LI.
BUSINESS
"This," replied Barbara, "has been a bright day for our whole town." And then, more pensively, "They say you could have made it brighter."
Whereat the young man lowered his voice. "Miss Garnet, I had hoped I could."
"And I had hoped you would."
"Miss Garnet, honestly, I'm glad I did not know it at the meeting. It was hard enough to disappoint Mr. March; but to know that I was failing to meet a hope of yours – "
Presently he added:
"Your hope implied a certain belief in me. Have I diminished that?"
"Why-y, no-o, Mr. Fair, you've rather aug-men-ted it."
He brightened almost playfully. "Miss Garnet, you give me more pleasure than I can quietly confess."
"Why, I didn't intend to do that."
"To be trusted by you is a glad honor."
"Well, I do trust you, Mr. Fair. I'm trusting you now – to trust me – that I really want to talk – man-talk. As a rule," continued Barbara, putting away her playfulness, "when a young lady wants to talk pure business, she'd better talk with her father, don't you think so?"
"As a rule, yes. And, as a rule, I make no doubt that's what you would do."
Barbara's reply was meditative. "One reason why I want to talk about this business at all this evening is also a strong reason why I don't talk about it to pop-a."
"I see; he's almost as fascinated with it as Mr. March is."
"It means so very much to the college, Mr. Fair, and you know he's always been over eyes and ears in love with it; it's his life." She paused and then serenely seized the strategic point at which she had hours before decided to begin this momentous invasion. "Mr. Fair, why, do you reckon, Mr. Ravenel has consented to act as commissioner?"
Fair laughed. "You mean is it trust or distrust?"
"Yes, sir; which do you reckon it is?"
He laughed again. "I'm not good at reckoning."
"You can guess," she said archly.
"Yes, we can both do that. Miss Garnet, I don't believe your father is actuated by distrust; he believes in the scheme. You, I take it, do not, and you are solicitous for him. Do I not guess rightly?"
"I don't think I'm more solicitous than a daughter should be. Pop-a has only me, you know. Didn't you believe in Mr. March's plan at one time, sir?"
"I believed thoroughly, as I do still, in Mr. March. I also had, and still have, some belief in his plan; but" – confidentially – "I have no belief in – "
"Certain persons," said Barbara so slowly and absently that Fair smiled again as he said yes. They sat in silence for some time. Then Barbara said, meditatively, "If even Mr. March could only be made to see that certain persons ought not to have part in his enterprise – but you can't tell him that. I didn't see it so until now. It would seem like pique."
"Or a counter scheme," said Fair. "Would you wish him told?"
"You admit I have a right to a daughter's solicitude?"
"Surely!" Fair pondered a moment. "Miss Garnet, if the opportunity offers, I am more than willing you should say to Mr. March – "
"I rarely meet him, but still – "
"That I expressed to you my conviction that unless he gets rid of – "
"Certain – " said Barbara.
"Persons," said Fair, "his scheme will end in loss to his friends and in ruin to him."
"And would that be" – Barbara rose dreamily – "a real service to pop-a?"
Fair gave his arm. "I think it the best you can render; only, your father – " He began to smile, but she lifted a glance as utterly without fear as without hardihood and said:
"I understand. He must never know it's been done."
"That's more than I meant," he replied, as Fannie Halliday came up. The two girls went for their wraps.
"March?" said Ravenel, as he and Fair waited to escort them home. "O, no, he left some time ago with his mother."
On the way to the Halliday cottage Fair said to Barbara:
"I'm glad of the talk we've had."
"You can afford to be so, Mr. Fair. It showed your generosity against the background of my selfishness."
"Selfishness? Surely it isn't selfish to show a daughter's care and affection for a father."
By her hand on his arm he felt her shrink at the last word. "I love my father, yes. But you're making mistakes about me. Let's talk about Miss Fannie; she'll only be Miss Fannie about two weeks longer. You ought to stay to see her married, Mr. Fair."
"And you are to be bridesmaid! But I must go to-morrow. I wish my father and mother could reach here in time on their way home from New Orleans, but when they get this far your bridal party will have been two days married and gone."
Barbara mused a moment. "You know, this plan for me to give a year to study in the North has been as much mine as pop-a's; but pop-a's entirely responsible for putting me into your father's and mother's care on the journey. I've been in a state of alarm ever since."
