THERE was a flag flying over Chattalla; the “old flag,” thus called
in contradistinction to another, that had once flashed across the
clouds here and was gone like a meteor. The Square was filled with an
eager and intent crowd of recently re-enfranchised and intelligent
voters; the grass in the court-house yard was trampled by many jostling
feet; a rude platform had risen among the dappling shadows, and the
figure there, with its imposing dignity and impressive attitude, might
realize to the imagination a Roman senator. His fine voice filled
the wide spaces of the sunlit air; the glance of his earnest eyes
kindled a responsive enthusiasm; a magnetic thrill quivered through
his audience. Only Maurice Brennett, of all the fellow-citizens whom
General Vayne harangued, was analytic enough to find him a study, and
sufficiently discriminating to perceive how very amusing he was. He
hurled back, with infinite gusto, insinuations against his party--his
people. He visibly joyed in his elocutionary bitterness. He stormily
counselled mildness, calmness, conservatism, above all, consistency.
His apostrophe to the flag that waved above them was oddly accented by
an unconscious convulsive gesture, as if he would clasp his missing
right hand. “It was to Us,” he said, “the symbol of a hard-won Victory,
of a generous Peace, and of Freedom in the largest sense known to
the universe.” The fervor of his sincerity caught in the crowd, and
flamed out in cheers for the old flag for the first time in ten years.
Despite the wild incongruities of his patriotism, there was so splendid
a display of oratory here and there, that Brennett’s cynical face
was more than once smitten with sudden gravity. His faculty for the
utilitarian fixed upon this gift. “If that man,” he said to Percy, “had
even a modicum of common sense he could do anything--anything.”
But presently his lips were curving again, for General Vayne was
vaunting the great Volunteer State, and the language was depleted of
adjectives. He alluded to her hosts of “Fighting Tennesseeans,” and
called upon the heights of Monterey, upon Old Hickory’s “mile-long
line” at New Orleans, upon the “Battle of the Horse-shoe,” upon their
blood that deluged Shiloh, the bare hills engirdling Nashville, the
wide wastes around Murfreesboro’, to tell of their valor. Then he
proceeded to do this himself--in so eloquent, so fiery, so tender a
strain that it brought the remnant of his brigade to the front with the
old rebel charging yell, which set the great bell in the court-house
tower to shivering.
He stated that he was no candidate for any office whatever within the
gift of the people, and had no interest save theirs at heart; in short,
he represented himself as a sort of self-organized tutelary deity of
the party, appearing before them only in support of its principles.
“You all know _me_,” he said, with some pardonable pride, as
they manifested their appreciation of the purity of his motives. “I
stand upon my native heath, and”--effective diminuendo--“my name is
Macgregor!”
In the thunder of applause that followed his peroration, a grizzled,
elderly wight turned, with grave, breathless interest, to Percy.
“What makes the old Gen’al say he stands on his naked heels an’ his
name’s Grigory?” he asked swiftly. “I didn’t know old Frank Vayne’s
middle name was Grigory.”
Could there be a more felicitous anti-climax! Brennett fell back
against the iron fence, laughing with sardonic delight. He had intended
to humor the little-great man’s self-valuation by pressing up with the
town and country magnates, to join in shaking severely the orator’s
hand, with congratulations on the “powerful effort,” as the phrase
went. But he saw, with surprise, that General Vayne was pushing through
the crowd toward him, waving off the effusive demonstrations of his
friends with a calm self-sufficiency that was curiously independent of
vanity. His face was flushed; there was an anxious gleam in his eyes;
he fixed them eagerly on Mr. Ridgeway, who chanced to be standing close
by, and although he shook hands with Brennett it was evidently the
elder gentleman with whom he wished to confer--about no private matter,
apparently, for he began without preamble,--
“A great surprise, sir. Lamentable--lamentable! I had heard nothing of
it until his messenger met me at the depot. I had promised to speak
at once, so I sent you a line from there. We can arrange it now?” He
stroked his gray mustache, and looked alertly expectant.
Mr. Ridgeway took a firm stand, metaphorically and literally. He
steadied his unwieldy bulk on his two ponderous legs, turned his
argumentative spectacles on his friend, and spluttered emphatically,--
“You are not able to lose that money, General, and I’m sure I’m not.”
“Lose money, sir?”
“He’d _bolt_, sir; if that man, Toole, were bailed, he’d bolt.”
Maurice Brennett’s face was suddenly petrified--its cynical laugh upon
it. But, with those distended muscles hardened and rigid, his bright
eyes narrowed, his teeth gleaming through his parted lips, there was
marvellously little joviality suggested. The two important old cocks
were hardly as provocative of mirth as he had thought them an instant
ago. He retained barely power enough to look, breathlessly, from one to
the other.
“Permit me, sir,” said General Vayne loftily, “to differ with you. I
will not entertain the suspicion. That man served four years in my
brigade.” He looked triumphantly at his interlocutor. The logical
inference was too plain. The man couldn’t bolt.
