A fervid Fourth-of-July sun was blazing in the sky, and Chattalla
responded, for the first time since the war, with a celebration of the
day. That favorite rural diversion, a barbecue, had been projected,
and certain optimistic souls, spending the day thus in the forest
beside a flowing rivulet, drinking of its crystal clear water,
flavored with mint and dashed with “Robertson County,” grew patriotic
enough by degrees to declare that it was altogether like the good
old times, and “damn the bloody chasm.” The disaffected absentees
who remained in the town were of opinion that it was a “mighty pore
little Fourth,” for Independence Day was here represented only by a
banner on the court-house, hanging motionless in the sultry air, and
all the “under-foot trash” of the village, white and black, rioting in
fire-crackers and small explosions of gunpowder.
The ringleader of this motley juvenile assemblage was Pickie Tait.
How he came by so large a quantity of powder was then, and afterward
remained, a mystery. When, through its agency, disaster was developed,
there was some speculation on the subject. Very possibly he stole the
money to buy it from the drawer in which his father kept the change
taken in at the toll-gate; or he might have stolen the powder itself
from the store where he had “done yerrands” for a week, and in that
time had contrived to perpetrate more mischief than could be rectified
in six. He never divulged the source of his secret supplies, and his
silence baffled conjecture. As the morning waned he went home to
dinner, and the town heard no more from him till late in the day.
At the barracks the patriotism was of a somewhat more glittering and
imposing quality, and there was martial music and a dress parade.
It was a great relief to Estwicke when it was all over, for every
distraction grated on his preoccupied thoughts. He mounted his horse
and galloped aimlessly away in the lingering sunset, glad of the
solitude and the woodland quiet, and finding in the swift motion some
expression for his impatient spirit.
He had determined to make General Vayne’s position as difficult as
possible, and continued to visit the family as heretofore, divining
that a man who held hospitality as a sacred obligation would flinch at
the idea of forbidding him the house, and resolved that, unless this
extreme measure were resorted to, he would see Marcia as often as he
might. Now and then he had a twinge of self-reproach for thus making
use of this fantastic view of the duties of a house-owner to persuade
his host’s daughter to marry him without her father’s consent. But
what could he do? Must he tamely give up the woman he loved, and who
loved him, because, forsooth, her father was vaguely supposed to prefer
another man? He swore that he would not, and he put his sensitive
conscience down.
He carried his fierce moods there. Sometimes he bitterly upbraided
Marcia with her broken promise. Sometimes it was almost a pleasure to
him to know that, if he suffered, she too suffered. And then would come
a great revulsion of feeling, and he would beg her with passionate
tenderness to care for him no more, and protest that he was not worth
one of her tears, and declare that, if she said the word, he would go
away--he would go away and blow his brains out, and trouble her never
again.
He had been more peremptory when he had last seen her. He had insisted
that he must come to terms with this suspense; he could better endure
despair. She must make her decision at once and forever. If she
definitely gave him up, he would know how he stood; he would try to
reconcile himself as best he might to the worthless conditions of his
life. He might at least seek to make it of some value to others. He
could go and fight the battles of his country with the Indians; he was
still first-rate food for powder.
He had placed great hopes on this effort to coerce her from that
neutral ground which she had striven to hold. But she had only cried
and besought him not to be unhappy. And he had parted from her in anger.
To-day the horse had taken of his own accord the familiar,
oft-travelled road, and checked the sweeping gallop only at her
father’s gate. Estwicke, roused from his absorption, realized where he
was with momentary surprise. He had not intended to come, but now that
he was here, he hesitated. Then he suddenly turned the horse aside, and
went on slowly down the road along the river bank.
The green expanse of the battle-field lay before him, stretching to
the horizon, and set, a gigantic, enamelled circle, in a circumference
of gold and crimson clouds,--for the east was flushed with western
reflections. The cows were coming home through the haunted thickets;
the faint clangor of their bells reached him on the perfumed stillness.
And in the midst of the shining river rose the massive piers of the old
bridge, burned so long ago, leaving these great, useless, detached
columns as still another reminder of the days of conflict.
As he glanced toward them Estwicke abruptly checked his pace. On the
summit of the central pier was a small figure pottering about with an
uncanny show of industry. A dug-out was tied to a bush that grew in
a niche near the base; this showed how the boy had gone, and how he
proposed to return. But what could he be doing?
“Now, that’s odd,” murmured Estwicke speculatively. “I have seen that
boy there every day for a week.”
A man was lying on the river bank with a crazy violin beside him,
across which he now and then aimlessly drew a shuddering bow. Estwicke
thought him a mowing idiot until he spoke. He was beginning to hold a
long-range colloquy with the pigmy on the pier.
“Hello, Pickie!” he shouted in a convulsively chattering fashion. “What
air ye up to?”
Pickie Tait turned his preternaturally solemn face toward his
interlocutor.
