Where the battle was fought

By Charles Egbert Craddock

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Title: Where the battle was fought

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock

Release date: June 27, 2025 [eBook #76397]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1884

Credits: Peter Becker, Laura Natal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT ***






                               WHERE THE

                           BATTLE WAS FOUGHT

                                A Novel

                                  BY

                        CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

                AUTHOR OF “IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS”




                            FIFTH EDITION.




                                BOSTON

                          TICKNOR AND COMPANY

                                 1886




                        _Copyright, 1884_,
                    BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY.

                      _All Rights Reserved._




                               CONTENTS.

                                                  PAGE
 CHAPTER I.	                                     1
 CHAPTER II.	                                    23
 CHAPTER III.	                                    45
 CHAPTER IV.	                                    61
 CHAPTER V.	                                    89
 CHAPTER VI.	                                   116
 CHAPTER VII.	                                   128
 CHAPTER VIII.	                                   142
 CHAPTER IX.	                                   154
 CHAPTER X.	                                   174
 CHAPTER XI.	                                   196
 CHAPTER XII.	                                   223
 CHAPTER XIII.	                                   242
 CHAPTER XIV.	                                   256
 CHAPTER XV.	                                   274
 CHAPTER XVI.	                                   283
 CHAPTER XVII.	                                   310
 CHAPTER XVIII.	                                   319
 CHAPTER XIX.	                                   328
 CHAPTER XX.	                                   344
 CHAPTER XXI.	                                   370
 CHAPTER XXII.	                                   381
 CHAPTER XXIII.	                                   399
 CHAPTER XXIV.	                                   411




                     WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT.




                              CHAPTER I.


IT is said that a certain old battlefield in Tennessee is haunted in
these peaceful times. Often there comes out of the dark silence the
sudden wild blare of the bugle, chilling the blood of distant fireside
groups. Then the earth throbs with the roll of drums and the measured
tread of martial hosts. A mysterious clangor, as of the clash of arms,
fills the air. A flash--it is the glinting of bayonets above the grim
earthworks which still loom up against the vague horizon.

And yet there are those who can hear, in the military music and the
tumultuous voices of victory and defeat, only the rush of the wind
across the vast historic plain; who can see, in the gleaming phantoms
that hold the works, only the mist and the moon; who can feel, in the
tremor of the earth beneath a charging column, only the near approach
of the railway train thundering through the cavernous limestone country.

By wintry daylight the battlefield is still more ghastly. Gray with the
pallid crab-grass, which so eagerly usurps the place of last summer’s
crops, it stretches out on every side to meet the bending sky. The
armies that successively encamped upon it did not leave a tree for
miles, but here and there thickets have sprung up since the war, and
bare and black they intensify the gloom of the landscape. The turf in
these segregated spots is never turned. Beneath the branches are rows
of empty, yawning graves where the bodies of soldiers were temporarily
buried. Here, most often, their spirits walk, and no hire can induce
the hardiest ploughman to break the ground. Thus the owner of the land
is fain to concede these acres to his ghostly tenants, who pay no rent.

A great brick house, dismantled and desolate, rises starkly above the
dismantled desolation of the plain. Despite the tragic aspect of this
building, it offers a certain grotesque suggestion--it might seem in
the mad ostentation of its proportions a vast caricature of succumbed
prosperities. There is no embowering shrubbery about it, no inclosing
fence. It is an integrant part of the surrounding ruin. Its cupola
was riddled by a cannonade, and the remnants shake ominously with
every gust of wind; there are black fissures in the stone steps and
pavements, where shells exploded; many of the windows are shattered
and boarded up. In others, however, the glass is intact, and through
those nearest at hand John Estwicke, standing for the first time on the
long, broad portico one afternoon in 1871, caught the genial flicker
of fire-light and the glow of crimson curtains. The whole place was
grimly incongruous with the idea of a home, and as he was ushered into
a wide, bare hall, with glimpses of uninhabited, unfurnished rooms on
either hand, there was intimated something of those more potent terrors
with which it was instinct--the pursuing influences of certain grisly
deeds of trust, for the battlefield, the grewsome thickets, the house
itself, all were mortgaged. The next moment he was in an atmosphere
of goodly domestic cheerfulness, heightened by coloring so vivid
and warm that it seemed to pulsate. A flaring, be-flowered, velvet
carpet covered the floor of a large, square room; the crimson curtains
were long and expansive; the clumsy, old-fashioned, brass fender and
andirons glittered with the reflection of the blazing logs; now and
then a red gleam was evoked from the time-darkened mahogany chairs,
upholstered with thread-bare black hair-cloth which showed here and
there the canvas beneath, for all the furniture was well worn, being
scanty relics of ante-bellum days, saved by some miracle in the general
destruction of the great battle. He caught a bizarre glimpse of himself
in a huge fractured mirror with a showy, gilded frame, which hung above
the mantel-piece, and of his host rising suddenly and turning to meet
him.

“My dear sir,” exclaimed General Vayne, with a certain rotund emphasis,
“I am happy to see you!”

As he crossed the room and offered his hand to his guest--his left
hand, for his right sleeve was empty--there was something in his
manner which, despite the impressiveness of his fine proportions,
his soldierly gait, his kindling enthusiastic eyes, and the grave
earnestness of his florid face, savored strongly of the ludicrous. He
bore himself with a noble dignity which might well have befitted Julius
Caesar, but which consorted absurdly enough with the uncouthness of
the bare ruin where he lived; with his hunted condition, never out of
sound of the hue and cry of his debts; with the well-worn seams of his
coat--a suggestive contrast to his perfect and immaculate linen, that
in making the most of its virtues only offered another annotation upon
the history of his struggle between gentility and poverty. There was
evident cordiality in his welcome, but it was accorded pre-eminently in
his official character as host. After this the murmured civility with
which the introduction of Estwicke was acknowledged by the General’s
slender young daughter, and the beaming amiability of an old lady, his
sister, who sat on the opposite side of the fireplace, seemed a trifle
irresponsible.

“My brother has told me,” said Mrs. Kirby, her short gray-streaked
curls waving with an animation that threatened to dislodge the little
old-fashioned side-combs which held them from her plump, benignant,
wrinkled face, “that you are a relative, a third cousin, of our
good friend the Reverend Edward Estwicke--regret to hear of his
neuralgia--so sad!”

“An admirable man,” said General Vayne. He fixed his dark earnest eyes
upon the fire, and with his adroit left hand, he reflectively stroked
his long, gray mustache.

“I have never known, sir,” he continued, weightily, “an intellect more
powerful, acute, and analytic than that of that learned and eloquent
divine.”

The relative of the “learned divine” looked at his host with a
momentary touch of surprise, for he knew his cousin only as a dull and
droning old preacher in an obscure little town in West Virginia. He had
not the advantage of General Vayne’s moral magnifying-glass. Through
this unique lens life loomed up as rather a large affair. In the
rickety court-house in the village of Chattalla, five miles out there
to the south, General Vayne beheld a temple of justice. He translated
an office-holder as the sworn servant of the people. The State was this
great commonwealth, and its seal a proud escutcheon. A fall in cotton
struck him as a blow to the commerce of the world. From an adverse
political fortune he augured the swift ruin of the country. Abstract
ideas were to him as potent elements in human affairs as acts of the
Legislature, and in the midst of the general collapse, his large ideals
still retained their pristine proportions.

“I am afraid you have had a cold drive,” said Mrs. Kirby, beaming on
the visitor. “Our climate has changed since the war. It is much more
severe.”

“The loss of the trees, perhaps,” suggested the stranger.

“Perhaps,” said the old lady, with her gurgling laughter, “there may
be something in the superstition that the Yankees forgot their weather
and left it behind them. And now the malaria has gone--I wonder where!
Probably we have to thank the Federal army and their cold weather for
that also.”

General Vayne lifted his eyes. “I thank the Federal army for--nothing,”
declared the unreconstructed, bitterly.

There was an unaccountable astonishment,--more--constraint in the
visitor’s face. He remained stiffly silent, and one sufficiently
observant might have caught in his manner an intimation that he held
himself on the defensive.

Miss Vayne was not sufficiently observant. She laughed out suddenly
with girlish effusion, and as she changed her position, the light was
full upon her delicately fair complexion, her rich brown hair, and her
shabby black silk dress. She turned her joyous eyes upon the pallid
heartbreak of that blighted plain. “To make light of your obligations,
papa,” she cried, “doesn’t make away with them.”

The gesture sharpened the frivolous satire, but the stranger’s
attention had not detached itself from General Vayne, at whom he was
looking with a fiery red spark in his challenging brown eyes. This
was more in accord with an alert aggressiveness habitually expressed
in his face than with his suave reserved manner and his smooth and
punctilious observance of the behests of polite society. His polish was
like that of steel--its pleasing lustre does not deceive as to the
stern possibilities of the weapon or the temper of the blade. He had a
firmly moulded chin, a short upper lip, and excellent teeth. There was
a dash of red in his close-clipped brown hair, and his whiskers and
mustache were of a lighter tinge. His hands were smooth and white, but
his face was darkened and roughened by sun and wind. He looked about
thirty years of age; he was tall and heavily built, and, like all the
men of this region, a military training was very marked in his bearing,
despite his civilian dress.

“Ah well,” said General Vayne, waving the war, the Federal army, and
the nation generally into a diminishing distance with his expressive
left hand, “I have--a--dismissed them--from consideration. Let them go!
Let them go! Nowadays I am no wrangler. I leave all questions of public
policy as a bone of contention for the Political Dogs to gnaw.”

His method of enunciation might suggest to the literary mind the
profuse use of capital letters.

“I am, and have always been, strictly tolerant,” continued General
Vayne,--“conservative in my views. Conservatism, sir,” declared
the tolerant man, with an extreme look in his eye, “is the moral
centripetal force that curbs the flighty world.”

Mrs. Kirby’s interest in politics had diminished since the war, during
which it had a phenomenal growth like Jonah’s gourd. Now an absorption
in personal matters flourished in its stead.

“I hope you find your stay in the neighborhood pleasant, Captain
Estwicke--so glad,” she said. “Of course you’ve been to Chattalla.
Charming, charming town! I am a visitor here myself. I haven’t before
seen my brother since the eve of Shiloh--yes, since Shiloh. I shall
remain some months with him--so delightful to come back! And is it
business or pleasure that brings you to Tennessee?”

This old lady possessed an unbridled imagination. She fancied it
possible that people came to Tennessee for pleasure.

Once more there was that peculiar look of surprise and constraint upon
Estwicke’s face. He hesitated in doubt and embarrassment. It did not
escape her attention this time, but she misinterpreted it as a look of
inquiry, so she smilingly reiterated with great distinctness, “Did you
come to Tennessee for _business_ or _pleasure_?”

“I came to join my regiment,” he replied, tersely--evasively it may be
considered.

This information exploded like a bomb, leaving a sulphurous silence
behind it.

“Ah-h-h!” exclaimed General Vayne, in a tone intended to express
assent, but which was like a prolonged note of surprised comprehension.
He appreciated all at once how it was that he had mistaken this man
for an ex-rebel captain. His letter of introduction from the Reverend
Edward Estwicke had described him broadly as “Captain Estwicke of
Virginia,” and when General Vayne had called upon him at the house of
a mutual friend near Chattalla, where the officer was spending the
last few days of his leave, no allusion as it chanced was made to
the stubborn fact of his regiment, stationed at the city of Marston
twenty miles away. He had subtly impressed General Vayne as a man of
an inordinate personal pride and an extreme sensitiveness. To such a
man the perception that he has accepted an invitation extended under a
mistake can hardly be pleasant. General Vayne, versed in fine issues
of internal dissension, realized how the annoyance must be aggravated
by the stranger’s consciousness that he was secretly regarded as a
renegade, for he could but know how slightly his host would esteem the
replication that he was a representative of the loyal South which had
borne martyrdom between two fires.

General Vayne, however, held hospitality as the first element of
religion, and it was abhorrent to him that a guest should by any
mischievous mischance be rendered uncomfortable in his house. But he
was not helplessly dismayed; he thought himself possessed of tact
equal to any emergency, and he demonstrated this claim by bolting
incontinently from the subject. The old lady beamed upon the equivocal
captain with smiling eagerness to make amends. The girl’s face was
grave, but in her luminous eyes lurked a freakish delight in the
whole misapprehension. Captain Estwicke was not in the habit of being
considered amusing, but if he inwardly resented it he made no sign.

General Vayne had returned to the loss of the timber. “The aspect of
the country would be almost prairie-like but for that elevation and
those frowning redoubts,” he said, waving his hand toward the western
windows through which the huge earthworks were visible. “There are very
peculiar scenic effects here now and then--very peculiar, sir, indeed.
A horseman there near Fort Despair, will loom up gigantic”--lowering
his voice impressively--“mysterious, wonderful. He seems a bit of
materialized poetry. He looks far more like a gallant knight pricking
across the plain in quest of noble adventure, than”--effective
_diminuendo_--“a ploughman going out to bed up land for cotton.”

“Is that the work we used to call Fort Despair?” exclaimed Estwicke,
as if with sudden recognition. Something strained and unnatural in
his voice struck the girl’s attention. She noted too the look in his
eyes--at once eager and shrinking--as he leaned his elbow upon the
worn arm of the chair and bent forward to the window. Little as she
knew of him she knew it was an uncharacteristic look. She did not
understand it. She only apprehended the emotion that swayed him as one
groping in the dark is conscious of the proximity of an unaccustomed,
it may be a fearful presence.

“Fort Despair,” repeated General Vayne, absorbed in reminiscence--he
had lost his right arm there. “Appropriately named, too, it seems, even
at this late day.”

“Ah, I know!” cried the stranger passionately. “I feel its meaning!
Every weed that stirs in the wind is voiced with a terrible suggestion.”

Then he seemed to check himself. He leaned back in his chair and said
no more. He was panting slightly; his face was flushed; a sharp pain
was expressed in his eyes.

“The man,” thought Marcia, watching him in a tumult of feeling,
half sympathy, half inquisitive amaze, “has a morbid horror of that
battlefield. And a reason for it!”

General Vayne was fighting the day over again. He saw his brigade in
line of battle; he was canvassing once more the problematic strength of
the opposing force; he was regretting again, as he had often regretted,
that he had not disregarded his orders and pushed on through the
timber; if his arm had been spared him one half hour longer! How could
he notice the stranger now; he had no thought even of his guest!

And Mrs. Kirby was thoroughly tired of the war, and welcomed the
opening of the door and the entrance of other visitors, a few
middle-aged people of a decorously dull aspect, and, like their
entertainers, so provincial that they were not even aware of it. This
deplorable state of ignorance has, however, its compensations. With
full faith they indorsed the old-fashioned customs that had always
prevailed among them, and were free from that subtle self-distrust
which hampers many very worthy people, who pay this price for the
knowledge that they do not know everything.

In the general change of position Estwicke found himself beside the
young lady, and nearer the window than before. Through it he could see
the sinking sun, a great red globe, resting a moment on the parapet of
Fort Despair. Far away a vertical line of light was drawn sharply upon
the sad purple of the distant hills. The tapering shaft pierced the
pale saffron belt above the horizon, and at its summit was a bright
flake of crimson. It was the flag-staff, and the flying flag above the
National Cemetery across the river. Certainly this was a grewsome place.

And now the sun was gone. The shadows thronged the battlefield. The
haunted thickets were all a-shiver, and the viewless wind marched over
the plain. The cheerful room seemed a flout, a derisive mockery, to the
woful scene without.

“How we forget!” he thought. “How we forget!”

For the interior was very cheerful; the flames roared up the chimney;
the shattered mirror reflected the homelike group, seated in a wide
semicircle before the fire; the flush of the western sky was still
bright on the girl’s fair face, and there were golden glintings in
her brown hair, as if belated sunbeams were entangled in its midst.
A smile hovered about the curves of her delicate lips; her brilliant
hazel eyes looked out from the tender shadows of long black lashes;
even the genteel poverty expressed in her attire had its gracious,
poetic aspects; her standing linen collar, turning slightly outward
at the edges, might seem the calyx of some lovely flower as her white
neck rose from it, and the plainness of her shabby black silk dress,
of which the only ornament was a knot of black lace at the throat,
accented all the pliant graces of her figure.

He could not understand the tranquil joyousness of her expression.
She was to him the most striking anomaly of the anomalous place--so
manifestly happy, so dominantly contradicting its persistently
reiterated doom of death and decay; so evidently untouched by any
influence of the high tragedy of these surroundings. Clearly she must
lack feeling, sensibility. He looked speculatively at her, as he sat
leaning his elbow on the stiff, angular arm of the chair, and with his
right hand laid meditatively upon his dark red whiskers. Presently he
recognized the appropriateness of beginning a conversation, and said,
at a venture,--

“You have no near neighbors here?”

“No,” she replied, “we have all the world to ourselves. Do you see that
black line?” she added, turning her eyes toward the horizon, where the
sombre hills, miles away, met the darkening sky, “that is the boundary
of the world. You may think there’s something on the other side,
because you don’t know the country; but there isn’t.”

For a moment he was silent. Then he laughed a little.

“I had no idea that I was to meet a distinguished astronomer, with a
new planet,” he said. “It has an orbit of its own, of course, and is
governed by its own laws.”

“That’s the way with everybody,” she declared. “People are always
talking about ‘the world,’ and they only mean the few other people and
the few places that they know.”

“I perceive,” said Estwicke, gravely, “that you are a close reasoner.
The capacity for inductive ratiocination, Miss Vayne, is the noblest
faculty of the human mind. Let me congratulate you on its possession.
Will you reason some more!”

He had been a trifle in doubt as to how she might receive this
pleasantry at her expense, but she laughed gleefully.

“Oh, I will reason with pleasure if you will suggest a topic.”

“You seem pretty expert,” said Estwicke. “Do you spend much time at it?”

“At what?”

“At reasoning.”

“Oh no,” she cried; “I haven’t the leisure for such an elegant
recreation.”

Her eyes were fixed upon him in delighted anticipation of what he
would say next. It occurred to him that it was not often she had an
experience like this; that her world did not abound with people who
“amused” her.

“I should think you might indulge occasionally,” he said. “When, for
instance, your father is away, and your brothers”--he glanced across
the room at a row of small boys, stiff in their best clothes and their
company manners--“are at school, and you have your little planet all to
yourself, you might find time to reason considerably.”

“Oh, but they don’t go to school; I teach them at home, and there’s no
reasoning with _them_--nor with housekeeping either.”

He knew that General Vayne had been for some years a widower, and he
understood now that she presided over the household. This must involve
heavy cares. She was very elastic. The Juggernaut car evidently made no
impression.

Already he could divine that the boys were taught at home to avoid the
expense of the academy and in deference to their father’s prejudice
against the free school, and that the whole system of domestic
education was designated in General Vayne’s magniloquent nomenclature
“Retrenchment.”

“Teach me to reason,” said Estwicke. “I assure you I am amenable.”

“You have a dignified idea of my curriculum. I shouldn’t try to teach
you to reason,” she cried delightedly. “If you were my pupil you would
find yourself laboring to distinguish between the first principles of
geography--North and South.”

His face hardened, but he laughed and made a feint of throwing up both
hands. “I surrender!” he exclaimed.

She looked at him with a sudden grave intentness. However, she said
nothing, for the others were rising to repair to the dining-room.
There the conversation was general, until, after a time, a rubicund,
apoplectic, eager, unwieldly old gentleman of the name of Ridgeway
began to preponderate, while the heavy faces of his auditors bore
witness to the weight of his discourse. He talked of different
processes of agriculture; of new labor-saving machines; most
discerningly of the quality of land, and it was only when he began
to take a morbid pleasure in humiliating himself and his hearers by
comparing Tennessee soil to the alluvial richness of the buckshot
cotton lands of Mississippi that General Vayne came swiftly, potently
to the rescue. Then it became apparent to anyone not sodden in idiocy
that God created first Tennessee, and with what was left over made
the rest of the world. Nothing could live in such rhetoric. From
Reelfoot Lake to the highest peak of Big Smoky Mountain General Vayne
demonstrated his proposition. Its vast mineral wealth might enrich
all the nations of the earth. Its water-power could run the machinery
of--of the universe. On its mountain domes may be found the flora of
the Canadas; its western swamps are rich with sub-tropical vegetation;
between those extremes is every variety of soil and every grade of
climate. He descanted on its geological interest, folded his napkin
into strata and illustrated triumphantly. So at last the transition
was very pretty to spirited sketches of angling in the waters of that
mystic western lake presented by the earthquake to the State; of
fox-chases through the park-like mid-land country; of hunting deer in
the romantic coves and ravines of the Cumberland Mountains; of the
wilder solitudes among the majestic domes and ridges of the great
Unaka chain that bars off the world from our eastern borders. And as
he talked it might have seemed that with his admiration of physical
prowess and the loss of his right arm; with his magniloquent ideas and
phrasings and the scantiness of all his belongings; with his young
family growing up around him and only privation in the present and this
mortgaged ruin to leave them as an estate, he was a marvellously apt
illustration of the ignoble fact, failure,--a fact of which he was most
profoundly, most pathetically unconscious.

The whole affair was a forced march to Estwicke; his interest lagged;
the perception of the mistake under which he had been invited rankled
within him throughout the evening, and even when he had taken his
departure and was driving away under the frostily glinting stars.

And so the entertainment--a rare occasion for Marcia--was over.
To-morrow would come again the dull routine of teaching and
housekeeping--this last a matter of problems, of careful ingenuity,
of reconciling large necessities and small means. But she was not
thinking of that. She was ready for tears, for self-reproach, for that
utter despair of youth, which, with the infinite lengths of the future
before it, deems everything irrevocable. He was sensitive, she said
to herself, and she had hurt him. She had let him go without a word,
because she feared to speak. He seemed on the lookout for slights--but
that perhaps was because he had found slights on the lookout for
him. And he had had in his life some ungentle--it might even be some
terrible experience; she had divined that early in the evening. And
she, too, must wound him! She was so sorry--she was so sorry!

Her father’s voice broke upon her absorption. “I can respect--I can
even admire,” he said, addressing the family circle, “a real bona
fide Yankee. Born so”--he added, liberally. “But these home-made
Yankees--these Southern Yankees--for my life, for my life I can’t
understand them.”

It seemed to General Vayne a monstrous freak of nature that a man
should be born south of Mason’s and Dixon’s line without a full set of
indigenous principles warranted to stick.

His daughter turned her head suddenly. For they were not gone. Old Mr.
Ridgeway was re-entering the room, stumbling over a foot-stool and
spluttering and gasping in his apoplectic agitation. “I have--yes, I
have”--he exclaimed. “I have broken the wheel of my buggy.”

By degrees, in the tumult of his explanation, the facts were developed
that Mrs. Ridgeway was not hurt in the fall, and that Captain Estwicke,
who happened to overtake them at the “big gate,” had kindly offered
them his buggy. In order that he might not be kept waiting until they
could send the vehicle back, Mr. Ridgeway desired to ask if his host
could lend Captain Estwicke a saddle-horse.

General Vayne could and would, and apologized for not offering a
vehicle instead. Before the war he had been “horsey” on a princely
scale. Now he possessed a saddle-horse or two, and a pair of jog-trot
sorrels that served alternately in the plough and in a certain
dilapidation which he called his barouche. This had already rumbled off
to Chattalla full of the elderly guests.

During the few moments required for the horse to be saddled the
whole party waited on the front steps. The night air was keen and
penetrating. A great star, in splendid isolation near the zenith,
shivered in those wide spaces made dark by its own brilliancy. And the
moon was bright, too--the ragged, withered crab-grass, still tufting
the fissures of the bomb-riven pavements, glittered with rime as if
every blade was frosted with silver. Vague belts of vapor lay upon the
battlefield, and fluctuated with mystic glimmers. Estwicke watched
it absently as he stood a little aside, heedless of the talk of the
elders, whose black shadows and animated gestures were grotesquely
defined on the blocks of limestone that floored the portico.

Marcia was silent, too. Once she cast a timorous glance upon him. Then
her eyes fell. Still she did not doubt that he would receive what she
wished to say as simply and kindly as it was intended.

“Captain Estwicke,” she faltered, “I want to tell you--I--I--am very
sorry, but--but--you won’t do for a pupil at all. You can’t learn to
reason. You have too much imagination.”

She glanced up and smiled. The next moment her heart misgave her. He
was looking at her in cool surprise.

And what if she had taken too much for granted! He might not have cared
at all--he might even have forgotten. She blushed painfully. She could
not think to choose her words--she could not be silent while his eyes
tacitly asked an explanation. She hastily stipulated--

“I alluded to teaching you to distinguish between North and South. I
only meant the points of the compass--_Geography_, you know,” she
added, lucidly.

“I am very grateful that you should trouble yourself to tell me,” he
said, gravely. “I misunderstood you. I hope you will forgive me.”

She was silent in astonishment. What chaos was here! She had tendered
her regrets, and now _he_ was begging her pardon. In the simple
life of her little planet she had never before had occasion to question
the appropriateness of any of her good and gentle impulses. It came
upon her with a crushing sense of humiliation that she had done an
awkward, a silly thing--she even thought it, at this moment, forward.
She wondered that she should discern all this so late. She said to
herself that he was a man of the world, whose spurious gallantry
would not permit him to accept an apology from a lady. The slight
wordy dexterity with which he had reversed their mutual position, and
placed himself in the humble case of begging her pardon, instead of
granting forgiveness, seemed to her painfully insincere. It was her
first experience of the world’s little feints, and it chilled her. She
flinched too from the thought of how absurd the whole episode must be
to him.

And in fact he laughed as he rode away in the moonlight.

“Now, that was mighty good of her,” he protested. “She thought I was
cut to pieces--routed!” And he laughed again.

He had pressed the horse into a gallop, and was speeding through the
infinite loneliness of the moonlit expanse. When the animal abruptly
swerved aside, he glanced down to recognize the shallow rifle-pits of
the old picket line. He knew none of the traditions of the place, but
as he reached Fort Despair, and rode along, close upon the crest of
the counterscarp--dank and sodden with the late rains now, once dank
and sodden with a darker current--there came upon him a mysterious
sense of a mighty multitude astir in the vast, vague plain. A strange,
rhythmic throb shook the earth--or was it in the air? The haunted
thickets shuddered audibly as he passed. Once, when the steely gleam
of a sabre was thrust suddenly forth, he turned and looked back with
fierce eyes--that changed and were startled. But it might have been
only the shimmering of a moonbeam on the white bark of an aspen shoot.
As he rode on down the scarred, treeless bank of the river, the earth
pulsated with a stronger tremor, a great white light sprang upon the
horizon, and the whistle of the down train from Marston split the air.

Into the mist and into the moonlight a series of massive, isolated
columns of masonry rose starkly out of the black water. They were the
piers of the old turnpike bridge, burned one night long ago to cover
a frantic retreat and impede a frantically fierce pursuit. He checked
his horse near the brink and gazed at them. There was something so
picturesque and martial in the equestrian figure, thus thrown into bold
relief against the moonlit sky, that Mr. Ridgeway, in mid-stream upon
the broad, flat ferry-boat, called his wife’s attention to it.

“Captain Estwicke is not going back to his friend’s house,” added the
old gentleman. “He tells me he will spend the night at the hotel in
Chattalla, in order to catch the early train for Marston. The barracks
are five miles from Marston.”

The ferryman heard this. He lived on the highway, he saw everybody that
came and went, and he had the interest of the professed gossip in small
details. He noted the name, and when he had landed the old couple on
the opposite bank he pulled lustily upon the rope, and the cumbersome
craft, pulsing with the current, crossed more rapidly than usual under
the impetus of Tom Toole’s curiosity about the stranger. As he ran in
to land there was a sudden, sharp change on his stolid, unspeculative
countenance. He stood staring, with wild, dumfounded recognition, at
Estwicke, who still sat motionless upon the horse, his eyes fixed upon
the obeliscal columns, a dreary memorial, in the midst of the swift
current. After a moment of doubt and hesitation, Toole tremulously
held the lantern up at arm’s length, throwing the light full upon the
officer’s face. It was no longer pallid, spectral, as it had been in
the moonlight. The artificial gleam suddenly evoked all its peculiar
coloring--the dark red of his hair and beard, the fiery spark in his
challenging brown eyes, the warm tint of his tanned complexion.

“My good Lord A’mighty!” the ferryman broke forth, “thar ain’t many men
ez knows what I knows, an’ hev seen what I hev seen, ez would like ter
git a glimge of ye now--a-settin’ in that saddle an’ a-lookin’ fust at
the old forts, like ye war a-studyin’ ’bout’n the range o’ the guns,
an’ then a-medjurin’ that thar bridge with yer eye.”

Estwicke turned quickly. Toole flinched beneath his glance, and held up
one hand as if to ward it off, laughing confusedly at himself the while
for the involuntary gesture.

“Ye might have knocked me down with a feather jes’ now. Bless God, I
thought ’twas _him_ agin!” he protested, laying his hand on the
rope as Estwicke pushed his horse down upon the ferry-boat. The pause
was broken only by the gurgling of the water, and the rattling of the
“block an’ tickle” as every effort sent the broad, flat craft throbbing
on its way. Then he replied to the inquiry in Estwicke’s face.

“By God!” he exclaimed, wildly, “I’ve seen ye hyar afore, a-ridin’
an’ a-raidin’ on the banks o’ this ruver, mounted an’ armed, an’
a-medjurin’ the bridge with yer eye. But then--ye fired it with yer
own hands--_with yer own hands_. I know it. These rocks know it.
None of us hev forgot. An’ I seen ye hyar agin,” he added, lowering his
voice, “a-lyin’ dead--dead!--on the ground yander a-nigh Fort Despair,
shot through the lungs, an’ through the head, an’ half crushed by the
carcass o’ yer horse!”

He paused abruptly.

There was on Estwicke’s face a sudden look of recoil which imposed
silence. The ferryman had loosened his grasp upon the rope, and the
wayward plunging of the boat was like the disordered throbbing of some
great heart. He could not interpret that look. He was wrestling with a
vague, superstitious thrill. The equestrian figure seemed to rise into
abnormal proportions. Its eyes--its inscrutable eyes--were fixed with
some imperious protest upon him. And he remembered the face! He was
shut off from the world with it--all the moonlit water was around them
and all the misty air. Again he laid hold on the rope, pulling hard for
the shore--for deliverance, keeping his shoulder toward the figure, but
ever and anon turning, under a morbid fascination, a fluctuating glance
upon it, impelled by the very strength of the contradictory desire to
see it no more.

But when he was about to land, the approach to a mere familiar element
restored, in a measure, his self-possession.

“Ye air the livin’ image o’ that man, cap’n,” he said, tremulously. “Of
course I know ’taint _him_ agin. _His_ name warn’t yourn.
I useter know _his_ name, though I hev furgot it now. I hope ye
don’t take no grudge at bein’ called like a Johnny Reb. They hev hed
the respec’ o’ soldiers afore now.”

There was no answer. The horse’s hoofs sounded loud upon the planks;
the rider pressed swiftly in among the mists and the shadows; and he
was gone.

Then the ferryman looked down at the boat. It had risen in the water.
“He weighs!” he exclaimed suddenly. After a moment he turned about with
a laugh. “Of course the man weighs. Thar’s two of ’em! An’ this man’s
name is Estwicke--an’ what war t’other one’s name? Ef”--he cast a swift
glance at the empty embrasures of the distant fort--“ef thar ever war
enny other one.”

He pondered upon this problem as he pulled the boat across the river,
and again while he walked up the bank toward a little log-house where
the window was still a-light.

He paused half-way in his absorption, only roused when a breath of
wind brought to him a strange sound from out the thicket close to
Fort Despair, a sound of the whickering of horses and the heavy tramp
of hoofs, and a clangor as of the clash of sabres, and a note--was
it?--a note from a bugle. He remembered that a company of cavalry was
literally annihilated there under a murderous cross-fire--he hastened
on--and on the evening of the first day’s fight, when captured and led
to the rear, he saw, lying among the dead on the ground that the enemy
held, this man--this staff-officer. He had reached the door of his
house; he struck it with his heavy hand. He had recalled the name at
last, and the recollection entered with him into his home like a curse.




                              CHAPTER II.


ESTWICKE slept little that night. For long hours he lay gazing at the
pallid wintry moonlight as it crept, barred with the shadow of the tiny
window-panes, across the floor of his room at the village hotel. The
winds had died away. The world without was mute. Within, the intense
quietude was broken only by the light sound of his watch under his
pillow checking off the seconds. It seemed loud and strident, and its
monotonous iteration jarred upon his nerves. He drew it forth presently
and stopped the works. And then he could hear only his passionate
pulses beat. These he might not silence so lightly.

He rose after a time, stirred the failing fire, dressed and lighted a
cigar. He drew a chair to the window and sat aimlessly looking out upon
the street. More than once he sighed heavily,--heavily. The shadows and
the moonlight shifted about the “Square.” The sonorous clangor of the
clock, in the court-house tower, ever and anon warned the world how
the time wore on. He watched a mist rise, and hover, and drift away.
He looked to the east for the flush of dawn. But clouds were gathering
silently, and in the morning they hung low and dense.

This assisted the somewhat dreary aspect of the place, for the pretty
homes of Chattalla and the graces of its social life were well out of
sight behind the two-story business blocks that surrounded the muddy,
ill-paved Square, in the centre of which was the court-house yard and
the Temple of Justice itself. A gaunt sycamore tree overhung this red
brick structure; the grass was covered with dank withered leaves; to
the iron fence saddle-horses were hitched in time-honored defiance of
the august legislation of the county court. As Estwicke strolled out
in front of the hotel after breakfast he was impressed by a certain
military aspect about the citizens. The teamsters standing near
their wagons, loaded with wood or country produce, shouldered their
long-handled whips in a soldierly fashion, implying a similar habitude
with a far deadlier weapon. An equestrian group, that might well have
served a painter for a study of cavalry, had gathered about the town
scales, where the weighing of cattle was in progress. A dry-goods
clerk, middle-aged and iron-gray, came out of a store and crossed the
Square to the bank. Estwicke’s eyes followed the erect figure with its
practised, measured gait.

“That man has marched a thousand miles to the throb of the drum,” he
said.

When the rain began to fall heavily in myriads of dun-colored lines it
drove the population within doors except the teamsters, still lounging
near their horses’ heads, and Saturday’s crowd of black humanity
that surged about a row of Jew stores denominated by common consent
“Jerusalem.”

The contemplation of this picture from the hotel window was his only
resource during the morning, and he regarded the approach of the
belated train as in the nature of a rescue.

He established himself with a newspaper and a cigar in the smoking-car,
and did not look up until his name was called.

“Glad to see you back,” said a young man who was entering from the
“ladies’ car.” He smiled agreeably and offered his hand, then leaned
unsteadily against the arm of the seat while he struck a match and
applied it to his cigarette. He was a tall, supple, dandyish young
fellow, with a sparkling clever face, a girl’s complexion, a long,
silky, brown mustache, and hair and eyes of the same shade. The officer
moved to give room, and he slipped into the place assigned him with a
panther-like ease and grace that habitually characterized his motions,
and made heavier and more muscular men seem a trifle awkward and clumsy
in comparison.

“I’m not going to tell you we’ve missed you. And why? Because you have
come among us too lately to believe me,” he declared, lightly.

“Don’t think you overtax my credulity, Mr. Meredith,” said Estwicke,
somewhat satirically. “I can fancy how the society of Yankee officers
must be prized among you.”

Meredith laughed coolly. He had been too young to bear his share on
this historic plain that stretched so far around them on every side;
he had grown happily into manhood under the new _régime_. He held
something of the old theories, but in the revolving years his mind had
been caught on the cogs of new ideas, and revolved with them. He looked
with unruffled serenity at his companion.

“You are so eager in helping us to keep the peace that you never forget
your mission. It had escaped me for the instant. Do you find it hard
work? Very arduous, eh?”

Estwicke laughed, too. “Well, on the whole you are not so bad as the
Indians,” he said, temperately. “But you are duller,--far! There is
some healthy snap and go on the frontier.”

“That pleasing uncertainty about being scalped is the one redeeming
feature of your profession--otherwise it is too painfully definite,”
said Meredith, philosophically. “If you keep your scalp--when it is
gray you’ll still be _Captain_ Estwicke, unless we can get up
a foreign war or a civil commotion for your advancement. Whereas
_I_,” with a hopeful rising inflection, “may in the course of
time, and by the force of talent alone, be a Chief Justice--and then
again, by the force of talent alone, I mayn’t. Room for speculation,
eh?”

“Strikes me, on the contrary, that your prospects are painfully
definite, too,” said Estwicke. “Your father and his partner will take
you in as a third after a while. So you’ll be perpetually bringing up
the rear, overcrowed by the two big lawyers. Your father will think he
ought to do something for you--that’s the way he’ll do it.”

“Not he--not he,” protested Meredith. “I wish he would. My father has
a theory that if a young lawyer is not helped he will help himself--to
any stray litigation that may be afloat, as it were, in the air. He has
left me to illustrate this theory.”

“How does it work?” asked Estwicke, with interest.

“I pray God I mayn’t starve,” said Meredith, tersely.

“Room for speculation, eh?” suggested Estwicke.

Chattalla had faded in the distance, and now the earthworks loomed up
through the low-lying vapors and the blurring rain, vague and distorted
but always grim and grewsome. As the train thundered with a hollow roar
on the railroad bridge, there could be caught a fleeting glimpse of
the isolated piers, and of the ferry-boat, pausing in mid-stream that
Tom Toole might gaze after the cloud of smoke, which lay on the top of
the cars, and drifted back to the redoubts and hung about the empty
embrasures suggestively.

Estwicke, oblivious of the landscape, was absorbed in the conversation.
He was essentially a man of this world. He craved the companionship
of other men. He could not live apart from it. He had none of those
intimate inner resources that make solitude sweet. Except for some
principles of gunnery, bearing upon a still unperfected improvement
of his own, he cared nothing for the study of science. Apart from the
history of splendid achievement, some stirring martial lyrics, the
biographies of great commanders, he had no fondness for reading. His
books were the men about him; their experience, their lives, formed
his interest, and as in the ever shifting combinations of human events
they lapsed upon his own life he too bore a part in this sentient
literature. He had a quick understanding of men, and a passionate
sympathy with them. He did not even affect an appreciation of art; he
looked blankly at its results. But an unrecognized something in the
burnished sunlight, the silver-shotted moonlit mists, the haze on the
purple hills, the sound of the melancholy autumn wind subtly thrilled
to his heart and prevailed within him mightily. He found a wondrous
sensuous exaltation in the mystery and the joy of being. He felt that
his blood was swift in his veins; he stretched his limbs; he admired
his muscles; he took cognizance of an involuntary alertness of his
mental faculties; he knew that he was strong, and well, and graciously
endowed. But he had no questions to ask of Heaven or Earth. He was too
definite for mere abstractions, and adhered mechanically to the faith
of the fathers.

Despite his imperfectly tempered aggressiveness he possessed certain
qualities of good-comradeship,--his zest in life, his soldierly
frankness, and his ardor commended themselves to Meredith, who was
presently surprised in the midst of the desultory talk, which was
neither wise nor witty, to see that the twenty miles had slipped
past, that billowy sweeps of hills were on every side, that the city
was elusively appearing and disappearing, mirage-like, in the purple
distance.

They parted at the depot, and until evening Estwicke was greatly
harassed with loneliness, for his regiment had but recently been
stationed in the vicinity, and he knew few of the citizens. Nothing
was going on at either of the theatres, and he could only mitigate the
tedium after tea by lounging about the hotel with a promiscuous crowd
of smokers, who habitually congregated here, for Marston boasted no
club-houses. A fountain in the centre of the tessellated floor was
tossing up pretty corolla-shaped jets of spray, that sparkled in the
gaslight. The clerks bullied the incoming travellers. A mocking-bird
in a cage sang shrilly; the cheerful click of billiard balls was heard
from behind a colonnade, and through its vistas might be descried
delicately poised cues and nimbly attitudinizing figures.

The scene soon palled upon Estwicke. He began to think of driving out
to the barracks to-night instead of in the morning, but Meredith came
in from the street, and the resolve faded.

“I’m glad to see that you are still in town,” said the lawyer, as they
met.

Following, as was often the case, in Meredith’s footsteps, was his
cousin, Tom West, a jaunty young sprig, some twenty or twenty-two years
old, who effusively claimed Estwicke’s acquaintance. As they shook
hands the officer became aware of a close scrutiny directed upon him
from over the tall, young fledgling’s shoulder. It emanated from a pair
of cold, fishy eyes, set in an impassive, florid face, which belonged
to a stout, middle-aged, soberly dressed, responsible-looking party.
Estwicke could not have said explicitly why he was so unfavorably
impressed, nor why when West, with callow self-sufficiency, introduced
the stranger as his friend, Mr. Casey, it seemed so very odd that
he should have a friend like this. Estwicke, mechanically extending
his hand, looked at Casey with wonted fierce intentness, and noted
the indefinable but strong intimations lurking about him of solid
commercial pursuits. Somehow his breadth of waistcoat, his sparingness
of speech, his quiet, grave manner, assisted this effect. The man who
knew men could not reconcile it with the look in his eye and stony
countenance.

He showed a disposition to devote himself to West, and said little to
Estwicke, who presently turned back in relief to Meredith.

“How do you get away with these long evenings?” he demanded.

“Professional study, generally; regular midnight oil business.”

“Nice boy!” ejaculated Estwicke.

“Sometimes,” said Meredith, signifying by a gesture that he desired
the favor of a light from Estwicke’s cigar, “sometimes clients get as
scarce as hen’s teeth, and the justice’s court--most of my practice is
in that humble modern _pie poudre_--the justice’s court knows me
no more. Then I make up my mind to renounce the profession before it is
in everybody’s mouth that the profession has renounced me. So I play
billiards in the evening, or go to the theatre, or call on the young
ladies.”

“Oh, the young ladies!” cried Estwicke, stroking his whiskers. “That’s
mighty bad!”

He looked at Meredith, and laughed as he received his cigar back.

A band of itinerant musicians suddenly struck up a popular waltz,
and the rotunda was filled with surging waves of sound. “This is
insufferable,” said Meredith. “Suppose we go up to my room, where we
can have a quiet smoke and talk.”

As they passed the fountain West approached them. “Going upstairs?” he
asked of his cousin.

Meredith nodded. “Will you come with us?”

“And I’ll bring Casey,” West declared agreeably, very slightly
lowering his voice; “that is if you have no objection. I’m under great
obligations to him, and as he knows nobody in town but us I feel bound
to see him through and make his stay as pleasant as possible.”

Meredith frowned, and hesitated. But Casey was standing at no great
distance, and had evidently overheard the conversation. Estwicke
experienced a twinge of uneasiness. Despite his ill-defined antipathy
toward Casey, and although the suggestion that he should join them had
destroyed every prospect of pleasure, it seemed to Estwicke almost a
cruelty to refuse publicly so slight and apparently so reasonable a
request. He watched Meredith with expectant eyes.

“Certainly, if you like,” the young lawyer assented, not too
graciously, and turned away.

“That’s a boon,” he muttered to Estwicke, who made no reply, for at
that moment they stepped into the elevator, and stood silent and with
their cigars held low and reversed, like the muskets of privates at a
military funeral, in deference to a group of ladies within.

“I roost high,” said Meredith, when they had gotten out on an upper
story. “It comes cheaper up here, and there’s better ventilation.
‘Beggars all, but, marry, good air.’”

After they were seated before the blazing fire in Meredith’s room, West
seemed altogether unaware of the reluctant toleration with which his
entertainer regarded the amendment to the quiet smoke and talk. With
his gay, youthful self-sufficiency, he absorbed the conversation as far
as he might. He was facetious, and flippantly fraternized with Casey.

“Captain,” he said to Estwicke, with an explanatory wave of his hand
toward his solemn red-faced friend, “there is the great original David!
And I am Jonathan! Wasn’t it David who saved Jonathan’s life?” He
pulled at his mustache and laughed and smoked his big cigar with manly
gusto.

“Oh, it was nothing, nothing whatever,” declared Casey. His manner
suggested that from good nature he was content to lightly waive
recognition of a feat.

The sharp young lawyer apprehended the intimation.

“Nothing?” he repeated satirically. “Nothing to save Tom West’s life?
Why, it was a public benefaction!”

Estwicke, with his quick interest in exploits, his love of danger, his
enthusiastic admiration of bravery, turned to Casey with a sudden sense
of respect.

“May I ask how that came about?”

Casey hesitated, and Estwicke presently recognized in this a tact
which was hardly consonant with such a slow-seeming man, for West,
after waiting expectantly for a moment, plunged into an account of
a recent railroad accident, that might have been very disastrous,
but had resulted in nothing worse than cooping him up in the debris,
whence by some exercise of thews and sinews--of which Mr. Casey was
amply capable--he was extricated. His rescue had evidently involved
no risk, but it had served as an introduction of Casey, who was
adroitly abetting West in magnifying its importance. Estwicke listened
with contemptuous amusement, and Meredith’s efforts to conceal his
impatience had grown so lame that his relief was very evident when a
knock at the door interrupted the conversation, and a card was brought
in. He glanced at it in surprise.

“Show the gentleman up,” he said, and the brisk, and grinning bell-boy
disappeared.

The interval that ensued was expectant. Perhaps this was the reason
the new-comer appeared upon the scene with the impressiveness of the
principal character of a drama. Perhaps it might be that life had
always cast Maurice Brennett for the leading business, and he bore
himself in a manner befitting the title _rôle_. His eyes had
a peculiar brilliancy, and were capable of an intent expression so
concentrated that when suddenly elicited it had a sinister effect, and
put its subject instinctively on guard. He was tall, thin, angular,
and dressed with an elaborate fastidiousness that was somehow oddly
incongruous with his pale, powerful, intellectual face--he seemed
rather the type of man who scorns the minutiæ of externals. Between
his mobile eyebrows many a scheme had registered itself in subtle
hieroglyphics. There was a look of severely maintained repression about
the hard lines of his lips as if the controlling influences of his
nature had had a struggle for ascendency over other wild and turbulent
forces. Even now the slight annoyance of finding a group here instead
of the man he wanted had brought a quiver to the thin, sensitive
nostrils of his sharp, hooked, and delicately chiselled nose. His
pallor was the pallor of late hours--not such as these young fellows
kept, but the anxious vigils of thought, the canvassing of opportunity,
and the inception of plans. He had his hat in his hand, and the
gaslight revealed such glimmers here and there in his dark hair,
clipped close about a shapely head, and in his full, dark mustache, as
might intimate that he was fast growing gray, which is premature at
forty.

His presence exerted a singular influence upon the other men; their
personal peculiarities were suddenly abnormally pronounced.

Casey seemed trebly slow, stolid, rubicund. West looked very callow,
and felt very callow too; Meredith’s dainty complexion, his silky
mustache, his sparkle, were almost effeminate. Estwicke silently
measured the stranger with challenging eyes.

“I have hardly time for this,” Brennett said, as he took the cigar
which Meredith tendered him. “My business with you is rather
imperative.”

Meredith was a trifle confused, having naturally enough supposed that
the visit at this place and hour had only a social significance. Upon
the word business, the others made a motion as if to take leave.

“I fear I am interrupting you,” Brennett continued, looking round
at the group. “I feel rather like the ghost of fiction who routs a
pleasure party. It is a hackneyed theme, but no one has adequately
considered the embarrassing position of the ghost.”

There was a laugh at this and a momentary hesitation.

“You will greatly alleviate it if you won’t allow me to put you to
flight. I only want a few minutes’ consultation with Mr. Meredith. I
ventured to look you up out of office hours and on Saturday night,” he
continued turning to the young lawyer, “because I have information that
a debtor of mine is about to run off his cotton on a Sunday freight,
and this may be my last opportunity to get out an attachment.”

“I insist that you don’t go,” said Meredith, addressing himself
specially to Estwicke. “This won’t keep me long--meantime suppose you
have a game of cards. I am not going to my office--we can talk the
matter over here.”

He flung a pack of cards on the table; then he and Brennett turned away
to a desk which was on the opposite side of the room. The trio at the
table chatted for a few moments in a desultory strain, but presently
West, glancing at lawyer and client now fairly immersed in business,
shrugged his shoulders, gathered up the cards, and with a juvenile leer
at the others, proposed to deal for “draw.”

“I haven’t played for so long, I scarcely remember the game,” protested
Casey.

West laughed jeeringly; he joyed so in his amiable wickedness.

“Oh, Casey’s afraid of getting turned out of church. We’ll take you in
out of the wet--won’t we, Captain? We belong to the ‘big church’--we
do.”

Estwicke made no reply; he hardly relished even a “big church”
membership with Casey.

“I suppose we play with a limit?” he asked impatiently, showing some
eagerness to begin.

West’s _was_ an amiable wickedness. In fact it was only a
weak-kneed semblance--that would, yet might not, be. He quaked at the
bare suggestion of the alternative.

“Captain, you shock me,” he declared. “Of course we play with a
limit--fifty cents--say.”

They talked very little when once fairly at it. For a time Meredith,
who sat with his back toward them, only knew vaguely that somebody was
“passing” or “straddling the blind,” or “seeing and going better.” Once
or twice West laughed out loud and long in triumph. And again his voice
rose in excited remonstrance, to which his companions seemed to pay
no attention. Then the room was quiet for a time, and the lawyer lost
cognizance of everything except the complications of Brennett’s liens
and his debtor’s duplicity.

“How many bales do you suppose he has there?” Meredith asked, after a
meditative pause.

There was no answer.

He glanced up impatiently. Brennett’s face was instinct with an alert
interest. His eyes, lighted by some inward sardonic laughter, were
fixed upon the group by the fire.

Meredith turned quickly, and at this moment Estwicke,--his coat thrown
off upon the floor, his hat thrust on the back of his head, the hot
blood crimsoning his sunburned cheek, the perspiration standing thick
in his close-clipped red hair, his eyes blazing with that most unholy
fire, the gambler’s passion,--cocked his cigar between his set teeth
and raised the blind one hundred dollars.

West had passed out of the game, had drawn away from the table, and
was gazing with dismayed surprise at the swollen proportions of the
pool and at the impassive, stony countenance of Casey. Not a feather
was ruffled as he looked cooly into Estwicke’s burning eyes; he was as
decorously florid, his waistcoat as commercially rotund as ever, but
his demeanor was the demeanor of the professional expert.

He stolidly made good--and then he drew one card, Estwicke standing
Pat. After this, for a few moments, each seemed cautious, making very
small bets. But presently, when Estwicke raised him fifty dollars,
Casey “saw it” and went a hundred better.

Then the slow, cumbrous fellow, according to his habit, laid his cards,
face downward, on the table in front of him, with a single chip upon
them to hold them in place, and clasping his hands lightly upon his
substantial stomach, calmly awaited Estwicke’s “say.”

And all at once Estwicke looked hard at the man, with a change on his
expressive face. There was an eager surprise in his eyes; the flush
of sheer excitement deepened to an angry glow; he seemed lost for an
instant in a sort of doubting confusion. Suddenly he made good, and
“called.”

Meredith was thunder-struck as he realized the full significance of the
scene. He rose hastily. “Gentlemen,” he said, sternly, “this is going
entirely too far.”

They took no heed. With one hand Casey laid his cards, a straight
flush--ace, king, queen, jack, and ten of diamonds--upon the table
beside Estwicke’s jack full, while with the other hand he gathered the
pool toward him, giving no sign of elation.

“I protest,” began Meredith. He stopped suddenly short.

Brennett sprang to his feet with a sharp exclamation.

It happened in an instant. There was a swift movement of Estwicke’s
intent figure; he thrust his hand behind him, and seemed to draw from
his pistol-pocket a glancing, steely flash of light; there was a sharp,
metallic click--of a peculiarly nerve-thrilling quality; he lunged
across the table, and held the weapon at full cock at the man’s head.

Warned by Estwicke’s motion, Casey had made an effort to draw his
pistol. His hand grasped it in his pocket.

“Move your right arm and you’re a dead man,” said Estwicke between his
set teeth. They were strong and white, and unconsciously he showed
them. The veins that crossed his forehead were black and swollen. His
breath came hot and fast and with a sibilant sound. He seemed to think
as Brennett sprang up that there would be an effort to disarm him.

“If you interfere,” he said, in a low voice,--“if you touch me--I will
kill you--I will kill you!”

It was a moment of terrible suspense, but as Brennett moved hastily
back, he laughed aloud--a short, ungenial laugh, nervous perhaps--or
was the fancy so absurd that he should interfere!

Meredith’s motion toward Estwicke was arrested by his next words. “Drop
that card out of your sleeve--the card I dealt you.”

Casey gazed abjectly at him, turning even paler than before, and made a
weak, spasmodic effort to speak, to deny.

“No use talking,” said Estwicke, cutting him short. “Drop the card.”
His finger by accident or design quivered slightly on the trigger.

The sharper shook his sleeve, and the three of diamonds fell upon the
table.

“The exchange was quick as lightning--but I _saw_ it!” Estwicke
declared.

Without lowering his eyes or moving the weapon, he placed with his left
hand the three of diamonds on the table beside the straight flush to
illustrate the self-evident fact that, no matter which of the cards
Casey had substituted for it, the hand after the draw was merely a
flush.

“And a full out-ranks a flush!” he proclaimed, with a fierce,
dictatorial air.

Casey sat before him, silent, cowed, helpless, the revolver that he
still grasped in his pocket as useless as if his right hand was palsied.

“My ‘Full’ raked the pool!” thundered Estwicke. “I won it all! I’ll
have it all! Fork! With your left hand--mind.”

As Casey hastily pushed the money across the table, a modest nickel
that had served in the half dollar limit game with which they began,
fell to the floor and rolled away among the shadows.

He had surrendered utterly--it was all over. A breath of relief was
beginning to inflate his lungs, which in the surprise and fright
had seemed to forget and bungle their familiar functions. The other
men moved slightly as they stood,--an involuntary expression of the
relaxation of the tension--the creak of Tom West’s boots was to him
like the voice of a friend. Then they realized, with the shock of an
infinite surprise, that Estwicke sat as motionless as if he were carved
in stone, his pistol still held at the cheat’s head. The room was so
silent that they might hear the rumble of the elevator on its missions
up and down, the throb of the engine in the cellar, the faint rattle of
the dishes in the dining-room far, far below the high story where the
young man’s room was perched. They understood at last, and it came upon
them with the amazing effect of a flash of lightning from a clear sky.

Estwicke was waiting for the nickel!

The card-sharper was panting, failing, almost losing consciousness. He
did not dare to stoop and search for the coin--he could not summon his
voice for speech. The tears sprang into his eyes when he saw that the
situation was at length comprehended by the others.

West hastily knelt on the floor, passed his tremulous fingers over the
dark carpet, clutched the coin and placed it on the table.

To the two men who knew Estwicke best the episode was a frightful
illustration of a certain imperious exactingness which they
had discovered even in their short acquaintance was a notable
characteristic of his nature. For one instant longer he looked hard at
the sharper. Then he brought his heavy hand down upon the table in the
midst of the pile of greenbacks, with a vehemence that sent a shiver
through every glass in the room.

“Damn you!” he cried out, fiercely. “Keep it!”

He thrust his pistol into his pocket. Without another word he strode
heavily out of the room, leaving Casey staring blankly at the money so
strangely relinquished, and the others standing petrified under the
yellow gas-jets gazing after the receding figure that marched through
the shadowy vagueness of the dimly lighted hall without.

When he was fairly gone Meredith turned to Casey. The sharper had
before hardly seemed able to breathe. He was on his feet now and ready
to walk. His god was good to him. The touch of it had made him whole.

“I have never before had occasion,” said Meredith, sternly, “to show a
man the door.” He waved his hand toward it.

The hardened creature insolently lifted his cold, fishy eye and
grinned. His plethoric pocket-book was overflowing in his hands;
he tucked the other bills into the pockets of his respectable,
commercial-looking waistcoat.

“Sorry to have any disagreement, I’m sure. Your friend is a little too
choleric--apt to be the fault of military men. I have to thank you for
a most delightful evening. I’ll come again soon. Bye-bye, West!”

He bowed and grinned and grimaced at the door. Meredith was scarlet
with indignation. Tom West thrust his hands into his pockets and turned
sheepishly away. Brennett flung himself against the mantel-piece
and laughed with an intense enjoyment so chilling, so derisive, so
repellant in its quality that Casey paused in the hall and glanced back
through the open door in surprise and a vague distrust. Meredith saw
among the shadows his white, heavy-jawed face, from which the smile had
faded in an expression of inexplicable wonder, of fear. Then he turned
once more and disappeared.

Meredith hastily handed Brennett his memoranda and, with a promise to
return in a few moments, started toward the door.

“Where are you going?” West demanded inquisitively.

“To look up Captain Estwicke,” Meredith replied, curtly.

The “elevator boy” knew the number of Estwicke’s room on the transient
floor by reason of having had the key left with him during the evening.
Estwicke had hardly entered and closed the door when Meredith knocked.
He looked around with a flushed face as the young lawyer came in.

“I hope you will remember how that blackguard was forced upon me,”
Meredith began, hotly. “I don’t usually consort with cheats. I am not
responsible for your meeting such company in my room.”

Estwicke gave a bitter laugh.

“What does it matter to me where I met him?”

“It matters to me,” said Meredith, tersely.

Estwicke was tramping back and forth the length of the room.

“I thought I had given that thing up!” he cried in a tumult of despair.
“I haven’t touched a card for years. I can’t play in moderation. I
can’t, you see. I go wild--wild! It’s an hereditary passion.”

Meredith was a lawyer, and an acute one. He changed his base with a
celerity that did infinite credit to his acumen. Estwicke was taking
himself to task--not his entertainer. He briskly joined the onslaught.

“Oh hereditary!” he sneered. “I have often noticed that a man credits
his father with his own pet vices. What was the reason you let the
rascal have the money?”

“I had no reason--no positive idea; it was only an impulse,” said
Estwicke. “Somehow when I got it--I--couldn’t touch it. That _I_
should brawl with a fellow like that for money! But why not?” he added
after a sullen pause. “He is as good as I am--that is, I am as bad as
he is.”

“Bless me!” exclaimed Meredith, satirically, “I wouldn’t say
_that_.”

“I know better. He doesn’t.”

“But some of it was yours on the strictest moral construction.”

Estwicke stood in the middle of the floor staring at his visitor.

“I mean the money you originally bet,” Meredith explained.

This was a distinction that Estwicke could not grasp. “It was
_all_ mine!” he bawled. “My--full--raked--the--pool!” He came
hastily and sat down in the green-rep arm-chair, expounding how the
game stood, checking off his cards and Casey’s on the fingers of his
right and left hands respectively. His excited words in their confused
haste stumbled and tripped up over each other in his throat; his eyes
were eager and earnest; he trembled with the intensity of his interest.
Even the wordy lawyer could not interrupt.

“Well,” he said, when Estwicke had concluded, “I knew all that
before--and it’s a nice business. You told me once that you have
nothing but your pay. I should think,” he continued, exasperatingly,
“this night’s work would make a considerable hole in it. I hope you
feel that you have invested your time and money to the best advantage.”

“Oh, I got disgusted with the money. I couldn’t endure to keep step,
morally, you know, with that contemptible, poor devil. I tell you he
looked at the money with tears in his eyes.”

Meredith stared.

“This is rather a belated sympathy with the ‘poor devil,’” he said,
sarcastically. “Captain Estwicke,” he continued, “I don’t pretend to
understand you, but I feel it almost a duty to tell you how heartily I
disapprove of your conduct to-night. Pistoling a man at a card-table
for cheating is a practically unprovoked, cruel and abhorrent crime.”

“Didn’t do it,” said Estwicke, grimly, on the defensive.

“You would have done it--if he had not instantly yielded.”

“Ha-a-rdly,” drawled Estwicke. The tone was significant. Meredith
looked at him expectantly. Estwicke glanced uneasily up at the ceiling,
then down at his boots. As he turned doubtfully toward Meredith their
eyes met, and he broke into an uproarious peal of laughter.

“Why, man!” he cried, hilariously, “the pistol wasn’t loaded!”

He drew the weapon from his pocket and held it at arm’s length,
revolving its empty chambers, and setting the walls to echoing its
sharp click.

Meredith laughed, too, partly in sympathy with the other’s boisterous
enjoyment of what he considered so exquisitely flavored a joke and
partly in relief. “I’m glad you let me know this,” he declared. “Forget
what I said when I didn’t know it.” Presently he added with a view of
contingencies of which Estwicke seemed utterly incapable--“But suppose
that that fellow had persisted in heaving up the thing _he_ had in
his pocket?”

“Oh, but I was sure he wouldn’t. Moral suasion, you know. There’s
a wonderful deal of moral suasion in giving a man a peep down an
iron tube. It puts the best of us out of countenance.” After a
pause he said, gravely,--“Nothing would have induced me to hurt the
man--besides, I _couldn’t_. All I wanted was my own money.”

“And you didn’t want that little long.”

“I feel like the devil,” said Estwicke, impatiently. “I’m so much like
the devil to-night that I don’t know us apart.”

“Well,” persisted Meredith, “you’ve given us a fine sensation. I never
saw a man so entertained as that fellow, Brennett.”

“I don’t care to set up as a show,” said Estwicke, sulkily.

“A cat may look at a king.”

“I doubt if it is altogether safe for the cat.”

“In the light of late events, I certainly should not take the liberty
if I were a cat,” said Meredith, with a laugh.

“He is not a cat,” rejoined Estwicke, with that sudden insight into
character which was so marked a quality of his mind. “He has a hawk’s
face and a hawk’s eyes--the most startlingly brilliant eyes I ever saw.
I never met a human hawk before--though I’ve known human wolves, and
monkeys, and dogs, and cats. We don’t want to claim kin with our poor
relations. But some of us can’t help ourselves. We will look like ’em,
and sometimes we will behave like ’em.” He stretched out his legs to
the fire, and thrust his hands in his pockets. “I’m misanthropic, ain’t
I?” He glanced up with a laugh. After a pause he asked--“What’s his
business?”

“Getting rich.”

“I could have guessed as much,” declared Estwicke. “That man has his
soul in his pocket. And his pocket doesn’t bulge. Such a soul as that
won’t crowd things.”

“Don’t know about his soul, but he certainly has an instinct for money.
He speculates heavily in cotton futures. And he owns a half interest in
a mine out west that they used to say was as good as a mint.”

The young lawyer had risen to take leave. With an almost affectionate
impulse he paused at the door. “Estwicke,” he said, “I want to tell
you--you’re a good fellow.”

“That I am,” said Estwicke, mockingly, “I’m mighty good.”

He looked about him wearily, with a haggard, hunted face after the
door had closed. Then suddenly he rang the bell, called for his bill,
packed his traps dexterously, methodically, and in surprisingly small
compass--one of his military accomplishments--and the full moon was
hardly swinging past the meridian before he was bowling swiftly along
the turnpike among the hills that encompassed the city. Through the
carriage windows he saw it lying behind him in many an undulation, its
domes and its mansard roofs idealized in the glamour and the distance
to a castellated splendor. It had faded away in the dusky shadows long
before he caught sight of the white-framed barrack buildings. His heart
warmed at the thought of his friends so close at hand, of the familiar
surroundings, and the old routine. He saw the sentry’s bayonet glisten
in the moonlight, and catch on its point a star of fire. And the
evening and the scene he had left slipped into the dark corners of his
recollection.




                             CHAPTER III.


HIS image, however, remained importunately present with the man whom
he had characterized as a “hawk.” In the days that ensued, it intruded
between Maurice Brennett and many an abstruse commercial calculation,
with which it was devoid of analogy in any particular. He became
conscious, with a sharp surprise, of the dereliction of his trained
and tutored attention. Even then he admitted to himself that this was
strange, although he argued plausibly that it was but the lingering
impression of a startlingly unexpected episode and a notable face.

Long afterward, in the light of subsequent events, he remembered this.
And then he called it a presentiment--this man of facts and figures!

One night while it still harassed him, he chanced to come in late from
the deserted streets. The rotunda of the hotel was deserted too, and
so quiet that he could hear in the distance the carriage, which he
had left, rolling away with a dull monotonous whir over the Nicholson
pavement. A solitary night-clerk languished behind the counter. The
water was motionless in the basin of the fountain. A single gas-jet
served to accent the darkness and dreariness of the scene, bereft of
its wonted animation. The shadows clung thick about the great pillars,
and as he walked slowly and listlessly among them, he wore a grave,
pondering, baffled aspect. His hat was pulled far over his brow, and
his hands were sunk deep, with a certain surliness of gesture, in his
trousers’ pockets. His overcoat hung loosely on his shoulders, giving
glimpses of his dress-suit beneath it, and of a half crushed flower in
his button-hole. These exponents of recent participation in some genial
festivity, were at this moment curiously at variance with his face,
in which there was so marked an expression of keen intensity, and so
strong, though subtle, a suggestion of latent rapacity, that it fully
justified Captain Estwicke’s descriptive phrase, “a hawk’s face.” His
peculiarly brilliant eyes--so bright even in the checkered glooms--were
downcast. They held an intimation of a deep dejection of spirit.

So he, too, had his hopes deferred--his far off Canaan! He, too, had
some vital part that could be called a heart, where at least wounds
might rankle, and disappointments chill. But once admit that idea of a
latent rapacity, and he seemed an unpleasant transformation of a man
into a creature of prey.

He paused when he reached the counter, and as he glanced over the
register, his eyes suddenly dilated with eager intentness. His hand was
poised, quivering over a certain scrawling autograph.

“When did Mr. Travis arrive?” he asked sharply of the clerk.

“Ten minutes ago,” replied the impassive functionary.

Brennett hastily noted the number of the room, turned from the counter,
and took his way swiftly up the stairs and through the dim twilight of
the long halls. Above the row of doors on either hand, only one transom
was still alight. He knocked with loud impatience, and he trembled with
suspense, while the key was turned within.

“_Hello!_ unexpected pleasure!” exclaimed the occupant of the
room, opening the door and seeking to suppress a mighty yawn. “You
_are_ quick on the trigger. How did you find out that I was in
town?”

Brennett made no reply. He was even more excited when they were shut in
together. He tossed aside his overcoat and hat as if he were stifling,
threw himself into a chair, and in hastily drawing off his light kid
gloves, he wantonly tore them bit from bit with gestures that were most
unpleasantly like his cousin, the feathered hawk, whom he so closely
resembled. Though the meeting was fraught with a deep significance,
there were no indications of the fact in Travis’s unruffled demeanor,
except that he now and then looked uneasily at his friend, as if in
deprecation of this intensity of impatience and eagerness. His eyes
were blue, finely set, and contemplative; his hair was of an equivocal
shade, called golden by his feminine acquaintance, and sandy by his men
friends; a very recent railway journey was suggested by the cinders on
his beard. He was half undressed; his throat was bare; he had taken off
his coat and vest, and they hung on the back of the chair where he sat
thrusting his feet into a pair of slippers. He was tall, handsomely
proportioned, and was popularly supposed to run on his looks. By
virtue of his prepossessing exterior, aided by a singularly quiet and
gentlemanly manner, he retained his hold on well-regulated society,
and fostered a prevalent scepticism as to stories of extravagant
dissipation told about him. Although far from being intellectual,
he had a habit of putting plain sensible ideas into unpretentious
language, which gave casual observers the impression that he was a
shrewd practical fellow with solid views. He presented the anomaly of a
man credited with acumen by his general acquaintance, and pronounced a
fool by his intimates.

“You received my telegram?” he drawled, as he rose to his feet and
stood leaning against the mantel-piece.

“Rather enigmatical it was--I did not understand it.”

Brennett’s tone was acrid, and Travis replied as to a reproach.

“I don’t see how I could have made it more explicit, considering the
circumstances. I said, ‘It has all gone wrong.’”

“How has it gone wrong?”

“You know she died in London more than a month ago, and I started soon
afterward for New York. Her will--you remember I gave you a copy of
it--well, when I reached New York, I found there was a codicil of which
I had before known nothing. It changed the former disposition of her
property. She left everything available for our purposes away from me.
I telegraphed you as soon as I discovered it.”

Brennett fixed his eyes, sullen and lowering, though never losing that
quality of searching brilliancy, upon his friend, and replied not a
word.

The silence shook Travis’s equilibrium.

“Say something, Brennett,” he cried angrily. “There’s no use
in jay-hawking me. You seem to hold me responsible for your
disappointment, while I--why this thing is my ruin! I have sunk in that
mine every cent I could rake and scrape for years. Give over the luxury
of stamping on me, and stir your wits to see if anything can help us
now--or”--with anxious doubt--“do you throw up your hand?”

Brennett still said nothing, and Travis with an impatient gesture
shifted his position, leaning more heavily on the mantel-piece, and
struck a match for his cigar.

By a dexterous use of the system known as “freezing out,” the two had
become exclusive owners of a certain silver mine in Colorado. But
after a time it had seemed that the biters were bitten. The yield grew
meagre, the expenses continued, their perseverance had only brought
them largely into debt, and now their liabilities had swollen like
a gigantic boa-constrictor. Ruin was close upon them, when suddenly
brighter prospects opened. If they could retain the mine now they
thought it would be worth millions to them, but their necessities were
immediate. A large sum must be raised within the next few months or the
property, with all its inchoate wealth, would be sacrificed, possibly
for the merest fraction of its value,--possibly only for the amount of
the debts.

Travis had looked for extrication to the estate of his widowed and
childless sister, who had been in a dying condition for months, and the
result seemed only to demonstrate the long-conceded futility of waiting
for the shoes of the dead.

“I tell you, Brennett,” he said presently, sheltering with his hand
the feeble flicker of the match from some draught that stole shivering
in, “this thing came upon me like a thunder-clap. She had intimated so
often--she had virtually promised me those houses. They are equivalent
to cash, as you know--could be converted at a moment.”

“And what do you get?” asked Brennett, with a voracious look.

“The Arkansas plantations--a drug on the market.”

“You are to blame,” Brennett interjected sharply.

“You can always prove that--to your own satisfaction,” said Travis,
with a sneer, which might have pointed a more pungent sarcasm. He threw
himself back in his chair with an air of bracing himself for endurance.

“We should have taken some account of Mrs. Perrier’s stand-point--we
ought to have managed so as to give her a different view. I suppose,”
Brennett pursued, impelled rather by an incisive mental habit of
stripping facts bare, than by a definite purpose, “I suppose her idea
was that the plantations would give you a comfortable income always,
and would be likely to stay by you--as nobody will buy them now-a-days,
nor lend money on them. She intended to protect you against your own
imprudence in speculation, perhaps--or your gambling proclivities.”

Travis eyed his cigar sourly, while he flipped off the ash with his
delicate fourth finger.

“How obvious!” cried Brennett. “And I never thought of it before! Yet I
knew she had strong objections to your habits.”

“Laura was religious, you know.” Travis suggested this as if it were a
disease, which had impaired her judgment, and was therefore a plea in
extenuation of her weakness. “She was really very fond of me. She cared
for nobody else, and I have no doubt the provisions of this codicil
surprised Antoinette beyond measure.”

“_Antoinette!_ What the devil are you talking about?” demanded
Brennett, impatiently, rousing himself from his absorption.

“I am talking,” said Travis, with an elaborate show of placidity,
“about my step-sister, Antoinette St. Pierre, to whom Laura left the
property which I expected to receive.”

“I never before heard of her,” said Brennett, sternly. “Why did you not
tell me that there was some one likely to share with you Mrs. Perrier’s
estate?”

“My dear fellow,” said Travis, with a debonair wave of the hand, “my
friends urge against me that I am indolent, but I have never been given
over to such an abandonment of idleness as to have nothing better to do
than to talk about Antoinette St. Pierre.”

Brennett, goaded though he was, made some concession to the displeasure
which expressed itself in this frivolous affectation.

“Well--tell me about her now, and how it happened that Mrs. Perrier
gave her that valuable property at your expense?”

“Why, she is the same relation to Laura that I am. You see, my
father married a second time, and so it came about that Laura is
my half-sister. After his death his widow also married again, and
Antoinette is the child of that marriage. So Laura is the half-sister
of each of us, although Antoinette is no relation whatever to
me--merely a step-sister. Make it out?” he asked, knitting his brows,
as if he had propounded some dark conundrum.

“Of course--how can I help making it out?”

“Well,” said Travis, lightly, “it is a relationship that gets away with
most people.”

Then he pulled calmly at his cigar.

“And you never told me this before!” exclaimed Brennett, desperately.
“And this girl had the same claim exactly on Mrs. Perrier that you had.”

“But Mrs. Perrier had promised,” interrupted Travis. “She had written
and signed her will.”

“It is hard--hard!” cried Brennett, springing up and walking nervously
back and forth,--“that in a matter like this I should have such a
coadjutor, who doltishly keeps me in ignorance”--

“I am beholden to you,” drawled Travis, airily, caressing his
straw-colored beard, with a gentle gesture, as he watched, with a
smiling face and incongruously fierce eyes, his friend’s movements.

In a juncture like this he carried more weight than might be argued
from his limited mental capacity. Brennett had found him and his
resources convenient in more ways than one, and it was not yet
conclusively demonstrated that this usefulness was a thing of the past.

“You must overlook something, Travis,” he said, as a reluctant
retraction. “But I ought to have been fully informed.”

Travis readily accepted the amende, for this matter of usefulness was
mutual. He was one of those fools who are sub-acutely aware of the
fact. Not that he deprecated it; he would have found a ponderous brain
merely a dead weight in those giddy and lightsome scenes which made
up to him the pleasure and the worth of existence. He preferred to
exert judgment and foresight by proxy, and he experienced unfailing
satisfaction in the fact that his interests were indissolubly
interwoven with those of Maurice Brennett, whose acumen had been
attested by success.

“How could I imagine that Antoinette was to come into our plans? What
could I have told you--that she is an interesting orphan, twenty-three
years of age--and incidentally the color of her hair and eyes?”

“Where is she now?”

“She has just come to Tennessee on a visit to General Vayne’s family,
up there in the country somewhere,” with a vague backward nod of the
head. “She has a lot of friends in that neighborhood, and sometimes
visits among them for months.”

