THE STORY OF DUCIEHURST
[Illustration: colophon]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
THE STORY OF
DUCIEHURST
_A Tale of the Mississippi_
BY
CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
AUTHOR OF “THE FAIR MISSISSIPPIAN,” “THE AMULET,” “THE STORM
CENTRE,” “THE STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON,” “A SPECTRE
OF POWER,” “THE ORDEAL,” “THE PROPHET OF
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1914.
THE STORY OF DUCIEHURST
CHAPTER I
Dead low water and there the steamboat lay on the sand-bar, stranded and
helpless. The surging swirls of the swift current raced impetuously on
either side. Scarcely a furlong distant on that corrugated, rippling
surface the leadsman had heaved the plummet of the sounding-line at
“deep four.” Nevertheless the craft had grounded here on a submerged
projection of a “tow-head” built of silt and detritus by the ever
shifting Mississippi, attaining dangerous proportions since the last run
of the boat. All unknown and unsuspected it lurked till “quarter less
twain” was sung out, but the next cry of the leadsman smote the air like
the sound of doom. Before the engines could be reversed the steamer was
in shoal water, ploughing into the sand with the full momentum of her
speed, the shock of the impact shattering the equilibrium of all on
board.
Straight ensued the contortions of mechanical energy common to such
occasions; the steamboat repeatedly sought to back off from the sand;
failing in this she went forward on one wheel and then on the other,
finally on both, trying to force her way across the barrier to her
progress, in technical phrase “to jump the bar.”
At length the Captain confessedly relinquished the attempt to effect
the release of the craft under her own steam. The fires sank down in the
furnaces; the water cooled in the boilers; and the passengers of the
still and silent boat resigned themselves to await with such patience as
they could muster the rescue which might be furnished by a passing
packet, none due for twenty-four hours, or which a rise in the river
might compass, for the clouds of the dull October afternoon were heavy
and sullen and intimated the near probability of rain.
A group had begun to assemble on the promenade deck, disconsolately
looking out at the rippling tawny expanse of the vast vacant river, for
the bight of the bend was as lonely a spot as could be found throughout
its course. On either side of the deep groove of the great channel the
banks rose high, seeming precipitous at this shrunken stage of the
water. In the background loomed gigantic forests with foliage sere or
green as the nature of the growths might determine.
The leveling effect of the stereotyped surroundings of travel served to
bring out in distinct relief the individual characteristics of the
passengers. Mr. Floyd-Rosney received the Captain’s final admission of
defeat with the silence and surly dignity befitting an implacable
affront, and his manner could scarcely have been justified had he and
his family been wilfully abducted by orders of the owners of the packet
line. In his wonted environment at his home, encompassed by all the
insignia of wealth and station, he might have seemed a man of such
preëminent importance and fashion as to render a contretemps impertinent
and significant of a failure of respect and service, but here, on the
deck of the steamer, his sullen impatience of the common disaster, his
frowning ungenial mien in receiving the apology of the Captain, poor
victim of the underhand wiles of the great Mississippi, betokened an
exacting ill-conditioned temperament, and suggested that his wife might
be anything but a happy woman, even before she emerged from the saloon
and he met her with a rebuke, which was the obvious vent of his general
ill-humor that could not be visited on independent strangers.
“Too late,--_as usual_!” He turned and placed a chair for her with an
air of graceful and considerate courtesy. “The fun is all over,--the
Captain has given up the game.”
The coercions of good society rendered it imperative that he should
somewhat veil his displeasure, but the thin veneer of his graciousness
was patently insincere and did not commend his pretense of regret for
her sake that she should have missed the spectacle of the gyrations of
the boat in seeking to free itself from the sand-bar, though, indeed,
one might travel far and never witness the like.
He was singularly handsome, about thirty-five years of age, tall, well
built, admirably groomed, fair and florid, with finely chiseled
features, straight dark hair and large brown eyes, whose inherent luster
was dulled by their haughty, disparaging gaze. He rated his fellow-men
but lightly in the scale of being, and, save for the detention, he would
not have appeared on deck or exchanged a word with the rest of the
passengers in the tedious interval of making his landing.
“I am glad that you have at last consented to sit here awhile,” he
continued to his wife, with flimsy solicitude. “That stuffy little
state-room is enough to asphyxiate you.”
His moods, indeed, were elements to be reckoned with and his wife was
eager and smiling in making her excuses. “Oh, I should have come at
once,” she protested,--“only the baby was so reluctant to take his nap.
