THE lawyer whom Miss St. Pierre was destined to consult had no
prevision of his coming client. Such prevision might have induced
some exhilaration of spirit, for after court was adjourned on the
day of the “shindy,” as Meredith characterized it--the affair always
figured in General Vayne’s subsequent meditations as “that deplorable
encounter”--the young man, strolling down Main Street, was rather
dismayed by the prospect of the long evening before him; now that
the abnormal excitements of the day were over he was beginning to be
impressed with the facilities of Chattalla for unlimited dulness. He
felt it, therefore, as something in the nature of a rescue when he
suddenly heard his name called, and, turning, saw a carriage, which had
stopped near the sidewalk, a face that he knew framed in the window,
and a delicate gray glove beckoning to him with much cordiality of
gesture. He threw away his cigar and hastened to shake hands with Mrs.
Percy.
“Why didn’t you let me know that you were here? Why haven’t you been
out to see me?” she exclaimed, graciously. For she made a special point
of cultivating such of her pliable son’s acquaintances as were not
given over to the iniquitous beguilements of the wine bottle and the
spring races. Besides, in the dreary interval which she spent in the
country between her winters in New Orleans and her summers at the White
Sulphur, she prized “company” only as a woman who is fond of society,
but suffers a periodic bucolic eclipse, can prize it. She carried her
forty-eight years lightly,--the style of her black-velvet dress and
bonnet betokened that she accorded much attention to the mandates of
fashion, and her religious friends objected with disparaging piety that
she was a worldly-minded woman. She had a fresh complexion, dark hair,
a Roman nose, bright gray eyes, and a charming smile. She bent this
full upon him as she added, “When did you reach Chattalla?”
“Eight o’clock this morning,” said Meredith, answering all three
questions at once.
“Ah, then that explains it. I forgive you on condition of future good
behavior. But you must come out and dine with us this afternoon. Jump
in. I won’t take any refusal.”
“You won’t have the opportunity, I assure you,” said Meredith, briskly
stepping into the carriage.
Thus it was he chanced to meet Miss St. Pierre, who was still Mrs.
Percy’s guest.
She introduced him graciously to the young girl who sat beside her. “I
am so glad you happened to be here while I still have Miss St. Pierre
with me. I take great pleasure in making my two _most_ charming
young friends known to each other,” she added, with that habit of
blandishment which was not so patently insincere as to detract from the
pleasure its exercise afforded to those in her good books.
Her two most charming young friends smiled rather inanely at each
other in default of an appropriate response. And it presently occurred
to Meredith that the other charming young friend was habitually in
default in this respect. She did not, as he phrased it, “talk back,”
and although he admired the acquiescent gentleness of her voice in her
monosyllabic replies, and her blonde prettiness, enhanced by its sombre
crape setting, his interest in her died out naturally enough as he grew
absorbed in the spirited dialogue with Mrs. Percy, who did “talk back.”
It was soon revivified, however, and by an odd circumstance--a very
odd circumstance it seemed to him--which came about in the course of
conversation.
“And by the way,” said Mrs. Percy, after a time, “tell me what brought
you to Chattalla--if it was not to see me?”
“Nothing half so pleasant--professional business.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Percy, shaking her head with a melancholy gesture, the
effect of which was impaired to some degree by the frivolous flutter
it occasioned in the jet-tipped plumes on the top of her bonnet. “If
Horace would only devote himself, as you do, to some serious solid
pursuit! I tell him you are an example for him. If he would only enter
the profession too!”
“There’s so much room for him!” cried Meredith, with a laugh. “Tell him
that, too,--from me.”
Mrs. Percy waved her fan in remonstrant dissent. “Young men used to say
that kind of thing when I was a girl--away back in the middle ages. You
young pessimists haven’t a patent on that sort of railing. Well, I hope
the court will keep you here for a good while.”
Antoinette suddenly fixed her eyes upon him. Speaking of her own accord
for the first time, she asked gravely, as if the matter had a vital
significance,--
“Are _you_ a lawyer, Mr. Meredith?”
This personal inquiry from a stranger was so abrupt and unexpected that
Meredith stared for an instant--then could not forbear a smile. To
justify the smile, he replied with an attempt at pleasantry. “I can’t
deny the soft impeachment.” After this the conversation flowed on in
orthodox fashion. The incident did not leave his thoughts, however. He
could not determine to what he might attribute this interest. She had
put the question in so serious a manner. She had waited for the reply
with eager attention. It flattered him, and it piqued his curiosity.
“Why did she ask?” he marvelled. “What does it matter to her whether I
am a judge or a hod-carrier?”
Ever and anon as he sat opposite, he glanced furtively at her. She
seemed absorbed now--meditative. He wondered what she could be thinking
about. He had no idea it was anything so solid as business.