“Where has she been all this time?” asked Brennett.

“She has lived with her father’s mother, in a rented house three
miles from New Orleans, until about six months ago, when the old lady
died--in the nick of time, too,” added Travis, unfeelingly, “for the
mortgages on her Mississippi plantation, which she had been fighting
off for the last ten years, had just been foreclosed. So you see she
left Antoinette nothing. Old Mrs. St. Pierre’s death was the reason
that Laura wanted to return from Europe. She intended to take a house
in town this winter and have Antoinette with her. I don’t know why
you never heard of Antoinette, unless it is because she is rather an
unimportant little body.”

Brennett came back and sat down in front of the fire. Travis watched
him vacantly for a few moments. Then he yawned portentously and shifted
his position. Certainly he had had time to recover somewhat from the
first poignant anguish of disappointment, but few men with interests of
magnitude at stake could so readily detach the mind and so trivially
catch at trifles. He glanced about the room with its stereotyped hotel
furnishing; then he fell to gazing at the uncertain flickering of the
gas-jet.

“What the devil do you suppose is the matter with the meter?” he
suggested, lazily.

Brennett sat silent and absorbed. Presently Travis yawned again, and
broke forth suddenly--

“Oh, I say--its getting on to two o’clock. And, my dear fellow, I am
fagged out. I’ve been travelling for two days. I can’t get hold of my
faculties for a midnight consultation like this. Let’s adjourn till
to-morrow.”

Perhaps Brennett had scant regard for the efficacy of these faculties
when got hold of. Still silent and absorbed he made no motion. It had
begun to rain, and the wind was rising. Heavy gusts dashed against
the window, and in the intervals one might hear the drops trickling
drearily down the panes. They beat with a resonant clamor on the
tin-covered roof of some portico near at hand. The sound was chilly and
cheerless, and after once more observing Brennett’s impassive attitude,
Travis rose and re-dressed himself completely, with a resigned
deliberation of gesture; then languidly resumed his chair.

“Well, since you are determined to talk it out now I have only to say
that I think we have come to the financial jumping-off place. Can’t you
suggest anything except unavailing regrets that you didn’t know about
Antoinette?”

“I can suggest a sure way to command that money,” returned Brennett,
taking his cigar from his lips, and glancing keenly though furtively at
his friend.

“How?” demanded Travis, excitedly.

“A sure way,” reiterated Brennett.

“How?” asked Travis again.

“Marry her,” said Brennett, coolly, replacing his cigar. “Marry her.”

Travis looked at him in silence.

“Well,” said Brennett, impatiently, “what have you to say to it?”

“Got nothing to say to it,” replied Travis, shortly.

And again the man who managed him as one manages a restive horse was
fain to concede the point, and give him his head.

“Well, see here,” said Brennett, presently, “the division which Mrs.
Perrier made is, except in the matter of convertibility, largely in
your favor. Suppose you try to persuade Miss St. Pierre to exchange the
houses for your plantations. Represent to her----”

“You can’t _represent_ anything to Antoinette. I tell you she is
sharp, sharp as you yourself--and very suspicious. If you knew her you
would appreciate that you can’t represent things to _her_.”

“In some respects the exchange would really be to her advantage. The
rents of those houses are an inconsiderable per cent upon the value
of the property in comparison with the income of the plantations and
their market value. She would give her houses to you at the maximum
valuation and take your lands at the minimum. She would exchange a
small income-bearing property for a large income-bearing property.
Don’t you see?”

“Ye-es,” Travis assented, dubiously. “Perhaps. But there are the labor
questions, and the unsettled state of the country, and the low price of
cotton. And, Brennett,--you don’t know Antoinette!”

“There is another possibility that she might be induced to make this
exchange. Her title--Mrs. Perrier’s title to those houses is not
indefeasible.”

Travis turned with a stare of blank amazement. He took instant fright.
“Then God knows,” he cried fervently, “_I_ don’t want them.
_I_ won’t exchange.”

“You were so certain that your sister would leave you that property,
that I thought it worth while to have the title looked into, in view of
a speedy sale.”

“And what’s the matter with it?” asked Travis anxiously, vaguely aware
that his friend had some intention shuffling behind all this, but as
yet utterly unable to “spot it.”

“Why, Clarence Clendinning, the man who fraudulently sold to Mrs.
Perrier, purporting to convey in fee, was only a tenant _per autre
vie_, and at the period of this sale this life estate was just
terminated. Thereafter he could be regarded only as a tenant at
sufferance. So you see she bought literally nothing, and all this time
she has been liable to be ejected at any day by the remainder-man.”

“And who the devil is the remainder-man?”

“His name is John Doane Fortescue.”

“John Doane Fortescue?”

Brennett assented.

“Hm-m,” said Travis, meditatively. “I have never seen him, but I know
who he is. Antoinette is related to him. They are cousins--distant--but
I should say she is about the nearest relation he has, for he is the
last of his family.” He thought it over silently for a moment. “This
whole affair seems to me very queer,” he suggested.

“Not so queer, after all,” said Brennett. “The way of it is this,--John
Fortescue’s grandfather, who first owned the property, was pressed for
a large sum of money--more than he could raise by mortgages--and as
he had always intended to will it to his grandson he did not wish to
alienate it absolutely. So he granted to Clendinning an estate in it
_per autre vie_, remainder to John Fortescue in fee. This estate
_per autre vie_ was limited to the life of James Murray, who was
then a young man and only died in April, 1857. The same year and month
Clendinning--I suppose he had expected his tenancy to last longer, and
wanted to make more out of it--sold the property to Mrs. Perrier for a
good big price.”

Travis turned upon him a face of smiling triumph. “1857! That lets us
out,” he remarked, cheerfully. “The remainder-man’s remedy is barred.
I happen to know that here the statute of limitations allows only
seven years next, after the right of action first accrues, for the
institution of proceedings to recover real estate.”

“I talked to the lawyer about that,” said Brennett. “It seems that in
Tennessee an intermission or sort of suspension has been prescribed, in
view of the disorganization caused by the war, during which no statute
of limitations can be held to have operated. This period extends from
the sixth of May, 1861, to the first of January, 1867--something more
than five years to be added to the original seven.”

“Throw in your suspension,” said Travis, liberally. “Can you count,
Brennett?--can you count? Seven years and your suspension--eh? We’re in
1871.”

“But,” persisted Brennett, pressing the point, “the statute doesn’t run
against some people. There are minors, you know, and married women,
persons ‘beyond the seas,’ or _non compos mentis_--all of these
have three years next after the disability is removed to bring suit.
The remainder-man may set up a disability and recover the property at
any time within the next ten, twenty, thirty years.”

“Ah, but Brennett, that is a very remote possibility.”

“It is probable enough,” Brennett declared, with a weighty significance
of manner, “to frighten Miss St. Pierre.”

Travis cast upon him a sudden glance of comprehension. “By the Lord,
Maurice,” he exclaimed, “what a head you have!”

“You must represent,” continued Brennett, careless of this tribute,
“that you are willing to exchange your solid lands for her houses,
with their shaky title, because it is imperative for you to have a
convertible property, and you are therefore prepared to encounter some
risk.”

“And I can say, too,” added Travis, temporizing with a certain pulpy
weakness which he called his conscience, “that the remainder-man may
never appear. And I’ll say it,” he added with a curious inconsistency,
“in such a way as will make her think he is knock, knock, knocking at
the door.”

He gave a short, abrupt laugh, impressed with the humor of the
situation. The next moment he was himself frightened by the bugbear
conjured up for the intimidation of Miss St. Pierre.

“But suppose upon these representations she does exchange--and before
I have time to do anything with the property up comes John Fortescue,
brisk and smiling, fresh from the Lunatic Asylum, or he may turn out to
be a minor, or a married woman, or just returned from circumnavigating,
or”--

“All that need not be considered by us,” said Brennett, impatiently.
“The man is dead, no doubt, or he would never have let this thing lie.
In fact, I think I have heard that he is dead. And I am quite sure,
too, he was not married.”

“Never, so far as I know,” rejoined Travis.

“And so, no widow,”--said Brennett, with satisfaction--“and no heirs
nearer than Miss St. Pierre, herself.” Presently he added--

“It would be a good plan for you to go to General Vayne’s place, have
an interview with her, and propose an exchange of property. We can’t
manage it through an agent, because we don’t care to take any one into
our confidence.”

Travis’s countenance fell, but he said nothing. There was much
conversation between them not expressed in words--hardly in reciprocal
glances. Brennett replied to the objection in his face.

“So she doesn’t like you,” he said, slowly.

Travis’s pause was impressive.

“I should think not,” he declared.

Brennett knitted his brows.

“That is a complication. Can’t you propitiate her--_make_ her like
you.”

Travis for a moment was dubious, but reflective. Then he glanced up
with some hopefulness. “There is one way to please her,” he said. “The
very fact that I thought of it would propitiate her.”

Brennett turned toward him with quick interest.

“You see,” Travis explained, discursively, “Laura left her personalty
to me, and among her valuables is an old heirloom of the St. Xantaine
family. Laura was descended from the St. Xantaines, you know.”

Brennett knew it. Everyone who had ever been within speech of a
descendant of the St. Xantaines knew the fact.

“And so is Antoinette,” continued Travis. “So you see it would be
peculiarly appropriate for me to give this old trinket to her. She
ought to have it, really. It is a very curious old cross--diamonds set
in silver, in the shape of the letter X--rather handsome diamonds, but
nothing extraordinary. It is not very valuable, intrinsically.”

Brennett looked disappointed.

“I tell you, Brennett, the thing is famous,” persisted Travis, replying
to the look as the other had done. “She would value it more than
something worth twenty times as much. I know her way. The stones have
a history--it may be true, and it may not. I have my doubts. It is
said that they were originally set in some ornament given, ages ago,
by royalty itself, to some interesting member of the St. Xantaine
family--I can’t say how many ages--can’t say what royalty--can’t say
what interesting member of the family.” He spoke with the air of a
man who had been nagged by these mythical splendors of ancestry which
he did not share. “I have heard the story often enough, but the Lord
knows I don’t want to burden my mind with it. Antoinette, though, could
tell you all about it. She would be immensely pleased to have it, and
pleased with me for thinking to bring it to her.”

“That will do,” said Brennett, decisively. “But, Travis, talk about the
business first, and bring in the cross as an afterthought.”

And upon this the two parted.




                              CHAPTER IV.


TRAVIS was a man incapable of temporizing with lower conditions than
those of his ideal, and he was acutely conscious upon arriving at
Chattalla that it was not the town it ought to be. There was something
fiercely inconsequent in his criticism,--certainly regarded as the
terminus of a swift transition from London and Paris, the dingy little
village was, by comparison, nowhere. But although they did not enter
into his mental estimate the great fundamental facts of humanity
were here--crowded upon this narrow stage were roaring farces, and
sentimental melodramas, and elements of high tragedy, the actors all
sublimely unconscious of the defects of the accessories and for the
most part having known nothing better.

He was constitutionally dilatory and indolent in business, but the one
o’clock dinner served as a stimulant to his industry, and with the
determination never to eat another meal in Chattalla and to take the
train at nightfall, he promptly prepared to call on Miss St. Pierre.

He found egress from the hotel blocked by a surging crowd which filled
the adjacent section of the Square--a crowd with grave, absorbed, not
to say awe-stricken faces, all turned incongruously enough toward
a door bearing above it the festive sign--Saloon. He made several
attempts by the use of his elbows, and also a cane with which he now
and then rapped gently upon a brawny brown jeans shoulder, to force
his way down from the somewhat elevated porch, that seemed in great
requisition, for, jammed and creaking beneath the heavy weight, it
afforded special facilities for looking over the heads of the crowd
below. The cane and the elbows made scant impression upon the general
pre-occupation, but at length a country fellow turned with a savage
growl in response to a smart admonitory tap--as that free, enlightened
and democratic animal will sometimes do--and it occurred to Travis
to supplement his blandly reproving “Will you let me pass?” with the
inquiry, “What’s the row?”

“Why,” said the countryman, casting upon him an excited eye, “Toole’s
brother-in-law hev jes’ killed a man.”

Travis looked down to button his glove.

“Gratifying to Toole,” he murmured, softly.

“That’s him now,” said his interlocutor, leaning eagerly forward.
“That’s Toole.”

Travis, his progress effectually barred by the press, thought it
worth while to cast a glance in the direction indicated. The glance
lingered upon Tom Toole, standing in front of the groggery--a tall,
powerfully-built, splendidly proportioned figure, and the very ideal of
a trooper. His old wide-awake hat was pushed back, showing his tawny
hair and his grave, flushed face. His long tawny beard streamed down
over the breast of his brown jeans coat. His feet, encased in coarse
muddy boots, which were drawn up over his trousers, moved unsteadily,
and his blue eyes were deeply bloodshot. He exhibited that peculiar
phase of drunkenness when a man’s senses have been sobered by some
sudden shock, but the fire still streams through his veins and writhes
among his muscles.

Travis noticed his superb physique with a flippant allusion to the dead
man.

“I can’t sufficiently commend his caution in not tackling Toole.”

And so he fell smilingly once more to buttoning his glove, raising his
hand now and then with a deprecatory gesture when some man as tall as
himself jostled against him and threatened the equilibrium of his silk
hat, as it towered in aristocratic isolation above the multitude.

“Oh, shucks!” said the rustic, comprehending him. “This hyar Ryder
Winklegree, the man what war killed, air ez big ez Tom Toole. He war
able ter pertect hisself. An’ Graffy never done it a-purpus--’twar
self-defence, ye onderstand. Graffy never drawed a pistol till
Winklegree’s bowie-knife war at his throat. That’s what some say.
Though Winklegree’s father an’ brothers hev swore ter sweep the country
ter find Graffy--the prosecution air a-goin’ ter be mighty hot, now, ef
they kin compass it. But they hain’t fund him yet.”

“Bolted--eh?” said Travis, languidly, and even while speaking to the
man never looking at him and having the air of ignoring him.

“Flunged down his pistol an’ kited through the back door of the
groggery thar. So I hev been gin ter onderstand. The sheriff’s a-riding
now.”

A sudden violent commotion of the crowd swept Travis and his
acquaintance down the steps and upon the pavement where close at hand
a carriage, of a long by-gone fashion, awaited him. Far out into the
street the throng was dense, and after he had stepped into the vehicle
he was detained for some minutes, while the driver loudly and fervently
insisted on a pass-way.

“They couldn’t do nothin’ with a man like Graffy nohow--even ef they
makes out ter find him,” said one of the deeply interested upon the
curb-stone. “He is an idjit. Jes’ the looks of him would be enough for
a jury.”

“Graffy’s a sane man, though he looks like an idjit--thar’s su’thin the
matter with the leaders of his face so that he can’t hold it still fur
a minit,” declared Travis’s former interlocutor--a man of speculation,
for he presently added--“It always did seem ter me thar war a sorter
spite in that dispensation--ef a body mought git thar consent ter think
so. He’s a sane man, an’ he’s made ter look like an idjit. I know that
some folks ’low fur sartain ez he is one--an’ mebbe they’ll fetch that
up on the trial.”

“Nothing,” began Travis, lounging on the seat of the carriage, his
eyes on his gloves as he buttoned them at his ease--both men on the
curb-stone turned sharply; a touch of embarrassment was in their
manner; they were restive under the unwonted impertinence of being
spoken to with contemptuously averted eyes, but their respectful
attention was constrained by something peculiarly impressive in
Travis’s tone and bearing as if he were about to propound views of
importance--“Nothing,” he drawled, “is so efficacious as pleading
insanity.”

Then he leaned slightly out of the window.

“Now, driver,” he expostulated, with that affectation of familiarity
and good humor which is the most offensive form of condescension,
“can’t we trundle along?”

The door banged; the whip cracked; the good Tennessee horses stretched
their muscles.

His lightsome mood deserted him when he was alone in General Vayne’s
library awaiting the appearance of his step-sister. He walked the
length of the room with a swift, nervous step. The realization of the
magnitude of the interests involved weighed upon him heavily. The
project was clumsy at best. He was no tactician, and he knew it. How
could he bit and bridle his words, and harness them in with those
wayward coursers, the doubtful whims of a woman.

Perhaps it was the relief from suspense which enabled him, when the
door at last opened, to drop naturally and at once into his wonted
manner. It might be appropriately described as a silken manner, and
it combined with all those soft lustres acquired by the habit of good
society a certain brotherly ease as he approached the tall, slender
girl who stood upon the threshold.

“I hope, now, Antoinette, you are going to say you are glad to see me,”
he drawled softly, as he took her hand. “Stretch your conscience to
that extent; won’t you! A little exercise will benefit it, develop its
elasticity you see. A good conscience must have some elasticity or it
can’t be an easy fit. Take the advice of a man who experimented on his
conscience before you were born.”

She was evidently not quick at repartee. She looked at him with
smiling hesitation, as if at a loss for an appropriate rejoinder.
Then, as he laughed lightly, and, turning away, placed one of the
cumbrous arm-chairs for her before the fire, she replied, at last, with
conscious flatness,--

“I _am_ glad to see you; very glad.”

She spoke with a mellifluous, monotonous voice. She moved slowly toward
the chair, the soft material of her long, mourning dress sweeping
inaudibly over the gay carpet. She was so languid that in comparison
even Travis seemed alert. Except for the convention which accounts all
yellow-haired girls beautiful, she might be held as only pleasing.
Her hair, drawn in light, loose waves from her brow, and coiled in
smooth plaits at the back of her head, was of a paler, duller shade
than that of the true auriferous blonde. She had a fair complexion, a
ready flush, and a slender, delicate white throat, half concealed by
the black crape frilling clustered about it. Her features were small,
and singularly characterless and inexpressive. Despite its gentle
prettiness her face, in its unmeaning immobility, was like a mask.

He sat down near her, maintaining his usual careless, listless aspect,
but occasionally glancing toward her with furtive watchfulness, and
doubtfully. He could not now discuss their sister’s will with the
callous readiness he had displayed to Brennett. The consciousness
of the feelings which must naturally animate her induced in him a
repulsion for the part he was to enact in the little scene, in which
the two people who had profited by the death of a woman, presumably
dear to both, were to canvass the relative value of the property
she had left them. He did not expect open reproaches, it is true.
He knew she must be keenly sensible of the futility, as well as the
unbecomingness, involved in intimating to a man fifteen years her
senior that he failed in the respect due to his sister’s memory.
She would dread the counter-intimation that her grief had been so
handsomely gilded at his expense that she could afford to indulge it.
The situation, however, unsettled him; the more, because the desultory
conversation, on trivial topics, failed to suggest how he had best
approach the subject of his mission. Presently he was fain to lay hold
on his awkward project without the preliminary graces of an exordium.

“Do you know, Antoinette,” he said, “that this is a visit on business.”

Her smile might have meant anything or nothing.

“I should like to talk to you about the disposition which Laura made in
her will of her property.”

He had described Miss St. Pierre to Brennett as solidly sensible,
well-informed for her age and sex, and shrewd beyond either. But she
was certainly singularly inapt in conversation.

“I was very much surprised,” she said inappropriately enough. Then
she checked herself, hastily, with a deep flush. For the surprise she
had expressed might seem to refer to differences which had long ago
subsisted between her father and his step-daughter, while a member of
his household, and in which Travis had interfered to aid and abet his
sister. By reason of tender years Antoinette had been a non-combatant,
and she had later construed Mrs. Perrier’s infrequent letters, a
birthday gift now and then, or a morning call at long intervals when
in the same part of the country, rather as an acknowledgment of her
irresponsibility in these matters than as a manifestation of affection.

To Travis Mrs. Perrier had been the most devoted of sisters. In the
relation of step-children they had formed an alliance offensive and
defensive against all the world. Afterward his chosen friend had become
her husband, and to the day of her death the brother and sister were
on cordial terms and frequently together. The fact that Antoinette was
equally closely related to her she had ignored for so long that the
girl was genuinely astonished when this relationship was adequately
recognized by the terms of the codicil of the will.

Travis took instant advantage of her admission.

“And I was surprised, too,” he assented. Then, with his incongruous
sledge-hammer mode of phrasing, he softly drawled, “I was very harshly
treated.” He leaned back languidly in his chair, slipping the tips of
the fingers of his left hand into his trousers pocket as he glanced
about aimlessly at the gay carpet, at the showy, shattered mirror, the
flashing fender and andirons, and the glowing wood fire.

“The property which I received is inconvertible in the present state
of the country as compared with those houses. Now I am in need of
ready money, and I should like to make this proposition to you. Those
plantations are, as you know, completely cleared, in full operation,
and the levees are in perfect condition. Now don’t you think we might
make an exchange?”

He did not wait for a reply, but began to argue the question in
his reasonable, plausible style, which so impressed strangers. He
especially endeavored to prove that the investment was safe, and dwelt
particularly on the fact that her income would be trebled, as the
plantations produced phenomenally in comparison with the market value
of the lands.

“I know that you are thinking it is odd I wish to get rid of the
plantations when they pay so well,” he said with his light laugh.

She merely smiled in her non-committal, conventional fashion.

“Let me remind you that I told you the plantations are not easy of
sale. You observe I _don’t_ say you might readily sell them, and
I tell you fairly, you can’t mortgage them nowadays.” He made this
stipulation in a weighty manner; it was the lesson of experience. “But
I do say that they will give more income than any other investment
whatever. Now I am in need of a considerable sum of money. I could
afford to let you have them at a great sacrifice, and I will tell you
why. I know of an opportunity by which I could make an immense fortune
if I had available capital, and I could raise money by a sale of those
houses, or mortgages. What do you think of the plan?”

“I don’t know just yet what to think,” she replied, slowly.

Travis seemed prepared for this.

“Now,” he drawled, placidly, “if you will permit me to advise, I
suggest that you shilly-shally as little as possible in getting rid of
those houses.”

She fixed her eyes suddenly upon him. “Why?” she asked, with a startled
intonation.

“There is an outstanding title to that property, which, if established,
would invalidate Laura’s title, and of course yours.”

She sat silent for a moment, looking intently into his tranquil face,
as if she were trying to extract more from it than he had told her in
words.

“Whose is it?” she asked concisely.

“His name is Fortescue; John Fortescue. You see, Laura, who was always
careless in matters of business, bought this property without having
the records examined, and knew nothing of his interest. If this claim
should be set up--and I suppose it will be, sooner or later--it would
involve the property in a suit that might last ten years, and in all
probability you would lose the whole of it. Isn’t it better to draw
every year the certain and large income from lands that can never
be spirited away by legal chicanery than to be wound up in endless
litigation like that?”

She made no reply for a time, and when at last she spoke it was
irrelevantly.

“Do you know Mr. Fortescue?” she asked, with a peculiar characteristic
hesitation, which might pass for mere girlish timidity, but in an older
woman would indicate habitual caution.

“No, I have never met him.”

“Does he know about this claim?”

“I should think not. If he knew, he would raise the question at once.
A friend of mine--or, rather, his lawyer--discovered it by accident in
examining some old records, and I suppose we are the only people aware
of its existence. I did not know it myself until a few days ago.”

“Who is this Fortescue?” she asked.

“Why, you ought to know who he is; your father was his second-cousin,”
said Travis, a trifle impatiently, for she was apparently disposed to
give her attention to small personal details rather than to the matter
of business submitted for her consideration.

“I have heard of him, but I never saw him. He used to live in New
Orleans.” Then, after a pause, “Where is he now?” she persisted.

“I don’t know. He has the reputation of being a wild fellow, and he has
lived a riotous, wandering life, chiefly in Europe, I think. I know he
has not been in New Orleans for many years now.”

She leaned her elbow on the arm of the chair, and gazed reflectively
into the fire. The cheap clock on the mantel-piece ticked off many
seconds, even minutes, as she sat thus, gravely silent. Travis, silent
too, stealthily watched her. His contemplative eyes were languid no
longer, when her head turned slowly toward him. She was about to speak,
and his heart beat quick with the hope that she would at least promise
to consider the proposition.

She hesitated, as she always did. Then, as in his eagerness he leaned
slightly toward her, she said, “Now that I think of it, I seem to have
heard that that man had two sisters, and a brother. How was it? And
where are they?”

He recoiled indignantly. He began to recognize in all this her
ill-regulated caution, and perhaps a touch of suspicion.

“Why, what has the man, himself, to do with the matter?” he broke out,
impatiently. “It is his vested remainder in the property that affects
you, Antoinette. You ought to have a lawyer to examine its validity,
and then decide about this exchange. The point of law is the question,
not the man’s relatives. Not even such a genealogist, such a respecter
of persons as you, can make anything by taking account of his ma’s pa
and his pa’s ma. _They_ are not kin to the St. Xantaines!”

He gave that sudden, short laugh which he seemed to keep for those rare
occasions when he perceived something which he fancied was a joke.
Her face was as inexpressive as ever, but a hot flush, rising to the
roots of her fair hair, warned him. This was hardly civil, certainly
impolitic.

“Forgive that fling into the family tree,” he said, with his careless,
fraternal air, “and I’ll tell you all I know about the man’s brother
and sisters, although they died in childhood, and have nothing whatever
to do with the affair. They were drowned in a steamboat accident on the
Mississippi River, when the Bellefontaine burned just above my father’s
plantation. Never shall forget how she looked swinging around the bend,
a tower of flames.”

“Oh, were _they_ the children drowned there! I remember that
dreadful story,” she said, with a little shudder.

He looked at her and laughed. “It was nearly thirty years ago,” he
cried.

There was a pause.

“How that family has thinned out,” said Travis, discursively. “His
father was an only child and his mother’s brother, Adolphe Duchene--you
remember that crusty old bachelor?--died ten or fifteen years ago. This
Fortescue is the last of them.”

Then ensued another interval of silence.

“What sort of claim is this?” asked Antoinette.

“Well, the man who sold to Laura made a fraudulent conveyance. He
had only a life estate in the property. That is now terminated and
Fortescue is the remainder-man. You can get all the details by having a
lawyer to examine the record.”

“If I should exchange with you,” she said, “you would have the same
difficulty about this claim. What would you do?”

“I am willing to take the risk. There is a probability that the claim
may never be set up. If it should be I could possibly compromise with
the claimant. A man in my financial position must make sacrifices.
But you--I should think you would want to avoid the losses and
uncertainties of litigation.”

She made no rejoinder.

“Remember,” persisted Travis, “this claim may be sprung at any moment,
and any lawyer will assure you that it is valid.”

“If I have no right to the property,” she exclaimed, hotly, and losing
for the first time her self-possession, “I don’t care to keep it.”

“I thought you were too sharp for that sort of sentimental nonsense,”
returned Travis, scornfully. “Don’t you see that Laura paid a full
value for the property and you can only be ousted by some legal
subtlety. But law is law, you know, and many people have lost property
through carelessness about titles. And, Antoinette, if I were in your
place I would not talk about this affair. The mere whisper of it will
cloud your title so that nothing can be done with that property for the
next thirty years. And Fortescue _may_ never move in the matter.
There is nothing underhand in keeping it quiet,” he added quickly as
a concession to feminine squeamishness. “It is all blazoned on the
record--as free to Fortescue as to anybody else.”

Once more there was a long pause.

“Take it all into consideration,” said Travis, rising. “I hope you will
determine on the safest course--the only safe course for you.”

He walked to the door, stopped as with an afterthought, then suddenly
turned back. He caught her countenance off its guard. She was looking
after him with perplexed anxiety and distrust in her eyes--a cold,
hard, calculating dubitation anomalously expressed itself in her
delicate infantile features. He was not a man of observant habit,
but the realization of the crisis sharpened his senses. So far, it
was evident, his mission had been a failure. An appreciation of this
fact gave his amiable, languid manner the added charm of a gentle
deprecation as he approached her once more.

“Ah, Antoinette,” he said, “I had almost forgotten.” Then with his
blunt habit of speech--“I have brought you something that I thought you
would like.”

Her eyebrows were elevated in doubting surprise.

“It really belongs more properly to you than to me--that old St.
Xantaine cross, you know.”

Her face changed; her color rose; her eyes were suddenly aglow; her
lips parted in a smile of unaffected pleasure.

“Oh, how kind of you--how kind and thoughtful! There is nothing in all
the world that I should so delight to possess.”

The genuine ring in her voice thrilled him. As he placed the gleaming
gaud in her hand there was a certain picturesque effect in their
attitudes. It might have seemed a moment of some splendid homage--the
man was so handsome and so intent upon pleasing; she was so graciously
pretty and so evidently agitated by a sweet emotion. The scene would
have suggested an episode in a romance. Surely there was no possible
intimation that the presentation of the cross was devised by a crafty
schemer to lubricate the stubborn machinery of a clumsy project.

Certainly all was much smoother now. The girl held up the diamond X all
a-glitter, and laughed with pleasure. Travis found it easy enough to
say in a casual, off-hand, brotherly fashion,--

“I’ll write to you about that matter of exchange, Antoinette, and give
you in detail all the points.”

“I shall always be glad to hear from you,” she replied, prettily, and
he was struck anew by the change in her voice.

“By the Lord Harry,” he said to himself as he stepped into the carriage
and was bowled rapidly away, “Maurice Brennett himself couldn’t have
managed that more adroitly.”

Then his flexible attention turned from the subject, and as he cast a
glance out of the window at the desolate waste that encompassed him on
every side, something in the terrible solemnity of its aspect smote
upon the chords of his trivial nature and set them all to jarring.

“Damn such a God-forsaken country!” he exclaimed with a sudden
unreasoning anger.

He struck a match, lighted his cigar, lifted his boots to the opposite
cushions, and thus as comfortably established as circumstances would
allow, gazed out upon it with a contemplative contempt into which
entered an element of self-gratulation that it was none of his.

And so he saw before him a bleak barren; he knew that it rained and
sleeted and hailed alternately; he heard the frozen drops of water
dashing against the glass, and he was chilled.

But did he see, as he passed, a spectral wavering in the haunted
thickets, where even the weeds were dead and sheeted with ice? Did the
wind bring to him from across the plain the shrill tones of a bugle,
piercing the clamor of some woful invisible rout? Did he quake with an
unnamed fear when he skirted a heavy work and the pallid mists came
suddenly down and interposed an impalpable but opaque barrier between
mortal eyes and some fierce assault upon the grim redoubt, which threw
the earth into a strong tremor and shook the air with a terrible sound?
Was he even aware of the presence of a woman, who heard and saw all
these things, as she stood in the rain, and the hail, and the sleet on
the steep slope of the great traverse in the midst of the terre-parade
plein of Fort Despair--or was his glance so cursory that he hardly
distinguished her among the bushes, and the mists, and the looming
works? Sometimes she turned her head slowly, fearfully, impelled to
look backward, yet hardly daring for the horror of what she might see.
Sometimes she rose to her full height and, panting with her exertions,
leaned upon her axe-handle and gazed far away at the billowy sweep of
the wire-weeds--all whitened with the hail and lashed by the wind into
a surf-like commotion, and stretching and stretching across the level,
until, though only weeds, they touched the blurred sky. Then she bent
once more to her work.

And it was strange work for a woman--and a slight, timorous, weakly
woman like this. She dug for the wood as well as cut it, for, although
others had been here before her on a like errand, the timbers of the
old powder-magazine still lay deeply embedded in the heart of the
great traverse. They would kindle more readily than the green, soaked,
ice-girt saplings close at hand, and make better fuel for supper. This
heavy, unaccustomed labor, and the terrors of the spectred place were
a check on some grief which beset her. It was only at long intervals
that she fell to sobbing, and dried her tears with the backs of her
hands, or upon the sleeve of her dark blue cotton dress, or upon the
red worsted tippet tied over her yellow hair, which hung down about
her neck after the country fashion, and glittered here and there with
frozen drops of water. Then with a tension of muscle and nerves that
sought to be substituted for strength she lifted the axe, and again
the burnished glimmer of the steel cleft the pallid mists. There was
a flash of a different kind struck out when the metal clashed sharply
upon a minie-ball, spent so long ago, and sunk into the clay, or a
curiously fashioned, flint arrowhead,--for often these implements of
warfare of far different ages and far different peoples are found lying
side by side, washed by the same rain, lighted by the same sunshine,
turned sometimes into the same peaceful furrow. Once there was
projected into the dim, gray atmosphere a fiery darting gleam, brighter
and fiercer than all the others. She drew back hastily, then she
stooped and took from the earth a great solid shot, and tossed it down
upon the terre-plein. “Ef that thar thing,” she said, as she watched it
break the ice in a standing pool, “ef that thar thing hed happened ter
be a bomb, the way that fire lept up mought hev busted it. An’”--with a
sudden change of countenance,--“I wish it hed! I wish it hed!”

And yet again her fears broke upon her weeping. Suddenly her eyes were
dilated with a new terror. She had become strongly conscious of a vague
presence near at hand. She fancied that it sometimes flitted to the
shapeless fissure where once was the door of the powder-magazine, but
as her glance turned thither it stole back silently into the glooms
within. With a morbid fascination she was continually peering over at
that black gap below, as she worked high up in the rain outside. She
saw only the mists shifting in and out of the useless vault-like place.
But when she averted her eyes she knew that something had slipped to
the door and was looking at her.

All the full-pulsed courage that had once beat so high here where
the battle was fought had ebbed away long ago, and there were those
stronger than she who avoided the place as if there were a ban upon
it. She only wondered now that she should have come at all, as she
hastily packed the wood she had cut into the barrow, and wheeled
it away through the outlet and into the midst of the battlefield,
along the road that the movements of mighty armies had worn,--a meek
successor to the flying artillery! But here the whirl of any wheel
was suggestive, and it roused the cavernous echoes. Even when it was
silenced by the distance the bright colors of her garments were visible
from the spot she had left--now a fitful gleam of red and blue against
the hail-whitened weeds, and now adding to the Protean illusions of the
place and flaunting like a battle-flag from a far away misty lunette.

And when it was gone at last a sound issued suddenly from the silence
of the old powder-magazine--a sound as of despairing hands struck
together. A man came out abruptly from the jagged fissure and stood
gazing wistfully at the point where she had disappeared,--a man with
a face such as one does not care to look upon twice, a face which
Nature seems to have intended as a flout at humanity. There was some
painful affection of its muscles which would not let it be still for an
instant. He mowed and grimaced like an idiot, and only the expression
of his eyes gave evidence of his sanity. He was further set apart by
the red brand of a birth-mark above his left eyebrow. His yellow hair,
of a deeper hue and a silkier texture, but like the woman’s, hung
down to the collar of his brown jeans coat. Here only was the hand of
Nature laid kindly upon him--even in the gray light of the sad day it
glimmered like burnished gold. When he spoke, each syllable was flung
out from his agitated muscles with the force of a projectile.

“Mirandy might have holped me some! Jes’ one word would have holped
me some! But I dilly-dallies ter the door--an’ then I dilly-dallies
back--too skeered ter let her know. An’ now she’s gone! An’ ef I war
to gin her a call to fotch her back, them ghostis would set up sech a
charging cheer I’d most drap dead ter hear it.”

He too glanced dubiously over his left shoulder, and his own mowing
face set in the pallid mists was as frightful an object as any he could
dread to see.

As he stood out hatless in the rain and the sleet he noted the
deepening gloom of the day. The early nightfall was close at hand, and
he welcomed the change.

“It’ll be cleverly dark by the time Mirandy gits ter her house,” he
said, unconsciously speaking aloud, the rural proclivity to soliloquy
strong upon him. “An’ along ’bout midnight I kin slip down thar an’ see
Tom an’ her--an’--” What to do then? Once more, with a realization of
the utter futility of scheming or effort, he held his despairing hands
above his head and smote them together.

Then he turned back into the old powder-magazine for safety. Sometimes
when the terrors of the law were strong upon him he lay silent,
motionless, scarcely daring to breathe, listening to detect some alien
sound in the surging wind, and the ceaseless rain, and the turmoil of
the ghostly forces that had died in the vain struggle to carry the
work, and vainly struggled still. Then there were times when fear
loosed its clutch upon him, and he rose up and strode about his narrow
bounds, the grotesque distortions of his mowing face more horrible than
ever in contrast with the misery expressed in his eyes--times when
he could take no comfort from the distinctions between murder, and
manslaughter, and excusable homicide. He only knew that there was blood
upon his hands. And he wrung them.

The woman wheeling the barrow had need of the guiding gleam of light
which she caught from far across the battlefield. It was like the
glister of some great, lucent, tremulous star, but it was charged with
a meaning foreign to cold sidereal glintings. It was the light of a
home and the fact can dignify a kerosene lamp and a log-cabin.

She burst into her ready tears as she saw it. “Thar’ll be a mighty
differ in that house arter this!” she exclaimed.

The red fire-light flared out into the night as the door was opened and
a burly shadow came forth to meet her.

“Gimme a holt o’ the handles o’ that thar barrow, Mirandy!” said Tom
Toole in penitent haste. “I clean forgot thar warn’t nothin’ lef at the
wood-pile.” He meant the place where the pile ought to be. “Did ye hev
ter go a-pickin’ up of doty wood off’n the groun’?”

“Thar warn’t no doty wood nowhar ter pick up,” sobbed Miranda. “I got
this off’n the old forts.”

Her husband turned and looked hard at her as she came into the light.

“Ye hev hearn ’bout it all,” he said, conclusively.

“They kem hyar a-sarchin’ fur him,” she replied.

“They ain’t fund him yit,” he said, breathing hard as he thrust his
hands into the pockets of his brown jeans trousers and strode heavily
up and down the floor. His wife had knelt upon the rough ill-adjusted
stones of the hearth, and was stirring the live coals with an old
bayonet kept in the chimney corner for the peaceful offices of
poker. But when he spoke she turned her head and looked after him
breathlessly, the bayonet still in her hand, her loose yellow hair
tossed back, a deep flush hot on her cheeks, her eyes wide and bright,
the kindling of a sudden hope revivifying the early faded youth in her
face. She had expected only a terrible tale of capture and despair. And
she had dreaded it.

Toole was a man of a discriminating conscience.

“Ef Graffy hed done it a-purpose I’d be the fust to say--‘Take him.’ An
ef Graffy hed done it in a fair fight I’d say--‘That’s agin the law.
Take him, too.’ But thar air mighty few men ez hev got the grit ter
stand still with the p’int of another feller’s bowie-knife ter thar
throat an’ be carved. Ev’ybody said ’twar no wonder that Graffy drawed
his pistol then. He’d hev been a dead man ef he hedn’t. Leastways, that
is the word they tell in town.”

Caution prompted this last stipulation, for Toole was conscious of
having been too drunk at the time of the occurrence for the evidence of
his senses to be of any value, even to himself.

His wife hesitated, the bayonet still poised above the glowing coals.
Then with suddenly developed cynicism she said--“Thar’s nothin’ like
humans. A man air obligated ter be mighty peart ter git away from
twelve other men a-settin’ in jedgment on him.”

“Waal,” said Toole, “he air fur enough away from hyar by now, I reckon.
’Twar self-defence, but ev’ybody ’lowed that the prosecution would hev
been mighty fierce.”

“How’d he git the money ter go?” asked the woman with an anxiously
knitted brow.

“Somebody mus’ hev lent it ter him, I reckon,” said Toole with
preposterous hopefulness.

Equally ignoring the probabilities she assented to this view and then
fell silent.

Every faculty was absorbed in brooding upon the various phases of
the event, and she went mechanically about her preparations for
supper--broiling the salt pork upon the live coals, and baking a johnny
cake on a square flat board propped up before the fire and thus exposed
to its heat. There was “salt risin’” bread in the oven with coals
beneath and upon the lid. This she lifted off now and then with the
bayonet-poker to judge how the baking was progressing. Once she let it
fall with a heavy crash.

“An’ whar he will go,” she cried, with a sharp note of anguish, “it
will all be strange to him. He air a man marked for a purpose by God
A’mighty--but what air the purpose nobody keers ter know. Thar’ll be
laffin’ an’ mockin’, an’ a-follerin’ of him always. An’ stones will be
flung at him in the streets. ’Pears like ter me ez I kin feel ’em now.
The Lord is mighty hard on some folks.”

Toole paused in his heavy striding to and fro. He looked upon his
wife as a sort of moral pilot, and he felt that he was now among the
breakers.

“That ain’t religion, Mirandy,” he said, severely. “An’ ye air
a-talkin’ of foolishness. Who hev got the moest friends--you, or me, or
him? Why, thar ain’t a yaller dog in the county that don’t wag his tail
when that man goes by the fence. An’ wharever he’ll drift to thar’ll be
the same pack o’ chillen, an’ idle, shiftless niggers, an’ no ’count
white trash a-hangin’ round ter hear him play on the fiddle, an’ beg
or borry his money--he can’t keep his money no more’n ef it ’twas red
hot--an’ git him to do ’em faviors. And they’ll traipse arter him jes’
like they done hyar. An’ he’ll crap--he’ll rent land from somebody. An’
he’ll go fishin’; he’ll go fishin’ of a Sat’day like he always done. He
ain’t so ’flicted, nohow; he hev been respected by all. An’ this thing
war self-defence. Lawyer Green was speakin’ ’bout it jes’ afore I kem
out’n Chattalla, an’ he said he thought so, jedgin’ from town talk an’
them that stood by. Law, Mirandy, he’ll go fishin’ all the same, an’
the chillen, an’ the dead-beats, white an’ black, all will hang round
him, an’ he’ll hev so many friends that they’ll hardly leave him a
nickel for himself.”

Somehow the idea of this friendship, albeit of a dubious advantage,
made life seem more tolerable to Miranda. The fire flared joyously up
the wide chimney, casting a ruddy glow on the faces of the children
as they trooped in to supper, and conjuring up quaint shadows on
the dark walls and the rafters, from which depended strings of red
peppers, and hanks of blue and yellow and white yarn, and a picturesque
swinging-shelf where the humble store of groceries was kept safe from
the rats and mice. And there was the sound of childish laughter in
the house, that had been so sad to-day, and the baby grew excited
amidst the hurly-burly, and after the others were tucked into the
trundle-bed he was hard to get to sleep. But at last quiet came again.
Toole lounged in front of the fire smoking his cob pipe, and his wife,
her foot still on the rocker of the box-like cradle, sat in a low
chair mending the child’s clothes until, succumbing to the soporific
influences of the heat after her long cold tramp, she fell asleep over
her work. Very still it was within; you might have heard the drawing
of the wick in the kerosene lamp, for the oil was low. There was a bed
of pulsating coals where the hilarious flames had been. The gnawing of
a mouse among the rafters now and then annotated the silence. Without,
the rain fell in a low muffled roar--sometimes a volley dashed against
the shutterless window. The mists pressed their pallid cheeks close to
it and looked in. Far and faint a bugle sang out suddenly in the night
and the wind redoubled its force.

It was with a movement as if a galvanic thrill were all at once astir
in every fibre, that Tom Toole became conscious that something beside
the mist was looking in at the window. Roused to a wild alarm he sat
rigidly upright, his pipe in his hand and his eyes fixed, expectant of
the re-appearance of the vague presence of which he had only caught a
glimpse. It might have been hallucination, suggested by the subject
uppermost in his mind; it might have been the distortions of the rain
and the grimy glass; it might have been the strange uncanny effect of
the mist, but it was like a mowing human face. And he knew it when it
came again.

He cast a startled glance upon his wife; her sleeping head had sunk
down on the edge of the cradle, and her yellow hair streamed over
the baby’s torn red dress which she still held half mended in her
unconscious hand. No creature was awake in the house except himself
and the mouse gnawing among the rafters. He crept cautiously to the
door--so cautiously that the loose boards of the ill-floored room
scarcely creaked beneath his heavy weight. That short instant was
charged with the force of years. He always felt afterward that in
shutting himself out into the rain, and mist, and darkness, with the
man who awaited him there, he had shut himself off forever from all his
former life--a life so different from what was to come that it often
seemed to him that that other reckless, buoyant, undismayed self had
died when he closed the door.

Henceforth he was a changed man, for he carried a heavy secret. He
could not so much as be boisterously drunk of a Saturday evening,
according to the immemorial custom of the dwellers about Chattalla,
lest some fatal allusion escape him. He was of an unthinking habit of
speech, and the perpetual guard upon his tongue, even when alone with
his wife and children, was a perpetual effort. He actually feared that
he would tell in his sleep that a man whom the law sought, lurked in
hiding near at hand. He could scarcely support the strain of feigning,
when among his boon companions; speculation was rife as to Graffy’s
flight and refuge. Whenever his boat was in mid-stream, and he faced
the east, as he pulled on the ropes his heart waxed faint and his
sinews failed, and he labored hard in the old accustomed vocation that
used to be but a slight matter for his strength. He was aware, too,
of a change of countenance in nearing the cruel old redoubt, and grew
painfully conscious of the powder-magazine in the distance, where, as
in a cell, a man who had slain another in self-defence expiated a deed
that the law forgives.

Sometimes for the sake of the light and air, Graffy stole cautiously
out from the jagged fissure where once was the door of the
powder-magazine, and lay at length on the banquette. He could see far
across the battle-field through the outlet, narrow though it was. The
sun came out and shone upon the young ice-covered growth fringing the
long lines of earthworks, and then those grim parapets seemed overhung
by a glittering network of stellular scintillations. Even the humble
wire-weed was an incredibly magical and refulgent thing, and all the
level expanse was bestrewn with myriads of glancing frosty points of
light. The skies, vast as the skies above a sea, shoaled from blue to
orange, and thence to the purest green, in the midst of which the red
sun went down to the purple hills. There was much splendor before the
sad eyes so full of tears, and half unconsciously he missed it as the
thaw came on.

He grew very lonely after a time. He eagerly watched for Miranda as
she went back and forth from the house, and he was glad to know that
she thought he had miraculously secured the money to go far away, and
was safe somewhere, making a new life for himself in a new place. He
learned to look for the ferry-boat, slipping to and fro across the
river with some wagoner and his team, and he took an interest too in
the passengers. His idle gaze followed Tom’s motions as he cut the
wood, or fed the pigs, or pulled the boat and set the air vibrating
with his melodies.

For with no appreciation of his voice, and no adequate appreciation
of his motive, Toole sang at his work, though his heart was heavy,
thinking the sound might give a sense of companionship to the solitary
wretch hidden away there in the empty powder-magazine. Even the
stern old rocks along the river were instinct with a wild, barbaric,
melodic spirit and responded in strophe and antistrophe. Sometimes
there were war-songs; sometimes quaint antiquated ditties which his
great-grandfather had brought here when he came and settled in the
cane among the Indians; often he sang a certain old hymn, and its
dominant iteration--“Peace--peace--be still!”--resounded in its strong
constraining intensity far and wide over the battlefield--echoing
from parapet to parapet, thrilling through the haunted thickets, and
breaking the silence with a noble pathos where the shadowy pickets
lurked and listened in the rifle-pits.

A long unseasonable drought succeeded the thaw, chill and calm, with a
clear sky, and a pale suffusion of wintry sunlight. The traffic on the
distant pike was slight, and the dust lay motionless. But more than
once on the battlefield when the earth was a-throb with that strange
tremor, and a vibratory blare rang faint in the distance, and a dull
weird clash as of arms pervaded the drear and lonely sunshine, Graffy
heard the swift wheels of artillery whirl by with a hollow whir, and he
saw the dust spring up from an old redan and, without a breath of air,
whirl too in a reeling column after the invisible battery. He had seen
often before this simple phenomenon of dry weather. But its coincidence
with the sound gave it a new meaning, and then he came to fear the dead
hardly less than the living.

And so when Tom Toole, under cover of the midnight, slipped down
into the old magazine with his tin pail of bits, stolen from his own
larder, and his canteen that had not yet forgotten a certain trick of
joviality, and a cartridge-box full of tobacco, he would find these
creature comforts disregarded by Graffy in his frantic importunacy for
the money to get away and be gone forever. A promise to “skeer up” all
the cash possible without exciting suspicion, supplemented by warnings
that an inadvertence would certainly precipitate capture while all the
world was yet on the alert for the reward offered, could reconcile
Graffy to the “harnts” for a time--so long in sooth as Toole lay there
and smoked his pipe, and talked in whispers, even though his topic was
not cheerful. For Toole grew prone to dwell upon the experience of
various malefactors who had fled from justice with an inadequate supply
of funds, and who were finally glad to choose between surrender and
starvation among strangers, fairly falling upon the sheriff’s neck for
joy when he came with the Governor’s requisition.

But when Tom was gone Graffy would relapse into his anguish of
loneliness. He pined for his friends--who, stimulated by the reward
offered for his apprehension, sought him by bush and brake. He pined
for the sound of his crazy old fiddle. He yearned for the light. One
afternoon when he crept out from his burrow he found that clouds had
gathered at last and portended rain. He hardly feared to lie here on
the tread of the banquette, for in these days there were no laborers
in the fields. The last “dog-tail,” as the frosted remnant of the
cotton is called, still hung on the black and withered stalk, and not a
plough was yet bedding up land for the new crop. In these early sunsets
the cattle that broke down the fences, or were surreptitiously let
through the bars by their enterprising owners that they might utilize
General Vayne’s fields as pasturage, came lowing by on their homeward
way. Sometimes an estray was sought with a loud, beguiling call of
“Suke!--Suke!”--which echoed far along the level stretch, and heralded
the cow-boy’s approach. Now, however, there was no sign nor sound of
life. The earth seemed as lonely as the lonely skies. As he smoked, a
coal fell from his pipe upon the ground, and in the very abandonment of
idleness he watched the golden thread, which emanated from it, steal
along the edges of a dead leaf and trace in a fiery arabesque all the
graces of the maple. Then, spark by spark, it died, and the leaf was a
cinder. Another had been touched by the coal--another and another. Here
and there a twig caught, too,--and at last a tiny blaze was kindled.
Its presence cheered him. It was a friendly, domestic thing. It seemed
instinct with the spirit of home. “It’s ez much company ez a human,
mighty nigh!” he exclaimed.

Somehow the sight of it deadened his fears. The sound of it lulled him.
As he lay on the ground beside it he dropped into a reverie--so deep
that even his morbidly sensitive nerves were not startled by the thud
of rapid hoofs until they had approached very near.

It was a terrible moment. He sprang to his feet. Then he seemed
stricken into stone--he could not move a muscle. He had no
consciousness save a repentance of his temerity. He understood nothing
but the imminence of his danger as he looked over the parapet at a
horseman galloping past close along the crest of the counterscarp. He
remembered afterward, rather than noted then, that this man’s face was
meditative, and that his downcast eyes were fixed absently upon the
ground, heedless of what he saw. The sweeping gallop bore him speedily
into the distance toward the great house looming up in the closing
twilight.

The fugitive from justice hastily flung a heavy stone upon the fire to
crush its life out. Then he skulked like a shadow, like the skulking
shadows whom he feared, through the jagged fissure and into the deep
glooms within the powder magazine, and his world of lunettes, and
redans, and redoubts, knew him no more.

The sky was gray. The earth was black. The wind was dead. The only
motion in all the still, sombre expanse was the upward curling of a
tiny wreath of luminous smoke from beside the heavy stone that had
served to smother the fire. Its fall had displaced a single coal. This
glowed, and flared, and reddened in the melancholy dusk encompassing it.

And the night came on very dark.




                              CHAPTER V.


THE battle-field, the cannon-shattered house that rose like a monument
in its midst, had so impressed Estwicke, that when he was here once
more he had a strong sense of familiarity with all the details of the
unaccustomed place. It seemed to him that he had often sat in the dim
light of the flickering fire and the shaded lamp, watching through the
window the weird new moon in the cloud rifts, as it hung, a curved,
red blade above the dark glooms of Fort Despair, then fell like an
avenging sword in their midst; that he had often noted the bizarre
reflections in the shattered mirror, which gave distorted glimpses of
the gay carpet, the crimson curtains, the stiff mahogany furniture and
the family group. And perhaps because of this savor of old associations
he was quick to detect something which he did not recognize. The young
lady looked at him with changed eyes. They were more brilliant than he
had thought them, and colder. A deep, rich flush glowed on her delicate
cheek. She seemed older, more formed. Her manner was collected, and
he observed with a sense of loss that her smile lacked a certain
spontaneous cordiality which he had supposed was characteristic of her.
For a time he could not understand this change. It roused him to a
keener interest in his visit, which had been prompted only by duty, and
perhaps unduly postponed, for it was a drive of but eight miles from
the barracks to General Vayne’s plantation, these being intermediate
points between Marston and Chattalla. The mistake under which he
fancied he had been invited still rankled, and he had promised himself
that, after taking due cognizance of this involuntary hospitality by
a call, he would drop off and trouble the Vaynes no more with his
acquaintance.

He often glanced toward her as she sat close to the table in the mellow
dimness of the shaded lamp. The pliancy of her figure and the soft,
black folds of her dress were prettily accented by the stiff, angular
outline of the old arm-chair. Sometimes as she turned her head her
brown hair caught the flicker of the fire and sent out a golden gleam.
Her silence struck him as significant. It seemed tense and studiously
maintained--unlike the mute quietude of the young stranger, Miss St.
Pierre, which had the ease and languor that suggested habit. Miss Vayne
was alert in every fibre and vivacious in every impulse. He saw in her
eyes the interest with which she followed the conversation. She was
denying herself in that she took no part in it. He had a vague idea
that he had something to do with this--that she sedulously forbore to
claim his attention.

Was it possible, he asked himself in swift alarm, that he had
so received her unsophisticated little apology as to induce in
her restraint, even resentment? He made an effort to recall the
interview--it had not since recurred to his mind--and it seemed to him
that what he had said was peculiarly neat, even more appropriate than
he had thought it at the time. Surely she could not know that he was
secretly amused by her contrition; that he had laughed because she
had seemed to fancy him so susceptible to her unintentional sarcasm.
Even then he had recognized how gentle an impulse had prompted her. He
valued it adequately now that he had apparently forfeited her kindly
feeling. He was all at once eager to recover lost ground.

To win a proud and alienated young lady to graciousness, in a general
conversation founded upon so recent an acquaintance that only
platitudes are in order; with her father and her aunt solemn sentinels
on either side; with a silent, observant young stranger to mark all
lapses from established usage, was, he felt, no easy matter. Still he
took advantage of the earliest hiatus in that weary subject, the state
of the turnpike--which had certainly been a sufficiently severe trial
while he travelled it.

He addressed an observation directly to her, although he could think of
nothing more felicitous to say than--

“As the spring advances the road will be better, and I assure you, Miss
Vayne, it is a very picturesque drive to the barracks. I hope that some
Sunday afternoon you will come with your aunt and Miss St. Pierre and
witness dress parade.”

Marcia looked smilingly from her aunt to Miss St. Pierre, as if
submitting the question.

“Oh, delightful!” cried Mrs. Kirby, amiably effusive.

“No doubt it is very interesting,” murmured Miss St. Pierre.

Mrs. Kirby’s face grew abruptly grave, as if the sins of many sinful
years had suddenly found her out.

“Oh--but, dear me--now I come to think of it--_Sunday_
afternoon--yes,” she said, in an appalled _staccato_, her waving
curls stilled into becoming solemnity.

An ethical discussion with the old lady was hardly what Estwicke
wanted. Once more he fixed his eyes on Marcia.

“Do you think it too frivolous an entertainment for Sunday afternoon?
All the ladies in Marston come.”

The girl’s cheek dimpled. Her sudden laughter broke upon the air.

“Thank you for suggesting ‘the ladies of Marston!’ In a case of
conscience nothing is so valuable as a precedent,” she cried, joyously.

Estwicke was a trifle confused by having this sentiment attributed to
him, and Mrs. Kirby rustled hastily to the rescue.

“Not that I mean to imply that the dress parade is in itself sinful
on Sunday. I--well--I, myself--I don’t judge of that--yes--I don’t
judge--for military men have no--no--”

“No souls to be saved?” suggested Marcia, raiding like a guerrilla
through the conversation.

“Oh, my dear child!” protested Mrs. Kirby, aghast.

“I beg your pardon, Aunt Alice. Don’t let me interrupt you. You were
saying that military men have no--” She paused, expectant.

In breaking her silence her mood had changed. A daring spirit was
shining in her eyes. She had a freakish delight in her aunt’s
embarrassment and involution of explanation. Mrs. Kirby was eagerly
desirous not to seem to reflect on Captain Estwicke and his Sunday
parade, but was bewildered by Marcia’s conduct, which she supposed was
inadvertent.

“I meant that military men have peculiar duties, and--”

“Very peculiar, if one of them is to break the Sabbath,” cried the
bushwhacker, harassing the enemy’s march.

“Perhaps the life does not tend to foster a sense of religious
responsibility,” said Estwicke, demurely, commiserating the old lady’s
anxiety.

“I didn’t mean _that_, exactly. I meant--I meant--” Then Mrs.
Kirby plucked up a little spirit. “It is very hard that _I_
should have to fight the battles of the _military men_,” she said.
“You should resent these reflections, Captain Estwicke.”

“I am too wary a soldier to give battle to a superior force,” Estwicke
declared. “I am retreating in good order.”

The girl had the grace to be a little ashamed. She was still laughing,
but she did not look at him, and she blushed.

“And you ought to remember, Marcia, that your father is a soldier,
too,” said Mrs. Kirby, reprehensively.

“Oh,” cried Marcia, altogether reckless, and rejoiced to throw a bomb
into the cowering circle, “that kind of soldier has--has gone out of
fashion.”

She was frightened when she had said this, and a sudden grave pause
ensued.

“How far are the barracks from Marston, Captain?” asked General
Vayne, feeling bound to interfere. He was a serious and earnest man,
a little slow; he had had no large experience of the world, and he
did not pretend to understand women. In a girl, the general feminine
incomprehensibilities were enhanced by the caprice of youth, and he
made no effort to tackle the problems which Marcia daily suggested.
What she had just said seemed to him singularly inappropriate, but he
did not even wonder how she had happened to say it. He was relieved
to see that she had subsided at last, and that Estwicke entered with
unimpaired gayety upon the new theme.

For Estwicke was pleased and flattered. It is true he began to
understand that she regretted her apology and had repented of her
repentance. She evidently wished him to think that it was a matter of
no such paramount importance to her as it had seemed then; that she
had no special solicitude about hurting his feelings and jarring his
prejudices. In order to convince him of this she was handling them
sufficiently carelessly now. But she only succeeded in convincing him
that she had thought much about him, and that she had schemed in her
innocent and inexpert fashion to produce these impressions upon him. He
deprecated infinitely wounding her pride and sustaining her resentment,
and once more he sought to conciliate her. With that smoothness and
suavity which were evidently only superimposed upon his manner, having
no root in the rougher material of his character, and which affected
her as an exponent of worldliness and insincerity, he again addressed
her.

“What amusements do you have in Chattalla in winter--no sleighing nor
skating, I suppose?”

“No; I hardly know how to describe the amusements. We have the rain and
the mud.”

Estwicke laughed. “Oh, that sort of gayety! You have been deprived of
it for the last three weeks.”

“Singular drought, sir, for this time of the year; protracted,
sir,--very, indeed,” said General Vayne, with a planter’s chronic
disaffection with the elements.

“It looks like rain this evening--very cloudy,” said Estwicke. He
watched the glowing fire for a moment in silence. “The wind is rising,”
he added.

A meditative pause ensued.

“That sound,” said General Vayne, slowly, “is not the wind.”

His eyes, too, were fixed absently on the fire, but as Estwicke lifted
his head he became all at once conscious that the others were watching
him with some strange, furtive meaning, some intent expectation. A
yearning sense of desolation had struck suddenly across the warm
domestic atmosphere, and although an alien it shared the hearth with
them. The hickory logs flung jets of sparks and long, quivering plumes
of flame high up the chimney; the fender glittered as if set with
scintillating jewels; the faces of the girls bloomed like rare exotics.
In this quiet sanctuary of home even the hot hearts of the men were
fain to beat calmly. The shattered mirror reflected the sheltered,
peaceful group; but oh, for the battle-field without! and oh, for the
graves beyond the river!

The earth pulsated with a strong tremor; the windows shook with
a responsive vibration; all the air thrilled and shivered with a
tumultuous throb.

“It is a drum!” cried Estwicke.

He was unprepared for the effect of his words.

“Oh, don’t say that!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby.

“Oh, surely _you_ don’t recognize it, too,” cried Miss St. Pierre,
her soft voice strangely agitated.

He faced round and looked at them in amaze.

“I beg your pardon?” he said, interrogatively. They made no reply, and
he turned toward Miss Vayne. She was softly biting her under-lip, and
looking at her friend with eyes suffused with laughter.

“I begin to think, Antoinette,” she said, “that you are superstitious;
you really believe the battle-field is haunted by the dead soldiers.”

Only Mrs. Kirby observed that Estwicke recoiled as if from a blow. His
face was pale, rigid, and very grave, but it had, even in its gravity,
a consciousness of self-betrayal. He visibly strove to regain his
composure.

“I hardly think _I_ am superstitious, Marcia,” returned Miss
St. Pierre, speaking with more animation than usual, and with a
shade of annoyance in her voice, “but _you_ have positively no
imagination.”

“What you call your imagination seems to be only a thorn in your side.”

“Perhaps what she calls her imagination might be translated as a
heart,” said Mrs. Kirby, blandly allying herself with the visitor.

“And what is a heart but a thorn in the side!” cried Marcia, joyously.

General Vayne began to explain. “The country, sir, is so cavernous that
the gradual approach of railway trains produces very peculiar effects
of sound.”

“I lived here,” said Mrs. Kirby, significantly, “for many years. I
never heard those sounds before the war. Of course I don’t believe that
terrible story--but--but this is one of its inexplicable points.”

“There is the wind, at last,” said General Vayne, with the air of a man
impatient of nonsense, and striving to effect a diversion.

It came with a hollow roar through the vastness of the night and the
plain. There was a sense of a mighty movement without. The tramp of
feet, that long ago finished their marches, rose and fell in dull
iteration in the distance. The gusts were hurled through the bomb-riven
cupola, which swayed and groaned and crashed as it had done on the day
when even more impetuous forces tore through its walls. Far--far and
faint--a bugle was fitfully sounding the recall.

“Ah-h!” said Mrs. Kirby, shuddering a little--“hear that!”

Estwicke mechanically turned his eyes toward the window. They distended
suddenly, and he sprang to his feet.

For the empty embrasures of Fort Despair were belching flame and smoke
once more. The haunted thickets, visible in the lurid light thus
projected into the midst of the black waste, were in grim commotion;
and here was a prickly growth that might be bayonets--for who could
say, in this strange glow and this strange place?--and here was a
triumphant, waving hand--and one might fear to look at the ground,
remembering what once lay there. The pallid horizon alternately
advanced and shrank away as the fire rose and fell. The deep, surly
glooms of the night pressed close about, but veins of flame were
beginning to pulse through the thickets wherever a dead leaf might
cling, and a glittering rim had encircled the dry crab-grass, and was
flaring and broadening round all the field.

“Some miser-r-able boy,” exclaimed General Vayne through his set
teeth--he was a man of punctilio, and even with this provocation he
did not forget the presence of ladies--“some miser-r-able boy has been
hunting over the plantation, and his gun-wad has set the grass afire.
Ten to one the fence will burn!”

Estwicke was still standing near the window, his hand upon the red
curtain. Mrs. Kirby looked at him speculatively. Certainly he--a man
and a soldier--could not be afraid of ghosts like Antoinette, who was
morbidly timid and afraid of everything. She could not thus translate
the emotion he had manifested. Here was something different, deeper. It
baffled conjecture.

No trace of it was on his face when he turned. “The wind has shifted,”
he said. “That fence must be in considerable danger now. General, we
had better make a sortie.”

Marcia’s face grew very grave. “If the fence should catch, papa, would
the fire be strong enough to blow to the gin-house?”

There was a pause. “I hardly think that,” her father replied, “but it
is possible. I couldn’t spare the gin--and--and I’ve a good deal of
cotton there still.”

“We had better go at once,” said Estwicke.

General Vayne glanced hurriedly about him for his hat, and strode after
his guest out into the night.

There was no moon; there was no star; tumultuous clouds surged over the
battle-field. The glare showed the great, gaunt waste in its immensity.
The wind rioted fantastically with the flames. Here and there a ball
of fire was thrown from the empty embrasures of Fort Despair, and fell
into the midst of the crab-grass, and burst into a thousand waving
plumes, and expanded and glowed into a thousand more. Now and then, as
a dead branch crashed to the ground in the thicket, a fiery flag waved
so high that one might see the livid sky look down--then the flag was
struck amid a shower of sparks. A deep, steady glow in the distance
suggested that the flames had given over these airy effects, sustained
only by leaves, and dead-wood, and crab-grass, for the solid business
of burning the fence. They quickened their steps, and presently the
younger man began to run. He was not a light weight, but he was swift
on his feet, and he soon left General Vayne far behind.

And as he ran, a thing happened which seemed to him strange at the
time, and afterward still more strange. He was not so far from the
blazing redoubt as to believe that what he saw was imagination. Among
the slender growth that fringed the parapet, some of which was already
aflame, there appeared suddenly two figures that walked with a measured
gait, presently accelerated to a soldierly double-quick. He had not a
touch of superstition--he instantly suspected that General Vayne had
secret enemies, who had fired his field of set purpose, so that his
gin-house and cotton might be burned as if by accident.

Estwicke, with characteristic inconsequence--without an idea of what
he should say, how he should deal with them, or how they might deal
with him--held both his hands, trumpet-wise, to his mouth, and shouted
to them with all the force of his lungs. The crackling brush drowned
his voice. They had halted abruptly upon the parapet, arguing with each
other, to judge by their excited gestures--one of them was so wild of
demeanor that Estwicke fancied him drunk. At the second stentorian
halloo, they faced round suddenly. Perhaps in the far flickering vistas
which the flames revealed among the dun shadows they caught a glimpse
of Estwicke. With a simultaneous movement they dropped out of sight,
leaving him staring at the blazing panorama in blank amaze.

As he pressed on he began to overtake other men, both white and black,
chiefly tenants of General Vayne, all running toward the gin-house.
They were inspired only by friendly feeling, for their rents were
already paid, and the cotton still there belonged to their landlord.
The figures of a distant group loomed up, gigantic and distorted,
through the smoke, and seemingly in the midst of the fire as they
knocked down the burning fence and scattered the rails. With these
grewsome effects the simple significance of the gin-house was oddly
incongruous as it came in sight, mounted grotesquely on its stilts, and
distinctly defined against the black whirl of skurrying clouds, and
the lurid, unnatural glare. The out-door press, which stood near, was
like some menacing monster, with its levers, huge, uncanny black arms,
poised above the negro who with a balky mule was trying to plough a few
furrows to hold within bounds the impetuously burning crab-grass. The
sharp, ringing strokes of an axe sounded high above the roar of the
flames and the clamor of voices, for a dead apple-tree, a fatally near
neighbor, had caught fire from the fence, and was blossoming white and
red anew. Before the sharp steel had pierced through its rotten trunk
it had fallen, sending up myriads of sparks into the dark sky, and a
moment later the cedar shingles that roofed the gin-house were blazing
timorously. When Estwicke came up the smell of burning cotton was on
the air.

They made an effort, however, to save what they might. After a few
minutes of such desperate exertion as left a soreness in his muscles
for days, Estwicke happened to glance up in the midst of tearing out
the soft, fluffy, infinitely bulky masses of unginned cotton. He caught
the steady gaze of a man with a pallid, frightened face, who stood idle
on the outskirts of the sweating, struggling, panting crowd. Save for
that frightened pallor Estwicke might not have recognized the face,
but he had not forgotten the scene on the ferry-boat, and Toole’s
expression recalled both it and him.

“Hello, my man, lend a hand here!” Estwicke called out fiercely. “Do
you find nothing to do but to stand and watch us work?”

The man fell to without a word.

But once or twice afterward Estwicke came in contact with him, and
noticed that, big fellow as he was, he was doing no good. His hands
trembled; he was confused; he seemed to see nothing; he was in
everybody’s way. And he _was_ a big fellow. Estwicke measured him
critically, noting closely his gait, gestures, build; then silently
fell to work.

The gin-house and press were burned. The rescued cotton, scorched,
begrimed with cinders and dirt, lay, nearly worthless, upon the ground
hard by. The air was still dense with smoke, and pervaded by the
pungent odors of charred cornstalks and crab-grass, and of the burnt
cotton. It had grown intensely dark; the very outline of Fort Despair
was swallowed up in the black night, and except the sullen glow of the
embers of the press and gin-house, there was no spark nor gleam in all
the vast stretch of country. Estwicke was looking about for his coat,
which he had flung upon the ground when he went to work at the cotton.
He stumbled upon it presently, and, as he picked it up, he accosted
Toole suddenly.

“You’re one of the men I saw on the parapet yonder to-night. I know
your build. Didn’t you hear me call?”

So imbued was he with the idea of incendiarism that he wondered the man
did not affect surprise,--did not attempt denial.

Still Toole seemed agitated, anxious, almost piteous.

“An’ I knowed it war ye ez war a-callin’ of me, ’kase I seen ye ez well
ez hearn ye. But it got so hot thar that I war obleeged to scoot outern
them works, an’ dust away in a hurry.”

But for the man’s tremulous deprecation Estwicke would have thought all
suspicion of evil-doing absurd. “Who was with you?” he persisted.

The other’s face was very white; or perhaps some livid flame had
started up among the ashes and cast a pallid gleam upon it.

“’Twar Tim Jones ez I started away from the turnpike with, but I dunno
ez I hadn’t caught up with that darkey Bateman--no, I overhauled him
down ter the spring. ’Twar Tim, or mebbe Pete Winsley.”

Estwicke turned away, half ashamed. Then with his insistent
exactingness, he looked over his shoulder. “How did you happen to go up
on the parapet? That was a queer manœuvre.”

Why should the man tremble? The reply was so obviously natural. “Waal,
Cap’n, I lives not fur on t’other side o’ that redoubt, an’ it hadn’t
been long burnin’ when I seen it, an’ naterally I run ter whar I seen
the fire fust. Then it air toler’ble good walkin’ up thar on them old
forts, an’ I jes’ thought I could run along the parapets till I got
hyar; but the fire got het up so hot ez I war obleeged ter come down.”

If he had resented any of these questions, which must have seemed to
impute to him some evil intent, Estwicke would have dismissed the
subject from his mind. As it was, he spoke to General Vayne when they
were tramping back together through the darkness toward the lights
beginning to be faintly visible in the windows of the distant house.

“My dear sir,” exclaimed General Vayne, “he is my good friend, although
a very humble one. Why, he served four years in my Brigade!”

“That settles it,” said Estwicke, satirically; but he said it to
himself.

However, he felt justified in throwing aside his suspicion, since the
man most interested refused to entertain it.

He was sorry, of course, that General Vayne’s cotton and gin-house
and press were burned, and wondered that the loss should be borne so
calmly, knowing that it must be disproportionately large to a man in
his financial condition. But Estwicke’s was a temperament to which
excitement is always grateful, and he strode into the bare, echoing
hall, flushed and warm, but feeling all the more active and alert for
it. He looked like a young blacksmith, with his soot-begrimed face
and hands, and his hair and whiskers powdered with cinders, and his
collar and shirt-front ornamented with arabesques in charcoal. He was
distinctly deprecatory of the presence of the three ladies, as they
surged out into the hall, eager for news. Mrs. Kirby did not scruple
to hold up her hands at the sight of him.

General Vayne noticed this. “We will go and get rid of some of these
cinders,” he said. “Then we will give you an account of the affair.”

But when they returned, he did not at once mention the fire. Estwicke
was speaking as they entered the library. “I assure you, General,” he
protested, in a tone that sought to veil impatience and annoyance, “it
is nothing--nothing whatever.”

“I am afraid, Alice,” said General Vayne, gravely, addressing his
sister, “that Captain Estwicke has burnt his hand severely.”

There was a sympathetic chorus of “Oh-h!”

“You must let me bind it up,” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby.

Marcia turned to the door. “I will get bandages, and sweet oil, and
flour--and what else is good for a burn?”

Estwicke glanced keenly from one to the other, as if doubting their
seriousness; then he flung himself into a chair, held up his hand,
looked at it, and laughed aloud.

“If I go back to the barracks bearing such desperate wounds as these,
it will demoralize the men. They will mutiny--desert. They won’t stay
in a country where such horrors are possible.”

But his ridicule had no effect. And in fact their sympathy was not
altogether misplaced, for the burns were sufficiently severe to cause
great pain, which he had borne with the stoical pride of a man who
piques himself on his fortitude, who has known the poignant anguish of
serious wounds, and who is supported by the consciousness that this is
no killing complaint. He had intended to say nothing of it, and at the
earliest opportunity to bid his entertainers good evening, but his host
had accidentally discovered it. He was soon reconciled, however, to
the offices of these gentle Samaritans, as he sat by the table while
the three stood in anxious absorption around him. He thought the pain
would be considerably assuaged if one of the young ladies should bind
up the injured member; but as that might not be, he was in a measure
consoled that Marcia held the saucer, and Antoinette the bandages,
while Mrs. Kirby’s gentle, wrinkled hands were soft and soothing to the
touch.

He could not forbear a gibe at her old-fashioned remedies and the
amateur performance. “I can’t let this stay on till I get back to the
barracks,” he declared.

“But you must--and why not?” asked Mrs. Kirby, sternly, repressing him
as if he were a refractory boy.

“I wouldn’t--I wouldn’t have the surgeon see this extraordinary bit
of work for--” He looked at the bandages and the slow, tender hand
hovering above them, and shook his head silently.

“Good surgery as any!” cried Mrs. Kirby, strong in her faith in
herself. “I assure you, Captain Estwicke, _I_ am not ashamed of
it.”

“Oh!” cried Marcia, abruptly--“his wrist!”

“His _wrist_ is burned, too!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby in an animated
_crescendo_. “The flesh is baked! yes--fairly baked! You will
carry that scar to your grave!” she prophesied with grieved solemnity.

Estwicke broke out laughing afresh.

“What a pity! What a pity!” he protested.

“Oh, how it must pain you,” exclaimed Marcia. “And to have burned it
_here_--trying to save our cotton!”