I couldn’t get away till he was asleep.” She was nervously adjusting her
wrap, appropriate and handsome, but evidently hastily flung on.
“I think he has a nurse,” her husband remarked in surly sarcasm.
“Oh, yes, of course,--but he wanted me,--he would not let go my hand
till he was fast asleep.”
She was as much as ten years her husband’s junior, of a blonde type very
usual in American life. One might have thought to have seen her often,
so familiar have become the straight, delicate somewhat angular
lineaments, the fair hair, the gray or blue eyes, the slender, yet
strong, elastic physique. The degree of beauty, of course, is dependent
on the blending of these elements and its pleasing appeal. Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney was one of the finer examples of the ordinary mold. Her
features were classic in their regularity; her delicately kept,
redundant blonde hair had a silken sheen that simulated burnished gold;
her gray eyes were of a darkly greenish luster that suggested
moss-agates, and they were shaded by long, pensive lashes almost black;
the whole effect was heightened by her dark brown cloth gown with narrow
bands of seal fur, the hat corresponding with the rich yet plain costume
that betokened a traveling garb. She had a certain covertly derisive
expression in her eyes, whenever diverted from her husband, for it must
needs be a brave wife, indeed, who could banter that imposing presence.
To this look a trick of an occasional upward cant of the chin gave
special emphasis. When she seemed amused one could not be sure whether
she was laughing with her interlocutor, or at him. In fact, she had a
marked gift of irony which she sometimes carried so far as to suggest
the danger of recoil. Her old nurse, in the state-room, who had tended
her infancy, as well as now her three-year-old boy, had often warned her
in years agone, when the victim of her unhallowed mirth, “You surely
will stump your toe some day,--better mind how you skip along.” The
discerning observer might well fancy she had duly met this check in her
career in her choice of a husband, for the obvious repression in her
manner toward him suggested a spirit-breaking process already well in
hand. Her deprecatory disarming glance when their eyes met had in it an
eager plea for approval which was almost derogatory, curiously at
variance with her beauty, and position, and handsome garb, and her
assured manner in deporting herself toward others.
“The best you can do for us, Captain Disnett?” she had caught the words
of the skipper’s apology as she issued. “Then all I can say is that bad
is the best!”
She regarded the immense spread of the great river with disparaging
objection. “How low it is,--in every sense of the word.”
Despite her assured pose a certain consciousness informed her manner
when her eyes suddenly fell upon a young man of thirty, perhaps, who was
standing near the railing of the guards, apparently ruefully revolving
the Captain’s announcement that it was impossible to get the _Cherokee
Rose_ off the sand-bar under her own steam. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s
surprise, for she had started on perceiving him and flushed with
embarrassment, was not reciprocal. He gave her no glance of recognition,
although his eyes met hers in a casual regard as he turned from the rail
and drew forth his cigar-case with the presumable intention of making
himself as comfortable as the detention would permit. As yet the baleful
sign, “Cotton aboard. No smoking on deck,” had not been displayed, for
the boat was on its downward beat and would not take on cotton until
returning up the river. His muscles were suddenly stilled, however, and
there was a moment of intent, though covert, observation of her, when
her name was abruptly called out in blithe tones as a young girl emerged
upon the deck.
“Oh, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney! I did not know you were on board. How perfectly
delightful,” with a swift cordial rush, both hands outstretched.
“Captain Disnett,” she whirled upon the skipper, in buoyant parenthesis,
“I forgive you! You have merely contrived us an enchanting week-end
house party. I don’t know when or where I should have met Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney otherwise. And Mr. Floyd-Rosney, too. Is little Ned here?
Asleep?--Well, I’ll spare his nap.”
The deck, the whole dull day, seemed suddenly irradiated by the presence
of the joyous young beauty. Naught but happiness surely came her way.
Eternal springtide shone lustrous, soft, mellow in the depths of her
great sapphire eyes with their long black lashes and thick white lids.
Her hair was black and straight but her complexion was transparently
fair and an exquisitely delicate rose bloomed on her cheek. Her coral
lips were slightly parted, for she was always exclamatory and
breathless, and showed a glimpse of her even white teeth. She was tall
and slender, very erect, and moved with the deft certainty of trained
muscles, the athletic girl of the day. She wore a simple gown of rough
gray cloth, and a knowing little gray toque. She had no disposition to
await events and, after a brief comprehensive survey of the personnel of
the group, she abruptly accosted the young man at the rail, an impassive
spectator of her entrance on the scene.