She had not been stricken by the personal interest which his vanity
was fain to ascribe to her, but she was very favorably impressed with
his bright, clever face, and his air of decision and imperturbable
serenity; these endowments aided the fact that he was a lawyer, which
suggested the idea that she might have him to investigate the title to
her property, and also to decide what had best be done to discover the
owner of the locket she had found.
She had driven into Chattalla to-day with Mrs. Percy, intending to
acquaint her with these perplexities, and under her chaperonage
to consult some lawyer of the town. But Mrs. Percy had talked so
much!--she and her particular friends were victims of that dissipation
known among country ladies as “Spending the Day,” and in these feminine
caucuses they became singularly well-informed as to the affairs of
other people; when she observed the large crowd about the square, which
indicated that the circuit court was in session, she gave Antoinette so
minute a detail of all the litigation, actual and incipient, in which
mutual acquaintances were involved, that at last the girl was fairly
frightened from the intended confidence, appreciating how disastrous it
would be to have people speculating about an hypothetical flaw in her
title, when in all probability there was no Fortescue living to lay
claim to her property, and perceiving distinctly that whatever she told
Mrs. Percy would, however unintentionally, be finally transmitted to
the county. Even the question of the locket was so intimately connected
with these interests that it was manifestly unwise to excite a useless
romantic curiosity in the mystery encircling it, until she could advise
with a lawyer as to its value as proof of Fortescue’s death. So she
said nothing, and finally, when the horses’ heads were turned homeward,
she had been absorbed in disappointment until they had chanced to meet
Meredith, and the fact that he was a lawyer had been elicited. At her
age she had had necessarily little enough experience of the world,
and that little was drawn from its superficial and smiling phases of
life in society and boarding-schools. She knew nothing whatever of
its sterner aspects and commercial habitudes. Conventional as she was
in every look, tone, and gesture, it did not for a moment occur to
her that the course she now had in contemplation was _outré_ in
any respect; she did not recognize the impropriety of consulting a
gentleman professionally who was out on a holiday and in the midst of a
visit at a friend’s house; she had no appreciation of the recklessness
of her project, and gave no heed to the fact that she had never heard
his name until an hour ago, and knew nothing of him or his reputation
at the bar. Now and then she glanced at him as she sat opposite, and
each hurried survey strengthened her purpose. She said to herself that
he had an intellectual face, and sagaciously concluded that whatever
there was to know in the law Mr. Temple Meredith had probably found it
out. As to his youth--the reproach and shame of the neophytes of his
profession, a reproach and shame which they can only live down by slow
degrees--she never once thought of his youth. Such as she have scant
regard for the value of experience. Her only anxiety was the fear that
an opportunity to consult him would not be presented.
When they reached Mrs. Percy’s place the sun was going down behind the
heavy woods which, at this distance westward from the town, still stood
untouched. The air was languorous and full of vernal suggestions--but
for the bare boughs that encompassed the house, a large modern brick
structure faced with stone, one might have believed that spring had
come. The dark masses of evergreens about the grounds were edged with
a most vivid and delicate emerald tint. Here and there the eye caught
the blaze of some brilliant hot-house plant already set out in the open
air. The windows of the parlor stood wide to the breeze, and within as
well as without were everywhere evidences of much worldly prosperity.
The whole scene was a wonderful contrast to the desolate barren that
lay ten miles away and north of Chattalla, and to the dilapidated
cannon-shattered house that stood forlorn and alone in its midst.
They found in the parlor Mrs. Percy’s mother, a platitudinarian meek
old lady, with a mouse-like manner, and always more or less agitated by
an intermittent intention of repressing a pair of too airily fluttering
diaphanous capstrings. She had been additionally perturbed by the
lateness of their return, for it was long past the dinner hour, and she
feared some accident had befallen them. Here, too, awaiting them, was
old Mr. Ridgeway, who had stopped on his way home from town, eager and
excited about the prospective route of a new turnpike that was to be
built through these broad acres of woodland, and determined that Mrs.
Percy’s influence as a stockholder in the company should be used with
discretion, which in his opinion was synonymous with his interest, for
he owned the adjoining tract. He was easily enough persuaded to stay
to dinner, which was presently announced, and throughout the meal he
monopolized the conversation--talking turnpike steadily on, without
hindrance or pause. It was perhaps in the hope of effecting some
diversion that Mrs. Percy, instead of returning to the parlor when they
had risen from the table, led the way out upon the front veranda. The
hope was vain; the party was hardly established here in rustic chairs
before a square of light was projected from each of the windows, as the
servant placed the lamps in the parlor; old Mr. Ridgeway sprang up with
a buoyancy scarcely to be expected in a man of his size, produced from
his pocket a map of the county, and insisted that the two elder ladies
should go within and have the evidence of their own eyes as to the
triumphs of turnpikeage which he proposed.