Estwicke was daring at best. This sympathy did not tend to decrease his
courage. He lifted his head and looked straight at the girl, with a
sudden meaning kindling in his eyes.

“To make amends you must promise that you will always think kindly of
me after this,” he said.

Mrs. Kirby paused, her head inquiringly askew. She looked quickly from
one to the other of the young people. His eyes were still fixed upon
Marcia’s face, which had crimsoned from the roots of her hair to the
lace knot at her throat. Her long eyelashes dropped. The hand that held
the saucer trembled visibly. And she evidently could not speak. Mrs.
Kirby answered for her.

“You must be very wicked indeed if you make us”--_Us_ was the word
the punctilious old lady used--“think unkindly of you--on so short an
acquaintance.”

But Estwicke did not care for this thrust. He saw that the young girl
understood him, that Mrs. Kirby did not, and that the episode had been
unnoticed by General Vayne and Miss St. Pierre, who were now standing
near the hearth listening to the account which one of the boys was
giving of his experiences at the fire.

Marcia was very silent and demure after this. And Estwicke was demure,
too. He got away as soon as he could, and as he rode off he said to
himself that it was a pleasant little circle, and he would come again
next week.

“That young man has a very wilful temper,” said Mrs. Kirby, thinking
of his resistance to the blandishments of flour and sweet-oil. “But,”
added the judicious old lady, “he is as handsome as a picture.”

Miss St. Pierre was more discriminating.

“He has fine eyes, and he carries himself splendidly, but I can’t say I
think he is handsome. His features are too irregular.”

Only Marcia said nothing.

One of the boys broke the silence. “He’s got a red head on him,” he
submitted.

“Reg’lar sorrel-top,” drawled Dick. And this was _his_
contribution to the evening’s entertainment.

They did not linger long about the hearth, for it was growing late. The
haggard anxiety of General Vayne’s expression began to be reflected on
his daughter’s face as on a mirror. She became very grave. She seemed
absorbed. But he talked with his habitual manner of lofty cheerfulness,
and bade his sister good-night with a smile. As he rose and with his
dexterous left hand moved a chair from Miss St. Pierre’s way, she said
mellifluously--“I hope your loss is not very severe, General.”

“I have been apprenticed to pessimism,” he evaded, with a smile. “This
is the way I learn the trade.”

He opened the door, stood aside, and bowed her out with his
old-fashioned ceremoniousness.

Marcia had gone to the dining-room on a household errand connected with
laying the cloth for to-morrow’s breakfast. She came back presently.
His eyes were on the door as he sat by the embers alone. He had
expected her, but for a moment he said nothing. She looked at him
eagerly--very anxiously.

“How much of the cotton was burned, papa?” she asked, placing her right
hand on his left hand as it lay on the table.

“Nearly all, Marcia, nearly all,” he groaned.

“And the rest is ruined?--and the gin, and the press?”

“Ruined--yes, ruined,” he assented, with a sigh.

In the days of his wild enthusiasm he himself had put the torch with
his right hand--a misguided hand that, and better gone perhaps--had put
the torch to a thousand bales on his Mississippi plantation rather than
risk the capture of the cotton or smuggle it through the lines, and, to
use his own rotund phrase, stain his palm with the enemy’s gold.

It seemed the veriest fleer of fortune that now he should have such
bitter cause to sigh for the loss of perhaps twenty bales, which at the
best could be but a sop to Cerberus, to meet the interest of impending
debts, to stave off the foreclosure of the mortgage that menaced
forever the shattered and quaking old house and the grewsome fields
about it.

She still kept her hand pressed upon his hand--one of her ceremonies in
their councils of war.

“Papa, what will the creditors take?”

“Anything they like, Marcia,” he said, bitterly.

She glanced instinctively about her; it was not a cheerful home, with
the wild waste without and the gnawing anxieties within, but they had
no other.

Then she turned her eyes upon him with a pained intensity that was
pathetic in its helplessness.

“How will we live, papa?” she asked, in a tense voice.

The strain on his nerves suddenly gave way. “God knows, Marcia,” he
exclaimed, tumultuously. “I don’t!”

He rose and walked heavily out of the room. The tears started to her
eyes, but she forbore to follow him, and presently she heard him
tramping, tramping, back and forth, the long length of the dark,
unfurnished drawing-rooms opposite, according to his wont when he could
not be still for the throes of his financial distress, or when he was
only reflective.

For sometimes his anxieties seemed to relax their clutch, and then
the interval, empty of pleasure, of interest, gave him opportunity to
review the most important events of his life, and he busied himself
with those distraught questions--settled, thank God, long ago--which
involved the righteousness of the Lost Cause. Doubts thickened about
him. Doubts! And his right arm was gone, and his future lay waste,
and his children’s lot was blighted. And he had flung away the rich
treasure of his blood, and the exaltation of his courage, and his
potent enthusiasms, and the lives of his noble comrades, who had
followed him till they could follow no longer. So he was glad when the
screws of the usurers came down again, and the present bore so heavily
upon him that he grew dulled in suffering for the past.

No one suspected this--not even his favorite child. She only knew
that he was on one of his “forced marches,” as she called these
demonstrations. To-night it was more prolonged than usual. His
soldierly step resounded through the empty rooms and echoed over the
quiet building. The faint glimmer from the windows guided him--he would
not have had it more. In the intense darkness it seemed as if he were
rid of himself--annihilated.

The house had been still for hours, when he saw with surprise a long
shaft of light steal past the door. He walked out into the big, bare,
black hall, and looked up at the landing of the wide stairs.

Marcia was standing there, her crimson shawl caught about the shoulders
of her dark blue dressing-robe, her hair floating in confusion over it.
With the aureola of the candle, held above her head among the dusky
shadows, she looked like some pictured saint. She smiled at him, and
waved her hand toward his room, which was on the ground-floor, and
reproached him in pantomime for disturbing, with his heavy tramping,
the sleep of the guests in the house.

She kissed her right hand to him, and he kissed his left hand to her.
She silently watched him walk softly to his own door, enter and close
it after him.

Then, with a wild gesture born of a sudden, mad impatience with this
troublous world, she smote the candle upon the balustrade, and in the
instantaneous darkness she burst into stormy tears. She had had her
touch of martyrdom to-night. As she leaned sobbing against the wall,
the extinguished candle still in her hand, she heard the heavy rain
begin to fall in the vast waste outside. She recognized once more in
the wailing wind those sad sounds which, it was said, were the dead
soldiers’ cries.

“Oh, my poor fellows!” she exclaimed. “Life is so hard! Be content that
your battle is fought--and rest--rest!”

As she went groping up-stairs, blinded by her tears as well as by
the darkness, she thought of that hopeless warfare her father was
waging now--she had a bitter prevision that it would end only with
his life. It might have been happier for him, perhaps, if this new
sordid struggle had never begun--if he were now with his comrades
outside--outside of the world! Then she shrunk back shuddering from the
unspoken thought.

She lay awake for hours, her mind busy with the deep significance of
this disproportionate loss. She canvassed the relative obduracy of the
creditors, for from her father’s experience she knew their respective
characteristics better, perhaps, than they knew themselves. In many
an anxious struggle since the war the cannon-shattered home had had
more hair-breadth escapes than even in those three terrible days when
the world about it went mad, when the air was powder and smoke, and
the light was flashes of flame, and the rain was lead. She tried to
remember what she had heard her father say of the various complicated
liens that lay on the property--even on the worn chairs and tables,
even on the jog-trot sorrels that munched their hay in replevied
jeopardy. She computed the interest with a dexterity acquired in her
daily task of teaching arithmetic to the boys. Sometimes, when the
total was less than she had feared, she brightened. But in a moment
some forgotten item would recur to her mind, and she would fall to
sobbing afresh, and bury her face in the pillow. Then she would
resign herself to this additional load, and begin again her expert
calculations. Once, in the midst of her tears, she did not lift her
head--gradually they ceased to flow. Sleep had overtaken her, and had
even crowded out the debts.

It was not a restful sleep. She rose in the gray, wet morning,
harried and fagged out, with heavy eye-lids and pale cheeks. As she
went down stairs she met, in the hall and on the landing, trickling
streams of water, that insidiously slipped in where the great shot and
shells had made way for the rain. She paused at the door of the empty
drawing-rooms--a mass of damp plaster, fallen from the ceiling of the
bay-window, lay on the floor, and moisture was still dripping down upon
it. She looked up at the grinning laths. She gave a little laugh that
was more bitter than tears.

“It’s a poor roof you are,” she cried, “that we make such an ado to
save!”

With all this ruin to clear away, it was to be a field-day with the
housekeeping, and when breakfast was fairly over, she made haste to
be at it. She went back presently to the dining-room door to admonish
her brothers, who sat learning their lessons at the side-table, where
it was their habit to partake of mental refreshment, convenient to
the household duties of their preceptress. As she looked in a frown
gathered on her fair brow. There they were, ostensibly hard at their
books, but panting and flushed, as if to master the rule of three were
a matter of physical exertion. A tell-tale marble was rolling over the
floor, and she noted the swelling and hastily stuffed pocket of the
middle-sized boy. His face was grave, studious, but the green cover of
the table was drawn aside, and she could see his hilarious, brass-toed
boots kicking his brothers, to gleefully call their attention to the
fact of how ludicrous was their task-mistress, as she stood apparently
deceived by this show of devotion to duty. The stalwart kicking legs
must have inflicted severe pain on the other boys, but they made no
sign, except to actively return it in kind.

“Boys,” she said, sternly, “attend to your lessons. I will keep you
in two hours by the clock if you don’t recite perfectly.” Then in an
altered tone, “Don’t let me have to do that,” she pleaded. “I’m not
well, and there’s so much work to-day about the house.”

“Bet on me, Marsh,” said the roguish, middle-sized boy, with a gravely
reassuring face. “I’m just a-stavin’ ahead on these here old ’rithmetic
sums.”

“Me, too, Marsh,” the others promised in concert.

But what a tumult of the silently deceitful feet under the table! How
much they expressed of the gayety of the games of marbles when she
was away. How they congratulated each other on her ignorance of these
pastimes. How they jeered and gibed at her in their fantastic gestures.

She gave no sign of her consciousness of this sly pantomime. In her
normal state of feeling the discovery would have resulted in more
trouble to the little miscreants than to her. But now she was greatly
depressed, mentally and physically, and she regarded it tragically. She
walked away along the hall and into the empty drawing-rooms, her face
flushed, and with a swelling, indignant heart. Was she such a tyrant
that she must be secretly scoffed at and derided among them? They cared
nothing for her, she said--she had expected the recompense of their
affection, for young as she was, she did all for them that a mother
might. She made their clothes--no dainty work; she taught them and kept
them in order; she schemed and contrived for their comfort; they and
their rough ways rendered the housekeeping a heavy burden. She worked
for them till her hands were hard--_hard_--she protested with
despairing iteration. She held up these hands and looked critically
at them. They were shapely and white, but the palms were a little
roughened, and this was a grief to her.

As she stood in the midst of the fallen plaster, waiting for the one
house-servant with brooms and pails, General Vayne chanced to pass the
door.

Instead of his lofty cheerfulness there was a pained resignation,
almost meekness, on his face. It smote upon her very heart-strings.
That dominant impulse of her nature to help to lift up, was suddenly
all astir within her.

“Papa,” she cried, passionately, “when ill-fortune takes the field in
force like this there’s nothing for it but to form in line of battle
and give it the bravest fight we can make.”

There was a tense vibration in her voice; her face was replete with
feeling, and all aglow; her eloquent young eyes looked at him from out
the ruins of the big rooms that had been so fine in their day.

He had paused abruptly. His hand stole slowly up to stroke his mustache.

“That is very true, Marcia,” he said, with weighty conclusiveness. And
again,--“That is very true.”

The dignity of the metaphor could efface for him the sordid aspects of
the situation.

Her words were to him like the blast of a bugle. They rallied his
courage. He had lifted his head. He turned away, twirling his long,
gray mustache, and strode out buoyantly into the rain.

And she herself had experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. She went
back to her work with a light step, already beginning to evolve plans.
She had a full realization of the terrible menace of the future--of the
pitiable straits of the present. But now that she had formed anew in
the face of these inexorable facts she returned to the charge with the
desperate ardor of a forlorn hope.

Despite her youth and her effervescent girlish gayety she had a broad
and mature appreciation of the seriousness of life;--her experience
warranted this. Even the terrors of her childhood were never the
hobgoblins of the nursery tales; instead, she had known what it was to
quake in the cellars of bombarded towns and listen to the shriek of the
shell. Her imagination had been tutored by the imposing spectacle of
a gallant division in line of battle. She derived a commensurate idea
of the grim tragedies of existence from the sight of the same crack
troops, before the sun went down, decimated and demoralized, mangled
and routed. Her only impressions of the gala-world were reminiscences
of those hurried festivities in the Confederacy, when she had watched
with precocious eyes the unprescient gayety of spirited young officers,
who danced all night and marched out and were killed in the morning.
Her only experience of travel was in the rôle of refugee, knocking
about with her mother through all the South, a prey to a deadly anxiety
about the distant “command,” and in terror of a newspaper lest she
might read her father’s name among the long lists of the killed. Her
participation in those mad, panic-stricken flights of non-combatants,
sometimes in the dead of night, to escape an unexpected insidious
approach of the enemy, had sharpened her comprehension of an emergency.
Perhaps all this had added to her decision and force of character,
and gave her that practical element of precocious management which had
been of infinite service in enabling her and her father to readjust the
fragments of their shattered home.

All the plans she was revolving now had a certain phase of feasibility.
She was utterly lacking in his marvellous susceptibility to
abstractions. The case was so desperate that little could be done, but
she projected with a sense of triumph small savings here and there in
the small supplies. She would hope for the best, and work for it, too.

When the debris of the night’s rain had been cleared away she went
blithely back to the boys and their ill-learned lessons. She was no
longer occupied with the tragic aspects of their callow ingratitude;
here, too, the wonted practical element of her management reasserted
itself. Not one second was abated of the threatened two hours’
penance--even after the others were released she watched above her
sewing the roguish middle-sized boy--roguish no longer--alternately
weep and “wrastle” over the doctrine of projectile forces as set forth
by his primary philosophy. Who so skilled as he in the great feat of
plumping out the middle-man from taw--who so reluctant to recognize the
scientific principles thus illustrated.

As he was gathering up his books at last his hard-hearted tyrant put
her dimpled elbows on the table and looked across at him with a smile.
He returned it by a surly, mutinous stare.

“I am going to make,” she remarked incidentally, as it were, “--Royal
pudding for dinner--on account of _Somebody’s_ sweet tooth.”

A reluctant smile broke upon his face. This beguilement he could not
resist.

Thus she made amends for having had “hard thoughts of the poor
boys,” as she phrased it to herself, and silently forgave the nimble
iniquities of those brass-toed kicks.




                              CHAPTER VI.


THE days that ensued were very anxious days, but with a stoicism
inconsistent enough with the impulsiveness of both father and daughter,
they sedulously repressed all manifestation of this anxiety, and life
in the maimed old house had to its guests as cheerful an aspect as
usual. The excitement occasioned by the fire gradually smouldered away
with its smouldering embers, but there were other incidents of the
evening that Marcia wondered should slip by so lightly.

She constantly expected her aunt to canvass, with all the fervor of
feminine curiosity, Captain Estwicke’s pointed requisition that she
should always think kindly of him now. As time wore on, and Mrs. Kirby
said nothing, Marcia was angry with herself for experiencing so vivid
a sensation of relief. In extenuation, she declared that if she were
asked she would not hesitate to--to--explain--and then she realized
suddenly how difficult it would be to unravel for a dispassionate
examination this tangle of thought and feeling--or rather this subtle
and sympathetic divination of feeling--in which she and a “strange
man”--for thus she called him--had contrived to involve themselves in
two short interviews.

She dwelt so much upon this episode, and the “strange man’s” part in
it, that the idea of him became familiar, and might have earned him the
right to be accounted an old acquaintance.

Oddly enough, Mrs. Kirby had forgotten it; but perhaps this was not
so odd after all, for the day after the fire she dined by appointment
with Mrs. Ridgeway, the gossip of the county, and there was greatly
entertained. When she came back, even before she got her shawl off,
she was absorbed in rehearsing to the family circle all she had heard.
The news was dramatized by the expressive play of her blue eyes and
her wrinkles, her airily waving curls, the explanatory gestures of
her plump, jewelled hands, and the animation of the swinging, swaying
veil that clung to the crown of her old black bonnet. Before these
excitements had fairly palled, a new interest occupied her.

“Antoinette,” she said, one afternoon, breaking a long silence, as the
two sat in the flicker of the library fire, and the ever-reddening
bars of sunlight that struck aslant through the dusky room, and set
all the motes to dancing, “Antoinette, you are reflective, I see; you
garner up your thoughts; I hope you make good use of them, my dear.
Now, with me,” she declared, with her gurgling laughter, “every trivial
subject cries, ‘_Largess!_’ and I am generous; yes, I fling away
my choicest ideas in words. Anybody may have them for the asking. So,
when solitude and silence pounce upon me unaware, I can’t think; I
haven’t an idea to solace me; I have talked them all away; yes, I’ve
nothing to fall back on, you see. And I’m destitute now, my dear; so
say something, do. Tell me what you were thinking about.”

Antoinette had raised a flushed, perplexed face. She seemed a
little confused, perhaps because the thread of her meditations had
been so suddenly broken, perhaps because she was conscious of her
conversational deficiencies.

“I was only thinking of a letter which I received yesterday--a letter
from Austin Travis, my step-brother, you know.”

Mrs. Kirby stared. She felt that girls were not so naïve in her
day! So he had written to her, had he? And he had come so far to
see her--yes, indeed! And he had brought her their sister’s diamond
cross, so interesting from its associations, and so beautiful! A
long vista of romantic possibilities was opening before Mrs. Kirby’s
contemplation. For this old lady was given over to reading novels,
and had a cultivated imagination. Despite her sixty odd years, all
that is delicate, and true, and tender in sentiment appealed to
her as vividly now as when this dull old world was freshly a-bloom
and she stood in her eighteenth summer. Thus she was exceedingly
susceptible--vicariously. Under normal circumstances she would have
regarded Mr. Travis only as a drawling dandy, and felt for him that
robust contempt with which the substantial provincial magnate favors
the superficial syllabub circles of fashionable life. The moment he
loomed above her mental horizon in the interesting guise of lover, he
had acquired all the dignity appertaining to the passion. Mrs. Kirby
was suddenly impressed with the conviction that he was a very handsome
man, well educated, of good style, according to the modern standard, of
excellent social position, and well endowed with this world’s goods.
He had known Antoinette all her life; doubtless this was an attachment
of long standing, and it would be a charming match. To be sure, people
said he was wild; yes, (regretfully) a _little_ wild. But then,
people said so many things. They talked; yes, they talked too much.
(Thus the crony of Mrs. Ridgeway.) She had an idea now to solace her,
and she experienced a little wistful curiosity, good soul, about the
contents of that letter. She sat silent, meditatively gazing down the
rich crimson and orange vistas of the fire, where the chips had burned
away between the logs, giving glimpses of the white heat beyond; here
and there a purple flame, completely detached in the air, quivered
with so lucent a gleam that it might seem the vivified spirit of an
amethyst; the red coals close to the hearth pulsated visibly, as if the
heart of the fire beat there. With these stimulants to her imagination,
she wrought out and shaped a letter, such as she wished it might be--so
eloquent, so tender, so delicately fervid, that Travis could not have
written its like were he to hang for it.

This aerial epistle was a great waste--and there was a great waste,
too, of her sweet sympathy. She looked with a motherly yearning at
the girl, who had always been lonely enough. An unwonted depth was in
the old lady’s blue eyes--a little moisture, too, perhaps. She was
so happy in her foolish fancy that others were happy. She refrained
from speaking, however. She said only to herself that the Balance of
Life swings at that delicately adjusted and perfect poise but once.
No word nor glance should jeopardize its equilibrium. Curiosity might
consume her first! And so she gazed once more at the fire and fell to
retouching her letter.

It was very different from Travis’s actual letter. He had inclosed
with it an abstract of the record which bore him out in all that he
had said concerning Fortescue’s claim to Antoinette’s property. To
the inexperienced girl the document had great impressiveness--her
title seemed far more shaky than before. Her appreciation of the value
of money, of a solid competence, of a provision for her future, had
been greatly sharpened in that short interval after her grandmother’s
death when she stood penniless face to face with the world. She was
ill-adapted alike by training and by her constitutional timidity
for its conflicts. She had no wild enthusiasms to serve merely in
underrating them. Inquiry and effort only proved how overcrowded
was the profession of teaching--that favorite recourse of reduced
gentlewomen, and for which alone she was well fitted--and dependence
or semi-dependence, the greatest dread of poverty and pride, was not
altogether below the horizon. The unexpected remembrance of her in her
half-sister’s will, after so many years of neglect, had changed the
aspect of the world for a time. But the knowledge that her title was
not indefeasible had reopened all these anxieties and possibilities.
Therefore she had concluded it would be best to risk nothing, to
exchange with Travis while his financial condition rendered this
desirable for him as well as for her. The plantations, it was true,
were cumbrous of management, of uncertain value, and impossible of
sale. But they gave a good income, and were not liable to be spirited
out of her possession by some technicality. As she reflected on this
she said to herself that it was high time she made her decision known
to Travis--that it would be well to have a lawyer at once examine the
state of the titles, both of the town property and the plantations,
and confer with her step-brother as to relative values and final
arrangements.

By a strange chance, however, which presently befell, her resolution
was suddenly reversed, and this came about in the simple routine of
life here, where the battle was fought.

On this same day these grave cogitations were still uppermost in her
mind when she and Marcia, according to their custom, started for an
afternoon walk along the quiet plantation road. The air was crisp and
cold, and as they descended the broad stone steps to the pavement,
rent here and there with its historic fissures, they heard, distinct in
the distance, the ringing thud of a horse’s hoofs. A moment more and a
swift equestrian figure appeared galloping along the serpentine drive,
and Marcia was first to recognize the “strange man.” As he rapidly
approached them, he was smiling and lifting his hat. Seen in the crude
light of the day, which was full upon the unique tints of his dark red
hair and beard, his bold, quickly-glancing, brown eyes, his tanned
complexion, and his clear-cut but irregular features, his face could
less than ever be called handsome, although it was notably striking.
There was a suggestion of great vitality and alertness in the pose of
his fine figure, but that air of dash and mettle owed something of its
effectiveness to the high-couraged animal he rode, for he was gallantly
mounted. Her father’s daughter could not look upon such a horse save
with emotion.

He threw himself from the saddle and walked up the bomb-riven pavement
to meet them.

“Adopt Bishop Berkeley’s theory, I beg,” he cried, gayly, “I’m
no matter--and therefore can’t interfere with your excursion--or
perhaps”--he added with a laugh, “you might allow such an impalpable
essence to join you.”

“I have an idea,” said Marcia, as the three began to walk on slowly
together, “that there is just enough reality about you to keep off the
cows. Antoinette is dreadfully afraid of cows.”

“I perceive a purpose in my creation!” Estwicke exclaimed.

“Oh--I’m afraid of everything,” Antoinette admitted, with the
shamelessness of the feminine coward.

“And you?” asked Estwicke, glancing at Marcia.

“It is all the other way,” she boasted. “Everything is afraid of me.”

“I can appreciate that,” he declared.

She flushed, and looked away and laughed.

“I hope your burned hand is better,” said Antoinette, mellifluously.

“Oh, no!” Estwicke insisted. “It is _not_ better--much.”

He looked from one to the other--but this, after such a lapse of time,
was so empty a bid for sympathy that even they triumphantly withheld it.

Antoinette had paused to pluck a spray of cedar from a little tree
by the roadside. She showed the berries to Estwicke. “They are
pretty--don’t you think so?”

“You won’t find many now,” he remarked, glancing at the great charred
expanse of field and thicket, whence that fiery besom had swept the
withered grass and leaves. “Is that the object of this expedition?”

“Oh, no,” she explained, “we are only going up on the parapet of Fort
Despair to see the sun set.”

“We have a glimpse of something like scenery from that elevation,” said
Marcia.

Estwicke made no rejoinder, and somehow after this there was an
indefinable change; perhaps only the wind, blowing from the red west,
chilled them--for they were facing the wind now and rapidly approaching
the heavy earthwork which loomed, silent and grim, against the
gold-flecked splendors of the crimson sky. A scanty fringe of peach
and plum trees had sprung up along the slopes, where the soldiers had
tossed away the stones of the fruit they ate, and the red clay showed
through the bare branches. On the opposite side of the road was a
blackened, leafless thicket of young dogwood, hackberry, and aspen
trees. The wind was surging through it. The shadows here were deep. In
skirting the dense copse it seemed close upon nightfall.

And now the besieging force made its way into Fort Despair, which
offered no resistance, and walked slowly around on the parapet and
watched the sun go down. All the clouds assembled to do him honor, and
color and rejoicing filled the sky. Then the dull, sad shadow fell upon
the landscape, and the wintry twilight came on apace.

Antoinette stood watching the fading west, the wind stirring the waves
of fair hair which her bonnet permitted to be visible on her brow, and
fluttering the semi-opaque veil of black crape that floated backward
from it.

“Such melancholy suggestions in that sky!” she exclaimed, with a gentle
inflection.

“The day is dead,” said Estwicke, mechanically striking with his light
riding-whip at the charred bushes about him. “It’s gone forever.
There’s no resurrection for a dead day. It is the type of the
irrevocable. And what is done--is done.”

Marcia glanced from one to the other, her eyes brightening beneath the
gray mists of her tissue veil.

“I only see that the sun has gone down,” she declared, with her blithe
laughter. “To-day has left its mark on the world--a vast deal of useful
work has been done everywhere. And ‘To-morrow’ is already sailing on
the high seas, and bright and early in the morning she will be here.”

Estwicke looked hard at her as he offered his hand to assist her down
the steep exterior slope of the parapet. The shattered old house was
visible in the distance, its upper windows still aflame with the
sunset, as with some great inward conflagration. He thought of its
maimed and ruined owner. What a support her sturdy optimism must be to
a man like this!

With a sudden acute discernment he saw her life--she was all heart and
hands. Instead of bewailing the ruin of the war, she busied herself
in picking up the pieces. Her courage--the virtue of all others which
appealed most strongly to him--roused a quick sympathetic throb,
which was half pity that so young and gentle a thing should know this
desperate struggle, and half admiration of her pluck--such as he might
feel for some stripling soldier’s fine deeds of valiance. It was
nothing more tender. As they paused on the berme to rest, and stood
there motionless for an instant, he was all unaware that he held the
helpful little hand in a close clasp--as he might have pressed with
friendly fervor the hand of that brave young comrade. He did not notice
how deeply she blushed beneath the shimmer of her silky gray veil; that
she shrank away shyly from him after they had crossed the ditch, and
climbed the counterscarp and were once more on level ground; that she
was confused, agitated; that she did not speak. He sighed--he was only
reminded of the faith and affection which bound together that little
home-circle in perfect peace, here where the battle was fought--such
simple virtues--so widely possessed--and yet he sighed. So he walked
on, silent and absorbed, thinking--not of her--only of what she
suggested.

He had forgotten Miss St. Pierre. She hardly needed his assistance.
She only missed it because it was becoming that he should offer it. To
cover the slight embarrassment thus induced, she busied herself once
more with the cedar, for, as she followed them over the glacis, she
caught the gleam of the berries against the dark green of a funereal
little tree on the verge of the haunted thicket. She paused to gather
the spray while the others walked on unheeding. And so it happened that
the moment of their pre-occupation came to be an era in her life.

The fire had been very fierce just here, and the charred tangle of
vines and the prickly stubble of the burned bushes and weeds showed
how thickly matted was the growth thus cleared away. As she moved
forward into the midst of the thicket, she said to herself that no
other foot had pressed this sod since the days when the battle was
fought.

The next moment a cold horror clutched at her heart. There--almost at
her feet--was a ghastly row of excavations of a shape and size that
told their own story. These were the empty graves of the soldiers whose
ghosts walked here, and would not follow their transplanted bodies.
She stood motionless, looking down in terrified fascination. They were
shallow; the rains had washed the earth into them; the wind had helped
to fill them with leaves. And as she looked, a sudden fitful gleam
caught her eyes. It flashed up from the bottom of the nearest grave.
Perhaps it was the fading light on a drop of water; perhaps on a bit of
tin;--but it was like the burnished glimmer of precious metal. She did
not understand her courage afterward. She was suddenly impelled to step
swiftly forward, she knelt down on the brink of the excavation, and
picked up a small fragment of a watch chain. At one extremity it had
been cut smoothly off--perhaps by the bullet that had carried death to
the heart of the man who had worn it here. From the other end depended,
encrusted with clay, stained, too, she fancied, with some dark current,
a gold locket--the memento of a romance it might be, a love token. The
dead soldier had left it in his grave, and here it had lain all these
years, overlooked and unmolested. And here his story ended.

No--not ended yet! She had mechanically touched the spring and the
locket was open. She had only a glimpse of a tress of dark hair beneath
the shattered crystal--and then with the shock of an extreme surprise,
her pulses seemed suddenly stilled. For within the lid were engraved
these words:--

                         JOHN DOANE FORTESCUE
                              _from_
                              “ADELAIDE.”

Her blood came back with a rush. The pathetic interest of the bauble,
found here and now, was merged in its prosaic significance. John
Fortescue was dead. This discovery proved the fact. Did it prove
something more--that Travis was working on her fear of litigation to
weaken her hold upon the property he coveted? To be sure he might not
know that the man was dead, but he doubtless had reason to believe
it. She remembered that he had alluded to the fact that Fortescue had
been singularly alone in the world--he was probably aware, too, that
the dead man had no relative nearer than herself to urge their rights
as his heirs. Thus, in exchanging undesirable for desirable property,
Travis would acquire also her indefeasible title.

She recollected where she was with a shudder, for as she stood with the
trinket in her hand, the earth was suddenly a-throb with mysterious
vibrations. Loud voices rang on the wind in its wild, unimpeded rush
across the plain. The shadows in the haunted thicket were swaying back
and forth with a convulsive motion--the fantastic shapes began to
assume a dimly realized resemblance to human forms. She hastily thrust
the bit of chain and the locket into her muff, and as she turned, it
was a great relief to see her friends strolling leisurely along the
road close at hand.

They were still silent, and she was silent too when she joined them.
Already her caution was warning her that the discovery she had made
had so serious a connection with the title of her property that it was
not well to provoke an indiscriminate curiosity in the matter until
she could have the advice of a lawyer, and take the proper measures
to restore the little trinket--valueless except, possibly, from
association--to its rightful owner, if, indeed, the dead Fortescue had
a closer relative than herself still surviving. But was he dead--was
this sufficient to prove it?

Her strong sense of justice, too, combated the impulse to canvass with
her companions the wonderment of this episode, that was so strange in
that it should aptly fall into her experience, and so natural in that
it had happened here, where the battle was fought. But it involved
the honor and honesty of a _quasi_ member of the family, and
this touched her pride. She knew that its recital could not fail to
suggest to them the identical suspicions which she entertained of her
step-brother’s motives in the proposed exchange of property, and had
she sufficient proof to warrant her, for the mere love of sensation, in
exposing him to this grave discredit?

Thus it was that she said nothing.

Night was falling. The evening star shivered in the wind. The mists
were crouching in the rifle-pits of the old picket-line, and had
silently entered the works. Now and then she glanced back at the
desolate stretch of country, its heavy redoubts so grim, so gaunt, so
doubly drear, projected against an infinitely clear sky. The scene,
in its vast loneliness, was burnt into her brain--she saw it years
afterward as vividly as she saw it now--as all must forever see it who
once look upon it. Even the house, standing stark and silent in the
distance, gave no sense of life, of a future, of the domestic world,
of humanity. One might sigh to see the pallid, wintry moon peering
curiously through the big rifts of the bomb-shattered cupola.




                             CHAPTER VII.


IT chanced that Maurice Brennett’s varied cotton ventures took him to
New Orleans in February. He found the city ablaze with illuminations
and wild with excitement, for it was the evening of Mardi Gras and the
Mystick Krewe procession was on the march.

In the enchantment suddenly turned loose in the streets, the past and
the present were fantastically blended. The Pickwick Club-house lent
the radiance of a thousand gas jets to the triumphal pageant of the
“Faërie Queene.” A salute of artillery thundered from Lafayette Square,
and made the hero of those mystic weapons, “Caliburn” and “Ron,”
acquainted with the realistic magic of modern warfare. In front of
the City Hall the procession halted, and Prince Arthure dismounted to
exchange the compliments of the season with his honor the Mayor of New
Orleans.

It seemed as if all the nations of the earth had gathered here between
the Mississippi and the Swamp. From among the banners fluttering from
every balcony and open window, and house-top, looked out creole eyes,
potent enough to have laid their languorous spell upon the splendid,
glittering swarm, and held it there motionless for all time to come.
These southern beauties had a pretty contrast in the fairer faces from
the north. And below, jostling along the sidewalks, sternly repressed
by the police, was a motley throng of every grade of swarthiness, from
the broadly grinning African, the mulatto, the Indian, the cream-tinted
Chinaman--gazing with oblique smiles at the wild vagaries of the
“Melican man”--to the Sicilian, and the dark-browed Spanish vagrant,
wearing his tattered garb with the dignity of a hidalgo.

And beneath the inspiring melodies, and the cheers of the enthusiastic
populace, and those louder iron-throated plaudits of the guns, were all
the echoes of Babel. One heard here a resonant German “ach!” and there
the nimble Gallic tongue demanding of a just Heaven if this were not
_too_ magnificent, and the neat, precise Yankee pronunciation,
and the languid, Southern drawl, and the Englishman’s broad “a,” of
which the swelling proportions overlapped all the other letters of the
alphabet. The mirthful guttural negro dialect rose too, mingled with
unique clippings known as pigeon-English, and that _vox populi_,
slang, which, like “don’t care,” has no home, was loud upon the air.

Orion looked over the western house-tops at this strange red
constellation wheeling through the streets so far below. Cassiopeia sat
in her splendid chair, and Berenice’s shining hair streamed athwart the
moonless heavens. But the stellular display of the _ignis fatuus_
of the Swamp was soon over; the Opera House was reached, the ruthless
door shut the rabble from “faërie land,” and it hung hungrily about
outside, reluctantly making way for the richly-attired freight of
carriages privileged to behold the tableaux within.

Among those thus favored was one who had less greedy an appetite than
the untutored mob for the gracious and splendid. Only a very short
time elapsed before Maurice Brennett emerged and walked up Toulouse
Street--slowly, meditatively, as if he had less an object in view
than a desire of the motion and the fresh air. Little affinity had
he with this night of enchantment, these beautiful presentations and
responsive enthusiasms. The dominant instinct of his nature was the
instinct of prey. He pursued it in his varied speculations with as
little conscience as his cousin, the “feathered hawk,” pursues his own
peculiar line of business.

Now, as he walked on listlessly, his mind was filled with complex
calculations, with rigidly severe retrospections as to whether he might
not have been more adroit even than he was, with careful reconnoitering
of tortuous alternatives of future policy. They all led him to the
wall. This realization roused him. He raised his head and looked
tentatively about him in the darkness as if he sought an inspiration.
Slowly a purpose began to shape itself in his thoughts. He paused
irresolute for a moment. Then he slipped on his overcoat and took his
way briskly toward the levee.

A silence had fallen with the night upon the great embankment that
lies like a guardian dragon along the sinuous borders of the city.
Numbers of steamboats--dark and silent--lurked at the wharves, their
smokeless chimneys rising high, high into the mists that hovered about
the great river. One felt the presence rather than saw that leafless
forest of masts where the sea-going craft was lying. The monotony of
the interval, while he waited, was broken only by the measured tread
of watchmen echoing along the planks, and once by the swift sibilant
rushing of a locomotive upon the branch line of a railway close at
hand, the glare of its cyclopic eye rending the darkness.

He was about to turn away in disappointment, when suddenly from up the
river sounded three husky, remonstrant whistles. They conjured up a
hundred twinkling lights among the glooms by the water side, and soon
the levee was swarming with the dusky figures of roustabouts, running
hither and thither with clattering steps and an uncouth chatter.
Presently the white mists up the river were gemmed, first with a ruby,
then with an emerald gleam; both appeared close together, and from that
moment until he could see all the side-lights of the great illuminated
floating palace; until he could hear the water surging in the darkness
about her wheels, and the throb of her machinery; until she was
swinging, with a slow, easy grace, to the sharp jangling of her pilot’s
bells, into her allotted berth by the levee, the man who watched her
landing was in the grip of a strong emotion. It brought a quiver to
the hard lines of his parted lips; it shook his hand; a faint flush
sprang into his cheek; his eyes were eager--so eager and so fierce. He
accosted the first man ashore--one of the deck hands, who was making
the boat fast.

“Is that the Marchesa?”

“Yes, sah.”

“Why is she so long behind time?”

“Well, sah, disher boat jis’ run aground ob a sand-bar up dere in
Choctaw Bend--stayed dere twenty hours. Den we kem a-bustin’ down de
ribber, makin’ de fastes’ time eber seed on de Mis’sippi. Didn’t do no
good, dough. An’ dese yere passygers, wot’s gwine ter be landed too
late fur de Moddy-Graw is a-tearin’ deir shirts ’bout it. Sich cussin’!”

As Brennett scanned the passengers crowding down the stage-plank, he
stepped forward with a sudden look of recognition.

“Have you heard from _her_?” he exclaimed, with quick
impulsiveness, as he mechanically grasped Travis’s outstretched hand.

His manner was so pronounced that a lady who was passing at the
moment, and who caught his words, glanced at him with covert sympathy.
This was surely a phase of some delicate and tender heart-drama, which
is forever on the human stage, but which shirks an audience, who may
only catch a glimpse of a scene, now and then, by some chance lifting
of the curtain, such as this. And so she went her way, speculating
futilely about this important “her.”

“Got a letter just as I started,” said Travis, slowly separating an
envelope from a dozen missives which he had drawn from his pocket,
and handing it to Brennett, who hastily slipped out the inclosure,
and read it by the lamps of a carriage near which they stood. Miss
St. Pierre’s letter was in response to the one which her step-brother
had written immediately after his visit, urging still further the
proposed exchange of property. The reply was a marvel of non-committal
temporizing. To reconcile its cool and formal tone with the sanguine
expectation which Travis had deduced from her delight in receiving the
cross was difficult. He had believed, when they parted, that she was
far more kindly disposed toward him than ever before, and that, thus
propitiated, she could be readily influenced.

But now her feeling, as expressed in this letter, had changed to
distant reserve. There was even, indefinably suggested, an undercurrent
of distrust. She had come to no decision; not a word foreshadowed her
ultimate course; she might have written chiefly with a view of gaining
time.

“She will or she won’t, Brennett,” drawled Travis. “It’s like her to
want to eat her cake and have it too.”

As he stood in the light of the carriage lamps, listlessly twirling
his gloves in one hand, and glancing about him with that disparaging
superficial interest characteristic of the professional loafer, there
was nothing in the contemplative placidity of his manner to suggest
disappointment or irritation. In fact, he had given with the letter all
anxiety for the future into Brennett’s hands. For he was an expert in
the matter of shifting responsibility and “taking it easy.”

But Brennett’s was a face on which every emotion and thought had left
its mark. He read and re-read the letter without speaking, but with a
perplexity, and a baffled avidity, and a doubt, which nearly approached
dismay, vividly expressed on his sharp features. At length he carefully
folded and returned the delicate sheets, with a significant glance, and
a smile that was curiously related to a sneer.

“Well,” said Travis, “I’m afraid our getting hold of that property is a
thing that will never come to pass.”

“Travis,” said Brennett, laying his hand lightly upon his friend’s arm,
which was swinging the gloves, and thus arresting the motion, “other
men expect events to come to pass. _I make_ things happen.”

Travis’s contemplative eyes, staring intently for a moment from under
his hat-brim, held a sharp touch of surprise, and he laid his hand
meditatively on his silky, straw-colored whiskers, which the lamplight
seemed to burnish to a deeper yellow.

“Stick to that!” he exclaimed, gradually taking in his friend’s
meaning. Then, as Brennett’s grasp relaxed upon his arm, he fell once
more to twirling his gloves, and glancing casually up and down the
levee.

“Well!” he presently exclaimed, with a cheerful intonation, as he
turned toward the door of the carriage, “I have to go and dress.”

“What for?” demanded Brennett, rousing himself with difficulty.

“For the ball. I might as well see what is left of the poor little
show.”

And when they were rolling along the street toward the hotel, he had no
graver absorption than swearing at the bar in Choctaw Bend, and asking
questions, that were hardly answered, concerning the relative splendors
of the procession and tableaux to-night and those of former years.

Travis was like a cork. The surface was his element. He knew nothing
below. Perhaps, however, he might not have been able to maintain his
constitutional buoyancy had he divined that, behind Brennett’s boast,
was an absolute chaos, in which not even an indefinite plan of action
was vaguely shaping itself.

With secret wonder at his own poverty of resource, Brennett only
suggested, after a day or so, that Travis should write to her again.

“If this produces no appreciable result,” he said to himself, “I must
try heavier artillery.”

As the time went by no more letters were received from Miss St. Pierre.

And for the nonce Maurice Brennett was at a loss for his ordnance.

One lingering sunshiny morning it chanced that he and Travis were in
the reading-room of the St. ---- Hotel. The murmur of the streets below
rose drowsily, and within it was very still. The other occupants of the
room had dropped out gradually one by one, and only the rustle of the
journal in Travis’s hand broke the quietude as he hastily turned the
sheet. Brennett was not reading. There was a folded newspaper on his
knee, his eyes were fixed absently on the floor, and his thoughts were
busy with that baffling perplexity never in these days far from them.

“The Tichborne case!” exclaimed Travis as he glanced at the head-lines.
“I’m devilish tired of the Tichborne case. What do you think of it,
Brennett? Is the claimant an impostor?”

It was as if he had touched a match to a fuse. The air was full of
strange forces hitherto latent.

Brennett sat silent, motionless, looking at his companion with an
expression in his brilliant eyes difficult of analysis.

“Eh! What do you think of the Tichborne case?” reiterated Travis.

And still on Brennett’s face was a fixed expression of introversion--as
of one who ponders deeply, who is carefully evolving an intricate
train of sequences. A new idea had been projected on his mental
horizon--vague, diffuse, but soon to be focussed in action. Even
Travis, unobservant though he was, felt that his friend’s mind was
coming back through wide spaces as Brennett replied, absently, “The
Tichborne case?--why, I hardly know what to think about it.”

And then he was silent again.

And so Travis left him.

He remained there for an hour or two, sunk in this new absorption,
uninterrupted by friend or acquaintance. Then he wrote and mailed a
letter, and by four o’clock that afternoon it was on its way to New
York.

Travis’s ruminant moods--the mental process could scarcely be dignified
as reflection--were rare. One of the most memorable of his life was
superinduced within the next week by a casual meeting with Brennett in
the lobby of the Opera House. The performance was over, and Travis was
in the midst of the surging crowd near the door when he first caught
sight of his friend in the jam on the stairs. Brennett made a slight
gesture with the opera glass in his hand, which Travis interpreted
as a request to wait for him without. He went on, experiencing at
the moment a faint and fleeting amusement that a man like Brennett,
who seemed, however illogically, harder and sharper than the hardest
and sharpest, whose whole heart and soul were in his eager haste to
be rich, should nevertheless affect a sentimental interest in music,
and to enjoy the gentle illusions of the lyric stage. There recurred
to him, too, a vague perception, of which he had often before been
conscious, that men of Brennett’s stamp usually care little for
externals, and that there was a sort of incongruity in the glitter of
diamonds on his shirt-front when he moved beneath the gas-jets, and in
the fact that he was always so carefully plumed.

As Travis lounged in the gloom without, beside the posters which
announced in gigantic letters the resplendent attractions of “L’Etoile
du Nord,” billed for Monday the 6th of March, he watched carelessly the
erratic orbits of the carriage lamps far up the instarred perspective
of the street. Presently Brennett came out, and slipping his arm
through Travis’s they took their way along the thoroughfare together.

“I have something to say to you,” Brennett began.

“Say it, my dear fellow,” rejoined Travis, lightly.

The next instant he was struck with a sudden surprise that Brennett’s
arm should be trembling within his own. The circumstance was
significant. He grew abruptly grave, and turned an expectant face upon
his friend.

Brennett seemed to hesitate. It was only after they had traversed the
broad belt of moonlight falling athwart the crossing, and reached the
deep shadow of the opposite block of buildings that he spoke.

“I have heard from Fortescue,” he said.

Travis stopped short in the street.

“Not John Doane Fortescue?” he asked, with a sharp intonation of dismay.

“He is the man,” Brennett assented.

Travis stared hard at him for a moment. He was only a black shadow
sharply outlined upon the dim, gray background of the street. Even the
light in his eyes was eclipsed. But somehow it seemed a keenly vigilant
shadow. Its attitude was intent.

Travis’s observation was the mere embryo of a faculty. But he had an
instinctive aversion to being watched, and, although hardly realizing
that he stood in the moonlight and the other in the gloomy obscurity,
the instinct prevailed. The words and the gesture were almost
mechanical as he said, “Come, let’s get out of this,” and passing his
arm once more through his friend’s they walked on together.

“I thought that man was surely dead by this time,” he said,
desperately. “He has not been heard of for years.”

“He is in New York now,” said Brennett.

“How did _you_ hear of him, Brennett? How did it come about?”

“I remembered that a friend of mine in New York speaks of him
occasionally. I wrote and ascertained that Fortescue has just
arrived there after a prolonged residence abroad. He expects, so my
correspondent says, to come to New Orleans very soon.”

“Of course, then, he will get scent of his right to that Tennessee
property before long. But, Brennett, now I think of it, I don’t see how
that can affect our chance of securing it. His remedy is barred by the
statute,” said Travis, striving to fling off the anxieties that had so
suddenly beset him.

“He will rely on the disability of continuous absence,” said Brennett,
eagerly, showing a strange insight into the intentions of a man whom
he had never seen, and who was as yet presumably in ignorance of the
vested remainder in these houses in Graftenburg. After he had spoken he
recoiled slightly, and was savagely biting his lip.

But Travis’s sense of the artistic was too blunt to recognize
this lapse from veri-similitude. “Ah, the game is up!” he cried,
despairingly. Then with a bitter gesture of renunciation he flung the
stump of his cigar into the street, feeling as if he had put from him
in the moment every cherished prospect of the future.

The air was soft and full of vernal suggestions. The moon hung low in
the western sky. The elongated shadows of the two men dogged their
progress down the deserted streets, and for a time the silence was
unbroken save by the rhythmic beat of their footsteps, and once when
the multitudinous brilliant notes of a mocking-bird’s nocturnal melody
burst forth suddenly.

“In thinking it over,” said Brennett at last, “I doubt whether we are
so much damaged by this new development after all. The project of
exchanging property was beginning to seem very hopeless.”

Travis made no reply. He was wondering whether Brennett’s apparent
astuteness, hitherto so prominent in the invariable success of his
enterprises, might not have been instead only the heavy backing of
circumstance--luck rather than brains. And now, if luck should fail
him, and the man who relied upon him--what would remain?

Brennett presently resumed. “It seems to me that, if we are adroit, we
might make the appearance of the claimant serve our interests. Perhaps
we can manage her all the better for it--through him, as it were.”

Travis hardly recognized the caution which, even at midnight and in
the empty streets, used a personal pronoun for a proper name, but under
the magnetic influence which Brennett exerted he unconsciously followed
the example.

“But he, himself! his title is superior to hers.”

“Still he is not in possession, and the law is proverbially uncertain.
We can manage him through her.”

Travis shook his head.

“I don’t altogether make you out, Brennett,” he said.

“Why, see here. When the claimant appears she will stand in immediate
danger of losing the whole property. Perhaps she would be willing to
compromise. Now view the matter from _his_ standpoint. It is
doubtful whether he can dispossess her or secure any concession. It
might be that for a pecuniary consideration he would let us get the
advantage of the compromise if it can be effected. One half of that
property would give us the money we need.”

“You mean buy his claim?”

Brennett assented.

Again Travis shook his head. “It would be a cut-throat sacrifice on his
part for anything we could afford to pay.”

“You lose sight of the uncertainty, Travis,” said Brennett, eagerly. He
seemed anxious that his friend should regard the scheme as practicable.
“It is very possible that Fortescue would get nothing at the end of a
long suit, and have all the costs to pay. And it is possible, too, that
she will not compromise at all. Don’t you see that a substantial sum,
planked down at once, is rather an enticing alternative--especially as
the man is a gambler, so my correspondent intimates, and given over to
riotous living. Men of that stamp prefer ready money to anything in the
way of distant possibilities.”

“It may work,” said Travis. “But it will surprise me. And, Brennett, we
haven’t time to prosecute the suit. You know that.”

“If she will not compromise that is the end of it--at least so far as
the mine is concerned.”

“Well, if I understand you,” said Travis, in great dissatisfaction of
spirit, “the proposal is this--He takes the ready money. And if she
can’t be induced to compromise she takes the houses. And we are left
with the bag to hold.”

“The money we pay him is only a stake. We take the risk. But I am
confident she will compromise. Otherwise she jeopardizes her whole
estate. She has nothing else, you said?”

“Nothing else.”

A pause ensued.

“Look here, Brennett,” said Travis, presently. “This arrangement
with Fortescue is what the lawyers call, in their confounded jargon,
‘champerty.’ It is against the rules of the game, as I understand it.”

“That amounts to nothing. We must keep the affair a secret between
ourselves and him--that is all. The proposal for a compromise will have
to be made in his name, and through his lawyers. And it is much better
that this is the case. It strikes me that, after all, his coming is
rather opportune, though it will bleed us a little. She distrusts you,
and she is predisposed to oppose you. It is very well that you will be
obliged to lie low and seem to have nothing to do with it.”

“But this thing of champerty,” said Travis, dubiously, “it is no
offence, is it? There is no fine, nor penalty, nor”----

“Practically none. That has all fallen into desuetude. But, of course,
we shall take care to keep it quiet.”

“I ask,” said Travis, “because I never had the grit to run against the
law. I am a very Jonah for being found out. It’s my policy to be above
board--else I’m overboard in about a minute and a quarter.”

He laughed a little, in a low-spirited way, at his hobbling witticism.
Then he said, gravely, “Make the thing straight, Brennett, and keep it
straight. I depend on you.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said Brennett.

Then they both fell silent.

The moon was slipping slowly behind the western roofs. The melancholy
tones of a bell close at hand clanged out the hour. Others far away
sounded like its echo. The world was lost in the immensity of the
night--even their shadows seemed to have deserted them, only recalled
now and then by the sudden glare of a gas-lamp as they passed beneath.

And presently, still silent, they turned into the familiar hotel where
they always sojourned during their stay in New Orleans, and which
seemed to them as much like home as any other place.

Shortly after this interview the races began and Travis’s anxieties and
forebodings lost their hold upon him.




                             CHAPTER VIII.


IN the darkness of the night the snow slipped down, and the morning
broke on an unfamiliar world. Chattalla was idealized like a town in
a dream. Pavements, smooth and unblemished as marble, had replaced
the wretched sidewalks. “Jerusalem” was a picturesque row of low,
white-roofed buildings, softly defined against the sad, gray sky; here
and there delicate tendrils of blue smoke were beginning to timidly
ascend. The dome of the court-house was begirt with icicles; its gilded
weather-vane seemed to touch the low-hanging clouds; the leafless
sycamore in the yard was blanched to a yet more pallid effect by the
snowy lines traced on every branch and twig. A great black crow was
cawing from its top.

The first faces that appeared were of the unmistakable Israelitish
type, and soon all Jewry was alive. Then groups of freedmen,
silhouettes against the snowy background, slowly slouched along,
grumbling because of the weather. Last of the three classes came the
soldierly clerks, and lawyers, and doctors, their morning greetings
complicated with comments on the unprecedented depth of the snow, and
disputes as to the relative depth of the “big snow” of 1843.

There were no carts in from the country, but the streets were soon
enlivened with every manner of fantastic expedient--from a goods-box
to a wagon-bed--that could serve as a sleigh. Some of them were
of such grotesque contrivance that the very dogs barked at them in
frenzied surprise. After the one o’clock dinner these vehicles became
more numerous, and Captain Estwicke met upon the turnpike nearly all
Chattalla, on pleasure and pleurisy bent.

But it was lonely enough when he had turned off from the high road and
reached the great, ghastly battlefield, that after all its woe was laid
at last in its motionless, white shroud. The stillness was something
dreadful. The vast snowy expanse stretched out indefinitely beneath
a livid sky; only the sombre tints of the haunted thickets broke the
monotony, until the great dilapidated house rose up before him, and he
caught through the library windows the flicker of fire-light and the
glow of crimson curtains.

“De Gen’al’s done gone ter town, sah,” said a small major-domo, with an
air of importance disproportionate to his inches, and an expression of
affable regret on his black face, as he opened the door in answer to
Captain Estwicke’s ring. “Mrs. Kirby went yestiddy to spen’ de night at
Mrs. Ridgeway’s, an’ de snow, so unexpected, kep’ her f’om comin’ back.
Miss Anternette went up ter Mrs. Percy’s place las’ Wednesday ter stay
a few weeks wid her”--

Estwicke’s heart lightened as he listened, and he received the next
item with a sense of elation.

“--but Miss Marshy--she’s at home. Won’t yer walk in, sah.”

It was the first time that Estwicke had found the library unoccupied,
and he was conscious of a certain alert expectation as he waited; not,
he stipulated, because he was in love with Miss Vayne,--he often told
himself that he was not a susceptible man,--but she possessed a unique
charm and interest, and he had more than once felt that he could, with
an admirable degree of fortitude, dispense with the less congenial
presence of the others.

“You have disappointed me,” he cried, gayly, as she entered the room,
and he rose to meet her. “You told me that spring was coming.”

“And so it is.”

“And so is the millennium--after a while.”

“Well,” said Marcia, with an air which seemed to dispose of her
delinquency in the matter, “life is a mosaic of disappointments--the
art of life is to adjust their jagged edges together so nicely that
they form an harmonious whole.”

“Do I understand this?” said Estwicke, knitting his brows in mock
gravity. “Are you trying to inculcate the moral lesson of contentment?”

“Oh, no,” cried Marcia, with a blithe laugh, “I am only admiring your
patience.”

Somehow he greatly relished these strictly personal themes, and sought
to conserve them. He was silent for a moment, then said, ponderingly,
as if reaching a weighty conclusion, “I thought so--I thought so from
the first. You are very satiric.”

He was hardly prepared for the degree of pleasure expressed in her
face. She was delighted that her little ill-feathered shafts of wit
should be dignified as satire, for she was possessed by that youthful
admiration of cynicism which is so marked a phase of intellectual
adolescence.

“Oh, you are altogether wrong,” she returned, with the air of waiving a
compliment. “On the contrary, I am very”--she paused, at a loss, then
meeting his intent, expectant gaze as he leaned slightly forward, his
elbow on the arm of the chair, and his hat held motionless in his hand,
she laughed and blushed, and turned her eyes away.

There were wonderful depths in those happy eyes, shaded to softness
by their long, black lashes. They held some spell that touched his
imagination. They suggested to him deep, enchanted waters, overhung by
the mystery of some wild, romantic legend. And was there ever a line
like that which gave a gentle curve to her under lip, and defined her
chin, and swept away with its long, lithe grace to be lost in the knot
of black lace at her throat! He was struck anew by the charm of sudden
contrast between her dark eyebrows and the shade of her light brown
hair, with its flashes of gold all a-sparkle. As it waved back from her
forehead, he could see, from the opposite side of the fireplace, the
blue veins in her temples.

But why was he on the opposite side of the fireplace? There suddenly
seemed a needlessly immense distance between them. He rose and stood
by the table, taking up one of those frightful Japanese fans which lay
there, and affecting to be interested in its grotesque design. He idly
opened and shut it, and when he again seated himself, he selected a
chair nearer her.

“You remarked just now that you are ‘very,’” he said gravely; “I beg
to agree with that. I have found you ‘very’ indeed. Especially on the
subject of the weather. Why, I could have drummed up more sympathy at
the barracks.”

“About the weather?--why, _they_ must be in their element this
morning!” she cried. “I can imagine that at every blast _they_
exclaim--‘How nippingly this reminds me of home!’”

Estwicke laughed. “_They_ ought to hear you say that. _They_
stand up manfully for ‘home.’”

She looked down meditatively at the fire. “They are a long way off,”
she said presently, in a sort of speculative commiseration. “I wonder
if they never mind it. Do you?”

“I have no home,” he said, harshly. “I have never had a home.”

His tone startled her. It was like a passionate reiteration of some
long-cherished grievance. His sudden frown was upon his face. He
passed his hand hastily across his brow, as if conscious that a fierce
intentness had gathered there, which he sought to obliterate. Then with
a short, angry sigh, that yet was not all angry, he slightly shifted
his position in the crimson glow of the fire, and turned his eyes upon
the shrouded battlefield, lying stark and cold beneath the sombre sky.
He looked out with moody reflectiveness, so long that she wondered when
he would speak. Some inward monition swayed her, and held her mute.

“How still it is here,” he said at last. “An impressive silence broods
over this landscape.”

“All strangers say that. Antoinette declares it makes her melancholy.”

“Sometimes,” pursued Estwicke slowly and thoughtfully, “it does not
seem like silence. It is as if there were a great sermon or solemn
oration in the air. I know it is being pronounced. I am thrilled by the
electric eloquence. But somehow my nerves won’t respond. I don’t hear
it. I am too gross, too sordid, too coarse. Now and then I think I have
caught a whisper, but when I come to analyze it--nothing!”

He had forgotten her for the moment. His eyes were still fastened upon
the scene without, and her surprised eyes were fastened upon his face.
She did not know how it was--all that he was saying seemed wild and
strange--but her heart was beating in painful sympathy, and her tears
were rising fast. She made an effort to regain her self-control. He
would think her silly--he would not know what to think. For an instant
she fought her emotion, and then said, in her ordinary tone of voice,
“It is a lonely place.”

Her words roused him from his absorption. “Yes,” he rejoined, detaching
his attention with obvious effort. “And are you never lonely here--so
far from any other house?”

“Oh, no,” she replied. “Whenever I go away I almost _die_ with
homesickness. I think I couldn’t live anywhere else. It is so peaceful
here--so still and peaceful.”

Estwicke looked at her without speaking. So peaceful _here_--where
the battle was fought!

“Life seems a long struggle everywhere else. Why, when I go to Marston
I am oppressed with a sense of all the movement, and strife, and
hurly-burly in the world. And yet at the same time everything is so
narrow--so contracted.”

“I can well understand that--after these large skies,” said Estwicke.
But he was thinking what a narrow, contracted life hers would seem to
those of her age in a wider sphere--with her educational cares, and
the succession of dull old guests of faded gentility. He regarded her
speculatively. How unconscious of her beauty she seemed. Had no one
ever told her? Was he the first to discover it?

She became a little restive under his gaze. Her color rose; again she
glanced out at the snowy landscape. There she caught an inspiration.
“You are fond of peculiar scenic effects,” she said. “If _you_
should look out of the window, your artistic eye would perceive that
that horse, with the grayish slope of the snow below him and the
sky--just the same shade--above, seems as if he were miraculously
poised in the air.”

“And what do _you_ see?”

“Well, I--with my practical eye--looking out of the window, see only a
horse that belongs to me, that is named Hotspur, and that ought to be
in the stable this minute. But you would be in an artistic ecstacy if
you could see him from where you are sitting.”

“Come with me to the window so that I can go off in an artistic
ecstacy,” said Estwicke.

They walked together across the room, and he held back the heavy
crimson curtain with one hand that she might stand in the recess. The
peculiar reflection of the snow was upon her face, which was all the
fairer for it, and yet the delicate flush on her cheek was fresher and
purer. He silently watched her while she looked out smilingly, and
talked of the “scenic effects.”

“And there is the line,” he said presently, fixing his eyes upon the
horizon where the sombre woods, miles away, met the sky, “that you told
me once is the boundary of your world.”

“Oh, did you remember that?” she exclaimed naïvely.

He looked at her quickly. “Remember what you say? I forget everything
else,” he protested with a sudden mental illumination.

A moment of surprise, the color intensified in her cheeks, and her
eyelashes quivered and dropped. His heart was beating tumultuously;
there had broken in upon him a realization of those subtle processes
which had of late changed his own world. It had crystallized within
closer limits than hers. This curtain and this window were the
boundaries of his world.

He never knew what he was about to say in that first ardent,
full-pulsed rush of emotion--but all at once there sounded a great
clatter of feet in the hall, and here were Mrs. Kirby and General
Vayne, bringing a cold blast of air to the fire with them, and
bringing also Mrs. Kirby’s chosen intimate, Mrs. Ridgeway.

“Oh, Marcia, my dear!” cried Mrs. Ridgeway, shortly after the
salutations, “the sleighing! We went all the way to Mrs. Percy’s. You
could never imagine it!”

Mrs. Ridgeway was a short, rubicund, stout old lady, and in all her
sixty odd years she had never before been in a sleigh.

“And that reminds me,” she continued in so animated a tone, that it
riveted general attention upon her. “Mrs. Percy told us to-day that her
son is coming home in a few weeks.”

“Won’t that be rather early for him to leave New Orleans?” asked Mrs.
Kirby, blandly.

“Well, yes. I should think so if I were in his place. But I suppose he
is soon tired of town. There seems to be some powerful magnet in this
dull country neighborhood for Horace Percy. He is always coming back.”

She glanced at Marcia with an archness which seemed to Estwicke
odiously knowing. He turned his eyes instantly upon the young girl. She
was blushing and embarrassed.

The mere mention of this man, of whose existence he had hitherto been
unaware, sent a hot thrill through his blood. The man’s name was Percy.
And she called her horse--Hotspur.

In the few moments that he remained after this, there was an alteration
in his manner. He was pre-occupied, and an accession of formality was
noticeable in his voice, his phrasings, even his bow, as he took leave.
And presently he was gliding over the snow in the crisp cutting air,
remembering only how she had blushed and faltered when she was told
that man was coming. That man’s name was Percy. And she called her
horse--Hotspur!

It was dark before he arrived at Chattalla, and intensely cold. He had
taken out a cigar, but found, in great annoyance, that he had no match.
He made the last mile in very quick time, and when he reached town he
pulled up at the book-store. A tattered black urchin was lounging about
the sidewalk, and to him Estwicke tossed the lines as he alighted.

“Hi, boss!” shouted the little darkey after his employer, shrewdly
desirous of settling the amount of his emolument beforehand. “Yer’ve
got ter gimme a quarter for holdin’ disher hoss in disher kind
o’wedder. You heah me!”

“I’ll give you a quarter and confound you!” exclaimed Estwicke,
irritably, as he disappeared within.

The book-store served Chattalla in the stead of a clubhouse, but it
was almost deserted now, the coteries that were wont to assemble here
having gone home to tea. The clerk behind the counter, and a solitary
figure sitting by the stove at the further end of the store, were of a
lonesome aspect. Estwicke recognized in the latter Mr. Ridgeway, and
after a momentary hesitation he strode back into this dim perspective.
There was to be a political meeting and speaking this evening at the
court-house, and Mr. Ridgeway had come to town to attend; he was now
awaiting the time appointed for the political potentate to give his
fellow-citizens the benefit of his newly discovered method of saving
the country. He took his cigar from his mouth and greeted Estwicke
with--

“Come in, Captain, come in. Almost frozen, hey? I should think you
would be more accustomed to the cold.”

“Don’t know why,” said Estwicke shortly.

“That’s a fact. I always forget that you are a Southerner.”

Estwicke sat down, placing his feet companionably beside Mr. Ridgeway’s
on the fender of the stove.

“Can’t say, Captain, that I think this Arctic weather improves
Chattalla.”

“Chattalla seems on the down grade,” returned Estwicke. “No business,
I should think--except in the line of the Jews. They seem to have a
pretty soft thing.”

“Taking the town,” assented Mr. Ridgeway.

“Raise cotton?” asked Estwicke, jerkily, pulling at his cigar.

“Jews don’t,” replied Mr. Ridgeway, also jerkily. “They raise
greenbacks. Don’t plant at all; show their sense; planting these days
will break any man. Speak from experience.”

“I mean the people generally,” said Estwicke.

“Oh, yes; _they_ raise cotton; all the old set do. It’s their
ruin--prices down to nothing, and still they keep planting--straight
along. But, Lord,” continued the old gentleman, sweepingly, “everybody
is broke--flat as a flounder, sir. It really makes no difference what
they do now, I suppose--impossible to aggravate that fact. There’s
not a man in this county who is not wofully reduced--_wofully_
reduced, sir, except, of course, Horace Percy, and he is richer than he
ever was.”

There came a sudden change into Estwicke’s face. His eyes were lighted
with interest, and his color rose. Still he would not ask a question.
But after a long, retrospective pause, Mr. Ridgeway--waving aside the
wreaths of smoke that floated about his head--continued of his own
accord.

“Horace’s good luck is all owing to his uncle, old Colonel
Percy--Colonel by courtesy, you know. Between you and me and the
gate-post, old Walter Percy is a fool about everything in this world
except money. But he is the longest-headed old sinner about money that
ever was seen. When the war began this young fellow had a fine estate
by his father’s will, and his uncle was his guardian. By the time the
first guns were fired old Walter Percy had sold plantations, negroes,
stock, _everything_. He knew their day was over. He foresaw how
it was all going to end. What do you suppose that old fox did with the
money? Bought United States bonds. People thought he was crazy! The
lower bonds went the more old Walter Percy bought. Well, the event
justified him. His finesse has made Horace a rich fellow.”

Estwicke smoked in silence, and after another long pause Mr. Ridgeway
continued,--

“People are so fond of exaggerating--liars, you know. They say Horace
Percy is worth a million--and that’s bosh. I am in a position to know.
Five hundred thousand would amply cover all he’s got. _Half_ a
million, sir--scant.”

“Is _that_ all?” said Estwicke, satirically.

The old gentleman misapprehended him.

“Of course I know there are vastly richer men elsewhere, and were here
before the war. General Vayne, for instance, could have pocketed all
the Percys, scot and lot. But here, and now, a man as rich as Horace
Percy is a rare bird. If anybody deserves good fortune Horace does. You
have never met him? Well, you will, probably, as you come down here
once in a while. Yes, Horace Percy is a fine fellow; good as gold, and
generous to a fault--a little too reckless and headstrong, perhaps. But
that is the natural effervescence of youth and animal spirits, you
know. Horace is a whole-souled, high-mettled, ardent”--

--“A sort of a Harry Percy of a fellow--Hotspur,” suggested Estwicke.

“Tha--that’s it,” spluttered Mr. Ridgeway, in cordial approbation of
this apt translation of his idea. “That’s Horace, exactly. Hotspur!”




                              CHAPTER IX.


EVEN bores have their _raison d’être_. Maurice Brennett had long
speculated on the purpose of Colonel Percy’s creation. One sunshiny
afternoon in New Orleans he seemed to have solved this problem, for,
chancing to meet the old gentleman, he detained him in conversation for
a few moments on the street, and then, arm in arm, they turned into the
St. ---- Hotel, close at hand, and repaired to the reading-room.

Colonel Percy’s natural manner, if ever he had a natural manner,
had been so long and so utterly submerged beneath his mannerism,
that not the faintest vestige of the hypothetical original tissue
was discernible. He conserved, mentally and physically, a pose of
portly pomposity and benign condescension, which would have implied
repletion of self-approbation but for its covertly insatiate demand
for responsive homage. He was emphatic, and oracular, and eminently
Socratic--not that he was verbally interrogative, but the whole man was
himself a huge interrogation point, seeming to ask continually, “Do you
comprehend--can you appreciate _Me_?”

He was an exemplification of the driving force of prosperity. It had
carried him far along the grooves of convention, and he occupied an
enviable place in public esteem. To the impartial observer, however,
seeing things as they are, uninfluenced by tradition and worldly
consideration, he merely proved how very creditably a man can sustain
a high social and financial position on how very little mental capital,
confirming the old belief that fools are Fortune’s favorites, and
making wise men “ambitious for a motley coat.”

But in his happy, ignorant pomposity he thought he knew it all. He took
it for granted that his brain-pan was as handsomely furnished as his
purse, and the world in general took it for granted, too.

It was not Brennett’s habit to fly in the face of established usage. He
did not resent the old gentleman’s condescension, for, when it suited
his designs to take a low seat, it mattered very little who said, “Sit
thou here.” Conventionalities are the pawns of the chess-games of life,
and by their adroit management he frequently gave checkmate without
mooting graver radical questions--the expediency or the inexpediency of
the relative position of knights and bishops.

“You have seen the evening papers, eh?” said Colonel Percy, as he sank
into a chair. “Sad state of affairs in France--sad state--sad state.
Riotous.”

Colonel Percy had a habit of iteration. He chanted continually an
acquiescent refrain to his own words. His speech was like a Greek
chorus, strophe and antistrophe blending in one harmonious whole.

“I had expected to go to Paris this spring,” he continued. “But now, I
hardly know, I hardly know.”

He looked as if the Commune were especially invented for the
frustration of this praiseworthy intention.

“It has been some time since you were abroad, I believe,” Brennett
remarked.

“Years, years. I have not been off American soil for years; not since
my brother and I made a little tour together--a little tour.”

“He died in Germany, did he not?”

Was Brennett talking merely for time, that he should thus steer the
conversation into the dull channel of these personal interests? An
eager expectation, foreign to the subject, was in his countenance. An
intense anxiety and excitement had kindled in his eyes. Once he turned
his head toward the door--only once--and afterward there was a rigidity
in the muscles of his face and neck, as if he would avoid, by an effort
of the will, the gesture to which an unruly impulse rendered him prone.

Nothing of all this did old Walter Percy see or imagine; absorbed in
the subject, he prosed on.

“Yes, yes; his health was not good, and travel was advised by his
physicians. He was a great sufferer during his latter years, and died
at last from spinal meningitis--he died from it.”

“I remember meeting him at Interlaken.”

“Interlaken? Yes, Interlaken. I recollect Interlaken, Mr. Brennett.
Nice scenery there, very nice scenery indeed. The scenery at Interlaken
is certainly very nice,” repeated Colonel Percy, with about as much
imagination as a primary geography.

“Very nice,” Brennett assented.

The afternoon sunlight was streaming in at the windows; the lace
curtains stirred softly to and fro in the fresh breeze, and, as they
moved, the long, yellow rays were broken and deflected into fantastic
shimmers. Now an arabesque of golden light in a network of gray
shadow--the etherealized similitude of the curtain itself--was waving
on the frescoed ceiling; and now it was slipping insidiously over the
carpet. Sometimes the radiance encircled the old man’s white hair like
a halo; sometimes it played over his withered features with a scornful
brilliancy; sometimes it flashed full on Maurice Brennett’s bright
eyes. Once it surprised a strange expression there. He was looking
intently at the pier-glass--not at his own reflection, for he was so
placed that he could see only the indistinct image of a man in the
dim perspective of the hall without. And the man could see Maurice
Brennett’s reflection, lounging in a green velvet chair as he talked to
a garrulous graybeard. Could it be that a swift glance, charged with
a deep meaning, flashed between the _simulacra_ in the mirror?
Or was it only the vagary of the wanton sunshine, flying on the wings
of the wind, and filling the room with its quiverings, and bright
distortions, and bizarre effects?

Suddenly the shadow in the hall was merged into substance. There
was entering a tall, well-dressed man, with a handsome face and a
singularly effective manner. He had a certain air of high breeding,
but his appearance gave a sharply contradictory suggestion of reckless
living. He looked as if he ought to be the finest type of gentleman,
and yet could not, or would not--for there was something distinctly
vicious in his handsome eyes.

The two friends by the window were rising; their conference was
terminated. The stranger had paused near one of the tables, and was
listlessly glancing over a newspaper as he stood. Occasionally he
looked with faint and fleeting interest at the other occupants of the
room, until his eye chanced to fall on Colonel Percy. Then he laid the
paper down and advanced.

“I believe I had the pleasure of your acquaintance a long time ago,” he
said.

The smile of amiable condescension which had for so many years adorned
Colonel Percy’s face had become the habit of his muscles. Just now it
was more bland and mollifying than usual, because he was in the painful
position of not recognizing the man who knew him long ago.

“Why, you have forgotten me,” cried the stranger, with a fresh buoyancy
of laugh and manner simply indescribable. “You used to know me well
enough--John Fortescue.”

“Ah, my dear sir,” exclaimed the old gentleman, eagerly extending his
hand, “I had only mislaid your name for a moment--yes--mislaid for a
moment. But as soon as you came into the room I knew I had seen you
somewhere. And yet you have changed greatly in personal appearance.
Appearance, you know.”

“Everybody tells me that,” said Fortescue, carelessly. “Very few of my
old friends recognize me at first. It is hardly a matter for wonder,
and I ought not to expect anything else, as I have not been in this
part of the country for nearly thirty years.”

He bore himself with a most discouraging affability, before which even
the condescending old gentleman wilted a little. When Colonel Percy
partially recovered from the novel sensation, he sought to assume an
air as of taking Mr. Fortescue under his wing, and the stranger, with a
certain imperious good humor, permitted himself to accept the position
_protégé_.

“I am glad to welcome you back,” said Colonel Percy pompously.
“Yes--glad. I knew your father well. Intimately. In some respects you
remind me of him--yes, very much,--especially in your manner and the
tones of your voice. You have the family traits very strongly marked. A
chip of the old block--ch? Yes--a chip.”

The several groups about the room observed this scene with some
interest. Maurice Brennett was still standing near the window. The
old gentleman suddenly recollected him, and at once introduced him to
Fortescue. The two men looked into each other’s eyes in the agitation
of elation, and gravely shook hands.

Thus in re-entering New Orleans society Mr. Fortescue had as a voucher
Colonel Walter Percy--a man of great wealth and social consequence, and
as well known there as the custom-house.

