A FAIR DUELLIST
The great hand of time which turns the kaleidoscope of human affairs
appeared to move slowly for a few weeks, as far as the characters of my
story are concerned. The two little bakers worked together daily, one
abounding in mirth and drollery, and the other cheered, or rather beguiled
from melancholy in spite of herself. Business grew apace, not only because
two girls who evoked general sympathy were the principals of the firm, but
also for the reason that they put something of their own dainty natures
into their wares. Aun' Sheba trudged and perspired in moderation, for the
fleet-footed Vilet seemed to outrun Mercury. Moreover, the "head-pahners,"
as Aun' Sheba called them, insisted that their commercial travellers
should take the street-cars when long distances were involved.
Captain Bodine and Mr. Houghton maintained their business relation in the
characteristic manner indicated by their first interview. The
ex-Confederate was given some routine work which kept him at a remote desk
a certain number of hours a day, and employer and employee rarely met, and
scarcely ever spoke to each other. The captain, however, had no reason to
complain of his salary, which was paid weekly, and sufficed for his modest
needs. So far from being dependent on his large-hearted cousin, he and
Ella were enabled to contribute much to her material comfort, and
immeasurably to her daily enjoyment. She and Ella were in the sunshine
again, and it was hard to say which of the two talked the most genial
nonsense. The old lady had what is termed "a sweet tooth," and loved
dainties. The two girls, therefore, vied with each other in evolving rare
and harmless delicacies.
"Two Ariels are ministering to me," she said, "and sometimes I feel so
jolly that I would like to share with that old--I mean Mr. Houghton."
The girls never forgot, however, the depths beneath the ripple and sparkle
of the old lady's manner.
As spring verged into summer, Uncle Sheba yielded more and more to the
lassitude of the season. His "bobscure 'fliction" seemed to grow upon him,
if it were possible to note degrees in his malady, but Aun' Sheba said,
"'Long as he is roun' like a log an' don' bodder me I is use' ter it." He
even began to neglect the "prar-meetin'," and old Tobe told him to his
face, "You'se back-slidin' fur as you kin slide, inch or so." His
son-in-law, Kern Watson, had won such a good reputation for steadiness
that he was taken into the fire department. When off duty he was always
with "Sissy an' de chilen."
Outwardly there was but slight change in Owen Clancy. He had never been
inclined to make many intimate acquaintances, and those who knew him best
only noted that he seemed more reserved about himself if possible, and
that he was unusually devoted to business. Yet he was much spoken of in
business circles, for it was known that he was the chief correspondent of
the wealthy Mr. Ainsley of New York, who was making large investments in
the South. Among the progressive men of the city, no matter what might be
their political faith and association, the young man was winning golden
opinions, for it was clearly recognized that he ever had the interest of
his section at heart, that in a straightforward, honorable manner he was
making every effort to enlist Northern capital in Southern enterprises. He
had withdrawn almost wholly from social life, and ladies saw him but
seldom in their drawing-rooms. When among men, however, he talked
earnestly and sagaciously on the business topics of the hour. The evening
usually found him with book in hand in his bachelor apartment.
Beneath all this ordinary ebb and flow of daily life, changes were taking
place, old forces working silently, and new ones entering in to complicate
the problems of the future. As unobtrusively as possible, Clancy kept
himself informed about Mara and all that related to her welfare. By some
malign fate, as she deemed it, she would unexpectedly hear of him,
encounter him on the street, also, yet rarely now, meet him at some small
evening company. He would permit no open estrangement, and always
compelled her to recognize him. One evening, to her astonishment and
momentary confusion he quietly took a seat by her side and entered into
conversation, as he might have done with other ladies present. By neither
tone nor glance did he recognize any cause for estrangement between them,
and he talked so intelligently and agreeably as to compel her admiration.
His mask was perfect, and after an instant hers was equally so, yet all
the time she was as conscious of his love as of her own.