"Really, that's wrong! You're going to be a source of great pleasure to them. And you'll like them, too, very much. They are interesting in many ways and good in all, and as travelers they are perfect."
"You give me new courage, Mr. Fair. But" – she spoke more playfully – "I'm afraid of New England, yet. There's a sort of motherly quality in our climate that I can't expect to find there. Won't the snow be still on the ground?"
"Very likely; the higher mountain tops, at least, will be quite covered."
"Well, I'm glad that doesn't mean what I once thought it did. I thought the snow in New England covered the mountain tops the same way the waters covered them in the Deluge."
Fair looked down into his companion's face under the leafy moonlight and halted in a quick glow of inspiration. "When first you see New England, Miss Garnet, nature will have been lying for four months in white, sacramental silence. But presently you will detect a growing change – "
"A stealing out of captivity?"
"Yes! – each step a little quicker than the one behind it – " So he went on for a full minute in praise of the New England spring.
Barbara listened with the delight all girls have for flowers of speech plucked for themselves.
"You know," she responded, as they moved on again, "it doesn't come easy for us Southerners to think of your country as being beautiful; but we notice that nearly all the landscapes in our books are made in 'barren New England,' and we have a pri-vate cu-ri-os-i-ty to know how you all in-vent them."
"If New England should not charm you, Miss Garnet," – Fair hurried his words as they drew near Ravenel and Fannie waiting at the cottage gate – "my disappointment would last me all my life."
"Why, so it would me," said Barbara, "but I do not expect it. Well, Fannie, Mr. Fair has at last been decoyed into praising his native land. Think of – " She hushed.
A strong footstep approached, and John March came out of the gloom of the trees, saluting buoyantly. Ravenel reached sidewise for his hand and detained him.
"I took my mother away early," said March. "She can't bear a crowd long. I was feeling so fatigued, myself, I thought a brisk walk might help me. You still think you must go to-morrow, Mr. Fair? I go North, myself, in about a week."
The two girls expressed surprise.
"For the land company?" quickly prompted Fannie.
"Yes, principally. I'll take my mother's poems along and give them to some good publisher. O no-o, it's not exactly a sudden decision; its taken me all day to make it. My mother – O – no, she seems almost resigned to my going, but it's hard to tell about my mother, Miss Garnet; she has a wonderful control of her feelings."
LII.
DARKNESS AND DOUBT
The paragraph in the Courier which purported to tell the movements of Mrs. March silently left its readers to guess those of her son. Two men whose abiding-places lay in different directions away from Suez had no sooner made their two guesses than they proceeded to act upon them without knowledge of, or reference to, the other.
About an hour after dark on the night of the golden wedding both these men were riding, one northward, the other southward, toward each other on the Widewood road. Widewood house was between them. Both moved with a wary slowness and looked and listened intently, constantly, and in every direction.
When one had ridden within a hundred yards or so of the Widewood house and the other was not much farther away, the rider coming up from the southward stopped, heard the tread of the horse approaching in front, and in hasty trepidation turned his own animal a few steps aside in the forest. He would have made them more but for the tell-tale crackle of dead branches strewed underfoot by the March winds. He sat for a long time very quiet, peering and hearkening. But the other had heard, or at least thought he had heard, the crackle of dead branches, and was taking the same precautions.
The advantage, however, was with the rider from the south, who knew, while the other only feared, there was something ahead it were better to see than be seen by. About the same time the one concluded his ears might have deceived him, the other had divined exactly what had happened. Thereupon the shrewder man tied his horse and stole noiselessly to a point from whose dense shade he could see a short piece of the road and the house standing out in the moonlight.
The only two front windows in it that had shades were in Mrs. March's bed-chamber. The room was brightly lighted and the shades drawn down. The rest of the house was quite dark. The man hiding so near these signs noted them, but drew no hasty conclusions. He hoped to consider them later, but his first need was to know who, or, at least where, the person was whom he had heard upon the road.