Mr. Ridgeway nodded his big head and his big Panama hat very much to
one side. “I know all that, and I should be his friend now if he had
behaved better in this affair.”
“Patent your art, my dear sir, ‘friendship made easy,’” cried General
Vayne satirically. “Drop your friends when they don’t ‘behave better!’”
“General,” said Mr. Ridgeway, with excellent temper, “I don’t want you
to throw your money like soapsuds into a sinkhole; and I don’t want to
throw mine there either.”
“No man--be he gentle or simple--shall ever seek help from me and I
withhold this hand,” cried General Vayne impetuously. He raised his
only hand and struck it violently against the iron fence. “Do you
know, sir,” he continued solemnly, “that man’s wife lies at the point
of death, prostrated by the shock of his arrest and smitten with
paralysis. There has not been a dollar in that house for weeks--and
no flour, no meal, no meat; those children--Lord knows how many--have
subsisted by _begging_! Begging from the neighbors! The turnpike
company is only awaiting the moment of her dissolution to turn that
family out upon the road. The man’s occupation is gone, and he has all
those starving children to provide for.”
“A good reason for bolting, if there were no other.” Maurice Brennett
had suddenly found his voice, for Mr. Ridgeway’s face was a study of
agonized indecision. Perhaps all might yet remain as it was.
General Vayne turned slowly, with a haughty stare in his intent eyes,
as he fiercely twirled his mustache.
“Under your favor, sir,” he said, loftily, “a good reason for
_not_ bolting, if there were no other.”
Percy pressed Brennett’s shoulder with his own as a warning to forbear,
for his friend was naturally associated with himself in General Vayne’s
mind, and he took politic care that all such association should be
pleasant.
“I beg your pardon,” said Brennett--he was breathing more freely--“I
had only heard that the man is a low fellow and abetted in this
transaction. A terrible affair, I’m told; shocked the community.”
“It did,--it did,” spluttered Mr. Ridgeway. “The law must be upheld, or
the country won’t be fit to live in.”
“I regard the law of the land, gentlemen, as the
will of God,” said General Vayne sweepingly.
“And--it--allows--this--man--the--privilege--of _bail_.”
There was no answer to this. Even the wordy and intellectual Maurice
Brennett had not a syllable of replication. He looked at General Vayne
with a wonderful sharpening of those rapacious suggestions in his eyes.
Old Mr. Ridgeway, with an air of absence of mind, brought out his
handkerchief and harrowed with it the furrows and creases of his fat
face.
“I regret to have troubled you, sir,” said General Vayne, turning with
elaborate courtesy to Mr. Ridgeway. “I took the liberty of asking your
co-operation simply because I knew that the law requires two sureties
on a bail-bond.”
He hesitated a moment, then, drawing himself to his full height, he
said, with a fierce humility that was strikingly like pride: “In the
s-h-shattered condition of my fortune I sometimes hardly know how I
stand with the usurers, but I believe my estate will bear a mortgage
for two thousand dollars more, and I will borrow the money and give it
to the man to deposit in lieu of bail.”
A sudden idea flashed upon Percy. He was so in the habit of putting
his own money in a safe place that this method of propitiation had not
before occurred to him.
“If you will permit me, General,” he said, with a charming air of
deference and modesty, “_I_ should be pleased to go on the
bail-bond with you.”
General Vayne cast on him a glance of approval. “I thank you, sir,” he
said. “But if there is any money to be lost here, I shall lose it. I
bid you good day, gentlemen.” He waved his hand ceremoniously, turned,
strode up the pavement, and disappeared within the court-house.
Mr. Ridgeway’s lungs lay far inland in a fat country. A huge sigh
laboriously travelled up from them, and he took off his hat and rubbed
his handkerchief around and around on his bald, shining, moist pate.
Men who speculate upon contingencies have a fine opportunity for
realizing how purblind and finite is the vaunted faculty called
foresight, and how infinitely intricate is that mechanism known as the
ordering of events.
“That such a man as General Vayne should bestir himself for a cracker
like Toole!” Brennett exclaimed aloud, in the abandonment of his
despair.
He lingered long in the village that morning, watching in helpless
excitement the uncontrollable course of the events which he himself
had set in motion. His finesse had only resulted in making Toole the
most prominent figure in public view, for General Vayne told on every
street-corner the pathetic story of the wife’s untimely death and the
homeless children’s destitution. A subscription for their benefit
was headed by his own name, and his large ideals and inflated way of
looking at things were abundantly manifest when he appealed to the
ex-soldiers of Chattalla in behalf of the tow-headed brats out on the
turnpike, as the children of a veteran who had stood his ground in a
hundred battles; when he spoke of the illiterate lout of a drunken
ferry-man as his “brave Companion in Arms.” Other names followed
fast; there was something enthusing in a glimpse through that foolish
magnifying glass. Toole had never had so much money at once as when he
tramped silently out of the town and along the dusty, white turnpike
till miles lay behind him, and at last the dark little log-cabin, that
was to be no longer his home came in sight. Hardly in sight, for he
would not look at it. He had a deep sense of the unnatural solemnity
that brooded upon it. He knew what lay within. He turned abruptly
from the road to the flower-crowned redoubt. He crossed the ditch,
climbed the parapet, and flung himself down in an empty embrasure,
through which a great gun had once looked. There he watched the golden
afternoon glow and ripen to redness, and drop at last out of the sky.