“I’m up ter--_here_!” he replied.
Graffy changed the form of address.
“What be ye a-doin’ of?”
“It’s _me_ that’s killin’ this here cat,--ye onderstand?” said
Quick Pickie significantly.
“Ef ye war ter fall off’n that pier ye’d git yer head bruk,” Graffy
admonished him.
“’Tend ter yer own head--ye may find a use fur it some day,” retorted
Pickie.
The sound of the horse’s hoofs as Estwicke approached diverted the
man’s attention. He turned, leaning upon his elbow, to see who might be
passing, and the casual curiosity expressed in his glance intensified
to a deep concentrated interest.
It was a somewhat brilliant apparition thus springing up in the lonely
country road. The young officer was gallantly mounted, and his blue
uniform took the light like velvet. His bearing, surcharged with spirit
and pride, and a certain challenging boldness in his eyes, suggested
the phrase, “every inch a soldier.”
There was a melancholy envy in the gaze that intently followed him till
the jagged bluffs of the river bank interposed, and he disappeared.
Then Graffy sighed--not because of the contrast with the mettlesome
full-pulsed soldier, but the band at the barracks was the best in
the service, and there rode a man who heard it every day. He took up
his old violin and began to draw gently forth the vaguest echoes of
crashing melodies,--souvenirs of his pilgrimages thither, where he had
earned notoriety among the troops as the “damn fool who would tramp
fourteen miles just to hear the band play a march.” He was instantly
aware when the regular dash of a paddle, growing momently more
distinct, began to beat an accompaniment to his rhythmic recollections
as they quivered along the string. But he was entranced with his own
music, and gave no heed till his name was twice called in a nasal
snuffling whine that was intended to be propitiatory.
The ragamuffin had come down from his airy perch, crossed the river
in his dug-out, and run it upon the gravelly bank. Then he stood up
in it, the paddle in his hand, and looked at the man from beneath his
shapeless hat-brim with a blandishing expression in singular contrast
with the cool impudence his dirty face had worn ten minutes ago. His
tatters hung picturesquely about his skinny little limbs, and as he
talked he placed one grimy, cut, and scarred bare foot upon the other,
and thus clubbed he teetered forward and backward, as if this gesture
were one of the accepted graces of cajolory.
“I kem over hyar,” he remarked affably, although somewhat indistinctly,
for he investigated, even as he spoke, the corners of his wide mouth
and a row of jagged, squirrel teeth, with his large, deprecatory, red
tongue, “I kem over hyar ter--ax ye--ef ye plissir--do me a--a favior!”
“I dunno ez I hev enny call ter do ye no faviors--sech a sassy critter
ez ye be,” said the musician, bending his head low to a series of deft
touches.
Pickie looked up the river, then down the river, then high into the
air, where he followed, as it were, a jay’s flight with the widening
motions of his mouth. Then he teetered forward, and with his former
beguiling demonstrations he glanced up once more at the man.
“I hev got some fi’-crackers thar on the pier what I’m a-aimin’ ter
set off fur the Forf o’ July, an’--an’--an’ some gunpowder.” Graffy
lifted his head to look at the boy, who suddenly became embarrassed.
He succeeded in clubbing his feet together more tightly, and thus
inspired, he speciously explained. “A _leetle_ gunpowder wropped
up in a piece o’ newspaper. An’ I’m a-feard ter leave ’em thar whilst I
skedadles home fur some candle wick fur a fuse, ’kase them Peters boys
will raid on ’em, an’ set ’em off tharselfs fur the Forf o’ July. An’ I
hev got the fi’-crackers all stuck round in the rocks, an’ I don’t want
ter--ter--unfix ’em, an’ tote ’em off with me. So I ’lowed ez mebbe
ye’d git inter the dug-out, an’ scoot over thar, an’ sot on the pier
whilst I’m gone. Them sly, sneaky Peters boys mought kem up on t’ other
side, an’ ye couldn’t see ’em from hyar.”
He stepped nimbly out of the dug-out, and waited for the man to
signify his assent, but Graffy still delicately and deftly touched the
instrument, and Pickie at last was fain to start off at a shambling
gait, looking over his shoulder now and then to make sure that Graffy
would relent toward him as of old. Presently the rocks intervened, but
when the river next came into view he saw the dug-out in mid-stream and
nearing the pier.
When Graffy had climbed it, which was no difficult matter, for some of
the stones had fallen away, leaving crevices and jagged edges, he was
surprised to see on the summit deep rifts into the interior.
“This hyar old pier ain’t haffen ez solid ez ye might think ter look at
it. More’n likely cannon-balls or su’thin’ must hev hit it an’ jarred
it powerful in the old war times.”
He looked down at the puerile preparations for noise--the fire-crackers
set around in chinks in the mortar, a tin canister, flaring and empty,
and a little roll of newspaper which he supposed contained the powder.