Meredith watched the trio through the open window for a moment--the
visitor gesticulatory and given over to long exhortations; Mrs. Percy
indifferent and as likely to favor one side as the other; and old
Mrs. Lorent, scrutinizing the map with so close an attention that
her fluttering capstrings were brought in dangerous proximity to the
lamp-chimney. Then he realized all at once that he was left to the
mercy of the catechistical young lady. He looked at her narrowly as
she sat near him in the mingled light of the moon and the glow that
fell through the open windows. She seemed thoughtful. Her eyes were
downcast. Her face was very grave.
Suddenly she glanced up. “Mr. Meredith,” she said, “as you are a lawyer
it has occurred to me that I might ask you to examine the title of some
property I have in Graftenburg--I have been told that the title is
defective.”
The surprise in his face which he could not control made her aware how
far she had departed from established usage. She hardly gave him time
for his murmured--“I shall be very happy.” She continued hastily--
“Perhaps this is not the customary way of managing such things. I’m
sure I don’t know. I’ve had no experience in business affairs. This
property only recently came into my possession. Before, I had nothing.”
She had lost her equilibrium and was blushing painfully. “I suppose I
seem odd enough to die!” she concluded desperately.
This poor young lady considered oddity one of the worst forms of
wickedness, and she was conscious of appearing very queer indeed in
Temple Meredith’s eyes. In her confusion and mortification she was on
the brink of tears. He hastened to reassure her.
“I will do everything that is possible in the matter,” he said
earnestly. “Now, what is the difficulty about the title?”
“I don’t know how to express these things intelligibly--as men do,”
said the conventional Miss St. Pierre, looking at him with appealing
eyes, her cheeks crimson, her lips unsteady. “I shall have to tell it
in my own fashion--you must try to understand it.”
“I have no doubt you will make it plain enough,” he replied in a
matter-of-course manner, as if the whole confidence were a routine
affair.
But he was thinking in great enjoyment that this was indeed an
innovation upon the regular professional consultation. Instead of the
prosaic mid-day atmosphere of his law-office in Marston, the din of
the streets, the burly office furniture, the frowning assemblage of
law-books, they were encompassed by a romantic blue twilight, pierced
through and through with silver shafts from the moon. A whippoorwill’s
plaint was rising from the dark forest. There were delicate shadows
of budding vines traced on the floor of the veranda. And what an
infinite remove from all his experience of the genus client was this
fair-haired, dark-robed young girl, blushing and faltering, and almost
in tears because she could not explain a matter of business “like a
man.”
His father had early warned him never to undertake business without a
retainer. Meredith remembered in secret and unfilial glee this golden
rule of practice, and laid himself heavy odds that his client would not
know the meaning of the term were it demanded of her.
As she detailed the story her composure returned, and it became more
easily maintained when she observed the change in his face as his
covert amusement, of which she had been subtly aware, gave way to
a grave interest and much surprise. There was a pause when she had
concluded. He silently revolved what had been said.
“Although finding the locket in an empty grave on the battlefield is
not positive proof, it is certainly presumptive evidence of the man’s
death,” he remarked at length. “Still he may be alive. It is possible
that he lost the locket, or it may have been stolen from him.”
“Or he may have given it away,” she suggested.
“Not likely,” the lawyer replied. “It is evidently a woman’s gift
to him, valuable chiefly from association. That fact indicates his
presence on the spot. The battlefield”--he repeated, meditatively. “Do
you know certainly that he was in either army?”
“I can’t say. I know very little of him beyond his relationship to me,
and I never saw him.”
“You can think of no way by which he or his heirs can be discovered, or
the fact of his death proved?”
“None at all. He was a wild, reckless, wandering man. And he was
singularly alone in the world, having no relatives of his father’s
family, and of his mother’s connections I am the nearest, although the
relationship is very distant.”
There was another silence. The wind rustled in the vines and stirred
her fair hair; the shifting moonbeams trembled on the floor.
“Perhaps it would be well for you to look at a paper which Mr. Travis
sent me,” she said, in a business-like voice. “It is an extract from
the record.”
His lips quivered slightly.
“Oh, ought I to say an ‘abstract’ of the record?” she cried. “How
should I know!”
“It would be dreadful if you knew!” Meredith protested, with a laugh.
“But let me see the ‘extract.’”
She laughed too a little, but cast a deprecatory glance upon him as she
rose and swept past him through the long window into the parlor, where
she searched a little inlaid trinket of a writing-desk for the document
which was incongruous enough with its dainty receptacle.
Mrs. Percy, still infinitely bored, sitting by the table at the other
end of the room, followed her motions with wistful eyes.
“Somebody’s photograph she is going to show him, I suppose,” thought
this victim of the Turnpike Company.
As Antoinette came back the young man rose and received the roll of
surly-looking legal cap with a bow and smile which might have been
a fit acknowledgment if she had given him a rose instead. Then he
leaned against the window-frame and began to flutter the pages, the
handwriting being distinct enough to his young eyes even at that
distance from the lamp.
“It is not a photograph,” said Mrs. Percy, watching them from within;
“it must be sheet-music, or more likely a copy of verses.”