The latest light of the day quivered on the wings of a throng of
homeward-bound swallows till they were white, and scintillated like a
flying constellation. The cows were coming home; he heard them low. The
familiar voice of the river sounded with a new and dreary intonation.
He listened to the fitful bleating of the baby, still rising and
falling as it had risen and fallen through all the long hours that the
child had crept about, neglected, and in forlorn surprise, on the
rickety porch. Stars were in the sky, and suddenly a golden gleam
sprang into the window of the little log-cabin. He lifted himself on
his elbow to look at it, and as he looked he burst into tears. Why
should a light ever shine there again!
It was strange to him that, filled as he was with an overwhelming
realization of his misfortunes, he could still take note of external
objects. He seemed endowed with keener sense. From far up the road he
heard the regular hoof-beats of a pair of trotters and the smooth,
light roll of wheels. He recognized Percy and Brennett as the buggy
whirled by. He saw in the dim light of the closing dusk the face of the
man who had testified against him, and whom he had learned to hate. And
so, too, the man saw his face.
There was so hard, so fierce, so bitter an expression on its clumsy
features that Brennett drove on in renewed perplexity. He had had some
wild, reckless idea of taking advantage of Toole’s straits by bribing
him heavily to leave the place. But he began to realize that he was
regarded as the direct and active cause of these calamities, and
although it could not be divined that thus he had sought to subserve
a personal interest, still Toole was an unreasoning brute, and this
instinctive distrust and enmity could hardly be dissipated even by the
most specious arguments. It was sheer madness to place himself in the
power of a man who held a grudge like this against him. And so he cast
the thought from him forever.
The swift shadows of the horses that had raced with them neck and neck
along the sunset road were distanced and lost in the darkness. Only the
red sparks of the cigars broke the monotony of the colorless night. The
new ferry-man, who, silent and grim, pulled them over the river, was a
suggestively lowering figure in the gloom, and the river was as black
as Styx. Brennett felt in landing on the other side that he had left
all hope and life, and was entering upon judgment. He arraigned himself
fiercely. He might have foreseen; surely he might have been sharper!
He said to himself that this was definitive; the game was up. The man
concerning whom General Vayne, with his fantastically potent rhetoric,
blowing about the town, had raised a cloud of public interest, might
now tell his story every day to a genteel audience. Other “companions
in arms” would indulgently listen to Toole’s reminiscences, when, in
rehearsing his Iliad of woes, he would relate how the old commander
held out the left hand spared him, although no one else would move; and
so to General Vayne’s qualities as man and soldier, to his feats on
the field, to the wide subject of the great battle, to the details of
personal experience,--and was it likely that the dramatic story of the
burning bridge and the officer who fired it would be forgotten?
So it was all over. Brennett was so loath to realize it that he
remained inactive for days in torturing suspense. When the Criminal
Court was in session, and the case came on for trial, he watched the
proceedings in a lethargy of despair. The fact of self-defence was
so incontestably proved, that the jury found a verdict of acquittal
without leaving the box, and the two men were free forever. They
occupied so much public attention, that Brennett’s mind was forcibly
recalled to the dangers with which Toole’s prominence menaced him.
The veriest chance word that might come to Percy or Miss St. Pierre
would ruin all, and Percy, in his utter idleness, made it a point
to interest himself in such subjects as General Vayne took in hand,
that he might find opportunities to present himself in an amiable
light for that simple-hearted gentleman’s approval. He had not, it
is true, done his sensibilities the violence of attending the trial,
but he was much exercised about the cheerful verdict, and brought up
the subject himself the evening after it was rendered as he sat in the
library at General Vayne’s house. The wide windows let in squares of
moonlight that lay sharply defined upon the floor despite the yellow
lustre of the shaded lamp. The white curtains fluttered in the perfumed
breeze. From far away he could hear the melancholy note of the frogs
monotonously chanting in the dank ditches of the works. It filled the
pause that ensued when Captain Estwicke was ushered in upon the party,
and the formal greetings were over.
Percy turned to him agreeably. It was an element of his self-love to
include even every casual stranger in the demonstrations of what he
mentally designated his “universal fascination system.” Estwicke’s hard
metal, and the superficiality of his suavity were very patent when they
were thus contrasted with these soft graces.
“You drove over, Captain? Then you haven’t heard the news from our
little burgh.”
This was so obviously a note from General Vayne’s bugle that Estwicke
could have smitten Percy for it; why did he call the town a “burgh!”
Estwicke, silent, his elbow resting lightly on the table, looked at
Percy with a challenging stare.
“You will be glad to know that Toole is acquitted.”