He recognized the new element which the Bodines had brought into her life,
and with a lover's keen instinct began to surmise what the captain might
become to her. He was not long in discovering the former relations of the
veteran to Colonel Wallingford, and he justly believed that, as yet,
Mara's regard was largely the result of that old friendship and an entire
accordance in views. But he was not so sure about Bodine, whom he knew but
slightly and with whom he had no sympathy. He had learned substantially
the ground on which the captain had taken employment from Mr. Houghton,
and as we know, he was bitterly hostile to that whole line of policy. "It
would eventually turn every Southern man into a clerk," he muttered, "when
it is our patriotic duty to lead in business as in everything else that
pertains to our section." Yet he knew, or at least believed, that if he
had taken the same course Mara might now be his wife.
Sometimes, when reading, apparently, he would throw down his book and say
aloud in his solitude, "Bah, I'm more loyal to the South than this
sombre-faced veteran. He would keep his State forever in his own crippled
condition. No crutches for the South, I say; no general clerkship to the
North, but an equal onward march, side by side, to one national destiny.
He thinks he is a martyr and may very complacently let Mara think so too.
Who has given up the more? He a leg, and I my heart's love!"
It has already been shown that Clancy touched the extremes of political
and social life in the city. Some, of whom Mrs. Hunter was an exasperated
exponent, could be cold toward him, but they could neither ignore nor
despise him. Those beginning to cast off the fetters of enmity and
prejudice, secretly admired him and were friendly. While cordial in his
relations, therefore, with Northern people and Northern enterprises of the
right stamp, he had not so lost his hold on Mara's exclusive circle as to
remain in ignorance of what was transpiring within it, and he secretly
resolved that if Bodine sought to take the girl of his heart from him,
and, as he truly believed, from all chance of true happiness herself, he
would give as earnest a warning as ever one soul gave to another.
In June he received a strong diversion to his thoughts. Mr. Ainsley wrote
him from New York, in effect, that he with his daughter would soon be in
Charleston--that his interests in the South had become so large as to
require personal attention; also that he had new enterprises in view. The
young man's interest and ambition were naturally kindled. As Mara had
taken the Bodines and their affairs as an antidote for her trouble, he
sought relief in the preoccupation which the Ainsleys might bring to his
mind. Accordingly he met father and daughter at the station and escorted
them to the hotel with some degree of pleasurable excitement.
Miss Ainsley made the same impression of remarkable beauty and
cosmopolitan culture as at first. There was a refined, easy poise in her
bearing. Indeed he almost fancied that, to her mind, coming to Charleston
was a sort of condescension, she had visited so many famous cities in the
world. She greeted him cordially, and to a vain man her brilliant eyes
would have expressed more than the mere pleasure of seeing an old
acquaintance again.
But few days elapsed before Mr. Ainsley was on the wing, here and there
where his interests called him, meantime making the Charleston hotel his
headquarters. Miss Ainsley's friend, Mrs. Willoughby, carried off the
daughter to her pretty home on the Battery, where sea-breezes tempered the
Southern sun. Clancy aided the father satisfactorily in business ways, and
the daughter found him so agreeable socially as to manifest a wish to see
him often. She interested him as a _"rara avis"_ which he felt that he
would like to understand better, and he would have been less than a man if
not fascinated by her beauty, accomplishments and intelligence. Miss
Ainsley could not fail to charm the eyes of sense as well, and she was not
chary of the secret that she had been fashioned in one of Nature's finest
molds. The soft, warm languor of the summer evenings was, to her, ample
excuse for revealing the glowing marble of her neck and bosom to dark
Southern eyes, and admirers began to gather like bees to honey ready made.
Clancy had wished to see her deportment toward other young men, and now
had the opportunity. The result flattered him in spite of himself. To
others she was courteous, affable and sublimely indifferent. When he
approached it seemed almost as if a film passed from her eyes, that she
awakened into a fuller life and became an enchantress in her versatile
powers. He responded with as fine a courtesy as her own, although quite
different, but there was a cool, steady self-restraint in eyes and manner
which piqued and charmed her.
