interfere with your excursion--or
perhaps”--he added with a laugh, “you might allow such an impalpable
essence to join you.”
“I have an idea,” said Marcia, as the three began to walk on slowly
together, “that there is just enough reality about you to keep off the
cows. Antoinette is dreadfully afraid of cows.”
“I perceive a purpose in my creation!” Estwicke exclaimed.
“Oh--I’m afraid of everything,” Antoinette admitted, with the
shamelessness of the feminine coward.
“And you?” asked Estwicke, glancing at Marcia.
“It is all the other way,” she boasted. “Everything is afraid of me.”
“I can appreciate that,” he declared.
She flushed, and looked away and laughed.
“I hope your burned hand is better,” said Antoinette, mellifluously.
“Oh, no!” Estwicke insisted. “It is _not_ better--much.”
He looked from one to the other--but this, after such a lapse of time,
was so empty a bid for sympathy that even they triumphantly withheld it.
Antoinette had paused to pluck a spray of cedar from a little tree
by the roadside. She showed the berries to Estwicke. “They are
pretty--don’t you think so?”
“You won’t find many now,” he remarked, glancing at the great charred
expanse of field and thicket, whence that fiery besom had swept the
withered grass and leaves. “Is that the object of this expedition?”
“Oh, no,” she explained, “we are only going up on the parapet of Fort
Despair to see the sun set.”
“We have a glimpse of something like scenery from that elevation,” said
Marcia.
Estwicke made no rejoinder, and somehow after this there was an
indefinable change; perhaps only the wind, blowing from the red west,
chilled them--for they were facing the wind now and rapidly approaching
the heavy earthwork which loomed, silent and grim, against the
gold-flecked splendors of the crimson sky. A scanty fringe of peach
and plum trees had sprung up along the slopes, where the soldiers had
tossed away the stones of the fruit they ate, and the red clay showed
through the bare branches. On the opposite side of the road was a
blackened, leafless thicket of young dogwood, hackberry, and aspen
trees. The wind was surging through it. The shadows here were deep. In
skirting the dense copse it seemed close upon nightfall.
And now the besieging force made its way into Fort Despair, which
offered no resistance, and walked slowly around on the parapet and
watched the sun go down. All the clouds assembled to do him honor, and
color and rejoicing filled the sky. Then the dull, sad shadow fell upon
the landscape, and the wintry twilight came on apace.
Antoinette stood watching the fading west, the wind stirring the waves
of fair hair which her bonnet permitted to be visible on her brow, and
fluttering the semi-opaque veil of black crape that floated backward
from it.
“Such melancholy suggestions in that sky!” she exclaimed, with a gentle
inflection.
“The day is dead,” said Estwicke, mechanically striking with his light
riding-whip at the charred bushes about him. “It’s gone forever.
There’s no resurrection for a dead day. It is the type of the
irrevocable. And what is done--is done.”
Marcia glanced from one to the other, her eyes brightening beneath the
gray mists of her tissue veil.
“I only see that the sun has gone down,” she declared, with her blithe
laughter. “To-day has left its mark on the world--a vast deal of useful
work has been done everywhere. And ‘To-morrow’ is already sailing on
the high seas, and bright and early in the morning she will be here.”
Estwicke looked hard at her as he offered his hand to assist her down
the steep exterior slope of the parapet. The shattered old house was
visible in the distance, its upper windows still aflame with the
sunset, as with some great inward conflagration. He thought of its
maimed and ruined owner. What a support her sturdy optimism must be to
a man like this!
With a sudden acute discernment he saw her life--she was all heart and
hands. Instead of bewailing the ruin of the war, she busied herself
in picking up the pieces. Her courage--the virtue of all others which
appealed most strongly to him--roused a quick sympathetic throb,
which was half pity that so young and gentle a thing should know this
desperate struggle, and half admiration of her pluck--such as he might
feel for some stripling soldier’s fine deeds of valiance. It was
nothing more tender. As they paused on the berme to rest, and stood
there motionless for an instant, he was all unaware that he held the
helpful little hand in a close clasp--as he might have pressed with
friendly fervor the hand of that brave young comrade. He did not notice
how deeply she blushed beneath the shimmer of her silky gray veil; that
she shrank away shyly from him after they had crossed the ditch, and
climbed the counterscarp and were once more on level ground; that she
was confused, agitated; that she did not speak. He sighed--he was only
reminded of the faith and affection which bound together that little
home-circle in perfect peace, here where the battle was fought--such
simple virtues--so widely possessed--and yet he sighed. So he walked
on, silent and absorbed, thinking--not of her--only of what she
suggested.
He had forgotten Miss St. Pierre. She hardly needed his assistance.