“Toole?” Estwicke repeated, dubiously.
“The ferryman, or rather the ex-ferryman,” Percy politely explained.
Estwicke’s face was blankly unresponsive. He had not known that the
ferryman was accused of anything; if he had noticed, he had forgotten
that the office was filled by a stranger. He was a trifle confused
to be boned on a point like this, as if he were expected, at such a
distance, to keep up with the excitements of the village. His attention
too was divided. He had never before seen Marcia wear a white dress.
The material and make were of the simplest, but the snowy diaphanous
draperies gave an added lustre to that fresh young loveliness. The
sleeve fell away from her delicate wrist, displaying her rounded
dimpled arm, and all the soft folds illustrated the grace of her lithe,
slender figure. Her throat rose from a many-petalled ruche. Her hair
sparkled with golden glimmers; with all this whiteness about her, she
seemed trebly fair. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked at him with
a smile deep in her gracious young eyes. He felt that she was conscious
of this sudden bloom into a beauty infinitely exquisite. He recognized
her frank vanity.
And how came those other men here!
Thus his jealousy shut from him the suspicion that by the intuition of
an awakened heart she had divined _his_ coming. And so it was,
he never knew that even after the lamps were lighted, she was still
sewing, that the dress might be finished in time, and he should find
her lovely.
He looked at Percy, not at her. And he said nothing of Toole, the
humble fellow who had served his coming and going for a matter of six
months, and who had lived a tragedy lately. General Vayne pulled hard
at his mustache. But he had always thought that this man was peculiarly
callous.
“Oh, poor fellow!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby, shaking her curls
compassionately, “so destitute--homeless--without employment--and so
many children--so many.”
She turned and bent the beaming blandishments of her smile upon
Brennett. “Poverty in the country is more painful to contemplate than
poverty in town, I think, Mr. Brennett. Deprivation in the midst of
the abundance of nature; yes, very bad indeed, very bad. In towns,
potatoes are measured by the bushel, and signify dimes. In the country
they are meted out by the sunshine, and the rain, and the generous
earth, and they signify the blessing of God on the rich season--yes.
And these are the inalienable rights of the poor as well as the
wealthy--the just and the unjust.”
Brennett smiled vaguely, with a semblance of endorsing this romantic
communistic proposition.
“It seems to me that potatoes belong to the man who plants them,” said
Marcia prosaically, from out the poetic shimmer of her white dress.
The slightest vibration of her voice thrilled through Estwicke, but he
sat looking straight forward, and did not turn his head.
“Do you know, General Vayne, what Toole intends to do?” asked Brennett
with some eagerness.
“What _can_ he do?” said General Vayne with a deprecatory wave of
the hand. “He is not a skilled workman; his only chance is to find an
odd job now and then.”
“Ah, the poor man! So precarious!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby. “He quits
his little house next Thursday. But his aunt, old Mrs. Prindle, at
the toll-gate, good old soul, will take one of the children, the
youngest, yes, the baby. F-fat little thing!” she cried, with a cheery,
grandmotherly smile illuminating the general desolation. “And no doubt
he can find homes with some of the small farmers for the boys--boys,
yes--so useful, you know--pick up chips.”
“You have talked with him then,” said Brennett, pursuing the subject.
“Yes; Marcia piloted me over there--long walk, dear me! and very warm
to-day. Takes his wife’s death hard, very hard. Seems really to feel
it, you know. She was dead before he was released, before he reached
there. The shock of his arrest killed her, and it was all for naught,
since he was acquitted. And nothing consoles that poor baby. But it is
all over dimples! It is a terrible reflection that that mother’s life
was sacrificed, and those children bereaved--all for nothing!”
“Oh, I beg of you!” exclaimed Percy, with a gesture of entreaty.
“Yes, very serious, I don’t wonder it jars your nerves,” said the old
lady with solemnity.
“Why, that’s a calamity--to jar _his_ nerves!” exclaimed Marcia,
with a light laugh. Light as it was, it had in it so tense a thrill of
satire that the others looked at her in surprise.
She sat at her ease in the stiff old arm-chair, her hand toying with a
full-blown white rose. She was very charming to look upon, and all the
gentlemen were gazing at her. Nevertheless, Mrs. Kirby sighed. Surely
it was not politic to show temper before so many unwived men. And
temper for what--pray?
“A calamity!” Marcia reiterated, “but we must try to bear up against
it!”
Certainly it is anomalous that a lover should grudge his rival the
lady’s displeasure. But the fact that she spoke thus freely to Percy
reminded Estwicke unpleasantly of the friendship which had subsisted
between them long, long before he ever saw her.
Percy was so accustomed to be regarded as an exemplar of all that is
gallant, and generous, and high-spirited in youth, that now he was
suddenly confused, self-depreciatory, and wounded.
“You mean my sympathy is so shallow that it is worthless?” he said,
looking at her with a gentle deprecation, that the bewildered Mrs.
