A CONFUSION IN COVENANTS
During the next morning Harry Sheraton galloped down to the village
after the morning's mail. On his return he handed me two letters. One
was from Captain Matthew Stevenson, dated at Fort Henry, and informed me
that he had been transferred to the East from Jefferson Barracks, in
company with other officers. He hinted at many changes in the
disposition of the Army of late. His present purpose in writing, as he
explained, was to promise us that, in case he came our way, he would
certainly look us up.
This letter I put aside quickly, for the other seemed to me to have a
more immediate importance. I glanced it over, and presently found
occasion to request a word or so with Colonel Sheraton. We withdrew to
his library, and then I handed him the letter.
"This," I explained, "is from Jennings & Jennings, my father's agents at
Huntington, on whose advice he went into his coal speculations."
"I see. Their advice seems to have been rather disastrous."
"At first it seemed so," I answered, "but now they advise me by no means
to allow foreclosure to be completed if it can be avoided. The lands are
worth many times the price paid for them."
"I see--and they have some sort of an offer as well--eh?"
"A half loaf is better than no bread," I assented. "I think I ought to
go out there and examine all this in detail."
"But one thing I don't understand about this," began Colonel Sheraton,
"your father's partner, Colonel Meriwether, was on joint paper with him.
What did he say to you when you saw him?"
"Nothing," I replied. "We did not discuss the matter."
"What? That was the sole reason why you went out to see him!"
"Other matters came up," said I. "This was not brought up at all between
us."
Colonel Sheraton looked at me keenly. "I must admit, Mr. Cowles," said
he, slowly weighing his words, that of late certain things have seemed
more than a little strange to me. If you will allow me so to express
myself, there is in my own house, since you came, a sort of atmosphere
of indefiniteness. Now, why was it you did not take up these matters
with Colonel Meriwether? Certainly they were important to you; and under
the circumstances they have a certain interest to myself. What are you
trying to cover up?"
"Nothing from you of a business nature, sir; and nothing from Miss Grace
of any nature which I think she ought to know."
He turned on me swiftly. "Young man, what do you propose to do in regard
to my daughter? I confess I have contemplated certain plans in your
benefit. I feel it is time to mention these matters with you."
[Illustration: ON HIS WAY BACK HOME JOHN FINDS HIS MOTHER AND GRACE, WHO
HAVE COME TO MEET HIM]
[Illustration: JOHN'S MOTHER HEARS THAT HIS MISSION HAS BEEN A FAILURE
"I'VE FAILED. MOTHER!"]
"It is time," I answered. "But if you please, it seems to me Miss Grace
and I should first take them up together. Has she spoken to you in any
way that might lead you to think she would prefer our engagement to be
broken?"
"No, sir. There has only been a vagueness and indefiniteness which I did
not like."
"Had my affairs not mended, Colonel Sheraton, I could not have blamed
any of you for breaking the engagement. If conditions prove to be
practically the same now as then, it is she who must decide her course
and mine."
"That is perfectly honorable. I have no criticism to offer. I have only
her happiness at heart."
"Then, if you please, sir, since I am rather awkwardly situated here, I
should like very much to see Miss Grace this morning."
He bowed in his lofty way and left me. Within a half hour a servant
brought me word that Miss Grace would see me in the drawing-room.
She was seated in a wide, low chair near the sunny window, half hid by
the leafy plants that grew in the boxes there. She was clad in loose
morning wear over ample crinoline, her dark hair drawn in broad bands
over the temples, half confined by a broad gold comb, save two long
curls which hung down her neck at either side. It seemed to me she was
very thin--thinner and darker than ever. Under her wide eyes were heavy
circles. She held out her hand to me, and it lay cold and lifeless in my
own. I made some pleasant talk of small matters as I might, and soon as
I could arrived at the business of the letter I had received.
"Perhaps I have been a little hurried, after all, in classing myself as
an absolute pauper," I explained as she read. "You see, I must go out
there and look into these things."
"Going away again?" She looked up at me, startled.
"For a couple of weeks. And when I come back, Miss Grace--"
So now I was up to the verge of that same old, definite question.
She sat up in the chair as though pulling herself together in some
sudden resolve, and looked me straight in the face.
"Jack," she said, "why should we wait?"
"To be sure," said I. "Only I do not want you to marry a pauper if any
act of my own can make him better than a pauper in the meantime."
"You temporize," she said, bitterly. "You are not glad. Yet you came to
me only last spring, and you--"
"I come to you now, Miss Grace," I said.
"Ah, what a difference between then and now!" she sighed.
For a time we could find nothing fit to say. At last I was forced to
bring up one thing I did not like to mention.
"Miss Grace," said I, seating myself beside her, "last night, or rather
this morning, after midnight, I found a man prowling around in the
yard."