“Why, Mr. Ducie,” she exclaimed in blended surprise and affront, “aren’t
you going to speak to me?”
He started as if he had been shot. He had much ado to get his hat off
his head with a cigar in one hand and a blazing match in the other. But
this accomplished, through casting the match overboard, he came forward,
replying with genial grace, albeit in some embarrassment: “I think my
brother has the advantage of me. I am Mr. Ducie, all right, but my
Christian name is Adrian. I fancy it must be Mr. Randal Ducie who has
the honor of your acquaintance.”
“Oh,--oh,--yes,--but this----” She was leaning on the back of one of the
stiff arm-chairs and across it openly studying his lineaments. He had
distinctive features; a thin, delicate, slightly aquiline nose, a firm
well-rounded chin, bold, luminous hazel eyes, with a thick fringe of
long straight lashes, a fair complexion not altogether devoid of the
concomitant freckles here and there; fine teeth and mobile red lips; and
his hair, glowing in the light, for he still held his hat in his hand,
was of that rich auburn shade that artists love and that one sees in
paintings and seldom elsewhere. “But this----” she continued, “oh,--you
are fooling us. Do you think I can forget you so soon when I waltzed ten
miles with you last winter, if it were all strung out in a row! This is
certainly Randal Ducie.”
He had begun to laugh in enjoyment of her perplexity. “Randal Ducie is
not half so good a man,” he protested gaily.
“_Les absens ont toujours tort_,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney brought herself,
uninvited, into the conversation. Not altogether welcome was her
interpolation, for the laugh faded from Mr. Ducie’s face and he
remembered to resume his hat and to slip his cigar-case into his pocket,
as if in preparation to betake himself elsewhere. But if this were his
intention it was forestalled by Miss Dean.
“Now, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” she turned vivaciously to that lady, since she
had of her own motion entered the discussion, “wouldn’t anybody think
this was Randal Ducie?”
“They are much alike, but I saw the difference in a moment,” Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney was smiling naturally, graciously, and looking extremely
pretty, as her husband, leaning against one of the posts that supported
the superstructure of the deck and, smoking with strong long-drawn
puffs, watched her with fixed inscrutable eyes.
“Oh, you didn’t,” Miss Dean contradicted gaily. “You _couldn’t_! The
likeness is amazing! Oh, pshaw! it is no likeness. He is guying us. This
_is_ Randal Ducie.”
“You are the twin brother of my young friend, Randal Ducie?” Colonel
Kenwynton asked, smiling, an old gentleman of the old school, with a
courteous manner and a commanding presence. His tall figure still
retained the muscular slenderness of his athletic youth and his stately
martial carriage; his dense snowy hair, brushed forward to his brow and
parted on the side, and also, straight down the back, the white imperial
and long military mustachios gave him the look of a portrait of some
by-gone celebrity rather than a man of to-day, so had the thought of
this fashion perished. His age was frosty but kindly, and the young man
responded with covert humor, as if elucidating a mystery.
“Oh, yes, we have always been twins,” he declared.
“How _did_ you know the difference, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” demanded Miss
Dean.
“I knew it at once,” she replied, still smiling, but the gravity in the
eyes of her husband deepened momently as he gazed, silently,
motionlessly at her. “I myself don’t know the difference at all,” said
the subject of the discussion. “When I am with Ran I feel as if I were
looking into a mirror.”
“Oh, how quaint,--how enchanting it must be,” cried Miss Dean
extravagantly.
“And so convenient,--I have always made Ran try the new hair cuts
first.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean any such preposterous thing as that--but to have
another self so near, so dear, to duplicate one’s lot in life, to
understand and sympathize with every sentiment, to share one’s mind,
one’s heart----”
“No,--no,--we draw the line there. I am a deep secret fellow! I could
tolerate no twin of an inner consciousness to spy out my true soul.”
Ducie was letting himself go in this badinage, and he had no meaning of
a deeper intent than the surface of jest. “And I could undertake no such
contract as to sympathize with Ran’s extravagant enthusiasms and silly
sentimentalities.”
The attention of the group was focused on the speaker. None of them
noticed the uprising conscious flare in the face of Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney--except, indeed, her husband, who was quick, too, to
recollect the significant fact that only she had had the keen
discernment to detect the difference between this man and the twin
brother of whom he seemed the counterpart.
“Oh, Mr. Ducie, how unkind!” cried Miss Dean.