Clancy would be long in learning to understand Miss Ainsley. He might
never reach the secret of her life, and certainly would not unless he
bluntly asked her to marry him--asked her so bluntly and persistently that
all the wiles of which woman is capable opened no avenue of escape. She
was an epicure of the finest type. If she had been asked to a banquet on
Mount Olympus, she would have preferred to dine from the one delicious
dish of ambrosia most to her taste and to sip only the choicest brand of
nectar. Profusion, even at a feast of the gods, would have no charms for
her. She had begun to see the world so early and had seen so much of it
that she had learned the art of elimination to perfection. Sensuous to the
last degree, but not sensual, she had a cool self-control and a fineness
of taste which led her to choose but a few refined pleasures at a time and
then to enjoy them deliberately and until satiety pointed to a new choice.
Keen of intellect, she had studied society and with almost the skill of a
naturalist had recognized the various types of men and women. This cool
observation had taught her much worldly wisdom. She saw all about her,
mere girls jaded with life already, faded young women keeping up with the
fashionable procession as fagged out soldiers drag themselves along in the
rear of a column. She had seen fresh young _debutantes_ rush into the
giddy whirl to become pallid from the excess of one season. At one time,
she and other friends of hers had been exultant, excited and distracted by
their many admirers and suitors. She soon wearied, however, of this
indiscriminate slaughter, and the devoted eager attentions, the manifest
desires and hopes of commonplace men, so far from kindling a sense of
triumph and power, almost made her ill. She became like a knight of the
olden time who had hewn down inferiors until he was sick of gore.
And so she gradually withdrew from the fashionable rout, took time for
reading and study and the perfection of her accomplishments. She accepted
merely such invitations as were agreeable to her, smiling contemptuously
at the idea that in order to maintain position in society one must wear
herself out by rushing around to everything; and society respected her all
the more. It became a triumph to secure her presence; but she only went
where everything would accord with her taste and inclination. This was
true of her life abroad as well as at home. Conscious of her father's
wealth, and that, apart from an unexacting companionship to him, she could
do as she pleased, she proposed to make the most of life as she estimated
it. She would have all the variety she wished, but she would take it
leisurely. She would not perpetrate the folly of gulping pleasures, still
less would she permit herself to fall tumultuously in love with some
ordinary man only to waken from a romantic dream to discover how ordinary
he was.
She was also too shrewd, indeed one may almost say too wise, to think of
an ambitious marriage. The man of millions or the man of rank or fame
could never buy her unless personally agreeable to her. Yet she was rarely
without a suitor, whom to a certain point she encouraged. Unless a man
possessed some real or fancied superiority which pleased or interested
her, she was practically inaccessible to him. She would be courtesy
itself, yet by her strong will and tact would speedily make a gentleman
understand, "You have no claim upon me; your wishes are nothing to me." If
he interested her, however, if she admired him even slightly, she would
give him what she might term a chance. Then to her mind their relations
became much like a duel; she at least would conquer him; he might subdue
her if he could; she would give him the opportunity, and if he could find
a weak place in her polished armor and pierce her heart she would yield.
The question was whether she had a heart, and she was not altogether sure
of this herself. On one thing, however, she was resolved--she would not
give up her liberty, ease and epicurean life for the duties, obligations
and probable sorrows of wifehood, unless she met a man who had the power
to make this course preferable.
During Clancy's visit to New York in the winter, Mr. Ainsley had spoken of
him to his daughter in terms that interested her before she even saw the
young man, and the moment the experienced woman of the world (for she was
a woman of the world, though but little past her majority) looked upon him
she was still more interested, recognizing at a glance the truth that
whatever Clancy might be, he was not commonplace. This explains why he was
perplexed by the intentness and soft fire of her eyes. If the way opened,
she was inclined to give him "a chance." It might cost him dear, as it had
others, but that was his affair. She felt that he was highly honored and
distinguished in being given what she contemptuously denied to the great
majority. The way _had_ opened. She was in Charleston, and now, this
particular and lovely June evening found her on a balcony overlooking the
shining ripples of the bay, reclining in a cane chair with her head
leaning against a pillar and her eyes fixed on him with all the dangerous
fascination they possessed. Some soft, white clinging material draped her
form that was rendered more graceful than usual by her well-chosen
attitude. A spray from an ivy vine hung above her, and its slightly moving
shadow flickered on her throat and bosom. She knew she was entrancingly
beautiful; so did he. He felt that if he were an artist nothing was left
to be desired. As a man he was flattered with her preference and charmed
with her beauty. He did not and could not believe that he had more than a
passing interest in her mind as yet, and he felt that she would never be
more to him than a gifted lovely friend, who could at one and the same
time gratify his taste and bestow fine intellectual companionship. They
talked freely with lapses of silence between them. These she would
occasionally break with little snatches of song from some opera. Her
familiarity with life abroad enabled her to say much which supplemented
his reading and which interested him. So he was not averse to these
interviews and was conscious of no danger.