In these early days of his return, Fortescue often dined with the
punctilious old Pattern at his club, went about with him to exclusive
reunions of the very elect, had the run of his house.

“I pledge you my honor, sir,” the old fellow said to a mutual
acquaintance, “I feel rejuvenated after a choice symposium of
this sort. Symposium. I talk. I tell about my college days--his
father was my chum--great times we had. Great times. He is fond of
hearing me talk about his father; he likes our old-world stories.
I tell him that he is his father over again--build, gait, voice,
manner--wonderful resemblance--wonderful! But I _don’t_ tell him,”
added Colonel Percy, with a sort of cumbrous slyness, “that he is his
father--_sublimated_. He is the only _handsome_ Fortescue I
ever saw. He has far more than fulfilled the promise of his youth--oh,
yes--I remember him when he was an ugly, harum-scarum, smooth-faced
cub. Yes--ugly cub. The only handsome Fortescue I ever saw--he
is, now. They were all men of fine presence--but a hard-featured
race--hard-featured to a degree.”

That notably exclusive circle in which John Fortescue had been
welcomed by virtue of the high position formerly held by his family
sustained something of a shock when _outré_ stories of his
extravagant dissipation began to be bruited abroad. A few people with
long memories now recalled sundry mad pranks of his early youth, and
said he was exactly what might have been expected,--as the twig is
bent the tree is inclined. He persistently sought to conserve the
hereditary consideration which had been accorded him, but he also
greatly affected a certain clique of fast men, in which he rapidly
became a prime favorite. His never-failing gayety, his vitality, his
prodigality, above all, his talent and invention in the noble art of
killing time, were qualities not to be lightly appreciated. A sudden
impression here prevailed that he was a man to be imitated, and many
a young fellow’s merely frivolous tendencies took a turn downward to
positive dissipation that might be dated from Fortescue’s reappearance
in New Orleans.

Now and then, over the smooth surface of this shallow-seeming life,
there played ripples which might have told of strange movements in the
unmeasured depths below. Several of the incidents that stirred the
waters came about in this way:--

In some sort, Maurice Brennett had begun to dog John Fortescue about,
and although not philanthropic, and by no means a temperance man, he
made every effort to restrain this chosen intimate from inordinate
drinking. One day, as Travis opened the door of his friend’s room in
the hotel, after a slight annunciatory tap on the panel, he heard
Brennett call out in a strained, excited voice--“You are drinking like
a damned fool! And if you keep it up, I’ll cut the whole thing, by God!”

The sound of the opening door interrupted Fortescue’s reply, and both
turned sharply.

“What does it matter to Brennett how hard Fortescue drinks,” thought
Travis, in great mystification. But the impression was soon effaced,
and the occurrence forgotten in the vicissitudes of fighting the tiger
and cognate pursuits.

A very observant man might have detected the fact that Mr. Fortescue
was merely veneered, as it were, by his seigniorial manner--the wood
beneath was of coarse grain. Then concerning his age there was a
strange discrepancy. He said that he was fifty-two, and he looked
barely forty. And the life he lived does not tend to preserve youth.
It was noticeable, too, that he seemed at first singularly unfamiliar
with the streets of New Orleans, considering the circumstance that he
was born and bred in that city, but he explained that many places about
it had in the thirty years of his absence slipped from his memory, for
he had “no head for locality.” He possessed other peculiarities, one of
which occasioned some remark, slight, however, and transitory enough.
When he was to a certain extent under the influence of wine he did not
answer readily to his name. He was known to sit in motionless silence
after some direct appeal, such as--“Will you come, Fortescue?” as
though another person were addressed whose reply he was awaiting. When
roused to a perception of the fact, he was deft at subterfuges, and the
matter passed as an accident.

Once a more significant episode took place in Brennett’s presence.
While walking with Fortescue along Canal Street one day they
encountered Colonel Percy, who with wonted benign condescension paused
for a few words. He was accompanied by his nephew, of whom he was
superlatively proud and fond, and, as he could never have done with
making an impression, his manner of bland importance in introducing his
kinsman to Fortescue seemed to say--“This, you will note, is Horace
Percy,--a man, young, rich, of fine parts, and greatly favored in that
he is my nephew.”

The flourishing nephew was a tall, lithe fellow of twenty-four or five
years of age, with regular features, a fresh complexion, black hair,
dark gray eyes, and a delicate dark mustache that curled upward at
the ends, and had rather a pampered appearance. His deportment was a
contrast to his uncle’s. He was unconstrained, propitiatory, and seemed
altogether unaware of his consequence. It may have been that from the
plenitude of his self-satisfaction he could afford some concessions,
but the very sight of him predisposed one in his favor.

His superficial glance changed suddenly to an intent gaze as it rested
upon Fortescue, and the idea slowly percolated through Colonel Percy’s
thick skull that instead of impressing his own merits his nephew was
distinctly impressed. And certainly there was something peculiarly
admirable in Fortescue’s manner. Those strong intimations of pride, a
fine candor, and a generous ardor, gave value to his imposing bearing,
his height, and personal effectiveness. A marked individuality was
attendant on his slightest gesture. His light laugh was full of
an infectious gayety. He was like a high wind--he brought his own
exhilarating atmosphere with his buoyant, untamable spirit.

With the bookish man’s carefully cultivated sense of the picturesque,
all this addressed itself intimately to Percy. It promised a perpetuity
of interest in the midst of the arid barren conditions of commonplace
life. Naturally he had expected something very different in his uncle’s
friend. He had a sense of acquisition.

“Do you find many changes here?” he asked agreeably.

“They find me,” Fortescue suavely corrected him. “They come trooping up
every street to meet me. They lie in wait for me all along the banks of
that restless old river”--

“Mutation! mutation, sir!” Colonel Percy solemnly interrupted. The word
and the intonation pleased him--so he said “Mutation” once more.

“It must exert a depressing influence,” Horace Percy suggested.

“It exhilarates me!” cried Fortescue unexpectedly. He lightly fanned
away the cigar-smoke from his handsome face, and he laughed a little.
“It lets me know how the world goes thundering on through space. I have
been thinking it a broken-down hack, and I come to America to find it a
fresh young flyer with a prime track before it.”

“The world moves, sir--the world moves. Especially the Western
Hemisphere,” said Colonel Percy. “Advancement--yes--arts and
manufactures--very good--very good. But not _too_ fast.
Moderation. Moderation.”

The odor of sanctity did not cling to Mr. Fortescue’s metaphors,
and the old gentleman was minded to reiterate circumspectly--“Not
_too_ fast--Moderation. Moderation.”

Maurice Brennett had shown some impatience throughout this
conversation--now it took the form of speech. “I fancy Mr. Fortescue
flatters us,” he said, rather incisively. “Or perhaps it is because
he thought so slightingly of us when he was here before, that our few
changes and our equivocal progress exhilarate him--or, it may be, he is
reconciling himself, with the very genius of philosophy, to his sojourn
among us.”

“He needs no ‘genius of philosophy’ for that, I am very sure,” said
Colonel Percy, with healthy self-esteem. “He is singularly favored if
he has not had more serious causes for unhappiness.”

“I have happily survived them. I have a knack at living--other men
are content to breathe,” Fortescue boasted airily. “But I lay no
claim to genius of any sort. Genius,”--he continued, with quick
discursiveness--“Genius is the perfect poise of the highest powers.”

His manner vitalized the phrase, and the old man, whose kind habit
it was to pat Intellect on the back, exclaimed--“Good! Very good!
Epigrammatic.”

He chipped out the syllables of this long word as if he found it very
good, too.

“And I hope, my dear sir, your ‘knack at living’ may never fail you,”
he added, rubbing his hands and looking about him for approbation, for
he fancied he had said a neat thing.

But his little joke limped by unnoticed. It suddenly occurred to him
that the attention of the group seemed to irresistibly gravitate
toward Fortescue. The others spoke only of him, and he was absorbed in
himself. Horace Percy listened with responsive interest to his every
word; Travis, who had joined the party, demonstrated a facility of
acquiescence; and Maurice Brennett was watching him like a hawk. It was
not Colonel Percy’s habit to assist in magnifying the importance of
other men, and to condescend to jests that are cavalierly overlooked;
jealous of his own consequence, he was quick to perceive that his
meaning had escaped the stranger’s negligent attention.

“With me,” Fortescue declared buoyantly, “the theory of failure and its
practical demonstration run in parallel lines--never touching.”

Then he turned with his grand air to Colonel Percy,--“Your good wishes
for my future ought to have much influence in keeping them from
converging,” he said suavely.

The old gentleman acknowledged this tribute with a wrinkled smile, and
he looked about him with portly pomposity, despite an uncomfortable
inward monition that Fortescue was somehow, incomprehensibly, laughing
at him.

To a man of his temperament this was peculiarly irritating. He was
not ill-tempered, and he usually maintained a conscientious reverence
for those behests of polite society which prevent one from walking
rough-shod over his neighbor’s sensibilities, but to him all others
must bow down. He would go any lengths to bring you to your knees.
Mr. Fortescue had withheld the requisite genuflection. It was with a
distinct intention to discipline him that the old gentleman, affecting
an amiable inadvertence, hastily anticipated his nephew’s reply to a
question which the stranger asked.

“Yes--yes--Horace has been out of town--or you would have met earlier.
He has visited his plantations. He plants extensively now. He plants.
By the way the old Paturin place has recently come into his possession.
Paturin,--you remember?”

He looked at his interlocutor with a world of speculation in his eye.

Fortescue removed his cigar from his lips, turned a smiling face full
upon the old gentleman, and responded,--“Paturin!--I think I remember.
A fine body of land.” Then he replaced his cigar and pulled away with
coolest unconcern.

The old fellow stared. _He thought he remembered Paturin!_ Colonel
Percy himself would never forget the night--in the times of the heavy
gambling on the Mississippi steamboats--when he had seen this man, then
a young sprig, barely come to his majority, stake this same “fine body
of land” and its growing crop of cotton, and lose on a reckless “two
pair” against “three of a kind.”

And now he thought he remembered Paturin!

Colonel Percy felt that there was an infinite impudence in this
seeming indifference--or perhaps Fortescue was only unwilling that one
should know how deep were the wounds made by this chance thrust--this
reminder of his flung-away fortune. But it coerced a respect for the
personal pride which he held like a sword between himself and too close
an advance from a grossly inquisitive world.

After this Brennett seemed feverishly anxious to get away, and
presently he and Fortescue left the others and walked together up the
street.

Travis lingered only a few moments. As he overtook them he heard
Brennett saying in a tense, sneering, half-suppressed voice: “What is
the use of all this display--_ep-i-gram-mat-ic_ wisdom! _It
can’t_ be in character.”

Fortescue said nothing, for at that instant the puzzled Travis joined
them. As he walked abreast with them he noted in surprise the surly
look in the faces of both men. He came at once to his sage conclusion.

“These intellectual fellows are too devilish jealous!” he said to
himself. “How they do grudge each other their little innings!”

Perhaps Maurice Brennett’s impressions of the scene might be most fully
gauged by the fact that he, assisted by Mr. Fortescue or assisting him,
spent the next few days in a laborious examination of sundry records on
which the name of Fortescue appeared, and thenceforth this scion of the
family so far overcame his pride and sensitiveness as to allude often
and readily to various pieces of property which had passed from his
hands, his memory being greatly refreshed by exhaustive lists obtained
during his researches into the arcana of real estate.

Fortescue’s reckless prodigality had convinced Travis, after some
observation, that the project of buying the claim to the Graftenburg
houses was feasible, but he was much surprised by the readiness and
cheapness with which the purchase was effected.

Brennett deemed it expedient to add a contingent element to the
transaction.

“We must make it to Fortescue’s interest that the compromise shall
actually go through,” he said privately to Travis, “or it may be
difficult to get him to bestir himself enough to effect it. The affair
is obliged to be carried on in his name, and ostensibly by him,
although we furnish the money for lawyer’s fees and all that. But we
can’t show at all, you know. So it is best to give Fortescue only five
thousand dollars now, and five thousand if we succeed in making the
compromise. Hold out that prospect to Fortescue and it will keep him
down to his work. He will exert himself to see the lawyers and have the
thing pushed through at once.”

On this basis the negotiation was consummated and, to Fortescue’s
lively satisfaction, five thousand dollars changed hands.

After he had left the room with the check in his pocket-book, Travis
commented on the transaction. “That’s the greediest man to gobble up
a little dab of money I ever saw,” he said to Brennett. “If I were in
his place I’d plough for a living before I would sell my claim to a
splendid property like that for such a pittance.”

He thought it over in silence for a moment--then shook his wise head.
“I can’t understand it, Brennett. It gets away with me.”

And Brennett said nothing.

For the remainder of the afternoon Travis pondered deeply at intervals
upon this problem. It was a long time for any one subject to occupy
his attention. Hours after the consultation, he remarked, apropos of
nothing, “It’s a conundrum, Brennett,” and still later he broke a
brooding silence with the exclamation, “Give it up!”. On each occasion
there was a swift expression of alarm among the anxious lines on
Brennett’s face--lines which it had not known a month ago. But the
absorption gradually relaxed its hold upon Travis, and that evening,
in the glare of gas-lights, the popping of corks, and the special
Providence of filling a “bob-tail flush” at a critical juncture, the
last lingering recollection of the “conundrum” slipped through his
sieve of a mind according to the habit on which Brennett had relied.

Into the strong sweep of Fortescue’s influence Horace Percy had drifted
without resistance, for if he were Hotspur at all, he was Hotspur
with those sturdy elements of obduracy and fierceness left out. His
wilfulness needed only a curb to bring it to naught. He had no coarse
proclivities, but he possessed an infinite leisure; he was malleable,
impressionable, and reflected the moods of the man nearest his elbow.
His chief restraints had hitherto lain in his intellectual tastes,
and although he had sometimes affected the _rôle_ of wild young
blood, and enjoyed the flutter of anxiety his suddenly erratic habits
occasioned among his relatives, he had found the _jeunesse dorée_
were but as sounding brass--dull, commonplace fellows, as a rule, and
ineffectual for mental attrition and congenial companionship. But the
pyrotechnic qualities of Fortescue’s mind dazzled and delighted him;
the man personally impressed and interested him singularly; he even
began to entertain an admiring friendship for him--in common with many
of the same stamp, for Fortescue had his following. To fraternize with
him, however, involved more or less a return to those wild scenes, of
which the joyousness had hitherto seemed a trifle chimerical to the
hesitant and fastidious Percy. Now they were suddenly invested with
a strong actuality of interest and a potent fascination. Fortescue’s
tireless brilliancy, his rampant gayety, his indefatigable vitality and
buoyant spirit were subtly imparted to his associates, and his zest
of enjoyment, even thus warmed over, had a fine flavor. They delighted
in those sensations with which he was wont to shatter the nerves of
a too sensitive public. Enlivening stories of Horace’s participation
in these escapades sometimes reached his uncle’s ears. When they
were supplemented by vivaciously accurate accounts of his reckless
expenditure of money and the sums he lost at cards, they almost broke
Colonel Percy’s heart. In the midst of these beguilements, however,
his nephew was impeded by a threatened attack of pneumonia. “And in
reason,” said the pious old man, humbly submitting to Providence, “it’s
the very best thing that could happen to Horace.”

The physician peremptorily forbade all exposure, and counselled the
patient to keep his room. Horace considered this a lamentable waste of
time, but it did not impair his cheerfulness, for he was not allowed to
be lonely; his wild young friends daily congregated about him, to “keep
up his spirits,” which they did, noisily enough.

One afternoon, Maurice Brennett, still maintaining that anxious
espionage upon Fortescue, deemed it expedient to affect an interest
in the invalid. He found, as he had expected, this choice coterie
of associates grouped about the sofa on which young Percy lay at
length. Among them was Fortescue,--loud, hilarious, flushed with
wine, immensely glad to see Brennett, immensely hospitable to Percy’s
guests, immensely entertained by Percy’s illness, which he evidently
considered a good practical joke. Brennett’s entrance had interrupted
a remonstrance from Travis, which, after the usual greetings, was
resumed by that gentleman in his habitual languid drawl, and with
an expostulatory gesture of his listless hand and arm, held out
expressively as he lounged in the easy-chair on one side of the
fireplace. “It is out of the question,” he said, “to have all this
noise and confusion in a sick man’s room. We ought to stay away from
here until Percy gets better.”

Fortescue, to whom this was addressed, regarded him intently for a
moment. Then dropping into the easy-chair opposite, with Travis’s own
look, with Travis’s own languid manner, with Travis’s own expostulatory
wave of his cigar, held at arm’s length in his right hand, with
every inflection of Travis’s voice, he repeated the words of the
considerate remonstrance, and so marvellously perfect was the mimicry
that a roar of astonished delight went up from the spectators. In the
momentary sensation that ensued, not one of the careless fellows was
observant enough to note that a glance of much significance flashed
from Brennett’s bright eyes into John Fortescue’s laughing eyes; not
one so quick as to detect the sudden paling of the flushed face as
the laughing eyes caught the glance; for a little while there was an
extreme gravity in the demeanor of the lively cynosure of the circle.

And as the days passed, this phase of their versatile friend’s
abilities was not again obtrusively presented.

During Horace’s illness he was in a measure at the mercy of his uncle,
who thought it his duty to take advantage of the opportunity which the
seizure afforded to badger the young fellow. Colonel Percy ascribed the
attack to the wine-bottle and the spring races. The physicians did not
altogether concur in this opinion. They admitted that too much wine was
bad, and too much races also. But these diversions do not of themselves
tend to produce pneumonia; the faculty took a lower moral ground.

Colonel Percy began with the most important point. “Horace,” he said
solemnly, “you are wasting a great deal of money. Why will you persist
in gambling in this wicked way? Wicked--very wicked. This man Fortescue
has a bad influence on you. He will ruin you, sir. He is ruining
all the young fellows. I happen to know that you have been gambling
heavily. And--losing!”

“Losing! Lost the last stiver. Poor as a church mouse,” assented Horace
easily. He was in his complacently iniquitous frame of mind to-day and
enjoyed his uncle’s uneasiness. “So poor because I will gamble. Will
gamble because I am so wicked. Therefore I’m so wicked because I’m so
poor. Moral--if you don’t want to be wicked you mustn’t be poor. Q. E.
D.”

Colonel Percy listened to this with an intent brow, vaguely conscious
that there was something wrong somewhere, but unable to “spot it.” Then
he sternly attempted to repress this levity.

“I speak for your good. Yes. Your conduct is unseemly. It has been
remarked.”

Which was true. Colonel Percy thought it was bad to be wicked, but to
be remarked in wickedness was far worse. With a weighty manner and
extreme emphasis he repeated--“It has been remarked, sir. Remarked. You
have been _seen_ fantastically tipsy,” he cried, with a shrill
rising inflection. “People laughed, sir! They _laughed_!”

Horace colored. The reproach struck home. He felt that there was cause
for serious mortification in this. He cherished the pre-eminence
with which his fortune had endowed him. He fostered notoriety--to be
remarked was one of the dearest conditions of his life, but with envy
and bated breath, and by no means as a target for the ridicule which
his uncle’s words implied.

As Colonel Percy talked on, Horace fell, as was his wont, under the
influence of whoever was nearest his elbow. He began to repent. The
idea of ridicule, deftly inserted, was more wholesome in its effects
than prayers.

Its effects were unfortunately fleeting. When the old man was gone and
his enlivening young friends returned, Horace, with a bewildering moral
versatility, hedged on his contrition, and throughout his convalescence
there was a fine display of those inconsistencies and vacillations of
character for which he was famous.

About this time, however, he came under the domination of an influence
which his uncle, in the innocence of his heart, welcomed.

Languid and enfeebled by illness, Percy had neither the nerve nor
inclination to keep the gait at which Fortescue pursued pleasure, and
thus gradually fell away from him. His society seemed to have lost,
also, its attraction for Brennett, who hitherto, prompted apparently
by friendship, had openly made earnest efforts to repress Fortescue’s
unseemly exuberance of notoriety. But, in despair, perhaps, he had
relinquished them at last. Fortescue remained the most conspicuous
figure of his conspicuous clique, and his hilarious drunken
_bon mots_ were all over New Orleans--people repeating them,
reprehensively, as in duty bound, but with infinite relish, as the old
Adam constrained them.

Between Brennett and Percy, thus distanced, there had long existed a
friendship of that cool conventional sort which but for accident might
have amounted only to acquaintance. Now it seemed suddenly to intensify
and become an intimacy. Brennett was a man of keenly alert and educated
faculties. In notable contrast with his chosen associates his life
was well-ordered and his habits singularly correct. He had no hold on
Percy through participation in the amusements which the young fellow
had recently affected, but to Horace the companionship was grateful,
for Brennett was one of those rare conversationalists who gently
titillate the intelligence of an interlocutor so that he enjoys without
effort or exhaustion. They found many subjects in common. They spent
much time together in these spring days, and as the season advanced and
the annual exodus began to be talked of, it was natural enough that
Percy should invite his agreeable and unexceptionable friend to make
him a visit at his country home. It was no less natural that Brennett
should accept the invitation. And thus his schemes ramified.




                              CHAPTER X.


THE pulses of life throbbed languidly in Chattalla. Sometimes there
was hardly a creature to be seen upon the Square--and then again
the noontide sunshine would rest only on the figure of a belated
countryman, drunk overnight, lying in the safe shadow of the Temple
of Justice, and sleeping off the effects of “bust head,” in the soft
spring grass beneath the budding sycamore tree. Sometimes a wagon
would rattle heavily across the stones; at long intervals the sound of
chaffering would rise upon the air from “Jerusalem;” or perhaps the
silence might be broken by the talk of a knot of gentlemen who brought
chairs from the bank, and took up a position in the midst of the
public pavement. If you should thread your way through this group, you
would not overhear the discussion of news of the present day, local or
foreign--you would catch such phrases as--“The enemy’s artillery opened
the ball,”--or, “Then we executed a brilliant flank movement.” And you
would go on realizing that all their interest lay in the past, and that
they looked upon the future as only capable of furnishing a series of
meagre and supplemental episodes.

It seemed to Estwicke afterward that one of these episodes, which
roused Chattalla and diverted it momentarily from its occupation of
contemplating its own history, was charged with the special purpose
of effecting a breach between himself and General Vayne. It operated
solely upon the peculiarities of their respective temperaments, for
each had in the matter as slight concern as might be.

One morning Estwicke came down by rail from the barracks, and as he
entered the lower cross-hall of the court-house he encountered General
Vayne marching meditatively back and forth upon the brick-paved floor.

“I have been endeavoring, sir,” said General Vayne, as he offered his
hand, “to drill some raw recruits of recollections. I am a witness, you
know, in that Jartree suit against the life insurance company--shabby,
shabby affair! Do you know, sir,” lowering his voice effectively,
“that the pretext upon which they refuse to pay the loss is that Major
Jartree died--by--his--own--hand!” Impressive pause. “They claim that
the deed was done for the sake of securing the insurance money for his
children!” Still more impressive pause. “That he _died_, sir, in
the act of cheating and chousing. _My_ friend, Major Jartree!”

He drew himself up to his full height, twirling his mustache fiercely
with his left hand, and looking frowningly intent--much as he did when
he led a charge at Shiloh or Monterey.

There was an expression of embarrassment on Estwicke’s face; he was
about to speak, but General Vayne, roused with affronted friendship,
went swiftly on,--

“I am only to testify to the life-long integrity of Major Jartree--my
limited knowledge of the minutiæ of this affair will permit me to go no
further. But I am glad to enter the lists on any terms. I am glad to
break a lance for those orphaned children! _Six_ of them, Captain
Estwicke--six of those helpless children, all under fifteen years of
age! No father--mother a confirmed invalid--and their half-brothers
both family-men struggling along on little tid-bits of salaries.
But”--with a change of voice, and waving the whole matter into a
diminishing distance with his expressive left hand, “the effort on
the part of the company to avoid the obligation is utterly futile. It
will only be painful to Major Jartree’s friends and relatives to hear
the puny, malicious attempts to tarnish his motives and character.
_That_ can’t be done, sir, here in Chattalla, where the man was
known and beloved and revered--_my_ friend, Major Jartree! It is
impossible for them to procure any reputable, credible testimony!”

“Perhaps you are unaware,” said Estwicke, with a sudden hot flush,
“that I am here to-day to testify in behalf of the insurance company.”

General Vayne fell back a step.

“Most certainly, sir, I was unaware of it,” he said, with slow
emphasis. “And”--severely--“it seems to me you should before have
stated the fact.”

Now, General Vayne was the father of a daughter--otherwise Estwicke
would have sharply retorted that he had found it impossible to get in
a word edgewise. He trembled with the effort at repression, but still
stood confronting the elder gentleman, and intimating by his expectant
eye that he anticipated something more definite in the way of an
apology.

In General Vayne’s foolish, partisan indignation that the legal
adversary of Major Jartree’s orphans had any witness at all, and that
he himself had been thus unwittingly and ludicrously hob-nobbing with
the enemy, he would have been glad to put Estwicke off with something
less than the full honors of war. But the young man’s manner and
attitude constrained him.

“In that case,” he resumed stiffly, “I beg to withdraw anything
offensive I may have said concerning the character of the testimony
which the insurance company can command.”

Here Estwicke should have dropped it.

“I did not have the opportunity,” he persisted, however, imperiously
resolved to place himself exactly right upon the record, “to intimate
earlier my slight connection with the affair. I was interested and
surprised by what you were saying.”

And here General Vayne should have dropped it.

“And, if I may ask, what did I say to surprise you?” he demanded.

Combat was to Estwicke like the breath of his nostrils. Already
restive under the many restraints imposed by the other’s seniority and
paternity, his aggressive manner was only imperfectly tempered as he
replied:--

“If you may ask, I may answer. I was surprised that so serious a doubt
should be entertained that Major Jartree killed himself.”

“Doubt, sir! That he killed himself!” exclaimed General Vayne. “If
I were warned of God in a vision I could not--I could not constrain
myself to believe it! My friend”--his voice trembled--“Major Jartree!”

“And, Captain Estwicke,” he added, after a momentary pause, “it will be
very difficult to make a jury believe _that_, in the face of Major
Jartree’s character, which, fortunately, he left behind him, and which
cannot be taken away even--from--a--dead--man.”

“I shall not attempt to make a jury believe it,” said Estwicke,
irritated beyond bounds. “I shall only tell the jury, under oath, what
I know.”

General Vayne looked at him gravely.

“I beg your pardon once more. I supposed that you were here to prove
some slight collateral point. I had no idea that you intended to
_try_ to make the jury believe that. Let me ask you, Captain
Estwicke,” he continued, in a sudden tremor for the result of the
case, “how you, a stranger, happen to be so fully informed about this
matter?”

So much had been said of questionable intent that Estwicke fancied an
implication in this, too.

“I should answer that question more appropriately from the witness
stand,” he replied, altogether overtaken.

“Thank you!” cried General Vayne, fierily, “I am schooled!”

He was about to pass by, but Estwicke, already penitent, hastily added--

“I was at Bandusia Springs when he killed himself--I mean when he died.”

“I perceive in you, sir, a very formidable witness against the widow
and the orphan,” said General Vayne, hotly.

“I assure you,” returned Estwicke, losing every vestige of
self-control, “other people have some rights under the law--even an
insurance company--and the law accords them my testimony, such as it
is.”

“I wish you joy of your tilt in its behalf, and I have the honor to
wish you also, sir, a very good morning.” And General Vayne passed
swiftly through the door and strode off down the pavement to the gate,
twirling his long, gray mustache, and touching his hat with a military
salute to the men he met, who greeted him in like manner.

There were ten windows in the Circuit Court room, all of them furnished
with great, green shutters, which stood, night and day, broadly
flaring. This gave them from within a bare and unnaturally glaring
aspect, and might have suggested, to a mind enervated and rendered
morbid by the sophistication of shades and inside blinds, a painful
resemblance to eyes lidless and lashless. In the summer-time, when the
grimy and cobwebbed sashes were thrown up, the thick leaves of the
sycamore close at hand, with here the flash of the dew and there the
flutter of a wing, afforded a pretty make-shift for upholstery, but
to-day only the budding branches touched the glass and occasionally
rapped sharply upon it as if to call to order the assemblage within.

Besides the Bar, many of the unprofessional “quality” of Chattalla
were present, and a considerable number of heavy country fellows from
the outlying districts of the county, clad in brown jeans and stolidly
eying the town folks, lounged on the benches or strolled aimlessly in
and out of the room. Close to the wall, on the left, sat rows of the
litigation-loving negroes, whose habit it is to frequent the trial of
all causes, great or small. Admirers of oratory are these, and never a
word is lost upon them. The jury held their heads attentively askew,
for already the plaintiffs _prima facie_ case had been made out,
and depositions were being read on the other side. Then Estwicke was
called, and as he took his conspicuous place on the stand an expectant
silence ensued.

The glare of the ten windows was full upon his expressive, irregular
features, and his dark red hair, clipped close about his finely shaped
head. His whiskers and mustache seemed to take a lighter tinge.
There was a slight frown upon his face, and a grave, almost anxious,
intentness in his brown eyes belied the cool, impassive manner with
which he awaited the questions.

The first of these were comparatively unimportant, and elicited ready
replies. They were put by the defendant’s senior counsel, a muscular,
wiry, hatchet-faced man of the name of Kendricks, a stranger at this
bar, and bearing in his garb and manner the stamp of a metropolis. He
was a practitioner of some note in the city of Marston, and Temple
Meredith had at first regarded with self-gratulation the fact of being
associated with him in this case. It was calculated, Meredith thought,
to impress the public with a sense of his increasing professional
importance, since it could not be generally known that the influence of
a kinsman, who was a director in the insurance company, had caused that
corporation to secure also the young fellow’s valuable services. And
in fact his services were valuable. He had done most of the drudgery
in preparing the case, he had studied it carefully, drawn the papers,
discovered important testimony, and armed himself to the teeth with
precedent. But now that it had come on for trial, and was before the
public, Kendricks had resumed his position as principal performer, and
left the young man, ambitious of distinction, to saw away on the second
fiddle with what complacence he might. Meredith maintained his habitual
serenity of aspect, but, after the manner of such young shoots who
desire to be century oaks in a fortnight, he felt ill-used. It never
occurred to him that this state of silent obscurity was exactly the
same which Kendricks had graced some twenty years before.

Presently a sudden break occurred in the examination.

“State anything that Major Jartree may have said to you on the subject
of suicide.”

The witness hesitated, turned his hat in his hand, and glanced
down at it, conscious of General Vayne’s fierce eyes fixed upon
him--conscious of no others. A flush rose into his face--and then he
looked up. He was sensible of an angry contempt for himself that he
had sought to shirk any man’s gaze, that there should be any man whose
displeasure he deprecated--and deprecated for a selfish reason. And
in this instant he caught the expression of faces that had a far more
unnerving effect--that smote upon his heart. The dead man’s two sons
sat before him--shabby-genteel young drudges, with joyless, troubled
eyes, in which he read the terrible anxiety that possesses men who
hold character dear, when character is called in question. And he
remembered, too, the widow and the six orphans whose little all was in
jeopardy.

He chafed under the sense of these influences. “Have I a conscience?”
he asked himself. “Do I realize the obligations of an oath?”

In the effort to sustain his equilibrium he was unaware how much of
the indifference, which he sought to foster in his mind and heart, was
expressed in his manner as he replied, “Major Jartree often spoke to me
of suicide. He alluded to it as ‘the solution of a problem.’”

General Vayne threw himself back impatiently in his chair, which
creaked beneath the shifting of his heavy weight. There was a cruel,
blanching dismay in the faces of the dead man’s sons. They looked at
each other in painful doubt and bewilderment, and then they looked back
in increasing surprise at the witness.

This to the crowd seemed almost conclusive. The depositions of the
physicians which had been read proved only that Major Jartree had for
some time, under advice, used morphine, and had taken an overdose. From
their showing, it might have been an accident. This testimony seemed to
indicate a deliberate intention.

Estwicke was requested to give the particulars, so far as his memory
might serve, of all that Major Jartree had said alluding to suicide,
and the circumstances under which these conversations took place.

And as he complied, the impression he created was one which his
slightest friend might regret. His glance was both hard and careless.
Now and then he turned, with an idle gesture, his soft hat which he
held folded in his hand. His manner seemed the exponent of a callous
nature--the very tones of his voice indicated a peculiarly frivolous
insensibility to the painful and even tragic elements involved in the
recital. For it began to be very evident that a bankrupt, in broken
health, in great depression of spirit, in frantic anxiety for his
children’s future and the support of an invalid wife, the dead man had
sacrificed his honesty, his conscience, his life, for a pittance, and
sacrificed it in vain. He had talked too much in his loneliness and his
sorrows to a friendly young stranger whom he had met at the “Springs,”
whither his sons had sent him for a few weeks to recuperate his health
and divert his mind--they felt every day even yet the hard pinching of
the economies which that extravagance had entailed upon them. Though
Estwicke gave every detail so lightly, as he recounted the scenes, they
seemed to pass visibly before the jury. Even the least imaginative
among them had a vivid mental picture of the long, mysterious, wooded
Cumberland spurs, and the grim gray cliff projected against a red
sunset sky, and heard the dead man’s shrill tones, breaking into the
still evening air, as he rose, and with uplifted hand protested,--“A
man’s life is his own, Captain Estwicke,--shall he not say when it
shall end!” And again there was a conversation in the freshness of the
morning as they sat in the observatory, which hung over the precipice
and quivered and shuddered with the wind, and here he had calculated
the depth below, and argued with his companion whether it were certain
death to fall. And once they drank together the sparkling chalybeate
water that bubbled out from a cleft in a crag. “I wish you health,
my young friend,” he had said. “You are at the entrance of the great
stage. I hope you have a fine _rôle_ to play, and a good stock
company of friends for support, and a great ovation and glorification
awaiting you. I am but a supernumerary at best, and nearer the exit
than you think. Instead of this health-giving water I should drink some
deadly drug. And then you would see with what grace I can make my bow
to an audience which has not troubled itself overmuch about me, and
about which I shall trouble myself no more.”

General Vayne rose and walked heavily out of the room. He went down the
stairs, leaning ponderously on the balustrade, and joined Mr. Ridgeway
who chanced to be aimlessly strolling about the porch.

“Sir,” said General Vayne, facing round upon his friend in the
flickering shadow of the leafless sycamore boughs, “sir, the quality
of sympathy is the one quality which lifts the human animal above the
beasts that perish. The man who lacks it, lacks his soul.”

After a pause he continued impressively. “It is a quality, sir, which
ennobles a beggar and adorns a prince.”

Then he fell suddenly from his rounded periods into an inconsequent
heap, so to speak, of indignation.

“I--tell--you--what--it--is--sir,”--he said in that effective
diminuendo--“this belated invasion--this post-mortem invasion, as one
might call it, is”--

He checked himself; he would not speak disparagingly of a man behind
his back,--not even of the post-mortem invader, his own familiar
home-made Yankee who invaded his native soil.

For a time the two elderly gentlemen sat on the front steps in silence.
Then General Vayne rose and paced up and down the brick-floored hall,
struggling with an inclination to return to the court-room and hear the
testimony that was so repugnant to him. Finally the impulse prevailed.
When he went back he found that Estwicke was under cross-examination.
This was very skilfully conducted, but elicited nothing of value,
except that he had heard other men who had never committed suicide say
many like things, and that he had considered these of no special import
until after Major Jartree’s death. There were no contradictions, no
admissions, no involutions. He was the ideal witness, bold, succinct,
and as transparent as crystal. As he went down from the stand,
Meredith, with the _camaraderie_ of youth, indicated by a gesture
of invitation, a vacant chair at his side. Estwicke hesitated; then,
saying to himself that he would not truckle, he would not seem to avoid
them, he sat down by the defendant’s lawyers, although he thought as he
did so that this was an overt act of perfect accord which he might well
spare himself, and he felt as if he and they were conspirators in some
dark deed against the widow and the orphans.

The plaintiff’s rebutting testimony was now to be taken, and General
Vayne was the first witness called.

“Will you state,” said the counsel, “what was Major Jartree’s character
for integrity.”

“Sir,” exclaimed General Vayne, while the tears rushed to his
enthusiastic eyes, and he made an agitated gesture as if he would clasp
his missing right hand--clasping only the empty air, “I would answer
for his integrity with my life--with--my--life!”

There was throughout the room an electric current of painful sympathy.
The jury were surprised, thrilled, touched. The hatchet-faced Kendricks
was on his feet in an instant with an objection.

“Could I say more--or less?” cried the witness, suddenly, forestalling
the plaintiff’s counsel, “knowing him as I did--_my_ friend, Major
Jartree! Only the voice of the stranger is raised against him!”

All eyes were turned toward Estwicke. He was a-tingle in every fibre,
his face grew hot and scarlet, the veins in his temples were blue and
swollen; he made a movement as if he were about to rise.

“Steady--steady!” said the placid and debonair Meredith in an
undertone, laying a staying hand on Estwicke’s shoulder.

The contentious Kendricks was in his element. “I appeal to your Honor,”
he vociferated, “to protect my witness”--Estwicke gasped--“to protect
my witness against these aspersions intended to prejudice the jury
against the conclusive testimony he has given.”

“Aspersions!” exclaimed General Vayne, leaning forward suddenly toward
the plaintiff’s lawyers. “_Did_ he say _aspersions_?”

There was a jostling rush forward to obtain a better view of the actors
in the little drama, and the constantly contracting crowd was shaded
off by a line of black faces enlivened by glittering ivories and the
whites of astonished rolling eyes. A clamor of voices had arisen, and
above all dominated the sheriff’s stentorian “Silence in court!”

“I’ll commit somebody presently,” said the judge impersonally. He had a
wooden face, an impassive manner, and a brier-root pipe which he smoked
imperturbably throughout the proceedings. He was a man of few words but
of prompt action; at the sound of his inexpressive voice the tumult was
stilled instantly.

“Will your Honor be so good as to admonish the witness that reflections
on those who preceded him are not evidence and are inadmissible.”

“The witness must comport himself with all due regard to this court and
counsel,” said the judge. Then the examination was resumed.

“What was Major Jartree’s habit of conversation?”

“He often spoke figuratively. He might have been easily misunderstood
by a man of different mental calibre--a literal-minded man.”

“Will your Honor instruct the witness to confine himself to the
necessary replies,” exclaimed Kendricks, again on his feet. “The
witness does not answer questions. He is only seeking to utilize
Captain Estwicke’s testimony, which he has heard, to make an argument.
I see that we ought to have had all these witnesses put under the rule.”

“Too late, now,” interpolated the judge, dryly.

“Instead of answering questions,” pursued Kendricks, “the witness
is trying to persuade the jury that all Major Jartree said to
Captain Estwicke were merely flowers of rhetoric which”--with a fine
sneer--“his limited mental capacity prevented him from comprehending.”

“Counsel may sit down,” said the impassive judge, who had weathered
many a storm like this.

Kendricks sat down in--paradoxically--a towering rage, and the
plaintiffs lawyer proceeded.

“What was Major Jartree’s temperament?”

The witness looked inquiringly.

“State whether he was kindly disposed, or otherwise, and anything you
may know of his character.”

“Kind, sir? He had the kindest heart that ever beat! He was humane,
and gentle, and generous! He was imbued with a fine char-r-ity.” Here
the witness demonstrated his own char-r-ity by pausing impressively to
scowl at Estwicke. “He saw men, not as they were, but as they sought to
be. He revered his fellow-creature. He beheld in man the majesty of his
Maker’s image!”

“I object,” cried Kendricks hastily. For there was a change ominous to
his client’s interests in the expression of the jurymen. They had all
known and been “mighty sorry” for Major Jartree, who was an amiable but
useless old gentleman, and nobody’s enemy but his own. They recognized
him in all this, but somehow he loomed before them in impressive
proportions as General Vayne lent them his moral magnifying glass. “If
the court please, this is not evidence,” persisted Kendricks.

“Keep strictly to the point,” said the judge.

“I will, your Honor,” returned the witness earnestly.

“Was he a religious man?”

“He was a sincere and humble Christian,” said General Vayne
conclusively--in his own way he was a pious man himself.

“Can you state anything which would intimate his possible horror of the
crime of suicide?”

“Sir, he entertained a deep reverence for the sanctity of life. He took
ample cognizance of that stupendous right to exist which dignifies the
meanest worm of the earth. I once heard him say to a grandchild who was
torturing an insect--‘My dear, the beetle is your brother. Spare him!’”

He repeated this with a noble gesture of intercession and a fine
oratorical effect. He fixed his magnetic eyes on the jury who were
subtly agitated by an illogical responsive fervor, and then with a
sudden wild burst of indignation he exclaimed:--

“And they ask us to believe that this man, of all men, held himself,
whom God had so nobly endowed, as slighter than the beetle--and took
his life and falsified his character, so graciously won, to cheat an
insurance company. It is monstrous--monstrous! _My_ friend! Major
Jartree!”

“Stop! _Stop!_ STOP!” Kendricks had roared in a steadily
increasing crescendo, but throughout these vociferations General Vayne
had kept steadily on, regarding them only as a strategic movement of
the enemy designed to divert his attention.

“Your Honor, I insist--I _demand_ that you admonish this witness
as to his duty, and require him to conform to it.”

“The witness _must_ answer questions, and say nothing further,”
said the judge emphatically.

The witness turned his flushed, enthusiastic face toward the
plaintiff’s lawyers as an invitation to come again. They were taking
heart of grace. It is not always safe to trust the appearance of a
jury, but those twelve good and lawful men were beginning to assume the
aspect of a row of intent and eager partisans. An influence more potent
than law or right reason swayed them. The witness had fast hold of
their heart-strings, and their pulses quickened under his touch.

“What was the character of Major Jartree’s mind?”

“He possessed a highly cultivated understanding, sir. His power of
discrimination between right and wrong was as solid as the heart of
that tree, and as perfectly adjusted as the hair-trigger of your
pistol, sir.”

“What was his habit in the matter of prudence or rashness?”

“He was cool and deliberate. He possessed remarkable foresight. I will
instance the fact that he foresaw, from the beginning, the result of
the Late War”--which on the day of the surrender had been a great
surprise to General Vayne.

“You are not here to instance facts,” exclaimed Kendricks pettishly.

To this General Vayne paid no manner of attention, but went on eagerly.

“If he were capable of such a deed, for such a purpose--the mere
supposition is abhorrent--he could but have perceived that it would of
necessity defeat itself.”

“I desire to ask of your Honor,” said Kendricks, once more on his feet,
and utterly losing control of his temper, “whether throughout the
testimony of this witness I am to be subjected to the ignominy of this
bravado, and my client’s interests to a flagrant injustice? It is plain
that the witness does not desire to give evidence. He only seeks to
insinuate prejudice and to foster misapprehension in the minds of the
jury.”

General Vayne rose slowly from the chair. The movement at such a moment
was unprecedented and unexpected, and there was a breathless pause of
surprise and doubt. He was so pre-eminently a calm man that he never
found it necessary to subject his intentions to the scrutiny and
question imperative with men of impulse. His gesture was appropriately
deliberate as he reached up to the judge’s desk and grasped the heavy
glass inkstand that stood there. The next moment it was hurled wildly
at the head of the defendant’s counsel, impartially distributing
its contents on the irreproachable shirt-bosoms of the “quality” of
Chattalla, and endangering in its defective aim the row of negroes,
high up on the benches, who dodged as one man. The wind of its flight,
as it crashed harmless against the wall, nearly took off a darkey’s
ear, and impressed with his peril, and holding the threatened member in
his cautious hand, he vociferated--“I tell ye now, dey’d better leff de
ole gen’al alone!”

Kendricks had--instinctively, perhaps--thrust his arm behind him. It
was a significant motion. The next moment something steely and sinister
gleamed in his hand. But quick as he was, he was hardly quick enough.
The pistol was cocked, but not levelled, when General Vayne rushed
upon him. There was a swift, muscular movement of that dextrous left
arm, and the learned counsel, hit fair and full between the eyes, was
sprawling upon the floor, the revolver discharging in his fall, and
the bullet skipping lightsomely through the little that was left of
the crowd. An eager curiosity as to the subsequent proceedings rallied
the audience, and it was re-enforced, in a solid phalanx, by the Grand
Jury, that had been in session in the opposite room, and was roused
from its absorptions by the exhilarating note of the pistol.

The judge sat astounded upon the bench. “Why, bless my soul, General!”
he exclaimed weakly. And then once more, “Bless my soul!”

He gave, however, a sign of return to judicial consciousness in
imposing a fine of fifty dollars upon General Vayne for contempt of
court; and to the lovers of sensation it seemed that the Grand Jury was
providentially close at hand, for it went back to its den and indicted
the stranger for carrying concealed weapons.

“Mr. Sheriff,” said the judge, “adjourn the court till two o’clock.”

“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” quavered Mr. Sheriff, greatly distraught. “The
honorable Circuit Court stands adjourned till two of the clock!”

General Vayne’s friends had hustled him out of the room. He was in the
deepest humiliation. The want of dignity in his demonstration smote
upon him sorely. That _he_ should have so far forgotten himself!
That _he_ should lift his hand against his fellow-man--without a
pistol in it!

When his colleague had left the room the defendant’s junior counsel
walked to the other door and waylaid a plethoric, eager, unwieldy old
man who was hastening after General Vayne.

“Let me detain you a moment,” said Meredith politely. “Mr. Ridgeway, I
think?”

The old gentleman, facing about, solemnly acknowledged it.

“This is a terrible affair, Mr. Ridgeway, and for General Vayne’s own
sake it must not be allowed to stand as it is. As you are a friend of
his, you must help me to get an apology from him.”

The old gentleman seemed on the verge of apoplexy. He became scarlet in
the face as he stood unsteadily before his junior. He spluttered and
gasped in his excitement; his eager words struggled for precedence, and
ran over each other--“Anapology?--’napology, sir? An apology for being
shot at!”

“The pistol was discharged when Mr. Kendricks was knocked down,” said
Meredith. “Do you think it is fair to conclude that he would have fired
it?”

“Wha--what was he doing with it, then?” spluttered the old gentleman
sarcastically.

“Don’t you admit the possibility that he drew it to intimidate General
Vayne--he could not stand still and be struck, and he could not strike
a maimed man. You don’t reflect, Mr. Ridgeway, that General Vayne
will occupy the intolerable position of taking advantage of that
circumstance. Of course Mr. Kendricks can do nothing but submit to the
indignity.”

The old gentleman tugged meditatively at his tuft of beard, as if it
had some cerebral connection and he sought thus to stimulate mental
activity.

As the lawyer was accustomed to present only one side of a question,
and Mr. Ridgeway to see only one side, neither took any notice of Mr.
Kendricks’s “intolerable position,” one ignoring it from intention and
the other from fatuity. And at this moment, that gentleman, walking
the narrow bounds of his room at the hotel, was absorbed in agonizing
deprecation of public opinion, which he knew would not take into
account a hurled inkstand in a case in which a pistol had been drawn on
an unarmed and maimed man.

In a sudden flutter of anxiety, Mr. Ridgeway acceded, with apoplectic
haste, to Meredith’s suggestion, and the ill-assorted couple crossed
the square to one of the lawyer’s offices, where General Vayne sat
with a friend, who, upon recognizing Meredith, rose and left the room,
marvelling greatly as to his mission.

“General Vayne,” said Meredith, who had previously met the elder
gentleman, “I do not come from Mr. Kendricks; understand that. But I
think some disinterested person should say to you, both on his account
and your own, that you mistook altogether his intention. If you had
been calm, you would have realized that his manner of urging his
objection was a mere matter of course; it was his duty to his client’s
interest to seek to injure your testimony.”

“Calm, sir, calm!” exclaimed General Vayne, his bald head purple. “I
assure you, sir, I was as calm as I am at this moment.”

“It is absurd, General,” said Mr. Ridgeway, eagerly, “to attribute to
a sane man an intention of seriously reflecting upon you. Your friends
cannot sufficiently regret that under this delusion you should have
permitted yourself to insult a gentleman”--

“And a gentleman in the discharge of a purely professional duty,” added
the wily young diplomatist.

General Vayne sprang up and began to walk back and forth the length of
the apartment, nervously pulling his mustache.

“And in the presence of a motley throng,” said the elder peacemaker.

“Bringing a court of justice into contempt,” said the lawyer.

“And offering a spectacle of insubordination to the men of your
command, who hold you as an exemplar,” pursued Mr. Ridgeway.

The unsuspecting subject of all this craft groaned aloud.

“Inflicting a public humiliation, and personal injury, and pecuniary
loss upon a man who only sought to do his duty to his client,” said
Meredith.

The simple-hearted gentleman paused in his rapid striding to and fro,
and with that agitated gesture, as if he would clasp his missing hand,
he turned credulous eyes first on one of the tacticians, then on the
other.

“And a stranger in the town!” exclaimed Mr. Ridgeway, capping the
climax.

“I--I--will write to him,” declared General Vayne, altogether
overwhelmed. He turned to the table, and placed pen, ink, and
paper with that adroit left hand. “I--I--am afraid I have been
very hasty--very wrong--I will write.” Then, suddenly, “No, I will
not write. The affront was offered in the presence of a large
assemblage”--this was his way of dignifying that motley little crowd;
“I will apologize publicly, sir, publicly.”

He looked about him wildly for his hat, caught it up, and strode with
his buoyant step into the sunshine, twirling his gray mustache, and
glancing keenly about for the object of his search.

The other two had risen at the same instant, and as they were about to
follow him out of the door, the young lawyer, equally surprised and
elated by the readiness with which peace had been patched up, attempted
to exchange a leer of congratulation with his red-faced coadjutor. The
demonstration was received with an expression of blank inquiry.

“Why, God bless me!” thought young America, feeling much like a child
caught making faces, and mastering the situation with an effort,
“here’s another!”

Kendricks had already emerged from his room at the hotel. It had
required some nerve to face Chattalla again, alive, as he knew it must
be, with its enjoyment of the “fight free for all,” but he did not
want the “cursed little town” to say he was hiding, and with this view
he was strolling listlessly about the public square. There General
Vayne met him. Admiring Chattalla could only see from a distance the
dumb show of an oratorical apology, and catch, now and then, the
echo of a rotund period. It seemed, however, that the thing was very
handsomely done, and handsomely received, too; for this unexpected
turn of affairs had solved the lawyer’s dilemma, which had offered the
equally impracticable alternatives of challenging a one-armed man, or
submitting to the ignominy of a blow. His relief gave his manner an
unwonted geniality, and as they parted, Chattalla, looking after them,
said that this was no doubt the best solution, although the whole
affair, from the inkstand to the apology, was painfully “irregular.”
Then knots of men fell to talking about the propriety of blows, and
apologies, under “The Code.”

It was a long day to Estwicke, and fraught with many anxieties,
but late in the afternoon, as he pressed with the crowd out of the
court-house yard, they all seemed merged in the canvassing of his
position in regard to General Vayne, and how far it might affect
the future. He had inwardly resented the allusion to himself in the
court-room, and he was not a man to tamely submit to an affront. But
how was it possible to openly resent it from one old enough to be
his father, whose hospitality he had often accepted, and with whose
family he was on terms of cordial friendship? Then, too, impartially
viewed, the ground of offence was untenable. He had been called a
stranger, which was true, and it had been intimated that he might have
misunderstood General Vayne’s friend. Ought he, in justice to himself,
to allow this to bar all further intercourse between them; to go to
General Vayne’s house no more; to relinquish, in effect, his hope of
winning the woman he loved, and every dear prospect of the future?

The question was summarily settled. As he crossed the square he passed
General Vayne. The elder gentleman returned his bow with a courtesy
as fierce and as punctilious as if they faced each other at twelve
paces. Estwicke went on, his blood on fire, swearing a mighty oath that
he would take what cognizance he could of his own dignity, and that,
whatever sacrifices might be involved, he would not go again to the
house of a man who had offered him a public affront, confirming its
deliberate intention by his manner afterward, which intimated a feeling
approaching enmity.




                              CHAPTER XI.


THE lawyer whom Miss St. Pierre was destined to consult had no
prevision of his coming client. Such prevision might have induced
some exhilaration of spirit, for after court was adjourned on the
day of the “shindy,” as Meredith characterized it--the affair always
figured in General Vayne’s subsequent meditations as “that deplorable
encounter”--the young man, strolling down Main Street, was rather
dismayed by the prospect of the long evening before him; now that
the abnormal excitements of the day were over he was beginning to be
impressed with the facilities of Chattalla for unlimited dulness. He
felt it, therefore, as something in the nature of a rescue when he
suddenly heard his name called, and, turning, saw a carriage, which had
stopped near the sidewalk, a face that he knew framed in the window,
and a delicate gray glove beckoning to him with much cordiality of
gesture. He threw away his cigar and hastened to shake hands with Mrs.
Percy.

“Why didn’t you let me know that you were here? Why haven’t you been
out to see me?” she exclaimed, graciously. For she made a special point
of cultivating such of her pliable son’s acquaintances as were not
given over to the iniquitous beguilements of the wine bottle and the
spring races. Besides, in the dreary interval which she spent in the
country between her winters in New Orleans and her summers at the White
Sulphur, she prized “company” only as a woman who is fond of society,
but suffers a periodic bucolic eclipse, can prize it. She carried her
forty-eight years lightly,--the style of her black-velvet dress and
bonnet betokened that she accorded much attention to the mandates of
fashion, and her religious friends objected with disparaging piety that
she was a worldly-minded woman. She had a fresh complexion, dark hair,
a Roman nose, bright gray eyes, and a charming smile. She bent this
full upon him as she added, “When did you reach Chattalla?”

“Eight o’clock this morning,” said Meredith, answering all three
questions at once.

“Ah, then that explains it. I forgive you on condition of future good
behavior. But you must come out and dine with us this afternoon. Jump
in. I won’t take any refusal.”

“You won’t have the opportunity, I assure you,” said Meredith, briskly
stepping into the carriage.

Thus it was he chanced to meet Miss St. Pierre, who was still Mrs.
Percy’s guest.

She introduced him graciously to the young girl who sat beside her. “I
am so glad you happened to be here while I still have Miss St. Pierre
with me. I take great pleasure in making my two _most_ charming
young friends known to each other,” she added, with that habit of
blandishment which was not so patently insincere as to detract from the
pleasure its exercise afforded to those in her good books.

Her two most charming young friends smiled rather inanely at each
other in default of an appropriate response. And it presently occurred
to Meredith that the other charming young friend was habitually in
default in this respect. She did not, as he phrased it, “talk back,”
and although he admired the acquiescent gentleness of her voice in her
monosyllabic replies, and her blonde prettiness, enhanced by its sombre
crape setting, his interest in her died out naturally enough as he grew
absorbed in the spirited dialogue with Mrs. Percy, who did “talk back.”
It was soon revivified, however, and by an odd circumstance--a very
odd circumstance it seemed to him--which came about in the course of
conversation.

“And by the way,” said Mrs. Percy, after a time, “tell me what brought
you to Chattalla--if it was not to see me?”

“Nothing half so pleasant--professional business.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Percy, shaking her head with a melancholy gesture, the
effect of which was impaired to some degree by the frivolous flutter
it occasioned in the jet-tipped plumes on the top of her bonnet. “If
Horace would only devote himself, as you do, to some serious solid
pursuit! I tell him you are an example for him. If he would only enter
the profession too!”

“There’s so much room for him!” cried Meredith, with a laugh. “Tell him
that, too,--from me.”

Mrs. Percy waved her fan in remonstrant dissent. “Young men used to say
that kind of thing when I was a girl--away back in the middle ages. You
young pessimists haven’t a patent on that sort of railing. Well, I hope
the court will keep you here for a good while.”

Antoinette suddenly fixed her eyes upon him. Speaking of her own accord
for the first time, she asked gravely, as if the matter had a vital
significance,--

“Are _you_ a lawyer, Mr. Meredith?”

This personal inquiry from a stranger was so abrupt and unexpected that
Meredith stared for an instant--then could not forbear a smile. To
justify the smile, he replied with an attempt at pleasantry. “I can’t
deny the soft impeachment.” After this the conversation flowed on in
orthodox fashion. The incident did not leave his thoughts, however. He
could not determine to what he might attribute this interest. She had
put the question in so serious a manner. She had waited for the reply
with eager attention. It flattered him, and it piqued his curiosity.
“Why did she ask?” he marvelled. “What does it matter to her whether I
am a judge or a hod-carrier?”

Ever and anon as he sat opposite, he glanced furtively at her. She
seemed absorbed now--meditative. He wondered what she could be thinking
about. He had no idea it was anything so solid as business.

She had not been stricken by the personal interest which his vanity
was fain to ascribe to her, but she was very favorably impressed with
his bright, clever face, and his air of decision and imperturbable
serenity; these endowments aided the fact that he was a lawyer, which
suggested the idea that she might have him to investigate the title to
her property, and also to decide what had best be done to discover the
owner of the locket she had found.

She had driven into Chattalla to-day with Mrs. Percy, intending to
acquaint her with these perplexities, and under her chaperonage
to consult some lawyer of the town. But Mrs. Percy had talked so
much!--she and her particular friends were victims of that dissipation
known among country ladies as “Spending the Day,” and in these feminine
caucuses they became singularly well-informed as to the affairs of
other people; when she observed the large crowd about the square, which
indicated that the circuit court was in session, she gave Antoinette so
minute a detail of all the litigation, actual and incipient, in which
mutual acquaintances were involved, that at last the girl was fairly
frightened from the intended confidence, appreciating how disastrous it
would be to have people speculating about an hypothetical flaw in her
title, when in all probability there was no Fortescue living to lay
claim to her property, and perceiving distinctly that whatever she told
Mrs. Percy would, however unintentionally, be finally transmitted to
the county. Even the question of the locket was so intimately connected
with these interests that it was manifestly unwise to excite a useless
romantic curiosity in the mystery encircling it, until she could advise
with a lawyer as to its value as proof of Fortescue’s death. So she
said nothing, and finally, when the horses’ heads were turned homeward,
she had been absorbed in disappointment until they had chanced to meet
Meredith, and the fact that he was a lawyer had been elicited. At her
age she had had necessarily little enough experience of the world,
and that little was drawn from its superficial and smiling phases of
life in society and boarding-schools. She knew nothing whatever of
its sterner aspects and commercial habitudes. Conventional as she was
in every look, tone, and gesture, it did not for a moment occur to
her that the course she now had in contemplation was _outré_ in
any respect; she did not recognize the impropriety of consulting a
gentleman professionally who was out on a holiday and in the midst of a
visit at a friend’s house; she had no appreciation of the recklessness
of her project, and gave no heed to the fact that she had never heard
his name until an hour ago, and knew nothing of him or his reputation
at the bar. Now and then she glanced at him as she sat opposite, and
each hurried survey strengthened her purpose. She said to herself that
he had an intellectual face, and sagaciously concluded that whatever
there was to know in the law Mr. Temple Meredith had probably found it
out. As to his youth--the reproach and shame of the neophytes of his
profession, a reproach and shame which they can only live down by slow
degrees--she never once thought of his youth. Such as she have scant
regard for the value of experience. Her only anxiety was the fear that
an opportunity to consult him would not be presented.

When they reached Mrs. Percy’s place the sun was going down behind the
heavy woods which, at this distance westward from the town, still stood
untouched. The air was languorous and full of vernal suggestions--but
for the bare boughs that encompassed the house, a large modern brick
structure faced with stone, one might have believed that spring had
come. The dark masses of evergreens about the grounds were edged with
a most vivid and delicate emerald tint. Here and there the eye caught
the blaze of some brilliant hot-house plant already set out in the open
air. The windows of the parlor stood wide to the breeze, and within as
well as without were everywhere evidences of much worldly prosperity.
The whole scene was a wonderful contrast to the desolate barren that
lay ten miles away and north of Chattalla, and to the dilapidated
cannon-shattered house that stood forlorn and alone in its midst.

They found in the parlor Mrs. Percy’s mother, a platitudinarian meek
old lady, with a mouse-like manner, and always more or less agitated by
an intermittent intention of repressing a pair of too airily fluttering
diaphanous capstrings. She had been additionally perturbed by the
lateness of their return, for it was long past the dinner hour, and she
feared some accident had befallen them. Here, too, awaiting them, was
old Mr. Ridgeway, who had stopped on his way home from town, eager and
excited about the prospective route of a new turnpike that was to be
built through these broad acres of woodland, and determined that Mrs.
Percy’s influence as a stockholder in the company should be used with
discretion, which in his opinion was synonymous with his interest, for
he owned the adjoining tract. He was easily enough persuaded to stay
to dinner, which was presently announced, and throughout the meal he
monopolized the conversation--talking turnpike steadily on, without
hindrance or pause. It was perhaps in the hope of effecting some
diversion that Mrs. Percy, instead of returning to the parlor when they
had risen from the table, led the way out upon the front veranda. The
hope was vain; the party was hardly established here in rustic chairs
before a square of light was projected from each of the windows, as the
servant placed the lamps in the parlor; old Mr. Ridgeway sprang up with
a buoyancy scarcely to be expected in a man of his size, produced from
his pocket a map of the county, and insisted that the two elder ladies
should go within and have the evidence of their own eyes as to the
triumphs of turnpikeage which he proposed.

Meredith watched the trio through the open window for a moment--the
visitor gesticulatory and given over to long exhortations; Mrs. Percy
indifferent and as likely to favor one side as the other; and old
Mrs. Lorent, scrutinizing the map with so close an attention that
her fluttering capstrings were brought in dangerous proximity to the
lamp-chimney. Then he realized all at once that he was left to the
mercy of the catechistical young lady. He looked at her narrowly as
she sat near him in the mingled light of the moon and the glow that
fell through the open windows. She seemed thoughtful. Her eyes were
downcast. Her face was very grave.

Suddenly she glanced up. “Mr. Meredith,” she said, “as you are a lawyer
it has occurred to me that I might ask you to examine the title of some
property I have in Graftenburg--I have been told that the title is
defective.”

The surprise in his face which he could not control made her aware how
far she had departed from established usage. She hardly gave him time
for his murmured--“I shall be very happy.” She continued hastily--

“Perhaps this is not the customary way of managing such things. I’m
sure I don’t know. I’ve had no experience in business affairs. This
property only recently came into my possession. Before, I had nothing.”
She had lost her equilibrium and was blushing painfully. “I suppose I
seem odd enough to die!” she concluded desperately.

This poor young lady considered oddity one of the worst forms of
wickedness, and she was conscious of appearing very queer indeed in
Temple Meredith’s eyes. In her confusion and mortification she was on
the brink of tears. He hastened to reassure her.

“I will do everything that is possible in the matter,” he said
earnestly. “Now, what is the difficulty about the title?”

“I don’t know how to express these things intelligibly--as men do,”
said the conventional Miss St. Pierre, looking at him with appealing
eyes, her cheeks crimson, her lips unsteady. “I shall have to tell it
in my own fashion--you must try to understand it.”

“I have no doubt you will make it plain enough,” he replied in a
matter-of-course manner, as if the whole confidence were a routine
affair.

But he was thinking in great enjoyment that this was indeed an
innovation upon the regular professional consultation. Instead of the
prosaic mid-day atmosphere of his law-office in Marston, the din of
the streets, the burly office furniture, the frowning assemblage of
law-books, they were encompassed by a romantic blue twilight, pierced
through and through with silver shafts from the moon. A whippoorwill’s
plaint was rising from the dark forest. There were delicate shadows
of budding vines traced on the floor of the veranda. And what an
infinite remove from all his experience of the genus client was this
fair-haired, dark-robed young girl, blushing and faltering, and almost
in tears because she could not explain a matter of business “like a
man.”

His father had early warned him never to undertake business without a
retainer. Meredith remembered in secret and unfilial glee this golden
rule of practice, and laid himself heavy odds that his client would not
know the meaning of the term were it demanded of her.

As she detailed the story her composure returned, and it became more
easily maintained when she observed the change in his face as his
covert amusement, of which she had been subtly aware, gave way to
a grave interest and much surprise. There was a pause when she had
concluded. He silently revolved what had been said.

“Although finding the locket in an empty grave on the battlefield is
not positive proof, it is certainly presumptive evidence of the man’s
death,” he remarked at length. “Still he may be alive. It is possible
that he lost the locket, or it may have been stolen from him.”

“Or he may have given it away,” she suggested.

“Not likely,” the lawyer replied. “It is evidently a woman’s gift
to him, valuable chiefly from association. That fact indicates his
presence on the spot. The battlefield”--he repeated, meditatively. “Do
you know certainly that he was in either army?”

“I can’t say. I know very little of him beyond his relationship to me,
and I never saw him.”

“You can think of no way by which he or his heirs can be discovered, or
the fact of his death proved?”

“None at all. He was a wild, reckless, wandering man. And he was
singularly alone in the world, having no relatives of his father’s
family, and of his mother’s connections I am the nearest, although the
relationship is very distant.”

There was another silence. The wind rustled in the vines and stirred
her fair hair; the shifting moonbeams trembled on the floor.

“Perhaps it would be well for you to look at a paper which Mr. Travis
sent me,” she said, in a business-like voice. “It is an extract from
the record.”

His lips quivered slightly.

“Oh, ought I to say an ‘abstract’ of the record?” she cried. “How
should I know!”

“It would be dreadful if you knew!” Meredith protested, with a laugh.
“But let me see the ‘extract.’”

She laughed too a little, but cast a deprecatory glance upon him as she
rose and swept past him through the long window into the parlor, where
she searched a little inlaid trinket of a writing-desk for the document
which was incongruous enough with its dainty receptacle.

Mrs. Percy, still infinitely bored, sitting by the table at the other
end of the room, followed her motions with wistful eyes.

“Somebody’s photograph she is going to show him, I suppose,” thought
this victim of the Turnpike Company.

As Antoinette came back the young man rose and received the roll of
surly-looking legal cap with a bow and smile which might have been
a fit acknowledgment if she had given him a rose instead. Then he
leaned against the window-frame and began to flutter the pages, the
handwriting being distinct enough to his young eyes even at that
distance from the lamp.

“It is not a photograph,” said Mrs. Percy, watching them from within;
“it must be sheet-music, or more likely a copy of verses.”

Antoinette had dropped again into her little rustic arm-chair; she
watched him intently while he read, altogether unaware that now and
then, as he turned the pages, he was vividly conscious of her upturned,
childish face, and her appealing eyes. She herself had found the paper
hard reading, and she rather wondered that he should whisk over the
leaves so lightly, seeming to take in only a point here and there. But
with the lawyer’s sixth sense, acquired by the habit of manipulating
facts enveloped, mummy-like, in the infinite swathings of technical
verbiage, he had easily separated all that was important from the rest.

“Well,” he said, as he handed it back to her, “I have extracted
something from this, although I hope you won’t accuse me of having
abstracted anything.”

She was surprised at the good nature with which she regarded his
harping on that trifling mistake.

“If an ‘extract’ from a poem, why not from the record?” she argued.

“Why not?” he rejoined, with a laugh.

She, too, smiled as she leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair,
propping her flushed cheek with the stiff roll of legal cap, that was
doubtless surprised to find itself in such pretty company.

Meredith had grown grave, reflective. “I think,” he said, still
lounging against the window-frame and checking off each point he
made by tapping his hand with her fan, which he had picked up from
the floor, “I think it more than probable that Fortescue’s remedy is
barred by the statute. Mrs. Perrier bought this property in April,
1857, immediately after the determination of Clendenning’s estate
_per autre vie_. And then, of course, Fortescue’s right of action
had accrued. The law in Tennessee allows for the institution of
proceedings to recover real estate seven years next after the right
of action has accrued. But on account of the disorder and confusion
caused by the war, a period of something more than five years--from
the sixth day of May, 1861, to the first day of January, 1867--has
been prescribed, during which no statute of limitations can be held
to have operated. Now, you see, Mrs. Perrier held the property under
a deed duly registered, claiming it as her own throughout the seven
years originally limited, and the period allowed for the war. Unless
Fortescue or his heir can set up some disability, there is no show for
him now.”

“If--if--if he were disabled in any way, would there be a--a--‘show’
for him?” she asked earnestly.

He was holding her fan to his lips, and looking at her over it with
laughing eyes.

“Oh, now _I know_ that I have said something dreadfully ignorant,”
she cried in deprecation.

“You can’t imagine how it shocks me,” he protested.

“Of course,” she argued, “if I knew all the law that there is, I
shouldn’t apply to you.”

“There’s a compliment in that,” declared Meredith. “You didn’t intend
it for me, but there is no law that I know of to prevent me from
appropriating it.”

She glanced away, laughing in confusion, and then the learned
counsellor, flirting the fan, proceeded,--

“Now, I’ll tell you all about the disability. There are certain persons
against whom the prescription does not run--minors; married women;
persons ‘beyond the seas,’ which, in Tennessee, means, ‘without the
limits of the United States;’ persons _non compos mentis_; and
also, in some of the States, persons who are imprisoned,--all are
excepted by the law if, when their right first accrued, they were
laboring under any one of these disabilities, in which case they are
allowed three years next after the removal of the disability to bring
their action. Now, it is possible that Fortescue or his heir may have
been under one of these disabilities, and may yet appear and make a
fight for the property; but I think it exceedingly improbable.”

She remained silent and meditative for a few moments. Then she
repeated, in a thoughtful voice, like a child learning a lesson,
“minors, married women, persons ‘beyond the seas,’ lunatics, and
convicts. That’s a nice company! Did it ever occur to you,” she added,
with the rising inflection of a laugh, and an archness that was
unexpected and uncharacteristic, “did it ever occur to you that the law
seems to consider married women persons to whom the fullest sympathy
should be accorded and exceptional privileges allowed, in common with
other grievously afflicted humanity, those who have suffered loss of
mind, for instance, or imprisonment?”

“The law is a cynic,” said Meredith as he stepped out into the
moonlight.

And there he sat in its gentle radiance, discoursing mellifluously of
the statute of limitations, of seisin, of disseisin in fact and by
election, of tenancy at will and at sufferance, and cognate “curious
and cunning learnings of the law”--emphasizing all his remarks with the
fan, but never lapsing from an almost judicial gravity, influenced by a
desire that she should understand the subject in all its bearings.

As she listened, she thought him a prodigy of legal erudition, and
could not sufficiently applaud her own acumen and tact which had led
her to place her interests in his hands. She felt altogether at ease
now. He possessed, besides all his superior mental endowments, an
extreme caution,--a quality which she held in high esteem, and which,
as a general thing, she exercised. She deduced this from the fact
that he had remarked parenthetically that he was glad to have seen
the abstract, but that upon his return to Marston, he would go to
Graftenburg where he would examine the record itself.

Then too he gave her a warning.

“Let me advise you, Miss St. Pierre, to say nothing to your friends
about this supposed defect in the title of the property.” As she had
confided so readily in him he thought her nature was effusive, and
that she needed a check. “That would be very impolitic, for if the
title should prove to be perfect, the value of the property would be
injured by the doubt in the minds of unprofessional people. It is very
difficult to eradicate that kind of impression.”

“Oh, I will not. I have not mentioned the matter to any one but you.”

There was a convincing earnestness in her eyes as she raised them. Her
child-like reliance upon an utter stranger was very beguiling. Alas,
for this wise young counsellor!

He drifted back presently to his disquisition, and the moonlight
shimmered about him, and the bird’s melancholy monody rose fitfully
from the deep shadows of the forest, and in the pauses they could hear
the river flow, and when his eyes met the girl’s, for all his learning,
they lingered.

And now there was a stir within; the elders were coming out upon the
veranda, and all too soon the professional consultation was ended.

When the young man returned to Marston, he mentioned rather pridefully
to his father that during his absence he had had some business put
into his hands, involving real estate in Graftenburg, which would
require him to go to that city shortly for the purpose of examining the
records.

“I am glad of it,” said the old gentleman, gratified by this
confirmation of his theory that if you don’t help a young lawyer too
much, he will help himself. “I’m glad of it. Don’t grudge time and
attention. Real estate is a very different style of business from that
_cause célèbre_ of yours--old Krieger and his two glandered mules.”

His son laughed. “I dare say old Krieger’s mules were as important to
him as the real estate is to this client.”

“All right--if you are disposed to hang your legal laurels on the long
ears of those interesting animals, I have only to say--prosperity
attend you,” retorted the old gentleman, waggishly.

A few days later the young man did run down to Graftenburg, but he
proceeded by indirection, setting out for that city _viâ_ the
Chattalla branch railroad, which in the nature of things, leads no
further than Chattalla. He spent much time during the early part of
his sojourn, _in transitu_ between the hotel of the village and
Mrs. Percy’s place. His constant requisition of a certain swift trotter
from the principal livery stable awakened in its proprietor a great
admiration of his acumen in horse-flesh, supplemented by no little
curiosity and speculation.

“It’s my belief,” he said, as a result of much cogitation, “that that
young chap--and he knows a good horse when he sees him--is courtin’
somebody in this neighborhood.”

He looked after the rapidly revolving wheels that bore his patron away,
and shook his head sagely.

Not only in the village did Meredith’s conduct provoke comment.

“It strikes me,” said Mrs. Percy, privately to her mother, “that Mr.
Meredith’s deficiency in the matter of geography is positively painful.
The poor young man seems utterly ignorant that Chattalla is not on the
direct road between Marston and Graftenburg. He told me last evening
that he had only stopped on his way!”

She found little difficulty in persuading him to subject himself no
longer to the discomforts of the little hotel in the village, and
after this he was established in Horace Percy’s room on very much the
footing of a son of the house, and with all his friend’s effects at
command--his books to read, his horse to ride, his boat to row. Some
concession, however, was made to the absent. Meredith beguiled half
an hour of his leisure one day by writing to Horace, describing the
usurpation of his prerogatives, and politely inviting him to remain in
New Orleans.

The elders of the household were readily propitiated. Mrs. Lorent found
the guest, in her platitudinarian phrase, “a very worthy young man.”
Mrs. Percy often sighed and sadly shook her bedecked head, protesting
that she would tell Horace what an example his friend was. And old Mr.
Lorent, her father, who was a mere wreck physically, but with political
opinions as fresh and vigorous as when he cast his first vote in 1820,
declared that he had not seen the young fellow’s equal for fifty years,
and that his views on specie payment would have graced the days of “Old
Bullion.”