Though already well hidden he crouched behind a log, and upon the piece of road and every shadowy cover of possible approach threw forward an alert scrutiny supported by the whole force of his shrewdest conjectures. The sounds and silences that belong to the night in field and forest were far and near. Across the moon a mottled cloud floated with the slowness of a sleeping fish, a second, third, and fourth as slowly followed, the shadow of a dead tree crawled over a white stone and left it in the light; but the enigma remained an enigma still. It might be that the object of conjecture had fled in the belief that the conjecturer was none other than Widewood's master. But, in that same belief, who could say he might not be lying in ambush within close gunshot of the horse to which the conjecturer dared not now return? In those hills a man would sometimes lie whole days in ambush for a neighbor, and one need not be a coward to shudder at the chance of being assassinated by mistake. To wait on was safest, but it was very tedious. Yet soon enough, and near and sudden enough, seemed the appearance of the man waited for, when at length, without a warning sound, he issued from the bushy shadow of a fence into the bright door-yard. In his person he was not formidable. He was of less than medium stature, lightly built, and apparently neither sinewy nor agile. But in his grasp was something long and slender, much concealed by his own shadow, but showing now a glint of bright metal and now its dark cylindrical end; something that held the eye of the one who watched him from out the shadow. Neither the features nor yet the complexion of the one he watched were discernible, but the eyes were evidently on a third window of the lighted room not at its front, but on a side invisible to the watcher. This person rose from his log and moved as speedily as he could in silence and shadow until he came round in sight of this window and behind the other figure. Then he saw what had so tardily emboldened the figure to come forward out of hiding. This window also had a shade, the shade was lowered, and on it the unseen lamp perfectly outlined the form of a third person. Without a mutter or the slightest gesture of passion, the man under the window raised the thing in his grasp as high as his shoulder, lowered it again and glanced around. He seemed to tremble. The man at his back did not move; his gaze, too, was now fastened, with liveliest manifestations of interest, on the window-shade and the moving image that darkened it.
As the foremost of the two men began for the third time that mysterious movement which he had twice left unfinished, the one behind, now clearly discerning his intention, stole one step forward, and then a second, as if to spring upon him before he could complete the action. But he was not quick enough. The black and glistening thing rose once more to the level of its owner's shoulder, and the next instant on the still night air quivered the plaintive wail of – a flute.
At mortal risks both conjectured and unconjectured, it was an instrument of music, not of murder, which Mr. Dinwiddie Pettigrew was aiming sidewise.
LIII.
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
Yet the pulse of the man behind him, who did not recognize him, began to quicken with anger. Almost at the flute's first note the image on the window-shade started and hearkened. A moment later it expanded to grotesque proportions, the room swiftly grew dark, and in another minute the window of a smaller one behind it shone dimly as with the flame of a lamp turned low. The flutist fluted on. From the melody it appeared that the musician had at some date not indicated, and under some unaccountable influence, dreamt that he dwelt in marble halls with vassals and serfs at his side. The man at his back had come as near as the darkness would cover him, but there had stopped.
Presently the music ceased, but another sound, sweeter than all music, kissed, as it were, the serenader's ear. It was the wary lifting of a window-sash. He ran forward into the narrow shade of the house itself, and lost to the restraints of reason, carried away on transports of love, without hope of any reply, whispered, "Daphne!"
And a tender whisper came back – "Wait a minute."
"You'll come down?" he whisperously asked; but the window closed on his words, the dim light vanished, and all was still.
He was watching, on his left, the batten shutters of the sitting-room, when a small, unnoticed door near the dark, rear corner of the house clicked and then faintly creaked. Mr. Pettigrew became one tremolo of ecstasy. He glided to the spot, not imagining even then that he was to be granted more than a moment's interview through an inch or two of opening, when what was his joy to see the door swiftly spread wide inward by a dim figure that extended her arms in gracious invitation.
"O love!" was all his passion could murmur as they clasped in the blessed dark, while she, not waiting to hear word or voice, rubbed half the rice powder and rouge from her lips and cheeks to his and cried,
"O you sweet, speckle', yalleh niggeh liah, you tol' me you on'y play de fife in de similitude o' ligislation!"
As Dinwiddie silently but violently recoiled Daphne Jane half stifled a scream, sprang through a stair door, shot the bolt and rushed upstairs. At the same instant he heard behind him a key slipped from its lock. He glanced back in affright, and trembling on legs too limp to lift, dimly saw the outer door swing to. As the darkness changed to blackness he heard the key re-enter its lock and turn on the outside. The pirate was a prisoner.