She sprang up as though shocked, her face gray, her eyes full of terror.
"You have told!" she exclaimed, "My father knows that Captain Orme--"
It was my own turn to feel surprise, which perhaps I showed.
"I have told no one. It seemed to me that first I ought to come to you
and ask you about this. Why was Orme there?"
She stared at me. "He told me he would come back some time," she
admitted at length. All the while she was fighting with herself,
striving, exactly as Orme had done, to husband her powers for an
impending struggle. "You see," she added, "he has secret business all
over the country--I will own I believe him to be in the secret service
of the inner circle of a number of Southern congressmen and business
men. He is in with the Southern circle--of New Orleans, of
Charleston--Washington. For this reason he could not always choose his
hours of going and coming."
"Does your father know of his peculiar hours?"
"I presume so, of course."
"I saw a light at a window," I began, "whose window I do not know,
doubtless some servant's. It could not have been a signal?"
"A _signal_? What do you mean? Do you suspect me of putting out a beacon
light for a cheap night adventure with some man? Do you expect me to
tolerate that sort of thing from you?"
"I ask you to tolerate nothing," I said. "I am not in the habit of
suspecting ladies. But I ask you if you can explain the light on that
side of the house."
"Jack," she said, flinging out a hand, "forgive me. I admit that Captain
Orme and I carried on a bit of a flirtation, after he came back--after
he had told me about you. But why should that--why, he did not know you
were here."
"No," said I, dryly, "I don't think he did. I am glad to know that you
found something to amuse you in my absence."
"Let us not speak of amusements in the absence of each other," she said
bitterly. "Think of your own. But when you came back, it was all as it
was last spring. I could love no other man but you, Jack, and you know
it. After all, if we are quits, let us stay quits, and forgive, and
forget--let us forget, Jack."
I sat looking at her as she turned to me, pleading, imploring in her
face, her gesture.
"Jack," she went on, "a woman needs some one to take care of her, to
love her. I want you to take care of me--you wouldn't throw me over for
just a little thing--when all the time you yourself--"
"The light shone for miles across the valley," said I.
"Precisely, and that was how he happened to come up, I do not doubt. He
thought we were still up about the place. My father has always told him
to make this his home, and not to go to the tavern. They are friends
politically, in many ways, as you know."
"The light then was that of some servant?"
"Certainly it was. I know nothing of it. It was an accident, and yet you
blame me as though--why, it was all accident that you met Captain Orme.
Tell me, Jack, did you quarrel? What did he tell you?"
"Many things. He is no fit man for you to know, nor for any woman."
"Do I not know that? I will never see him again."
"No, he will never come back here again, that is fairly sure. He has
promised that; and he asked me to promise one thing, by the way."
"What was that?"
"To keep my promise with you. He asked me to marry you! Why?"
Infinite wit of woman! What chance have we men against such weapons? It
was coquetry she forced to her face, and nothing else, when she
answered: "So, then, he was hard hit, after all! I did not know that.
How tender of him, to wish me married to another than himself! The
conceit of you men is something wondrous."
"Mr. Orme was so kind as to inform me that I was a gentleman, and
likewise a very great ass."
"Did you promise him to keep your promise, Jack?" She put both her hands
on mine as it lay on the chair arm. Her eyes looked into mine straight
and full. It would have taken more imagination than mine to suspect the
slightest flickering in their lids. "Jack," she murmured over and over
again. "I love you! I have never loved any other man."
"So now," I resumed, "I have come to you to tell you of all these
things, and to decide definitely and finally in regard to our next
plans."
"But you believe me, Jack? You do promise to keep your promise? You do
love me?"
"I doubt no woman whom I wed," I answered. "I shall be gone for two or
three weeks. As matters are at this moment it would be folly for either
of us to do more than let everything stand precisely as it is until we
have had time to think. I shall come back, Miss Grace, and I shall ask
your answer."
"Jack, I'm sure of that," she murmured. "It is a grand thing for a woman
to have the promise of a man who knows what a promise is."
I winced at this, as I had winced a thousand times at similar thrusts
unconsciously delivered by so many. "No," said I, "I think Orme is
right. I am only a very stupid ass."
She reached out her hand. I felt her fingers close cold and hard on
mine, as though loth to let me go. I kissed her fingers and withdrew,
myself at least very glad to be away.
I retired presently to my room to arrange my portmanteaus for an early
journey. And there, filling up one-half of the greater valise, was a
roll of hide, ragged about its edge. I drew it out, and spread it flat
upon the bed before me, whitened and roughened with bone, reddened with
blood, written on with rude stylus, bearing certain words which all the
time, day and night, rang, yes, and sang, in my brain.
"_I, John Cowles--I, Ellen Meriwether--take thee, for better, for
worse--till death--_" I saw her name, _E-l-l-e-n._