DR. CHEYNEY’S old gig traveled up the hill just behind Mrs. Eaton’s
carriage, and both turned into the gateway of Broad Acres.
That was the morning after Kitty Broughton’s ball. The doctor had not
been there, having had a bad case on his hands in Eshcol, and he was
full of excitement over a new review of the Cresset speech published in
New York, in a great metropolitan daily. It seemed that Caleb Trench
was going to be celebrated and old William Cheyney had championed
him. He had the paper in his pocket and wanted to show it to Colonel
Royall, but there was Mrs. Eaton, and when the doctor climbed down from
his high seat she was already delivering her opinion to Diana and her
father, and she did not suppress it on account of Dr. Cheyney.
“I can’t imagine what has come over you, Colonel Royall!” that lady
was saying with great indignation; “you must be out of your senses to
allow Diana to dance in public with a common shopkeeper, a--a kind of
hoodlum, too!”
This was too much for Dr. Cheyney, who shook with silent laughter; and
there was a twinkle in Colonel Royall’s eye.
“My dear Jinny,” he said pleasantly, “have you lived all these years
without knowing that it’s Diana who bosses me?”
“I call it a shameful exhibition,” continued Mrs. Eaton hotly. “I never
have believed in mixing the classes--never! And to see my own cousin,
and a young girl at that, dancing with that--that fellow! As far as it
looked to other people, too, she enjoyed it.”
“Did you, Diana?” queried Dr. Cheyney mildly, standing with his hands
in his pockets, and a queer smile on his puckered old face.
“I did,” said Diana, very red.
“Whoopee!” exclaimed the doctor, and went off into convulsions of
laughter.
Mrs. Eaton’s wrath passed all bounds. “At your age,” she said loftily
to Diana, “I should have been ashamed to confess it.”
“I am,” said Diana.
“I’m truly glad of it!” cried Mrs. Eaton.
“Let’s get the stuffing out of it, Jinny,” suggested the colonel mildly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mrs. Eaton stiffly. “I should call
that an extremely vulgar expression. I’m very glad that Diana is
ashamed, and I only hope it will never occur again. In my day, young
ladies of social prominence were careful who they danced with. I’m sure
I can’t see any reason for Diana dancing with Mr. Trench. Any one who
reads that abominable speech of his at Cresset’s can see, at a glance,
that he’s an anarchist.”
“Don’t you think that’s going some, Jinny?” argued the colonel mildly;
“you might have said socialist, and still been rather strong.”
“I never could see any difference,” retorted the lady firmly, settling
herself in the most comfortable wicker armchair. “An anarchist blows
up everything, and a socialist advises you to blow up everything; the
difference is altogether too fine for me!”
“Just the difference between cause and effect, eh, madam?” suggested
the doctor delightedly, “and all ending in explosion.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Eaton, with an air of finality. “Diana, why in the
world did you dance with him?”
“Because you and Jacob didn’t want me to,” Diana replied calmly.
Both the old men chuckled, and Mrs. Eaton reddened with anger. “You
are very unnatural, Diana,” she said severely. “Jacob and I have your
interests at heart. He didn’t consider the man a proper person for you
to be acquainted with!”
Diana opened her lips to reply, but the colonel forestalled her,
anticipating trouble. “He’s been my guest, Jinny,” he remarked placidly.
Mrs. Eaton teased her head. “You’d entertain Tom, Dick and Harry for
charity’s sake, Cousin David,” she retorted; “the first time I saw him
here he brought six cents in change to your daughter.”
“He’s honest, Mrs. Eaton,” said the doctor, twinkling; “he’s a Quaker.”
“I don’t know anything about Quakers,” she replied stiffly, “I never
met one!” and her tone signified that she did not want to.
“Well, they’re not anarchists, Jinny!” observed the colonel; “perhaps,
you’ve heard of William Penn.”
“I’m not quite a fool, David,” she retorted in exasperation.