All this praise did not tend to impair the position he held in
Antoinette’s esteem. In fact it only served to confirm her own opinion.

They were often together, wandering through the grounds or along the
bank of the river, while the warm vernal breeze stirred the trees,
and the sunshine dripped, like some golden fluid, from one budding
bough to another. The air tasted like wine. Wings were sweeping across
the sky--and it was blue! Oh, perfect spring-days _sub tegmine
fagi_! Oh, love and youth! Oh, Damon, no longer playing on an oaten
pipe, which is comparatively meaningless, but with case-learning and
precedent, with subtle distinctions and clever deductions. Oh, modern
shepherd, whose silly sheep are sublimated in learned parchments! Oh,
dear delights of seisin and disseisin, made plain as might be to pretty
Nisa, who no longer cruelly disdains as of yore but is reduced to
admiration of science, of its erudite professor, of the great future
stretching out before him. And, oh, that great future!--that infinite
possibility which stretches before every young man. How is it that,
when youth goes, it goes too? And then your great future lies in your
past. Your world has flattened out a little; the holy pool is stagnant,
for the wing of your aspiration troubles the waters only once in a
lifetime, and only once can you heal your sorrows and consecrate your
purposes. After that you become critical--you measure your powers--you
doubt--your hands fall. Then stock the holy pool with fish, my friend,
and get your living out of it.

And yet this modern Damon had his woes and, perhaps for the lack of the
oaten pipe, they were silent. Only within himself he argued dextrously
whether it would be becoming to notify Nisa that she had acquired a new
title--an indefeasible title to his heart--and her rights could never
be barred by any statute of limitations whatever. But he had known her
so short a time--only two weeks and a half. Still, he submitted, he
had seen so much of her--their knowledge of each other would amount to
full six months of ordinary acquaintance, prosecuted through a call
now and then, and an occasional waltz at a German. On the other hand,
such an avowal so soon after their first meeting might seem to her an
impertinence. He ran over in his mind all the experience of his friends
that had come to his knowledge--of those who were married, those who
were engaged, and those who had ever sought to be. He, so ready with
authorities, could not now cite one case in point--could not quote one
dictum bearing even remotely on the subject. There was no precedent
whatever--it would be a very informal proceeding. It was doubtless
better to have all the pleadings in due form.

This man of words, who needed so few now, was depressed in spirit and
rather wistful on the day preceding his departure for Graftenburg.

“This time to-morrow I shall not be with you when you come out to look
at the sunset,” he said, as they stood together on the front veranda.
“I shall see it from the car windows,--it will be a great red and
yellow daub skurrying by, flecked with cinders and smirched with smoke.
And the fields of winter wheat--all of a crude green--will reel out
from the woods somewhere, and the trees will go staggering about the
landscape, and all nature will seem a coarse, drunken thing. And I
shall realize that I am a man of towns and artificial life, and such as
that is not for me.” He pointed with Horace Percy’s light riding whip
at the calm and gracious splendor of the western skies, and then he
fell to flicking his boots.

As if he cared for the sunset except that she looked at it!

The clouds were still aflame; long lines of crimson light flashed
down the river alternating with its steely gleam; the brown boles of
the trees on the opposite bank could still be distinguished. But the
moonrise had followed hard upon the setting of the sun and a vagueness
was coming into this tender harmony of coloring--not jarringly, but
slipping through it with all soft and sweet accord.

“I’ll write to you from Graftenburg about that matter of the record,”
he said presently, brightening with the thought.

“You are very kind,” she murmured.

“And when I next come to Chattalla we’ll talk it all over again.”

There was certainly nothing more to talk over, and he had no further
business at Chattalla, but as he stood silent for a moment he was
seriously questioning how soon--how very soon--could he play truant to
his other engagements.

“Possibly on the--no, certainly on the 28th of June I shall be here
again.”

And on this understanding they separated.

“Temple!” exclaimed old Mr. Meredith, tartly, as his son came suddenly
into the office one day, “you stayed in Graftenburg long enough to
commit the records to memory. I was afraid I should be obliged to send
Bryant to New York in your place. Not that you know any more law than
he does,” he added disparagingly. “God knows it’s Hobson’s choice!”

And so Temple Meredith went to New York on business for his father.

It was only a short time after his departure that Antoinette received
from a notable and highly reputable firm of lawyers in Graftenburg a
letter which ran thus:--

 MADAM:--We write to inform you that in accordance with the
 instructions of our client, Mr. John D. Fortescue, we will at an early
 day bring suit for the recovery of the property in this city now held
 by you under color of title by the will of the late Mrs. Perrier.

 Mr. Fortescue directs us to say that he will resort to this course
 with great reluctance; rather than do so he would make a liberal
 settlement with you. If, after consideration of the matter, you are
 disposed to offer any terms, we shall be happy to submit them to Mr.
 Fortescue.

                       Very respectfully yours,

                                                       WYNDHAM & ORRIS.

She read and re-read this letter, and then thought it over in much
perturbation. That singular circumstance--the discovery of the locket
in an empty grave--made it seem as if Fortescue had strangely come
from the dead to dispossess her. Although Meredith had assured her
that she had no positive proof of his death, the belief had previously
become so rooted in her mind that it was difficult to eradicate it.
She determined that she would be reasonable now and harbor no more
fantasies. She would see things as they really were, not distorted,
through a childish love of mystery. She began to think that from
the first she had unjustly suspected Mr. Travis’s motives; for this
threatened attack upon the property was a fulfilment of his warnings.
The only apparent discrepancy--the length of time which had elapsed
since the determination of the estate _per autre vie_--could
probably be explained when Fortescue’s lawyers should confer with hers;
perhaps he had been under one of those disabilities of which Temple
Meredith had spoken, and had thus escaped the bar that would otherwise
prevent him from recovering the property.

Yet even while resolving to banish from her mind her fantastic
suspicions, she was vaguely conscious of a plot in the air, and,
struggle as she might, this vague consciousness hampered the decision
she sought to base on the bare facts before her, and still influenced
her action. She did not answer the lawyer’s letter. She inclosed it to
Temple Meredith, supposing that he was still in Marston, with a request
that he would give it his attention and obtain Mr. Fortescue’s present
address, in order that the locket might be returned. Her instinct was
to keep them all at a distance; she would treat with them only through
Meredith.

When this letter arrived in Marston, it was handed to his father
with a number of others. “Hey! What’s that--Temple’s mail?” the old
gentleman asked, as he thrust his pen behind his ear.

A couple of wedding cards fell upon the floor from one of the open
envelopes in his hand. He stooped with difficulty to regain them, and
when he had risen to his portly perpendicular, he was red in the face
and testy in temper.

“Weddings, and parties, and such follies!” He ejaculated scornfully;
for he had come to think all was folly that did not tend to litigation
or issue therefrom. “No way for a young man to get on. Wasting time;
fritter, fritter”--

As he shuffled the envelopes, he paused to look attentively at the
blurred and unintelligible postmark of Antoinette’s letter, from
which the stamp had chanced to be lost. He drew his own inference
from its delicate exterior and graceful, feminine chirography, and
righteously separated it from those envelopes of formidable aspect
which unmistakably indicated business correspondence. These he promptly
forwarded to his son, while Antoinette’s letter was relegated to a
place among the wedding cards and flimsy little notes treating of
impending Germans and private theatricals.

“I’ll keep these invitations and such trash till he comes; he’ll be
here in a week. He won’t want to be bothered with them now, for they
can’t do him any good there,--nor anywhere else.”

He placed them methodically together, and pigeon-holed them in the
darkest corner of his desk, to await Temple’s return.

It was long delayed by unforeseen complications of the business which
had carried him to New York, and old Mr. Meredith, forwarding from time
to time his son’s correspondence, had utterly forgotten the little
notes in his desk.

Antoinette, in great surprise, waited vainly for an answer. Twice,
during the weeks that ensued, she began to write to Meredith again;
twice she burned her letter, fearful, in her inopportune caution,
that her interference would work mischief, that her impatience might
harry him into precipitate and thoughtless action. She was checked,
too, by a sense of something unbecoming in her persistence; it might
seem as if she had scant confidence in his judgment, and desired to
call him to account, to dictate and superintend him in the matter. And
surely he knew best, she argued, whether the delay was injurious or an
advantage. She had committed everything to his guidance, and it was
for him to act, not her. In some indignation she thought that he might
have sent her a line to allay her anxiety; but, on the other hand, he
could hardly be expected to realize how anxious she was. He might be
making investigations important to her interests, and wished to reply
only when he had reached a decision, or had something definite to say.
She had become sharply conscious of her inexperience in the ways of
the world, and admitted to consideration the possibility that men of
business might be more deliberate in matters of importance than she had
supposed.

She sought to divert her mind as much as possible from this perplexing
absorption, and to await patiently further developments; but this was
difficult in the dull routine of country life. After she had returned
to General Vayne’s plantation, however, more frivolous interests
asserted a claim to her attention. She found that great events were
impending; the whole household was in a state of gratified expectancy;
the boys were noisy and hilarious; there was festivity intimated in the
very waving of Mrs. Kirby’s curls; only Marcia seemed a little languid,
and somehow unaccountably and constantly disappointed.

“We are getting ready, my dear, for Thursday, the ninth--Edgar’s
birthday,” said Mrs. Kirby. “Marcia always lets him have his own way on
that day; yes, and he desires to give a fishing party. Lucky, wasn’t
it,” she added, with an expression of deep slyness, “that he had a whim
to invite some grown people, too?--makes it so much more pleasant for
_us_, you know.”

Then she turned beamingly to her brother.

“And _you_ ought, Francis, to invite formally all whom Edgar has
asked. Suppose you write the notes now. Yes; no time like the present.”

General Vayne obediently seated himself, and, pen in hand, awaited
further instructions.

“Let me see,” continued the old lady, meditatively, “there were Mr. and
Mrs. Ridgeway, and their grand-children--don’t forget the children.”

General Vayne’s pen, with splutter and splash, flourished across the
page, and the Ridgeways were invited in all due form.

“And Captain Estwicke,” lined out Mrs. Kirby, who knew nothing of the
disagreement.

General Vayne’s pen paused in mid-air. To be sure, he disliked--nay, he
heartily detested--Estwicke, and desired no further intercourse with
him. But in a manner he had been already asked, and the “sacred laws
of hospitality” were involved in so reiterating the invitation that it
would be possible for him to accept or refuse, at his own pleasure.

Splutter, scrawl, splash once more.

There is an infinite sarcasm in a double-faced fact. It is perhaps an
apt illustration of this that Estwicke should receive a note, which
left General Vayne in this mood, as a covert apology; that he should
flinch under its supposed generosity; that he should scourge himself,
as having grossly refused to concede aught to the heat of partisanship,
when the character of a man’s friend was at stake and his orphans in
danger of beggary; that he should upbraid himself as a churl, who would
take no cognizance of the gracious cordiality and kindliness he had
enjoyed until it was extended again.

In this propitiatory and humble frame of mind, uncharacteristic enough,
he, too, was eagerly expectant of the great day.

While all these unconscious factors in his schemes were thus giving
themselves up to the anticipation of frivolous diversion, Maurice
Brennett was like a worm in the fire. He could not imagine why
Fortescue’s lawyers should have heard nothing whatever from Miss St.
Pierre in response to their effort to promote a settlement. As day
after day passed without result, he at length felt it necessary to take
a hand in the game himself.

Some time earlier than this, Fortescue had concluded to go to
Tennessee, for the purpose of a more comprehensive consultation with
his lawyers than could be readily compassed by correspondence. Brennett
had urged this plan, and when at last it was adopted, he told Travis
that he intended to accompany Fortescue.

“Ten to one,” he said, “the fellow won’t see the lawyers at all, unless
there is somebody along to keep him up to the mark. He will be gambling
and drinking, and forget why he went there at all.”

When Travis stopped in Graftenburg, on his way to the Louisville races,
he was greatly dismayed to learn from Brennett that some ill-feeling
had here been developed between him and Fortescue. Agitated by the
prospect of internal dissension at such a crisis, Travis reproached
Brennett with this patent imprudence.

“For the sake,” he said, “of a pitiful little three thousand
dollars,”--he always spoke contemptuously of comparatively small sums
of money, and with bated breath and deep respect of large,--“for the
sake of a pitiful little three thousand dollars you jeopardize all
our chances. If you incense that fellow against you, he may ruin our
prospects yet; he may go back on our contract, and bring suit for the
Graftenburg property on his own hook. We couldn’t chirp if he should,
because our agreement is champertous, you know. Why did you lend him
money if you didn’t expect to stand to lose?”

For Brennett, it seemed, had loaned Fortescue three thousand dollars,
dividing the debt for the sake of a more speedy collection, and taking
six notes for five hundred dollars each, thus bringing it within the
expeditious jurisdiction of a justice of the peace. When they fell due,
and the money was not forthcoming, there were some hot words about the
matter. Brennett--in a ridiculous pet, as it seemed to Travis, for
there was nothing to be gained--sued, got judgment, issued executions,
which were levied upon Fortescue’s interest in the Graftenburg
property, and, until the next term of the circuit court, could proceed
no further.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” Brennett admitted. “Still, I have thought of a
way to utilize the affair.”

“I should like to know how,” said Travis, “if it were only for
curiosity.”

“Well,” said Brennett, meditatively, “I am going up there in the
country with Percy. I should like to get the machinery of this proposed
compromise into running order, and, if I could discover what the hitch
is there, I might start the rest. I may meet Miss St. Pierre. If I
tell her that I am a creditor of Fortescue’s, and have therefore a
personal interest in promoting a settlement, it might be admissible for
me to talk the matter over with her. I could find out why she makes
no move in the affair. I might be able to facilitate--even to effect a
compromise.”

“That’s a first-rate idea, Brennett. Such a head for expedients as you
have! But it is soft in places. Lending money to Fortescue--of all the
men in the world! And I never heard before of your lending money.”

It might not have occurred to a more clever brain than Travis’s that
there was literally no “value received” for these notes that John
Fortescue gave to Maurice Brennett only two weeks ago, but dated thirty
days earlier, on which a justice of the peace in Graftenburg solemnly
rendered judgment, and executions were issued and levied.

Still Travis harbored some vague uneasiness.

“Has Fortescue started back to New Orleans?” he asked.

“He is there by this time,” replied Brennett.

“Look here, Brennett, we ought to keep on that fellow’s blind side. Was
he friendly with you when he set out?”

“Oh, friendly enough,” rejoined Brennett, carelessly.

Brennett’s “head for expedients” presently evolved the idea that it
might be productive of good results to open a correspondence with Miss
St. Pierre before a personal interview. It would be a less awkward
method of introducing the subject than by word of mouth. His letter
simply stated the fact that he held judgments against Mr. Fortescue for
the sum of three thousand dollars, and had levied executions upon his
interest in the Graftenburg property now in her possession. Hearing,
however, that a negotiation for a settlement between her and Mr.
Fortescue was pending, he wrote to notify her that he claimed payment
out of any fund which in such settlement might become due to Mr.
Fortescue and with the view of avoiding further litigation.

This letter occasioned Antoinette far less disquietude than the one
from the lawyers. She was only annoyed that Mr. Fortescue’s creditors
should be writing to _her_. She did not reply, for she did not
know how much, or how little, or what it would be judicious to say. She
merely made a mental note of the name signed and laid the letter aside
to be enclosed to Temple Meredith, when she should have received a
response to her former communication which she expected by every mail.

And still it did not come, and Maurice Brennett’s letter continued
unanswered.

He could not sufficiently congratulate himself that his plans were
complete for an invasion of the enemy’s country.




                             CHAPTER XII.


THE sky looked down so tenderly, so tenderly. And the haunted thickets
were all a-bloom. Gentle grasses had crept to the verge of the
open, empty graves, and trailing through them was the mystic purple
passion-flower. Delicately tinted wild roses had clambered into the
funereal cedar, hiding its sorrow with the splendors of a new spring.
All along the green perspective the elder shook out its snowy banners.

Restful places were these--where only the unquiet ghosts were wont to
walk. Here the dove was on her nest. The mocking-bird’s melody thrilled
through the solitude. All the timid and helpless wild things found
their refuge among the phantoms; there were rabbits, and squirrels,
and quail. No fear of man in these sequestered spots unbroken by the
ploughshare still, untrodden by mortal foot.

A luxuriant growth of bear-grass fringed the banks of the river as it
flowed through the battle-field. The reflection of the tall, stately
stems, hung about with myriads of snowy bell-like blossoms, embellished
the margin of the bright water for miles. And the water was very bright
to-day--full of concentric silver circlets, and golden sunshine, and
a blue sky brought down to earth and made sweetly familiar. It seemed
that the two skiffs, freighted with Edgar’s birthday guests, could but
glide swiftly through so limpid a medium, and they skimmed along as if
propelling themselves with their unfeathered wings.

“We shall meet Mr. Percy at the Coteatoy Bluffs,--Horace Percy,” said
Mrs. Kirby with animation. “He reached Chattalla yesterday--yes--in the
afternoon. He took great pains,” she continued, laughing slyly, “to let
us know he had returned. He drove over last evening--yes--he said he
was fishing for an invitation to fish.”

She waved her curls and smiled blandly. “Like a match-making mother,”
thought Estwicke furiously.

With jealous quickness he turned his eyes on Marcia. No rush of
emotion had sent the color to her cheeks now--only the faintly roseate
tinge, that dwelt there when her heart was calm, merged delicately and
imperceptibly into the warm whiteness of her brow and throat. She had
thrown off her hat. The sunbeams mingled with that perennial golden
glinting in her brown hair. The pliant grace of her figure embellished
the simple lawn dress which she wore, such as she always wore these
warm days,--it was pure white, with a dainty lace-like pattern traced
upon it in black stripes; one dress differed from another only in
the arrangement of many fluted ruffles, that gave it a petalled
appearance--“double,” as the gardeners say; it was like a flower,
moreover, in its exquisite freshness--it seemed to Estwicke to have
bloomed only this morning.

“He was a very successful angler,” said Mrs. Kirby,--“caught two
invitations, in fact. He tells us that he has a friend staying with
him--a Mr. Brennett--and that he is presumptuous enough to hope that
together they can fill the gap made by my brother’s absence. Yes, my
brother was called to Marston on business--very suddenly--will be gone
several weeks--too bad--too bad!”

Here and there, as they rowed, they could catch a glimpse of the
battle-field--the long lines of fortifications rising in billowy green
sweeps from the level expanse. In mid-stream were the stone piers of
the old turnpike bridge. As the boat was passing, Estwicke glanced up
and up the piles of masonry, austere and sternly suggestive, despite
the soft matutinal influences; despite the mosses and vines that come
always with their clinging grace to dull the sharp edges of ruin;
despite a nest in a niche and a brooding bird.

Well, the sentries tramped over this water once! Only the sunshine
guards the wreck of a bridge now. And here blood was shed. There were
flames in the night to cover a mad retreat and impede a swift and
fierce pursuit. And now only Marcia’s joyous laughter, and the fresh,
sweet voices of the children in the other skiff, and the melodious dip
of oars, and the restful peace of the springtide. And all that is gone;
is forgotten. And better so! A moment more and the ruined piers were
behind them.

And now they were among the shadows; they had reached the forests at
last, and a bend in the river brought them suddenly in sight of the
Coteatoy Bluffs and of a skiff drifting in the deep glooms below.
Brennett, idly dipping his oars now and then, was cynically watching
Percy, who was standing, his dark eyes turned eagerly upon the
approaching boats, his fresh complexion all the fresher for a sudden
accession of color, his delicate black mustache scarcely hiding a
quiver of excitement on his lips. His white linen suit rendered his
tall, lithe figure and every gesture, as he fanned himself with his
hat, very distinct upon the olive green and brownish shadows about
him, and instantly the children in the nearest skiff set up a shrill
acclaim of recognition and salutation. Mrs. Kirby waved her curls and
nodded benignly to him. Marcia was blushing and smiling. Mrs. Ridgeway
flourished her handkerchief.

“Why, God bless me,” spluttered old Mr. Ridgeway, “how well the boy is
looking.”

Estwicke suddenly felt alien--friendless. This man was coming back
among people who had known him from his infancy; they all called
him “Horace.” His intimacy with them had its root in habitudes that
dated back two generations. They all liked him, and indeed it would
be strange if a dull old stock of a country neighborhood, such as
this, were insensible of the charm of a gay, vivacious young worldling
grafted upon it, brilliant with foreign influences, and vigorous with
a new growth. His careful art in conserving his popularity had been
observed only sufficiently to give rise to the local report that he had
political aspirations, and to lead to harmless solicitations from “many
voters.” He fought shy of these, gratified, but unambitious of the
heavy cares of legislation; his coyness was held as proof of precocious
statesmanship, of latent designs awaiting development, and gave him the
reputation of being “deep.”

It did not escape Estwicke’s fierce scrutiny that when the newcomers
had run their boat close alongside, Percy’s notice of the other members
of the party was the merest mechanical courtesy, and his eyes were
loath to turn away from Marcia’s face. But the meeting involved the
prosaic necessity of introducing his friend, and it followed hard upon
this moment of sentimental apotheosis.

That moment had its peculiar interest for others. Maurice Brennett
fixed his piercing eyes upon Miss Vayne with questioning intentness,
until her name was pronounced, when it died out as suddenly as it had
sprung up. But he looked hard at Miss St. Pierre as he was presented
to her, and now his attention did not flag. It struck Estwicke’s
whimsical imagination with a fleeting wonder that a hawk could bow in
so conventional a manner and look so like a gentleman. For he had at
once recognized the man, and that strong likeness to the feathered
rascal which he had first observed over the card-table in Meredith’s
room. Brennett, too, recognized him, but in a cursory and superficial
manner that hardly impinged for an instant upon his deeper absorption.

“May I beg a place in your boat for Mr. Brennett?” said Percy, claiming
Mrs. Kirby’s indulgence. “I am sure it would be much more agreeable for
him there.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs. Kirby, “and you must come too.”

“Both would be too heavy in addition to your party. I think I had
better stay at anchor here.”

“I hope that through your agency Chattalla has produced a fine
impression on Mr. Brennett--yes--_impressed_ him,” said Mrs.
Kirby, beaming out of her old black bonnet.

“Oh, I have done my duty as cicerone. I have been trying all the
morning to find a lion or two about the place to show him.”

“How lucky you are!” cried Marcia, joyously. “You have found a whole
menagerie!”

“It will not be so easy for you to get away from the lions,” said
Mrs. Kirby, eagerly desirous of removing any constraint which the
informality of their invitation might have occasioned.

From the readiness with which Percy adapted himself to the situation,
it might be inferred that no man had had so little fear of lions
since the days of Daniel. By reason of the proximity of the boats,
it was easy for him to lean across the intervening water and talk
to Marcia--in a half-suppressed tone, as if he were desirous not to
offend the delicate susceptibilities of the fish. Naturally, as she
turned to reply, she had, in a degree, the air of ignoring Estwicke,
who, when he relinquished his oar, had seated himself beside her.
It was only after some little time that she became aware of her
remissness; then she made an effort to draw him into the conversation.
But he had suddenly grown unresponsive--almost formal. Although he
kept a careful restraint upon his words and manner, that he might
make no overt sign of indignation, he resented the fact that she
should have put a slight upon him for Percy’s sake; her afterthought
made scant amends. Besides, he argued, her absorbed interest in Percy
was significant; so far as he himself was concerned it ought to be
definitive. Why should he hope against hope? He remained seated beside
her, but he fell to angling presently, and seldom spoke unless directly
addressed.

When Brennett stepped from one skiff to the other, the only vacant seat
was beside Miss St. Pierre. As he took it he was still looking hard at
her with speculating uncertainty and surprise. He had been altogether
unprepared for this passive young lady with her infantile--not to say
expressionless countenance. Travis’s character-sketch, in which the
predominating traits were quick intelligence and tenacity of purpose,
might well apply to Miss Vayne. He hardly felt satisfied as to their
identity until he once more heard them addressed by their respective
names. Then he again bent his keen eyes upon Antoinette’s quiescent
face. Its unsuggestiveness operated momentarily as a check upon him. To
judge from it she was made up of all gentle and negative qualities. He
had a swift fear that he would not find here any traits of character
sufficiently definite and developed to furnish him a basis for a plan
of action, an impetus for that lagging project, the compromise.
“Surely,” he said to himself in irritation, “no other man ever had so
unpromising material to work upon,--a dolt, like Travis; a runaway
horse, like Fortescue; and this nonentity, this utter blank!” And
looking more like a hawk than ever, for his life he could see nothing
further.

He declined the offer of a rod--he was always an unsuccessful angler,
he said, and the two were thrown upon the resource of conversation to
beguile the tedium of the next hour or so.

It began in this way.

“You don’t fish, Miss St. Pierre. May I ask why?”

This inquiry was propounded with a searching glance. He waited for her
reply with an attention which seemed to attach to it a disproportionate
importance.

“I don’t care for fishing,” she said. “It always seems to me a cruel
sport.”

“Cruel? Ah, well, perhaps. But I confess I had not thought of that.
I can’t regard a fish as a hero who fights for his home and his life
and dies a martyr. For gustatory reasons I hope I never shall. That
reflection would not improve his flavor.”

She only smiled as a rejoinder. Her peculiar talent for forcing the
burden of the conversation on her interlocutor, whoever he might be,
was somewhat conspicuous in the pause that ensued.

He pulled at his mustache with a preoccupied air. Even her casual
silence was noteworthy--so important were the interests at stake, and
so utterly destitute was he of any idea as to how he had best proceed.

“What sort of fish are in this river?” he asked. Apparently he was
talking only for the sake of conversation.

“They are not valued highly, I believe,” she replied.

“That is why it seems especially cruel to catch them--when no one cares
particularly for them.”

“Ah! that lets in the light. Even a sensibility so delicate has its
practical element. If they were valuable you would not think it cruel
to catch them; if they were valuable it might seem cruel of them not to
come up and be caught. Is that your meaning?”

He had anticipated that she would be confused because of this
misinterpretation, and would perhaps protest. She laughed a little,
opening and shutting her black fan, and then she began to listlessly
fan herself.

“I have always heard that a woman’s moral intuition is more reliable
than a man’s conscientious perception. I like to be supplied with those
infallible feminine convictions. I appreciate their value. I shall add
that maxim of yours to my treasures,--‘Don’t be cruel unless it’s worth
while.’”

He said this as if it were humorously intended, but there was a
peculiarly irritating, though slight, suggestion of sarcasm in the
tones of his voice. She did not seem, however, to apprehend it. She
smiled placidly as her calm, unspeaking eyes rested on the swift
current and its shimmering silver circlets, that whirled and whirled
interfulgent, the blue sky above and the reflected blue sky below.

“She controls her temper,” he said to himself; “or, perhaps,” he added
dubiously, “she has no temper to control.”

Once more he looked at her speculatively, and he felt that he made no
progress.

He tried another policy.

“I hope you never attempt to put your Tennessee friends out of conceit
with their little river,” he said presently, glancing disparagingly
about. “Do you claim to be remarkably knowing in the matter of rivers
because you live upon the banks of the Mississippi?”

She was not ready at repartee, and was at a loss for an answer to a
question like this. But he was looking straight at her, and she must
speak.

“No-o,” she hesitated, at a venture.

“That is right,” he rejoined, lightly. “It is what I should have
expected of you. For I remember now that old French motto of the St.
Xantaine family, which, freely translated, might be made to read--‘Deal
gently with people who don’t own a Big River.’”

There was a change now; her color intensified, it rose to the roots of
her fair hair and crept down the shadowy black crape about her throat;
a surprised pleasure looked out brightly from her eyes; her lips curved
suddenly in a pretty smile.

“That is a very free translation,” she said, laughing.

“Can a translator be expected to do more than give the spirit of the
original?”

He spoke carelessly, but his face expressed a grave, almost breathless
interest. Here, certainly, was something definite at last. Who believed
more faithfully than she that the St. Xantaines had no need of the
homage of Maurice Brennett, or of any other man. And yet she was
flattered--infinitely flattered--by this slight tribute to the family,
charged with an adequate recognition of its antiquity. It was hardly to
be expected that in the consummate adroitness with which he had flung
this seemingly casual remark into the conversation she should discover
an astute intention. But her manner of receiving it augured great
weakness. “And yet this trait of family pride is something intense,” he
said to himself.

He was silent for a time, absorbed in bootless surprise that,
propitiated as she must have been--as he could hardly have believed
possible--by the gift of the heirloom, she should suddenly have
developed that distrust of Travis which he had detected in her letters.
His swift mind rushed upon its conclusion. “She was influenced against
him afterward by some outside cause--a strong cause, certainly. What
was it?”

He had no inclination, however, to speculate vaguely about the wrecked
scheme of the exchange of property. He only wished to steer his course
so as to avoid that sunken rock which had demolished his first project.
What was it?

In this momentary lapse of observation, something escaped him. She
was looking at him; kindly. At the instant of his introduction she
had recognized his name as that of the man whose letter she had never
answered, and who held an interest similar to Fortescue’s in her
property; so fraught with perplexity had this whole subject become
that she felt at first an unreasonable prejudice against him on this
score. Now, however, she was beginning to be agreeably impressed by
his manner, and more by his face, expressive as it was of a subtle
power and some deep meaning--too deep, she knew intuitively, for her
fathoming. She fell to wondering who he was, and why she had never
heard of him in New Orleans, and what he did with himself in the world.

Presently he resumed: “And what do you think of Tennessee cotton, Miss
St. Pierre? Does it seem a caricature of the plant when you remember
the big fields, almost breast high even at this time of the year, along
Bayou Gloire?”

“Oh, Bayou Gloire! How familiar that sounds!” she cried. “Are you from
that part of the State?”

“No--I am not from Louisiana. My experience along Bayou Gloire has been
only as an angler--ah, I forget your tender sensibilities! To reassure
you, I will say that I committed few murders--the skill was lacking. I
used to go with Mr. Travis--who, as you know, is an expert sportsman
and truculent to a degree. By the way, when did you see him last?”

There was a pause. Surely she had no need to guard her words. But all
that had come from Travis’s visit--the proposed exchange of property,
the first suggestion of an outstanding title, the significance which
finding the locket in an empty grave seemed then to possess--invested
the very mention of it with a certain importance, which, however, she
felt was undue, and very foolish.

She had a sense, that made her angry with herself, of closely skirting
many secrets as she said,

“It has been some time now since I have seen him.”

The pause and this simple reply gave him food for reflection.

“How reticent she must be where anything touches her interests,” was
his conclusion. “‘Some time’--that might mean three weeks, or three
months, or three years. She has no reason, I should judge, not to state
explicitly when it was. She is instinctively, constitutionally cautious
and reticent.”

The approach, accidental though it had seemed, to these subjects, which
had given her so much disquietude, had the effect of putting her on
her guard. She noted, with a sudden surprise, the keenly observant
expression of his bright eyes. She had an unpleasant fancy that there
was something sinister in their brilliancy; she began to feel like a
creature undergoing vivisection, whose sufferings might be aggravated
by the knowledge that they were not for the benefit of humanity or of
science, but for the personal advantage of the operator. She did not
entirely understand her own motive, but the leading idea in her mind
was to interrupt his study of her pause and her words, and above all,
and before all, to change the look he bent upon her. Yet even while
she spoke she was arguing within herself as to why she should fear his
analysis or his look.

“Have you known Mr. Travis long?” she asked.

“For many years,” he returned. “We were at college together. I have
a number of friends among your connections and relatives. It makes
me feel as if I had met you before. You will permit me that little
hallucination of acquaintance?”

She smiled upon him in sudden reassurance. How absurd, she said to
herself, that she should imagine that this man weighed her words and
watched her face with some intent and secret motive! What purpose could
he serve?

“I have often heard you spoken of among them. Perhaps you know that
you are a favorite subject of conversation with Mrs. Bradley. The last
time I saw her she was talking of you to a more distant relative of
yours,--Mr. Fortescue.”

Once more she experienced a quick revulsion of feeling. It seemed to
her that, considering their mutual position toward John Fortescue
in the impending litigation, this mention of him was hardly
appropriate. Somehow she was definitely aware of an intention here.
She recognized the address which had thus innocuously thrown him into
the conversation, and she felt instinctively that more was to come.
She deprecated it. She would have avoided it if she could. She had a
vague idea of trying to draw some one else into the conversation, but a
glance at the other members of the party demonstrated how futile such
an effort would be. Mr. Ridgeway was assisting Mrs. Kirby, in the midst
of whispered excitement, to land a fish. Beyond these bulky old people
could be seen Mrs. Ridgeway’s broad shoulders in a state of abnormal
activity, as she animatedly wound and unwound a snarl of fish-line. At
the other end of the boat was Marcia, listening to Horace Percy, and
now and then turning to appeal to Estwicke, whose evident absorption
in their talk--although he was saying little--as well as the distance,
precluded Antoinette’s hope of appropriately claiming his attention.

Brennett’s low voice, subdued in deference to the requirements of the
anglers, and inaudible except to her, diverted her from her indefinite,
hazy project.

“Did you ever meet Mr. Fortescue?” he asked; “but no; you must have
been too young. I remember now that he said he has not been to New
Orleans before for many years.”

“I have never met him,” she replied gravely.

“You have missed something,” he said, with a half suppressed, sardonic
laugh. “A man with the world in a sling--like Fortescue--is worth
knowing. He goes everywhere, he sees everything, he knows everybody.
The interest of his debts brings him a handsome income. The rights
of other people are nullified, so far as he is concerned, by a
self-arrogated prerogative that is almost royal. And he considers
himself a king--a king among fools, and levies a heavy tribute, as
I know to my cost. And that reminds me,” he added, turning to her
suddenly, “that you never answered my letter.”

In the momentary confusion which this outburst induced, she was at
first sensible only of the rudeness and bad taste which it involved,
and she appreciated keenly the very evident fact that Maurice Brennett
had been bred to know how reprehensible rudeness and bad taste are.
The next instant the nebulous suspicions afloat in her mind--the
suspicions which the lawyers’ letter and Brennett’s had failed to
disperse--suddenly crystallized. There was no adequate reason for it,
but all at once she believed that the man calling himself Fortescue was
an impostor, and that the locket, with that name in it, which she had
found in an empty grave on the battle-field, belonged to a soldier long
ago dead. And here was the impostor’s chosen coadjutor! This, and this
only, would give him a motive to weigh her words; this, and this only,
would set him to watch her face. She felt sure that for some reason,
some unconjecturable reason, she personally had become important to the
success of their scheme. There was something he wanted to find out from
her; she was to be their unconscious ally against her own interests.
She began to try to remember what she had said, and what it might mean
to him. But she could not think,--a chilly trepidation was overpowering
her,--vague, unreasonable; she only knew that she feared him.

“I was sorry to trouble you with a letter on business,” he continued.
“And I am aware that among the important absorptions of a young lady’s
correspondence such dull matters must wait. But I have at length begun
to despair of my turn.”

“My lawyer will give you an answer,” she replied tremulously.

She hardly noticed that they had quitted the shade of the Coteatoy
Bluffs, and were pulling steadily up the stream toward a shelving bank,
where the party proposed to take lunch. The continuous chatter, in
the usual tone of voice now, of the other occupants of the boat fell
unheeded upon her ears. As she mentally canvassed the situation, she
was mechanically drawing her black gloves back and forth in her soft,
white hands, and now and then toying nervously with the buttons. This
sign of agitation did not escape his attention as he sat beside her,
his hat drawn down over his brow to shield his eyes from the glare of
the sunlight and its reflection on the water. As the skiff was run upon
the bank, he stepped out and offered to assist her. She gave him her
hand with, he fancied, some slight reluctance. He felt that it trembled
and was cold. “She is nervous and timorous beyond the natural timidity
of her sex, and somehow or other she is afraid of _me_,” he said
to himself, surprised.

The way was stony and rough; here and there the roots of a tree
protruded. In one of these Antoinette caught her foot and almost fell.
Brennett and Estwicke each offered his arm at the same moment, but she
affected not to see Brennett and accepted Estwicke’s proffer. Only once
she spoke to him.

“Take me to Mrs. Kirby,” she said. “I think she has a vinaigrette, and
I’ve signalized the occasion by getting up a headache.”

“Perhaps it is the effect of the sun,” said Estwicke. “Suppose you rest
here in the shade while I go for the vinaigrette.”

“No--no--I’ll go with you,” she insisted eagerly.

As they walked on together she was silent, and Estwicke, too, seemed
abstracted. But the influence of his familiar presence reassured her
to some degree. The soft green shadows were grateful after the glare
on the river; a bird was singing somewhere; the wind stirred. She was
among her friends--she let her hand rest heavily on Estwicke’s arm as
they strolled slowly along beneath the overhanging boughs--why should
she entertain a fear so vague that she could not put it into words? If
all that she suspected were true, who could be endangered but Brennett
and his accomplice? It was only necessary to be cautious so that no
money might be lost by their finesse.

She recovered her composure more easily from a certain self-gratulation
which she began to experience just now. How fortunate it was, she
thought, that she had not written again to Temple Meredith and possibly
influenced him to unwise and premature action. Perhaps he, too, had
detected something abnormal in the circumstances surrounding these two
men, and intended to speak only when he had merged his suspicions in
certainty. She resolved that she would not write again--she would not
hamper him with an insistent letter at a juncture like this. As the
facts gradually developed they seemed more and more to justify caution,
and certainly this demonstration ought to convince her that it was
not she who had suffered by the delay. She would wait patiently, and
Maurice Brennett might wait also.

They presently overtook Mrs. Kirby, and when Antoinette made known
her wants the old lady offered the vinaigrette with disconnected
exclamations of sympathy. She seemed to specially deprecate this
seizure. “Try to shake it off, my dear,” she said, in an earnest aside.
“You won’t be able to talk to Mr. Brennett. I was _so_ glad he
came--yes. Horace Percy says he is such an agreeable, intellectual
man--and you are so fond of books! And we have so little company in the
country for you.”

Mrs. Kirby was of opinion that men are born into this world for
the single purpose of falling willing victims to the fascinations
of young ladies. It really was a pity that Antoinette’s headache
should interfere with her opportunity of enslaving so agreeable and
intellectual a victim, especially as dear Antoinette--such a sweet
girl, too--was not usually interesting to gentlemen. Captain Estwicke
had evidently not been particularly attracted, and Mr. Travis had come
no more. But already Mr. Brennett seemed greatly impressed. In the boat
she had noticed how deeply he was absorbed in the conversation.

“Oh, it’s a fearful bore to talk to him,” cried Antoinette fervently.

Mrs. Kirby looked at her in disappointment and grave reprobation. Here
was all the material for a charming romance, except the good-will of
the lady.

Still, when Brennett joined them, Mrs. Kirby hopefully welcomed him;
more than once afterward she observed that, as he half-reclined on
the grass near them, lazily supporting himself on one elbow, he cast
a swift glance of covert attention upon the young girl. It augured a
deepening interest, and was an infinite accession to the sentimental
old lady’s satisfaction. How should she divine that he was only saying
to himself, again and again--“Reticent and cautious--extremely timid
and proud--and what can I make of this?”

He sought to renew his conversation with her, and Mrs. Kirby would
have been very glad to give him a clear field. But Antoinette was so
monosyllabic and absent-minded that, ascribing her lassitude to her
headache, the old lady tried to make amends. The talk fell naturally
upon mutual acquaintances in Graftenburg. Gradually she became animated
and retrospective. She gave him, with great particularity, the “maiden
names” of the mothers and grandmothers of his friends, and various
collateral relationships fell tributary into the sweeping current
of reminiscence; dates ran riot upon it, and the sails of many a
memory-treasured romance spread themselves to the breeze. The graces of
Maurice Brennett’s intellect were chiefly displayed in the brilliancy
with which he listened. Although he bore himself thus creditably,
the little matters which so engrossed Mrs. Kirby fatigued him beyond
measure. Sometimes the whinnying laughter of the coltish Vayne boys
broke sharply on the air, and as his eyes mechanically followed the
sound, he found a momentary diversion in the spectacle presented by
them and their juvenile friends--all grouped suggestively close to the
hamper--the smallest, Edgar, treated now like a hero among them, and
now sadly badgered, according to the ups and downs of a bigger world.
It was even a relief--absurd as that might seem--to catch a few words
of old Mr. Ridgeway’s eager apoplectic discourse, on a wide range of
subjects intermediary between the plan of atonement and the policy of
the nation, with which Estwicke, hard by, was regaled along with the
sandwiches.

For Estwicke no longer remained beside Marcia, and thus assisted at
the conversational triumphs of his rival--it was Percy’s habit to talk
much, and much about himself, recounting glib little stories in which,
without coarsely bragging, he dexterously contrived to appear always
as an enviable figure. She maintained a responsive animation, and when
Estwicke had strolled away to the other group her laugh still reached
him. It was a very charming laugh. He did not doubt its mirthfulness.
The picture was suggestive as Percy sat beside her on the bole of a
great tree, fallen in a late wind-storm, the leaves still green on the
boughs that clustered about them. This day was as an idyl to them,
Estwicke said to himself--and as for him and his heavy heart, and his
misplaced love, and his cold torpor of despair, these were merely the
requisite contrasting elements in the perfect poem.

And now the sun was sinking, and the pleasure party was afloat again
and speeding down the river,--past the Coteatoy Bluffs; past the
National Cemetery, with its vast array of mounds marshalled about
the flagstaff, with its monument in the midst, and at intervals
field-pieces and piles of balls. And now past another cemetery, its
ghastlier simulacrum--where no monument rises, no flag waves,--with
only the splendors of the evening sky above it, and the glancing wings
of the homeward bound birds. Here are the piers of the old bridge; and
here is the green enamelled stretch of the battle-field. The scent of
clover is on the air; the cry of quail rises from the grass.

The sky is crimson and the water is crimson, and they land in the midst
of the red sunset.




                             CHAPTER XIII.


THERE was a golden moon in the purple dusk, and the world was sweet
one night. Delicate odors drifted along the imperceptible current of
the air from the lilies that grew in the fissures of the bomb-riven
stones which had once upheld the sunken terraces. A mocking-bird,
perched somewhere on the shattered cupola, was singing as if he were
a conscientious contractor, pledged to supply the earth with music.
The creamy, gold-centered roses that clambered up the pillars of the
portico caught the dew and glistened. One could look out at the cruel
old battle-field only through their charmed vistas. There was no wind,
and the shadows that thronged the haunted thickets, and lined the
redoubts, and lurked in the rifle-pits, were motionless.

When Brennett and Percy reached the house this evening, a week,
perhaps, after the fishing party, they found the family seated upon
the long, broad portico for the enjoyment of the fresh air. It was not
Brennett’s first visit. Since the day of the excursion he had been
here once by invitation, and had called once. Except for the most
unmeaning conventionalities, he had not spoken to Antoinette, and she
was genuinely astonished that he had made no overture to recur to
the subject of conversation which he had seemed persistently anxious
to pursue on the occasion of their first meeting. This evening,
immediately after the greetings, he took a chair near her and a little
apart from the others. It might have been accident; she thought it
design.

And yet, when he turned and spoke to her, nothing could be more
commonplace than his words and manner; more in accord with this world’s
ways; more antagonistic to the suspicion of plots and such fantastic
vagaries with which she had lately been prone to invest all prosaic
events.

“There is the recompense for the loss of the trees; you can’t get an
adequate idea of the moonlight anywhere else,” he said, looking out at
it, as it lay in a splendid vastness upon the vast plain. “In towns
you have it cut into parallelograms and triangles. You may demonstrate
a theorem at every street corner. In the woods, the shadows are
paramount. At sea, the water asserts itself; it has its reflections,
and its motion, and its suggestions of glancing color. Here, the still
earth takes the moonlight like a benediction. And you can be still,
too, and perhaps blessed. How is that, Miss St. Pierre? Do you feel
its influence? Does the world fall away? Are you ready to renounce the
artificialities?”

A fit rejoinder did not present itself. Her belief that Brennett was
involved in some plot against her interests, and her eager scrutiny
to detect a purpose in all he said, preoccupied her faculties, and
she was conscious of seeming flatly unresponsive, as she replied,
with a little laugh, “No-o, I hardly think I am ready to renounce the
artificialities.”

“That is an essentially feminine conclusion,” he returned lightly.
“Women are all for--not the artificialities, no, I will say,
for--progress. They have no sympathy with that yearning for the more
primitive modes of life, which sends a man to the woods, to ‘rough it’
with his dog and gun. When a woman sighs for nature, the beautiful and
true, she wants it _en fête champêtre_. She predicates upon nature
a parasol. And there must be cavaliers and claret cup.”

Evidently the man had no purpose in his speech. Her interest in the
subject suddenly became more genuine.

“But for our influence, then,” she said, “our civilizing influence, man
might still be in the wilderness. Is that your theory?”

“Perhaps.”

“It is well that somebody is progressive.”

“But am I right? Are women progressive? Are _you_ progressive?”

“Oh, yes; very.”

“So I should judge. And that is why it seems to me strange that you
have not replied to the letter written by Mr. Fortescue’s lawyers.”

He was looking hard at her. His eyes gleamed, two brilliant points
of light, in the dusky shade of the vines which hung above him. At
a little distance were the other members of the party in the full
moonlight, their black shadows impishly foreshortened, but sharply
defined upon the great blocks of limestone that floored the portico.
With their every gesture these silhouettes moved in a silently
exaggerated excitement, and there were many gestures, for the group was
merry and animated. Edgar was standing between his sister and aunt,
and Percy was drawing from him a naïvely enthusiastic account of the
wonders he had seen at the circus yesterday. The little boy’s shrill
treble rang loud above the other laughing voices, and all together
overpowered the low tones of the two who sat apart. Antoinette glanced
absently at this vivacious quartette, then at the silent, bobbing,
elfish caricature behind it, convulsed with noiseless merriment, and
once more at Brennett. He was still gazing at her. She caught her
breath with a quick start, and the blood rushed to her face. For there
was a sarcastic expression in his eyes, a peculiar intonation in his
voice, as he laughed a little, significantly. What was the import of
the tone and look she could not divine; she did not pause to analyze
them, nor to consider her reply. She was angered suddenly and beyond
endurance, and she spoke upon the impulse of the moment.

“And it seems to me _not_ a little strange, Mr. Brennett, that you
should, uninvited, persistently question me about my own affairs. If
ever I should want your advice, I shall venture to ask for it. Until
then may I beg that you do not interfere in matters with which you have
no concern.”

There was a flash of astonishment in his eyes, and a grave constraint
in the change of his face. She knew, the moment after she had spoken,
that she had been guilty, not only of bad manners, but of great folly,
in permitting herself to fly into a passion without a sufficient
provocation. What so intangible as a tone, what ground of offence so
untenable! And had the man no “concern” in the matter? And yet, for
all her confusion and regret, she felt that his surprise was cleverly
simulated, and that he had wished to produce the result he had so
effectually done,--to make her angry, provoke her to an outbreak, and
put her in the wrong.

“I cannot sufficiently reprobate my rudeness,” he said. “Let me assure
you it was unintentional. It did not occur to me that the mention of
the subject was amiss. I did not suppose that you would consider me an
officious intermeddler, as I have a pecuniary interest involved, being
Mr. Fortescue’s creditor. I took the liberty, you may remember, of
writing to you to that effect some time ago. I thought I might perhaps
talk the matter over with you and learn your intention in regard to
the proposed adjustment. Naturally, I am anxious that it should be
speedily effected, so that I can collect a very bad debt. I don’t say
all this to justify myself--only in some small degree as an excuse. I
can find no words to ask your pardon.”

He was leaning forward with an extreme earnestness of manner. One hand
lay on the balustrade; the other, holding his hat, was upon his knee.
His eager, deprecatory face was plainly shown in the moonlight. She
dropped her eyes, a deep flush burned on her cheeks; the shadow of a
belated humming-bird, still fluttering high among the roses, wavered
now across her fair hair and now across the long black folds of her
dress.

She was fully aware that this was a solemn sham, but with a curious
doubleness she saw the hardship of the position in which he had
adroitly placed himself as if it were real. With her stern ideas of
right she could not let matters thus remain. For what proof--what proof
had she with which to assail his statement. He must have the benefit of
the doubt.

“Mr. Brennett,” she began, “I can’t accept your apology--for I must
offer mine. I was not warranted in what I said--I”--

“Oh, I beg of you”--he interrupted, with a gesture of insistence.

“If you please, I should like to ask you a question about this claim of
Mr. Fortescue’s,” she resumed, thinking this less awkward than a forced
transition to other topics, and besides shrewdly wishing to secure some
advantage since the subject had been broached.

“If I can give you any information I shall be very happy.”

“I should like to know why Mr. Fortescue failed to press his claim
against my half-sister, Mrs. Perrier. He has permitted it to lie idle a
long time.”

She paused for an instant, endeavoring to find fit and intelligible
expressions for her ideas. Then, with a recollection of one of Temple
Meredith’s phrasings, she went on.

“The length of time that has elapsed since the determination of the
estate _per autre vie_ is more than sufficient to bar his claim.
I can’t understand upon what pretext he intends to attack the property
now.”

“It is easily enough explained,” said Brennett. “He was abroad at the
time of the determination of the estate _per autre vie_. He was
not aware of it himself until just before his return last March. The
fact of this absence makes it possible for him to recover now, for, as
you may perhaps know, the statute expressly excepts persons who are
‘without the limits of the United States.’ So, you see, he has three
years from last March to institute proceedings for the recovery of the
property. The law allows three years next after the removal of the
disability.”

Antoinette was silent, and for a moment he was silent too. She was
canvassing what he had said--reasonable, credible enough, but for one
discrepancy--a fatal discrepancy. For how could it be, if Fortescue
remained abroad since ’57, that that locket, a woman’s gift, with his
name and hers engraved in it, was lost on the battle-field; that it
was found in an empty grave from which a soldier, killed in the great
struggle, had been afterward removed. This was some strange imposture.
She was sure of it.

His voice recalled her attention. He had returned to the subject of the
statute of limitations. At first it seemed to her that he was disposed
to talk discursively. “In Tennessee,” he said, “for rather more than
five years and a half--during the war and some time afterward--the
operation of the statute of limitations was intermitted. Well, pending
this intermission, when, by reason of the suspension of the courts, he
could by no possibility have instituted suit, Mr. Fortescue returned to
this country, entered the army, was badly wounded at this battle out
here, and”--

She started so violently that he suddenly stopped speaking and looked
at her in surprise. He gave her no time to recover. He asked a curt
question which necessitated an instant reply. “Did you never hear that
he was wounded at this battle?”

“Yes--no”--she faltered. “I know little about him,” she went on,
striving to muster her composure. “He is a very distant relative. I
have never seen him, and have rarely heard him mentioned.”

“You seemed surprised. What did I say to surprise you?” asked Brennett
quickly.

She answered precipitately, still startled and confused.

“I was surprised that you should say he was wounded here--so near to us
now. I was--I was--a little nervous,” she concluded, inconsequently.

Brennett laughed carelessly, as if the matter involved only a young
lady’s morbidly delicate sensibilities.

“You must be very nervous, indeed, to shudder at the idea that a man
was wounded near this place so many years ago. Reassure yourself, Miss
St. Pierre, by remembering how many were killed.”

Still his eyes were intent upon the shifting expressions on her face.
There was no imposture, she was thinking now. The finding of that
trinket was accounted for so readily--so naturally. Her secret was
rendered of no avail when this man knew and mentioned the fact that
Fortescue had borne a part in the great conflict. What was more
probable than that he had lost the locket when he was wounded? She had
always fancied that the bit of watch-chain by which it was suspended
had been cut smoothly off by a bullet, but the wound was not of
necessity mortal. Now she realized how simple and likely a thing it
was that the locket had fallen unnoticed, and that afterward, as the
earth was shovelled away, it slipped into a soldier’s grave, where,
among the clods and withered leaves, it had since lain undisturbed. She
said to herself that she must discard the idea that Brennett had deftly
constructed an ingenious plot, and that this locket was the clue to its
weak point. She had a sense of loss, for she had relied upon it as a
masked battery, certain in some way to demolish the imposture she had
so strongly suspected.

As her wandering glance came back from the west, where Fort Despair and
the haunted thickets rose starkly up, silent and lonely in the white
moonlight, she became conscious that he was still watching her, and
she detected in his face a certain speculation. She wondered at his
surprise as he had wondered at hers.

“Why does he find it so strange?” she thought.

“There are depths here still unsounded,” Brennett argued within
himself. “The lead-line has not reached the bottom.”

“As I was saying,” he continued, “Fortescue was wounded and captured.
He remained in prison until the surrender, when he went immediately to
France, and did not come back to this country until March, 1871. Under
ordinary circumstances, even a temporary return would operate as a
removal of the disability, but the suspension was prescribed in view of
an abnormal state of affairs, and he has three years from the time he
landed last March in which to bring suit.”

Fortescue certainly seemed to command the situation. Her recollections
of Meredith’s exposition in regard to the state of the title only
confirmed her in this conclusion. It was with some vague idea of
appearing undismayed by these formidable representations that she
said,--

“But suppose the court should decide that the return during the
suspension did operate as a removal of the disability?”

“Such a decision would be contrary both to the spirit and letter of the
enactment. How could the man bring an action at law when no courts were
held, and the whole country was filled with contending armies? Such
a decision would be very unjust, and law, you know, is not only ‘the
perfection of reason,’ but justice besides. Then there is precedent
in his favor. His counsel think his case very strong. You see, I have
posted myself, having an interest involved, and hearing from him that
a proposal to adjust the matter amicably was under consideration. His
lawyers were averse to making the proposition. They endeavored to
dissuade him. No one else with such a case would think of a compromise.
But you know with a man like Fortescue argument is futile and common
sense thrown away.”

“I don’t know, for I don’t know Mr. Fortescue at all.”

“I remember now that you told me that before. _I_ know him,
though. But _I_ made no effort to dissuade him. If I could I
wouldn’t.”

He laughed after a moment’s reflection; then turned his head and
glanced about him.

“It is a lapse, certainly, from the eternal fitness of things, that
in the presence of this moonlight and these roses a man should find
nothing better to talk to you about than his paltry three thousand
dollars, and your property, and Mr. Fortescue’s claim.”

Perhaps she had no realizing sense of this incongruity. She pursued the
subject with grave intentness.

“Why wouldn’t you advise him against a settlement if you and his
lawyers think it impolitic.”

“Because I am not a disinterested man, Miss St. Pierre. He owes me
money. I shall get it sooner if you and he can come to terms, than at
the end of a lawsuit.”

She said nothing, and after a little he resumed,--

“Honestly, it is the best solution for all concerned. He prefers ready
money now to the property after long litigation. I want his debt paid.
And you have a large estate in jeopardy--as good as lost if you go into
court. And then you have, besides the financial interests, a matter of
feeling involved.”

“A matter of feeling!” she exclaimed.

He turned his eyes upon her with a vague doubt in his face.

“Well,” he said, “one person cannot judge for another, but it seems
to me it would be more--more--politic, it would be wiser--to give
Fortescue what he will take and get him out of the country, for
the sake of the past--you know--of your family. There’s no way
of--of--muzzling _him_, you know.”

“What--what--do you mean?” she asked, her heart beating fast, her color
fluctuating.

“I hope--I hope--I haven’t offended you,” he said with great eagerness.
“The allusion escaped me in viewing the question from all its
standpoints.”

“What do you mean?” she asked again.

“I only meant a caution. Fortescue is a drunkard. He has no remorse,
nor pity, nor shame. And drunken men tell secrets. They got him out of
the country once to hush him up. And this affair has brought him back.
He ought to be induced to go again, and to go forever. But now there is
no one who cares--except you.”

“I! why should I care?”

He looked at her with an expression of sudden comprehension.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “you don’t know?”

“No,” she faltered, shaken with a wild terror.

“Well, then, let it go! I thought you surely knew. But it is better as
it is, perhaps.”

She was trembling in every fibre, her lips were parted, and her breath
came fast. There was a cruel dismay and horror in her blanching face.

“Take care,” he said hastily. “Those people will observe your
agitation. You don’t want everybody speculating, you know. Suppose
we walk to the end of the portico for a moment. It will give you an
opportunity to recover your self-control.”

She rose in silence. As he removed to one side the chair which stood
in her way, he turned his head toward the others of the party. “We
are going to get some of the Cloth-of-gold roses, Mrs. Kirby,” he
said. Then the two walked together down to the end of the portico. The
sentimental old lady looked rather wistfully at Antoinette standing
silent and motionless in the moonlight, her black skirt trailing in
sombre contrast upon the white floor, and observed Mr. Brennett’s
deferential care in trimming the thorns from the stems of the flowers
before handing them to her. The tableau addressed itself strongly to
Mrs. Kirby’s imagination, and the hypothetical romance she sought to
foster had her best wishes.

“It is singularly unfortunate,” Brennett was saying in low tones, “that
I should have chanced to broach that subject, so calculated to disturb
your peace of mind. But let it be as it was before I spoke. Remain in
ignorance. You will be happier.” He still had the flowers and his
penknife in his hand. He raised his head slightly, and she caught his
swift glance. Somehow she fancied he looked to see how she was taking
it.

“You are very right,” she said, still in a tremor. “I have no desire to
know. Pray don’t mention it again.”

His face was half averted, but she detected in it a suggestion of
disappointment. And as she turned her fast-filling eyes to the moonlit
vastness of the battle-field, all blurred and swaying before her, she
began to understand the situation.

This was what the newspapers called “blackmail.”

She had read of such dastardly things, but they had hardly seemed
possible. This man and his coadjutor, Fortescue, had concocted together
some frightful lie that would force money from her. She had given up
at last the theory of an imposture. She now believed their purpose
grew out of the fact that Fortescue’s case was in some way fatally
defective and could not stand in court. Should she defy them, they
might find an appropriate sequel to their scheme in breaking rock in
the State Prison. For she remembered having heard once an incident
bearing upon a certain fierce Tennessee statute, by which an effort to
extort money by threatening to impute to another an offence or crime
is made a felony, and is punished by five years’ imprisonment in the
penitentiary. This man was playing a desperate game,--more desperate,
perhaps, than he knew. For one moment she felt that she could not
forego this revenge. To compass it she could pursue them to the ends of
the earth. Then her characteristic caution returned, with its complex
elements of pusillanimity and a just regard of consequences. This lie
involved some one near and dear to her,--her father, her mother, or how
could it be efficacious with her? And how could she combat it? They
had died in her early infancy. She had never known them. But Fortescue
had known them. Would his word be more credible as to them in public
estimation, or hers? That anything disgraceful to them was true, she
did not believe for an instant. But if a specious lie were promulgated
and not disproved, it would be true to the world. A heavy sense of
responsibility had descended upon her. It was not for herself alone
that she must act; it was for those who were dead, and who could not
speak.

If only she had some advice! She began to cast about in her mind as to
whom she might apply. There was only General Vayne. On his good faith
and his friendship she knew she could rely. But he was a man without
policy or prudence; his life throughout had given evidence of this
fact, and the mere recollection of that fantastically rash episode at
the court-house so short a time ago was enough to deter her. The story
would be elicited, and if General Vayne should look upon it only as an
iniquitous attempt to extort money from her,--a helpless woman, and his
daughter’s guest,--proved or unproved, Maurice Brennett would never get
out of the town alive. Then there would be a great commotion, and the
wicked fabrication would come out.

She determined that never, if it could be prevented, should that
lie be divulged. Never should it be put into words. Money was no
object, and it could not be again, except as it might be used to keep
down that black calumny which could not be refuted now. She would
compromise,--she would give up anything, everything, when Temple
Meredith should come to carry out her wishes. He had said that he
would be here on the 28th of June, and it was not so far away. She was
aware that her position, weak as it was, had its strong point. That
cruel lie would not be made public so long as they hoped to effect a
compromise through its agency, held _in terrorem_ over her. Thus
she could safely postpone taking action.

Brennett’s finesse was a weapon of which every edge cut, but he could
form no idea of the depth of the wounds left by its keen strokes this
time. She had been startled, agitated at first. That was only natural,
and of no special import. Now she had recovered her composure; and her
calmly inexpressive face, as they walked down the portico to rejoin the
others, gave him no indication of the effect of what he had said, and
no augury as to how it would influence the future. He could not pursue
the subject. Her reply had effectually closed it. He could only wait,
and wait in doubt.

After the visitors were gone, the home-circle sat some time longer
in the moonlight. Mrs. Kirby noticed that Antoinette was silent and
abstracted, and when they had at last risen to go within, she still
listlessly lingered outside. The old lady, chancing to turn at the
door, saw her at a moment when she thought herself unobserved; it
was with a gesture of disdainful rejection that she was throwing her
flowers away, the fresh and beautiful roses which Maurice Brennett had
cut for her.

They fell upon the bomb-riven pavement, and there the next day, when
the sun was hot, they withered.




                             CHAPTER XIV.


AND the next day before the sun was hot, his schemes too showed signs
of wilting.

This was a wonderful day; the sky had withdrawn itself to an infinite
altitude; a few fleecy white clouds raced with their shadows across the
wide expanse of the battle-field; the green wheat shoaled and surged
ceaselessly with elusive silvery undulations. On the great earthworks
the plums hung ripe and red, amid a tangled profusion of blackberries
and a mass of flowering vines. With their redundant, leafy growth of
young trees, the redoubts loomed up in abnormal proportions. It was not
easy for Maurice Brennett to distinguish, even with his field-glass,
the height of the parapet in the midst of the heavy foliage. But until
he reached the river he was glancing about listlessly enough, for
it was only an evanescent curiosity which he had chanced to express
concerning the country and its history, and which had induced Percy to
offer to drive with him over the battle-field, and show all its points
of interest.

The river was haunted by the odor of ferns; its rhythmic murmured
monody was altogether overborne by the voices of Percy and a young
acquaintance whom he had encountered on the ferry-boat, and who stood,
while _in transitu_, with one boot upon the hub of the buggy-wheel
and persistently talked “horse.” The conversation grated on Brennett’s
preoccupied mood, and, feigning an accession of interest in the scene
before him, he alighted from the vehicle, that he might bring his glass
to bear upon the massive isolated columns of masonry--the piers of the
old turnpike bridge--which rose suggestive and drear in the midst of
the shining current.

Toole noticed the gesture.

“The bredge got burned up in the war, Squair,” he observed
companionably, nodding his great unkempt, tawny head, on the back of
which an old straw hat was precariously perched.

Brennett lowered the glass and looked coldly at the officious speaker.
Then he turned his shoulder with a studied air of inattention, and once
more lifted the glass to his eyes.

His manner might have repressed another man in a similarly low station,
but Toole, in his good nature, was rather obtuse, and continued
with easy _camaraderie_, for he held himself the equal in all
essentials of the “Squair,” or any other man.

“I tell ye it sots a-body sorter catawampus plumb till now ter git
ter studyin’ ’bout’n that thar job. ’Twar the reskiest thing I ever
seen done; it beat my time! An off’cer fired that thar bredge with his
own hands, an’ that kem about powerful cur’ous, ’kase the off’cers
ginerally gits the glory whilst the men gits the resk. But I never look
at them old piers ’thout thinkin’ ’bout that feller. He was ez plucky
ez the nex’ one, an’ the finest-built man ye ever seen. He looked
sorter stavin’ somehows, an’ wild, an’ fiery, an’ he hed sech eyes in
his head that when he fixed ’em on a-body, ye jes’ knowed ye was bound
ter mosey, ef he hed tole ye ter mosey. I hed seen him wunst afore,
a-ridin’ along o’ Gen’al Crespeau in one o’ his raids up this ruver; he
was on the Gen’al’s staff.”

A strange thing had happened. The glass in Brennett’s hand was
trembling; his color had changed; he had slowly reversed his position
and was gazing intently at Toole.

“The looks o’ that thar man is fairly welded in my mind. I s’pose it’s
account o’ what he done hyar. We hed been a-scrimmagin’ some up thar
on Beargrass Creek, an’ hed been cut up cornsider’ble, an’ treated
ginerally with perslimness, ’kase thar warn’t none sca’cely of us. An’
jes’ ez it was cleverly dark, we kem a-dustin’, hickelty pickelty,
acrost this hyar old bredge,--on the run, I tell ye! They hed some
fraish cavalry in pursuit, what hedn’t been in the fight, an’ ef they
could hev made out ter foller us acrost the ruver jes’ then, they’d
a-scooped the whole bilin’ of us. We hed the pruttiest sorter chance o’
bein’ cut off from the main body, ’kase our horses was too dead beat
ter travel another foot, an’ our ammunition hed in an’ about gin out.
That thar old bredge hed been sorter perpared aforehand ter burn in
case of a retreat. The boys hed piled bresh up under the floorin’ an’
along the sides, an’ hed poured out some ile thar, but we never thunk
ez how the Yanks war a-goin’ ter be so close a-hint us, an’ our time so
short. Waal, when the order was gin ter fire it, some durned artillery
o’ theirn that hed got in battery up thar on Boker’s Knob, they seen
the move, an’ they begun ter fling shell an’ shot a good piece this
side o’ the ruver ter hender us from gittin’ at the bredge. An’ they
hed some sharp-shooters thar that kem inter the game, an’ they made it
look like hell broke loose round thar fur about two minits. We never
hed no fire balls nor nothink’ ter throw ez was sartain ter sot the
bredge a-burnin’. The men ordered thar jes’ hed ter trot down under
them yellin’ shells an’ singin’ minies, an’ kindle up the bresh with a
torch, same ez ef it was a wood fire in a chimbly. Waal, they never
got thar; some was killed, an’ some was wounded, an’ some jes’ turned
around an’ dusted! An’ hyar come that cavalry on the other side,--ye
could ‘a heard them fraish horses o’ theirn a-lopin’, ef ye hed been
ever so fur off, it ’peared like. In two minits more we’d ’a hed ’em
’mongst us, an’ our horses was too dead beat ter travel another foot.
Thar warn’t no time for orders nor nothink else. The fust I knowed this
hyar man--a mighty suddint man he was--he jes’ sprung out’n the dark
somewhar like ez ef he’d been flung from a cannon’s mouth. He rode!
rode like a streak o’ light! He went a-spurrin’ down ter the bredge
with a torch in his hand flamin’ out like a big, red feather. An’ when
he shot by me his eyes was blazin’ in his head, an’ his teeth was set
close--Lord! how he looked! An’ didn’t them sharp-shooters pay him most
pertic’lar attention when he hed got a-nigh that bredge. That torch
made him a fair target fur ’em. His horse was shot under him jes’ about
thar,” he paused, and pointed with his pipe-stem. “When I seen that
light sink I thought we was goners. But it didn’t set him back none. He
was up agin in a minit--an’ walk! you never seen a man walk like that.
Light on his feet! for all he was so tall an’ heavy. He walked, sir,
same as a kildee! He hed the furder e-end o’ that bredge a-roarin’ in
a second. He fired it in fifty places. He stood so long on that middle
pier, I thought he’d be burned alive. All the men was shoutin’ ter him
ter come back. He got off ’thout a hair of his head bein’ teched, I
hearn. ’Twas a meracle--a plumb meracle. Everybody that seen it said
so. Why the nex’ day I swum the ruver ter swap a few lies with them
Yankee pickets that we hed struck up an acquaintance with acrost the
water, an’ ter beg a chaw o’ terbacco, an’ smoke a pipe or two, sorter
sociable like, an’ they was jes’ a-talkin’ ’bout that thar man an’
how he acted. They said they’d like ter git a-holt o’ him fur a minit
or two jes’ ter see what he was made out’n. I tole ’em ez how thar
sharp-shooters hed better load up with silver ’stead o’ lead nex’ time
they got a show at that thar kildee o’ ourn. His life ’peared ter be
witched. But law! ’twarn’t more ’n a week arterward when I seen him on
the groun’ thar a-nigh Fort Despair, stone dead; he was killed in the
big battle, shot through the lungs and the head, and half crushed by
the carcass o’ his horse. I couldn’t holp bein’ sorry ez the war hedn’t
kerried off somebody ez was less account, an’ lef Major Fortescue. That
was his name--John Fortescue.”

He turned his slow eyes on his interlocutor, and laughed a little at
his own foolish sentimentality about a man he had never known.

Brennett precipitately raised the glass to his face; perhaps its
expression was not to be trusted even to the slow perceptions of this
unspeculative bumpkin. His hand grew rigid with the effort of his will
to still its muscles. But his breath was short; his lip was quivering
and white.

He might not have attained even this degree of self-control had not the
vivacious talk and laughter of the young men in the buggy convinced
him that Percy had heard nothing. But any day, on their way to or from
Chattalla, the ferry-man might rehearse the story. He might even tell
it to Miss St. Pierre. He was familiar and garrulous, and his avocation
kept him upon the highway; otherwise it would hardly be possible that
he could have ready speech of people in their social station.

It was only an accident--no design--that Brennett turned the powerful
glass upon that great flower-decked redoubt, called Fort Despair in
the years gone by. He had no sense of what he saw. All his faculties
were bent inward. He was striving to rally his courage, his tact, his
invention, but he could only remember helplessly how near success had
seemed, how deeply for its sake he had involved himself; he could only
repeat again and again that the man lived on the highway--he lived on
the highway, and in his very avocation he had a constant reminder of
the burning of the bridge, else there would be no need of a ferry-boat.

Brennett scarcely heard Toole’s voice still drawling on:

“An’ it’s a cur’us thing ’bout ’n that off’cer; what d’ ye think
happened hyar one night las’ winter? Bless God, ef I didn’t ’low fur a
spell ez I hed seen his ghost! fur a fack, I did! Thar war a gentleman
that kem from Gen’al Vayne’s house, an’ jes’ afore he rid down onto the
ferry”--

Toole had broken off abruptly,--oddly enough at the moment that the
field-glass was directed upon Fort Despair. And as Brennett became
suddenly aware of this, he was also conscious that his motions were
furtively watched. He lowered the glass and looked curiously at the
ferry-man, who drew down his hat and averted his face. His hold had
grown light upon the rope. There was a visible tremor along the sturdy
muscles of his bare, sun-embrowned arms. The color had deserted his
tanned face, leaving it sickly and sallow. He seemed all at once to
have grown gaunt.

Question as he might, the wily schemer felt baffled. He had no abstract
interest in humanity; his keen and insidious knowledge of human nature
and motives had been acquired by strictly utilitarian processes. Had
this man not loomed up formidable, with his aimless reminiscence,
Brennett would not have given him and his idiosyncrasies so much as a
contemptuous curse. But he saw in him now his destruction or his prey.

He had received a subtle intimation that the change in Toole’s manner
had some connection with the field-glass. And here was a mystery.
This was an illiterate country lout, with no knowledge of the science
of optics or the properties of concave and convex lenses. Brennett
understood at last, and it struck him so suddenly that it took his
breath away; Toole had been a soldier, and was aware of the long range
of this implement as he was aware of the long range of a rifle. And
after so many years, was Fort Despair, with its embrasures empty except
for the nestlings, with its crown of flowers, with its summer songs, a
terror to him still?

The sense of power restored Brennett. When he lifted the glass and
casually surveyed first the piers, then the far-reaching perspective
of the river; he even had room for a calculating cruelty of pleasure
in Toole’s long-drawn sigh of relief. But Toole was forgotten when the
glass was again suddenly turned upon the redoubt. Among the scarlet
trumpet-blossoms and the wind-tossed fruit-trees on the parapet the
shadows were fitful; but one was motionless--the similitude of a
man?--nay, the substance. Far, far away the ploughs were running; only
a meditative cow stood here and there in the wide strip of uncultivated
land that lay,--a series of out-cropping ledges and brambly
tangles,--between the rifle-pits of the old picket-line and the banks
of the river. He was out of reach of human sight; he had baffled the
law and human vengeance; conjecture had forgotten him; and still he was
within the compass of human ingenuity. The field-glass was so powerful;
the wits behind it were so sharp. And surely it seemed a strange thing
that a full-grown man, a man in poor garments, should be basking idly
like a lizard on the red clay parapet, while all the crop was “in the
grass,” and cotton-scraping wages were rising with the thermometer. He
was moving at last,--moving slowly. Could it be that the fluttering of
a red bandanna handkerchief with which the ferry-man mopped his brow
was a signal?

The figure,--a tall, erect figure,--skulked stealthily along the
parapet. Once it paused and turned; yes, it was turning its face
toward the river. But was the glass so perfect? Brennett asked himself
abruptly. It blurred; it mingled. Was there a breath upon it,--the wing
of a moth,--fallen pollen from a passing bee? Was some damnable trifle
to snatch from him this moment,--this meagre moment that he craved,--of
more value than ten years of his life! The next instant his sardonic
laughter set the air a-shiver. The fault lay in God’s handiwork. The
blurrings, the distortions, were in the man’s face! Ah! the good glass!

“I have come late to Fort Despair,” Brennett said to himself, as he
watched the figure drop down gradually out of sight, “but not too late
for a heavy onslaught yet.”

A tumult of exultation surged within him. The ferry-man, with all his
brain a-fire, with his heart bursting, with his liberty, it might be,
at stake, could not see what he knew was lurking there,--could not
be sure what, with that marvellously extended faculty of vision, the
stranger saw.

Brennett was laughing still as he turned to the brawny fellow who,
pallid and gasping, feebly tugged at the rope.

“There,” he said, pointing with his field-glass to the great, blooming
redoubt, “is the reason that in the country a man’s greed for gain is
blunted.”

Toole stared at him in amaze and said nothing.

“Luxury is so easy to come by. A graceless lout like that, lying there
in the sun on the parapet of Fort Despair, wouldn’t bestir himself for
a million. And I’m not so sure he’s wrong. He hears the river sing.
The wind keeps him company. Now and then a ripe plum falls in his
reach. If a snake comes, he makes great shift to throw a stone, and
dozes. The sun mints gold for him all day. Give up this wealth for a
ploughman’s wages, or the fourth of a scanty crop on somebody’s acres
exhausted with fifty years of cotton-growing? Not he!”