Antoinette had dropped again into her little rustic arm-chair; she
watched him intently while he read, altogether unaware that now and
then, as he turned the pages, he was vividly conscious of her upturned,
childish face, and her appealing eyes. She herself had found the paper
hard reading, and she rather wondered that he should whisk over the
leaves so lightly, seeming to take in only a point here and there. But
with the lawyer’s sixth sense, acquired by the habit of manipulating
facts enveloped, mummy-like, in the infinite swathings of technical
verbiage, he had easily separated all that was important from the rest.
“Well,” he said, as he handed it back to her, “I have extracted
something from this, although I hope you won’t accuse me of having
abstracted anything.”
She was surprised at the good nature with which she regarded his
harping on that trifling mistake.
“If an ‘extract’ from a poem, why not from the record?” she argued.
“Why not?” he rejoined, with a laugh.
She, too, smiled as she leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair,
propping her flushed cheek with the stiff roll of legal cap, that was
doubtless surprised to find itself in such pretty company.
Meredith had grown grave, reflective. “I think,” he said, still
lounging against the window-frame and checking off each point he
made by tapping his hand with her fan, which he had picked up from
the floor, “I think it more than probable that Fortescue’s remedy is
barred by the statute. Mrs. Perrier bought this property in April,
1857, immediately after the determination of Clendenning’s estate
_per autre vie_. And then, of course, Fortescue’s right of action
had accrued. The law in Tennessee allows for the institution of
proceedings to recover real estate seven years next after the right
of action has accrued. But on account of the disorder and confusion
caused by the war, a period of something more than five years--from
the sixth day of May, 1861, to the first day of January, 1867--has
been prescribed, during which no statute of limitations can be held
to have operated. Now, you see, Mrs. Perrier held the property under
a deed duly registered, claiming it as her own throughout the seven
years originally limited, and the period allowed for the war. Unless
Fortescue or his heir can set up some disability, there is no show for
him now.”
“If--if--if he were disabled in any way, would there be a--a--‘show’
for him?” she asked earnestly.
He was holding her fan to his lips, and looking at her over it with
laughing eyes.
“Oh, now _I know_ that I have said something dreadfully ignorant,”
she cried in deprecation.
“You can’t imagine how it shocks me,” he protested.
“Of course,” she argued, “if I knew all the law that there is, I
shouldn’t apply to you.”
“There’s a compliment in that,” declared Meredith. “You didn’t intend
it for me, but there is no law that I know of to prevent me from
appropriating it.”
She glanced away, laughing in confusion, and then the learned
counsellor, flirting the fan, proceeded,--
“Now, I’ll tell you all about the disability. There are certain persons
against whom the prescription does not run--minors; married women;
persons ‘beyond the seas,’ which, in Tennessee, means, ‘without the
limits of the United States;’ persons _non compos mentis_; and
also, in some of the States, persons who are imprisoned,--all are
excepted by the law if, when their right first accrued, they were
laboring under any one of these disabilities, in which case they are
allowed three years next after the removal of the disability to bring
their action. Now, it is possible that Fortescue or his heir may have
been under one of these disabilities, and may yet appear and make a
fight for the property; but I think it exceedingly improbable.”
She remained silent and meditative for a few moments. Then she
repeated, in a thoughtful voice, like a child learning a lesson,
“minors, married women, persons ‘beyond the seas,’ lunatics, and
convicts. That’s a nice company! Did it ever occur to you,” she added,
with the rising inflection of a laugh, and an archness that was
unexpected and uncharacteristic, “did it ever occur to you that the law
seems to consider married women persons to whom the fullest sympathy
should be accorded and exceptional privileges allowed, in common with
other grievously afflicted humanity, those who have suffered loss of
mind, for instance, or imprisonment?”
“The law is a cynic,” said Meredith as he stepped out into the
moonlight.
And there he sat in its gentle radiance, discoursing mellifluously of
the statute of limitations, of seisin, of disseisin in fact and by
election, of tenancy at will and at sufferance, and cognate “curious
and cunning learnings of the law”--emphasizing all his remarks with the
fan, but never lapsing from an almost judicial gravity, influenced by a
desire that she should understand the subject in all its bearings.
As she listened, she thought him a prodigy of legal erudition, and
could not sufficiently applaud her own acumen and tact which had led
her to place her interests in his hands. She felt altogether at ease
now. He possessed, besides all his superior mental endowments, an
extreme caution,--a quality which she held in high esteem, and which,
as a general thing, she exercised. She deduced this from the fact
that he had remarked parenthetically that he was glad to have seen
the abstract, but that upon his return to Marston, he would go to
Graftenburg where he would examine the record itself.
Then too he gave her a warning.