Daphne Jane, locking everything as she fled, whirled into her mistress's room and out of her mistress's clothes. Though quaking with apprehension so that she could scarcely button her own things on again, she was filled with the joy of adventure and a revel of vanity and mirth. The moment she could complete her change of dress and whisk her borrowed fineries back into their places she stole to a window over the door by which she had let the serenader in, softly opened it, and was alarmed afresh to hear two voices.
The words of the one in the room were quite indistinguishable, but those from the other on the outside, though uttered in a half whisper, were clear enough.
"No, seh, I ain't dead-sho' who you is, but I has ezamine yo' hoss, an' whilce I wouldn' swear you ah Mr. Pettigrew, thass the premonition I espec' to espress to my frien' Mr. March, lessn you tell me now, an' tell me true, who you ah.
"Yass, seh, I thought so. Yass, seh. No, seh, I know they ain't a minute to lose, but still I think the time ain't quite so pow'ful pressin' to me like what it is to you; I thought jess now I hyeard buggy-wheels, but mebbe I didn't.
"Yass, seh, I does think I has cause, if not to be mad, leas'wise to be ve'y much paained. You fus' kiss the young lady I destine faw my sultana, an' now you offeh me a briibe! Well, thass how I unde'stood it, seh.
"Seh? No, seh! that wouldn't be high tone'! But I tell you what I will do, seh. I'll let you out an' take yo' place an' make the young lady think her on'y mistake was a-thinkin' she was mistakened.
"Seh? Yass, I'm jess that se'f-sacrificin'. I'm gen'ous as the whistlin' win'. An' I'll neveh whisp' a breath o' all this shaameful procedu'e evm to my dear frien' March, ef so be that – an' so long as – yo' gratichude – seh?
"O nothin'. I wus jess a-listenin' ef that soun' was buggy wheels, but I know that don't make no diff'ence to you, yo' courage is so vas'. I'm the bravess o' the brave, myseff, an' yit jess to think o' takin' yo' place fills me as full o' cole shivehs as a pup und' a pump.
"Seh? O I say I'll neveh whisp' it so long as yo' gratichude continue to evince itseff fresh an' lively at the rate of evm on'y a few dollahs per month as a sawt o' friendship's offerin'.
"Seh? I cayn't he'p it, seh; thass the ve'y bes' I can do; no otheh co'se would be hon'able."
The listening maid heard the door unlock and open and beheld liberty bartered for captivity with love for boot, and Mr. Pettigrew speed like a phantom across the moonlight and vanish in the woods. Before she could leave the window a sound of galloping hoofs told at last the coming of John March. Cornelius had barely time to scamper out into the night when the master of Widewood came trotting around the corner of the house and thence off to the stable, never to know of the farce which made Mr. Pettigrew thereafter the tool of Leggett, and which might even more easily have been a tragedy with the mountain people for actors and himself its victim.
LIV.
AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE
Ravenel and Fannie were married in church on an afternoon. The bridesmaids were Barbara and a very pretty cousin of Fannie's from Pulaski City, who would have been prettier yet had she not been revel-worn. The crowded company was dotted with notables; Garnet and Gamble took excellent care of the governor. But the bride's father was the finest figure of all.
"Old Halliday looks grand!" said Gamble.
"I'm glad he does," kindly responded Garnet; "it would be a pity for him to be disappointed in himself on such an occasion."
Parson Tombs kissed the bride, who, in a certain wildness of grateful surprise, gave him his kiss back again with a hug. When Ravenel's sister, from Flatrock, said:
"Well, Colonel Ravenel, aren't you going to kiss me?" he gracefully did so, as if pleased to be reminded of something he might have forgotten. And then he kissed the aged widow with whom he had lived so long. Her cottage, said rumor, was not to be sold, after all, to make room for the new brick stores. No, the Salters' house had been bought for that purpose – it was ready to tumble down, anyhow – and on Miss Mary's marriage, soon to be, Miss Martha and her mother would take the Halliday cottage, the General keeping a room or two, but getting his meals at the hotel.
"It's a way of living I've always liked!" he said, tossing his gray curls.
The bridal pair, everybody understood, were to leave Suez on the Launcelot Halliday, and turn northward by rail in the morning on an unfamiliar route.