Then he seated himself and gazed silently upon the landscape.
It was all very still. Far away for a moment he heard the metallic
jangle of trace-chains as some laborer jogged homeward on his
plough-horse through the peaceful battlefield. A pair of mocking-birds
fluttered back to their nest in a niche in the old pier, the male
circling about the head of the motionless figure on the summit, and
striking boldly at it. Then arose the shrill, vibrating clamor of the
nestlings, and presently a line of light down the river marked the
swift flight of the white wing-feathers of the little freeholder, still
on provident thoughts intent. Graffy peered over to see the mother-bird
hovering about her brood. “Ye air mighty nigh neighbors ter Pickie, I’m
afeard,” he said, with melancholy forecast. Then once more there was no
sound--and no motion save the silent shifting of the crimson and purple
clouds and of their gorgeous reflections in the deep water below.
The subject never far from his thoughts had returned now. In these
days, with his untutored intellect, his narrow experience, his poignant
conscience, the man who had been accused and acquitted, sought to
sift the evidence and weigh the argument. He was wont to lie in
wait for the witnesses who had testified in his trial, forcing from
them the story they had already told under oath, and waiving their
half-angry, half-startled remonstrance with the breathless protest,
“I hev furgot--I hev furgot--’Twar all so suddint--an’ so much come
arterward.” In like manner he once stopped the judge, presenting
a clumsy disguise of the circumstances, and begging an opinion on
a “p’int o’ law.” When the judge instantly stripped them of their
fictitious integuments, detecting his purpose, and admonishing him
to rest satisfied of the justice of his acquittal, he burst forth
suddenly, “Your little court and the jury’s say-so don’t seem ter
hender me none now.” He smote his breast. “I hev jes’ come ter
jedgmint!”
Perhaps it was well that his ragged following of street urchins and
shiftless loafers would not let him and his crazy old fiddle be, and
that it was exacted of him as an imperative public duty to play at
all the rustic merry-makings. Thus intervals, such as this when he
sat alone and idle on the old pier, were rare. Now, in his ignorant
fashion, he was reviewing the prosecuting officer’s speech, weighing
the fierce phrases as he muttered them. The cogent arguments of a
man trained to debate had given voice to his dumb conscience. The
trite truculence had for him all the actuality of doom. Once he rose
to his feet, and with a violent gesture unconsciously imitated the
muscular oratory of the Criminal Court as he mouthed the extravagant
denunciations which had been forgotten long ago by the mild man who had
first uttered them.
The muffled sound of hoofs pacing slowly on the grassy margin of the
road restored Graffy to a sudden realization of the present. Captain
Estwicke had wheeled his horse, and was riding back along the river
bank. Under his intent, astonished scrutiny Graffy was painfully
deprecatory; he mechanically laid hold on his violin. As he began to
draw forth the strains of a melodious country-side song, he heard the
plash of oars keeping time to the music. Presently the shrill voices of
children broke on the air, singing,--
“When I lived down in Tennessee,
U-li-_ah_! U-li-_ee_!
Beneath the wild banana tree,
U-li-_ah_! U-li-_ee_!”
There were five or six urchins, black, white, and yellow, in the
approaching skiff, all in imminent danger of a watery grave under
Pickie Tait’s guidance. But the tipsy craft reeled safely to the bank,
and landed all but Quick Pickie, who then rowed across to the pier.
He climbed it like a squirrel, and as he scuffled up on the summit he
looked at Graffy with a triumphant grin on his broad, dirty face. It
suddenly turned white beneath its grime. Graffy had filled his pipe,
and was kindling it with a match which he flung aside still blazing.
Its pale flicker disappeared as it dropped into a deep rift in the
masonry, and a wild, incoherent protest from the boy rang out across
the water.
Estwicke heard it. His eyes, following the sound, turned absently upon
the great obeliscal pier, outlined in sombre tints against the gold and
purple splendors still flaunting through the western sky. All at once
there sprang into their midst an ethereal, corollated, crimson presence
like some great evanescent flower of flame. Shooting through it,
high into the air, were strange black projectiles. A sulphurous cloud
of smoke surged over the placid waters, and far along the peaceful
battle-field rang a mighty sound as if the very foundations of the
earth were rent asunder.
And in an instant the flower of flame was gone as suddenly as it
had bloomed. The smoke and the wind, in an airy embrace, swept
together down the river. Here and there on the face of the current an
ever-widening circle of golden light described its elastic periphery
above the heavy masses of masonry that had fallen into the shining
depths.
And with its jagged edges and maimed proportions, grotesquely defined
against the calm sky, was the great pier, the right side torn away,
leaving the other of a taller aspect. On its summit lay a writhing
little figure.
The momentary silence that followed the report was broken with a
shrill, quavering, wail of pain, terrible to hear.