“Yes, indeed,” with affected obduracy, “Ran must sigh his sighs, and
hope his hopes, and shed his tears all by himself. For my own part I
don’t deal in goods of that grade. But if ever he strikes on some nice
little speculation, or discovers a gold mine, why I am his own only twin
brother and I will come in with him on the ground floor.”
“And, speaking of business,” said Colonel Kenwynton, “how goes it in the
south of France? Your brother did not accompany you.”
The group had taken chairs, and, with the permission of the ladies,
Ducie had lighted his cigar. “No, Ran sticks to cotton through thick and
thin. It is his creed that God never thought it worth while to create
anything but the cotton plant, and the earth was evolved to grow and
market it.”
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was struggling with the species of discomposure which
is incompatible with reserve and silence. “You went into the wine trade
instead,” she made the parenthetical statement from an imperfect
memory.
Mr. Ducie had that air of averse distaste which one feels in hearing
one’s own affairs misrepresented. “Beg pardon,” he said, “I quitted New
Orleans some six years ago with old Mr. Chenault; he was a wine merchant
there, a branch of a Bordeaux house,--knew my father and used to furnish
my grandfather’s cellar at Duciehurst in the long ago. He offered me an
opening in the French house at Bordeaux, but I didn’t take kindly to the
trade, and as the Chenaults had connections with the silk manufacturing
interests in Lyons they contrived to wedge me in with their relatives.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had obviously lost her poise, “I remember
now,--but I can’t recall who was speaking of you and your success the
other day,--to be a junior partner in the concern.”
Adrian Ducie’s consciousness of the breach of the commercial verities
turned him stiff. “Oh no! I?--a junior partner? Why, never in the
world!” he exclaimed brusquely. Then, realizing that there was no reason
for heat, since the matter had no concern for those present, he went on
more suavely. “I occupy a sort of confidential and privileged relation
to the members of the firm, owing chiefly to the value of the Chenault
interest, but I have neither the responsibility nor the profits of a
junior partner.”
As he ceased to speak he had a sudden look of affront--more than aught
else it suggested the impulse of some spirited horse refusing a mandate
of urgency, and ready to bolt, to rear, to assert an insurgent and
untamed power. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s words might bear an interpretation
of an ill-judged patronage,--her facile foolish blandness in magnifying
the importance of his opportunity that at its best must seem so very
small to her. With an almost visible effort he brought himself under
control without a snort of contempt or an impatient stamp. There was an
interval of silence so awkward, in view of these forced disclosures of
commercial status and financial interest, that Ducie was disposed to
continue the personal relation as a less crude method of its conclusion
than bolting precipitately from the subject. “We have close connections,
of course, with importers in America as well as elsewhere. It is my
mission to effect a settlement of a matter in controversy with a company
having extensive dealings with us and I am glad to utilize the
opportunity to run in on Ran at his plantation in this lower country
while I am en route to New Orleans. It makes this detention all the more
unfortunate. I lose time that I might otherwise spend with him.”
“You must be awfully lonesome over on the other side without your twin
brother, your other self,” said Miss Dean, sweetly commiserative.
And, indeed, his face fell.
“But how lovely to be in France,” sighed Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “I envy you
your Paris.”
“Paris!” he could but fleer. “I see as much of Paris as if I were in the
Mississippi swamp.” Then, recovering himself, “Paris is not France, so
far as the silk manufacturing interest is concerned.”
An interruption was at hand and this seemed well. An old gentleman,
dressed in black, a Prince Albert coat, a wide soft felt hat, with a
white beard and sightless eyes, seeming more aged and infirm than he
really was, by reason of his groping progress between a stout stick and
a pompous negro man-servant, was steered down the guards and toward the
group; perceiving whom, Colonel Kenwynton hastily arose and advanced.
“Here we are, Major,” he exclaimed jovially, “and here we are likely to
stay. (Make yourself scarce, Tobe,” he added in parenthesis to the
servant, “I’ll look after the Major.”) And Tobe relinquished his charge
with a grateful bow, after the manner of the servitors of yore.
Doubtless, he was glad of the leisure thus vouchsafed him to spend,
after his own liking, but he showed no undue alacrity to avail himself
of it. He did not disappear until he had placed chairs both for the
Major and Colonel Kenwynton, glanced discerningly at the clouds to judge
whether a possible outburst of the setting sun might render the spot
selected undesirable, asked if he should not bring glasses of water,
notified the Major that he had placed a light overcoat on a chair hard
by, in case the veering of the wind should necessitate protection, and
only then did the Major’s faithful body-servant “make himself scarce.”