Dr. Cheyney was enjoying himself; he had taken the rocker by the steps
and was swaying gently, his broad straw hat on his knee. He took the
New York paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Perhaps you’d like
to read a review of the Cresset speech, madam?” he said amiably;
“they’ve got it here, and they speak of Trench as a young lawyer who
has suddenly roused a State from apathy.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Eaton, with overwhelming politeness, “you are
too kind. Probably Diana would like to read it.”
Diana was rosy with anger, and her eyes sparkled. “Cousin Jinny, I
don’t like the man any better than you do!” she declared, “and I detest
and loathe that Cresset speech; I’ve breakfasted on it, and dined on
it, and supped on it, until--until I hate the name of it!”
“Diana,” said Dr. Cheyney, “you’ll need those pink capsules yet!”
“I can’t see what you all admire in that man!” protested Mrs. Eaton
irritably; “he keeps a shop and he goes to vulgar political meetings;
if that isn’t enough, what is?”
“Why, the truth is, Jinny, that he’s a real live man,” said the
colonel, putting on his spectacles to read the New York version of the
Cresset speech.
“I prefer a gentleman,” said Mrs. Eaton crushingly.
Dr. Cheyney twinkled. “Madam,” he said superbly, “so do I.”
Colonel Royall, meanwhile, was following the speech, line by line, with
his finger. Half-way down the column, he lowered the paper. “After all,
he was advocating the Australian ballot,” he remarked thoughtfully.
“He wants to go to the people for the election of senators,” said
Dr. Cheyney; “he doesn’t believe in our legislatures when the great
corporations are interested. Yes, I suppose he does like the Australian
ballot.”
“I should think he would,” said Mrs. Eaton promptly; “I’ve always
looked upon Australia as a penal settlement.”
Dr. Cheyney shook with silent laughter again. “Madam,” he said, “do you
think him a possible ticket-of-leave man?”
“I am disposed to think anything of a man who can and does support
Garnett Yarnall for governor,” she replied frigidly.
Dr. Cheyney’s face sobered suddenly, and Colonel Royall rustled the
paper uneasily. After all, she had cause; a Yarnall had shot her
husband. The two men felt it less keenly than Diana. She rose suddenly
and offered her elderly relative her arm.
“Cousin Jinny, let’s go and see my new rose stocks,” she said mildly;
“they’ve been set out in the south garden.”
Mrs. Eaton rose, propitiated, and accepted Diana’s arm, the two moving
off together in apparent amity. Dr. Cheyney’s eyes followed them, and
then came back to meet the peculiar sadness of Colonel Royall’s.
“Do you think she’s--she’s like--” The colonel’s voice trailed; he was
looking after Diana.
“No,” said Dr. Cheyney sharply, “no, she’s like your mother.”
The wistful expression died in the other man’s eyes, and he forced
a smile. “You think so? Perhaps she does. Mother was a good woman,
God bless her memory,” he added reverently, “but a month ago”--he
leaned forward, and the hands that gripped the arms of his chair
trembled slightly--“a month ago I caught her looking at me; her eyes
are hazel, and”--he avoided the doctor’s glance, and colored with the
slow painfulness of an old man’s blush--“her eyes were just like her
mother’s.”
Dr. Cheyney got up abruptly and laid his hand on his shoulder. “Wake
up, David,” he said sharply, “wake up--you’re dreaming.”
“I haven’t breathed it to any one else, William,” Colonel Royall said,
“not in eighteen years--but I’ve seen it all the time.”
His old friend eyed him grimly. “And it’s frightened you?”
The colonel drew a deep breath. “William,” he said, “do you know how a
starving man would feel when he saw his last crust in danger?”
The old doctor paced the broad veranda; beside it a tree of heaven
spread its graceful limbs, every branch still double tipped with the
rosy leaves of its spring budding. Before him stretched the tender
green of the south lawn, shaded by the grove of horse-chestnuts; beyond
he caught a distant glimpse of the river.