Kirby thought must surely disarm her. Her aspect, however, was so
impassive that the old lady, who believed herself the tactician of
the world, and joyed in her little management, could not trust the
conversation in other guidance, and seized upon the helm herself.
“Sympathy!” she cried. “Why Toole is held as a public martyr!”
“And that is very bad for him, and for the community,” said the severe
Marcia. “He _thought_ he was breaking the law--that was his
_intention_.”
Oh, if a young lady only knew how unlovely she appears when she
sets herself to discourse of affairs of public policy, she would
forbear--she would refrain. Mrs. Kirby could have wrung her hands. So
many gentlemen! And the moonlight was touching the girl’s grave face
with a spiritual glamour, and shifting over her beautiful dress, and
the melodious nocturnal sounds pulsed along the perfumed air, and all
the night was full of starlight, and poetry, and the bursting of buds,
and the bloom of flowers--and she to be talking about the community!
Maurice Brennett’s eyes were fixed upon Marcia with questioning
intensity. What did she mean? What was she driving at?
“Help me to reconstruct my sympathy,” said Percy, still grave and
gentle.
“You give him money,” said Marcia reprovingly, “because you have plenty
of it and won’t miss it.”
Everybody winced at this frank mention of the young gentleman’s wealth.
“You give him money, and it slips away immediately, and it is bad for
him--he drinks it up--and when it is all gone--what then? You give
him money because you are sorry for him--for a little while--and to
give it makes _you_ feel better. But you can’t _think_ for
him--you won’t give him so much as a thought.”
General Vayne was nervously pulling his mustache, and staring at his
daughter’s soft young face, with its unwontedly severe expression,
as if on the whole he did not recognize her. Mrs. Kirby could not
even fan. Miss St. Pierre smiled from one to another, as if to make
believe that this was a mere society conversation, and had no especial
significance, no incongruities. Estwicke, with a heavy frown on his
face, was watching Percy, who leaned eagerly forward, his elbow on his
knee, and his hat in his hand, his temper unruffled, and his pride
pocketed.
“I confess all that,” he said hastily. “Tell me how I must think for
him.”
“You make him a beggar,” Marcia continued, still indignantly accusing,
“when you might give him a chance to work for his living, and support
his children, and keep them together, instead of distributing them
about the country to anybody who will take them.”
“I shall make it my business to get him into something,” declared Percy.
“Mind,” said Marcia, lifting the white rose with a didactic gesture,
“it must be something in which he honestly earns every dollar of his
wages--it must be no pretence--charity in disguise. That, you know,
can’t last. What do you think of trying?”
“I had no definite idea,” Percy admitted, a trifle confused. “I don’t
know of anything about here--in this town or neighborhood that would
answer.”
“_Here_--why it is not necessary, surely, that the man should
remain _here_!” she rejoined impatiently.
Maurice Brennett scarcely dared to breathe. The anguish of his hope was
hardly less poignant than the anguish of his fear. Great drops started
on his forehead. He could not, he would not speak. What incongruity
of fate was this? That this girl, this saint on earth, should
unconsciously lend her hand to his schemes--that she should help Toole
out of the country!
“Can’t you find work for him elsewhere?” she demanded imperiously.
“You have interests away from this little treadmill of a town.”
(Young America is not always respectful to the good old “burgh” of
its fathers.) “Don’t you own an interest in some sort of factory--a
furniture factory, or something or other, at Marston,” she continued
vaguely--“enough to make them employ a workman you choose to send them?”
“I reckon so,” said Percy; he brightened at the suggestion, and rose
with a triumphant laugh. In fact, he had no doubt, for he was a half
owner in the flourishing concern; but he was modest in regard to his
possessions, and affected a modicum of uncertainty. “If you will let me
have pen and paper, I will write to them now, and give the letter to
Toole as I go past his house on my way home.”
“Yes--dear--yes. Get the inkstand for Horace,” said Mrs. Kirby, having
recovered the use of her palm-leaf fan. “Take your little key-basket
off the table--yes--out of Horace’s way,” she added blandly. She was
in truth anxious to make the girl wait upon him, and in trivial acts
of consideration and deference afford a small compensation for the
soul-trying experience to which she had subjected him.
But Percy, as he sat at the table, looked up with a bright protest in
his dark eyes.
“No, it doesn’t disturb me, I assure you; don’t trouble yourself.” As
he touched with an insistent gesture the stout little wicker basket,
with its jingling contents of housekeeping keys, his hand met hers for
a moment. Estwicke saw this; he divined the wild, vague suggestion
of close domestic association which made the ugly, housewifely little
key-basket a precious thing in the young man’s eyes, and its proximity
a pleasure. He recognized the adroit tact by which she was kept
hovering about the table, and knew that it seemed to Percy a foretaste,
too, of the blissful unrestraint of a common home, that he should
informally remain seated while she stood beside him and bent over to
look at the paper and pen, when he called her attention to them.
Estwicke’s heart waxed hot within him; was it for this that he had come
so far to see her? With a sharpened sense he heard every word that
passed between them, despite the animated chatter of the rest of the
group. He saw and translated as full of meaning every gesture.