It was seldom, indeed, that Major Lacey ventured so far from his home,
in view of his increasing age, with which his infirmities waxed in
proportion, except, indeed, on the various occasions of Confederate
reunions, when his years fell from him, and the scales dropped from his
eyes, and he was once more a dashing young officer with his sword in his
hand and his heart in his cause. He was now returning from one of these
symposia, and the old soldier would canvass its incidents, and discuss
its personnel, and repeat the toasts, and recount the old stories and
live again in the days of yore, growing ever dimmer, till the next
reunion would endow the past with reviviscence and it would glow anew
and the dull present would sink out of sight. He was barely ensconced in
his chair when Miss Dean gaily accosted him.
“Yes,--here we are, indeed, Major,--you remember me?--Miss Hildegarde
Dean,--but you ought to have been on deck when we were trying to get
away. It was just like an attempt to jump over a fence by pulling on the
rosettes of your slippers,--wasn’t it, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?”
“Oh, she didn’t witness it,” said Floyd-Rosney hastily, reminded of his
displeasure because of her tardiness. “Too late,--_as usual_. She
closely resembles Athelstane the Unready. You remember the Saxon
nobleman, Major Lacey.”
His bland patronage was a bit more insufferable than his obvious
disapproval, if such comparison be attempted, for the casual stranger
had done naught to incur his unwelcome benignities, whereas his wife, by
consenting to become his wife, had brought her doom upon her own head.
The receptivity of the object of his grace in this instance was blunted
by misunderstanding. “Well, now,” the Major replied, knitting his brows,
“there was a foreign nobleman--a native of Saxony,--for a time on the
staff of General Lancaster while I, too, was a member of his military
family. This stranger was eager to see our artillery in action,--greatly
interested in the Gatling gun,--it was new, then, invented by a
gentleman from North Carolina. But I don’t remember that the officer’s
name was Athelstane,--my memory is not so good as it once was,--his
name has escaped me. But he had been a lieutenant of the Line in his own
country,--light artillery.”
Colonel Kenwynton observed Floyd-Rosney’s satiric smile and resented it.
He would not suffer the matter to rest here. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney is
alluding to a character in one of the Waverley novels, Major,” he said
tactfully.
“Eh? Oh, I remember, now,--I remember,--Ivanhoe,--Athelstane of
Coningsburgh,” the Major replied casually. “But I was thinking of that
foreign nobleman from Saxony,--much impressed by the Gatling gun in
action.”
The war was all-in-all with the Major.
Miss Hildegarde Dean suddenly rose and, with her swinging athletic gait,
walked across the deck and seated herself in a chair beside the Major.
He was conscious, of course, of an approach and a new proximity, but
whose presence it was and of what intent he could not divine. He turned
his sightless face toward his unseen neighbor, expressive of a courteous
abeyance, ready and reciprocal toward the advance were it charged with a
meaning for him, yet with a dignity of reserve in awaiting it. He, of
course, could not see Hildegarde smiling at him so brightly that one
must needs deplore afresh his affliction which debarred him from such
suffusive and gracious radiance.
“Major Lacey,” she began blithely, “I have just lived for this moment. I
want you to tell me exactly how your grandmother--now that is your
great-niece Elodie Lacey’s great, great stupendously great
grandmother,--Elodie is a chum of mine and a precious monkey-fied
thing.” (The Major’s eyebrows were elevated doubtfully at this
description of his young relative, but the tone was one of approval and
affection and he took the compliment on trust.) “We have such gay old
times together,” in a burst of reminiscent enthusiasm. “But now about
your grandmother’s romance. How did she happen to marry the
Revolutionary lieutenant and not the rich English baronet whom she sent
away in despair. Elodie delights in telling the story,--all about the
fox-chase and all--but she mixes things up so with a piece of the white
brocade of the wedding dress that she treasures and the carved ivory fan
and the white satin slippers and she owns the whole bertha too--it is
Honiton,--lovely lace, but out of style now,--that one can’t get at the
details for the millinery. A rational account of the whole affair would
be as sentimental and exciting as a novel. Take a turn with me up and
down the guards, Major, and justify your grandmother’s choice. I am as
steady as a rock, and this ship is not going to pitch and toss among the
breakers on this sand-bar,--eh, Captain Disnett?” with an arch smile
over her shoulder.