The half dozen urchins on the bank were looking with frightened,
deprecatory eyes at Estwicke as he flung himself from his horse.
“’Twarn’t us that done it,” they cried in chorus. “’Twar Pickie Tait.
That’s him a-hollerin’ up there now. He had a fuse what he war goin’
ter fix ter light, an’ he laid off ter git away quicker ’n he done. But
Graffy Beale drapped a match thar. _’Twarn’t us!_”
Two or three ploughmen returning from work came clattering down on
their horses to join the little group at the water’s edge.
“Graffy an’ Quick Pickie?” said one.
“Well; they’ve blown themselves into Kingdom-Come this time, I reckon.”
“We must get them away at once,” exclaimed Estwicke, hastily tearing
off his coat. “That pier is badly shaken. It may come down and crush
them.”
“Hold on a minit, Cap’n,” said one of the men. “Then I’ll go along o’
ye--though it’s skeery under them shattered rocks, I tell ye. Still, if
they hain’t got no more powder ’mongst ’em, I’m willin’ ter resk that
fallin’ down on me.”
“Don’t try it jes’ _now_, Cap’n,” said another burly fellow. “I’ll
bet that leetle scamp hev got that thar pier ez full o’ powder ez an
aig o’ meat. Hold on a minit an’ I’ll go too when I’m sati’fied thar’s
nothin’ thar likely ter explode. Any way ter die but that.”
The horror of being blown into the air, dismembered and torn, was upon
Estwicke with a terrible realization. He hesitated; but once more the
child’s woeful shriek, with all its cadenced anguish, rang out. And
he flung himself into the water. He swam rapidly to the base of the
pier, although the time seemed long to those who stood in suspense,
watching him through the blue twilight which was softly slipping down
upon the earth from the blue sky. He deftly climbed the jagged column
and, as he neared the still figure of the man, he put out his hand and
touched it. Then he spoke to the boy. From the bank they could not hear
the words, but the sound of his voice came over the water. There were
gentle suggestions in the tones, and after that the woeful shrieks were
stilled. Even the distance did not disguise the careful tenderness
with which he took the writhing, quivering creature in his arms. And
suddenly, once more a-bloom in the blue twilight was that evanescent
flower of flame. From among its fiery petals the black projectiles were
flying upward--fallen instantly. And the red flower was withered. When
the smoke cleared away the pier was a shapeless pile of stone hardly
rising above the surface of the river, and the two men and the boy were
gone.
It seemed a miracle to those who dragged them out of the water that
there should be a spark of life retained in Pickie Tait’s mangled
little body. And even that pulpy mass of agonies which they knew
as Graffy Beale was yet all a-quiver. They could not judge whether
Estwicke’s injuries were less serious. There were evidences of
broken bones, he was insensible, and he bore some deep gashes and
ghastly bruises that were unpleasant to look at. They carried
him to the nearest house, which was the little log cabin by Fort
Despair, and, when the physicians arrived, popular awe was increased
by the professional utterance. After an examination they said, in
consultation, that his left clavicle was fractured, and the joint of
the scapula dislocated, and to the staring simple folks it seemed that
no gentleman who had such things inside of him could be expected to
survive. One of his ribs was broken and his left arm shattered in two
places.
“Pretty bad fracture,--that arm,--I reckon,” suggested the local
physician.
“Ah--I guess so--I guess so,” assented the post-surgeon, who had been
summoned by telegram. “It’s--ah--um--humerus”--with a meditative
smile--“humerus--don’t you know.”
A great country lout who was assisting in the quality of curious
spectator, stepped suddenly out of the room with a surly, lowering brow.
“I’d like ter beat that derned Yank inter a jelly,” he declared
to a crony outside. “Mighty funny ter _him_, I reckon,
‘_Humorous_’--hey!” with a sardonic sneer. “He wouldn’t think it
was ‘humorous’ long if _I_ hed a crack at him.”
For this episode had roused an intense local sympathy for Captain
Estwicke, and the feeling widened and deepened when all the
circumstances were duly set forth in the Marston “Daily Chronicle.”
Not every day does a man of “quality” risk his life to succor humble
folks, and the reporter, who felt himself destined for better things
than writing up dog-fights and ward politicians, made the most of the
opportunity. It afforded as broad a scope as an obituary. In fact, it
was quite as satisfactory to the reporter as if Captain Estwicke had
really died. It enabled him to dwell upon the generosities of character
intimated as well as that passion of courage illustrated. It admitted
of biographical detail which the enterprising representative of the
paper gleaned in abundance at the barracks from Estwicke’s brother
officers, who were peculiarly eager, anxious, and enthusiastic. If
their comrade had bravely encountered death and danger and paid the
forfeit of serious wounds upon some stricken field, they would have
held it an obvious duty and accorded varying degrees of soldierly
commendation. But to have disastrous dealings with gunpowder out of the
regular line of business seemed to these men of the sword abnormally
daring and intrinsically heroic.