The boat was moving smoothly once more. The cords on the brawny arms
stood out with renewed effort. Toole felt as if he were laying hold
again on life. A long, strong breath of relief was swelling his lungs.
The hot tears of pity for himself stood in his eyes.

“What a pore fool I be,” he thought compassionately. “I seen from
the fust ez the man hed a field-glass, an’ was a-swingin’ it round
the country. An’ I mus’ git so catawampus fur nothink! An’ he air a
stranger hyar, an’ dunno Graffy when he see him. Ef it hed been anybody
else, though!” He trembled again at the idea.

“Not he!” pursued Brennett. “He looks at you as you pull this heavy
boat back and forth, for money and the hope of ease some day, and I am
afraid he laughs. Perhaps he laughs, too, at Mr. Percy, who professes
to be a man of leisure, and who works very hard, often against great
odds, to amuse himself. He doesn’t know me, I dare say; if he did, I am
sure he would laugh at me.”

“What be your work?” asked Toole inquisitively.

“I might accurately define it as ‘tempting Providence,’” said Brennett.

Toole was a trifle dubious.

“I reckon we’re all in that trade,” he rejoined piously.

Brennett frowned in sudden irritation; he had used the words as
preliminary to an exposition of the peculiar and excessive risks and
anxieties of speculating in cotton futures. Inadvertently they were
too true. “Well, crack that nut,” he muttered contemptuously.

They were nearing the land, and his purpose was served. He had
succeeded in allaying Toole’s fears and absorbing his attention. Percy
would never hear that recital of military experience, if Maurice
Brennett were the man he took himself for.

He was about to return to the buggy, but checked himself with an
after-thought. It went against the grain, but it was best to be civil.

“I’ll explain my operations in the line of ‘tempting Providence’ some
day as I cross again,” he said agreeably. And, as he stepped into the
buggy, Percy gathered up the lines and drove slowly along the steep
bank, leaving Toole looking placidly after them, marvelling at his
folly in having caused himself so poignant an anguish of fright.

But they did not continue their drive over the battle-field to-day.
Brennett remembered abruptly that there were some important papers to
be sent him by express, and which were already due. Thus it was that
before the elusive, amethystine, matutinal haze had lifted from the
landscape, leaving it a trifle crude of color, they were in Chattalla.
The dew still gleamed on the leaves of the sycamore in the court-house
yard; the blue-jays chattered, and quarrelled, and fairly fought in
the court-house windows; the grass was high and rank. An old darkey
with a scythe was listlessly mowing it in the intervals of recounting
a miraculous story to two small white boys, who hung spell-bound upon
his every word. A knot of lawyers sat and talked amicably on the
court-house steps, nothing suggesting the prospective conflicts of
the day save here and there a roll of legal cap. One of them, a young
sprig, was trying to train a dog to smoke a pipe. Some hill-country
fellows lay in the grass, or stood about under the tree, having jogged
in before day to attend to business in court. They bantered each other;
now and then their jolly laughter rang out. A peaceful scene--almost
pastoral.

Brennett and Percy gravitated naturally toward it, for the package of
papers had not yet arrived at the express office; the sun was growing
hot on the paving-stones of the Square, and the dust was rising. They
lounged through the gate, which clanged noisily behind them as they
made their way to the steps. Percy was not sorry when Brennett strolled
off alone, for he had been silent, or monosyllabic, throughout the
drive, and his host craved livelier companionship.

Brennett had no affinity with the lower strata of society--no
good-natured leniency for ignorance, uncouthness, and shiftless
poverty; that he should seek to join the rough fellows under the
tree, as they joked the sheriff who was canvassing among them for
re-election, was in itself so uncharacteristic a thing that he felt all
the awkwardness incident to being out of one’s sphere as he hazarded
the remark--

“The warmest day of the season, gentlemen.”

“That’s so,” they assented politely.

His eye was glittering, excited. The delicately arched nostrils of his
sharp, hooked nose were quivering; the intricate lines between his
eyebrows were so dark that they seemed to have been cleverly traced
there with a bit of charcoal; the gracious sunshine that dripped
through the leaves fell, as he took off his hat and fanned himself with
it, on those gray glimmers which should not have come so early in his
close-clipped hair.

“Fine prospect for fruit,” he said, addressing himself especially to
the sheriff, a tall, well-knit man, wearing a brown linen suit, the
trousers thrust into the long legs of a pair of heavy boots, which were
ornamented with large spurs.

“Very fine,” assented the officer.

“I suppose you ship great quantities from this county?”

“No, scarcely any.”

“No--no,” drawled a robust young fellow with a florid face, black hair,
and wide, black eyes, who was lying luxuriously in the grass; “ship
cotton. That’s the dictum. Cotton ’s money--mebbe more--mebbe less; but
cotton’s money _every time_!”

“Good local market for fruit, then?” persisted Brennett.

“Why, no,” said the sheriff; “because pretty much everybody in town has
got a good big garden-spot of his own, and fruit-trees and vines in
plenty; we ain’t scrimped for room, you see. Fruit’s dirt cheap here.”

“I supposed that it would command a fine price, as I saw a man
gathering even the volunteer fruit growing on one of those old redoubts
not far from the river.”

“A-law!” mumbled a toothless sexagenarian, “them places air a-roamin’
with the haunts. An’ wunst thar was wusser sights yit ter be seen thar;
they was soakin’ with blood. Leastways, Fort Despair was. I never
know’d thar was a critter in the county ez would tech fruit that grow’d
out’n that sile.”

“Fort Despair--that is the name,” said Brennett, laughing a little; “it
is near the river--in a line with the ferryman’s house.”

For some reason which Brennett could not divine, the other men glanced
down, a trifle uneasily, at the young fellow in the grass. His face was
smitten by some strong emotion; he lay quite still, his wide, black
eyes, suddenly full of an untranslated meaning, turned absently up to
the sky.

“And,” thought Brennett, “to talk of ignorance!” That these men,
these louts, should have something in their minds which it might ruin
_him_ not to know! He experienced an unreasoning anger that their
lives should be less transparent than they seemed; that he should grope
blindly among them; that, at this crisis, he should be hampered by
those complex elements of hidden sensitiveness, and heart-history, and
mental drama, which consonantly make up life in worthier spheres. Under
the influence of this irritation, he grew all at once bold and fluent.
“I dare say,” he remarked, with a laugh, “the volunteer fruit is the
ferryman’s orchard. I noticed him signal with a red handkerchief, as
we were crossing the river, to the man gathering plums on the fort.”
He had replaced his hat; he was filliping the ash from the cigar in
his hand; he was turning away. “Very odd--the face of that man on the
fort--very odd.”

A grip like a vise fell upon his arm. He was suddenly shaken--shocked.
He looked down at the sheriff’s hand.

“Take it off,” he said, between his set teeth, “or, by the Lord, I’ll
cut it off.”

“How was the man’s face odd?” gasped the officer, in the breathless
interval of roaring to a negro boy to bring his horse.

He had scarcely relaxed his hold, but Brennett accommodated himself to
it, remembering the crisis.

“I can’t say exactly,” he replied, trembling a little; “some curious
facial distortion--he mowed like an idiot.”

The grip slid from his arm.

“A marked man in a thousand!” exclaimed the officer.

“But you ought to know that stealing a little fruit is only technically
a misdemeanor; there would surely be no prosecutor for such a trespass
as that,” remarked the innocent Mr. Brennett.

“Trespass! This is murder,” said the sheriff gravely. He took a warrant
from his pocket and handed it to a deputy, who galloped off at a
tremendous rate of speed across the stony Square.

Brennett changed color. He had not supposed it so serious as this.
Still it did not touch him.

The young man, at whom they had all looked doubtfully upon the mention
of the ferryman, still lay on the grass, his head supported on his
arms. He had grown pale; the shadows flickered over his face; his eyes
were dilated as if they saw more or less than was before them.

“It hev come at last,” he cried passionately, “I knew ’twould. But it
ain’t brung no comfort. All the law in the land can’t set my brother’s
plough a-runnin’, and let his mother hear him singin’ at his work.
It can’t gin him back a minit ter think on the Lord afore he went so
suddint ter jedgment. It can’t hender the grass from a-growin’ on his
grave, an’ his folks from furgittin’ him. I feel him slippin’, slippin’
away day arter day; an’ afore his fish-traps is rotten, an’ his gun
bar’l is rusty, he’ll be clar gone--the very thought of him--off’n the
face o’ the yearth! An’ somebody else will live up all them years of
time the Lord medjured out fur his space in the worl’.” He turned his
face upon his elbow and said no more.

The men who had crowded up to the scene of excitement shrank away from
him after this outburst. But it gave Brennett an instant to recover
himself. And he recovered himself with a sharp pang of disappointment.
Of what avail was all this to him--_he_ had no purpose to serve
by the incarceration of the man who mowed like an idiot among the
florescent splendors of Fort Despair.

He looked at the prosecutor, prone upon the ground. He looked at the
sheriff. The official had arranged with a deputy to open court--he was
about to mount. Had he taken no note of that significant statement
concerning the ferryman’s signalling red handkerchief? There was only
a moment for Brennett, or all his finesse might yet be in vain--even
now an officer was riding, like the wind, miles away. His haste and
anxiety to assure himself that his craft had taken effect, impaired for
a moment his judgment.

“I suppose I shall not be wanted here,” he said, “unless a warrant is
sworn out against Toole as accessory after the fact.”

The sheriff cast upon him a swift glance of suspicion and disapproval.

“Toole will be taken,” he said tartly, “according to the law which
allows a sheriff, knowing a felony has been perpetrated, and having
good ground for suspicion, to make an arrest without a warrant. You’ll
be needed to testify on the committing trial.” Then he mounted and rode
away.

“Blest,” he said, “if that soft-spoken dandy chap ain’t trying to learn
Joe Bates his business! Mighty keen for Tom not to be left out in
the cold, sure. Holds some kind of grudge against the pore fellow, I
reckon.”

The incidents of the day had jarred terribly upon Percy, making
dissonant havoc among the _scherzo_ harmonies, of which his
life was composed. He had hastily joined Brennett upon observing the
excitement in the crowd, and in helpless amaze discovered that his
friend was the mainspring of the commotion.

“Damn it, Brennett,” he cried fretfully, as the sheriff rode off,
leaving them alone, “your eyes are too sharp. I saw nothing when we
were crossing the river. You can’t expect me to stay here and hear your
testimony. I’ll go to the hotel and wait for you there. If you want
me you can send for me. I wouldn’t see Graffy or Toole either, for
a million, though I dare say nothing very horrible will come of it.
Rumor goes that the shooting was self-defence. But these things shock
me,--they make me ill.”

Percy was a punctilious host. This grating, disagreeable accident, as
he construed it, had thoroughly disgusted him with his friend; yet
he looked deprecatingly at Brennett, while avowing an intention of
deserting him, a stranger in the town, and a guest, in the unpleasant
episode of testifying in a criminal case. If Brennett had urged an
objection he would have repressed his finical delicacy, and sat out the
proceedings.

The rejoinder surprised him beyond measure. Brennett seemed to have
taken no notice of the breach of hospitality. “Self-defence,” he
repeated. “Then it may not be impossible to procure bail.”

“Drop it, Brennett, drop the unsavory subject. I shall dream of jails,
and pining prisoners, and bolts and bars, for a week. Poor Toole--it’s
hard on an active fellow like that.”

“You would not go on his bail-bond?” asked Brennett, with a look
singularly like an expression of apprehension.

“Not unless I want to be beat out of several thousand dollars the
quickest in this world--those men are in a panic--no obligation would
have any weight with them. Can’t you drop the subject?” Percy added
frowningly. “Are we to stand here and gloat over the details all day.”

He looked angrily and doubtfully at his friend. Was Brennett coarse
enough to enjoy an excitement like this? Did he relish his _rôle_
in the painful and pitiful little drama? Did he have no natural,
unreasoning, foolish, humane regret, that he should be the chosen
instrument of vengeance, to work justice, perhaps, but woe, and horror,
and despair, in those humble lives? His face was thoughtful, his eyes
downcast; he seemed revolving some mighty mental puzzle; he hardly
noticed Percy, and for the first time it struck the young fellow that
he did not altogether understand this man. “I wish you were in New
Orleans, where I found you!” Percy thought with inhospitable discontent.

“I am going, Brennett,” he added aloud. “You’ll know where to send for
me if you want me.”

“All right,” said the other.

As Percy turned hastily away he almost fell over the man lying in the
grass.

“Ah, I beg your pardon,” he said.

The man lifted the arm he had thrown over his face. Percy recognized
the prosecutor and went on with a shudder.

He did not leave the hotel again during the day; he had no idea how it
had passed, for, as he and his friend drove out of the town close upon
twilight, he asked no question. The first intimation of the result was
given him when they reached the river--it lay broad and red beneath the
broad red sky; the ferry-boat, a dark blotch upon its brilliance, close
in to the bank, pulsed with the crimson current. But the craft was a
useless thing to-day, for no one was there. Percy glanced up at the
weather-beaten log-cabin, the poor and humble neighbor of the flaunting
and splendid redoubt.

“No good in calling,” said Brennett, with a short, satiric laugh. “He
won’t hear you. We shall have to try the ford. It is six miles higher
up the river, somebody told me.”

“The nearest safe ford is ten miles higher,” said Percy, as he turned
the horses.

“It won’t last long,” Brennett remarked cheerfully. “The superintendent
has been telegraphed--so I am told--and has replied that another
ferryman will be here to-morrow.”

Their new route took them in front of the little weather-beaten house.
There was a “washing” still hanging, late though it was, on the clothes
line; a group of huddled children, with a pale fright on their faces,
stood in the door; a baby, in a tattered red dress, sat on the floor
and bleated fitfully; a woman, with yellow hair, that hung loose about
her shoulders and fluttered in the wind, was walking back and forth,
ceaselessly, tearlessly, striking her hands together as she walked,
saying no word, making no moan.

Percy hastily averted his eyes. He gave the off-horse a stinging cut
with the whip, and the dreary little house and its splendid neighbor
were in the fainting, fading distance.




                              CHAPTER XV.


IT was fine “growing weather” for the cotton, and in these hot days
the Midas-touch of the sun had turned the wheat-fields to gold. From
their midst the verdure-crowned earthworks rose like some gigantic
basso-rilievo in green enamel. A fierce thunder-shower one afternoon
had laid the dust and beaten the soft dirt-road, that swept in
serpentine curves through the peaceful battle-field, into the ideal
road for equestrians. Marcia, with one of her brothers, found a
wonderful exhilaration in a smooth, swift dash through the freshness
and perfume of the red sunset. They drew rein only when they had
reached the boundary of their father’s land and were about to turn
their horses’ heads homeward. She made some haste to do this, for where
the plantation road struck into the turnpike she saw Estwicke riding
along in the direction of the barracks. He had evidently not intended
to call at General Vayne’s on the way--but now his hand hesitated on
the rein, and she indignantly deprecated that a chance meeting should
force him into an attention which he had not contemplated. He had
been there only once since the fishing excursion, making a short and
formal call. She had not understood his stiff manner, and it induced a
responsive constraint.

“Oh, no, Dick,” she said urgently to her urchin escort, who at this
moment expressed an inopportune desire to ride down to the river to
see whether a boy who was fishing on the bank had caught anything, “I
can’t wait, and you must take me home.”

Estwicke had put the whip to his horse and galloped up in time to hear
Dick’s protest. “Let me take your place,” he said agreeably. Then to
Marcia--“I suppose you will grant me the right of way through these
fields with you.”

She assented with an effort at smiling ease. But she was so habitually
sincere that the slightest duplicity was deeply marked by contrast
on her face and loudly advertised itself a fraud. This evident
artificiality furnished Estwicke with a subject of meditation, and for
a few moments both were silent as they rode on together, leaving Dick
far behind on the bank of the river.

Estwicke was summarily roused from his preoccupation.

“Isn’t that a dangerous horse for you to ride?” he asked, with the
vicarious fright of a lover, as Hotspur shied suddenly.

Now, if any other lady had been mounted upon this animal, Estwicke
would doubtless have considered him sufficiently gentle, for although
young and a trifle freakish, he was evidently of a mild and tractable
disposition, and well enough trained. Horse and rider each embellished
the other. Estwicke had a vivid realization that in her black habit and
hat she was handsomer than ever, and he was forced to admit that she
rode with consummate grace and skill. Nevertheless he fully expected to
see her thrown; his heart was in his mouth; a cold chill shot through
every fibre; his hand was ready to catch the rein. He was irritated to
observe that she was flattered by what he had said, and he divined that
she thought it augured special virtues of horsewomanship to hold in
subjection so insurgent and dangerous a spirit.

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, with her wonted tone and manner, “Hotspur
is w-i-i-ld as he can be! You ought just to see him in one of his
tantrums! He threw me last week, but it isn’t often that he can get me
out of the saddle.”

Estwicke was aghast at this “often.” He could not altogether restrain
his feeling.

“It surprises me,” he said, with more truth than tact, “that General
Vayne should allow his only daughter to risk herself on a vicious brute
like that.”

She flushed with some anger. She was half disposed to retort that
General Vayne was popularly supposed to be able to manage his family
affairs without assistance--only by an effort she withheld this thrust.

“His only daughter,” she quoted, laughing. “If he had five or six I
suppose you would think him justifiable in letting some of them break
their necks. It never occurred to me before that the reason papa thinks
so much of me is because there are so few of me.”

“I wish he wouldn’t let you ride that horse,” persisted Estwicke
gravely.

“Oh, if you think Hotspur is wild now, I don’t know what you would
have said about him last summer. He had been out to pasture--he hadn’t
_seen_ a saddle for months. Papa wouldn’t let me mount him then.
He was so frisky I didn’t see how I should ever get him quiet. The men
wouldn’t plough with him, for he was so fretful; papa was away most of
the time, and therefore couldn’t ride him. So Mr. Percy took him home
and rode him every day for two weeks.”

This turn to the conversation touched other feelings. Their
sensitiveness was manifested in the rejoinder. “Obliging Mr. Percy!”
uttered with unmistakable sarcasm.

Again her flush deepened to an angry glow. “He is always obliging,” she
said--“and--amiable.”

Estwicke was minded to turn his horse and gallop away, leaving Hotspur
to kill her if he would. Somehow he could not go; he remained, but he
remained to retort.

“No doubt!” he exclaimed bitterly. “And in recognition of his grace of
character, I suppose, you named your horse--‘Hotspur.’”

He was a soldier and a brave man. But he was flinching with abject
terror the moment after he spoke. She wheeled her horse, and as she
faced him suddenly, her beautiful eyes full of surprise, she demanded
aggressively--

“Now what was that?”

“Nothing--nothing. Don’t ask me to repeat it,” Estwicke pleaded.

“I must know,” she rejoined. “I think I understood you, but I am not
certain. May I ask you to do me the favor of repeating and explaining.”

This was said with an elaborate show of politeness, but it savored
rather of the punctilio of the duello than of kindly Christian courtesy.

He hesitated and quailed before his formidable adversary. Now that he
was called upon to put into words the theory over which he had brooded
through the dark hours of sleepless nights, he began to realize how
fantastic it was. Somehow he could find no words foolish enough to fit
it. But he must answer.

“Miss Vayne,” he said helplessly, laying his hand upon Hotspur’s
forelock, “let me off. Let me off--just this time.”

“I want to know what you said,” she replied sternly.

Estwicke felt that it was futile to temporize.

“Well,” he began in great abasement, “the horse is named Hotspur, you
know.”

A pause ensued. Her eyes widened. “Yes, I know,” she interpolated by
way of giving his confession a much needed impetus.

“And Percy’s name is Percy,” continued Estwicke, painfully aware of
seeming to drivel. The astonishment in her face nerved him to try to
brace this impalpable fabric of the imagination with an historical
back-bone.

“And you know there’s that fellow from Northumberland--Percy--don’t you
know?--Harry Percy--Hotspur.”

Her softly scornful laughter cut him as cruelly as a knife might have
done. The color in her cheeks mounted to the roots of her hair. “I do
homage to your ingenuity,” she exclaimed with a sarcasm intended to be
withering. “It is equally creditable to your heart and head! I have the
pleasure of hoping that your speculations about me, and my horse, and
my motives have served to amuse you for an idle half hour or so.”

She looked him full in the eyes as she spoke, with her head erect, and
a proud resentment eloquently expressed in her face. Then she shook the
reins, and her horse sprang away like an unleashed hound.

She evidently wished to be rid of Estwicke. But he could not let
her go now. He kept his horse side by side with hers, and as they
came with a rush past Fort Despair he laid his hand upon Hotspur’s
rein, and checked the impetuous gallop. She turned her head with an
angry impatience. There were hot tears in her eyes. They should not
fall--they would never fall. But there they were--and he had seen them.

“I must speak to you,” he said beseechingly. “If you are angry it will
break my heart. Tell me you are not. Forgive me if you were.”

A moment ago she was vowing that he should never hear her speak
another word. Now she determined to throw off the whole affair lightly;
she would not allow him and Percy, and her horse’s name as connected
with them, to seem matters of such importance. But she could not tell
him she was not angry; she would not say she forgave him.

“You certainly stand in wholesome awe of my displeasure,” she returned,
with a forced laugh. “It is a fearful thing, I know, but it has killed
no one as yet.”

“It will kill me,” Estwicke protested, with inopportune fervor; “for no
one loves you--no one can ever love you--as I do.”

Her eyes flashed. “Captain Estwicke,” she exclaimed hotly, “let my
horse go.”

“One moment--just hear me for one moment. You will do me a cruel
injustice if you refuse to listen now. Since Percy came, even long
before he came, that fancy about the horse’s name has tortured me night
and day. I have loved you all my life, it seems to me, for I never
lived until I loved you. I have given you all my heart. It’s nothing to
give, since you don’t care for it; but it’s all I have. And I want, in
return, one word of forgiveness--one word.”

Her face was turned away; he could only see the downward sweep of
her eyelashes and the delicate curve of her crimson cheek. He leaned
forward wistfully, with his hand still on her horse’s rein, and all
his fiery heart in his eyes. She slowly turned her head yet further,
and still he saw only those gentle suggestions of the beauty of that
averted face.

“It is hard on me!” he broke out despairingly, after a moment. “I have
so sedulously repressed my feelings. I have stood guard over every word
I uttered--so afraid of speaking too soon or at an inopportune moment.
I have eaten out my heart by slow degrees; and now--now--I have
angered you beyond endurance, and you cannot forgive me.”

Still not a word.

“I’ve got what I deserve, though,” he continued bitterly, after
another pause, in which there were quick changes of expression on
his face. “It is a sort of stern justice that I should find you
unrelenting--_you_, on whom I have no claim; for I have been hard,
and cruel, and unresponsive when there was the strongest claim upon me.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said suddenly.

“Oh, God bless you for that,” he exclaimed, clasping one of the little
gauntleted hands.

She had not intended to speak; she had not intended to forgive him at
all. She drew her hand from his grasp, but slowly and gently.

“Don’t you forgive me now?” he persisted. “You couldn’t have said that,
if you didn’t forgive me.”

Her face was still averted. “Well--perhaps.”

“Then look at me--just once.”

She did not turn her head; she still sat motionless.

“Tell me,” he said, retaining his grasp upon her horse’s rein, “is
there some one whom you like better than me? Does he keep us apart?”

“I don’t want to stand here any longer,” she exclaimed suddenly,
turning her flushed and embarrassed face toward the great, grim house
in the midst of the plain, the reflected sunset gorgeously emblazoned
on its shattered windows.

He still held the horse. “Is it Percy?” She made a gesture of
impatience.

“Then don’t you care for me a little--just a little, you know?”

“That’s just what I don’t know.” She laughed, but the next moment she
was flushing, and trembling, and ready to cry.

“Then, some day--some day, soon, may I tell you again that I love you,
and hear what you have to say to me then?”

“I can’t stay here any longer,” she declared evasively.

As they rode slowly along, Estwicke looked at her and sighed. “That
day,” he said, “you know the day I mean, I must tell you something
more--the great trouble and haunting sorrow of my life. Something
painful and cruel to tell.”

“Then don’t tell it to me,” she replied gently.

“I was in fault throughout,” he continued. “I was hard, and cowardly,
and ungenerous, and petty-minded. Oh, I don’t know anybody who would
have done as I did.”

She said nothing, but there was a stony incredulity expressed in her
face.

“I am afraid to tell you--to jeopardize every hope. Yet I cannot endure
that you should think me different from what I am. Sometimes, when
fellows are friendly and make much of me, I feel like a fraud. I wonder
what they would have done in my place, and I wonder what they would
think of me if they knew all. But I don’t care for them. With you it’s
different. I can’t deceive you. You ought to know how I might come out
if anything should happen to try me hard. I will tell you, and let you
judge.”

“You need tell me nothing!” she cried impetuously. “I can trust you
without it.”

“If I only deserved this!” he exclaimed. “But if you can believe in me
against my own word, can’t you care for me--even a little?”

She rode on silently.

He leaned forward and once more clasped her hand.

“Or rather, dearest, let me take it for granted.”

“For the sake of argument,” she assented doubtfully.

And the sun went down over Fort Despair, and in all the east there was
no moon. The long-waning brightness had fled from the battle-field; it
lay now dim, and drear, and colorless, beneath the vast, vague sky.
The fort was beleaguered by a multitude of shadows. The wind brought
strange voices from out the haunted thickets. A shiver ran through
the flowers and grasses that hung above the yawning, empty graves.
A bugle’s resonance was thrilling along the air. The still evening
palpitated with the throb of the drum. The tread of martial feet shook
the ground. And all unheeding--here where the battle was fought--youth,
and love, and life rode bravely through the spectred twilight.




                             CHAPTER XVI.


THERE was a flag flying over Chattalla; the “old flag,” thus called
in contradistinction to another, that had once flashed across the
clouds here and was gone like a meteor. The Square was filled with an
eager and intent crowd of recently re-enfranchised and intelligent
voters; the grass in the court-house yard was trampled by many jostling
feet; a rude platform had risen among the dappling shadows, and the
figure there, with its imposing dignity and impressive attitude, might
realize to the imagination a Roman senator. His fine voice filled
the wide spaces of the sunlit air; the glance of his earnest eyes
kindled a responsive enthusiasm; a magnetic thrill quivered through
his audience. Only Maurice Brennett, of all the fellow-citizens whom
General Vayne harangued, was analytic enough to find him a study, and
sufficiently discriminating to perceive how very amusing he was. He
hurled back, with infinite gusto, insinuations against his party--his
people. He visibly joyed in his elocutionary bitterness. He stormily
counselled mildness, calmness, conservatism, above all, consistency.
His apostrophe to the flag that waved above them was oddly accented by
an unconscious convulsive gesture, as if he would clasp his missing
right hand. “It was to Us,” he said, “the symbol of a hard-won Victory,
of a generous Peace, and of Freedom in the largest sense known to
the universe.” The fervor of his sincerity caught in the crowd, and
flamed out in cheers for the old flag for the first time in ten years.
Despite the wild incongruities of his patriotism, there was so splendid
a display of oratory here and there, that Brennett’s cynical face
was more than once smitten with sudden gravity. His faculty for the
utilitarian fixed upon this gift. “If that man,” he said to Percy, “had
even a modicum of common sense he could do anything--anything.”

But presently his lips were curving again, for General Vayne was
vaunting the great Volunteer State, and the language was depleted of
adjectives. He alluded to her hosts of “Fighting Tennesseeans,” and
called upon the heights of Monterey, upon Old Hickory’s “mile-long
line” at New Orleans, upon the “Battle of the Horse-shoe,” upon their
blood that deluged Shiloh, the bare hills engirdling Nashville, the
wide wastes around Murfreesboro’, to tell of their valor. Then he
proceeded to do this himself--in so eloquent, so fiery, so tender a
strain that it brought the remnant of his brigade to the front with the
old rebel charging yell, which set the great bell in the court-house
tower to shivering.

He stated that he was no candidate for any office whatever within the
gift of the people, and had no interest save theirs at heart; in short,
he represented himself as a sort of self-organized tutelary deity of
the party, appearing before them only in support of its principles.
“You all know _me_,” he said, with some pardonable pride, as
they manifested their appreciation of the purity of his motives. “I
stand upon my native heath, and”--effective diminuendo--“my name is
Macgregor!”

In the thunder of applause that followed his peroration, a grizzled,
elderly wight turned, with grave, breathless interest, to Percy.

“What makes the old Gen’al say he stands on his naked heels an’ his
name’s Grigory?” he asked swiftly. “I didn’t know old Frank Vayne’s
middle name was Grigory.”

Could there be a more felicitous anti-climax! Brennett fell back
against the iron fence, laughing with sardonic delight. He had intended
to humor the little-great man’s self-valuation by pressing up with the
town and country magnates, to join in shaking severely the orator’s
hand, with congratulations on the “powerful effort,” as the phrase
went. But he saw, with surprise, that General Vayne was pushing through
the crowd toward him, waving off the effusive demonstrations of his
friends with a calm self-sufficiency that was curiously independent of
vanity. His face was flushed; there was an anxious gleam in his eyes;
he fixed them eagerly on Mr. Ridgeway, who chanced to be standing close
by, and although he shook hands with Brennett it was evidently the
elder gentleman with whom he wished to confer--about no private matter,
apparently, for he began without preamble,--

“A great surprise, sir. Lamentable--lamentable! I had heard nothing of
it until his messenger met me at the depot. I had promised to speak
at once, so I sent you a line from there. We can arrange it now?” He
stroked his gray mustache, and looked alertly expectant.

Mr. Ridgeway took a firm stand, metaphorically and literally. He
steadied his unwieldy bulk on his two ponderous legs, turned his
argumentative spectacles on his friend, and spluttered emphatically,--

“You are not able to lose that money, General, and I’m sure I’m not.”

“Lose money, sir?”

“He’d _bolt_, sir; if that man, Toole, were bailed, he’d bolt.”

Maurice Brennett’s face was suddenly petrified--its cynical laugh upon
it. But, with those distended muscles hardened and rigid, his bright
eyes narrowed, his teeth gleaming through his parted lips, there was
marvellously little joviality suggested. The two important old cocks
were hardly as provocative of mirth as he had thought them an instant
ago. He retained barely power enough to look, breathlessly, from one to
the other.

“Permit me, sir,” said General Vayne loftily, “to differ with you. I
will not entertain the suspicion. That man served four years in my
brigade.” He looked triumphantly at his interlocutor. The logical
inference was too plain. The man couldn’t bolt.

Mr. Ridgeway nodded his big head and his big Panama hat very much to
one side. “I know all that, and I should be his friend now if he had
behaved better in this affair.”

“Patent your art, my dear sir, ‘friendship made easy,’” cried General
Vayne satirically. “Drop your friends when they don’t ‘behave better!’”

“General,” said Mr. Ridgeway, with excellent temper, “I don’t want you
to throw your money like soapsuds into a sinkhole; and I don’t want to
throw mine there either.”

“No man--be he gentle or simple--shall ever seek help from me and I
withhold this hand,” cried General Vayne impetuously. He raised his
only hand and struck it violently against the iron fence. “Do you
know, sir,” he continued solemnly, “that man’s wife lies at the point
of death, prostrated by the shock of his arrest and smitten with
paralysis. There has not been a dollar in that house for weeks--and
no flour, no meal, no meat; those children--Lord knows how many--have
subsisted by _begging_! Begging from the neighbors! The turnpike
company is only awaiting the moment of her dissolution to turn that
family out upon the road. The man’s occupation is gone, and he has all
those starving children to provide for.”

“A good reason for bolting, if there were no other.” Maurice Brennett
had suddenly found his voice, for Mr. Ridgeway’s face was a study of
agonized indecision. Perhaps all might yet remain as it was.

General Vayne turned slowly, with a haughty stare in his intent eyes,
as he fiercely twirled his mustache.

“Under your favor, sir,” he said, loftily, “a good reason for
_not_ bolting, if there were no other.”

Percy pressed Brennett’s shoulder with his own as a warning to forbear,
for his friend was naturally associated with himself in General Vayne’s
mind, and he took politic care that all such association should be
pleasant.

“I beg your pardon,” said Brennett--he was breathing more freely--“I
had only heard that the man is a low fellow and abetted in this
transaction. A terrible affair, I’m told; shocked the community.”

“It did,--it did,” spluttered Mr. Ridgeway. “The law must be upheld, or
the country won’t be fit to live in.”

“I regard the law of the land, gentlemen, as the
will of God,” said General Vayne sweepingly.
“And--it--allows--this--man--the--privilege--of _bail_.”

There was no answer to this. Even the wordy and intellectual Maurice
Brennett had not a syllable of replication. He looked at General Vayne
with a wonderful sharpening of those rapacious suggestions in his eyes.
Old Mr. Ridgeway, with an air of absence of mind, brought out his
handkerchief and harrowed with it the furrows and creases of his fat
face.

“I regret to have troubled you, sir,” said General Vayne, turning with
elaborate courtesy to Mr. Ridgeway. “I took the liberty of asking your
co-operation simply because I knew that the law requires two sureties
on a bail-bond.”

He hesitated a moment, then, drawing himself to his full height, he
said, with a fierce humility that was strikingly like pride: “In the
s-h-shattered condition of my fortune I sometimes hardly know how I
stand with the usurers, but I believe my estate will bear a mortgage
for two thousand dollars more, and I will borrow the money and give it
to the man to deposit in lieu of bail.”

A sudden idea flashed upon Percy. He was so in the habit of putting
his own money in a safe place that this method of propitiation had not
before occurred to him.

“If you will permit me, General,” he said, with a charming air of
deference and modesty, “_I_ should be pleased to go on the
bail-bond with you.”

General Vayne cast on him a glance of approval. “I thank you, sir,” he
said. “But if there is any money to be lost here, I shall lose it. I
bid you good day, gentlemen.” He waved his hand ceremoniously, turned,
strode up the pavement, and disappeared within the court-house.

Mr. Ridgeway’s lungs lay far inland in a fat country. A huge sigh
laboriously travelled up from them, and he took off his hat and rubbed
his handkerchief around and around on his bald, shining, moist pate.

Men who speculate upon contingencies have a fine opportunity for
realizing how purblind and finite is the vaunted faculty called
foresight, and how infinitely intricate is that mechanism known as the
ordering of events.

“That such a man as General Vayne should bestir himself for a cracker
like Toole!” Brennett exclaimed aloud, in the abandonment of his
despair.

He lingered long in the village that morning, watching in helpless
excitement the uncontrollable course of the events which he himself
had set in motion. His finesse had only resulted in making Toole the
most prominent figure in public view, for General Vayne told on every
street-corner the pathetic story of the wife’s untimely death and the
homeless children’s destitution. A subscription for their benefit
was headed by his own name, and his large ideals and inflated way of
looking at things were abundantly manifest when he appealed to the
ex-soldiers of Chattalla in behalf of the tow-headed brats out on the
turnpike, as the children of a veteran who had stood his ground in a
hundred battles; when he spoke of the illiterate lout of a drunken
ferry-man as his “brave Companion in Arms.” Other names followed
fast; there was something enthusing in a glimpse through that foolish
magnifying glass. Toole had never had so much money at once as when he
tramped silently out of the town and along the dusty, white turnpike
till miles lay behind him, and at last the dark little log-cabin, that
was to be no longer his home came in sight. Hardly in sight, for he
would not look at it. He had a deep sense of the unnatural solemnity
that brooded upon it. He knew what lay within. He turned abruptly
from the road to the flower-crowned redoubt. He crossed the ditch,
climbed the parapet, and flung himself down in an empty embrasure,
through which a great gun had once looked. There he watched the golden
afternoon glow and ripen to redness, and drop at last out of the sky.
The latest light of the day quivered on the wings of a throng of
homeward-bound swallows till they were white, and scintillated like a
flying constellation. The cows were coming home; he heard them low. The
familiar voice of the river sounded with a new and dreary intonation.
He listened to the fitful bleating of the baby, still rising and
falling as it had risen and fallen through all the long hours that the
child had crept about, neglected, and in forlorn surprise, on the
rickety porch. Stars were in the sky, and suddenly a golden gleam
sprang into the window of the little log-cabin. He lifted himself on
his elbow to look at it, and as he looked he burst into tears. Why
should a light ever shine there again!

It was strange to him that, filled as he was with an overwhelming
realization of his misfortunes, he could still take note of external
objects. He seemed endowed with keener sense. From far up the road he
heard the regular hoof-beats of a pair of trotters and the smooth,
light roll of wheels. He recognized Percy and Brennett as the buggy
whirled by. He saw in the dim light of the closing dusk the face of the
man who had testified against him, and whom he had learned to hate. And
so, too, the man saw his face.

There was so hard, so fierce, so bitter an expression on its clumsy
features that Brennett drove on in renewed perplexity. He had had some
wild, reckless idea of taking advantage of Toole’s straits by bribing
him heavily to leave the place. But he began to realize that he was
regarded as the direct and active cause of these calamities, and
although it could not be divined that thus he had sought to subserve
a personal interest, still Toole was an unreasoning brute, and this
instinctive distrust and enmity could hardly be dissipated even by the
most specious arguments. It was sheer madness to place himself in the
power of a man who held a grudge like this against him. And so he cast
the thought from him forever.

The swift shadows of the horses that had raced with them neck and neck
along the sunset road were distanced and lost in the darkness. Only the
red sparks of the cigars broke the monotony of the colorless night. The
new ferry-man, who, silent and grim, pulled them over the river, was a
suggestively lowering figure in the gloom, and the river was as black
as Styx. Brennett felt in landing on the other side that he had left
all hope and life, and was entering upon judgment. He arraigned himself
fiercely. He might have foreseen; surely he might have been sharper!

He said to himself that this was definitive; the game was up. The man
concerning whom General Vayne, with his fantastically potent rhetoric,
blowing about the town, had raised a cloud of public interest, might
now tell his story every day to a genteel audience. Other “companions
in arms” would indulgently listen to Toole’s reminiscences, when, in
rehearsing his Iliad of woes, he would relate how the old commander
held out the left hand spared him, although no one else would move; and
so to General Vayne’s qualities as man and soldier, to his feats on
the field, to the wide subject of the great battle, to the details of
personal experience,--and was it likely that the dramatic story of the
burning bridge and the officer who fired it would be forgotten?

So it was all over. Brennett was so loath to realize it that he
remained inactive for days in torturing suspense. When the Criminal
Court was in session, and the case came on for trial, he watched the
proceedings in a lethargy of despair. The fact of self-defence was
so incontestably proved, that the jury found a verdict of acquittal
without leaving the box, and the two men were free forever. They
occupied so much public attention, that Brennett’s mind was forcibly
recalled to the dangers with which Toole’s prominence menaced him.
The veriest chance word that might come to Percy or Miss St. Pierre
would ruin all, and Percy, in his utter idleness, made it a point
to interest himself in such subjects as General Vayne took in hand,
that he might find opportunities to present himself in an amiable
light for that simple-hearted gentleman’s approval. He had not, it
is true, done his sensibilities the violence of attending the trial,
but he was much exercised about the cheerful verdict, and brought up
the subject himself the evening after it was rendered as he sat in the
library at General Vayne’s house. The wide windows let in squares of
moonlight that lay sharply defined upon the floor despite the yellow
lustre of the shaded lamp. The white curtains fluttered in the perfumed
breeze. From far away he could hear the melancholy note of the frogs
monotonously chanting in the dank ditches of the works. It filled the
pause that ensued when Captain Estwicke was ushered in upon the party,
and the formal greetings were over.

Percy turned to him agreeably. It was an element of his self-love to
include even every casual stranger in the demonstrations of what he
mentally designated his “universal fascination system.” Estwicke’s hard
metal, and the superficiality of his suavity were very patent when they
were thus contrasted with these soft graces.

“You drove over, Captain? Then you haven’t heard the news from our
little burgh.”

This was so obviously a note from General Vayne’s bugle that Estwicke
could have smitten Percy for it; why did he call the town a “burgh!”

Estwicke, silent, his elbow resting lightly on the table, looked at
Percy with a challenging stare.

“You will be glad to know that Toole is acquitted.”

“Toole?” Estwicke repeated, dubiously.

“The ferryman, or rather the ex-ferryman,” Percy politely explained.

Estwicke’s face was blankly unresponsive. He had not known that the
ferryman was accused of anything; if he had noticed, he had forgotten
that the office was filled by a stranger. He was a trifle confused
to be boned on a point like this, as if he were expected, at such a
distance, to keep up with the excitements of the village. His attention
too was divided. He had never before seen Marcia wear a white dress.
The material and make were of the simplest, but the snowy diaphanous
draperies gave an added lustre to that fresh young loveliness. The
sleeve fell away from her delicate wrist, displaying her rounded
dimpled arm, and all the soft folds illustrated the grace of her lithe,
slender figure. Her throat rose from a many-petalled ruche. Her hair
sparkled with golden glimmers; with all this whiteness about her, she
seemed trebly fair. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked at him with
a smile deep in her gracious young eyes. He felt that she was conscious
of this sudden bloom into a beauty infinitely exquisite. He recognized
her frank vanity.

And how came those other men here!

Thus his jealousy shut from him the suspicion that by the intuition of
an awakened heart she had divined _his_ coming. And so it was,
he never knew that even after the lamps were lighted, she was still
sewing, that the dress might be finished in time, and he should find
her lovely.

He looked at Percy, not at her. And he said nothing of Toole, the
humble fellow who had served his coming and going for a matter of six
months, and who had lived a tragedy lately. General Vayne pulled hard
at his mustache. But he had always thought that this man was peculiarly
callous.

“Oh, poor fellow!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby, shaking her curls
compassionately, “so destitute--homeless--without employment--and so
many children--so many.”

She turned and bent the beaming blandishments of her smile upon
Brennett. “Poverty in the country is more painful to contemplate than
poverty in town, I think, Mr. Brennett. Deprivation in the midst of
the abundance of nature; yes, very bad indeed, very bad. In towns,
potatoes are measured by the bushel, and signify dimes. In the country
they are meted out by the sunshine, and the rain, and the generous
earth, and they signify the blessing of God on the rich season--yes.
And these are the inalienable rights of the poor as well as the
wealthy--the just and the unjust.”

Brennett smiled vaguely, with a semblance of endorsing this romantic
communistic proposition.

“It seems to me that potatoes belong to the man who plants them,” said
Marcia prosaically, from out the poetic shimmer of her white dress.

The slightest vibration of her voice thrilled through Estwicke, but he
sat looking straight forward, and did not turn his head.

“Do you know, General Vayne, what Toole intends to do?” asked Brennett
with some eagerness.

“What _can_ he do?” said General Vayne with a deprecatory wave of
the hand. “He is not a skilled workman; his only chance is to find an
odd job now and then.”

“Ah, the poor man! So precarious!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby. “He quits
his little house next Thursday. But his aunt, old Mrs. Prindle, at
the toll-gate, good old soul, will take one of the children, the
youngest, yes, the baby. F-fat little thing!” she cried, with a cheery,
grandmotherly smile illuminating the general desolation. “And no doubt
he can find homes with some of the small farmers for the boys--boys,
yes--so useful, you know--pick up chips.”

“You have talked with him then,” said Brennett, pursuing the subject.

“Yes; Marcia piloted me over there--long walk, dear me! and very warm
to-day. Takes his wife’s death hard, very hard. Seems really to feel
it, you know. She was dead before he was released, before he reached
there. The shock of his arrest killed her, and it was all for naught,
since he was acquitted. And nothing consoles that poor baby. But it is
all over dimples! It is a terrible reflection that that mother’s life
was sacrificed, and those children bereaved--all for nothing!”

“Oh, I beg of you!” exclaimed Percy, with a gesture of entreaty.

“Yes, very serious, I don’t wonder it jars your nerves,” said the old
lady with solemnity.

“Why, that’s a calamity--to jar _his_ nerves!” exclaimed Marcia,
with a light laugh. Light as it was, it had in it so tense a thrill of
satire that the others looked at her in surprise.

She sat at her ease in the stiff old arm-chair, her hand toying with a
full-blown white rose. She was very charming to look upon, and all the
gentlemen were gazing at her. Nevertheless, Mrs. Kirby sighed. Surely
it was not politic to show temper before so many unwived men. And
temper for what--pray?

“A calamity!” Marcia reiterated, “but we must try to bear up against
it!”

Certainly it is anomalous that a lover should grudge his rival the
lady’s displeasure. But the fact that she spoke thus freely to Percy
reminded Estwicke unpleasantly of the friendship which had subsisted
between them long, long before he ever saw her.

Percy was so accustomed to be regarded as an exemplar of all that is
gallant, and generous, and high-spirited in youth, that now he was
suddenly confused, self-depreciatory, and wounded.

“You mean my sympathy is so shallow that it is worthless?” he said,
looking at her with a gentle deprecation, that the bewildered Mrs.
Kirby thought must surely disarm her. Her aspect, however, was so
impassive that the old lady, who believed herself the tactician of
the world, and joyed in her little management, could not trust the
conversation in other guidance, and seized upon the helm herself.

“Sympathy!” she cried. “Why Toole is held as a public martyr!”

“And that is very bad for him, and for the community,” said the severe
Marcia. “He _thought_ he was breaking the law--that was his
_intention_.”

Oh, if a young lady only knew how unlovely she appears when she
sets herself to discourse of affairs of public policy, she would
forbear--she would refrain. Mrs. Kirby could have wrung her hands. So
many gentlemen! And the moonlight was touching the girl’s grave face
with a spiritual glamour, and shifting over her beautiful dress, and
the melodious nocturnal sounds pulsed along the perfumed air, and all
the night was full of starlight, and poetry, and the bursting of buds,
and the bloom of flowers--and she to be talking about the community!

Maurice Brennett’s eyes were fixed upon Marcia with questioning
intensity. What did she mean? What was she driving at?

“Help me to reconstruct my sympathy,” said Percy, still grave and
gentle.

“You give him money,” said Marcia reprovingly, “because you have plenty
of it and won’t miss it.”

Everybody winced at this frank mention of the young gentleman’s wealth.

“You give him money, and it slips away immediately, and it is bad for
him--he drinks it up--and when it is all gone--what then? You give
him money because you are sorry for him--for a little while--and to
give it makes _you_ feel better. But you can’t _think_ for
him--you won’t give him so much as a thought.”

General Vayne was nervously pulling his mustache, and staring at his
daughter’s soft young face, with its unwontedly severe expression,
as if on the whole he did not recognize her. Mrs. Kirby could not
even fan. Miss St. Pierre smiled from one to another, as if to make
believe that this was a mere society conversation, and had no especial
significance, no incongruities. Estwicke, with a heavy frown on his
face, was watching Percy, who leaned eagerly forward, his elbow on his
knee, and his hat in his hand, his temper unruffled, and his pride
pocketed.

“I confess all that,” he said hastily. “Tell me how I must think for
him.”

“You make him a beggar,” Marcia continued, still indignantly accusing,
“when you might give him a chance to work for his living, and support
his children, and keep them together, instead of distributing them
about the country to anybody who will take them.”

“I shall make it my business to get him into something,” declared Percy.

“Mind,” said Marcia, lifting the white rose with a didactic gesture,
“it must be something in which he honestly earns every dollar of his
wages--it must be no pretence--charity in disguise. That, you know,
can’t last. What do you think of trying?”

“I had no definite idea,” Percy admitted, a trifle confused. “I don’t
know of anything about here--in this town or neighborhood that would
answer.”

“_Here_--why it is not necessary, surely, that the man should
remain _here_!” she rejoined impatiently.

Maurice Brennett scarcely dared to breathe. The anguish of his hope was
hardly less poignant than the anguish of his fear. Great drops started
on his forehead. He could not, he would not speak. What incongruity
of fate was this? That this girl, this saint on earth, should
unconsciously lend her hand to his schemes--that she should help Toole
out of the country!

“Can’t you find work for him elsewhere?” she demanded imperiously.
“You have interests away from this little treadmill of a town.”
(Young America is not always respectful to the good old “burgh” of
its fathers.) “Don’t you own an interest in some sort of factory--a
furniture factory, or something or other, at Marston,” she continued
vaguely--“enough to make them employ a workman you choose to send them?”

“I reckon so,” said Percy; he brightened at the suggestion, and rose
with a triumphant laugh. In fact, he had no doubt, for he was a half
owner in the flourishing concern; but he was modest in regard to his
possessions, and affected a modicum of uncertainty. “If you will let me
have pen and paper, I will write to them now, and give the letter to
Toole as I go past his house on my way home.”

“Yes--dear--yes. Get the inkstand for Horace,” said Mrs. Kirby, having
recovered the use of her palm-leaf fan. “Take your little key-basket
off the table--yes--out of Horace’s way,” she added blandly. She was
in truth anxious to make the girl wait upon him, and in trivial acts
of consideration and deference afford a small compensation for the
soul-trying experience to which she had subjected him.

But Percy, as he sat at the table, looked up with a bright protest in
his dark eyes.

“No, it doesn’t disturb me, I assure you; don’t trouble yourself.” As
he touched with an insistent gesture the stout little wicker basket,
with its jingling contents of housekeeping keys, his hand met hers for
a moment. Estwicke saw this; he divined the wild, vague suggestion
of close domestic association which made the ugly, housewifely little
key-basket a precious thing in the young man’s eyes, and its proximity
a pleasure. He recognized the adroit tact by which she was kept
hovering about the table, and knew that it seemed to Percy a foretaste,
too, of the blissful unrestraint of a common home, that he should
informally remain seated while she stood beside him and bent over to
look at the paper and pen, when he called her attention to them.

Estwicke’s heart waxed hot within him; was it for this that he had come
so far to see her? With a sharpened sense he heard every word that
passed between them, despite the animated chatter of the rest of the
group. He saw and translated as full of meaning every gesture.

“Is this your pen?” asked Percy, examining it. “The General’s? Well,
there’s a heavy stroke for you! Why doesn’t he write with a fence-rail
at once!”

She laughed blithely as she bent down to look at the writing; her
face was sweetly flushed; her eyes were so gentle now; her floating,
diaphanous sleeve lightly brushed his shoulder; his eyes followed its
sweep. He was so gay, so handsome, so alertly confident, and she was so
pleased with him.

As she turned away, he glanced up once more. “Do you write the date on
the top line or the next one? And how must I date it?--advise me. From
Chattalla? Oh, how you shock me. Is this what you call candor? I’m not
in Chattalla, thank heaven!”

As he began to write she went away and sat down, still flushed, and
excited, and absorbed.

“Mr. Percy is very prompt in keeping his promises,” said Brennett; his
lips were dry; he enunciated with difficulty the commonplace.

“Oh, I’m a very promising young man,” Percy declared without raising
his head.

But it was only a moment before he again appealed to her.

“Can’t you help me word this?” he said speciously. “I’m getting mixed
up here in some fearfully awkward phraseology.”

In the simplicity of her heart she rose instantly and went to help
him. To Estwicke it hardly seemed simplicity. He could not understand
how she should fail to know that a man like Percy was wont to write in
whatever hasty and dishevelled style that pleased him to the stewards
of his wealth, and had of necessity far more epistolary experience than
she. The two together made a long, grave, and careful job of it. Percy
was hypercritical; once or twice he objected to her suggestions on the
score of tautology, and as she placed her dimpled, rounded elbows on
the table, and rested her cheek on her clasped hands, and cast her eyes
absently out on the moonlight in a cogitating search for a felicitous
synonym, he, with his pen idly poised, looked with a satisfied
proprietary admiration at the pretty picture she made. And Estwicke
looked at him.

It was all over at last, and he had written his name half across the
page.

She laughed as she glanced at this pompous signature.

“That is a very great man!” she said.

“_I_ believe in him--for one,” said Percy--which was the truest
word he had spoken for a week.

“And so do I,” protested Mrs. Kirby blandly.

And this, too, was true in a certain sense. Estwicke had felt more than
once that they all liked Percy for himself--apart from his prominence
and wealth, which to the eyes of a poor and jealous rival were
formidable advantages. The handsome young fellow, with his subtle arts
of propitiation, always contrived to appear here in an exceptionally
genial and fascinating guise. With a disposition to make amends for
all that he must have suffered in the crucial interview with Marcia,
the kindly feeling of the elders was especially marked to-night.
Estwicke was of course unaware of this motive. He was angry, sore,
dismayed--he seemed to have dreamed that blissful termination of all
his vacillations of hope and fear. But for the glitter of his own ring
on the girl’s hand he could not have realized that she had so lately
given him a promise which he had fancied was dear to them both--which
had made his future bloom like a rose.

Only when he spoke to her at last--he had risen to take leave--did his
heart, grown so strangely heavy, beat with a quick, tumultuous throb
once more. The group was breaking up, for it was late, and these two
were standing quite apart from the others for a moment.

She lifted her eyes to his with so candid a disappointment expressed in
them, that he was in a measure consoled.

“We have had a dull time, haven’t we? But--but”--her eyelashes drooped
a little,--“you know you’ll be coming back again soon.”

“To-morrow,” he said hastily. “In the morning,” he added, frowning
darkly over an intention of thus out-marching Percy. But she was so
evidently unconscious of having given him reason for jealousy, that he
began to be a trifle ashamed of it.

Percy glanced at them askance as he stood at a little distance, a
victim of Mrs. Kirby’s messages and remembrances to his mother. He had
experienced upon first meeting Estwicke a vague uneasiness to find
any personable man in her society, but it had been dissipated by the
fact that the officer seemed a dull, heavy fellow, and there was no
sign of a sentimental interest. Now, however, he detected something
in Estwicke’s manner that roused him from the soft delights of his
self-satisfaction to the keenest anxiety. He had not time to make
sure; he would have waited till Estwicke was gone, but Brennett seemed
feverishly anxious to be off, and he must go with his guest. As they
walked down the long pavement he strove to reassure himself with the
recollection of the man’s serious, intent, even frowning face. Surely
this was not the self-gratulatory mien of a favored lover. And he had
no reason to suppose that the officer frequented the house; General
Vayne’s political feeling would hardly warrant that supposition, and he
had never before met Estwicke here.

Their host had accompanied them to the buggy; he was gesticulating
with his left hand as he described to Brennett how the features of the
country were utilized in a certain midnight assault on Fort Despair--an
incident of the great battle. As Percy looked back at the door he saw,
in the yellow flare of the swinging lamp in the hall, Mrs. Kirby and
Miss St. Pierre standing there, exclaiming over the iniquity of Dick,
who had robbed a nest among the roses on the pillars of the portico,
and was bringing the young mocking-birds into the house. The conviction
was forced upon Percy. Estwicke had lingered in the library that he
might have a few moments alone with Marcia. And had she not lingered as
well?

Percy drove away in moody silence, and very slowly. At every turn of
the road he glanced back, expecting to see a shadow moving in the
moonlight, and to hear the whir of wheels. Evidently Estwicke had not
yet left the house, for he saw only the myriads of fire-flies, pulsing
points of light, among the heavy foliage on the redoubts, and he heard
nothing but the shrill, quavering wail of a screech-owl, jarring ever
and anon the sombre stillness of the haunted thickets.

He experienced a thrill of dismay that he should suspect all this
so late. Hitherto he had considered himself reasonably sure of her,
although he had as yet given her no intimation of the state of his
feelings. He had thought he might safely wait. They were both very
young--there was plenty of time before them--and he felt, too, that his
freedom was dear and that he would like to see a little more of the
world before settling down to quiet home-life and conjugal felicity.
He had been entirely at ease as to the completion of his romance, when
it should suit him to recur to it. Now, however, his inertia, when the
field had been clear, seemed to him inexplicable, and it required some
agile mental processes to reason himself out of his despondency. But
he remembered once more Estwicke’s grave, intent, frowning face--he
remembered, too, that she had scarcely spoken to any one but himself
throughout the evening. He resolved that he would take heart of
grace--if he had been too dilatory heretofore, he would compensate
himself now.

His whip touched the off horse. They bowled along swiftly through the
gloom. The wind seemed to freshen with the quickening motion. He felt
its influence.

“It’s a good thing I forgot that letter!” he exclaimed hopefully.

The sudden sharpness of Maurice Brennett’s voice struck his attention
even amidst his pre-occupation.

“Did you leave it there?”

“I left it lying on the table--and that’s a good excuse to go back
to-morrow,” said Percy, laughing.

Brennett breathed hard--he remembered the broad open windows and
the position of the table near them. He felt on his cheek the fresh
wind--what more natural than that the letter on which so much depended
should be blown upon the floor to lie there overlooked, until some
careless housemaid should sweep it out in the morning. It was as likely
that Percy would forget the “good excuse” when once there again, and
the young lady, having carried her point, would probably recur to it no
more. Thus Toole, narrowly missing the good fortune intended for him,
would still remain here.

It was hard to say upon what pretext Brennett could interfere--how he
could busy himself in matters apparently so alien to his interests
without exciting surprise, anger, even suspicion of his motives. The
fact that Miss Vayne had concerned herself in the incongruous affair
added elements of difficulty--the jealous sensitiveness of her lover,
and the delicacy requisite in speaking of a young lady. But he could
not--he would not submit his recently rescued project to a contingency
like this--so slight in itself, so portentously important in its
effects. He had only a moment for thought, but he was wont to think
quickly.

Percy saw his face in the flicker of a match which he had struck and
applied to his cigar. He was laughing cynically, despite the weed held
fast between his teeth.

The young fellow turned scarlet; he felt a fiery rush of indignation.

“I am glad to afford you so much amusement,” he said, as stiffly as a
punctilious host may allow himself to speak to his guest.

Brennett pulled silently at the cigar until it was fairly a-light, then
he flung the match aside in the road, and leaned back luxuriously.

“My dear fellow,” he said--and Percy knew from the sound of his voice
that he was still laughing in the darkness--“I beg your pardon most
humbly, I assure you. _You_ do not amuse me--as Horace Percy. I
only laugh at certain common human vagaries, which are very humorously
expressed in you at this period of your career.”

Percy’s wounded pride was hardly assuaged. “I can’t see the
application,” he said tartly.

Brennett laid a friendly hand upon his knee. “Don’t ask me to translate
your characteristics, and then quarrel with me for my version. It
seems to me that a charming degree of youthful self-importance and
self-love is suggested in leaving that letter as a good excuse to call
on Miss Vayne to-morrow. Do you think she has no self-love? Will she be
flattered that you forget a matter which she intrusted to you?”

“Oh--I thank you--she will guess why I forgot it,” said Percy hardily.
“If she can’t, I will help her when I call to-morrow.”

Brennett made no answer. That the success of such a scheme should be
jeopardized by such puerilities!

Percy felt that this silence was almost impertinent. But their mutual
position forbade any notice of it. Still he chafed under this sense of
wordless ridicule.

“Oh, talk it out, Brennett, talk it out!” he exclaimed impatiently, at
last.

“Why, it’s no great matter, after all,” said Brennett, laughing
agreeably. “A disappointment will do you good. Life has been too easy
for you. Lucky fellow!”

“A disappointment!” said Percy sharply.

“No grave disappointment, of course,” said Brennett. “I was only
alluding to the letter. In my opinion you will never see it again.”

“Why?” Percy demanded shortly.

“Oh, confound it, boy,” said Brennett, with a blunt, good-natured
intonation, “why, she will give it to Captain Estwicke to hand to Toole
as he drives by; and you may bet your immortal soul that _he_
doesn’t forget it.”

Percy drew the horses suddenly into a walk.

“What makes you say that?” he asked eagerly. “Did you notice anything?”

“Vaguely, very vaguely. But, however that may be, I can understand how
she might think him a man whom she could intrust with a little matter
like this; a man accustomed to responsibility, detail, duty. What do
you mean? Where are you going?”

Percy was wheeling the vehicle round in the narrow road. “Going back
for that letter, that’s all.”

“It’s too late,” Brennett remonstrated. He drew out his watch, and
leaned forward, striving to see the time by the glow of his cigar. He
heard the triumph in his own voice, he felt it in the relaxing muscles
of his face.

Percy made no rejoinder. He lashed the horses savagely and they were
dashing back at a great rate. The old house loomed close upon them, dim
in the midnight, before he saw, slipping through the gloom, the moving
shadow for which he had angrily watched.

It became suddenly stationary. A stentorian “Hello, there!” prevailed
on him to check his horses, and the next moment Estwicke was standing
in the road, with one foot on the hub of the wheel, as he leaned
into the vehicle, and held out to Percy the envelope, with his own
superscription.

“I am instructed,” he said gayly, “to overtake you, and give you that,
and charge you, very severely, not to forget again.”

Both men in the buggy were looking keenly at him as he stood in the
full moonlight. He was elated; he had been laughing; his eyes were
bright; there was a flush on his cheek; he spoke with an ease and a
hearty comradeship that changed him out of recognition; he seemed
utterly unlike the saturnine stranger they had left. He was disposed to
hang upon the wheel and talk companionably.

“May I trouble you for a light, Mr. Brennett?” he said, reaching up
for the other’s cigar. “I might have gotten a match at the house,
but”--glancing back at the lights which were disappearing, one by one,
from the windows--“can’t rouse it after ‘taps.’”

Percy said nothing, and Brennett made amends for his silence.

“Do you drive far to-night, Captain?”

“Only a little matter of seven miles--first-rate road. It’s a fine
country, Mr. Percy, that you have about here,” Estwicke added, as he
turned away. “Good night.”

They lost sight of him before they drew up at Toole’s log-cabin, where
they called lustily, to rouse its occupant.

Somehow, as they stood there motionless, and looked on the vast, dark
stretch of country about them, and the lonely vastness of the sky
above, with no sound but the quavering wail of the owl from out the
recesses of Fort Despair, and the ceaseless monotone of the chanting
frogs, and the vibratory clamor of the cricket and the katydid, and
the weird echoes of their own outcry striking back from the parapets,
it was so drear, so solitary, so infinitely forlorn, that some untried
chord of Maurice Brennett’s nature was smitten strongly for an instant
and set jarring with an unwonted throb. He remembered the woman with
yellow hair whom he had seen here walking up and down and striking her
hands together in mute despair. She had walked thus all night. And
thus she had been found in the morning. It was a mute despair, for
she had spoken no more. She was brought to this pass by the shock of
the arrest, the ignorant people said,--and they said it because they
were ignorant. The shock had only evoked and given direction to some
deep-seated disease of heart or brain, which would have come at last.
But he had set it all in motion; and now he was sorry--he was very
sorry. It was a great price to have paid; but, he argued, a very vague
responsibility. Still, if he could have known, it should never have
happened. And perhaps he did not deceive himself.

He was glad when Toole came slouching out at last; he was even glad
to see the look of settled hate, as the man once more recognized the
witness who had testified against him. It gave Brennett back to mundane
associations, for this was a more familiar emotion than remorse.

He watched Toole’s face change gradually from an expression of stunned
astonishment to one of infinite relief, as he listened to Percy’s
explanation about the work, the wages, and the route.

“Oh, I’ll light out right away!” cried Toole passionately. “God knows I
don’t want to stay hyar.”

Brennett looked forward into the surly glooms hovering about the river,
a smile relaxing his thin lips.

Percy was about to drive on. He hesitated, and glanced around
doubtfully. He had enjoyed doing a real benefaction when once at
it. The humble gratitude of its recipient agreeably titillated his
self-esteem. But his mirror-like nature was reflecting the influences
cast upon it this evening, and with a frankness, and justice, and
modesty that were uncharacteristic, he had an impulse to disclaim the
credit of the kindness. Still, Toole was a rough fellow, to whom he
hardly liked to mention a lady’s name.

As he gathered up the reins, however, he said, a trifle dubiously,--

“You don’t owe me any thanks; all this was suggested to me. You are
indebted to--to--the General’s daughter.”

The man raised his shaggy, tawny head and looked back over his shoulder
with a light of comprehension on his face. “I might hev knowed that,”
he exclaimed naïvely; “’t ain’t the fust time that us pore folks round
hyar hev hed ter thank her.”

Percy drove on, laughing a little; and Brennett was laughing, too,
triumphantly. He was alert, revivified. He also had to thank her.

And in the days that came and went the hawk’s bright eyes were cruelly
vigilant, for the strong prescience of success was upon him.




                             CHAPTER XVII.


IN summer-time, always, Marcia and nature together did much to soften
the traces of that terrible event in the history of the old house.
Flowering vines curtained such of its windows as were still left
glassless. In the black fissures in the stone wall of the terraces,
and the curb of the pavements, where bombs had exploded, lilies grew
tall and stately. The parterre was splendid with variegated color, and
above it hovered always the fluctuating brilliancy of humming-birds
and butterflies, that seemed themselves some impalpable undulatory
blossoming of the fragrant air.

It was close upon noon when Estwicke checked his horse on the drive
next day, and no one was visible except Edgar, who stood upon the front
steps in an airy costume of bare feet and plump calves, brown linen
knickerbockers and blouse. He intently examined something which he held
in his warm, fat hands.

“Is your father at home?” asked Estwicke, in passing up the steps.

“Hy’re, Cap’n--d’ye see my Juny-bug?” demanded Edgar affably, ignoring
the question. “I’ve been on the terrus to ketch me a Juny-bug. An’ I
got him.”

Upon opening his hand there flew into the sunshine a June-bug, its
roving tendencies very effectually checked by a thread tied to one of
its legs.

“Marcia says,” continued Edgar, holding the end of the thread, and
watching with complacent eyes his victim’s evolutions, “Marcia says
that no boy who is mean enough ter tie a string ter a Juny-bug’s leg
needn’t never expec’ ter go ter Heaven. He’ll make a mighty mistake if
he does expec’ ter go _there_! That’s what Marsh says!”

Estwicke was too pre-occupied to comment on this singular doctrine of
election. He rang the bell without further questions, while Edgar, with
that insensibility to appropriateness, eminently characteristic of the
infant mind, sat down with a long breath of enjoyment upon the hottest
step of the whole flight, in the broad glare of the sun, and watched
his Juny-bug’s airy gyrations and listened to the musical whir of its
wings, totally indifferent to the prospective exclusion from eternal
bliss.

From the library could be seen vistas of uninhabited rooms, with bare
floors and curtainless windows, for all the doors stood open this June
day. The wind swept through with a rush, bringing the warm fragrance of
clover from the battle-field and the scent of the roses that climbed
the pillars of the portico. There seemed in this fierce weather much
method in the madly ostentatious proportions of the house. Within was
a large breeze-filled, perfumed twilight, while without, the earth
was scorching under a furious sun, and the drowsy drone of the cicada
pervaded the heated air.

In the strongest draught General Vayne sat, alone, at leisure, reading
his favorite Addison’s Cato. The anxiety occasioned by observing his
genuine liking for Percy had heavily re-enforced a wild fear, which
had already beset Estwicke, that General Vayne might, from political
prejudice, withhold his consent. These reflections had given the young
man a sleepless night. But, with the revivifying matutinal influences,
he grew more hopeful. He determined to put it to the test at once--to
make the attack all along the line. He argued within himself that this
friendship for his rival was not of necessity inimical to his interest,
and, as to his principles and his position in the army, even when the
war was at its fiercest, enamoured Yankee officers did not, as a rule,
find the cruel papas of the South so very obdurate.

Perhaps it was well that he could not divine, as he made his
demonstration, the amazement it excited in General Vayne, whose latest
impressions of his guest were from the witness-stand in the Jartree
case. His long absence from home had precluded all suspicion of the
little romance recently dramatized here. He had never thought to ask if
that forced invitation to the fishing-party had been accepted--for this
had seemed out of the question--and he had supposed that until last
evening Estwicke had not again been to the house. He was possessed by a
towering incredulity when a modest allusion was made to his daughter’s
gracious acceptance of the devotion offered her, and with difficulty
restrained himself from telling the young man, from the plenitude of
paternal wisdom, that he must be mistaken. But when General Vayne once
realized the situation, he quickly came to his conclusion. Marcia
was too young, far too young, to know her own mind. He determined to
put his foot down on this engagement at once. He believed Estwicke a
coarse-natured, hard, cold, callous man, to whom no woman’s happiness
could be safely committed. He was always convinced of the justness of
his decisions; but he recognized a certain awkwardness here, for he
could not put this into words. In decency he could not tell a man who
had just paid Marcia the highest compliment in his power that he was so
contemptuously considered. The puzzled father cast about vainly for
some plausible alternative. Even he appreciated the inconsistency that
so unprejudiced and temperate a thinker as he deemed himself should
base a grave objection on political differences. Estwicke’s position in
the army offered, however, a vague elusive prospect of extrication from
this dilemma. General Vayne honestly did not think Marcia’s happiness
would be promoted by going some time to the frontier with a husband
liable to be scalped any fine day. And he felt, with a sudden strong
rush of emotion, that he would not intrust her to any man--_any_
man--so far away. His humane intention was to keep his son-in-law
as much as possible under his own eye--the average son-in-law would
probably rather risk the Indians. But Captain Estwicke _might_
offer to resign; for aught General Vayne knew he was a man of fortune,
and his pay the merest superfluity. Thus the strategist determined he
would not advance an objection that could be so summarily swept away.

To one whose tact and policy are, in his own opinion, boundless, no
embarrassment need last long. General Vayne resolved, autocratically,
that he would assign no reason for withholding his consent; he would
merely intimate to Estwicke that his addresses were not acceptable, and
no doubt the young man would at once withdraw.

In projecting plans of action, General Vayne took slight note of
the volition of others. Experience taught him nothing, and he had
occasion for great surprise when Estwicke urgently pressed for the
reasons of the refusal, justifying his persistence by the altogether
unexpected argument that his dearest interests were at stake. And now
was presented the striking and unique spectacle of one man eagerly
insisting that another should insult him, which the other politely but
firmly declined to do.

They were restrained in manner, voice, and word by the rigid decrees
of the conventionalities, but, nevertheless, in their opposing
determination they fretted each other like a pair of fiery horses.

In the subsequent interview with Marcia it was still more difficult for
Estwicke to cloak his indignation.

“Your father will not give his consent,” he said briefly.

A startled expression sprang into her eyes. “Why?”

“He vouchsafed no reason!” cried Estwicke with angry sarcasm. “When
I had the audacity to ask for his reason, he said that it was not
necessary to discuss the matter further, and that he hoped I would
consider it definitively settled.”

Marcia walked in silence to a chair and sat down, revolving in her
mind the unexpected complication, and hardly sure of what she felt and
thought in the shock of the surprise.

The library was dim and shadowy, for the blinds excluded the sunbeams,
except one glittering marauder that forced an entrance through a
crevice and raided fantastically about the room when the wind stirred
the vines outside. Now the bright gleam touched the girl’s hair, now
it shimmered over the fluted petal-like ruffles of her dress, and now
it flitted across her face as she looked up at Estwicke, who stood
opposite her, leaning with one elbow on the mantel-piece and his hat in
his hand.

“Perhaps,” said Marcia, with a sinking heart and a keen despair, “it’s
because your politics are all wrong.”

His feelings were so deeply involved that he did not resent even this
sweeping imputation of wholesale error.

“I’ll vote for Genghis Khan if he wishes!” he declared impetuously.
“I’ll swear allegiance to the king of Dahomey! I’ll renounce every
political and religious conviction. But I can’t believe that’s the
reason,” he added more calmly. “We might as well imagine it’s because
I don’t belong to the church.”

“What do you think is the reason, then?”

In all Estwicke’s efforts and schemes the cohesive element of policy
was lacking. And thus his life was full of rugged incongruities; there
were great rifts in his friendships; and now, all unconsciously, he was
driving that wedge of tactless speech in among his own heart-strings.

“It is very plain,” he said bluntly, “he wants you to marry Percy.”

“I should be glad, Captain Estwicke,” cried Marcia angrily, “if I could
never hear you call that man’s name again.”

“Well, forgive me this time. I’m not jealous about your feeling for
Percy, _now_,” stipulated Estwicke. “I have given that up.”

Which was indeed true, as his every faculty was absorbed in
apprehensive jealousy on account of her father’s feeling for Percy.

He turned his hat in his hand, and eyed it for a moment with exceeding
bitterness. When he again looked down at her, he detected something in
the expression of her face which gave him a sudden comprehension of
the manner in which she regarded her father’s opposition. For once in
his life he was not precipitate. The knowledge of all he had at stake
steadied him. He sat down near her. “Tell me, Marcia,” he said, with a
calmness that sub-acutely astonished him, “Tell me that all this shall
not make any difference between us. Shall it, dearest?”

“No,” she replied softly.

He felt a thrill of infinite relief. He leaned forward and caught both
her hands in his. “And if you marry me now, at once,” he began, more
confidently.

There was a flash of astonishment in her eyes. She drew back suddenly.

“I only meant--that--that I can never care for anyone else; but I
couldn’t be married without papa’s consent; how can you think it?”

Estwicke did not intend to be tragic or theatrical, but his manner as
he dropped her hand and walked away to the window would have done him
credit on any stage. Presently, however, he came and stood opposite to
her, leaning against the mantel-piece once more.

“If your father would advance any objection in which sensible people
could acquiesce,” he argued, “I might understand the position you take.
But he has no objection. It is because he prefers Percy. Don’t break my
heart, Marcia.”

“Papa would never forgive me--never. But don’t say I break your heart.
You must wait, and be cheerful while you wait. And if he does not
change at last, you must forget it all. I don’t mind being miserable,
much.” Her lips quivered. “But you--_you_ must be happy!”

In discussing the subject with her father that afternoon, Marcia was
not so dutiful as she had been in his absence.

“I think you were needlessly rude to Captain Estwicke,” she said.

General Vayne had tried to shirk the interview, fearing an unpleasant
scene. Even now he had his papers before him on the table, and had
dipped his pen in the ink. He made no reply, and did not raise his eyes.

“I don’t intend to marry Horace Percy,” continued Marcia. “It is
useless, papa, for you to insist.”

Now indeed her father looked up. “And pray,” he said, with cold
constraint, “who told you that I wanted you to many Horace Percy?”

“Captain Estwicke,” promptly replied the guileless Marcia.