The old man’s stick was tremulously feeling the way as he arose. Then
she passed her arm through his, and moved forward at a measured pace,
with the other hand deftly putting out of the way chairs that might have
otherwise blocked their progress. Colonel Kenwynton looked on with a
benignant smile, for, presently, their slow and wavering march up and
down, the old blind soldier, supported between the radiant young beauty
and his stout cane, was interrupted by bursts of laughter, genuine and
hearty, such as he had not enjoyed for many a day.
Then ensued deep and earnest narrative, entangled in such a whirl of
questions as would imply that Miss Hildegarde Dean had never before
heard of the great battle of Shiloh, and, indeed, save that she had once
been of an excursion party that had visited the famous site, she would
have scarcely remembered its name. But she was gifted with a keen and
enduring observation, and ever and anon she broke into his detail of
special incidents,--the fall of noted officers, the result of intrepid
charges, the location of certain troops,--to describe the monuments that
now marked the spot, their composition, their approximate measurements,
their inscriptions, and her opinion of the general effect, with such
gusto as to incite a revival of recollection and to recall an episode or
two of that momentous event which had eluded till now his comprehensive
memory.
“That is a lovely, lovely girl,” said Colonel Kenwynton to Mrs.
Floyd-Rosney, as he contemplated the incongruous cronies.
“Yes, indeed,” she acceded with graceful alacrity, “but she should not
trifle with the affections of the venerable Major.”
“Perhaps the venerable Major is a bit of a flirt himself”; the flavor of
Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s pleasantry was acrid to the taste.
“Why, I should not call that ‘flirting,’ on her part,” said the
matter-of-fact captain of the steamboat. “I have known her since she was
that high,”--he indicated with his right hand a minute stature,--“her
uncle has a plantation down here a bit and she and her mother have often
been passengers of the _Cherokee Rose_. She was always just of that
kind, thoughtful disposition.”
For the old Major was laughing on keys of mirth so long disused that
they had fallen out of tune and accord with the dominant tones of his
voice, as if in another moment he might burst into tears.
“Well, perhaps not exactly ‘flirting,’--only a bit of her universal
fascination system,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with her chin in the air.
“I shouldn’t think she pursues any sort of system,--she seems all
spontaneity. She is incapable of calculation,” said young Ducie.
Once more Mrs. Floyd-Rosney flushed unaccountably, but she said,
lightly, “I perceive that you are profoundly versed in that most
difficult science, the knowledge of human nature.”
“You do me too much honor,” he replied, looking not at her but at his
cigar as he flipped off the ash. “It requires a very superficial
observation to discern that she is as open and undesigning as the day.”
“For my own part I think the day is particularly enigmatic,” she
retorted with her scathing little laugh, that yet was so sweetly keyed.
“I think it has something in reserve, especially obnoxious for us.”
“So it seems that you, too, are a profound observer, and that
meteorological phenomena are your province,” her husband ponderously
adopted her method of persiflage. Then he added pointedly, “I beg you to
observe it was not I that initiated the personal tone of this talk.”
He rose with his pervasive suggestion of a lordly ill-humor, which
enabled one to realize how grievous it was to be alone with him and
privileged to note the workings of his disaffected and censorious
moods. He strolled casually off, and began to talk at some little
distance to one of the several passengers about the price of cotton and
the disposition of the planters to hold it back from the market for a
rise.
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney and Mr. Ducie were left seated near each other amidst
a cluster of vacant chairs. With that peculiar clarity of the twilight
air when there is no mist every detail of this limited world was visible
with special distinctness, as if there were no insufficiency of light,
but one looked through amber glasses;--the slate-tinted lowering sky,
the ceaseless silent flow of the vast murky river, the high bank so far
above the water at this low stage that the grassy levee, an elevation of
prominent emphasis in so level a country, was far withdrawn and
invisible from this point of view. There was on the bank a swamper’s hut
perched on tall grotesque supports to escape inundation in the rise of
the river, which gave some idea of the height of the flood-level in
times of high water. The red glow from the open door of the cabin pulsed
like the fluctuating fires of an opal, and thus intimated that a mist
was insidiously beginning to rise. There was no other token of life in
the riparian borders,--no token on the broad spread of the river, save
that a tiny craft, a dugout, was slowly making its way across the
tortured currents,--seemingly an insignificant object, for who could
imagine it was freighted with grim Fate? The moment was of peculiarly
lonely intimations and she spoke abruptly.
“By your leave I shall make the conversation even more personal.” Then,
with an intent gaze, “Where is your brother?--and what is he doing?”