The reporter found much geniality housed in the unsubstantial
white buildings with their flimsy galleries that shook beneath his
tread. A potent nicotian fragrance permeated the air, as if it were
geographically appurtenant to the spot--like the resinous odor of piney
woods or the briny flavor of a sea-breeze. A veteran of the late war
told some stirring stories with effect, annotated by the measured tread
of the sentry without. A young lieutenant gave items of Estwicke’s
experience as an “Indian Fighter;” and while the reporter took notes,
he was ever and anon exhorted to take also what was modestly designated
as “something.” And somehow the mellow generosities of this same
“something,” and the manly good-fellowship of his entertainers, and
that fine thrill which the contemplation of a deed of daring, blended
with kindness, excites about the heart, were subtly infused into his
simple narrative, and surprised him when he saw it printed on the
smoking sheets in the morning.
It surprised others. It suggested to more than one subscriber of the
“Daily Chronicle” that there might be some fine fellows among those
Yankees at the barracks; and a wonder if it were not a trifle too
unfriendly and inhospitable to leave them shut off there like aliens;
and a resolve to go and see Captain Estwicke, who had been already
removed to his quarters, and tell him what was thought of him, and
virtually, though unavowedly, shake hands across the bloody chasm.
Now, this feat of moral gymnastics is remarkably simple when one fairly
tries it, and was successfully exploited by his brother officers and
_ses amis les ennemis_ so long as Estwicke lay too ill to take a
hand in it. But in a short time, when he began to pull together and
this amicable ceremony was celebrated in his quarters, a chill suddenly
fell upon it. He hardly knew how to receive the unwise, ill-chosen
superlatives of these fraternal strangers and his hearty, chorusing
friends. Among them he was heavily badgered. He had all the shyness of
intense self-consciousness. He was wont to approach his own identity
with misgivings, and an undue respect. Had any man come to the barracks
to pick a quarrel with him he would have been bold enough. Since they
had only come to sing his praises he was all at once timid, gruff,
uneasy, ashamed of himself, and very much ashamed of them.
The behests of hospitality held this grum mood painfully mute so long
as the visitors were present. But the sudden change from whole-souled
cordiality, which had earlier characterized their welcome, to this
congealed stiffness was very marked, and the quality of his demeanor
was variously reprehended as affectation, or “barrack manners,” by
these ex-soldiers who had seen only service in the field, and knew
little of the life and manners of barracks.
But plain-speaking is one of the prerogatives of friendship. “You
mortify me with your confounded twaddle,” Estwicke was wont to say
fiercely to his Damons when the wheels of the last departing guest were
heard rolling away on the broad, gravelled drive. “Yes,--I do feel
worse,--very much worse. They all make me worse. And _you_ make me
sick! I’m sick with shame!”
Whereupon the Damons would roar with good-natured laughter, and
demonstrate jovially the feasibility of once more taking “something.”
It was eminently characteristic that by his exacting reserve Estwicke
should repel much kindly feeling, and that with this opportunity he
should make not one friend in Marston for himself, but many for other
men.
Beyond the reach of his personal influence, however, his action
continued to levy a heavy tribute of good-will and admiration. It
seemed in Chattalla an incredibly brave and generous thing to do,--so
vast was the incongruity in the imperilling of a valuable life for poor
Graffy Beale, that ill-starred fleer of fate, and “Quick Pickie,”--who,
when he was pronounced out of danger, was universally conceded to be “a
grand rascal, though I’m sorry for the little chap.”
And just here was where it appealed to General Vayne. The whole
episode was instinct with a fine humanity. It gave evidence of high
impulses and a latent nobility hitherto undivined in Estwicke’s
character,--hitherto doubted.
And why doubted? In these days it seemed to General Vayne that his
own conduct had been actuated by some strange, unreasoning malice. He
could not recollect how his deep prejudice had taken root. He could not
remember his grievance; the blow that Estwicke had seemed to sordidly
deal him when he was already sore smitten and pressed to the wall.
Mentally he fumbled for it. It was gone.
His own fine deeds of valiance stretched out in the darkness of the
Lost Cause like the brilliant track of a falling star. He had thought
them then only prosaic duty; now they had loosed all hold on his
memory. But every enthusiastic pulse throbbed in accord with this fine
deed that another man had done.
So it came about that he listened with an unclouded brow to something
his daughter said one day,--something she said with her eyes full of
tears, her face suffused with flushes, a quiver in her voice.
“Papa,” she cried, “I don’t need this to teach me how good--how
good--Captain Estwicke is. It only teaches me how dearly I love him.
And now--_now_--I shall never care again because _you_ choose
to undervalue him. And I don’t want your forgiveness! He is more to me
than you are. And some day when he comes again I shall tell him that
now I--I will marry him,--whenever he likes.”