“Let me advise you, Miss St. Pierre, to say nothing to your friends
about this supposed defect in the title of the property.” As she had
confided so readily in him he thought her nature was effusive, and
that she needed a check. “That would be very impolitic, for if the
title should prove to be perfect, the value of the property would be
injured by the doubt in the minds of unprofessional people. It is very
difficult to eradicate that kind of impression.”
“Oh, I will not. I have not mentioned the matter to any one but you.”
There was a convincing earnestness in her eyes as she raised them. Her
child-like reliance upon an utter stranger was very beguiling. Alas,
for this wise young counsellor!
He drifted back presently to his disquisition, and the moonlight
shimmered about him, and the bird’s melancholy monody rose fitfully
from the deep shadows of the forest, and in the pauses they could hear
the river flow, and when his eyes met the girl’s, for all his learning,
they lingered.
And now there was a stir within; the elders were coming out upon the
veranda, and all too soon the professional consultation was ended.
When the young man returned to Marston, he mentioned rather pridefully
to his father that during his absence he had had some business put
into his hands, involving real estate in Graftenburg, which would
require him to go to that city shortly for the purpose of examining the
records.
“I am glad of it,” said the old gentleman, gratified by this
confirmation of his theory that if you don’t help a young lawyer too
much, he will help himself. “I’m glad of it. Don’t grudge time and
attention. Real estate is a very different style of business from that
_cause célèbre_ of yours--old Krieger and his two glandered mules.”
His son laughed. “I dare say old Krieger’s mules were as important to
him as the real estate is to this client.”
“All right--if you are disposed to hang your legal laurels on the long
ears of those interesting animals, I have only to say--prosperity
attend you,” retorted the old gentleman, waggishly.
A few days later the young man did run down to Graftenburg, but he
proceeded by indirection, setting out for that city _viâ_ the
Chattalla branch railroad, which in the nature of things, leads no
further than Chattalla. He spent much time during the early part of
his sojourn, _in transitu_ between the hotel of the village and
Mrs. Percy’s place. His constant requisition of a certain swift trotter
from the principal livery stable awakened in its proprietor a great
admiration of his acumen in horse-flesh, supplemented by no little
curiosity and speculation.
“It’s my belief,” he said, as a result of much cogitation, “that that
young chap--and he knows a good horse when he sees him--is courtin’
somebody in this neighborhood.”
He looked after the rapidly revolving wheels that bore his patron away,
and shook his head sagely.
Not only in the village did Meredith’s conduct provoke comment.
“It strikes me,” said Mrs. Percy, privately to her mother, “that Mr.
Meredith’s deficiency in the matter of geography is positively painful.
The poor young man seems utterly ignorant that Chattalla is not on the
direct road between Marston and Graftenburg. He told me last evening
that he had only stopped on his way!”
She found little difficulty in persuading him to subject himself no
longer to the discomforts of the little hotel in the village, and
after this he was established in Horace Percy’s room on very much the
footing of a son of the house, and with all his friend’s effects at
command--his books to read, his horse to ride, his boat to row. Some
concession, however, was made to the absent. Meredith beguiled half
an hour of his leisure one day by writing to Horace, describing the
usurpation of his prerogatives, and politely inviting him to remain in
New Orleans.
The elders of the household were readily propitiated. Mrs. Lorent found
the guest, in her platitudinarian phrase, “a very worthy young man.”
Mrs. Percy often sighed and sadly shook her bedecked head, protesting
that she would tell Horace what an example his friend was. And old Mr.
Lorent, her father, who was a mere wreck physically, but with political
opinions as fresh and vigorous as when he cast his first vote in 1820,
declared that he had not seen the young fellow’s equal for fifty years,
and that his views on specie payment would have graced the days of “Old
Bullion.”
All this praise did not tend to impair the position he held in
Antoinette’s esteem. In fact it only served to confirm her own opinion.
They were often together, wandering through the grounds or along the
bank of the river, while the warm vernal breeze stirred the trees,
and the sunshine dripped, like some golden fluid, from one budding
bough to another. The air tasted like wine. Wings were sweeping across
the sky--and it was blue! Oh, perfect spring-days _sub tegmine
fagi_! Oh, love and youth! Oh, Damon, no longer playing on an oaten
pipe, which is comparatively meaningless, but with case-learning and
precedent, with subtle distinctions and clever deductions. Oh, modern
shepherd, whose silly sheep are sublimated in learned parchments! Oh,
dear delights of seisin and disseisin, made plain as might be to pretty
Nisa, who no longer cruelly disdains as of yore but is reduced to
admiration of science, of its erudite professor, of the great future
stretching out before him. And, oh, that great future!--that infinite
possibility which stretches before every young man. How is it that,
when youth goes, it goes too? And then your great future lies in your
past. Your world has flattened out a little; the holy pool is stagnant,
for the wing of your aspiration troubles the waters only once in a
lifetime, and only once can you heal your sorrows and consecrate your
purposes. After that you become critical--you measure your powers--you
doubt--your hands fall. Then stock the holy pool with fish, my friend,
and get your living out of it.