Adrian Ducie flushed deeply, looking both affronted and indignant. Then
he replied in his wonted vein: “You do not know but that I am my
brother,--you could not distinguish one of us from the other to save
your life.”
“Oh, yes, the difference is obvious to me,” she exclaimed in agitated
tones. “Besides, Randal would have spoken,--he would have greeted me.
When you evidently did not recognize me I was sure that you were the one
I had never seen.”
“Doubtless, Randal would have rejoiced to offer you the compliments of
the season.” He could not altogether maintain his self-control and his
voice had a tense note of satire.
She cast upon him a quick upbraiding glance. Then, as if with an
afterthought: “I am aware that you must resent my course toward Randal.”
“Oh, no,--not at all,--though it would scarcely be courteous to say that
I congratulate him upon your inconstancy. But when a lady plays a man
out within a fortnight of their anticipated marriage with no reason or
provocation, his relatives can hardly be expected to lament his escape.
Pardon my blunt phrase for its sincerity, since I am no artist in words,
and this discussion has taken me by surprise.”
She flushed hotly, feeling arraigned for having introduced the
inappropriate subject. Yet she persisted: “Oh, you do not understand,”
she said in increasing agitation. “You haven’t the temperament, I can
see, to make subtle deductions.”
“Well, if Randal has such a temperament as you seem disposed to credit
him with,--or to discredit him with, if I may appraise the endowment,--I
am happy to say, in reply to your kind inquiries, that his subtlety has
not affected his health or spirits. He is in fine fettle and as happy as
he deserves to be. As to the rest, he is much absorbed in business,--in
fact, he is in a fair way to make a fortune. He is of a speculative turn
and has always been peculiarly lucky. Randal is something of a gambler.”
“No, never,” she interrupted hastily, “Randal was never a gambler.”
He revolted at her tone of defense and arrogations of superior
knowledge. He could not restrain a smile of sarcastic rebuke as he
retorted: “Oh, of course I meant only in a commercial way. He is bold
and takes chances that would deter many men. He has great initiative.”
“We have been abroad so long that I had lost sight of him altogether,”
she said in embarrassment.
The subject was infinitely distasteful to him but its sensitive
avoidance would seem a disparagement of his slighted brother. His
fraternal affection nerved him to complete the response she had
elicited.
“Randal has made a ‘ten strike’ several times, and has a long lease of
some fine land that this year has produced a stunning crop of cotton. He
has had a rare chance, too, to buy a standing crop, and, of course, he
took it in. The planter had shot a man,--very unpopular affair,--and had
to quit the country.”
Even as he spoke he realized how meager were these scanty graces of
opportunity in comparison with Floyd-Rosney’s magnificent fortune, but
he would not seem to recognize the fact. He would not minimize his
brother’s lot in life as too small for her consideration, since, with an
avid curiosity and interest, she had sought information.
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was silent for a moment. She had achieved a startling
and florid success in her brilliant marriage, a girl of very limited
means. But this temperate, conventional atmosphere, the opportunities of
people of moderate resources and high lineage, was her native element,
and somehow it exerted a recurrent fascination upon her at the moment,
it had the charm of old associations forever relinquished. The joy of
effort, of laborious acquisition, the splendor of superior capacity, of
trying conclusions with Fate could never be hers to share, but she felt
it was fine to ride at Fortune with lance in rest as in the jousts of
some great tourney. She listened wistfully to the simple annals of
agricultural ventures so familiar to her early experience, with the
sentiment of gazing through barred gates,--she, to whom all the world
was open.
“I am glad to know that Randal is well and happy,” she said at length.
“You may think it strange that I should introduce this topic with
you,--and you not even an acquaintance.”
She paused to give him space for a disclaimer, but he was rancorous on
this theme,--he would not make it easy for her. “No, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,”
he said gravely, “nothing that you could do would seem strange to me.”
She was accustomed to deference, apart from the sullen tyranny of her
husband, and this experience of conjugal life was only within the last
five years. She scarcely knew how to dispense with the phrase, the
smile, the bow, which, however little genuine, respectfully annotated
and acquiesced in her discourse. Adrian Ducie’s blunt rebuke,--it did
not affect her as discourtesy, for it was too sincere--his obvious
hatred of her, not only of her course, his absolute lack of confidence
or approval, the impossibility of winning him even to a modicum of
neutrality baffled her. She was losing her composure,--the threads of
her intention. Her eyes, looking at him wistfully, large and lustrous,
despite the closing dusk, pleaded with him for help. When the sound of
the dynamo began to pulse on the stillness, the electric lights flared
out on the deck as well as in the saloon, and showed that those eyes
were full of tears. He met their glance calmly with unconcern. He had
not caused her grief. This evident attitude of mind flung her back on
her pride, her own individuality. In the supreme crisis of her life she
was arguing within herself, she had exerted her feminine prerogative of
choice, and this in the manner that best suited her. He should not sit
in judgment thus on the justice of her decisions, on her line of
conduct, and she wondered at her meekness that had permitted him to take
this position, that had made his standpoint possible. She sought to
rally her self-control, and then she said, in her clear-cut enunciation:
“Thank you very much,--the idea occurred to me when I saw you this
afternoon that I had here an opportunity which I have long sought.”