To her they had an increasing pleasure. She was delighted that Clancy
thawed so deliberately, that instead of speedily verging toward sentiment
he found more pleasure in her intellectuality than in her outward beauty.
So many others to whom she had given a chance had quickly lost both their
heads and hearts, and she was beginning to rejoice in the belief that it
might require a summer's tactics to beguile him of either. His gray eyes,
which appeared dark in the moonlight, were clearly regarding her with
quiet admiration, but instead of paying a compliment he would broach some
topic so interesting in itself that before she knew it she was talking
well and even brilliantly.
This present evening he did pay her a compliment, however, which delighted
her. She had stated her view of a subject, and he had replied, "I must
differ with you most decidedly, Miss Amsley." Then he added with a little
apologetic laugh, "I could have made such a remark to very few ladies. I
would have said, 'I beg your pardon, do not think I am contradicting you,
but possibly on further reflection--' In brief, I would have gone through
the whole conventional circumlocution. You are a woman of mind, and you
put your views so strongly and clearly that I forget everything except
your thought. Good reason why, your thought is so interesting, all the
more so because it is your view, not mine, and because I do not agree with
you. Have I made sufficient apology?"
"You have done much more, Mr. Clancy, you have paid me the only kind of a
compliment that I enjoy. I am sick of conventionalities, and as for
ordinary compliments, I am as satiated as one would be if the entire
contents of Huyler's candy-shop had been sent to him."
"Oh, I knew that much before I had seen you five minutes. The only
question in my mind was whether you had not been made ill mentally by them
as one would be physically by the candy."
"In other words, whether I was a fool or not."
"Precisely."
"Well?"
"No need of that rising inflection. If you were a fool I would not be
here."
"I reckon not, as you say in the South."
"Yet you value your beauty, Miss Ainsley."
"Indeed I do, very highly."
"And you know equally well that I admire it greatly, but I value your
power of companionship more. Why should not a man and woman entertain each
other without compliments, conventionalities and sentimentalities?"
"No reason in the world if they are capable of such companionship. The
trouble with so many is that they tumble into these things, especially the
last, as if they were blind ditches in their path."
"That is excellent. Do you regard love as a blind ditch?"
"The deepest and worst of them all, judging from the experiences of very
many."
"I am inclined to agree with you," he answered very quietly.
A few moments later he rose to take his leave. She gave him her hand
without rising, and said, "Good-night. I'm not going to leave this lovely
scene till I am sleepy. Come again when you want companionship. Drop
conventionality I would like a friend who would talk to me as men of
brains talk to men of brains, without circumlocution."
"Very well, then, I shall begin at once. You have a head that ought to
inspire an artist, but I like its furniture. I am going to read up on our
point of disagreement. If I actually prove you are wrong you must yield
like a man."
"I will."
The smile on her lips still lingered as she looked out upon the moonlit
waters, and she passed into a delicious revery. At last she murmured,
"Yes, he has a chance. I don't know how it will end. I may yield to his
argument, but as to yielding to him, that is another affair. The best part
of it all is that he is so slow in yielding to me. Here, in this
out-of-the-way corner of the world, is a cup that I can at least drain
slowly."
Clancy sauntered up Meeting Street, his thoughts preoccupied with the
interview. Then half a block in advance two persons entered the
thoroughfare, and he recognized Captain Bodine and Mara. He crossed the
street so as not to meet them, and they passed in low, earnest
conversation. If Miss Ainsley had been in the furthest star, he would not
have cared. Every drop of his Southern blood was fired, and, with clinched
hands, he strode homeward, and passed a sleepless night.