And yet this modern Damon had his woes and, perhaps for the lack of the
oaten pipe, they were silent. Only within himself he argued dextrously
whether it would be becoming to notify Nisa that she had acquired a new
title--an indefeasible title to his heart--and her rights could never
be barred by any statute of limitations whatever. But he had known her
so short a time--only two weeks and a half. Still, he submitted, he
had seen so much of her--their knowledge of each other would amount to
full six months of ordinary acquaintance, prosecuted through a call
now and then, and an occasional waltz at a German. On the other hand,
such an avowal so soon after their first meeting might seem to her an
impertinence. He ran over in his mind all the experience of his friends
that had come to his knowledge--of those who were married, those who
were engaged, and those who had ever sought to be. He, so ready with
authorities, could not now cite one case in point--could not quote one
dictum bearing even remotely on the subject. There was no precedent
whatever--it would be a very informal proceeding. It was doubtless
better to have all the pleadings in due form.
This man of words, who needed so few now, was depressed in spirit and
rather wistful on the day preceding his departure for Graftenburg.
“This time to-morrow I shall not be with you when you come out to look
at the sunset,” he said, as they stood together on the front veranda.
“I shall see it from the car windows,--it will be a great red and
yellow daub skurrying by, flecked with cinders and smirched with smoke.
And the fields of winter wheat--all of a crude green--will reel out
from the woods somewhere, and the trees will go staggering about the
landscape, and all nature will seem a coarse, drunken thing. And I
shall realize that I am a man of towns and artificial life, and such as
that is not for me.” He pointed with Horace Percy’s light riding whip
at the calm and gracious splendor of the western skies, and then he
fell to flicking his boots.
As if he cared for the sunset except that she looked at it!
The clouds were still aflame; long lines of crimson light flashed
down the river alternating with its steely gleam; the brown boles of
the trees on the opposite bank could still be distinguished. But the
moonrise had followed hard upon the setting of the sun and a vagueness
was coming into this tender harmony of coloring--not jarringly, but
slipping through it with all soft and sweet accord.
“I’ll write to you from Graftenburg about that matter of the record,”
he said presently, brightening with the thought.
“You are very kind,” she murmured.
“And when I next come to Chattalla we’ll talk it all over again.”
There was certainly nothing more to talk over, and he had no further
business at Chattalla, but as he stood silent for a moment he was
seriously questioning how soon--how very soon--could he play truant to
his other engagements.
“Possibly on the--no, certainly on the 28th of June I shall be here
again.”
And on this understanding they separated.
“Temple!” exclaimed old Mr. Meredith, tartly, as his son came suddenly
into the office one day, “you stayed in Graftenburg long enough to
commit the records to memory. I was afraid I should be obliged to send
Bryant to New York in your place. Not that you know any more law than
he does,” he added disparagingly. “God knows it’s Hobson’s choice!”
And so Temple Meredith went to New York on business for his father.
It was only a short time after his departure that Antoinette received
from a notable and highly reputable firm of lawyers in Graftenburg a
letter which ran thus:--
MADAM:--We write to inform you that in accordance with the
instructions of our client, Mr. John D. Fortescue, we will at an early
day bring suit for the recovery of the property in this city now held
by you under color of title by the will of the late Mrs. Perrier.
Mr. Fortescue directs us to say that he will resort to this course
with great reluctance; rather than do so he would make a liberal
settlement with you. If, after consideration of the matter, you are
disposed to offer any terms, we shall be happy to submit them to Mr.
Fortescue.
Very respectfully yours,
WYNDHAM & ORRIS.
She read and re-read this letter, and then thought it over in much
perturbation. That singular circumstance--the discovery of the locket
in an empty grave--made it seem as if Fortescue had strangely come
from the dead to dispossess her. Although Meredith had assured her
that she had no positive proof of his death, the belief had previously
become so rooted in her mind that it was difficult to eradicate it.
She determined that she would be reasonable now and harbor no more
fantasies. She would see things as they really were, not distorted,
through a childish love of mystery. She began to think that from
the first she had unjustly suspected Mr. Travis’s motives; for this
threatened attack upon the property was a fulfilment of his warnings.
The only apparent discrepancy--the length of time which had elapsed
since the determination of the estate _per autre vie_--could
probably be explained when Fortescue’s lawyers should confer with hers;
perhaps he had been under one of those disabilities of which Temple
Meredith had spoken, and had thus escaped the bar that would otherwise
prevent him from recovering the property.
Yet even while resolving to banish from her mind her fantastic
suspicions, she was vaguely conscious of a plot in the air, and,
struggle as she might, this vague consciousness hampered the decision
she sought to base on the bare facts before her, and still influenced
her action. She did not answer the lawyer’s letter. She inclosed it to
Temple Meredith, supposing that he was still in Marston, with a request
that he would give it his attention and obtain Mr. Fortescue’s present
address, in order that the locket might be returned. Her instinct was
to keep them all at a distance; she would treat with them only through
Meredith.
