THE MASTER'S CONFERENCE WITH HIMSELF.
It was late in September, and chilly for the season. A bright fire
glowed upon the hearth in the "lady's chamber" at Kennons. Red curtains
shaded the windows, and drooped in folds to the floor. Roses and green
leaves seemed springing up out of the carpet to meet the light and
warmth that radiated from the small semicircle behind the glittering
fender. A bed hung with white curtains, a dressing bureau, with its
fancy pincushion, and numerous cut-glass bottles of perfumery, a lounge
covered with bright patchwork, and furnished with log-cabin cushions,
easy-chairs and ottomans, together with the workstand and its
inseparable little basket filled with every indispensable for
needlework--all, all bore the trace of woman's hand.
For nine years this had been the loved family-room of Duncan and Ellice
Lisle.
Now, Ellice was forever gone. Her foot had passed the threshold, to come
in, to go out, no more. Her canary hung in the window; how could he sing
on the morrow, missing _her_ accustomed voice? Her picture hung over the
mantle, looking down with the old-time brightness upon the the solitary
figures beforefire--Duncan and his child.
Hubert, the son, in his eighth year, sitting clasped in his father's
arms, had pierced anew that tortured heart by asking questions about his
mother and the mystery of death, which no human mind can answer. The
child was in a vortex of wonder, grief and speculation. It was the first
great lesson of his life, and he would learn it well, the more that it
was so severe and incomprehensible. But sleep and fatigue overcame
Hubert at length. The light from the fire no more danced with his
shifting curls, but settled down in a steady golden glow over the mass
that mingled its yellow-brown with the black beard of the stricken man.
For the father would not lay away his sleeping child. He held him close,
as the something, the all that was left to him of his lost love. His
head drooped low and his lips rested in a long embrace of the child's
soft wealth of hair.
Mayhap some watching spirit took pity upon the man bereaved; for while
he gazed into the fire, the heavy pressure of the present yielded to a
half-conscious memory of the past, and a dream-like reverie brightened
and darkened, flickered and burned in and out with the red of the flame,
and the white of the ashes.
Duncan Lisle was a boy again. With two little brothers and a half-dozen
black child-retainers, he hunted in the woods of Kennons, sailed boats
on the red waters of the Roanoke, rode break-neck races over the old
fields, despising fences high, and ditches deep, and vigorously sought
specimens of uncouth, out-of-the-way beast, bird and insect. He studied
mathematics and classics, played pranks upon one tutor, and did loving
reverence to another. He planted flowers upon his own mother's grave,
and filled the vases of his stepmother with her own favorite lilacs and
roses. He made houses, carriages, swings, sets of furniture, and all
sorts of constructions for his half-sister Della, who was his junior by
ten years at least.
He edified, not to say terrified, the dusky crowd of juveniles with
jack-o'-lanterns, impromptu giants and brigands, false faces, fire
crackers, ventriloquism and sleight-of-hand performances.
With a decided propensity for fun and mischief, there was also in his
disposition as evident a proclivity to seriousness and earnestness. If
it gave him delight to play off upon a stranger the joke of "bagging the
game," he enjoyed with equal ardor the correct rendering of a difficult
translation, or the solution of an intricate problem.
If sometimes he annoyed with his untimely jest, he always won by his
manly openness and uniform kindliness of nature. He cherished love for
all that was around him, both animate and lifeless. Soul and Nature
therefore rendered back to him their meed of harmonious sympathy.
Duncan was scarcely seventeen when the Plague swept over Kennons. That
mysterious blight, rising in the orient, traveling darkly and surely
unto the remotest West, laid its blackened hand upon the fair House of
Kennons.
Cholera! fearful by name and by nature, it was not so strange that thy
skeleton fingers should clutch at the myriad-headed city, situate by
river and by sea, but thou wert insatiable! Proud dwellings and lowly
cots in green fields and midst waving woods thou didst not spare; for
thy victim, the human form, was there.
In the middle of August, the skies shone over Kennons happy and fair.
Some cousins came down from the city seeking safety--bringing, alas,
suffering and death!
In one little month, how fearful a change!
Duncan Lisle, sitting before the fire on this sad rainy evening, after
the lapse of twenty years, shudders as he recalls the blackened pall
that seemed spread over earth and air.
Strange to say, the disease prevailed least amongst the frightened
servants.
The hundred were perhaps decimated.
In the house only Duncan and his half-sister Della survived; they in
fact escaped the contagion. The father, a strong, healthy man, struggled
bravely with the fierce attack; he even rallied, until there was good
hope of his recovery. But a sudden relapse bore him swiftly beyond
mortal remedy. Duncan, in his reverie, closes his eyes, to shut out the
fearful memory. He glides over his college years and his sister's course
at school. He sees Jerusha Thornton in her youth and pride and beauty.
She waves off the many suitors in her train, only to smile winsomely at
the young master of Kennons. Her estate is equal to, and adjoins his
own. He has known her from her childhood--he loves no other--and still
he loves not her. He revolves the reason of this in his own mind. She
has beauty, wealth, accomplishments. He gives no credence to rumors of
her cruelty to servants, though aware of her haughtiness to all, and her
disdain to inferiors. The high favor which she showed to him would be
welcomed with joy by at least a half-dozen of his acquaintance. But
this, her manifest preference, did not please Duncan Lisle--there might
be no accounting for it, but it was a fact.
What was to be done? Kennons needed sadly a woman at its head. Its
master had come to be nearly twenty-eight, and not married yet!
The servants were in a state of terrified suspense, lest he _should_
bring Miss Rusha as their mistress. They wished their master to
marry--they would dance for joy--but it must be some other young lady
than the heiress of Thornton Hall.
Delia had been to a Northern school nearly five years; she would soon be
eighteen, and was about to graduate.
As very young girls, Della and Rusha had known each other. For many
years, however, having been at different schools they had rarely met.
Duncan held a faint impression that his half-sister had never been at
all partial to this near neighbor of his. She was coming home so soon,
he had such confidence in her judgment and womanly intuitions, he would
await her coming, and see if she could divine why it was that while he
_would_ be attracted to Rusha Thornton he could not.
Besides, Della was not returning home alone. Ellice Linwood had been for
five years her most intimate chosen friend, and room-mate. Ellice was
the only child of a widowed Presbyterian clergyman. Her father had spent
all he had to bestow upon her, in her education. This being thorough and
complete, in the way such terms are used, she was henceforth to support
herself by teaching.
In order to avoid a deplorable separation, these two young friends had
put their wits together, and lo, the result! Through Della's good
brother Duncan, a situation had been secured for Ellice in the family of
Col. Anderson, not over six miles from Kennons. They would speedily
become excellent equestrians, these friends, and annihilate the narrow
space every day in the year.