“David,” he said uncompromisingly, “Diana has a noble heart, but--Jinny
Eaton is a fool.”
“I know it,” said the colonel thoughtfully, “but she’s been a mother to
the girl and she loves her.”
“She wants to marry her to Jacob,” snapped the doctor.
“I know it,” said the colonel.
“He’s not fit to tie her shoe,” retorted the doctor. “Jacob’s the
slickest critter in the county, but I haven’t got any more use for him
than Caleb Trench has--if he is your cousin.”
The colonel looked thoughtful. “He’s very clever, William,” he
protested, “and he’s very much in love.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said the doctor.
Colonel Royall laughed a little in spite of himself. “You love Diana,
too,” he remarked.
“I do,” said William Cheyney, “and I don’t believe Jacob will make her
happy. But, Lord bless me, David, you and I won’t do the choosing--Miss
Di will! In my opinion it won’t be Jacob Eaton, either.” Then he
added briskly: “This young lawyer of ours is right about Aylett; he’s
a machine man and the machine is rotten. We want Yarnall; I wish you’d
come to think so, too.”
Colonel Royall thought, putting the tips of his fingers together. “The
truth is, the Eatons are too near to me,” he admitted quietly; “you
know Jinny can’t forget that a Yarnall shot her husband, and I don’t
know that I could ask it of her.”
“Her husband was guilty,” said the doctor flatly.
“I’m afraid he was,” admitted Colonel Royall, “though Mrs. Yarnall
denied it; the jury justified Yarnall.”
“I can’t forgive one man for shooting another for an unworthy woman!”
said the doctor fiercely, forgetting many things.
The slow red crept up to Colonel Royall’s hair. “I ought to have done
it,” he said simply; “but--but I let him live to marry her.”
“Just so,” said William Cheyney; “solidly right, too; that’s purgatory
enough for most of ’em,” he added, under his breath, as he took the
long turn on the veranda.
Colonel Royall did not hear him; his head was bare, and the light
breeze stirred his white hair; it had turned suddenly, twenty years
before. “It would be against all precedent for any of the family to
favor a Yarnall,” he remarked slowly.
“Jacob won’t,” said the doctor shortly, a dry smile crinkling the
wrinkles around his kindly, shrewd old eyes.
“Nor would you, in Jacob’s place,” countered the colonel, tapping the
floor with his stick.
A negro appeared promptly at the door.
“Two juleps, Kingdom,” he ordered.
Dr. Cheyney ceased his promenade and sat down. “This State’s got to be
cleaned up, David,” he said maliciously; “we’ve got too much machine.
I’m all for Trench.”
“I’m not sure I know what ails us,” objected the colonel humorously;
“we’re either bewitched or hypnotized. In a fortnight we’ve set up
Caleb Trench, and I reckon he’s more talked of than the volcano in the
West Indies.”
“He will be later,” said the doctor; “there’s a man for you!”
“They say he began by getting hold of the backwoodsmen; they go down
to his shop and discuss politics once a week; he organized them into a
club and made them take a pledge to vote for Yarnall.”
“All rot,” said William Cheyney fiercely; “do you think the man’s a
damned rogue? He’s talked straight politics to ’em, and he’s showed
up some of the machine methods. By the way, David, he’s set his face
against Jacob Eaton’s get-rich-quick games. I don’t believe in ’em
myself; when that young bounder, Macdougall, came at me about them
the other day in the bank, I told him I kept all my money tied up in
a stocking. I reckon he thinks I do,” twinkled the doctor, “because
I’ve nothing in their bank. David, I hope you’re not favoring Jacob’s
schemes too heavily?”
Colonel Royall looked perplexed. Kingdom-Come had just brought out a
tray with two tinkling glasses of iced mint julep, and he watched the
white-headed negro set them out deftly on the little portable basket
tea-table of Diana’s.
“How are you feeling, Kingdom?” Dr. Cheyney asked genially, eying the
juleps.