When this letter arrived in Marston, it was handed to his father
with a number of others. “Hey! What’s that--Temple’s mail?” the old
gentleman asked, as he thrust his pen behind his ear.
A couple of wedding cards fell upon the floor from one of the open
envelopes in his hand. He stooped with difficulty to regain them, and
when he had risen to his portly perpendicular, he was red in the face
and testy in temper.
“Weddings, and parties, and such follies!” He ejaculated scornfully;
for he had come to think all was folly that did not tend to litigation
or issue therefrom. “No way for a young man to get on. Wasting time;
fritter, fritter”--
As he shuffled the envelopes, he paused to look attentively at the
blurred and unintelligible postmark of Antoinette’s letter, from
which the stamp had chanced to be lost. He drew his own inference
from its delicate exterior and graceful, feminine chirography, and
righteously separated it from those envelopes of formidable aspect
which unmistakably indicated business correspondence. These he promptly
forwarded to his son, while Antoinette’s letter was relegated to a
place among the wedding cards and flimsy little notes treating of
impending Germans and private theatricals.
“I’ll keep these invitations and such trash till he comes; he’ll be
here in a week. He won’t want to be bothered with them now, for they
can’t do him any good there,--nor anywhere else.”
He placed them methodically together, and pigeon-holed them in the
darkest corner of his desk, to await Temple’s return.
It was long delayed by unforeseen complications of the business which
had carried him to New York, and old Mr. Meredith, forwarding from time
to time his son’s correspondence, had utterly forgotten the little
notes in his desk.
Antoinette, in great surprise, waited vainly for an answer. Twice,
during the weeks that ensued, she began to write to Meredith again;
twice she burned her letter, fearful, in her inopportune caution,
that her interference would work mischief, that her impatience might
harry him into precipitate and thoughtless action. She was checked,
too, by a sense of something unbecoming in her persistence; it might
seem as if she had scant confidence in his judgment, and desired to
call him to account, to dictate and superintend him in the matter. And
surely he knew best, she argued, whether the delay was injurious or an
advantage. She had committed everything to his guidance, and it was
for him to act, not her. In some indignation she thought that he might
have sent her a line to allay her anxiety; but, on the other hand, he
could hardly be expected to realize how anxious she was. He might be
making investigations important to her interests, and wished to reply
only when he had reached a decision, or had something definite to say.
She had become sharply conscious of her inexperience in the ways of
the world, and admitted to consideration the possibility that men of
business might be more deliberate in matters of importance than she had
supposed.
She sought to divert her mind as much as possible from this perplexing
absorption, and to await patiently further developments; but this was
difficult in the dull routine of country life. After she had returned
to General Vayne’s plantation, however, more frivolous interests
asserted a claim to her attention. She found that great events were
impending; the whole household was in a state of gratified expectancy;
the boys were noisy and hilarious; there was festivity intimated in the
very waving of Mrs. Kirby’s curls; only Marcia seemed a little languid,
and somehow unaccountably and constantly disappointed.
“We are getting ready, my dear, for Thursday, the ninth--Edgar’s
birthday,” said Mrs. Kirby. “Marcia always lets him have his own way on
that day; yes, and he desires to give a fishing party. Lucky, wasn’t
it,” she added, with an expression of deep slyness, “that he had a whim
to invite some grown people, too?--makes it so much more pleasant for
_us_, you know.”
Then she turned beamingly to her brother.
“And _you_ ought, Francis, to invite formally all whom Edgar has
asked. Suppose you write the notes now. Yes; no time like the present.”
General Vayne obediently seated himself, and, pen in hand, awaited
further instructions.
“Let me see,” continued the old lady, meditatively, “there were Mr. and
Mrs. Ridgeway, and their grand-children--don’t forget the children.”
General Vayne’s pen, with splutter and splash, flourished across the
page, and the Ridgeways were invited in all due form.
“And Captain Estwicke,” lined out Mrs. Kirby, who knew nothing of the
disagreement.
General Vayne’s pen paused in mid-air. To be sure, he disliked--nay, he
heartily detested--Estwicke, and desired no further intercourse with
him. But in a manner he had been already asked, and the “sacred laws
of hospitality” were involved in so reiterating the invitation that it
would be possible for him to accept or refuse, at his own pleasure.
Splutter, scrawl, splash once more.
There is an infinite sarcasm in a double-faced fact. It is perhaps an
apt illustration of this that Estwicke should receive a note, which
left General Vayne in this mood, as a covert apology; that he should
flinch under its supposed generosity; that he should scourge himself,
as having grossly refused to concede aught to the heat of partisanship,
when the character of a man’s friend was at stake and his orphans in
danger of beggary; that he should upbraid himself as a churl, who would
take no cognizance of the gracious cordiality and kindliness he had
enjoyed until it was extended again.