She was not prepared for the effect of her words. In the instantaneous
change on her father’s face she saw in astonishment that he was deeply
offended. She had so little knowledge of the sordid ways of the world
that it did not occur to her that there could be any preference
between Percy and Estwicke, save that which her heart might dictate.
In a normal state of affairs General Vayne would have been equally
free from imagining that any one would attribute to him mercenary
motives. Lately, however, he had been greatly harried and pressed to
the wall by his debts; he knew that even a stranger in the town could
not remain unaware of his financial straits; his anxieties had made
his sensibilities tender, and in a flash he ascribed to Estwicke that
unworthy suspicion. He resented it as he would have resented a blow. He
could have forgiven it as readily.

“I have nothing whatever to say to you about Horace Percy,” he replied.
“And only this about Captain Estwicke--that if you do not break this
engagement you will disobey the first positive command I have ever seen
fit to give you.”

“I hope you are not angry with me, papa,” she said. Her fair young face
was full of trouble; there was a suggestion of unshed tears in her
heavy eyelids. He was a trifle softened as he glanced toward her. “And
I don’t see why you are so prejudiced against Captain Estwicke,” she
continued.

He hardened instantly. “I don’t care to discuss the matter further,” he
said. “And I am busy now.”

But when she had left the room he pushed the papers from him, and
leaned back idly in his chair--not even his tangled financial
tribulations could operate as a counter-irritant. He had never been so
deeply stung, this _ci-devant_ magnate and millionaire, as by the
fancied imputation that he would scheme to prop his fallen fortunes by
marrying off his daughter to a rich man. It was intolerable that this
gross slur should be cast upon him. And he had never known so strong an
emotion as the repugnance it induced for Captain Estwicke.




                            CHAPTER XVIII.


GRAFFY Beale had skulked back from the jail to his old burrow in the
huge traverse. His sense of liberty expressed itself only in the fact
that he was free to lie here in the deep glooms under the earth as if
he were dead. Through the jagged fissure, where once was the door of
the powder-magazine, he had no glimpse of the midsummer world save a
narrow section of the parapet on which the lavished blood had bloomed
so splendidly in trumpet-flowers. To his upward glance they defined
themselves gorgeously against the blue sky, where sometimes a pale
poetic moon swung among them in the full glare of the yellow sunshine.
A bird might flit by; the grasshoppers drowsily droned; lizards basked.
When the sky grew gold, and purple, and faintly green, behind those
swaying red blossoms, he looked up to see the evening star in the amber
haze, and it looked down to see the haggard misery in his mowing face.
Sometimes a moonbeam stole to the fissure, and the mists entered into
fellowship with him, and they inhabited the powder-magazine together.
When they fell to shifting and shimmering, and asserting weird forms
in the dusky dreariness; when a strange tumult sprang up all along the
parapets; when the tramp of marching hosts and the clash of arms shook
the earth; when the whirling wheels of the light artillery went by on
the wind; when all the night broke forth with those strange lipless
shrieks of the dead, with the blare of their bugles, with the roll of
their drums, he shivered and trembled, and turned his grimacing face to
the wall. But the ghosts had done him no harm--and in these days they
seemed nearer akin than the living.

Now that his terrors of the law were over, he had developed in the
reaction a morbid shrinking from the world, and his griefs--they were
many--renewed their power. He said there was no place for him--he
wanted no food, no drink, no home. He would waste out his life, wear it
out, offer it in expiation, here.

Days had passed since he had heard a stir close at hand other than the
flutter of a bird or a rabbit’s leaping rush. Suddenly there sounded,
on the parapet without, hesitating footsteps, heavy panting, the sharp
cracking of brush and weeds, which indicated a struggle with the
brambles. He rose from the ground, tremulous and weak, and, holding
in his hand his wool hat, which had the best of reasons for being
fresh and unfaded by the sun, he stepped out through the fissure. The
light struck full upon his yellow hair, that was as fine and soft as a
woman’s, and gave out a glimmer like burnished gold. As he turned his
head upward there was something ineffably repugnant in his pitiful,
jail-bleached, mowing face. But delighted recognition resounded in the
shrill cry set up suddenly on the parapet--there was a great scuffling
under the blackberry bushes, and a dirty, tattered, tow-headed urchin
came sliding, with an avalanche of dislodged stones, down the steep
interior slope.

“They tole me ter fotch ye!” he piped out tumultuously on a high
key. Then he sat down on the tread of the banquette, placed his
hands on either knee, and drew a long breath. His attention was
abruptly arrested by the sight of the sun-blanched skull of a noble
charger, flung here, perhaps, when upturned by the plough in the
fields without. The boy’s curious eye detected the minie ball still
half embedded in the splintered bone. He glanced over his shoulder,
furtively, fearfully, for the unseen terrors that lurked about the
place. “Whyn’t ye go ’way from hyar, now that ye air out’n jail?” he
demanded impatiently.

Graffy said nothing. He was only wondering vaguely why Pickie Tait
should have sought him here. The boy was called “Pickie” by reason of a
certain deft accomplishment of picking and stealing, sometimes--“Quick
Pickie;” he was the hardiest urchin in the county, and all the juvenile
iniquity perpetrated within five miles was easily traced to his door.
“Waal,” he observed, wiping his hot, dirty face with his tattered
shirt-sleeve, “I ain’t a-goin’ through these hyar harnted forts agin by
myself, ye hear me! Like ter hev been skeered ter death fower or five
times whilst I war a-gittin’ hyar. The folks hev sent fur ye ter kem
an’ play the fiddle at the infair. Las’ night they scoured the country,
mighty nigh, ter git a-holt o’ ye in time ter play the fiddle fur
Jeemes Blake’s weddin’. They rid hyar, an’ they rid thar! Nobody knowed
whar ye be.”

He cocked up his sharp eye reprehensively. Then he rose, went nimbly
to the old powder magazine, and peered in with amicable curiosity.
“Got yer fiddle in thar?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder and
nodding gayly, his broad mouth a-grin.

“Ye-es.” The man flung out the word between his chattering teeth and
his unruly muscles. “The fiddle is thar.”

“I’ll tote it,” said the boy officiously. He treated his red, round
face to another smear from his ragged sleeve. Then he cut a wiry caper,
kicking up a festive heel. “Kem on!” he cried imperiously. “They say
that now ez ye air out’n jail ye hev got ter play the fiddle at the
infair.”

And Graffy followed.

Perhaps it was by way of making her flout at humanity more complete, of
pointing her grim jest, that Nature encased a great gift here--a gift
that should be as useless, as unavailing as a wayside weed. But like
the wayside weed, it throve mightily in sterile conditions where naught
else might grow.

His wild, barbaric melodies came to him as the wind comes; no one
knows how, nor whence. They were a defiance of science, but in their
spontaneous ecstasy they swayed, they thrilled, they held. In the midst
of the infair that night, when their passionate, tumultuous, shivering
chords set all the midnight a-quiver, the strong rapture of his rude
art once more laid hold upon his heart, and it grew warm again. As he
sat on the cabin porch, his unnaturally white cheek pressed to the
instrument, his eyes were fixed sometimes on the stars which seemed
to throb in sympathy with the rhythmic vibrations of the strings,
sometimes on the red interior, where the dancing figures of young men
and girls whirled in a cloud of dust that was idealized into a golden
haze by the soft light of the kerosene lamp. Merry guffaws proceeded
from the elders, ranged against the wall or thronging the cooler porch,
where they smoked and spat profusely through the white and lilac
blossoms of the luxuriant jack-bean, and among the yellow globes of the
gourd vines which climbed to the roof. Once there burst forth from the
violin a strain so rapturous, so poignantly beautiful that its effect
was like that of some impassioned eloquence. A slow, white-haired
codger, the bridegroom’s father, paused in lighting his pipe, and let
the match burn to his fingers, while he stared at the instrument and
the uncouth musician. “Graffy do fairly make that fiddle talk!” he
exclaimed.

When the bow paused, and the reel was finished, and the elders made way
for the over-heated young people to get out into the air and walk in
couples, arm in arm, up and down the dusty turnpike, or flirt and make
love under the apple-trees, or sit--a noisy, hilarious crew--on the
rickety steps, this man, the host, sauntered up to the musician.

“S’prisin’ how ye play, Graffy,” he remarked affably.

Graffy looked down at the violin and twanged the strings. “Toler’ble
well,” he admitted, in his shrill, gasping voice, “cornsiderin’ I never
hed no showin’.”

“Shucks! showin’ ’s nothin’!” said the old man, with that supreme
contempt for science so characteristic of ignorance.

“I hearn tell in town,” said a black-bearded, jeans-clad fellow
lounging against a post close by, “ez Patton--I don’t mean Bob; I
speaks of his brother Jim, the jailer--waal, Jim say ez he air a-tryin’
mighty hard ter put up some sort’n job on ye ter git ye an’ yer fiddle
back thar agin. He say they air all mighty lonesome round them diggin’s
now, sure. He say they all ’low ez ye wouldn’t know it fur the same
place. He say ye kin play all sorts o’ chunes out o’ yer own head. He
say ye kin even play hyme chunes wonderful.”

The musician glanced from one to the other, his pallid, grimacing face
indistinctly seen in the light from within the door. They might not
know if he smiled, but he twanged at the string with the air of a man
who receives a compliment.

“I’d a-reckoned ye’d hev furgot how ter play all them months ez ye war
a-hidin’ out,” said the black-bearded man. “Ye never tetched yer bow
then, I’ll bet, fur enny fool would know yer whank from enny other
man’s sawing, ez fur ez they could hear it.”

Even Graffy’s face, debarred though it seemed of expression, changed
subtly. He took the fiddle and began to turn it about mechanically.

“That was a mighty queer dodge ennyhow, yer hidin’ out,” said the
rough, black-bearded man, whose coarse disregard of the other’s
sensibilities was perhaps unintentional. “Ye ought ter hev lef’ the
thing ter men at fust,” he pursued didactically. “That’s jestice. Ye
_hev_ ter leave sech questions ter men. I can’t understan’ how ye
hed grit enough ter face shot an’ shell in the old war times, an’ now
ye air afeard ter leave things ter men.”

“Whar hev ye been stayin’ sence ye been out--at Tom’s?” asked the host.

“No,” gasped Graffy; “Tom an’ me hev bruk.”

“I hearn,” said the black-bearded man, animatedly retailing the gossip,
“ez how Tom hev never said nare word ter ye sence he was took; they say
he warned Patton ’t warn’t safe ter leave ye an’ him tergether, kase
he’d do ye a damage, sure; they say he hev jes’ gin ye up an’ cast ye
off.”

“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed the master of the house, upon this dramatic
recital. “I dunno what ails Tom Toole, to sot hisself up ez better’n
Graffy Beale.”

“I s’pose he thinks Graffy fotched all his troubles on him,” said the
black-bearded man dispassionately.

“Ef he hed a mind ter renounce ye he oughter hev done it a-fust,”
declared the old codger. “Then he’d ’a’ been cl’ar o’ blame an’ trouble
too. That’s like Tom Toole--do all he kin fur a-body, an’ grudge it
arterward. But law! we hain’t got time to be a-talkin’ ’bout sech ez
that. The folks air on the floor agin, standin’ up ter dance. They
all look powerful peart, an’ spry, an’ straight, don’t they?” He
admiringly surveyed the two rows of rosy-faced young rustics through
the gleaming haze of dust. “I’m mightily afeard, though, that hell is
a-gapin’ fur ’em.”

“Shucks! They’re young yit,” said the black-bearded man, too leniently
for the “perfessin’ member” and anti-dancing theorist that he was.

“Jes’ fryin’ size, I’m thinkin’,” chuckled the old fellow. “Play
up, Graffy; gin ’em a good chune ter dance ter the devil by. That’s
edzactly whar ye air all bound fur,” he added, raising his voice, as
he leaned through the open door and admonished the young people with a
gesticulatory, skinny forefinger. “Play up, Graffy, an’ let ’em dance
ter the devil.”

So Graffy played up.

The freshness of dawn and dew was in the air when he was tramping
along the turnpike. Only by degrees the fences on either hand detached
themselves from the dense gloom. The sad, gray light made day seem
hardly less drear than darkness. But in the distance a purple mass,
which he knew was Fort Despair, slowly outlined itself against a
faintly roseate suffusion in the east, that was deepening and reddening
all along the horizon. Suddenly it expanded into a myriad of divergent
lines, that shot up into the sky, quivering from red into the purest
gold, then into a dazzling white effulgence that the eye might not
gaze upon. The birds burst into song, the wind rose, and for a mile
throughout the level country he could see the jagged line of the works
take the first benedictory touch of the sun.

Perhaps it was the matutinal purity and peace that rested upon the
land, less like holiness than forgiveness, which revived in him a
yearning to which he thought he had grown callous. He watched for a
long time, from the opposite bank of the river, the smoke stealing
timorously up from Tom Toole’s log-cabin, and when the first wagoner of
the day came down the turnpike and hallooed lustily for the ferryman,
he, too, went to the water’s edge and waited for the boat.

“I’ll be fixed nigher arter this, an’ kin hear folks call,” said the
new ferryman apologetically to the teamster. “Tom Toole gits out ’n his
house terday, an’ I gits in termorrow. Mighty ill-convenient it’s been
fur me at my brother’s place, way down yander round the bend.”

When Graffy had trudged up the steep bank, he paused and laid his hand
on Toole’s door; then he looked back over his shoulder at the cruel old
redoubt, with its flaunting flowers, its darting birds, and the grace
of the sunshine upon it. The memory of all that had come and gone swept
over him tumultuously, and he turned away without a sign.

He vacillated when he was again in the road; he glanced at the house;
he turned toward it; once more he turned away, shaking his head
tremulously and smiting his hands together.

He was sitting, when at last Toole opened the door, on a rock beside
the milestone, mowing and grimacing at the house like an ugly dream.
The burly master of the cabin stood staring, his tawny head unkempt,
his great beard streaming tangled upon his breast, a lowering, dogged,
dangerous look usurping the surprise in his eyes.

But the sight of Toole intensified the longing that had seemed to wear
itself out in the hardships of prison and the loneliness and despair of
the old powder-magazine. Now it asserted its redoubled force.

“Oh, Tom,” quavered Graffy, extending his long, deft fingers that were
unnaturally white, too, “I hev kem hyar ter shake hands with ye afore
ye goes away. Ye hev done too much fur me ter grudge me that. I never
knowed how ’t would end--fur _her_--no more’n ye did. What ye hev
done, an’ tried ter do fur me, air wuth all my life’s work, an’ more,
too,--more, too.”

“Yer life’s work!” cried Toole bitterly. “Yer life’s work air them two
graves what ye hev holped ter fill. When ye gits ter studyin’ ’bout me,
go look at them.”

And he shut the door.




                             CHAPTER XIX.


THE great sun that went down over the vast sweeps of the battle-field,
and slipped into the dawning day lying in wait beyond the wide horizon,
had a potent solemnity and majestic breadth of effect, which were
lacking in the sunsets of the mountains, despite their melancholy. Here
all nature besides was subordinate to the everlasting hills. The dark,
mysterious, heavily-wooded Cumberland spurs cancelled the rest of the
universe. They piled, one above another, their long, craggy, horizontal
barriers against the clouds, and limited the infinite sky. The sun was
dragged down beyond them before the day was done, leaving the afternoon
valley dominated by their moody shadows. Diana and her hounds had an
up-hill jog of it, till they could slip her silver leash on the purple
heights, and course after the fleeing darkness through the wild world
of ravine and cliff, roaring cataract and placid lick, tangled woods
and scanty clearing.

For it was a wild world, so rugged and primeval of aspect that it
might seem it was not made for man. The impression humanity left here
was slight, discordant,--only an alien incongruity foisted upon the
scene. The savage fastnesses were a wilderness still, although the gay,
flimsy, many-galleried buildings of a summer hotel teetered on the
verge of a frowning precipice. A cataract, that dashed headlong down
the gorge, charged with some thunderous message to the forests, gave
it voice, overwhelming with its sonorous periods the flippant chatter
of bevies of young girls, who, attended by few and highly-prized
cavaliers, drank of the chalybeate water bubbling out from the
neighboring cliffs. The cicada sang deep into the night. Myriads of
fire-flies quivered over the inaccessible heights of the looming black
mountain opposite, whence one might hear the wildcat shriek, while the
band in the ball-room was playing a waltz, and the throb of dancing
feet kept time to the rhythmic strain. Nowhere had nature and art
demonstrated an affinity save in the fresh, delicious fragrance of mint
which lurked alike among the abysses and on the piazzas, and rooted in
the mind a deep, immovable faith that somewhere there was a julep in
the air.

It was an infinitely tame world to John Fortescue.

“This is the length of my tether,” he was in the habit of saying,
with an air of resignation. He felt that there was a certain
inappropriateness in the presence of a man of his stamp and pretension
at an obscure little watering-place like Bandusia Springs, for its
halcyon days preceded by ten years the present summer, when it was
timorously entering upon its first season since the war. Only the
fact of important litigation in Graftenburg, which might be favorably
compromised at any time, and necessitate his return thither within
twelve hours at a call from his counsel, might explain how he could
reconcile himself to the flat and spiritless conditions of existence
here.

The place seemed the paradise of connubiality. It was overrun with
children, whose health was understood to be fostered by mountain
air and mineral water. The rocks everywhere echoed their shrill
clamor. Perambulators occupied the plank walks, to the confusion and
exclusion of pedestrians. The society was largely composed of sober,
unimaginative Benedicts, who could evolve no more original idea of life
than the routine of talking politics in the morning, driving out in the
afternoon, each with his own wife, and gracing the white-washed walls
of the ball-room in the evening, solemnly watching the young people
dance. Of these young people, the ladies were in their teens; their
partners, callow collegians,--callow enough to be conscious of their
fledgling state, and to entertain a self-immolating admiration of Mr.
Fortescue, a man who had progressed so far up the scale of being, and
who was so handsomely schooled by experience, as to care nothing for
the eventful balls at Bandusia. He might hear only the vague swing of
the waltz music in the distance, while he consoled his loneliness in
the billiard-room by fancy shots that made even the thoroughly-seasoned
attendant stare. For they were wonderful. Sometimes the youth of
Bandusia stood around the table and looked on, feeling effaced the
while, since Fortescue, although the centre of a crowd, skilfully
preserved the manner of being alone, cognizant only of his own
presence. He would have no opponent to quake before those marvellous
runs and stand aghast at his “nursing,” so delicate and dextrous that
it rivalled the zealous coddling of the infants at connubial Bandusia;
for, somewhat contemptuously, it is true, he recognized the adolescence
of his spectators.

“I should like to take a game with you, Mr. Fortescue,” said a young
sprig, one day, rendered reckless by that potent elixir, chalybeate.

Fortescue glanced up quickly, his cue poised above the table, and the
attitude displaying his fine, lithe figure to great advantage. “My good
young friend,” he exclaimed presently, “you discredit my humanity.”

But there came a day when Fortescue’s humanity was lightly esteemed
at Bandusia. That exuberance of notoriety in which he had flourished
in New Orleans, and which had so vexed the sensitive soul of Maurice
Brennett, had been checked by the narrow restrictions of life here. He
seemed to the casual observer only a quiet gentleman, who, by reason
of a long absence abroad, had become unacclimated to his native New
Orleans, and, pending the adjustment of business affairs, sojourned
in these salubrious mountains. Now and then accident threw him into
the heavy company of the other quiet gentlemen of the place. Under the
stress of his exile from his own accustomed sphere he was for a time
as lethargic as he deemed them. But the singular fascination which
he was wont to exert upon other men began, even in this trance-like
existence, to unconsciously assert its power. His interest was half
dormant, and he did not notice, until it grew very marked, the
preference for his conversation which had been developed by one of
the party, a man of considerable prominence in business and social
circles, of some mental and colloquial activity, but a heavy weight
physically. They became familiar associates after Fortescue’s discovery
of this predilection. They talked away long, idle hours, as they lay at
length on some fern-covered slope, and watched the distant mountains
changing in the sunset from purest azure to an illusory, amethystine
tint that was itself a poem. They smoked many a meditative cigar in the
observatory, a mere skeleton of a building, perched on the verge of a
sheer precipice. In company they visited the stables, where, however,
Mr. Fortescue exhibited more zeal and knowledge concerning horse-flesh
in general than interest in his new acquaintance’s sober, fat, sleek
family trotters; they cemented their friendship in the domestic circle,
and he decorously accepted the position of a friend of the family.
Often the two were together until late at night in Fortescue’s room.
It was at some little distance from the fair and flaunting hotel, and
situated in a dark, unlovely, unpainted building, which was consigned
to the use of the bachelor fraternity, and grimly called “St. Paul’s.”
But, although still vulnerable to malice, the bachelors were out of
earshot of the babies.

Strange rumors concerning these vigils got afloat somehow. Certain
cabalistic words drifted through the open windows to belated strollers
in the woods below. But the suspicions which seemed too grotesque for
fact were merged in certainty when a couple of the callow youngsters,
going out betimes on some mountain excursion, chanced to encounter this
elderly wight as he emerged from Mr. Fortescue’s room. The first sad,
pale glimmer of dawn was straggling through the high, unwashed window
of the narrow hall and fell upon his puffy, red face, that, despite its
superabundant flesh, had a rigidity of aspect. His eyes were bloodshot;
his gait a trifle unsteady; he recoiled from the stare of the
bewildered boys as if he had received a blow in the face. Through the
open door streamed the soft lamplight, and in its midst was Fortescue,
fresh, flushed, triumphant, a pack of cards in his hands, a decanter
and a couple of glasses on the table by which he stood, a bottle or two
rolling empty on the floor beneath it, and a tense vibration of elation
in his voice.

“Your revenge, Colonel, whenever you like,” he was saying. “I can’t
sympathize, you know. Good morning, gentlemen;” and _his_ eye
fell unabashed on the passers-by. “But I offer you all the comfort in
revenge--that you can get.”

And so it came about that the “Colonel,” instead of paying his
board-bills, was obliged to borrow the money of another Colonel who
kept the hotel, to take his family and himself home in the dog-days.

And all Bandusia was agog.

Although Fortescue thus contributed much to the entertainment and
excitement of the place, his own idiosyncrasies had not with himself
the force of novelty, and proved less edifying. Bereft of the diversion
of this new friendship, his days grew dull. One afternoon he was so
far reduced as to share a petty interest that swayed all Bandusia
at this hour: when the cliffs began to echo the mellow resonance of
the stage-horn from the foot of the mountain, and the arrival of the
coach, the great event of the day, was expected. With his cue in his
hand, he leaned out of the window of the billiard-room and gazed far
down the bosky recesses of the precipitous slopes where, now and then,
a gap in the foliage gave glimpses of the winding road. The purple
splendor of the sunset glorified the distant mountain-summits; they
glowed transfigured, like the heights of heaven. Below, all along the
coves and ravines, and in the heavily-timbered valley, skulked the
dusky shadows of the coming night, like troglodytes emerging from the
cavernous earth. A mist sifted through the chasms. Among the wild
tangles of “the laurel,” a cow-bell jangled faintly. The cicada’s
song grew loud. The pungent fragrance of the humble herbs, nestling
by the waterside, drifted by on the air that throbbed responsive to
every eloquent apostrophe of the declamatory cataract. Human voices
rose thence after a time, for the rocks below the fall had been made
by immemorial custom a resting-place for those able-bodied passengers
who were constrained, either by the tyranny of the stage-driver
or motives of compassion for his horses, to walk up the mountain.
Something in one of these voices struck John Fortescue as singularly
familiar--something _ore rotundo_, something indicative of a
benignity of patronage, as it descanted on the sublimity of the
scenery; it convinced him that Colonel Walter Percy had, for the
present, forsworn condescending to his fellow-men, and had come to
pat Nature on the back for a while. Thus the sight of the old man,
pompously trudging along in advance of the vehicle, the dust of his
journey thick on his hot red face, his linen duster, his big Panama
hat, and dimming the lustre of his silver hair and beard, was no
surprise to the sybarite who, cool and clean, looked down from the
giddy heights of the billiard-room on the summit of the crags, waved
his hand, and shouted out a welcome.

Colonel Percy glanced up and bowed in response with as much dignity as
it is in human anatomy to bow upward vertically. Then the clustering
leaves enveloped him and hid him from sight. Presently a heavy tread on
the steps of the billiard-room announced that he had taken the short
cut thither. “I knew you were at Bandusia,” he said, as he held out his
hand. “I heard something to that effect; yes, I heard so when I was in
Graftenburg--the city.”

Fortescue supplemented the fact of his presence with the story of his
involved interests, and the tyranny of his counsel in reeling out so
little line. “I find it dull as the grave here. But for the fear of
yellow fever I should as soon be in New Orleans, deserted though it is.”

“Why,--my--dear--sir!” exclaimed the old man, with a supreme ridicule
that might well become a medical authority, striving to dispel the
vaporings of an ignorant superstition, “believe me, you can have the
yellow fever but once. It is not in human nature to do that thing
_twice_. Not in human nature. No, sir!”

Fortescue’s face changed suddenly. He stared blankly at his
interlocutor, as if some strong surprise or doubt lurked within him. It
was only thus suggested. In a moment he turned lightly to the table,
bent down, and with an airy stroke of the cue sent a red ball glowing
across the green cloth.

“And you think once isn’t enough, eh?” said the elderly joker,
continuing to twinkle upon him with the affable superiority of rallying
laughter. “Let me see--that was in ’39--terrible epidemic! I was going
down, by invitation, to your father’s place for safety--Paturin--yes,
the plantation--met a runner to stop me--the fever had appeared in the
family--yes--you, and your sister Estelle, and your mother, and--let
me see--no--no--your father had it before--years before. They had my
sympathy--my dearest sympathy. I wrote to them. I did write. But I
pledge you my honor I accepted no more invitations to Paturin for a
season. Cure means future exemption. _You_ need never shun New
Orleans.”

But Fortescue, still knocking the balls about on the table, said that
nevertheless he _was_ afraid. And when he lifted his face he
looked afraid.

The old gentleman, however, was now absorbed in a budget of envelopes,
which he drew slowly and magisterially from his pocket, closely
scanning the superscription of each. “I had the pleasure, sir,” he
said, detaching his attention with difficulty from the papers, “of
meeting--before I quitted Graftenburg--a gentleman--ah, is this
it?--no--a gentleman who has some connection with you in business
matters. He sought an introduction to me through the kind offices
of--of--what have I here?--of Mr. Maurice Brennett.”

Once more Fortescue’s manner and attitude changed. That strong, fully
vitalized look was in his eyes again. Its spirit was expressed in
every gesture. “Is Mr. Brennett in Graftenburg?” he asked eagerly,
disregardful of the vague gentleman who had business with him, and who
had apparently sent him some token which Colonel Percy was striving to
separate from the chaos of his own correspondence.

“He was there only for a day,” Colonel Percy answered, still
dexterously shuffling his letters as if he were stocking cards; “let me
see,--the day of his encounter with Mr. Travis.”

“An encounter with Travis!” Fortescue exclaimed sharply.

The old man’s hands were still, and he looked up, laughing with a sort
of cumbrous slyness.

“Aha! you see, when you tell the world good-by, and say, ‘I have done
with you,--you baking, broiling planet,--I go for my good pleasure
to the cool retreat of sylvan shades,’--the first whiff of a mundane
sensation makes you quite ready to get back into the frying-pan and
stand the temperature for the sake of the company,--take a hand, as
it were, in this little sublunary game, which we call life. Chip
along,--yes, chip along.”

Somehow the propinquity of Mr. Fortescue suggested this wicked
phrasing, and the old man repeated it with the relish of feeling
in a degree up to snuff. “Chip along--yes. Well, sir; well, they
contrived to keep this altercation out of the papers,--the public
prints. Still it was notorious. Deeply regretted by the friends of both
gentlemen--although Mr. Brennett was popularly held blameless in the
matter. Blameless. But, in fact, he is a blameless man.”

“Emphatically,” assented Fortescue; there was, however, so strong an
expression of irony in his curving upper lip that perhaps he himself
became conscious of this lapse of facial control, for he drew down the
long ends of his auburn mustache as he continued with his gracious air.
“Let me remind you that you have not yet told me the story.”

“Aha! the frying-pan is pretty interesting, eh?--you would like to hear
a little more of the sizzle and sputter? Well, sir,--well,--let me
see.” Colonel Percy hesitated, looking meditatively upward, his sheaves
of papers in either hand, and slightly balancing himself alternately
on the heels and toes of his boots, which creaked pleasantly with the
motion. “They met in the office of some hotel in Graftenburg,--the
city, you know. Travis made an effort to strike Brennett in the face,
without a moment’s warning. In the face, sir, in the face. Brennett
caught his arm, tried to quiet him, demanded an explanation. Travis
stated that he wished to strike him for the purpose of forcing a
challenge, when he would take the utmost pleasure in shooting Mr.
Brennett.”

This suggestion seemed to please Fortescue. He laughed out buoyantly,
gayly, irrepressibly, boyishly. Then he leaned forward, half supporting
himself on his cue, so eager a listener that Colonel Percy felt all the
stimulus of oratory and an audience.

“Well, sir,--well, the altercation came about from this cause:--Travis
accused Brennett of having, with interested motives, set his creditors
on him,--the usurers, you know. Usurious money-lenders. It seems that
Travis’s affairs here in Tennessee were much involved, aside from
his mining interests in the West, which I understand were hopelessly
embarrassed. Nevertheless, Mr. Brennett bought out these interests,
assuming of course their liabilities, and with the money thus furnished
Travis was enabled to make a satisfactory compromise with his
creditors here, and retain a handsome surplus. Generous of Brennett,
eh? Generous?”

“Characteristically generous,” Fortescue agreed.

“But Travis, although he was reconciled personally, and apologized
for his violence, was not satisfied. He declared openly that Brennett
had ‘skinned’ him. That was the expression he used. Skinned. Still he
sailed for Liverpool,--without his cuticle, I presume,--last Monday.”

He glanced at his companion, expectant of a bravo for this jest, but
Fortescue’s attention had failed mid-way. He had fallen suddenly into
deep, absorbed thought. He understood all this in a sense of which
Colonel Percy, wise as he was, did not dream. So Brennett, at some
comparatively trifling outlay, had contrived to double his stake. The
future profits and prospects of the mine were secured for himself
alone, in case the compromise with Miss St. Pierre should be effected
and the debt cleared away with the funds thus secured, for Fortescue
could easily divine that Travis had sold, too, all the interest in the
Graftenburg property which he had bought of the claimant. No doubt,
deceived as to the probability of a compromise, and heavily harassed
by Brennett’s clever manoeuvres with his creditors, Travis was easily
pacified with a little ready money, and content to make off with his
meagre pickings in lieu of the full feast he had expected. Brennett was
a wonderful fellow! No hint of all this to his coadjutor, no word, no
letter. The compromise was imminent, and doubtless Brennett feared that
because of this he would be bled as he was wont to bleed others.

The darkness had come at last. The mountain in the distance, sad and
sombre of aspect, doubly bereaved as one dropped again to earth from
the ecstasies of a vision, touched with its jagged purple summit the
last faint greenish line of light in the sky. The lamps were glimmering
in their places against the unplastered, unpainted walls, and the soft
yellow radiance brought out the rich tints of the maple and the cedar
and the walnut and the oak, which in their rude, undressed state made
this building so primitive, so sylvan, that it seemed still nearly
allied to the trees of its kindred standing in the forest without. The
pallid mist pressed close to the broad windows; sometimes it shifted
through in a ghostly, elusive fashion.

As Fortescue leaned against the window-frame, he was laughing a little;
it was a low laugh of elation.

Colonel Percy suddenly faced round upon him.

“John Fortescue,” he said impressively, “you lost something on the
battlefield of Chattalla.”

The man received the words with a palpable shock. It quivered through
every fibre, and blanched his face, and shook his laugh to a husky
mutter. He turned with a stony stare.

“My life!” he cried out shrilly. “I lost my life!”

A tiny package that Colonel Percy had drawn from his vest-pocket fell
from his nerveless clasp and rolled away on the floor, while he stood
as one petrified.

The moon was dim and the wind came up the gorge. The sudden gust tore
away the fantastic white mists from the window, and the uncertain
light fell through the shivering rifts and traced upon the floor a
dusky outline of the serrated leaves and acorns of the chestnut-oaks
without. Perhaps it was well for John Fortescue at that moment that the
convulsive motion of the boughs dashed into his face their wealth of
dew, cold and fragrant, and with all the freshness and strength of the
woods distilled into it. When he drew out his handkerchief and brushed
it away, he brushed away other drops, colder and clammy, which had
started from within, and his long sigh of physical relief was blended
with a groan as of mental anguish.

The commonplace gesture restored Colonel Percy’s normal
self-possession. He stooped with difficulty, regained the package,
and, as his fingers curled around it, he felt that he had mastered the
situation.

“The lady’s letter to the lawyer suggested as much,” he said, with the
stiff pomposity of a conscious appreciation of delicate matters.

“The lady’s letter to the lawyer?” Fortescue echoed tremulously.

The old man nodded gravely. “She spoke properly--the lady did--quite
properly, in fact. She said that in finding this trinket on the
battle-field she was aware that it must be of great worth to its owner
from association--its character being that of some loved one’s gift. A
gift,--yes. Therefore she was willing to retain it no longer, although
she was as yet unable to decide as to the matters of business touching
which your counsel had approached her. She states,” he continued,
drawing from an envelope some flimsy sheets, which fluttered in the
breeze, “that she intends to write again soon to her legal adviser who,
for some reason, did not reply to her former communication, and she
hopes then to--to--ah yes,--this is the lady’s letter to the lawyer.”

He adjusted his spectacles and strove to read. “Ah well,
sir--well--your eyes are younger than mine--you see she fails to say
anything whatever touching the intrinsic value of this gift--this
trinket--which she sends by express to you, in care of your lawyers,
as she is ignorant of your address. It is in a sealed packet.
Sealed--hermetically sealed. And your lawyers are cautious fellows.
Very prudent. They say a ‘trinket’ may be diamonds and may be oroide.
They decline the responsibility of forwarding it by mail. There is
no express to Bandusia. No express. None. So they beg of Brennett to
introduce them to me. ‘As you are going, my dear Colonel, will you
be so very good’--And I am always very good--So, you see, I have the
pleasure--pleasure, I am sure--”

He paused expectant. But Fortescue had forgotten the elaborate courtesy
that so well graced his splendid presence. He did not even thank
Colonel Percy, who felt that for his friend’s behoof he had done much
in waiving his dignity and fetching parcels like a common carrier. As
Fortescue hastily tore the papers enveloping the package, his breath
was quick, his hand unsteady, and when the locket, that the girl had
found in the empty grave on the battle-field, lay exposed to view,
encrusted with clay, tarnished, stained too by some dark current, and
jangling from the bit of watch-chain cut smoothly off by the bullet,
which had gone close to the heart of the man who had worn it there, he
winced with a shocked recognition so unmistakable, so simple in its
expression that it touched Colonel Percy into momentary forgetfulness
of his own importance.

This was what he had lost, and, so strangely, he called it his life!
Once more in dwelling upon it the old man was bewildered, mystified.
But after all, he thought, with a not unkindly accession of sentiment,
are not the feelings we cherish for others, for even the inanimate
things they have hallowed, the most vital principle of life, the
essence of existence--worthier of the name than the involuntary
functions of the lungs or the merely animal mechanism of the heart?

He was satisfied with his own explanation. He could not understand, and
he did not stay to ponder on, the change that usurped this look when
the spring of the lid gave way suddenly in Fortescue’s hand--as it had
given way in Antoinette’s hand when she stood by that yawning empty
grave in the haunted thicket.

Fortescue glanced hastily at the hair beneath the shattered crystal;
then he held up the burnished lid to the light, and read the words
engraved within,--

                         JOHN DOANE FORTESCUE
                              _from_
                              “ADELAIDE.”

The intent curiosity in his gesture and eyes immolated every other
suggestion of his face and figure. After a moment it was supplemented
by surprise, by a vague doubt, even by a grave and gathering fear.

But the old man was turning away. Fortescue, observing the motion,
silently offered his hand, which was silently accepted. Then, thrusting
his hat upon his head, he went out from the flickering flare of the
lamps into the dark encompassing wilderness.

The wind was laid. The silvery impalpable mists contended with the
silvery impalpable moonbeams. Together in a splendid sheen they hung
about the little observatory that quivered over the dark chasms below.
It quaked even more beneath Fortescue’s weight as he strode within it
and threw himself, panting and exhausted, on one of the benches.

“And who the devil was ‘Adelaide’?” he muttered.

Then he fell silent again, and for a long time he did not move.

He might have heard, yet he did not hear, the music in the ball-room
that told of the tide of enjoyment, rising gradually from sober lancers
to waltz, to the culminating gayety of the wild Virginia reel, then
ebbing away at last in the sentimental measures of “Home, Sweet Home.”
He might have seen, yet he did not see, the orange-tinted points of
light as they disappeared one by one from the rows of windows till the
wilderness knew no gleam but that of the pallid moon which had waxed
and waned here when the savage fastnesses first rose from the sea.

More than once he turned his eyes toward the west, where the sombre
summit of the distant mountain, rising above the illusory vapors, was
sharply outlined against the midnight sky. Beyond that mountain lay the
nearest railroad.

The moon went down behind it. The mists closed more densely about him.
The night grew chill, and because of this, perhaps, when he chanced to
slip his hand in his pocket and it suddenly touched the locket, which
he had thrust away there, he shivered.




                              CHAPTER XX.


A fervid Fourth-of-July sun was blazing in the sky, and Chattalla
responded, for the first time since the war, with a celebration of the
day. That favorite rural diversion, a barbecue, had been projected,
and certain optimistic souls, spending the day thus in the forest
beside a flowing rivulet, drinking of its crystal clear water,
flavored with mint and dashed with “Robertson County,” grew patriotic
enough by degrees to declare that it was altogether like the good
old times, and “damn the bloody chasm.” The disaffected absentees
who remained in the town were of opinion that it was a “mighty pore
little Fourth,” for Independence Day was here represented only by a
banner on the court-house, hanging motionless in the sultry air, and
all the “under-foot trash” of the village, white and black, rioting in
fire-crackers and small explosions of gunpowder.

The ringleader of this motley juvenile assemblage was Pickie Tait.
How he came by so large a quantity of powder was then, and afterward
remained, a mystery. When, through its agency, disaster was developed,
there was some speculation on the subject. Very possibly he stole the
money to buy it from the drawer in which his father kept the change
taken in at the toll-gate; or he might have stolen the powder itself
from the store where he had “done yerrands” for a week, and in that
time had contrived to perpetrate more mischief than could be rectified
in six. He never divulged the source of his secret supplies, and his
silence baffled conjecture. As the morning waned he went home to
dinner, and the town heard no more from him till late in the day.

At the barracks the patriotism was of a somewhat more glittering and
imposing quality, and there was martial music and a dress parade.
It was a great relief to Estwicke when it was all over, for every
distraction grated on his preoccupied thoughts. He mounted his horse
and galloped aimlessly away in the lingering sunset, glad of the
solitude and the woodland quiet, and finding in the swift motion some
expression for his impatient spirit.

He had determined to make General Vayne’s position as difficult as
possible, and continued to visit the family as heretofore, divining
that a man who held hospitality as a sacred obligation would flinch at
the idea of forbidding him the house, and resolved that, unless this
extreme measure were resorted to, he would see Marcia as often as he
might. Now and then he had a twinge of self-reproach for thus making
use of this fantastic view of the duties of a house-owner to persuade
his host’s daughter to marry him without her father’s consent. But
what could he do? Must he tamely give up the woman he loved, and who
loved him, because, forsooth, her father was vaguely supposed to prefer
another man? He swore that he would not, and he put his sensitive
conscience down.

He carried his fierce moods there. Sometimes he bitterly upbraided
Marcia with her broken promise. Sometimes it was almost a pleasure to
him to know that, if he suffered, she too suffered. And then would come
a great revulsion of feeling, and he would beg her with passionate
tenderness to care for him no more, and protest that he was not worth
one of her tears, and declare that, if she said the word, he would go
away--he would go away and blow his brains out, and trouble her never
again.

He had been more peremptory when he had last seen her. He had insisted
that he must come to terms with this suspense; he could better endure
despair. She must make her decision at once and forever. If she
definitely gave him up, he would know how he stood; he would try to
reconcile himself as best he might to the worthless conditions of his
life. He might at least seek to make it of some value to others. He
could go and fight the battles of his country with the Indians; he was
still first-rate food for powder.

He had placed great hopes on this effort to coerce her from that
neutral ground which she had striven to hold. But she had only cried
and besought him not to be unhappy. And he had parted from her in anger.

To-day the horse had taken of his own accord the familiar,
oft-travelled road, and checked the sweeping gallop only at her
father’s gate. Estwicke, roused from his absorption, realized where he
was with momentary surprise. He had not intended to come, but now that
he was here, he hesitated. Then he suddenly turned the horse aside, and
went on slowly down the road along the river bank.

The green expanse of the battle-field lay before him, stretching to
the horizon, and set, a gigantic, enamelled circle, in a circumference
of gold and crimson clouds,--for the east was flushed with western
reflections. The cows were coming home through the haunted thickets;
the faint clangor of their bells reached him on the perfumed stillness.
And in the midst of the shining river rose the massive piers of the old
bridge, burned so long ago, leaving these great, useless, detached
columns as still another reminder of the days of conflict.

As he glanced toward them Estwicke abruptly checked his pace. On the
summit of the central pier was a small figure pottering about with an
uncanny show of industry. A dug-out was tied to a bush that grew in
a niche near the base; this showed how the boy had gone, and how he
proposed to return. But what could he be doing?

“Now, that’s odd,” murmured Estwicke speculatively. “I have seen that
boy there every day for a week.”

A man was lying on the river bank with a crazy violin beside him,
across which he now and then aimlessly drew a shuddering bow. Estwicke
thought him a mowing idiot until he spoke. He was beginning to hold a
long-range colloquy with the pigmy on the pier.

“Hello, Pickie!” he shouted in a convulsively chattering fashion. “What
air ye up to?”

Pickie Tait turned his preternaturally solemn face toward his
interlocutor.

“I’m up ter--_here_!” he replied.

Graffy changed the form of address.

“What be ye a-doin’ of?”

“It’s _me_ that’s killin’ this here cat,--ye onderstand?” said
Quick Pickie significantly.

“Ef ye war ter fall off’n that pier ye’d git yer head bruk,” Graffy
admonished him.

“’Tend ter yer own head--ye may find a use fur it some day,” retorted
Pickie.

The sound of the horse’s hoofs as Estwicke approached diverted the
man’s attention. He turned, leaning upon his elbow, to see who might be
passing, and the casual curiosity expressed in his glance intensified
to a deep concentrated interest.

It was a somewhat brilliant apparition thus springing up in the lonely
country road. The young officer was gallantly mounted, and his blue
uniform took the light like velvet. His bearing, surcharged with spirit
and pride, and a certain challenging boldness in his eyes, suggested
the phrase, “every inch a soldier.”

There was a melancholy envy in the gaze that intently followed him till
the jagged bluffs of the river bank interposed, and he disappeared.
Then Graffy sighed--not because of the contrast with the mettlesome
full-pulsed soldier, but the band at the barracks was the best in
the service, and there rode a man who heard it every day. He took up
his old violin and began to draw gently forth the vaguest echoes of
crashing melodies,--souvenirs of his pilgrimages thither, where he had
earned notoriety among the troops as the “damn fool who would tramp
fourteen miles just to hear the band play a march.” He was instantly
aware when the regular dash of a paddle, growing momently more
distinct, began to beat an accompaniment to his rhythmic recollections
as they quivered along the string. But he was entranced with his own
music, and gave no heed till his name was twice called in a nasal
snuffling whine that was intended to be propitiatory.

The ragamuffin had come down from his airy perch, crossed the river
in his dug-out, and run it upon the gravelly bank. Then he stood up
in it, the paddle in his hand, and looked at the man from beneath his
shapeless hat-brim with a blandishing expression in singular contrast
with the cool impudence his dirty face had worn ten minutes ago. His
tatters hung picturesquely about his skinny little limbs, and as he
talked he placed one grimy, cut, and scarred bare foot upon the other,
and thus clubbed he teetered forward and backward, as if this gesture
were one of the accepted graces of cajolory.

“I kem over hyar,” he remarked affably, although somewhat indistinctly,
for he investigated, even as he spoke, the corners of his wide mouth
and a row of jagged, squirrel teeth, with his large, deprecatory, red
tongue, “I kem over hyar ter--ax ye--ef ye plissir--do me a--a favior!”

“I dunno ez I hev enny call ter do ye no faviors--sech a sassy critter
ez ye be,” said the musician, bending his head low to a series of deft
touches.

Pickie looked up the river, then down the river, then high into the
air, where he followed, as it were, a jay’s flight with the widening
motions of his mouth. Then he teetered forward, and with his former
beguiling demonstrations he glanced up once more at the man.

“I hev got some fi’-crackers thar on the pier what I’m a-aimin’ ter
set off fur the Forf o’ July, an’--an’--an’ some gunpowder.” Graffy
lifted his head to look at the boy, who suddenly became embarrassed.
He succeeded in clubbing his feet together more tightly, and thus
inspired, he speciously explained. “A _leetle_ gunpowder wropped
up in a piece o’ newspaper. An’ I’m a-feard ter leave ’em thar whilst I
skedadles home fur some candle wick fur a fuse, ’kase them Peters boys
will raid on ’em, an’ set ’em off tharselfs fur the Forf o’ July. An’ I
hev got the fi’-crackers all stuck round in the rocks, an’ I don’t want
ter--ter--unfix ’em, an’ tote ’em off with me. So I ’lowed ez mebbe
ye’d git inter the dug-out, an’ scoot over thar, an’ sot on the pier
whilst I’m gone. Them sly, sneaky Peters boys mought kem up on t’ other
side, an’ ye couldn’t see ’em from hyar.”

He stepped nimbly out of the dug-out, and waited for the man to
signify his assent, but Graffy still delicately and deftly touched the
instrument, and Pickie at last was fain to start off at a shambling
gait, looking over his shoulder now and then to make sure that Graffy
would relent toward him as of old. Presently the rocks intervened, but
when the river next came into view he saw the dug-out in mid-stream and
nearing the pier.

When Graffy had climbed it, which was no difficult matter, for some of
the stones had fallen away, leaving crevices and jagged edges, he was
surprised to see on the summit deep rifts into the interior.

“This hyar old pier ain’t haffen ez solid ez ye might think ter look at
it. More’n likely cannon-balls or su’thin’ must hev hit it an’ jarred
it powerful in the old war times.”

He looked down at the puerile preparations for noise--the fire-crackers
set around in chinks in the mortar, a tin canister, flaring and empty,
and a little roll of newspaper which he supposed contained the powder.

Then he seated himself and gazed silently upon the landscape.

It was all very still. Far away for a moment he heard the metallic
jangle of trace-chains as some laborer jogged homeward on his
plough-horse through the peaceful battlefield. A pair of mocking-birds
fluttered back to their nest in a niche in the old pier, the male
circling about the head of the motionless figure on the summit, and
striking boldly at it. Then arose the shrill, vibrating clamor of the
nestlings, and presently a line of light down the river marked the
swift flight of the white wing-feathers of the little freeholder, still
on provident thoughts intent. Graffy peered over to see the mother-bird
hovering about her brood. “Ye air mighty nigh neighbors ter Pickie, I’m
afeard,” he said, with melancholy forecast. Then once more there was no
sound--and no motion save the silent shifting of the crimson and purple
clouds and of their gorgeous reflections in the deep water below.

The subject never far from his thoughts had returned now. In these
days, with his untutored intellect, his narrow experience, his poignant
conscience, the man who had been accused and acquitted, sought to
sift the evidence and weigh the argument. He was wont to lie in
wait for the witnesses who had testified in his trial, forcing from
them the story they had already told under oath, and waiving their
half-angry, half-startled remonstrance with the breathless protest,
“I hev furgot--I hev furgot--’Twar all so suddint--an’ so much come
arterward.” In like manner he once stopped the judge, presenting
a clumsy disguise of the circumstances, and begging an opinion on
a “p’int o’ law.” When the judge instantly stripped them of their
fictitious integuments, detecting his purpose, and admonishing him
to rest satisfied of the justice of his acquittal, he burst forth
suddenly, “Your little court and the jury’s say-so don’t seem ter
hender me none now.” He smote his breast. “I hev jes’ come ter
jedgmint!”

Perhaps it was well that his ragged following of street urchins and
shiftless loafers would not let him and his crazy old fiddle be, and
that it was exacted of him as an imperative public duty to play at
all the rustic merry-makings. Thus intervals, such as this when he
sat alone and idle on the old pier, were rare. Now, in his ignorant
fashion, he was reviewing the prosecuting officer’s speech, weighing
the fierce phrases as he muttered them. The cogent arguments of a
man trained to debate had given voice to his dumb conscience. The
trite truculence had for him all the actuality of doom. Once he rose
to his feet, and with a violent gesture unconsciously imitated the
muscular oratory of the Criminal Court as he mouthed the extravagant
denunciations which had been forgotten long ago by the mild man who had
first uttered them.

The muffled sound of hoofs pacing slowly on the grassy margin of the
road restored Graffy to a sudden realization of the present. Captain
Estwicke had wheeled his horse, and was riding back along the river
bank. Under his intent, astonished scrutiny Graffy was painfully
deprecatory; he mechanically laid hold on his violin. As he began to
draw forth the strains of a melodious country-side song, he heard the
plash of oars keeping time to the music. Presently the shrill voices of
children broke on the air, singing,--

    “When I lived down in Tennessee,
      U-li-_ah_! U-li-_ee_!
    Beneath the wild banana tree,
      U-li-_ah_! U-li-_ee_!”

There were five or six urchins, black, white, and yellow, in the
approaching skiff, all in imminent danger of a watery grave under
Pickie Tait’s guidance. But the tipsy craft reeled safely to the bank,
and landed all but Quick Pickie, who then rowed across to the pier.
He climbed it like a squirrel, and as he scuffled up on the summit he
looked at Graffy with a triumphant grin on his broad, dirty face. It
suddenly turned white beneath its grime. Graffy had filled his pipe,
and was kindling it with a match which he flung aside still blazing.
Its pale flicker disappeared as it dropped into a deep rift in the
masonry, and a wild, incoherent protest from the boy rang out across
the water.

Estwicke heard it. His eyes, following the sound, turned absently upon
the great obeliscal pier, outlined in sombre tints against the gold and
purple splendors still flaunting through the western sky. All at once
there sprang into their midst an ethereal, corollated, crimson presence
like some great evanescent flower of flame. Shooting through it,
high into the air, were strange black projectiles. A sulphurous cloud
of smoke surged over the placid waters, and far along the peaceful
battle-field rang a mighty sound as if the very foundations of the
earth were rent asunder.

And in an instant the flower of flame was gone as suddenly as it
had bloomed. The smoke and the wind, in an airy embrace, swept
together down the river. Here and there on the face of the current an
ever-widening circle of golden light described its elastic periphery
above the heavy masses of masonry that had fallen into the shining
depths.

And with its jagged edges and maimed proportions, grotesquely defined
against the calm sky, was the great pier, the right side torn away,
leaving the other of a taller aspect. On its summit lay a writhing
little figure.

The momentary silence that followed the report was broken with a
shrill, quavering, wail of pain, terrible to hear.

The half dozen urchins on the bank were looking with frightened,
deprecatory eyes at Estwicke as he flung himself from his horse.

“’Twarn’t us that done it,” they cried in chorus. “’Twar Pickie Tait.
That’s him a-hollerin’ up there now. He had a fuse what he war goin’
ter fix ter light, an’ he laid off ter git away quicker ’n he done. But
Graffy Beale drapped a match thar. _’Twarn’t us!_”

Two or three ploughmen returning from work came clattering down on
their horses to join the little group at the water’s edge.

“Graffy an’ Quick Pickie?” said one.

“Well; they’ve blown themselves into Kingdom-Come this time, I reckon.”

“We must get them away at once,” exclaimed Estwicke, hastily tearing
off his coat. “That pier is badly shaken. It may come down and crush
them.”

“Hold on a minit, Cap’n,” said one of the men. “Then I’ll go along o’
ye--though it’s skeery under them shattered rocks, I tell ye. Still, if
they hain’t got no more powder ’mongst ’em, I’m willin’ ter resk that
fallin’ down on me.”

“Don’t try it jes’ _now_, Cap’n,” said another burly fellow. “I’ll
bet that leetle scamp hev got that thar pier ez full o’ powder ez an
aig o’ meat. Hold on a minit an’ I’ll go too when I’m sati’fied thar’s
nothin’ thar likely ter explode. Any way ter die but that.”

The horror of being blown into the air, dismembered and torn, was upon
Estwicke with a terrible realization. He hesitated; but once more the
child’s woeful shriek, with all its cadenced anguish, rang out. And
he flung himself into the water. He swam rapidly to the base of the
pier, although the time seemed long to those who stood in suspense,
watching him through the blue twilight which was softly slipping down
upon the earth from the blue sky. He deftly climbed the jagged column
and, as he neared the still figure of the man, he put out his hand and
touched it. Then he spoke to the boy. From the bank they could not hear
the words, but the sound of his voice came over the water. There were
gentle suggestions in the tones, and after that the woeful shrieks were
stilled. Even the distance did not disguise the careful tenderness
with which he took the writhing, quivering creature in his arms. And
suddenly, once more a-bloom in the blue twilight was that evanescent
flower of flame. From among its fiery petals the black projectiles were
flying upward--fallen instantly. And the red flower was withered. When
the smoke cleared away the pier was a shapeless pile of stone hardly
rising above the surface of the river, and the two men and the boy were
gone.

It seemed a miracle to those who dragged them out of the water that
there should be a spark of life retained in Pickie Tait’s mangled
little body. And even that pulpy mass of agonies which they knew
as Graffy Beale was yet all a-quiver. They could not judge whether
Estwicke’s injuries were less serious. There were evidences of
broken bones, he was insensible, and he bore some deep gashes and
ghastly bruises that were unpleasant to look at. They carried
him to the nearest house, which was the little log cabin by Fort
Despair, and, when the physicians arrived, popular awe was increased
by the professional utterance. After an examination they said, in
consultation, that his left clavicle was fractured, and the joint of
the scapula dislocated, and to the staring simple folks it seemed that
no gentleman who had such things inside of him could be expected to
survive. One of his ribs was broken and his left arm shattered in two
places.

“Pretty bad fracture,--that arm,--I reckon,” suggested the local
physician.

“Ah--I guess so--I guess so,” assented the post-surgeon, who had been
summoned by telegram. “It’s--ah--um--humerus”--with a meditative
smile--“humerus--don’t you know.”

A great country lout who was assisting in the quality of curious
spectator, stepped suddenly out of the room with a surly, lowering brow.

“I’d like ter beat that derned Yank inter a jelly,” he declared
to a crony outside. “Mighty funny ter _him_, I reckon,
‘_Humorous_’--hey!” with a sardonic sneer. “He wouldn’t think it
was ‘humorous’ long if _I_ hed a crack at him.”

For this episode had roused an intense local sympathy for Captain
Estwicke, and the feeling widened and deepened when all the
circumstances were duly set forth in the Marston “Daily Chronicle.”
Not every day does a man of “quality” risk his life to succor humble
folks, and the reporter, who felt himself destined for better things
than writing up dog-fights and ward politicians, made the most of the
opportunity. It afforded as broad a scope as an obituary. In fact, it
was quite as satisfactory to the reporter as if Captain Estwicke had
really died. It enabled him to dwell upon the generosities of character
intimated as well as that passion of courage illustrated. It admitted
of biographical detail which the enterprising representative of the
paper gleaned in abundance at the barracks from Estwicke’s brother
officers, who were peculiarly eager, anxious, and enthusiastic. If
their comrade had bravely encountered death and danger and paid the
forfeit of serious wounds upon some stricken field, they would have
held it an obvious duty and accorded varying degrees of soldierly
commendation. But to have disastrous dealings with gunpowder out of the
regular line of business seemed to these men of the sword abnormally
daring and intrinsically heroic.

The reporter found much geniality housed in the unsubstantial
white buildings with their flimsy galleries that shook beneath his
tread. A potent nicotian fragrance permeated the air, as if it were
geographically appurtenant to the spot--like the resinous odor of piney
woods or the briny flavor of a sea-breeze. A veteran of the late war
told some stirring stories with effect, annotated by the measured tread
of the sentry without. A young lieutenant gave items of Estwicke’s
experience as an “Indian Fighter;” and while the reporter took notes,
he was ever and anon exhorted to take also what was modestly designated
as “something.” And somehow the mellow generosities of this same
“something,” and the manly good-fellowship of his entertainers, and
that fine thrill which the contemplation of a deed of daring, blended
with kindness, excites about the heart, were subtly infused into his
simple narrative, and surprised him when he saw it printed on the
smoking sheets in the morning.

It surprised others. It suggested to more than one subscriber of the
“Daily Chronicle” that there might be some fine fellows among those
Yankees at the barracks; and a wonder if it were not a trifle too
unfriendly and inhospitable to leave them shut off there like aliens;
and a resolve to go and see Captain Estwicke, who had been already
removed to his quarters, and tell him what was thought of him, and
virtually, though unavowedly, shake hands across the bloody chasm.

Now, this feat of moral gymnastics is remarkably simple when one fairly
tries it, and was successfully exploited by his brother officers and
_ses amis les ennemis_ so long as Estwicke lay too ill to take a
hand in it. But in a short time, when he began to pull together and
this amicable ceremony was celebrated in his quarters, a chill suddenly
fell upon it. He hardly knew how to receive the unwise, ill-chosen
superlatives of these fraternal strangers and his hearty, chorusing
friends. Among them he was heavily badgered. He had all the shyness of
intense self-consciousness. He was wont to approach his own identity
with misgivings, and an undue respect. Had any man come to the barracks
to pick a quarrel with him he would have been bold enough. Since they
had only come to sing his praises he was all at once timid, gruff,
uneasy, ashamed of himself, and very much ashamed of them.

The behests of hospitality held this grum mood painfully mute so long
as the visitors were present. But the sudden change from whole-souled
cordiality, which had earlier characterized their welcome, to this
congealed stiffness was very marked, and the quality of his demeanor
was variously reprehended as affectation, or “barrack manners,” by
these ex-soldiers who had seen only service in the field, and knew
little of the life and manners of barracks.

But plain-speaking is one of the prerogatives of friendship. “You
mortify me with your confounded twaddle,” Estwicke was wont to say
fiercely to his Damons when the wheels of the last departing guest were
heard rolling away on the broad, gravelled drive. “Yes,--I do feel
worse,--very much worse. They all make me worse. And _you_ make me
sick! I’m sick with shame!”

Whereupon the Damons would roar with good-natured laughter, and
demonstrate jovially the feasibility of once more taking “something.”

It was eminently characteristic that by his exacting reserve Estwicke
should repel much kindly feeling, and that with this opportunity he
should make not one friend in Marston for himself, but many for other
men.

Beyond the reach of his personal influence, however, his action
continued to levy a heavy tribute of good-will and admiration. It
seemed in Chattalla an incredibly brave and generous thing to do,--so
vast was the incongruity in the imperilling of a valuable life for poor
Graffy Beale, that ill-starred fleer of fate, and “Quick Pickie,”--who,
when he was pronounced out of danger, was universally conceded to be “a
grand rascal, though I’m sorry for the little chap.”

And just here was where it appealed to General Vayne. The whole
episode was instinct with a fine humanity. It gave evidence of high
impulses and a latent nobility hitherto undivined in Estwicke’s
character,--hitherto doubted.

And why doubted? In these days it seemed to General Vayne that his
own conduct had been actuated by some strange, unreasoning malice. He
could not recollect how his deep prejudice had taken root. He could not
remember his grievance; the blow that Estwicke had seemed to sordidly
deal him when he was already sore smitten and pressed to the wall.
Mentally he fumbled for it. It was gone.

His own fine deeds of valiance stretched out in the darkness of the
Lost Cause like the brilliant track of a falling star. He had thought
them then only prosaic duty; now they had loosed all hold on his
memory. But every enthusiastic pulse throbbed in accord with this fine
deed that another man had done.

So it came about that he listened with an unclouded brow to something
his daughter said one day,--something she said with her eyes full of
tears, her face suffused with flushes, a quiver in her voice.

“Papa,” she cried, “I don’t need this to teach me how good--how
good--Captain Estwicke is. It only teaches me how dearly I love him.
And now--_now_--I shall never care again because _you_ choose
to undervalue him. And I don’t want your forgiveness! He is more to me
than you are. And some day when he comes again I shall tell him that
now I--I will marry him,--whenever he likes.”

There was something hard in this too frank avowal of a transfer
of allegiance. But father and daughter alike were inexpert at
half-measures, and the thoroughness of the new departure surprised
neither of them.

“Why, my dear child,” exclaimed the consistent man, with a fine gesture
of expostulation, “I have not the slightest objection,--not the
slightest.”

There was an unfilial flash in his daughter’s eyes as she looked at
him. She remembered Estwicke’s passionate unhappiness, and her own
conduct to him seemed very harsh. She had thought obedience to her
father her first and highest duty. So it was valueless, intrinsically,
and wasted besides. But obviously policy forbade her to urge upon him
the grace of consistency, and she said nothing more.

She had wanted to go to see Estwicke. But Mrs. Kirby, with a
heavy support of proprieties, took the field in force. “My dear,”
remonstrated the old lady gravely, “you are not really, formally,
engaged to him now.”

“Oh, he knows how it all was,” declared the girl impatiently.

“But other people know nothing about it,--nothing whatever. It would
be very queer for you, and your papa, and me to go to him together as
you suggest; very queer indeed, unless we could give out that you are
engaged. You ought to have foreseen this, my dear. You broke it off;
yes, you gave him back his ring. Very pretty ring, that. Oh, yes; I
know what your papa said; he made you do it. But,”--with a funereal
shake of the head,--“_never_ give back a ring. So significant;
so-o conclusive. Remember that, my dear. _Never_ give back a
ring,--no!” Mrs. Kirby laid down these valuable rules of guidance with
as much solemnity as if her niece expected to be engaged a score of
times yet, and be tempted as often to thrust back rings upon their
donors.

So Marcia wrote a little note to Captain Estwicke, and Mrs. Kirby
wrote a longer one, and only General Vayne drove over to the barracks.
There were several other gentlemen present at this interview, and the
conversation was chiefly general and impersonal; hence Estwicke had
scant opportunity to exhibit that morose disinclination for laudatory
sympathy which had so unfavorably impressed former visitors, and
General Vayne went away with his rose-colored views of the incident
unimpaired.

As it had occurred so near his plantation, he was popularly supposed
to be peculiarly well posted, and more than once his account of it
was sought by guests at his house. It gained much impressiveness from
the noble graces of his rhetoric and the largess of his generous
admiration. It was pretty to see Marcia listen on these occasions, her
cheeks crimson and her crimson lips parted, an enthusiastic gravity on
her face, and her eyes alight with that wonderful radiance which can
shine in a mortal’s eyes but once in a lifetime. Most of these visitors
were stolid, unspeculative people, long past their romantic hey-day.
With them this voiceless language of love was already a dead language,
and they translated none of its glowing characters. Horace Percy was
younger, and he had his own reasons for being observant. When he saw
that look on her face--although it was but a look--his heart sank like
lead.

Any grief with him was nearly allied to a puerile irritation, and he
was rather cruel to his horses as he drove homeward. He said little
to Brennett, he was absorbed in canvassing the matter silently, and
seeking to reconcile himself to giving up his love with the doubt
still upon it. He did love her, but he loved himself more. He tenderly
deprecated for himself the jeopardy of rejection. Hitherto he had felt
so sure of her; he would have felt, equally sure of any woman whom he
might seek in marriage. He had brought himself to regard the avowal of
his preference, not as something that might give her to him, but as of
great value because it would bind him to her. His was the important
promise, and he was chary of bestowing it. That exaltation which dwarfs
the opinion of others to but a mote in the wind was an exaltation to
which Percy could never attain. The calamity of losing her, he dreaded
less than that the world should know of his loss. It did occur to him
for a moment that she might feel tenderly, in a manner, toward the
love she could not requite; that she might respect it as a confidence.
But no! his was a famous scalp. She would joy to wear it at her belt.
At the least she would tell all to her aunt--that would be only
natural. That Mrs. Kirby should not tell it to Mrs. Ridgeway would be
supernatural. Mrs. Ridgeway would tell it to the county. And then it
would go! A young man of great social prominence finds sometimes in his
notoriety a painful difficulty.

But even should he draw off at once, he was not safe from the gossip.
Percy ground his teeth when he reflected that if all he suspected were
true, and it should become known that she had accepted Estwicke, the
sharp-witted Maurice Brennett would understand his position, having
witnessed throughout the summer his persistent efforts to propitiate
General Vayne. Brennett was a man who gave no quarter, and Percy had
a vivid realization of the infinite zest with which the _jeunesse
dorée_ of New Orleans would laugh at the story of his fatuity in
making love to the old gentleman while another fellow made love to the
young lady.

And these cheap things vexed him. He continued moody and silent until
they reached home, but at dinner he was vivacious in a desultory
fashion, had much to say, and seemed to find nothing amiss with his
appetite. When he and his guest were lighting their cigars in the
library, he observed with a laugh: “Did you notice, Brennett, how much
interest Miss Marcia takes in Captain Estwicke’s--a--a--blow-out--as
you might call it?”

Brennett looked up with genuine surprise expressed in his face. “Why,
yes,” he admitted, in a tone that was evidently meant to seem casual.

“Do you know,” said Percy, his eyes fixed on the dark shrubbery close
by the open window as he lounged easily in his chair. “I’d be willing
to bet you something very considerable that they are engaged.”

The crafty Brennett was embarrassed. “Why, I don’t know about that,” he
said, hesitating.

After a moment he put a bold face on his uncertainty.

“To tell you the truth, I thought you were in love with her.”

Percy glanced up laughing. “With Miss Marcia?” he asked, a note of
incredulity in his voice. “I never should have credited _you_ with
a sentimental imagination, Brennett. What made you think that?”

Brennett vindicated his logic. “Because you seemed specially anxious to
stand well with her father and please her,” he said sturdily.

Percy made no rejoinder for a moment, while the servant came in
and placed the lamps on the table. Then he laughed again--a trifle
mysteriously this time.

“Well,”--he glanced over his shoulder about the room--“is that old
darkey out of hearing? Well, as I was about to say, General Vayne is
a man of influence, and in fact I am a man of some influence myself.
Moreover, I am twenty-four--nearly twenty-five years of age.”

Brennett stared. Percy turned his cigar between his fingers and gazed
gravely at it.

“You’re not a man that blabs, Brennett,” he continued, presently. “I
may as well say plainly that within a year I shall be eligible for
Congress, and my friends want me to knock the old fossil, who has
been going from this district, back into the Jurassic period where
he belongs. I don’t know certainly whether I shall consent to make
the race, but in view of that possibility, I must, in the meantime,
propitiate men of influence, and smile at their daughters, and humbug
their Mrs. Kirbys as well as I can.”

He filliped off the ash, grown long and white upon his cigar as he
talked, looked brightly up at Brennett, and laughed again. He had told
his little story very well, and the wily Brennett believed it--perhaps
because he esteemed any scheme of advancement a stronger motive than
love. Percy detected credulity in his face, and, having succeeded so
well, concluded to delay. If she were in love with Estwicke she would
demonstrate that fact by marrying him. If not, she would still be
here next autumn on Percy’s return from a little tour of the northern
seaside resorts which he had in contemplation. When he had determined
upon this course he waited only for his friend’s departure to carry it
into effect, and he waited in secret impatience, as Brennett showed no
sign of bringing his visit to a close. Percy had lost all interest in
the quiet rural existence that, but so short a time ago, was instinct
with the keenest zest. It was painful to him to go to General Vayne’s
house and meet Marcia. But Brennett often proposed a drive or ride
tending thither, and he must accompany his guest as behooves a host. He
bitterly upbraided his folly in having hampered himself at this crisis
with the restrictions of hospitality, for who knew so well as he that a
guest in the country is like a soul or a conscience, impossible to be
decently rid of for a moment.

In these visits Mrs. Kirby observed with some surprise that Antoinette
sedulously avoided Mr. Brennett, and, although he did not talk to
her with an eager interest, as when he had first come among them, he
adroitly contrived, continually but unobtrusively, to throw himself in
her way as if to keep her attention directed to him--to remind her of
him.

And Mrs. Kirby pitied the hopeless love of which she imagined he was
the victim, and wondered helplessly that dear Antoinette should be so
cold.

Marcia noticed nothing of all this, for she was absorbed in a
fact which she had at first vaguely perceived in doubting, chilly
apprehension, and realized at last with an amazed despair. Captain
Estwicke intended to come no more. She had experienced a sharp surprise
to hear from others that he was already out again with his arm in a
sling. Naturally she had expected to be the first to see him. But she
had accounted for this as an accident, and for a week thereafter she
herself gathered the flowers for the vases in the library; and in the
evenings the lamps and the fire-flies and the moon were early alight
in the big, square windows, with their sheer snowy curtains and their
clinging vines, where the dew glittered on the climbing roses, and the
mocking-bird sang for his welcome. But only the lagging hours came in
his stead. She began to take account of that last interview when he
had said his suspense should end. Did he, indeed, hold it definitive?
Had his love worn out--and now when she was ready to renounce for it
all the world besides? She could not have so doubted him, but for the
little letter she had written. If he had felt thus, she argued, it must
have seemed an appeal, a recall. And he gave it no heed. To be sure,
he had not been able for weeks past to hold a pen--but he might have
come, if he liked. That letter grew to be a poignant humiliation. She
brooded upon it until the words, simple and few, were burned into her
brain. Yet the told herself scornfully that it was no great matter--the
letter was doubtless gone long ago--it had served, perhaps, to light
his cigar. And then she remembered the fervor of faith and the glow of
delight with which she had written it, and she felt that the best of
her, the essence of hope and youth and love was exhaled with the smoke,
and that all her life had flickered with the paper and had faded and
fallen to ashes.

Estwicke did not light his cigar with it, but he smoked many cigars
over it, and it furnished him, too, midnight vigils and bitterness of
spirit. This was the first time she had ever written to him. Heretofore
he had come and gone so often that there had been no need of letters.
He thought this little note stiff and formal. He could not know how
beaming a face had bent over it. He could not conceive that what he had
done should render him eligible in General Vayne’s eyes and demolish
those formidable unacknowledged objections. He could not imagine that
that long withheld consent had made her all at once shy of him--shyer
than ever, when Mrs. Kirby sat by as she wrote and admonished her
to remember that they were not engaged just now. Estwicke moodily
compared the result with Mrs. Kirby’s own affectionate effusion, its
superlatives straggling half across the page. The contrast seemed
significant. It was all over between them. He had told Marcia she
must decide, and she had decided. And she wrote now only because they
had been friends, and because she must, since his other friends wrote
too--sooth to say more kindly. He regarded General Vayne’s visit
as the emptiest formality. Old Ridgeway, the merest acquaintance,
had accompanied him, and there were many who came more than once.
Estwicke’s pride, too, was reasserting itself. He declared that he
would humble himself to General Vayne and his daughter no more. He
would go there never again, though his heart should break. He grew
taciturn, and rebellious, and irritable, and the post-surgeon rubbed
his hands and said that the patient was coming on finely and that a
strong, fierce temper was the best indication of rapid convalescence.

Meantime, General Vayne, all unaware of the havoc his consistency had
wrought in Marcia’s life and the life of a brave man whom he admired,
was reconciling himself with a good grace to that stern avenging
dispensation which sends the “youth of flaunting feathers” close
upon the heels of the father of a daughter. That opprobrious epithet
“home-made Yankee” had been stricken from his vocabulary. He had
substituted “loyal.” Loyal! That was a word of noble significations.
And he was a man peculiarly susceptible to the gracious charm of fine
words.

Somehow the future seemed more ideally appropriate reconstructed on the
basis of this word “loyal.”

That notable issue of the “Daily Chronicle” was stale enough, when
one day Tom Toole found his dinner wrapped in a fragment of it, as
he sat eating from his tin pail in the brief interval of rest called
“nooning.” Between bites he read from it, slowly and laboriously. And
as he read, the yard of the furniture factory, with its piles of lumber
and its high palings; the city’s hum; the strident voices of the street
vendors; the heavy whir of the machinery that, even while it slackened
and until it ceased, seemed to shake the massive building before
him--all passed from his consciousness. Instead, he saw the long,
sunlit stretches of the battle-field, beautiful and blooming beneath a
summer sky. He heard the river sing, and remembered how the piers that
stood in its midst roused its voice to a more passionate utterance, as
if it too would tell the story of all that had happened here.

“An’ hain’t that thar old pier seen sights!” he exclaimed. “An’ it’s
cur’ous fur it ter be this same man ter hev sech resky dealin’s
thar--this hyar Estwicke what looked so powerful like the t’other
one--ef”--even in the sunlight and in the far away city he glanced
dubiously over his shoulder--“ef thar ever war enny other one.”

He munched for a time in meditative silence. Then he straightened the
paper on the planks before him and began to spell out the closing
sentence, sensible of a supplemental curiosity as to the man and boy
whom Estwicke had sought to rescue.

The account of the officer’s exploit had occupied a column and a half
of fine print. But only a paragraph was needed to say that the man,
Graffy Beale, a low fellow of the neighborhood, was fatally injured in
the accident, although the boy had been pronounced out of danger.

Through the surprise throbbing in his quickening blood, through the
agitation that mustered great drops upon his forehead, blistering
the crumpled bit of paper as they fell, through the incredulity that
sought to possess him because the familiar name looked so unfamiliar in
print, Toole was mastered by a tyrannous recollection of that morning
when Graffy had sat on the rock by the dusty milestone, and implored
forgiveness, and a friendly word, and a hearty hand-clasp before they
parted.

And for a friendly word he was bidden to look to the graves he had
filled.