“Right po’ly, Doctah,” Kingdom replied, showing his ivories, “but I
manages ter keep my color.”
“Eh?” said the doctor, startled.
Kingdom-Come beamed. “But I’se got er mis’ry in my chest, an’ I reckon
I’se got vertigo an’ congestion ob de brain; I hez dese er dizzy turns,
suh.”
“Take some castor oil, Kingdom,” said the doctor, placidly stirring his
julep, “and put a mustard plaster on your stomach.”
“Yass, suh, thank yo’,” said Kingdom, a little weakly. “I’se done took
two doses ob oil this week, an’ I’se been rubbin’ myse’f wid some ob
dis yer kittycurah.”
“Good Lord!” said Dr. Cheyney, “take a pint of whiskey and go to bed.”
“William,” said Colonel Royall, after Kingdom had gone, “I don’t see
why you set your face so flatly against Jacob Eaton’s investments. Who
has talked this up?”
“Caleb Trench,” said the doctor.
“Heavens!” ejaculated Colonel Royall, “is there no end?”
“To him?” Dr. Cheyney twinkled, “No, sir, not yet. He’s taken the
packing out of Jacob; he says that more than half these countrymen vote
with the Eaton faction because they’ve put all their money in the Eaton
Investment Company, and I’ll be hanged, sir, if he doesn’t state it
fairly.”
Colonel Royall got up and stood, a towering figure of a man, his
blue eyes kindled. “William,” he said hoarsely, “that doesn’t sound
honorable.”
“David,” retorted the old man uncompromisingly, “I tell the truth and
shame the devil--I’ve got an eighty-mile circuit in this county, sir,
and it’s true!”
“Then, sir,” said Colonel Royall, “this county’s rotten.”
William Cheyney leaned back in his chair and smiled quietly. “It’s the
same way in the State; the Eaton Company’s offering bigger interest
than any other company this side of the Mississippi; it hasn’t cut its
rate, even in the panic, and it’s getting new investors every day--or
it did till Caleb Trench got up at Cresset and cut the thing in two.”
“Caleb Trench?” repeated the colonel slowly. “William, that young man’s
creating a sensation. I begin to doubt him; does he mean it, or is he
bidding for notoriety?”
Dr. Cheyney smiled grimly. “David,” he said, “you ask Judge Hollis; he
believes in him and so do I.”
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t believe in Jacob,” said the colonel
stiffly; “he’s my own blood, and we might as well believe in one young
man as another. What’s the difference between them?”
“Well,” replied the doctor slowly, “when I go into a grocery store and
see one basket of eggs labelled ‘Box eggs, fresh, thirty-two cents,’
and the other basket, ‘Hen’s eggs, forty-five cents,’ I’m kind of
naturally suspicious of the box eggs. Not that I want to bear too hard
on Jacob.”
X
MEANWHILE Jacob Eaton rode out with Diana in the early mornings, before
even Dr. Cheyney had his breakfast. Jacob had no taste for sunrise or
the lark, but if Diana rode in the first freshness of morning, he rode
stubbornly beside her, more stubbornly than she cared to admit.
After all, Jacob was her third cousin, and the propinquity, with the
close family relations which Mrs. Eaton jealously maintained, made him
seem even nearer. Without liking him very much, Diana had tolerated
his constant presence for so many years that it had become a habit.
No doubt we could grow happily accustomed to a hippopotamus as a pet,
if we could keep it long enough in our individual bathtubs. Usage
and propinquity! How many recalcitrants have been reconciled to an
unwelcome fate by these two potent factors in life!
Diana, riding up the hill through clustered masses of rhododendrons,
was happily indifferent to Jacob at her bridle rein. Jacob was useful,
rather pleasant to talk to, and paid her the constant homage of
undisguised admiration. After all, it was pleasant to be with one to
whom she meant so much. She could hold him lightly at arm’s length, for
Jacob was too wise to hazard all for nothing, yet she was aware that
her lightest wish had its weight. It was only when he tried to assume
the right of an elder brother to meddle with her affairs, as he had at
Kitty Broughton’s ball, that she resented his interference.