There was something hard in this too frank avowal of a transfer
of allegiance. But father and daughter alike were inexpert at
half-measures, and the thoroughness of the new departure surprised
neither of them.
“Why, my dear child,” exclaimed the consistent man, with a fine gesture
of expostulation, “I have not the slightest objection,--not the
slightest.”
There was an unfilial flash in his daughter’s eyes as she looked at
him. She remembered Estwicke’s passionate unhappiness, and her own
conduct to him seemed very harsh. She had thought obedience to her
father her first and highest duty. So it was valueless, intrinsically,
and wasted besides. But obviously policy forbade her to urge upon him
the grace of consistency, and she said nothing more.
She had wanted to go to see Estwicke. But Mrs. Kirby, with a
heavy support of proprieties, took the field in force. “My dear,”
remonstrated the old lady gravely, “you are not really, formally,
engaged to him now.”
“Oh, he knows how it all was,” declared the girl impatiently.
“But other people know nothing about it,--nothing whatever. It would
be very queer for you, and your papa, and me to go to him together as
you suggest; very queer indeed, unless we could give out that you are
engaged. You ought to have foreseen this, my dear. You broke it off;
yes, you gave him back his ring. Very pretty ring, that. Oh, yes; I
know what your papa said; he made you do it. But,”--with a funereal
shake of the head,--“_never_ give back a ring. So significant;
so-o conclusive. Remember that, my dear. _Never_ give back a
ring,--no!” Mrs. Kirby laid down these valuable rules of guidance with
as much solemnity as if her niece expected to be engaged a score of
times yet, and be tempted as often to thrust back rings upon their
donors.
So Marcia wrote a little note to Captain Estwicke, and Mrs. Kirby
wrote a longer one, and only General Vayne drove over to the barracks.
There were several other gentlemen present at this interview, and the
conversation was chiefly general and impersonal; hence Estwicke had
scant opportunity to exhibit that morose disinclination for laudatory
sympathy which had so unfavorably impressed former visitors, and
General Vayne went away with his rose-colored views of the incident
unimpaired.
As it had occurred so near his plantation, he was popularly supposed
to be peculiarly well posted, and more than once his account of it
was sought by guests at his house. It gained much impressiveness from
the noble graces of his rhetoric and the largess of his generous
admiration. It was pretty to see Marcia listen on these occasions, her
cheeks crimson and her crimson lips parted, an enthusiastic gravity on
her face, and her eyes alight with that wonderful radiance which can
shine in a mortal’s eyes but once in a lifetime. Most of these visitors
were stolid, unspeculative people, long past their romantic hey-day.
With them this voiceless language of love was already a dead language,
and they translated none of its glowing characters. Horace Percy was
younger, and he had his own reasons for being observant. When he saw
that look on her face--although it was but a look--his heart sank like
lead.
Any grief with him was nearly allied to a puerile irritation, and he
was rather cruel to his horses as he drove homeward. He said little
to Brennett, he was absorbed in canvassing the matter silently, and
seeking to reconcile himself to giving up his love with the doubt
still upon it. He did love her, but he loved himself more. He tenderly
deprecated for himself the jeopardy of rejection. Hitherto he had felt
so sure of her; he would have felt, equally sure of any woman whom he
might seek in marriage. He had brought himself to regard the avowal of
his preference, not as something that might give her to him, but as of
great value because it would bind him to her. His was the important
promise, and he was chary of bestowing it. That exaltation which dwarfs
the opinion of others to but a mote in the wind was an exaltation to
which Percy could never attain. The calamity of losing her, he dreaded
less than that the world should know of his loss. It did occur to him
for a moment that she might feel tenderly, in a manner, toward the
love she could not requite; that she might respect it as a confidence.
But no! his was a famous scalp. She would joy to wear it at her belt.
At the least she would tell all to her aunt--that would be only
natural. That Mrs. Kirby should not tell it to Mrs. Ridgeway would be
supernatural. Mrs. Ridgeway would tell it to the county. And then it
would go! A young man of great social prominence finds sometimes in his
notoriety a painful difficulty.
But even should he draw off at once, he was not safe from the gossip.
Percy ground his teeth when he reflected that if all he suspected were
true, and it should become known that she had accepted Estwicke, the
sharp-witted Maurice Brennett would understand his position, having
witnessed throughout the summer his persistent efforts to propitiate
General Vayne. Brennett was a man who gave no quarter, and Percy had
a vivid realization of the infinite zest with which the _jeunesse
dorée_ of New Orleans would laugh at the story of his fatuity in
making love to the old gentleman while another fellow made love to the
young lady.
And these cheap things vexed him. He continued moody and silent until
they reached home, but at dinner he was vivacious in a desultory
fashion, had much to say, and seemed to find nothing amiss with his
appetite. When he and his guest were lighting their cigars in the
library, he observed with a laugh: “Did you notice, Brennett, how much
interest Miss Marcia takes in Captain Estwicke’s--a--a--blow-out--as
you might call it?”