She glanced about among the shadows, bulkier, blacker, because of the
keenness of the electric glare, as if she feared observation or
interruption. The piano in the saloon was beginning to strum “Oh, rosy
dreams!” with a disregard of accidentals calculated to give the
nightmare to the fellow-passengers of the performer. The perfume of
cigars floated down from the hurricane deck--Ducie’s was dead in his
hand. A dreary cow on the lower deck seemed to have just discovered that
she was in process of shipment and was mournfully lowing for her calf a
hundred miles or more up-stream. Deep guttural voices of roustabouts
rose in jocose altercation for a moment from the depths of the boiler
deck, and then all was silent again.
“I have long sought an opportunity to restore to Randal one of his
gifts, overlooked at the time that I returned the others. I found it
afterward, and was embarrassed,--shocked, in fact----” she paused
abruptly.
“There was the registered mail, or the express, I suppose,” he suggested
coolly.
“I wanted to explain.” She felt her face flame. “It was of intrinsic
value other than sentimental.”
“----which was great,” he interpolated.
“And,” she sturdily held to her purpose, “I did not wish him to
misinterpret my motive in keeping it.”
“You could not write to him?”
“Oh, no, I could not write to him.”
“I can easily understand that,” he fleered, full of vicarious rancor.
“It is a bauble in the shape of a key--it is set with a large diamond
and a circle of rubies. It was understood between us as the key of his
heart,” she could but falter at the revelation of the forlorn little
sentimentalities, shallow of root and wilted in the sun of a sudden
blaze of prosperity. “And I kept it,” she quavered.
“Randal would never think of the diamond and rubies,” he said, reaching,
indeed, the limit. “You have too many jewels, doubtless, for your
motive to be misconstrued.”
There was a moment of dead silence. “He could never have said that,” she
replied, in a voice that trembled with anger. “He is not in the least
like you. I hate you for looking like him.”
“Thank you for dispensing with ceremony and telling me this on so short
an acquaintance. It is more than evident that you like neither of us
over-much. May I ask what are the commands you design to lay upon me,
for if you have no more to say I should be glad to withdraw, with your
kind permission.”
“Only this,--that you will take this valuable which I chance to have
with me and give it to him,--explaining that there was no sentimental
motive in my retention of it, only the accident of overlooking it at a
moment of great commotion.”
He remembered that this event was the famous nuptials that filled the
countryside with _éclat_, and the metropolitan newspapers with the names
of the guests of distinction and the description of their jewels and
gowns. To him, to whom the journals had been sent in France, and to his
brother, this tawdry phase of display cheapened the marriage and lowered
it, and that it was the splendid superstructure on the ruins of the
heart of the jilted lover did not serve to further commend it.
“I wonder that you remembered to return any of the little trinkets,” he
remarked. “But, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, you must forgive me for declining to
repair your negligence. I really cannot undertake your commission. The
relations between my brother and me are peculiarly tender. All my life I
can remember almost in every scene that other self, from the time when
we were little toddlers in our red coats and toboggan caps.”
He paused, for he saw, at the moment, almost with the distinctness of
actuality, the swift little image of himself and its replica in
childhood days, scuttling about among the vacant chairs of the deserted
deck, snow-balling each other in juvenile joviality in some forgotten
winter. He caught himself and went on. “My brother is dear to me and I
to him, and I will not allow the shadow you cast to come between us.”
“And you will do nothing in the matter?” Her voice was keen with its
plaint of surprise and disappointment.
“Oh, you will easily find another emissary,” he said, rising and
standing with one hand on the back of his chair. “Permit me to suggest
that you give the thing to Miss Dean. She, evidently, is very well
acquainted with Randal. Tell her that it is the key to his heart, and,
perhaps, she may unlock it.”
And with that he lifted his hat and left her.