Jacob had, indeed, slipped into her ways with a tame-cattiness which,
no matter how it accorded with his sleek appearance, was in direct
contradiction to the character behind the mask. Diana, flouting him
in her girlish coquetry, was but sowing the wind; if she married him
later, she would reap the whirlwind, yet half her relations desired it.
Thus wisely does the outsider plan a life.
Diana stopped abruptly and, bending from the saddle, gathered a large
cluster of pink rhododendrons; the dew was on them still and it
sparkled in the sunshine.
“Why didn’t you let me break it for you?” Jacob asked mildly; “sometime
when you bend that way from your saddle you’ll lose your balance and--”
“Take a cropper,” said Diana. “I hope I shan’t break my nose.”
“Or your head, which would mean my heart,” he retorted.
She laughed; she was very charming when she laughed and, perhaps, she
knew it. Diana was very human. “Which is harder than my head,” she
said; “in fact, I have heard something of the nether millstone.”
“You would find it very brittle if you turned the cold shoulder,” said
Jacob calmly, flicking the young shrubs with his crop.
“A piece of broken crockery,” mocked Diana; “you will have it mended
when I marry some one else.”
“On the contrary,” he retorted, unmoved, “to quote the romancer: ‘_Je
vais me fich’ à l’eau._’”
“What?” she questioned, with lifted brows.
“It’s French,” he explained.
“So I supposed,” replied Diana, “but not as I learned it.”
“Nevertheless it is forcible,” said Jacob; “it means, inelegantly, that
I will pitch myself into the river.”
“Inelegant and untruthful then,” said she.
“I got it from a book,” he said, “a recent one, and famous. I am
quoting the modern novelists.”
They had reached the crest of a low ridge, and through a growth of red
cedars could see the flash and leap of the river. Diana drew rein and
turned her face fully toward her companion.
“Jacob,” she said abruptly, “why did you give all that money to
Juniper?”
Jacob smiled, his eyelids drooping; in the sunshine his clear smooth
skin looked waxy, as though it would take the impression of a finger
and keep it. “There’s an instance of my heart, Diana,” he said
sententiously.
She studied him attentively. “Was it altogether that?” she demanded,
the straight line of her brows slightly contracted.
“What else?” he asked lightly, leaning forward to break off a cedar
berry and toss it away again. “Look here, Di, you’re down on me--what’s
the matter?”
“I want to understand you,” she replied slowly; “fifty dollars is too
large a sum to give all at once to a negro; you’ll corrupt a member of
the church, a brand snatched from the burning. Juniper has experienced
religion.”
Jacob laughed. “Been stealing chickens lately, I reckon.”
“No, it was Lysander,” corrected Diana demurely.
“The shopkeeper lawyer can defend him again,” said her cousin; “all the
fools are not dead yet.”
“No, indeed,” she agreed, so heartily that he looked up quickly.
“I really meant to help the old nigger,” he said frankly; “he’s always
begging, and he’s been sick and out of work. I’m sorry if you think
fifty too much.”
Diana touched her horse lightly, and they moved on. “Too much at one
time,” she said more gently. “He’ll spend it in an enormous supply of
tobacco, watermelons and whiskey, and probably go to the workhouse. If
he does, you’ll have to bail him out, Jacob.”
“Isn’t there a bare possibility that the watermelons might kill him?”
he suggested meekly.
“A negro?” Diana laughed. “Jacob, why didn’t you give it to Aunt
Charity?”
“She has, at present, purloined the silver teapot,” said Jacob; “my
soul loves justice.”
She looked sharply at him, her young face severe. “I believe you had
another motive. Are you sure that it was for his good, and only for his
good?”
“Cross my heart,” said Jacob devoutly. “See here, Diana, why should I
fritter away my substance? Of what use on earth could that old nigger
be to me?”