“Is this your pen?” asked Percy, examining it. “The General’s? Well,
there’s a heavy stroke for you! Why doesn’t he write with a fence-rail
at once!”
She laughed blithely as she bent down to look at the writing; her
face was sweetly flushed; her eyes were so gentle now; her floating,
diaphanous sleeve lightly brushed his shoulder; his eyes followed its
sweep. He was so gay, so handsome, so alertly confident, and she was so
pleased with him.
As she turned away, he glanced up once more. “Do you write the date on
the top line or the next one? And how must I date it?--advise me. From
Chattalla? Oh, how you shock me. Is this what you call candor? I’m not
in Chattalla, thank heaven!”
As he began to write she went away and sat down, still flushed, and
excited, and absorbed.
“Mr. Percy is very prompt in keeping his promises,” said Brennett; his
lips were dry; he enunciated with difficulty the commonplace.
“Oh, I’m a very promising young man,” Percy declared without raising
his head.
But it was only a moment before he again appealed to her.
“Can’t you help me word this?” he said speciously. “I’m getting mixed
up here in some fearfully awkward phraseology.”
In the simplicity of her heart she rose instantly and went to help
him. To Estwicke it hardly seemed simplicity. He could not understand
how she should fail to know that a man like Percy was wont to write in
whatever hasty and dishevelled style that pleased him to the stewards
of his wealth, and had of necessity far more epistolary experience than
she. The two together made a long, grave, and careful job of it. Percy
was hypercritical; once or twice he objected to her suggestions on the
score of tautology, and as she placed her dimpled, rounded elbows on
the table, and rested her cheek on her clasped hands, and cast her eyes
absently out on the moonlight in a cogitating search for a felicitous
synonym, he, with his pen idly poised, looked with a satisfied
proprietary admiration at the pretty picture she made. And Estwicke
looked at him.
It was all over at last, and he had written his name half across the
page.
She laughed as she glanced at this pompous signature.
“That is a very great man!” she said.
“_I_ believe in him--for one,” said Percy--which was the truest
word he had spoken for a week.
“And so do I,” protested Mrs. Kirby blandly.
And this, too, was true in a certain sense. Estwicke had felt more than
once that they all liked Percy for himself--apart from his prominence
and wealth, which to the eyes of a poor and jealous rival were
formidable advantages. The handsome young fellow, with his subtle arts
of propitiation, always contrived to appear here in an exceptionally
genial and fascinating guise. With a disposition to make amends for
all that he must have suffered in the crucial interview with Marcia,
the kindly feeling of the elders was especially marked to-night.
Estwicke was of course unaware of this motive. He was angry, sore,
dismayed--he seemed to have dreamed that blissful termination of all
his vacillations of hope and fear. But for the glitter of his own ring
on the girl’s hand he could not have realized that she had so lately
given him a promise which he had fancied was dear to them both--which
had made his future bloom like a rose.
Only when he spoke to her at last--he had risen to take leave--did his
heart, grown so strangely heavy, beat with a quick, tumultuous throb
once more. The group was breaking up, for it was late, and these two
were standing quite apart from the others for a moment.
She lifted her eyes to his with so candid a disappointment expressed in
them, that he was in a measure consoled.
“We have had a dull time, haven’t we? But--but”--her eyelashes drooped
a little,--“you know you’ll be coming back again soon.”
“To-morrow,” he said hastily. “In the morning,” he added, frowning
darkly over an intention of thus out-marching Percy. But she was so
evidently unconscious of having given him reason for jealousy, that he
began to be a trifle ashamed of it.
Percy glanced at them askance as he stood at a little distance, a
victim of Mrs. Kirby’s messages and remembrances to his mother. He had
experienced upon first meeting Estwicke a vague uneasiness to find
any personable man in her society, but it had been dissipated by the
fact that the officer seemed a dull, heavy fellow, and there was no
sign of a sentimental interest. Now, however, he detected something
in Estwicke’s manner that roused him from the soft delights of his
self-satisfaction to the keenest anxiety. He had not time to make
sure; he would have waited till Estwicke was gone, but Brennett seemed
feverishly anxious to be off, and he must go with his guest. As they
walked down the long pavement he strove to reassure himself with the
recollection of the man’s serious, intent, even frowning face. Surely
this was not the self-gratulatory mien of a favored lover. And he had
no reason to suppose that the officer frequented the house; General
Vayne’s political feeling would hardly warrant that supposition, and he
had never before met Estwicke here.
Their host had accompanied them to the buggy; he was gesticulating
with his left hand as he described to Brennett how the features of the
country were utilized in a certain midnight assault on Fort Despair--an
incident of the great battle. As Percy looked back at the door he saw,
in the yellow flare of the swinging lamp in the hall, Mrs. Kirby and
Miss St. Pierre standing there, exclaiming over the iniquity of Dick,
who had robbed a nest among the roses on the pillars of the portico,
and was bringing the young mocking-birds into the house. The conviction
was forced upon Percy. Estwicke had lingered in the library that he
might have a few moments alone with Marcia. And had she not lingered as
well?