In this propitiatory and humble frame of mind, uncharacteristic enough,
he, too, was eagerly expectant of the great day.
While all these unconscious factors in his schemes were thus giving
themselves up to the anticipation of frivolous diversion, Maurice
Brennett was like a worm in the fire. He could not imagine why
Fortescue’s lawyers should have heard nothing whatever from Miss St.
Pierre in response to their effort to promote a settlement. As day
after day passed without result, he at length felt it necessary to take
a hand in the game himself.
Some time earlier than this, Fortescue had concluded to go to
Tennessee, for the purpose of a more comprehensive consultation with
his lawyers than could be readily compassed by correspondence. Brennett
had urged this plan, and when at last it was adopted, he told Travis
that he intended to accompany Fortescue.
“Ten to one,” he said, “the fellow won’t see the lawyers at all, unless
there is somebody along to keep him up to the mark. He will be gambling
and drinking, and forget why he went there at all.”
When Travis stopped in Graftenburg, on his way to the Louisville races,
he was greatly dismayed to learn from Brennett that some ill-feeling
had here been developed between him and Fortescue. Agitated by the
prospect of internal dissension at such a crisis, Travis reproached
Brennett with this patent imprudence.
“For the sake,” he said, “of a pitiful little three thousand
dollars,”--he always spoke contemptuously of comparatively small sums
of money, and with bated breath and deep respect of large,--“for the
sake of a pitiful little three thousand dollars you jeopardize all
our chances. If you incense that fellow against you, he may ruin our
prospects yet; he may go back on our contract, and bring suit for the
Graftenburg property on his own hook. We couldn’t chirp if he should,
because our agreement is champertous, you know. Why did you lend him
money if you didn’t expect to stand to lose?”
For Brennett, it seemed, had loaned Fortescue three thousand dollars,
dividing the debt for the sake of a more speedy collection, and taking
six notes for five hundred dollars each, thus bringing it within the
expeditious jurisdiction of a justice of the peace. When they fell due,
and the money was not forthcoming, there were some hot words about the
matter. Brennett--in a ridiculous pet, as it seemed to Travis, for
there was nothing to be gained--sued, got judgment, issued executions,
which were levied upon Fortescue’s interest in the Graftenburg
property, and, until the next term of the circuit court, could proceed
no further.
“Perhaps I was wrong,” Brennett admitted. “Still, I have thought of a
way to utilize the affair.”
“I should like to know how,” said Travis, “if it were only for
curiosity.”
“Well,” said Brennett, meditatively, “I am going up there in the
country with Percy. I should like to get the machinery of this proposed
compromise into running order, and, if I could discover what the hitch
is there, I might start the rest. I may meet Miss St. Pierre. If I
tell her that I am a creditor of Fortescue’s, and have therefore a
personal interest in promoting a settlement, it might be admissible for
me to talk the matter over with her. I could find out why she makes
no move in the affair. I might be able to facilitate--even to effect a
compromise.”
“That’s a first-rate idea, Brennett. Such a head for expedients as you
have! But it is soft in places. Lending money to Fortescue--of all the
men in the world! And I never heard before of your lending money.”
It might not have occurred to a more clever brain than Travis’s that
there was literally no “value received” for these notes that John
Fortescue gave to Maurice Brennett only two weeks ago, but dated thirty
days earlier, on which a justice of the peace in Graftenburg solemnly
rendered judgment, and executions were issued and levied.
Still Travis harbored some vague uneasiness.
“Has Fortescue started back to New Orleans?” he asked.
“He is there by this time,” replied Brennett.
“Look here, Brennett, we ought to keep on that fellow’s blind side. Was
he friendly with you when he set out?”
“Oh, friendly enough,” rejoined Brennett, carelessly.
Brennett’s “head for expedients” presently evolved the idea that it
might be productive of good results to open a correspondence with Miss
St. Pierre before a personal interview. It would be a less awkward
method of introducing the subject than by word of mouth. His letter
simply stated the fact that he held judgments against Mr. Fortescue for
the sum of three thousand dollars, and had levied executions upon his
interest in the Graftenburg property now in her possession. Hearing,
however, that a negotiation for a settlement between her and Mr.
Fortescue was pending, he wrote to notify her that he claimed payment
out of any fund which in such settlement might become due to Mr.
Fortescue and with the view of avoiding further litigation.
This letter occasioned Antoinette far less disquietude than the one
from the lawyers. She was only annoyed that Mr. Fortescue’s creditors
should be writing to _her_. She did not reply, for she did not
know how much, or how little, or what it would be judicious to say. She
merely made a mental note of the name signed and laid the letter aside
to be enclosed to Temple Meredith, when she should have received a
response to her former communication which she expected by every mail.
And still it did not come, and Maurice Brennett’s letter continued
unanswered.
He could not sufficiently congratulate himself that his plans were
complete for an invasion of the enemy’s country.