Brennett looked up with genuine surprise expressed in his face. “Why,
yes,” he admitted, in a tone that was evidently meant to seem casual.
“Do you know,” said Percy, his eyes fixed on the dark shrubbery close
by the open window as he lounged easily in his chair. “I’d be willing
to bet you something very considerable that they are engaged.”
The crafty Brennett was embarrassed. “Why, I don’t know about that,” he
said, hesitating.
After a moment he put a bold face on his uncertainty.
“To tell you the truth, I thought you were in love with her.”
Percy glanced up laughing. “With Miss Marcia?” he asked, a note of
incredulity in his voice. “I never should have credited _you_ with
a sentimental imagination, Brennett. What made you think that?”
Brennett vindicated his logic. “Because you seemed specially anxious to
stand well with her father and please her,” he said sturdily.
Percy made no rejoinder for a moment, while the servant came in
and placed the lamps on the table. Then he laughed again--a trifle
mysteriously this time.
“Well,”--he glanced over his shoulder about the room--“is that old
darkey out of hearing? Well, as I was about to say, General Vayne is
a man of influence, and in fact I am a man of some influence myself.
Moreover, I am twenty-four--nearly twenty-five years of age.”
Brennett stared. Percy turned his cigar between his fingers and gazed
gravely at it.
“You’re not a man that blabs, Brennett,” he continued, presently. “I
may as well say plainly that within a year I shall be eligible for
Congress, and my friends want me to knock the old fossil, who has
been going from this district, back into the Jurassic period where
he belongs. I don’t know certainly whether I shall consent to make
the race, but in view of that possibility, I must, in the meantime,
propitiate men of influence, and smile at their daughters, and humbug
their Mrs. Kirbys as well as I can.”
He filliped off the ash, grown long and white upon his cigar as he
talked, looked brightly up at Brennett, and laughed again. He had told
his little story very well, and the wily Brennett believed it--perhaps
because he esteemed any scheme of advancement a stronger motive than
love. Percy detected credulity in his face, and, having succeeded so
well, concluded to delay. If she were in love with Estwicke she would
demonstrate that fact by marrying him. If not, she would still be
here next autumn on Percy’s return from a little tour of the northern
seaside resorts which he had in contemplation. When he had determined
upon this course he waited only for his friend’s departure to carry it
into effect, and he waited in secret impatience, as Brennett showed no
sign of bringing his visit to a close. Percy had lost all interest in
the quiet rural existence that, but so short a time ago, was instinct
with the keenest zest. It was painful to him to go to General Vayne’s
house and meet Marcia. But Brennett often proposed a drive or ride
tending thither, and he must accompany his guest as behooves a host. He
bitterly upbraided his folly in having hampered himself at this crisis
with the restrictions of hospitality, for who knew so well as he that a
guest in the country is like a soul or a conscience, impossible to be
decently rid of for a moment.
In these visits Mrs. Kirby observed with some surprise that Antoinette
sedulously avoided Mr. Brennett, and, although he did not talk to
her with an eager interest, as when he had first come among them, he
adroitly contrived, continually but unobtrusively, to throw himself in
her way as if to keep her attention directed to him--to remind her of
him.
And Mrs. Kirby pitied the hopeless love of which she imagined he was
the victim, and wondered helplessly that dear Antoinette should be so
cold.
Marcia noticed nothing of all this, for she was absorbed in a
fact which she had at first vaguely perceived in doubting, chilly
apprehension, and realized at last with an amazed despair. Captain
Estwicke intended to come no more. She had experienced a sharp surprise
to hear from others that he was already out again with his arm in a
sling. Naturally she had expected to be the first to see him. But she
had accounted for this as an accident, and for a week thereafter she
herself gathered the flowers for the vases in the library; and in the
evenings the lamps and the fire-flies and the moon were early alight
in the big, square windows, with their sheer snowy curtains and their
clinging vines, where the dew glittered on the climbing roses, and the
mocking-bird sang for his welcome. But only the lagging hours came in
his stead. She began to take account of that last interview when he
had said his suspense should end. Did he, indeed, hold it definitive?
Had his love worn out--and now when she was ready to renounce for it
all the world besides? She could not have so doubted him, but for the
little letter she had written. If he had felt thus, she argued, it must
have seemed an appeal, a recall. And he gave it no heed. To be sure,
he had not been able for weeks past to hold a pen--but he might have
come, if he liked. That letter grew to be a poignant humiliation. She
brooded upon it until the words, simple and few, were burned into her
brain. Yet the told herself scornfully that it was no great matter--the
letter was doubtless gone long ago--it had served, perhaps, to light
his cigar. And then she remembered the fervor of faith and the glow of
delight with which she had written it, and she felt that the best of
her, the essence of hope and youth and love was exhaled with the smoke,
and that all her life had flickered with the paper and had faded and
fallen to ashes.