Percy drove away in moody silence, and very slowly. At every turn of
the road he glanced back, expecting to see a shadow moving in the
moonlight, and to hear the whir of wheels. Evidently Estwicke had not
yet left the house, for he saw only the myriads of fire-flies, pulsing
points of light, among the heavy foliage on the redoubts, and he heard
nothing but the shrill, quavering wail of a screech-owl, jarring ever
and anon the sombre stillness of the haunted thickets.
He experienced a thrill of dismay that he should suspect all this
so late. Hitherto he had considered himself reasonably sure of her,
although he had as yet given her no intimation of the state of his
feelings. He had thought he might safely wait. They were both very
young--there was plenty of time before them--and he felt, too, that his
freedom was dear and that he would like to see a little more of the
world before settling down to quiet home-life and conjugal felicity.
He had been entirely at ease as to the completion of his romance, when
it should suit him to recur to it. Now, however, his inertia, when the
field had been clear, seemed to him inexplicable, and it required some
agile mental processes to reason himself out of his despondency. But
he remembered once more Estwicke’s grave, intent, frowning face--he
remembered, too, that she had scarcely spoken to any one but himself
throughout the evening. He resolved that he would take heart of
grace--if he had been too dilatory heretofore, he would compensate
himself now.
His whip touched the off horse. They bowled along swiftly through the
gloom. The wind seemed to freshen with the quickening motion. He felt
its influence.
“It’s a good thing I forgot that letter!” he exclaimed hopefully.
The sudden sharpness of Maurice Brennett’s voice struck his attention
even amidst his pre-occupation.
“Did you leave it there?”
“I left it lying on the table--and that’s a good excuse to go back
to-morrow,” said Percy, laughing.
Brennett breathed hard--he remembered the broad open windows and
the position of the table near them. He felt on his cheek the fresh
wind--what more natural than that the letter on which so much depended
should be blown upon the floor to lie there overlooked, until some
careless housemaid should sweep it out in the morning. It was as likely
that Percy would forget the “good excuse” when once there again, and
the young lady, having carried her point, would probably recur to it no
more. Thus Toole, narrowly missing the good fortune intended for him,
would still remain here.
It was hard to say upon what pretext Brennett could interfere--how he
could busy himself in matters apparently so alien to his interests
without exciting surprise, anger, even suspicion of his motives. The
fact that Miss Vayne had concerned herself in the incongruous affair
added elements of difficulty--the jealous sensitiveness of her lover,
and the delicacy requisite in speaking of a young lady. But he could
not--he would not submit his recently rescued project to a contingency
like this--so slight in itself, so portentously important in its
effects. He had only a moment for thought, but he was wont to think
quickly.
Percy saw his face in the flicker of a match which he had struck and
applied to his cigar. He was laughing cynically, despite the weed held
fast between his teeth.
The young fellow turned scarlet; he felt a fiery rush of indignation.
“I am glad to afford you so much amusement,” he said, as stiffly as a
punctilious host may allow himself to speak to his guest.
Brennett pulled silently at the cigar until it was fairly a-light, then
he flung the match aside in the road, and leaned back luxuriously.
“My dear fellow,” he said--and Percy knew from the sound of his voice
that he was still laughing in the darkness--“I beg your pardon most
humbly, I assure you. _You_ do not amuse me--as Horace Percy. I
only laugh at certain common human vagaries, which are very humorously
expressed in you at this period of your career.”
Percy’s wounded pride was hardly assuaged. “I can’t see the
application,” he said tartly.
Brennett laid a friendly hand upon his knee. “Don’t ask me to translate
your characteristics, and then quarrel with me for my version. It
seems to me that a charming degree of youthful self-importance and
self-love is suggested in leaving that letter as a good excuse to call
on Miss Vayne to-morrow. Do you think she has no self-love? Will she be
flattered that you forget a matter which she intrusted to you?”
“Oh--I thank you--she will guess why I forgot it,” said Percy hardily.
“If she can’t, I will help her when I call to-morrow.”
Brennett made no answer. That the success of such a scheme should be
jeopardized by such puerilities!
Percy felt that this silence was almost impertinent. But their mutual
position forbade any notice of it. Still he chafed under this sense of
wordless ridicule.
“Oh, talk it out, Brennett, talk it out!” he exclaimed impatiently, at
last.
“Why, it’s no great matter, after all,” said Brennett, laughing
agreeably. “A disappointment will do you good. Life has been too easy
for you. Lucky fellow!”
“A disappointment!” said Percy sharply.
“No grave disappointment, of course,” said Brennett. “I was only
alluding to the letter. In my opinion you will never see it again.”
“Why?” Percy demanded shortly.
“Oh, confound it, boy,” said Brennett, with a blunt, good-natured
intonation, “why, she will give it to Captain Estwicke to hand to Toole
as he drives by; and you may bet your immortal soul that _he_
doesn’t forget it.”