She only missed it because it was becoming that he should offer it. To
cover the slight embarrassment thus induced, she busied herself once
more with the cedar, for, as she followed them over the glacis, she
caught the gleam of the berries against the dark green of a funereal
little tree on the verge of the haunted thicket. She paused to gather
the spray while the others walked on unheeding. And so it happened that
the moment of their pre-occupation came to be an era in her life.
The fire had been very fierce just here, and the charred tangle of
vines and the prickly stubble of the burned bushes and weeds showed
how thickly matted was the growth thus cleared away. As she moved
forward into the midst of the thicket, she said to herself that no
other foot had pressed this sod since the days when the battle was
fought.
The next moment a cold horror clutched at her heart. There--almost at
her feet--was a ghastly row of excavations of a shape and size that
told their own story. These were the empty graves of the soldiers whose
ghosts walked here, and would not follow their transplanted bodies.
She stood motionless, looking down in terrified fascination. They were
shallow; the rains had washed the earth into them; the wind had helped
to fill them with leaves. And as she looked, a sudden fitful gleam
caught her eyes. It flashed up from the bottom of the nearest grave.
Perhaps it was the fading light on a drop of water; perhaps on a bit of
tin;--but it was like the burnished glimmer of precious metal. She did
not understand her courage afterward. She was suddenly impelled to step
swiftly forward, she knelt down on the brink of the excavation, and
picked up a small fragment of a watch chain. At one extremity it had
been cut smoothly off--perhaps by the bullet that had carried death to
the heart of the man who had worn it here. From the other end depended,
encrusted with clay, stained, too, she fancied, with some dark current,
a gold locket--the memento of a romance it might be, a love token. The
dead soldier had left it in his grave, and here it had lain all these
years, overlooked and unmolested. And here his story ended.
No--not ended yet! She had mechanically touched the spring and the
locket was open. She had only a glimpse of a tress of dark hair beneath
the shattered crystal--and then with the shock of an extreme surprise,
her pulses seemed suddenly stilled. For within the lid were engraved
these words:--
JOHN DOANE FORTESCUE
_from_
“ADELAIDE.”
Her blood came back with a rush. The pathetic interest of the bauble,
found here and now, was merged in its prosaic significance. John
Fortescue was dead. This discovery proved the fact. Did it prove
something more--that Travis was working on her fear of litigation to
weaken her hold upon the property he coveted? To be sure he might not
know that the man was dead, but he doubtless had reason to believe
it. She remembered that he had alluded to the fact that Fortescue had
been singularly alone in the world--he was probably aware, too, that
the dead man had no relative nearer than herself to urge their rights
as his heirs. Thus, in exchanging undesirable for desirable property,
Travis would acquire also her indefeasible title.
She recollected where she was with a shudder, for as she stood with the
trinket in her hand, the earth was suddenly a-throb with mysterious
vibrations. Loud voices rang on the wind in its wild, unimpeded rush
across the plain. The shadows in the haunted thicket were swaying back
and forth with a convulsive motion--the fantastic shapes began to
assume a dimly realized resemblance to human forms. She hastily thrust
the bit of chain and the locket into her muff, and as she turned, it
was a great relief to see her friends strolling leisurely along the
road close at hand.
They were still silent, and she was silent too when she joined them.
Already her caution was warning her that the discovery she had made
had so serious a connection with the title of her property that it was
not well to provoke an indiscriminate curiosity in the matter until
she could have the advice of a lawyer, and take the proper measures
to restore the little trinket--valueless except, possibly, from
association--to its rightful owner, if, indeed, the dead Fortescue had
a closer relative than herself still surviving. But was he dead--was
this sufficient to prove it?
Her strong sense of justice, too, combated the impulse to canvass with
her companions the wonderment of this episode, that was so strange in
that it should aptly fall into her experience, and so natural in that
it had happened here, where the battle was fought. But it involved
the honor and honesty of a _quasi_ member of the family, and
this touched her pride. She knew that its recital could not fail to
suggest to them the identical suspicions which she entertained of her
step-brother’s motives in the proposed exchange of property, and had
she sufficient proof to warrant her, for the mere love of sensation, in
exposing him to this grave discredit?
Thus it was that she said nothing.
Night was falling. The evening star shivered in the wind. The mists
were crouching in the rifle-pits of the old picket-line, and had
silently entered the works. Now and then she glanced back at the
desolate stretch of country, its heavy redoubts so grim, so gaunt, so
doubly drear, projected against an infinitely clear sky. The scene,
in its vast loneliness, was burnt into her brain--she saw it years
afterward as vividly as she saw it now--as all must forever see it who
once look upon it. Even the house, standing stark and silent in the
distance, gave no sense of life, of a future, of the domestic world,
of humanity. One might sigh to see the pallid, wintry moon peering
curiously through the big rifts of the bomb-shattered cupola.