Was this the last word to be spoken between them? Had he indeed gone
hence forever? The ignorant fellow was battling with that maddening
sense of irrevocability which alone is potent to give to mortals a
realization of how finite is opportunity, how infinite is eternity.

“But Graffy air the frien’liest pore critter in all this worl’!” he
broke forth presently. “He ain’t a-goin’ ter hold no grudge agin
nobody, nuther hyar nur hyarafter. I hopes he knowed me that day,
better’n I knowed myse’f. An’ ef the Lord lets me I’ll tell him that,
ef I kin git back thar in time.”

Certainly conscience had little to do in Maurice Brennett’s schemes.
And when it became a factor, it was the conscience of another man.




                             CHAPTER XXI.


TEMPLE Meredith in New York--like “our army in Flanders”--swore
terribly.

Miss St. Pierre’s long-lost letter still lay, among the invitations to
parties and weddings and other delicate and flimsy missives, in the
darkness of his father’s desk in Marston, to which the old gentleman’s
mistake had consigned it.

As Meredith received from time to time his mail, which was forwarded
to him, he would eagerly scan the superscription of the envelopes,
then, in deep disappointment, thrust the letters into his pocket,
unread for hours. He had his own reasons for attaching a peculiar
significance to her long-continued silence. The last letter he had
written to her, which had apparently failed to elicit a reply, was one
that could in no degree be considered in the same category with their
previous correspondence as counsel and client. To be sure, it had some
slight preliminary sentences, relative to matters of business, as a
pretext, but then it meandered off into a strictly personal vein, and
it filled four large and closely-written pages. Not a love-letter, by
any manner of means; it merely breathed a respectful friendship, which,
however, held a subtle but unmistakable suggestion of a latent faculty
for vast expansion. Now this wily young lawyer had intended this as a
tentative proceeding--in his own jargon, as a “fishing bill.” He had
felt, for the first time in his life, self-distrustful, and that he
needed encouragement. Their intercourse had hitherto been on the basis
of counsel and client,--peculiarly informal, professionally speaking,
peculiarly formal in a social point of view. He had been altogether
unable to decide in what esteem she held him, apart from his position
as her adviser, apart from that vast legal lore on which she relied
so implicitly. But if she should respond to his attempt to awaken a
personal interest, he would take heart of grace.

So the fishing bill was carefully prepared and duly filed--and it
caught nothing. He had hardly realized how fully he had expected
an answer, how strong were his hopes, until days and weeks sped by
and brought him only grievous disappointment. There was an extreme
mortification in all this. And thus it was that Temple Meredith,
smarting with wounded pride, blasphemed, and said in his wrath that he
was the only damned fool (_sic_) in America who could contrive to
get into the position of being rejected before he had offered himself.
She refused even his friendship; no doubt she infinitely scorned
those delicate intimations of a still deeper feeling which the young
lawyer had carefully and craftily incorporated into the instrument. He
remembered them all. He remembered them with a rush of blood to his
face and a plunging heart. He remembered the foolish hopefulness with
which he had drawn it up. He had thought it a masterly performance
at the time. He had wished to avoid “rushing things” and speaking
prematurely. And now she would not give him an opportunity of speaking
at all. If he had not put his fate to the touch so soon--so fatally
soon; if he could only have waited for a time! But no! and it was that
evil thing, a lawyer’s busy pen, which had brought all this woe upon
him, and thrown him out of Cupid’s court. And so he swore terribly.

The thermometer in New York was the wonder of the country during Temple
Meredith’s sojourn in that city.

He grew callous as to how long that sojourn should continue. At one
time he contemplated writing to her to explain that he was prevented
by business from keeping his promise to be in Chattalla on the 28th of
June. But why should he write? what did she care how he came or went?
That day was a long day in New York as well as in Tennessee.

When he returned home he received after a short interval a letter which
had been forwarded to New York, arriving there after his departure,
and following him to Marston. As he caught sight of the delicate
chirography he seized it with eager hands, tore the envelope open, and
while he read, dismay overspread his face. The fair writer curtly and
coldly begged to call his attention once more to the matters contained
in her previous communication.

“There is some terrible mistake here,” he exclaimed. “A letter has gone
wrong, and it has played the very deuce, I’m afraid. Did nothing come
for me except the mail you forwarded?”

“No,” replied his father decisively; “everything was sent on.” After
a moment’s reflection he repeated, “Everything was sent on--except, I
believe, some wedding-cards and such like.”

“Where are they? By some chance the letter may be among them.”

When at last the package was drawn from the pigeonhole where it
had been so methodically lost, Temple Meredith had no time for the
somewhat unfilial criminations that had risen to his tongue. After
anxious perusal of the inclosed letter from Fortescue’s lawyers, he
caught up the newspaper, glanced at the time-table of the Marston and
Chattalla road, hastily made his preparations for the journey, and
on the afternoon of the same day his card was brought to Antoinette.
She had lapsed into despair. It had seemed impossible that she could
ever hear from him again. The slow torture of the past few weeks had
been sharpened with a keen sense of perpetuity. Now she felt stunned
with surprised relief, and tried in vain to brace her nerves for
what she must say to him and what he would say to her. Through the
open door of the library he caught a glimpse, as she came across the
empty drawing-rooms opposite, of her black-robed figure; a stray
sunbeam gilded her blonde hair; her face was flushed, and he noted
that expression of pathetic appeal which it had acquired in place of
the sweet immobility it was wont to wear. Somehow that gave him a
more adequate idea than anything else could have done of all she had
suffered; it roused within him an unjust self-reproach. He could hardly
endure to meet her as he rose hastily and advanced. She suddenly lost
her self-control when she had entered the room. She leaned back against
the door as if for support. She cast one glance upon him, and burst
into tears.

Perhaps it was well for Temple Meredith that he was a lawyer, and
expert by habit in marshalling together effective points and swiftly
exploiting an argument. So well did he plead his cause that he had made
the whole position of affairs, from the loss of the letter to the state
of his feelings, perfectly plain to her in the few moments that they
stood together by the door. And all the time he held her hand in his,
and she did not attempt to withdraw it.

“What did you think of me?” he exclaimed at last, in retrospective
dismay.

“I knew it was some strange accident,” she faltered; “I couldn’t
believe you had forgotten me.”

“Forgotten you!”

Then she turned away, and once more fell to sobbing. He looked at her
in great anxiety. He began to understand that something was involved
in all this of far deeper significance than those merely monetary
interests. Something had happened during his absence to grieve her
greatly.

He sat down beside her and once more took her hand.

“What is it?” he said, gently. “Tell me what it is that troubles you?”

She made no reply.

“I don’t wonder that you hesitate to trust me, after all this,” he
continued. “I only wish I knew, so that I might say something to
comfort you.”

“Nothing can ever comfort me,” she declared, in a burst of tears. “And
yet I know it is false, whatever it may be. It’s not that I believe
it, but other people may. That’s the reason I can’t tell you. But I’ve
intended to tell you. I’ve waited for you because I can’t trust any one
but you.”

“Then tell me,” he urged.

She was unobservant of the effect of her words as she sobbed through
her pathetic little account of the scene with Brennett on the
moonlit portico, and explained the interpretation she had placed
upon his mysterious hints and his motive in hazarding them. She was
hardly conscious that Meredith’s hand, which still clasped hers, was
trembling, and that there was a change in his voice intimating a tense
repression of feeling. He did not interrupt her. He spoke only after
she had finished her story.

“Where did you meet the man?”

“Here. That’s the strangest of all. He seems to be a thorough gentleman
as far as appearance and association go. They are all completely
deceived as to his real character.”

“Where is he now?”

“At Mrs. Percy’s. He is making her son a long visit.”

She looked up--an extreme surprise mingled with the tears in her eyes.
Meredith in ominous silence had risen, and was glancing hastily about
for his hat. His face was stern and hard. She divined his intention
from its expression.

“I thought I might trust you,” she exclaimed. “This is the reason I
didn’t tell General Vayne. He would have been rash. He would have taken
my position into consideration only as his daughter’s guest, who had
been threatened and intimidated in his house. He would have felt that
his own dignity was involved. But you! I thought _you_ would care
only for my interest. And now for the luxury of calling that man to
account you will have a great sensation, and it will bring out the
whole story,--the wicked fabrication that will seem the truth,--and it
will drag my name into the newspapers. It will all seem worse than it
is. You will have the satisfaction of horsewhipping or pistolling the
man, because _you_ are angry, and _I_ shall have to take the
consequences and the publicity.”

Meredith paused. He could not overlook these considerations. He felt
the weight of her argument. He stood, his hat in his hand and his
intention vacillating.

“You must not see him at all,” she persisted. “Promise me that you
will not. You are angry on my account. You think you are fighting my
battles. But you are taking the course of all others I most deprecate.
Ah, it is hard,--hard that there is nobody who will think for me, and
whom I can trust!”

He came back, and again sat down beside her. “Don’t tell me that,” he
entreated. “It is the pride of my life that you have said to-day you
could trust no one but me. I will do whatever you wish.”

“And what I wish you to do,” she exclaimed in increasing agitation,
“is to see Fortescue’s lawyers and make terms with them. Offer them
whatever they will take. Get the compromise through. Get it through at
once, and have it over.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Don’t you think you are very
precipitate?” he said. “This affair is a most transparent device. The
man is merely trying to frighten you into a compromise, so that he can
collect his debt on Fortescue.”

“I’ve thought of that. But can I risk it? Suppose we are mistaken.
Fortescue knew my people before I was born. My father, my mother,
they have been dead for twenty years. I never knew them. How could
I disprove any lie he might tell? How do I know what innocent
circumstance he may contort into such shape as to serve his wicked
purposes. It’s so vague; that makes it all the more terrible. That lie
must touch them or it would be impossible to make it useful in coercing
me into a compromise. The attempt proves that. Do you think I can keep
the property at such a price,--the price of their good name? You see I
have no choice.”

“There is no secret,--not even a lie,” said Meredith. “That rascal
threw out the idea merely as a chance suggestion. If you would allow me
to go to him I could wring from him a retraction of every word he spoke
to you--”

“I will not,--I will not,” she interrupted. “I have told you how
disastrous that would be to me.”

“I only want to convince you that the whole thing is only a most
audacious attempt to extort money. I dare say Fortescue has never heard
of this move. It is that incomparable villain’s own device.”

“But do you _know_ it? Shall I risk everything on a surmise? Will
you take the responsibility of advising me to defy the man? It was such
a bold thing. He couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t ask questions. He
was ready to tell the lie, and he was prepared to support it.”

“But a compromise would give you no immunity. They would presently
renew their demands and threats in the hope of extorting more money
still.”

He looked at her with earnest eyes. All the lawyer within him revolted
at the idea of thus tamely submitting to blackmail. It seemed hardly
less wicked than weak.

“Then they could take the whole property,--every cent.”

“And still they might tell it.”

“Then, you know, I couldn’t help it. It would be like a stroke of
lightning. It would be my hard fate. But my duty would have been done.
I should have stood between the dead and calumny as long as I could.
I should not have chosen money rather than their good repute. I can’t
keep the property now. I can’t haggle and barter over their graves. Oh,
no; I can’t do that.”

Her soft lips were quivering; her eyes had filled again.

“Oh, don’t distress yourself,” he cried. “Don’t talk about it any more.”

“I can’t think of anything else,” she faltered.

“But don’t cry. See here. I want you to tell me all that that man said
about Fortescue’s case. It may be useful. Tell me what he said.”

It was not difficult for Antoinette to recall all the details of the
conversation. She had gone over it often in the deep stillness of the
perfumed summer midnight, as she lay awake and could not sleep because
of her unquiet thoughts. She became more calm as she rehearsed it, and
he grew graver still. A pretty strong showing he considered it, for
he believed that Fortescue’s visit to the United States during the
suspension of the statute of limitations would not be held to operate
as a removal of the disability. In his opinion the statute began to
run against Fortescue only when he landed in New York early in the
spring of ’71. He resolved to observe special caution in his advice to
Miss St. Pierre. If he should counsel her to refuse the compromise,
it might chance that Fortescue would be able to sustain his claim to
her whole estate, and the story of which he seemed disposed to make
such unscrupulous use might prove, when spread abroad, as disastrous
as if it were true. Thus she would lose heavily both in pecuniary
considerations and in the more important matter of feeling. Meredith
appreciated his weighty responsibility in view of this possibility.

“What is your opinion?” she asked at last.

He made an effort to shake off his anxiety for the present.

“That it will bear a good deal of tough cogitation,” he said, with his
imperturbable aspect. “Suppose we agree upon this: to postpone deciding
upon the compromise for a week. That will give me an opportunity to
look into the affair. I’ll come again to Chattalla next Tuesday. Then
we’ll talk it all over again and determine on our best course.”

She assented, and for a few moments sat gravely silent. Meredith noted
her downcast eyes and troubled face. With an effort to conjure into it
something of its wonted impassive brightness, he said, remembering her
former ambition to explain things “like a man,”--

“How well you stated those points just now--positively like a lawyer.”

She looked at him and smiled faintly.

“I couldn’t have got them more distinctly from some ‘big wig’ arguing
in court.”

She laughed at this as at a jest. Still she was visibly flattered.

Her pride in her capacity for business suggested to him the
recollection that it was a hollow assumption, for she was still
unconscious that she owed him any money for his professional services.
He thought of his father and the “golden rule of practice” in inward
and unfilial merriment, and he offered himself a glorious bet that he
was the only lawyer in America who had ever taken as a retainer his
client’s heart.

When he was gone at last it seemed to Antoinette, with her rigid sense
of propriety, that it was incumbent upon her to confide to Mrs. Kirby,
as her chaperon _pro tempore_, the circumstance of this very
recent engagement to Temple Meredith.

“Now this is very nice--very nice indeed,” said the old lady, beaming
with gratification. “I don’t know Mr. Meredith, but I have no doubt he
is _all_ a young man should be, for his grandmother was Leonora
Archer--nice people, the Archers! And his mother was Louise Lapice--and
they are a good family too--and I feel confident that you will be very
happy.”

It never occurred to Mrs. Kirby that a nice grandmother might, in the
perverse course of events, have a grandson who was not at all nice.
The grandmother she considered important in the premises, and thus
she deftly argued. One pang of pity for Maurice Brennett’s blighted
affections--he was so talented! But then, she thought, brightening with
reassurance, no doubt Temple Meredith was talented too, for was not his
grandmother Leonora Archer!

And this was Mrs. Kirby’s moan for Maurice Brennett.

She had no intention of betraying Antoinette’s confidence. She fancied
that a secret told to her was as safe as if it were locked in the bosom
of the earth. She piqued herself on her trustworthiness. Thus she was
prone to error through lack of precaution, for she set no guard upon
her tongue, believing that member to be the most discreet organ of its
kind.

It chanced that she spent the following day with Mrs. Ridgeway; the
dust of her departing wheels was hardly laid upon the pike before her
hostess was on the way to town in that swift and commodious fashion,
known as “riding in the barouche.” And in three hours all Chattalla
was aware that the pretty Miss St. Pierre, who had made Miss Vayne
such a long visit, was just engaged to a stranger--a friend of Horace
Percy’s--whom she had first met at Mrs. Percy’s house.

And, singularly enough, this disclosure evoked a train of sequences
fraught with disproportionate importance.




                             CHAPTER XXII.


MAURICE Brennett confided little to chance. He had found it a doubtful
auxiliary. One lowering afternoon, however, it came to his aid in
an unexpected emergency. It had moved him to decline an invitation
from Horace Percy to drive to Chattalla, and an hour or so after his
friend’s departure it led him into the library.

The day was sultry; no wind stirred; the woods were still. A heavy
cloud overshadowed the landscape like an impending curse; now and then
it was cleft by a lurid flash of lightning, but as yet there was no
thunder. The storm was in abeyance.

The grating of wheels on the gravelled drive struck sharply upon the
silence. With an idle man’s languid interest in small details, he put
aside the curtain and looked out. His heart stood still.

It might seem that there was nothing in the sight which met his eyes
to elicit vivid emotion--only a well-dressed man, with a handsome
face and a seigniorial manner, alighting from a carriage. But if a
great painter had staked his life, his soul upon the grouping in his
masterpiece, and the figures should become animated with a malicious
free-agency, leaving their places on the canvas and involving all in
ruin, his despair might be commensurate with what Brennett felt when
John Fortescue, quitting his prescribed sphere, appeared suddenly on
this new scene, dragging chaotic complications after him.

There was hardly a moment for reflection. There was hardly need
for that moment. His best course--his only course flashed through
Brennett’s mind instantly. He caught up his hat, walked hastily out
into the hall, and the two men met at the open front-door as Fortescue
laid his hand on the bell-knob.

He drew back slightly. The gesture, almost imperceptible though it was,
restored Brennett’s self-confidence. There was no trace of discomposure
now in his manner.

“You’ve come to see me, I suppose,” he said coolly. “May I ask why?”

His agitation seemed to have subtly transferred itself to Fortescue,
whose face changed.

“Hang it!” he said with husky uncertainty. “Shall I talk it out now and
here?”

“If you like,” Brennett replied, laughing a little, and eying him
contemptuously.

Fortescue had known Brennett long and well. No one could know him well
enough to divine how he quaked with the prosaic fear that some servant
might see the carriage and come to usher in the guest--how cautiously
he was pushing his advantage--how anxious he was lest he push it too
far--how he deprecated what he invited, for a hasty word might ruin
them both. Still it was imperative to cow Fortescue--to keep him down
was the first consideration.

“Isn’t there some place about here where we can talk without
interruption, Brennett,” said Fortescue, calling his name for the first
time. “I don’t want to meet people--I must see you alone. I must talk
affairs over with you. I won’t go on with the”--

He broke off suddenly. “I tell you now,” he resumed, with a gathering
frown, “I’ve come expressly to have it out with you.”

“You can imagine what facilities there are here for the interview you
propose,” said Brennett, still harassing him. “There is the library,
with the dining-room adjoining; there are the parlors, opening into
a conservatory; there is my room, connected with Percy’s by sliding
doors.”

“Oh, come out, come out!” said Fortescue impatiently. “We can find some
quiet place about the grounds, or we can get into the carriage and
drive away somewhere.”

Brennett silently assented. As they walked down the steps he took out
his cigar-case and offered it. Fortescue shook his head, hardly raising
his absorbed eyes from the ground, and mechanically keeping by the side
of his friend, who led the way through the shrubbery. Brennett was
selecting a cigar for himself when they reached their objective point;
they had emerged from among the evergreens into an open, grassy space,
with only a great oak-tree in the centre; beneath its wide-spreading
branches was an iron bench. Here a figure approaching in any direction
could be observed at the distance of fifty yards, and their voices,
even if raised in emphasis or anger, would be inaudible to any loiterer
among the shrubbery beyond.

Brennett threw himself on the bench, and, with his cigar between his
teeth, he glanced up at his visitor, who paused, leaning moodily
against the bole of the tree.

“Now, see here,” said Brennett, in a pleasant, deliberate voice.

Fortescue lifted his head with a hungry expectancy of look, almost
pitiable in its intensity.

“Give me a match, can’t you?” continued Brennett.

A cruel disappointment was sharply cut into Fortescue’s face. There was
something positively simple-hearted in his unsuspecting ignorance of
the astute intention that had dealt this insidious thrust. It seemed
to him that only his eagerness had led him into sanguine anticipation,
and in his curt response, “Haven’t one,” there was no infusion of
bitterness.

“Ah, I believe I have one myself.” Brennett produced it and lighted his
cigar; then, as he began to smoke, he carelessly eyed his despondent
companion, still leaning against the tree,--more despondent, perhaps,
for that sudden kindling of hope, as suddenly quenched,--more anxious,
more nervous. Fortescue made an effort to rally.

“Now, Brennett, what have you to say to me?”

“To say to you?” echoed Brennett in surprised accents. “My dear fellow,
not one word.”

“Come, there’s enough of that,” retorted Fortescue fiercely.

“Did you journey all the way from the mountains merely to ask what I
have to say?”

“I won’t be badgered in this manner, Brennett. You had better draw off.
I came here for money. You know that.”

“You won’t get it.”

“Then I’ll expose the whole affair.”

“And incidentally give yourself up?”

Fortescue looked hard into his coadjutor’s face. It was grave, but the
brilliant eyes were lighted by some inward, sardonic laughter.

“And give myself up,” he said slowly, “and, incidentally, you.”

“You mistake your metal, my dear Fortescue. You have been a soldier, as
we all know, but you are not the stuff of which martyrs are made.”

“I don’t see why I should be a martyr. I don’t see why, in exposing
you, I should necessarily give myself up.” Fortescue paused, as if
in doubt whether he should go further. Brennett’s satiric face and
gleaming eyes seemed to exert an unnerving effect upon him.

“I intend to cut the whole thing,” he cried suddenly. “I have been
shabbily treated from the first, because you fancy that I am completely
at your mercy. I am not in your power. I have the ability to ruin you
by a course which insures me immunity. I did _not_ come all the
way from the mountains merely to ask what you have to say, but to see
Miss St. Pierre,--unless you find it prudent to come to terms.”

Brennett pulled away comfortably at his cigar. The unconstrained
calmness of his manner had not a suggestion of _bravade_; his
attitude denoted a certain degree of easy attention; his bright eyes
were fixed in listless quietude upon the line of shrubbery. But was his
face paler than its wont, or did it catch the pallid reflection of a
lurid gleam from the heavy clouds?

“See Miss St. Pierre,” he exclaimed presently, looking up. “Of course
you must. She is worth seeing, I assure you.”

“Damn it!” cried the other furiously, “you know what I mean. I shall
see Miss St. Pierre, and, by disclosing the whole scheme, secure her
promise not to prosecute,--as far as I am concerned. I went into the
affair reluctantly. I never half liked it, but I was so devilish hard
up for the money you bribed me with. I never knew how serious it was.
It seemed a sort of theatrical lark. I was exhilarated with the idea of
personating that fellow and humbugging a town full of people. I knew I
could do it. But I really did not appreciate what a swindle it was, for
I was only half posted about the facts before I had committed myself.
_You_ were the originator of the plot; you alone will have to
answer for it. I shall tell her the whole story, and throw myself on
her clemency.”

“Her clemency!” Brennett repeated the words mockingly. “The man who
trusts to _her_ clemency will find himself in the county jail,
convicted of a conspiracy to fraudulently obtain property.”

From this ignoble allusion Fortescue flinched. And certainly there
was a barbed malice in its incongruity with all those fastidious
intimations which hung about his presence--his attire, somewhat too
elegant and elaborate, his impressive bearing, even his delicately
white but strong and sinewy hand clenching itself upon the kid glove
which he had drawn off. Hardly more incongruous, however, than the man
was with himself, with those sordid appeals for money, with his coarse
threats. He seemed so nobly endowed by nature. His superb physique in
itself should have rendered mere existence pleasure. His strength,
his stature, his animal spirits might have made life a long triumphal
progress for some ambitious soul, niggardly equipped. All the sharply
chiselled lines of his features, and those fine eyes that were so
vicious and so handsome, bespoke a rare intelligence which could only
be an added reproach to him and his failings. His special talents, and
his voice, with its infinite susceptibility of inflection, would have
given fortune and fame to another man, and a histrionic artist to the
world. He was an example of perverted powers. He had all--yet lacked
all in lacking that consecrating element, an abiding sense of honor.

Certain lines about his perfectly moulded lips might once have
suggested an ingenuous sensitiveness--now they expressed an
accomplished sensuality. There was a momentary lapse, however, into the
old habit of their muscles as they trembled almost imperceptibly. Then
they were resolutely stilled, and with the coarseness of these days he
faced his coadjutor’s suggestion and persisted.

“She will be under a certain degree of obligation to me for exposing
the conspiracy and withdrawing from it before her interests are
injured. She will have promised.”

“This is the nineteenth century,” said Brennett, “and yet here is a
man willing to stake his liberty on a woman’s promise. The world moves
slowly.”

There was a muttering of thunder on the still air. A vivid flash shot
swiftly through the heavens from zenith to horizon and quivered in
ghastly vibrations over all the landscape below. Fortescue lifted
his eyes toward the black clouds as he spoke. “I left Bandusia with
the resolve of seeing her at once. Even after I reached that little
town yesterday I had no intention of ever appealing to you again.
This afternoon I started out to that man’s place--General Vayne’s
place--determined to have an interview with her and explain the whole
affair.”

He was still looking at the clouds. He did not note the effect of
his words, or he might have seen that Maurice Brennett winced at the
imminence of this danger of which he had had no premonition. His bright
eyes were distended and brighter still. He lounged upon the iron bench
in a relaxed attitude; one hand was on his hip; it might have occurred
to a man more timid or more observant than his companion, that it was
in significant proximity to his pistol pocket. He was an unscrupulous
villain and he had been threatened with discovery and ruin. His quick,
prophetic mind had sketched the outline of the possible scenes to
come--a jet of red light projected into the somnolent atmosphere of
this gray afternoon; a sharp report; a result that should be called
a dreadful accident; frantic regret for the careless handling of a
pistol supposed to be unloaded; always the most cordial relations
existing between the parties. Thus the curtain should fall upon the
“theatrical lark.”

There was no change in his voice when he spoke. He asked a question as
if the answer could in no degree concern him.

“And why didn’t you go?”

Fortescue once more searchingly scanned the face before him. There was
nothing in it to suggest how he had best modify the facts. He gave
them unvarnished. “I discovered she was not there. Before I left the
turnpike I met a carriage with two young ladies driving toward the
town. I questioned the tollgate-keeper, who said that one was General
Vayne’s daughter and the other Miss St. Pierre. So I postponed the
project, turned back, and concluded to try you once more before I throw
up my hand.”

“Throw it up, my friend. You can see her easily enough in the morning.”

“I’ll try it, at any rate,” said Fortescue doggedly, his breath coming
hard between his clenched teeth. “I’m likely to get nothing from
you--perhaps she will pay for the information I can give.”

“You don’t know her!” exclaimed Brennett, laughing. “If you did I
should admire your enterprise.”

“I shall not ask her for money,” cried Fortescue impetuously, veering
instantly from his determination. “I shall only tell her the whole
story and throw myself on her clemency. My testimony against you will
give her all the revenge she wants.”

“My dear Fortescue,” said Brennett, still laughing, “you don’t know
your cousin.”

“She is not my cousin. Stop that humbug. Don’t call me ‘Fortescue.’”

“Don’t you call yourself ‘Fortescue?’ Tell me, what shall I call you?”

“What’s the use of all that rot when we are alone?”

“Habit, my dear fellow--for the sake of habit. You wouldn’t like it if
I should accidentally blurt out among our acquaintances in New Orleans
that you are my valued friend Edward Keevor--merely masquerading for
mingled considerations of pleasure and profit as John Fortescue.”

“And you needn’t shout it now”--with an anxious glance toward the
shrubbery.

“Why not? To-morrow you will fling yourself penitent before Miss St.
Pierre, and meekly petition for immunity and mercy. The game is up.”

The adventurer said nothing. He was thinking that if it were desirable
to see Miss St. Pierre he should have done so without talking the
matter over with Brennett. He was conscious of being unduly swayed by
his coadjutor’s influence when they were together, and yet he could
not shake it off. His project, which he had believed so safe, so easy,
began to present unexpected difficulties. Pitfalls were before him--he
must tread warily. There was no prophesying how she would receive
his disclosure. The story once told--he was absolutely at her mercy.
As he reflected on his fast-fading resolve it seemed the maddest
temerity to have contemplated risking himself upon the doubtful whim
that might possess a woman whom he had never seen, and of whom he had
heard nothing save what would augur the most disastrous results of his
confidence.

He could not understand Brennett’s indifference. It was simply
inexplicable in a man fatally menaced, with every consideration at
stake. It never occurred to him--who could feign so well--that another
might play a part too. And he did not think Brennett in any special
sense a courageous man--he did not credit him with the nerve to
stolidly face an emergency like this. He believed himself possessed of
far more force and pluck; he had relied on these endowments to shake
his adversary’s equilibrium, and now he himself was wavering. As far
as he could judge he had made no impression. A new conviction was
sending deep roots into his mind--his coadjutor had an alternative in
contemplation. Perhaps there had been some change in the position of
affairs of which he had not been notified. He quaked as he thought of
his precipitancy, and the dangers into which he might have plunged. He
felt enmeshed in hidden toils; his manner was changing from threatening
sternness to despondent appeal. He stood for an instant longer beneath
the tree, then he walked slowly to the iron bench and sat down beside
his companion.

“Brennett,” he said, “you have not treated me fairly in this matter.
You have deceived me in more ways than one.”

“If so, you have your redress. I don’t say a word to dissuade you. Do
whatever you think your interest requires.”

“You kept me in ignorance of the extent of this swindle until I was
fully committed. You knew I wouldn’t take hold if I had understood. I
never before did anything villanous--never half so bad, I mean. Ah,
well--when a man once starts on the down grade of crime there’s not
much chance of putting on the brakes. The gambling-house and the gates
of hell--they are the _termini_, I suppose.”

“This is edifying,” said Brennett, with a curling lip.

“You are trying to exasperate me. You are trying to provoke me to an
outbreak. You want me to become discouraged and to relinquish the
whole matter, and go quietly back to France. You have succeeded in
effecting a compromise, and now you are trying to evade paying me the
five thousand dollars which you promised.”

Brennett laughed. “What a fool!” he said contemptuously. “How could I
effect a compromise without John Fortescue’s signature?”

This was evidently a false scent.

“Then you have some alternative in view. What is the prospect for a
compromise?”

“Better than ever.”

“You have told me that before.”

“It was true then--it is true now. The chances have steadily improved.
Before long they will be merged in a certainty.”

“I must have money, Brennett--in the meantime I must have some money.”

“You won’t get it from me.”

“Then I’ll split.”

“Split then--and be damned to you!”

There was a pause.

“It is hard--hard! You promised at first that it should last for only
two or three weeks, and I agreed to play the part for that length of
time. It has lasted four months. It is a terrible strain.”

“Nonsense. I don’t believe you. I’ve seen you ape first one fellow and
then another, and hardly make a gesture or speak a word in your own
manner for days together. It’s a natural gift with you. There’s no art
nor cultivation about it, and it can’t be painful to exercise it. You
are doing for money what I have seen you do a thousand times for pure
tomfoolery. I have filled my contract with you to the letter. I told
you that the time could not be positively limited. I paid you five
thousand dollars--to undertake a little deception, as easy to you as
lying--and I promised you five thousand more contingent upon effecting
a compromise with Miss Antoinette St. Pierre. You want more money in
the interval--which our agreement does not call for. I won’t pay a
cent.”

“I run a frightful risk. Every day that this thing continues makes it
more imminent. I am always oppressed with a sense of my danger.”

“You run a frightful risk when you are drunk.”

“But I haven’t been drinking lately. I have sworn to be moderate. I
thought at first that I could carry the affair off easily enough for
a short time, but this long, long imposition has broken me down. And
since that locket--you remember I wrote to you--since it has come from
the grave to upbraid me I have been fearfully harassed; my nerves
are disordered; I am beset with an idea that discovery is upon me.
I am actually becoming superstitious,” he continued, more wildly.
“Brennett,”--he paused impressively as he rose to his feet, while the
thunder crashed from the clouds and the lightning rent the sky--“I
am almost afraid to put it into words, but I have a curious sense of
companionship. Often that man, John Fortescue, is with me.”

Brennett glanced up with a satiric smile.

“You will not believe me,” the other went on, in a broken voice and
with a white, set face. “Why I should tell _you_ I don’t know--I
saw him shot from his horse on that battle-field--I saw him hours
afterward lying on the ground, dead--and--by the Lord in heaven--I met
him on the streets of Marston yesterday.”

He struck the iron bench in emphasis; the blow forced out the blood
from his hand. He did not notice it in his excitement. He held it up,
dripping and quivering, as he spoke.

“Like he was when I first knew him. Like he was twenty years ago.
Brennett--Brennett, I thought I had lost my mind! I thought that it was
only a diseased and morbid fancy. I purposely reeled up against it,
like a drunken man, to try if the--the Thing was palpable--if it could
speak!”

His face was illumined suddenly with the baleful glitter of the
lightning; then it sank as suddenly into the moody shadow of the
stormy clouds. And still he held up his hand, dripping with blood, and
quivering with a pain of which he was unconscious. Brennett was looking
at him with some speculation in his cool, critical eyes as to how he
might turn these fantastic mental gyrations to his own use. “And it did
speak?” he said.

“It did speak--and it spoke with his voice, but I could not catch the
words. He threw me off with a gesture as characteristic as his tones.
Then he walked on down the street with exactly the air and manner which
I had been imitating as I had walked on up the street. It seemed to me
so patent that I stared about to see if people had noticed it, but no
one was looking at us.”

After a moment the impostor once more broke forth wildly,--

“When I fell asleep I dreamed of him; I shall dream of him to-night.
Some day I shall see him again. I know it. I feel it. I shall see him
again.”

Brennett laughed harshly. “You are a marvellously unreasoning creature.
Does it never occur to you that the man was uppermost in your thoughts,
and this fact invested some stranger with a fancied resemblance. I’ll
stake my immortal soul, too, that you had been drinking.”

“I expected you to say that,” his friend declared, with a heavy sigh.
“I don’t understand why I should tell these things to you, except
perhaps because I can tell them to no one else. I don’t look to you
for sympathy. I am a fool, God knows, but I have never been given over
to such abject idiocy as that.”

Again he paused, white and haggard. He was in a strong tremor. He might
have fallen but for the tree behind him.

“Brennett,” he cried suddenly, “I am dead! I have lost my identity.
I am a dead man! And this,” he continued, striking his breast, “this
is John Fortescue. _I_ go about so lonely--so lonely among these
crowds of living men. When my head aches, and my heart is bursting,
and my conscience has fallen upon me with a fang, John Fortescue is
hilarious and loud. He has a handful of winning cards--the bottled
sunshine of champagne has kindled a riotous summer in his veins. His
friends are fond of him for all his faults. They call him Jack, and
swear he is the best fellow in the world! His father’s old cronies
come to him and beg him to reform. They take him home to dinner, and
he meets saintly old ladies, who talk to him about his mother. And
_I_, I don’t know where _I_ am! _I_ look on at all of
it from some outer darkness. My soul has given me the slip; God has
forgotten it--it was so little, you know, it slid away, and was lost,
just vaguely _lost_ somewhere. For _this_, this is John
Fortescue. They talk to him about his mother. And he listens. I don’t,
you know, for I never saw her. And I would rather face death than the
recollection of my own mother. But he, he feels differently. It is very
natural that he should.”

Once more Brennett’s sardonic laughter jarred the air.

“Don’t think to work upon me, Ned, by your histrionic display. I have
already the highest opinion of your ability in that line. I have given
you substantial proof how I value your talents. You cannot extort
further admiration, and, incidentally, another _honorarium_ by
this unexpected _coup de théâtre_.”

His words were like a douche of cold water to the adventurer. They
chilled while they stung, and yet they brought up his blood with a
rush, and steadied his nerves. He again walked to the bench and seated
himself.

“Brennett,” he said, laying his hand upon his friend’s knee and
speaking slowly as he looked into those bright eyes, “you are a man
of acumen and excellent judgment--singularly quick in the vivisection
of character, and adroit to a superhuman degree in exposing secret
motives. And yet you think it possible that a man would try to profit
by working upon your feelings; that I credit you with a heart--a heart!
whose generous heat might mislead your cooler reason. I have long
known that you have an ability to scheme which you call your mind; an
all-consuming avarice, that you dignify by the name of ambition. You
have a system of veins and valves and arteries through which flows a
sluggish fluid that is not blood, for it was never warm--it can pulsate
to no interest save your own. I could only reach your feelings by
striking you. And I have a mind to strike you dead on the spot.”

“There would be a prompt decadence of the drama if all mild, admiring
spectators were subjected to dangers like this,” sneered Brennett. He
made no move toward his pistol-pocket now--the threat was empty of
intention. He recognized the fact.

“I did not hope that I could by argument reach that hypothetical
essence, your conscience,--by showing you how manifestly unfair it
is that I should be forced to continue this personation through four
months instead of the three weeks to which I agreed, and without any
payment for the extra time and risk. I did not trouble you so long
as I could live by the tables, but at that sequestered place in the
mountains, where on account only of your insistence I remained, there
is literally nothing going on, and I am sometimes at my wits’ end
for five dollars. But I did not intend to appeal to your conscience.
If you have a conscience nobody would suspect it. If you have a
soul--imagination cannot conceive the idea! If you ever had a spark of
honor or honesty it was extinguished long before I first knew you--long
before I first fell under your blighting influence. How it should
attach men to virtue--the companions they meet in vice!”

“You’re a rhetorician, Ned; doubtless able to write tragedies as well
as play the high-minded though lugubrious penitent. Give over these
handsomely rounded periods and tell me what you did expect to reach?”

“Your fears.”

“I am mistaken, Ned; comedy is your forte. This is funny.”

“And so I thought I would warn you that I intend to tell Miss St.
Pierre.”

“You won’t do it,” said Brennett coolly. “You have everything to risk;
you have nothing to gain; and you will certainly lose the chance of
five thousand dollars.”

Still once more the adventurer scanned that impassive face. There was
no mistaking its expression--it was an absolute indifference. He threw
himself back with a hunted look; he hardly knew which way to turn. It
was a great relief to give for a moment his attention to a trivial
subject.

“How did I get that cut?” he said, looking in surprise at his hand, and
sensible for the first time of the stinging bruise.

“In your excitement you struck your hand on that sharp edge,” said
Brennett. “I tell you now--for your own good, mind you--such
agitation is dangerous. You ought to struggle against those fantastic
illusions about Fortescue, or you’ll pass the rest of your days in a
strait-jacket.”

The other did not reply. He was spent with the intensity of his
emotions. His spirits were at their lowest ebb. He raised his
heavily-lidded eyes and gazed despondently at the encompassing wall of
shrubbery. Suddenly he became aware that a carriage was rapidly passing
behind it, and he heard a hasty voice of recognition calling from the
window.

He turned in languid inquiry to Brennett.

“That’s Percy,” said Brennett in answer to the look. “He has seen you.
We shall have to go to the house, I suppose. If you intend to continue
with the affair, you ought to try to rally and support the character.”

“I intend to go on with it for the present,” the impostor rejoined.

Certainly it was no mean order of ability which could conjure into
that jaded, sordid face all those strong, yet subtle suggestions of
vitality, and buoyancy, and a fine candor, and a generous ardor;
that could put on, as a vestment, a demeanor in which high breeding
and pride were blended with patent recklessness and a fantastic
_bravade_ of convention. One would have said that it was an
inimitable manner as he walked with his friend toward the house. He
was drawing his glove over his cut and bruised hand, and Brennett,
watching him furtively, yet narrowly, felt a great weight lifted in the
vanishing doubt as to how he would meet Percy.

He met Percy lightly enough, parrying with clever lies and excuses the
young man’s invitations which were insistent almost to the verge of
rudeness. For the storm was breaking at last; the peals of thunder and
flashes of lightning were instantaneous and nearly unintermittent;
far away about the horizon the sombre masses of clouds were torn
into fringes as the heavy rain began to fall. With feigned regrets
the visitor sprang into the carriage, and it rolled away between the
darkening earth and the flaring sky.




                            CHAPTER XXIII.


THE storm was over by the time he reached Chattalla. The wind and
the breaking clouds were rioting through the deep blue sky. The moon
had risen; wherever its rays fell they seemed to evoke a lily in the
picturesque waste of a garden, that lay at one side of the little
hotel; there were petunias hidden somewhere, and honeysuckle, their
fragrance all freshened by the rain. His sore heart was instinct
with tender recollections as he leaned out of the bar-room window,
recognizing the fragrance of old-fashioned flowers, the pride of
country gardens--he had not seen their like since his early childhood.
It took him back for a moment, and in that moment he forgot the
baffling wonder and dismay that had possessed him; for since parting
with Brennett he had been groping blindly about in a maze of conjecture
for those secret motives which he suspected. Now some long crushed
germ of higher impulses was faintly stirring, perhaps with reviviscent
possibilities, as he took his cigar from his lips and looked out into
the dim leafy recesses, and sighed while he looked. He knocked the
feathery ash from the weed, and in the motion changed his position.

It brought the interior of the bar-room before him, and with the glare
of the lamps and the prosaic suggestions of the scene, returned his
eager speculation as to the innocuous alternative which he believed
Brennett held in reserve. This roused his exhausted faculties for
another spurt.

The house was quiet, but from the purple gloom of the street came the
insistent clamor of the village church bells, inconceivably discordant
to ears accustomed to the more melodious sound of the bells of
cities. This was not Sunday, but a “big revival” was in progress--the
prevailing sensation amidst the monotony of life in Chattalla--and by
reason of the dominant desire to know who had “got religion” it drew
until even the saloons were almost deserted. Now and then, however, a
languid drawl broke the stillness within the bar-room, and seemed the
preconcerted signal for a group of loungers to noisily shift their
chairs, which were already precariously tilted on the hind-legs, to
spit profusely on the bare floor, and to raise slow meditative eyes
to the speaker’s face. Their conversation was of that retrospective
character, peculiarly rural, in which facts perfectly well-known to
each are severally rehearsed as if to satisfy some iterative mental
craving. Often covert glances were cast at one of their number,
expressive of curiosity, and an expectation of more pronounced symptoms
of emotion than he exhibited. His grave, stolid face was half shaded
by his slouched hat, his long, tawny beard hung down upon his breast,
his legs were stretched out at length, his hands were thrust deep in
the pockets of his brown jeans trousers. The talk was not cheerful, and
seemed as incongruous as might be with the time and place. It consisted
chiefly of details of the fearful “taking off” of an unfortunate called
Graffy Beale. These chanced to involve the mention of General Vayne,
whose name the adventurer caught as he lounged in the window.

“Firing the Gen’al’s fields kep’ Graffy in torment,” said the
bar-keeper, turning a huge quid of tobacco in his cheek. “An’ yit ’t
war an accident.”

“Never rested till they went an’ fetched old Frank--they tells me,”
said Tom Toole, shifting his heavy boots one above the other.

A third spat on the floor. “Jes’ oughter hev seen Gen’al Vayne!”

“Ye war thar,” said Toole affirmatively.

“I war,” the eye-witness replied.

Long pause.

“Old Gen’al gits foolisher every day--talks like he war a millionaire
yit,” he presently resumed discursively. “All that thar good cotton
burnt up fur nothin’, an’ he so scrimped fur money--Shucks! Mightily
surprised he war ter find out that the fire started from whar Graffy
hed hid in the old powder-magazine on his plantation--then sez he--sez
the old Gen’al--‘I hope I may be forgiven ez freely ez I forgive you.
My pore feller, I do not grudge one fibre of the cotton. I bear in
mind your grievous straits. And, for God’s sake, if you had shelter,
or warmth, or security from me or mine, take it as the bounty of
Providence, and be at rest!’”

The church-bells jangled out of tune. The breath of jasmine came in
at the window. A mocking-bird was singing in the moonlight. Once more
the roughly shod feet grated harshly on the floor, and the chairs were
noisily moved.

“Shucks! Mighty big sinner now, old Frank is!” another submitted
ironically. “What ails him ter git ter goin’ round hyar jowin’ ’bout
furgiveness? What’s he ever done ter be furgiven fur?”

“He fought a juel wunst,” suggested a moralist, dubiously. “They say
nowadays ez that is a sin.”

“I reckon even the bes’ men need grace,” said the bar-keeper piously.

“I beg your pardon,” the adventurer struck unexpectedly into the
conversation, “but you alluded just now to General Vayne’s financial
condition. I have some curiosity to know how he stands since the war.”

This moment was the crisis in Maurice Brennett’s affairs. If his
coadjutor should leave on the next train for East Tennessee his scheme
was perfect. On this chance he had reckoned when they parted. Only a
few more days and there would come the full fruition of success--it was
even more imminent than he thought,--for Miss St. Pierre had finally
instructed her lawyer to compromise on any terms her adversary might
dictate.

And all this intricate mechanism, of which free agents were the
component parts, so delicately adjusted that the ruling characteristic
of each acted and reacted on the others according to Brennett’s
volition, all was in an instant brought to naught because his
accomplice’s eyes chanced to rest upon Tom Toole, and the impulse of
the moment led him to mingle in the rural gossip.

“How does he stand? How does General Vayne come on since the war?” he
reiterated.

Tom Toole shook his head with slow impressiveness. The gesture operated
as a melancholy annotation of his response. “Come on? He don’t come on
wuth a cent.”

“It’s a pretty good country you seem to have about here. I should think
he might have pulled together in all this time. He ought to have more
elasticity.”

“He’s flat _broke_,” said the bar-keeper conclusively. “The value
o’ his property hes gone down ter nothink, scarcely, whilst his debts
hev been growin’ on thar interes’. When the hammer comes down it’ll
smash all in sight. Now, ez ter me, _I_ never hed nothink ter
lose. But it’s a right stiff thing on the ‘big rich,’ sech ez Gen’al
Vayne uster be.”

“Oh, I dare say he will mend his fortunes. He is only middle-aged as
yet. He is not on his last legs, you see. There are chances before
him. He may marry a rich widow. Let me tell you, never moan for a man
who has a rich widow for a neighbor! He has a financial panacea, always
ready to be applied with neatness and despatch.”

There was a laugh of languid amusement among the rural loafers. Only
Tom Toole sat silent and grave.

The speaker, too, laughed as he shifted his cigar between his teeth.
“General Vayne has acumen in those matters, I should judge. He has
hedged--neatly. I happen to know that he has a young lady staying in
his house, visiting his daughter. Is it a coincidence that this young
lady is very rich, in her own right?”

He had carried his point. He had wrenched the subject of conversation
to Miss St. Pierre. He wanted to know what was said and thought of her
in the village; a chance word might give him a clew--vaguely a clew--to
something that would prove valuable. He had heard of her only through
Brennett. It might be well to glean a point or two from some source
more reliable and disinterested. It might lead to a knowledge of that
suspected alternative which he believed rendered Brennett indifferent
to the imposture, and the imposture futile. He did not know what use
he could make of the vague “something” when he should hear it. He only
felt blindfolded, and working in the dark, and his instinct was to lift
the bandage.

“Ye’re a stranger hyar,” said Toole, “an’ I reckon ye don’t know Gen’al
Vayne. No man that ever knew him would believe _he_ was dangling
after rich wimmen fur the sake o’ thar money.”

“Oh no, I don’t know him. He was only pointed out to me on the street.”

“_I_ know him--bet on that! I served in his brigade four year.
I’ve known him on the battle-field an’ in camp, in forced marches an’
routs, in victories an’ defeats What _I_ don’t know about that
man ain’t wuth findin’ out. An’ _I_ say he’s a good soldier, an’ a
brave man an’ a gentleman--_every inch_!”

“That’s a true word,” said the bar-keeper, suddenly infected with
Toole’s enthusiasm.

“Fur a fack!” chorused the group, easily adapting their plastic mood to
the gravity with which Toole contemplated the subject.

“I don’t question it,” the adventurer carelessly declared. “But
gentlemen have married rich women. It may be a wicked thing to do.
Still I am no judge.”

And he laughed again.

“Gentlemen hev never married rich women fur the sake o’ thar money--not
ef _I_ onderstan’ the meanin’ o’ the word. A gentleman sech ez
Gen’al Vayne don’t invite a young lady ter visit his darter fur the
sake o’ draggin’ in her fortin’. That’s what you hinted jes’ now,”
Toole persisted seriously. He thought he owed much gratitude to General
Vayne, who, despite his anxious financial straits, had furnished
bail, had given with an open hand of his scanty store, had restored
his humble friend to liberty, had trusted him when all the world was
against him. But hitherto the indulgence of this sentiment had seemed
a farce to Toole, so heavily did remorse weigh upon him for his share
in that folly which had resulted in firing the battle-field and burning
the cotton. He had never been able even to contemplate confessing
how deeply he had injured his benefactor. Those words of comfort and
forgiveness, which had sent Graffy in peace to the grave, were hardly
less welcome to him. Now he no longer felt belied in any demonstration
of respect and regard for the man who had done so much for him. He
could not sit by and hear General Vayne disparaged. He was ready to
make it his own quarrel. As a sudden recollection struck him he was
imbued with a sense of triumph, and he re-commenced with the assurance
of making this insidious detractor eat his own words.

“An’ now I kem ter think of it, mister, I kin prove ter ye that ye
air all cat-a-wampus on that p’int--’kase this young lady--this Miss
Sampeere, or Camphire, or whatever her name is--it’s reported about
town that she is engaged ter be married ter another man--a stranger
hyar.”

“A _stranger_? What stranger?”

Toole looked at him in surprise. He had drawn himself up to his full
height; his teeth were clenched on his cigar; his breath was quick;
upon his face was the pale anguish of suspense.

“Why,” said Toole, with a reluctance which he hardly understood, “I
don’t know his name. I ain’t sure he’s hyar now,--he’s a friend o’
Horace Percy’s, an’ he stayed a good long spell down at Mrs. Percy’s
house.”

“By the Lord!” exclaimed the adventurer wildly, bringing his hand down
on the counter with a vehemence that sent a shiver through all the
glasses, “what a dupe I have been! Engaged to him! There’s the secret!
That explains it!”

His pallor had deepened--his face was ghastly and rigid. A terrible
passion was blazing in his eyes. It had set all his pulses a-quiver,
and he shook visibly. He looked desperate, even dangerous. For an
instant he stood in doubt, then started toward the door. One of the
amazed, uncomprehending loafers threw himself in the way, striving to
expostulate. “Hold on; give yerself a chance ter cool down, or ye may
do something rash.”

He silently flung off the countryman and plunged into the violet dusk
of the street, which was still a-jangle with the discordant bells,
and permeated with the fresh fragrance left by the summer rain, and
veined with the glint of the moonbeams. His anger dominated over every
faculty. He was barely conscious of throwing himself into a carriage
and calling out an order to the driver. Then he was shut in with it,
losing even the sense of motion as the vehicle rolled on and on through
the darkness toward the vast, vague stretch of the battle-field. And
so Brennett was going to marry the girl, and thus secure her fortune.
All that was necessary had been to keep his coadjutor at a distance,
counsel prudence, and excite fear. And this had cost him not one
cent; on the contrary, he was cleverly beating his dupe out of five
thousand dollars--the unsuspecting fool, whose futile and dangerous
imposture had thus been left day after day without a word of warning
at the mercy of accident. This was the favorable change for Brennett
of which there had been no hint. This was the innocuous alternative.
Perhaps the influence already secured over the girl was sufficient to
make her doubt the plainest proofs which could be put into her hands
of the conspiracy of her “lover”--he sneered at the very thought of
the word--to rob her. But it might be that Brennett overrated this
influence. It should be put to the test. He would risk his liberty--if
need were, he would risk his life--to compass the ruin of the man who
had deceived him. He ran over once more in his mind what he would say
to her. It was a strong showing--stronger even than he had thought. No
sane woman of reputable station would marry a man blasted like this. He
could thwart Brennett’s scheme, and wreck his hopes, and stigmatize him
forever in the business world, even if, for the sake of what had been,
she should refuse to prosecute.

But the price of this: It should cost as little as might be. He would
be cautious. He swore to himself that he would be cautious. He would,
if possible, secure first her promise of immunity; if not--

He was looking out at the moon-flooded battle-field with abrupt
realization of what he saw. Somehow, now that he was here again--here,
where the battle was fought--the localities seemed to have dwelt
strangely in his memory. On that elevation there had been a battery,
and how the shells had rioted through the heavy timber to the west.
He turned slightly--the heavy timber was gone. Where were the dead
and dying men once strewn over this ground!--there seemed to him a
flash as of bayonets from out a thicket as he passed. And suddenly--he
lifted his head with an intent gesture and dilating eyes--a mellow,
undulatory resonance drifted to him on the wind--clear, vibrating,
infinitely stirring. His heart leaped to the familiar strain, and every
nerve responded with a thrill. For was it not a distant bugle, sounding
“boots and saddles.” But, no, how could that be? The place--the
associations it revived--these illusions were accounted for so readily.
He heard, too, a shell shrieking down the night. He would have sworn
it. But that also--that was his sensitive imagination. There stood Fort
Despair--no doubt about it--mounted with heavy guns once, and fiercely
repelling the fiercest assaults--but now assaulted only by the wind
or the rain. And here was the long slope where John Fortescue and a
score or two more fell, while the rest went on with that wild charging
cheer--surely its echoes were in the air yet! It was some comfort to
him now, singularly enough, that he had gone back afterward, under a
hot cross-fire, to take his friend’s dying hand. He felt its convulsive
grip again. He put his own tremulous hand over his eyes for an instant.
He was so wrong, so weak, so wretched.

And here, rising starkly into the night, was a great gaunt house,
that he remembered too--as headquarters. A flare of lights came from
the open window, and within was Antoinette St. Pierre holding strange
possibilities in the lives of two men. And here was his resolution
again in full force.

He did not hesitate. But he walked slowly up the pavement, giving
himself time to quiet his tumultuous pulse and gather his faculties to
sustain the personation. He would keep it up at first--it could do no
harm and he might regret a different course. He noticed that a group of
figures stood at the end of the long portico just without the lighted
window. He hardly thought he was observed as he ascended the flight of
steps. Then the clangor of the bell resounded through the house.

It seemed to General Vayne and Mr. Ridgeway, seated in the library,
a moment of no special significance when Antoinette St. Pierre,
delicately blonde and youthful in her mourning dress, was rising from
her chair beside the table with a card in her hand. She glanced hastily
at the name upon it and a hot flush mounted to her brow. The next
instant ushered in a man of notably fine presence. His handsome eyes
swept the other occupants of the room with a cursory glance. Then he
bowed to her gravely.

“I have ventured to intrude,” he began. But there was a stir upon the
portico; a light shower was pattering down; the group without were
entering at the long windows. As he spoke his eyes fell upon Captain
Estwicke, who was holding back the curtain for the ladies to pass into
the room while he stood motionless outside.

The impostor suddenly raised a tremulous hand.

“Coming again!” he cried wildly, pointing to the face, plainly defined
upon the darkness and framed by the drapery of the window. “I knew
you would! I have felt you with me when I couldn’t see you. But, Jack!
Jack! why should you care? You know if you were alive you’d forgive
it all and pass it by. You always loved me. You always said so--‘the
best friend a man ever had.’ You’ve _sworn_ it!--_sworn_ it a
thousand times.”

He held his right hand up as if in memory of an oath. He had pressed
by Miss St. Pierre, and was advancing toward Estwicke, who still stood
without the window, the curtain in his hand, motionless, and with a
dismayed surprise aghast upon his face. The adventurer paused.

“We went through so much together. You haven’t forgotten--surely,
surely, you haven’t forgotten. Don’t look at me with those accusing
eyes! you’ll break my heart. You would never have looked at me like
that in the old days. And I tried you often, and tried you hard. Ah,
Jack! you’re dead--that makes all the difference. A dead man forgets
his friends. A dead man _has_ no friends--that’s what you think.
You come back and find a fellow masquerading around the world as John
Fortescue, when John Fortescue is dead, so cruelly dead, so long
ago, on this black battle-field. But, Jack, if it could have hurt
_you_, old man, I would have lain down in your place and let you
take mine, rather than call myself John Fortescue.”

Estwicke made a motion as if to step into the room.

“I’m not afraid of you!” cried the impostor, holding out both arms.
“Give me your hand. I had its last clasp in life. Tell me you forgive
me! Say the word! And let it all be as it was in the days when
_you_ were John Fortescue, and Edward Keevor was his best friend.”

He laid his hand heavily on Estwicke’s shoulder, and General Vayne,
impelled by a sense of danger, sprang to the window, and caught the
stranger’s arm.

“The man’s a maniac!” he exclaimed. “What does all this mean?”

“Why that,” faltered Estwicke, “that--John Fortescue--that is my name.”




                             CHAPTER XXIV.


ESTWICKE stepped into the room in the midst of an expectant silence.

The touch of a strong, coercive hand upon the impostor’s arm roused him
to a realization of the situation.

“In the name of Heaven,” he gasped faintly, “who are you?”

“I,” said Estwicke tremulously, “I am--his son.”

“His son!” The adventurer echoed the words in a passion of despair.

Only five minutes ago he had been assuring his fears of the caution of
his intention. And yet he had wrested from Miss St. Pierre no promise
of immunity. He had pulled down no temple of fancied security upon
Maurice Brennett. He had betrayed himself, himself only, to a dozen
witnesses, and among them this man, John Fortescue’s son, of whose
existence he had never before heard.

Instinctively, perhaps with no idea of flight, he turned toward the
door. A moment earlier he might have seen more beyond it than the
great, dimly-lighted, bare hall. He might have seen, lurking in the
gloom, a hesitating shadow, with cruelly brilliant eyes, all their
rapacious suggestions sharpening and intensifying as they looked upon
the group within. But when those words, “his son,” and their despairing
echo, struck Maurice Brennett’s intent ear, he slipped out softly into
that night of changeful mood. And as he rode swiftly through the misty
uncertainty of the moonlit battle-field he remembered the strong
premonition that had beset him when first he saw John Estwicke’s face,
and again and again he cursed that fine and subtle sense which gave him
so much and yet gave him no more.

There was no need for General Vayne to tighten his grasp upon the
detected impostor’s arm. The man was incapable of flight. He stretched
out his hand to the table for support, or he might have fallen. He was
white and shivering, his breath was failing. The faces bent upon him,
each expressive of a righteous aloofness, seemed reeling fantastically
about the room. And he looked at them, as they went in that giddy
whirl, with a piteous deprecation of which he was unconscious. The
group stood motionless, silent, watching him askance as if every human
feeling and endowment were merged in that coldly accusing gaze.

Marcia never knew how it happened; her heart was suddenly all pierced
with compassion; the sympathetic tears sprang into her eyes. The most
potent instinct of her nature--to help, to comfort--was strongly
constraining her. She made no question. She had no thought of the
others, or of what they would think of her. She found herself putting a
glass of wine into his trembling hand. “Drink it,” she said, “you are
faint. Oh, papa, papa, can’t you even give him a chair in _your own
house_!”

It broke the spell. There was a change of attitude in the circle, a
breath of relief. He turned toward her with the glass untasted in his
hand.

“I cannot thank you,” he said brokenly. “I am not worthy to speak a
word to you. You don’t know me, or you couldn’t pity me. I am too low
for pity.”

Her eyes were filling again, but she replied with prosaic little words,
“You will be better after this.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, looking hard at her, “I will be better after
this; I promise you that.”

He placed the brimming glass upon the table. Once he had been a
gentleman. Even now, far down as he had sunk, he could not drink wine
in the house of a man who gazed at him with stern, condemning eyes.

“You understand it now,” he said, addressing Estwicke. “It was a
conspiracy to obtain money. The imposture was part of the scheme.”

“How did you dare--?” Estwicke began angrily.

“It was no question of courage. Nothing was easier. I had known that
man--John Fortescue--all my life. He had not been in New Orleans in
thirty years before my little game. I had reason to believe that he was
the last of his family. I had heard him say, a thousand times, he had
no near relatives. He used to complain that there was not a soul upon
earth to care if he were living or dead. The last ten years of his life
we spent abroad together. We came back on account of the war. We took
part in a few skirmishes, but in his first battle he was killed; the
report said, ‘missing.’ I was captured, and remained in prison till the
surrender, when I went at once to France. These circumstances came to
serve my turn afterward. We were on the staff of General Crespeau, who
was killed on the same day. There were not ten men who knew us well
enough, during the short time we were together in the army, to have
recognized either Fortescue or me a year afterward. Everything played
into my hand, you see. I knew him thoroughly, through and through. I
could imitate his voice, and gesture, and manner, without a chance of
detection. I have a knack at that kind of thing. A casual resemblance
in height and build and complexion helped to carry it off. I passed
easily enough as John Fortescue among men who had not seen him for
twenty odd years.”

He recited this in a hard voice and an off-hand manner; he had mustered
his effrontery to face it out. General Vayne’s grasp was relaxing, for
his attention had concentrated itself upon a phase of the story which
touched him nearly.

“Captain Estwicke,--if that is your name,” he said severely, “I think I
am justified in demanding an explanation from you.”

Estwicke turned, with sudden color flaring in his face, and his eyes
flashing. His quick intuition had met General Vayne’s covert suspicion,
and he was tremulous with the shock of the collision.

“You shall have it!” he exclaimed. “My name--John Fortescue--was
changed by law. When my mother died, within a year after her marriage,
it became the scheme of my grandfather, Judge Estwicke, to effect a
separation, permanent and complete, between my father and me, so that
I might grow up to be ‘correct,’ like the Estwickes. A promise was
obtained from my father never to interfere with me; never to see me;
to keep his distance; because he was no fit custodian and exemplar for
his own son. All the long heads of the family were put together, to
make out a showing that might rid me even of his too notorious name;
for his extravagant escapades, and gaming ventures, and wild courses
had rendered the very words a stumbling-block and an offence to good
men, like the Estwickes. My father’s consent was forthcoming when
Judge Estwicke pledged himself to make the change of name advance my
pecuniary interests. And so it was done. The connection was cut like a
thread. He left me forever, because I was little, and troublesome, and
expensive--so the Estwickes afterwards gave me to understand.”

It was all beginning to be plain enough to Edward Keevor. He listened
with as intent an interest to the points touching upon his imposture,
as if he could still serve a purpose by comparing the facts to
the ingenious status which he had constructed and fitted to those
circumstances that he had believed constituted an exhaustive knowledge
of his friend’s life. So the roystering John Fortescue had had a hidden
heart-history, with some cruel suggestions in it, which he buried under
years of revelry, and from which he separated himself by leagues of
water and foreign lands. It was not strange that so proud a man should
never have spoken to his boon companion of his dead wife, and her
“correct” relatives, who held themselves better than he. But there was
something curiously uncharacteristic in this voluntary alienation from
his child,--he, so generous and hot-blooded, with his deep feelings
and enthusiastic attachments. And the son, so like his father, was
strangely unlike in this critical, censorious attitude.

The fire was dying out of Estwicke’s eyes; he seemed dallying with
some resolve. Twice he checked himself as he was about to speak, but
his desire suddenly pulled away from his control and he broke forth
impetuously, the tragedy of his feelings expressed, incongruously
enough, in the hap-hazard phrasings of the day.

“I can’t talk about this thing--it kills me! I thought I had no part
in it. But it was settled at last by my own choice; and I never knew
I had a choice to make. And he is dead. And I am here. He can never
understand. It will always seem that I went back on him. I thought he
had thrown me off; and it was all the other way, for they would never
let me know. He had stipulated--he had stood firmly on that--he had
stipulated that if ever my heart should turn to him, they must let me
go. He looked for it, he said, for blood is thicker than water. And my
heart did turn to him. He was my father; as I grew older, I wanted to
know him--to be with him. _I_ didn’t care if he did live as all
gamblers live--like a prince one day, and a beggar the next. _I_
didn’t care if he had left his reputation in every city on this
continent! That’s the account the Estwickes gave of him. And when I
declared I would go to him, they made me think--for they would not tell
me otherwise--that he cared nothing for me; that in all these years he
had shown no interest in me,--never a line, or word, or sign. It was
sharp; it cut me. And that idea that he had given me away because I was
so little, and troublesome, and expensive--I couldn’t forgive him for
that.”

He paused for an instant and laughed sarcastically.

“Well, I cherished that idea, and after a time it possessed me. Only
once it let go--only once, for a little while. It was just before
this battle,”--he made a gesture toward the black plain without. “I
was aghast one day to realize that now and here I was nearer to him
than ever before. I used to climb up on the parapet of Fort Despair
at night, and watch the rebels’ camp fires, and wonder which might
be his, and whether he knew that I was here, and a terrible fear of
meeting him as a stranger and an enemy laid hold upon me. A flag of
truce went out one day and I wrote to him, and when the letter was
finished I thought it all over again, and that idea that he had given
me away lightly--_lightly_--as if I had been a choice puppy, beset
me once more. It was too much like a choice puppy to go fawning around
now without a word of encouragement. So I flung the letter into the
fire. If I had stood up for him, if I had believed in him against all
the world as I was bound--_bound_ by every instinct of my blood to
do, that letter would have reached him the day before he was killed.
We should have understood each other then. He would have read it here
where the battle was fought.”

With an agitated gesture, as if he would clasp his missing right hand,
General Vayne sought to interpose a word of deprecation. “Let me beg of
you--say no more, my dear sir.”

But Estwicke hastily interrupted.

“I saw him at last!” he cried, bitterly. “Oh, yes, I saw him at last.
It was after an assault on Fort Despair, one of many attacks that day.
They had charged again and again, with picked men. When it was all over
I saw _him_ lying on the ground--dead--_dead_! I knew him by
my own likeness to him--by my repudiated sonship. It was as a prevision
of my own end--it was like looking on my own dead face. It’s a fine
thing--oh, I tell you it’s a fine thing for a man’s conscience to
acquit him of the crime of parricide on the plea of a lucky accident,
to have to thank a gracious God that a minie ball from the infantry
was charged with his father’s death rather than the shells which were
bursting everywhere from his own battery.”

He leaned against the window-frame, and turned his eyes out upon the
night. The fire-flies flickered. A bird sang. Far, far to the vague
horizon stretched the stern, savage old battle-field, indelibly marked
with its own irrevocable history--the seal of woe set upon the country.
And still, even in the haunted thickets, the very outgrowth of carnage,
the bird sang, the fire-flies flickered.

After a moment he recommenced scornfully. “I suppose it was in the
joint character of a victorious plunderer and an heir-at-law that
I felt myself privileged to ransack John Fortescue’s belongings in
the captured train. And I found among them an old budget of letters
from my grandfather and uncles, evidently carefully treasured,
friendly, delightfully cordial letters, teeming with bits of news
about _me_,--my health, my talents, my progress at school, as if
these trifles were of deep interest to him. Now and then there was an
allusion, in response to letters of his own, to those objectionable
habits which used to grind the rigid and intolerant Judge Estwicke
when John Fortescue was brought near to him as his daughter’s
husband,--invariably it was couched, not as one might speak to a coldly
depraved man, but to a noble creature with fantastic generosities of
character, and elastic impulses that carried him away, and sometimes
astray. And these letters made a mystery--they began to poison my life.
At last I wrote to my grandfather demanding the full correspondence
that had gone on over my head while I knew nothing of it. And then I
discovered that, from the first, my father’s heart went out to me; that
he kept himself posted, and was familiar with every detail of my life;
that he consented to this ‘cruel separation’ only for my good, as he
thought; that he relied implicitly on Judge Estwicke, and revered his
‘great sagacity,’ and humbly submitted his own judgment; that he was
hard on his own faults, and was always trying to reform, on my account;
that he patiently awaited and expected some sign from me, when the
agreement would be broken and he could take me back; that the years
brought him only disappointment, and he bore it meekly, and said he
deserved nothing, and that I was doubtless far better off, growing up
‘steady,’ with studious habits, and among such good influences. And I
thought he never wrote. And he thought his own son never cared. And the
end was that we met here, where the battle was fought, when he had lain
down with his tragic, empty heart, and did not rise again.”

He paused. His voice was faltering.

“I cannot sufficiently regret,” said General Vayne, with grave
constraint, “that I forced this explanation upon you.”

Estwicke turned sharply.

“I don’t know what I have told you!” he exclaimed. “I am misleading
you! I am misrepresenting the good man who did everything for me--who
had no motives but his self-sacrificing interest in my welfare, and
his fear that my father’s influence and example would ruin me. I was a
burden--a dead weight from first to last. My grandfather in his old age
worked early and late, and took from his dutiful sons to give to me,
for my mother’s share of his little property had been advanced during
her married life, and had slipped through John Fortescue’s hands at the
card-table. And here, in the presence of these people who never knew
Judge Estwicke, I am maligning him and holding him up as cruel, and
treacherous, and hard, when the only sin of his long life--if it were a
sin--was to save me. Don’t you see what a traitor I am? Don’t you see I
can’t justify myself without aspersing him. I went back on my father,
or if I try to persuade myself that I did not, I go back on the man who
deprived his own children to give to me. Do you wonder that I don’t
talk of these things--that I can hardly bring myself even to think of
the chaotic sarcasm of John Fortescue’s fate. The most honorable man
that ever lived systematically deceived him. ‘The best friend a man
ever had,’”--he quoted the words with a sneer,--“has robbed him of his
identity, and is masquerading around the world with his name. And here
is his own son, masquerading around the world--without it!”

He laughed harshly as he turned away. He was resolving to say no more.
He wondered now that he had spoken at all, except to give the curt
explanation required. Why should he have bared his heart with all its
long-rankling wounds, for these strangers to gaze upon.

He scarcely listened as Keevor addressed him. The man, panoplied in
vice though he was, had yet one vulnerable point. He had been honestly
fond of his friend. Even after so many years the feeling hampered his
imposture, it stirred unaccustomed chords of remorse and repentance, it
hung round him with strange superstitions, at last it betrayed him.

There was genuine emotion in his voice and an eager appeal in his
manner. “I can’t attempt any extenuation,” he said. “There is none to
make. But at first it did not seem the gross sacrilege that it does
now. It was rather a relapse into an old habit. I had often imitated
him to his face. He used to laugh. He thought it was clever. The
realization of what I have been doing only came upon me by degrees. And
I was kept in ignorance of what a swindling job it is until I had been
plunged deep into it.”

Estwicke made no answer and not a sign of attention until Keevor
was about to recommence, when he raised his hand with a gesture of
contemptuous expostulation, stepped out of the window, and walked off
down the portico.

As Keevor turned away, crushed and cowed, his eye fell upon Miss St.
Pierre. She was still standing beside the table, and still turning his
card nervously in her hands. The sight of her suggested the reflection
that now she would hold her property secure--after his father’s death
the law allowed Estwicke only three years from January, 1867, in which
to bring suit, but he had evidently been in ignorance of his rights,
and by the lapse of the prescribed term the remedy was barred forever.
So thoroughly had the impostor identified himself with the part that he
had played, that with a strange doubleness he experienced a vicarious
disappointment because at last the Fortescue heir would receive nothing.

And it was Maurice Brennett who would profit by this! He would marry
her; he would gain the fortune he coveted, and around which he had
woven the fine web of his schemes. With sudden anger in his face and
voice, Keevor spoke to her, resolved to frustrate Brennett yet, if it
were possible.

“I was not the originator of the plot to rob you,” he said. “It
was a device of Maurice Brennett’s; I acted under his instructions
throughout. I came here to tell you that, to warn you how you place
confidence in him. I can give you proofs of what I say; I can put
papers into your hands. It was a conspiracy to obtain money.”

She was pale and agitated, and a little frightened. “I suspected that
all the time,” she said simply.

She could not analyze the look he bent upon her. A pang shot through
his heart. He had for his fancied wrongs causelessly ruined Brennett;
he had defeated the scheme in which they had both lavished a world of
ingenuity; and he had indeed given himself away. “A friend of Horace
Percy’s,” the countryman had said, and he must infer no friend save
one. He stood silent, feeling thwarted and beaten and bruised.

She had seemed on the point of speaking again. But at first she was
only conscious of a painful bewilderment, of mentally fumbling for
something, she greatly desired to say. Then she realized that she was
no longer at the mercy of that dastardly lie with which Brennett had
threatened her.

“If you will prove his complicity,” she cried impetuously, “if you will
give testimony that will convict that man, you shall go free! I will
fix it upon him! I will pursue him to the ends of the earth!”

She became suddenly aware that the others were gazing at her with
astonished eyes--she hastily averted her own. As she turned slightly
she caught sight of a great, swift light that had sprung up on the
horizon. It incomprehensibly paused for a moment, but she gave it
no heed. Then it glided on as before. It was the head-light of the
up-train for Marston. Her caution had held her anger and revenge in
leash too long. At that instant Maurice Brennett had signalled the
train, and now it was bearing him far away into the darkness. The
thorough search made for him afterward was futile.

Keevor received with stolid composure the promise of immunity for which
he had hardly dared to hope. “I shall wait in Chattalla until I hear
from you. If I am permitted,” he turned to General Vayne, “I shall go.”

He bowed at the door with courtesy as elaborate as if he were an
honored guest taking leave. He went out from the dim hall into the
moonlight. The wind was high, and the haunted thickets tossed in wild
commotion. A great wave of martial music rolled over the plain. It
broke into weird shouts and cries, and the earth shook with a strong
tremor. The outline of Fort Despair defined itself aggressively
against the western horizon. The gusts passed, the sounds fainted,
his foot-fall was dying in the distance. And then, Estwicke, still
standing on the portico, could hear only the tumultuous beating of his
own passionate heart, which had wrought with its exacting sensitiveness
such cruel havoc in its lot. He did not see that the light curtains
were suddenly a-flutter, and a girl’s slender white-robed figure glided
out. But under the touch of her hand upon his arm his whole nature
softened like the rock that the prophet smote. He looked down at her
through gathering tears that came few and painfully and stood burning
in his eyes and did not fall.

“You see what you have escaped, Marcia,” he said gently. “I am a man
whom no woman might safely trust”--she lifted her face, eloquent with
an indignant protest--“a recreant to natural affection. There are
not many such. I am a man whose life must be made up of remorse and
self-reproach, his best alternation a callous forgetfulness.”

“I ask no greater happiness than to share his life,” she declared
suddenly.

He turned and caught her in his arms.

“Oh, if I could only take the great joy and comfort that you are to me,
without grudging it for his sake, remembering what his life was, and
what I helped to make it. If he could only know how it all happened,
and how I feel, and”--

“He must--he does!” she cried solemnly, like one inspired.

Estwicke looked hard at her. Light opaline clouds were sweeping across
the sky; pallid mists shifted about the battle-field and caught the
glimmer of the moon, and through its mystery and through its glamour
her face shone as the face of an angel.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, his credulity half-constrained by the
force of her conviction.

“Oh, God is so good!” she exclaimed.

He slipped her hand through his arm, and together they turned toward
the east and the future.




               C. J. PETERS & SON, STEREOTYPERS, BOSTON.




                          =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not
changed.

Inconsistent hyphens left as printed. For convenience, a table of
contents have been added.





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