John March chose not to see the wedding. He remained in Pulaski City, where for three days he had been very busy in the lobbies of the Capitol, and was hoping to take the train for the north that evening. Between the trifling of one and the dickering of another, he was delayed to the last moment; but then he flung himself into a shabby hack, paid double fare for a pretence of double speed, and at the ticket window had to be called back to get his pocketbook. The lighted train was moving out into the night as a porter jerked him and his valise on to the rear platform.
He stood there a moment alone silently watching the lamps of the town sink away and vanish. His thought was all of Fannie. She was Fannie Ravenel now. Fate had laughed at him. He calculated that the pair must about this time be rising from supper on the boat.
"Happy bridegroom! – and happy bride!"
As the dark landscape perpetually spun away from him he began with an inexperienced traveler's self-consciousness to think of the strangeness of his own situation; but very soon Fannie's image came before him again in a feverish mingling of gratitude and resentment. Had she not made his life? But for her he might yet be teaching school in the hills of Sandstone. No doubt he would have outgrown such work; but when? how soon? how tardily? how fatally late? She had lured and fooled him; but she had lured and fooled him into a largeness of purpose, a breadth of being, which without her might never have come to him.
"I cannot be with her, I must not go near her; but I am here!" he exclaimed, catching a certain elation from his unaccustomed speed. "The prospect may be desert, but it's wide; it's wide!"
She had been good for him, he mused, not to him. She had been wiser than she meant; certainly she had not been kind. She was not cold-hearted. His welfare was dear to her. And yet she had cold-heartedly amused herself with him. She was light-minded. There! The truth was out! Just what he meant by it was not so clear; but there it was, half comforting him, half excusing her; she was light-minded! Well, she was Fannie Ravenel now. "Happy Fannie Ravenel!" He said it with a tempered bitterness and went in.
It was the sleeping-car he was on. Two steps brought him to the open entrance of its smoking-room – they were enough. With drooping eyelids its sole occupant was vacantly smiling at the failure of his little finger to push the ash from a cold cigar.
"Jeff-Ja'!" exclaimed March, "O my Lord!"
The bridegroom looked up with a smart exaggeration of his usual cynicism and said, "J – (h-h) – Johnnie, this 's 'n un'spec' – 'spected pleasure!"
"I thought you were aboard the – " faltered John, and stood dumb, gnawing his lip and burning with emotions.
"John, o' frien', take a chair." The speaker waved a hand in tipsy graciousness. "What made you think I was aboard – I look like one? Wha' – (h-h) – kind o' board – sideboard? S' down, John, make 'seff at home. Happm have cars all t' ourselves. Mr. March, this 's ufforshnate, ain't it? Don't y' sink so? One o' my p'culiar 'tacks. Come on 'tirely since leavin' Suez. Have – (h-h) – seat. My dear frien', I know what you're thinkin' 'bout. You're won'rin' where bride is an' feel del'cacy 'bout askin'. She's in state-room oth' end the car, locked in. She's not 'zactly locked in, but I'm locked out. Mrs. Ravenel is – (h-h) – annoyed at this, Mr. March; ve'y mush annoyed."
He put on a frown. "John, 'll you do me a – (h-h) – favor?"
"I'm afraid I can't, Ravenel. I've a good notion to get off at the next station."
"Tha's jus' what I's goin' t' ash you t' do. I'll stan' 'spence, John. You shan't lose anything."
"O no, if I get off I'll stand the expense myself. You've lost enough already, Jeff-Jack."
"No, sir; I'll stan' 'spence. I can be gen'rous you are. Or 'f you'll stay 'n' take care Mrs. Ravenel I'll – (h-h) – get off m'seff!"
John shook his head, took up his bag and returned to the rear platform.
The train had stopped and was off again, when the porter came looking everywhere, the rear platform included.
"Whah dat gemman what get on at P'laski City?"
Ravenel waved his cigar.
"He's out in back garden pickin' flowers! Porter – you – f – ond o' flowers? 'F you want to go an' pick some I'll – (h-h) – take care car for you. Porter! – here! – I – (h-h) – don't want to be misleading. Mr. March's simply stepped out s – see 'f he can find a f – four-leaf clover."