She looked thoughtful. The horses moved on evenly abreast. “None that
I can see,” she admitted honestly; “after all, it was good of you;
forgive me.”
“After all, there is some good in me,” he replied, paraphrasing. “I’m
worth noticing, my fair cousin!”
“When you come directly across the horizon!” laughed Diana.
Below them now was the highroad, and as they looked along the white
bend of its elbow, below the ash and the young maples, they both saw
the tall straight figure of Caleb Trench. He did not see them; he
passed below them, and turned the shoulder of the hill. Diana said
nothing; her eyes had reluctantly followed him.
“There goes a fool,” remarked her cousin, “or a knave.”
“Why is it,” asked Diana, “that a man, failing to agree with another,
calls him names?”
He laughed, his cheek reddening. “Why should I agree with that shyster?”
“Why should that shyster agree with you?” she mocked, a light kindling
in her clear eyes.
Jacob chuckled unpleasantly. “I hope you’ve never claimed that six
cents again,” he commented; “he’s got your receipt, you know.”
It was her turn to redden. “You are jealous of his growing reputation,”
she flung at him.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Of that beautiful speech at Cresset’s, in
which he painted me as the devil and all his works?”
“I admired the Cresset speech!” she exclaimed, a sentiment which would
have amazed Mrs. Eaton.
Jacob laughed. “So do I,” he said, “it was first-class campaign matter,
but--well, Di, personal abuse is a little vulgar, isn’t it, just now?”
“Not if you deserved it,” she said defiantly.
“I’d take any amount if you’d promise not to dance with him again.”
“I’m the best judge of my partners,” said Diana, with indignant
dignity; “if any one speaks it should be my father.”
“Aptly said,” he admitted suavely, “and the colonel is one in a
thousand, but you wind him around your little finger.”
“You do not know Colonel Royall,” said Colonel Royall’s daughter, with
just pride.
Jacob lifted his hat. “_Vive le Roi!_” he said.
She gave him an indignant glance. “You are a mocker.”
“On my soul, no!”
“Jacob,” said Diana, “your soul, like the rich man’s, may scarcely pass
through the eye of a needle.”
“My dear cousin, my soul has been passing through it under your
rebukes. What shall I do to please you?”
Diana rode on, her chin up. The path was narrow, and Jacob, falling
behind, had only the privilege of admiring the long slim lines of her
athletic young back, and the way she sat her horse. Beyond the cedars
the path forked on the road, and he came up again.
“I am chastened,” he said; “shall I be forgiven?”
She laughed softly, then her mood changed. “Jacob,” she said, quite
seriously, “you are sure that you’ll renominate Governor Aylett?”
“My dear Di, I am sure of nothing in this world but death,” he retorted
dryly, “but I’ll be--”
“Cut it out, Jacob,” she cautioned, her eyes twinkling.
“I won’t have Yarnall!” he finished lamely.
She nodded. “I understand, but what is this about the backwoodsmen
being organized?”
“Your friend, the shyster,” he mocked, “he has that line of politics;
he speaks well on top of a barrel. I suppose he can empty one, too.”
“Not as easily as you could, Jacob,” she retorted ruthlessly.
He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been in love with you these many years,
and thus do you trample on my feelings!”
“I wish you had feelings,” said Diana calmly; “you have mechanism.”
“Upon my word!” he cried; “this is the last straw.”
“You should be a successful politician,” she continued; “you are a
successful business man. Success is your Moloch; beware, Jacob!”
“I am willing to sit at the feet of the prophetess,” he protested.
“I’ve served seven years, I--”
“Jacob,” said Diana, “don’t be silly. There’s Kingdom-Come at the gate;
they are waiting to turn the omelet. Come!” and she galloped down to
the high gateway, the rhododendrons clustering at her saddle-bow and
the sunshine in her face.
Kingdom-Come grinned. “Fo’ de Lawd, Miss Di, I reckon yo’ clean forgot
dat folks eats in de mawnin’.”