Estwicke did not light his cigar with it, but he smoked many cigars
over it, and it furnished him, too, midnight vigils and bitterness of
spirit. This was the first time she had ever written to him. Heretofore
he had come and gone so often that there had been no need of letters.
He thought this little note stiff and formal. He could not know how
beaming a face had bent over it. He could not conceive that what he had
done should render him eligible in General Vayne’s eyes and demolish
those formidable unacknowledged objections. He could not imagine that
that long withheld consent had made her all at once shy of him--shyer
than ever, when Mrs. Kirby sat by as she wrote and admonished her
to remember that they were not engaged just now. Estwicke moodily
compared the result with Mrs. Kirby’s own affectionate effusion, its
superlatives straggling half across the page. The contrast seemed
significant. It was all over between them. He had told Marcia she
must decide, and she had decided. And she wrote now only because they
had been friends, and because she must, since his other friends wrote
too--sooth to say more kindly. He regarded General Vayne’s visit
as the emptiest formality. Old Ridgeway, the merest acquaintance,
had accompanied him, and there were many who came more than once.
Estwicke’s pride, too, was reasserting itself. He declared that he
would humble himself to General Vayne and his daughter no more. He
would go there never again, though his heart should break. He grew
taciturn, and rebellious, and irritable, and the post-surgeon rubbed
his hands and said that the patient was coming on finely and that a
strong, fierce temper was the best indication of rapid convalescence.
Meantime, General Vayne, all unaware of the havoc his consistency had
wrought in Marcia’s life and the life of a brave man whom he admired,
was reconciling himself with a good grace to that stern avenging
dispensation which sends the “youth of flaunting feathers” close
upon the heels of the father of a daughter. That opprobrious epithet
“home-made Yankee” had been stricken from his vocabulary. He had
substituted “loyal.” Loyal! That was a word of noble significations.
And he was a man peculiarly susceptible to the gracious charm of fine
words.
Somehow the future seemed more ideally appropriate reconstructed on the
basis of this word “loyal.”
That notable issue of the “Daily Chronicle” was stale enough, when
one day Tom Toole found his dinner wrapped in a fragment of it, as
he sat eating from his tin pail in the brief interval of rest called
“nooning.” Between bites he read from it, slowly and laboriously. And
as he read, the yard of the furniture factory, with its piles of lumber
and its high palings; the city’s hum; the strident voices of the street
vendors; the heavy whir of the machinery that, even while it slackened
and until it ceased, seemed to shake the massive building before
him--all passed from his consciousness. Instead, he saw the long,
sunlit stretches of the battle-field, beautiful and blooming beneath a
summer sky. He heard the river sing, and remembered how the piers that
stood in its midst roused its voice to a more passionate utterance, as
if it too would tell the story of all that had happened here.
“An’ hain’t that thar old pier seen sights!” he exclaimed. “An’ it’s
cur’ous fur it ter be this same man ter hev sech resky dealin’s
thar--this hyar Estwicke what looked so powerful like the t’other
one--ef”--even in the sunlight and in the far away city he glanced
dubiously over his shoulder--“ef thar ever war enny other one.”
He munched for a time in meditative silence. Then he straightened the
paper on the planks before him and began to spell out the closing
sentence, sensible of a supplemental curiosity as to the man and boy
whom Estwicke had sought to rescue.
The account of the officer’s exploit had occupied a column and a half
of fine print. But only a paragraph was needed to say that the man,
Graffy Beale, a low fellow of the neighborhood, was fatally injured in
the accident, although the boy had been pronounced out of danger.
Through the surprise throbbing in his quickening blood, through the
agitation that mustered great drops upon his forehead, blistering
the crumpled bit of paper as they fell, through the incredulity that
sought to possess him because the familiar name looked so unfamiliar in
print, Toole was mastered by a tyrannous recollection of that morning
when Graffy had sat on the rock by the dusty milestone, and implored
forgiveness, and a friendly word, and a hearty hand-clasp before they
parted.
And for a friendly word he was bidden to look to the graves he had
filled.
Was this the last word to be spoken between them? Had he indeed gone
hence forever? The ignorant fellow was battling with that maddening
sense of irrevocability which alone is potent to give to mortals a
realization of how finite is opportunity, how infinite is eternity.
“But Graffy air the frien’liest pore critter in all this worl’!” he
broke forth presently. “He ain’t a-goin’ ter hold no grudge agin
nobody, nuther hyar nur hyarafter. I hopes he knowed me that day,
better’n I knowed myse’f. An’ ef the Lord lets me I’ll tell him that,
ef I kin git back thar in time.”
Certainly conscience had little to do in Maurice Brennett’s schemes.
And when it became a factor, it was the conscience of another man.