Percy drew the horses suddenly into a walk.
“What makes you say that?” he asked eagerly. “Did you notice anything?”
“Vaguely, very vaguely. But, however that may be, I can understand how
she might think him a man whom she could intrust with a little matter
like this; a man accustomed to responsibility, detail, duty. What do
you mean? Where are you going?”
Percy was wheeling the vehicle round in the narrow road. “Going back
for that letter, that’s all.”
“It’s too late,” Brennett remonstrated. He drew out his watch, and
leaned forward, striving to see the time by the glow of his cigar. He
heard the triumph in his own voice, he felt it in the relaxing muscles
of his face.
Percy made no rejoinder. He lashed the horses savagely and they were
dashing back at a great rate. The old house loomed close upon them, dim
in the midnight, before he saw, slipping through the gloom, the moving
shadow for which he had angrily watched.
It became suddenly stationary. A stentorian “Hello, there!” prevailed
on him to check his horses, and the next moment Estwicke was standing
in the road, with one foot on the hub of the wheel, as he leaned
into the vehicle, and held out to Percy the envelope, with his own
superscription.
“I am instructed,” he said gayly, “to overtake you, and give you that,
and charge you, very severely, not to forget again.”
Both men in the buggy were looking keenly at him as he stood in the
full moonlight. He was elated; he had been laughing; his eyes were
bright; there was a flush on his cheek; he spoke with an ease and a
hearty comradeship that changed him out of recognition; he seemed
utterly unlike the saturnine stranger they had left. He was disposed to
hang upon the wheel and talk companionably.
“May I trouble you for a light, Mr. Brennett?” he said, reaching up
for the other’s cigar. “I might have gotten a match at the house,
but”--glancing back at the lights which were disappearing, one by one,
from the windows--“can’t rouse it after ‘taps.’”
Percy said nothing, and Brennett made amends for his silence.
“Do you drive far to-night, Captain?”
“Only a little matter of seven miles--first-rate road. It’s a fine
country, Mr. Percy, that you have about here,” Estwicke added, as he
turned away. “Good night.”
They lost sight of him before they drew up at Toole’s log-cabin, where
they called lustily, to rouse its occupant.
Somehow, as they stood there motionless, and looked on the vast, dark
stretch of country about them, and the lonely vastness of the sky
above, with no sound but the quavering wail of the owl from out the
recesses of Fort Despair, and the ceaseless monotone of the chanting
frogs, and the vibratory clamor of the cricket and the katydid, and
the weird echoes of their own outcry striking back from the parapets,
it was so drear, so solitary, so infinitely forlorn, that some untried
chord of Maurice Brennett’s nature was smitten strongly for an instant
and set jarring with an unwonted throb. He remembered the woman with
yellow hair whom he had seen here walking up and down and striking her
hands together in mute despair. She had walked thus all night. And
thus she had been found in the morning. It was a mute despair, for
she had spoken no more. She was brought to this pass by the shock of
the arrest, the ignorant people said,--and they said it because they
were ignorant. The shock had only evoked and given direction to some
deep-seated disease of heart or brain, which would have come at last.
But he had set it all in motion; and now he was sorry--he was very
sorry. It was a great price to have paid; but, he argued, a very vague
responsibility. Still, if he could have known, it should never have
happened. And perhaps he did not deceive himself.
He was glad when Toole came slouching out at last; he was even glad
to see the look of settled hate, as the man once more recognized the
witness who had testified against him. It gave Brennett back to mundane
associations, for this was a more familiar emotion than remorse.
He watched Toole’s face change gradually from an expression of stunned
astonishment to one of infinite relief, as he listened to Percy’s
explanation about the work, the wages, and the route.
“Oh, I’ll light out right away!” cried Toole passionately. “God knows I
don’t want to stay hyar.”
Brennett looked forward into the surly glooms hovering about the river,
a smile relaxing his thin lips.
Percy was about to drive on. He hesitated, and glanced around
doubtfully. He had enjoyed doing a real benefaction when once at
it. The humble gratitude of its recipient agreeably titillated his
self-esteem. But his mirror-like nature was reflecting the influences
cast upon it this evening, and with a frankness, and justice, and
modesty that were uncharacteristic, he had an impulse to disclaim the
credit of the kindness. Still, Toole was a rough fellow, to whom he
hardly liked to mention a lady’s name.
As he gathered up the reins, however, he said, a trifle dubiously,--
“You don’t owe me any thanks; all this was suggested to me. You are
indebted to--to--the General’s daughter.”
The man raised his shaggy, tawny head and looked back over his shoulder
with a light of comprehension on his face. “I might hev knowed that,”
he exclaimed naïvely; “’t ain’t the fust time that us pore folks round
hyar hev hed ter thank her.”
Percy drove on, laughing a little; and Brennett was laughing, too,
triumphantly. He was alert, revivified. He also had to thank her.
And in the days that came and went the hawk’s bright eyes were cruelly
vigilant, for the strong prescience of success was upon him.