Chapter IX: Part 9

Mr. Weed asked how many shares offered to voluntary subscribers on the ten-dollar instalment plan had been taken, and Garnet replied, "All. Those, together with the shares assigned me in exchange for the mortgages I hold on Widewood and propose to surrender, the forty for which Mr. Leggett pays five hundred dollars, and the two hundred retained by Mr. March and his mother, make six hundred and forty, leaving three hundred and sixty to be placed with capitalists willing to pay their face value. We have to-day an increased confidence that these reinforcements"--he smiled--"are not far off. When this is done we shall have raised the three-eighths of the face value of the one thousand private shares, as required, before the three counties' subscription to the other thousand shares can become effective. I have to state, gentlemen, that General Halliday has been compelled by the weight of other burdens to resign the treasurership; but on the other hand I have the pleasure to announce that Captain Charles Champion has consented to act as treasurer, and _also_, that Colonel Ravenel expresses his willingness to serve as one of the two trustees for the three counties on the--(applause)--on the very reasonable condition that he be allowed to name the other trustee. I believe there's no other formal business before the meeting, but before we adjourn I think a few brief remarks from one or two gentlemen who have not yet spoken will be worth far more than the time they occupy. I'll call on our vice-president, Mr. Gamble." (Applause.)

Gamble said his father used to tell him a man of words and not of deeds was like a garden full of weeds. Here he was silent so long that Champion whispered to Shotwell, "He's stuck!"

But at length he resumed, that he attributed his own success in life to his always having believed in deeds!

"Indeed!" echoed Shotwell in so audible a whisper that half the group smiled.

Gamble replied that his statement might surprise some that had been asleep for the last twenty years, but he guessed there wasn't any such person in this crowd. (Laughter.) However, he proposed to say in a few words, which should be as much like deeds as he could make 'em, what he was willing to do. He paused so long again that Champion winked at John and was afraid to look at Shotwell.

He remembered, the speaker finally began again, another good saying--couldn't seem to be sure whether it was from Shakespeare or the Bible--that "a fool and his money are soon parted." Now, he was far from intending that for anyone present----

"No-o," slowly interrupted Hersey, turning from a large spittoon, "we ain't any of us got any money to part with."

"Well, I haven't mistook any of you for fools, neither. But I think that proverb, or whatever you call it, is as much's to say just like this, that if a man ain't a fool, 'tain't easy to part him from his money!" (Applause.)

"How about a fool and his land?" asked John, with a genial countenance.

"O _you're_ all right," eagerly replied Gamble, and smiled inquiringly as the company roared with laughter. "Why, gentlemen, our able and efficient secretary is all right! Land ain't always money, and the fool is the man who won't let his land go when he's got too much of it. (Applause.) But that's not what I was driving at. What I was driving at was this: that if we want to get any man or men to put big money into this thing out o' their own pockets, we've got to make 'em officers of the company an' give'em control of it. Of course, our secretary is in to stay; that's part of his pay for the land he gives; but except as to him, gentlemen, there'll have to be a new slate. How's that, Mr. President?"

"Certainly; we're all pro tern, except Mr. March--and Colonel Ravenel."

"Yes, Colonel Ravenel, of course; but the man he selects for the other trustee must be someone satisfactory to the men on the new slate, eh, Colonel?"

Ravenel smiled, nodded, and as Gamble still looked at him, said, "All right."

"Now, gentlemen, if any of you don't agree to these things, now is the time to say it." A long pause. "If we are all agreed, then all I've got to add, Mr. President, is just this: you say there's three hundred and sixty shares for sale at their face value; I'll take two hundred when anybody else will take the balance." (Applause.)

As Gamble sank down Garnet glanced over to Fair, who was sitting next to Jeff-Jack; but Fair began to read some of the company's printed matter and the whole gathering saw Ravenel give Garnet a faint shake of the head.

"Ravenel!" suggested Champion, but Jeff-Jack quietly replied, "Father Tombs," and five or six others repeated the call. The pastor rose.

"I'm most afraid, my dea' friends an' brethren, I oughtn't to try to speak to this crowd. I'm a man of words and not of deeds, an' yet I'm 'fraid I shan't evm say the right thing. I belong to the past. I've been thinkin' of the past every minute I've been a-sitt'n' here. Yo' faces ah all turned to the future an' ah lighted"--he lifted his arm and waggled his hand--"by the beams of a risin' sun reflected from the structu'es o' yo' golden dreams. As I look back down the long an' shining stair-steps o' the years I count seventy-two of 'em in the clear sight o' memory's eye besides fo' or five that lie shrouded in the silve'y mist of earliest childhood." The pastor, ceased and his hearers were very still.

"I don't tell my age to brag of it, but if I remind you-all that I've baptized mo' Suez babies than there are now Suez men an' women alive, an' have seen jest about eve'y cawnehstone laid in this town that's ever been laid, I needn't say my heart's in yo' fawtunes whether faw this world aw the next.

"An' I don't doubt you goin' to be prospe'd. What I'm bound to tell you I've my private fears of, an' yet what I'm hopin' an' trustin' and prayin' the Lord will deliveh you fum--evm as a cawp'ate company--is the debasin' sin o' money greed. Gentle_men_, an' dea' friends an' breth'en, may Gawd save you fum that as he saved the two Ezra Jaspehs, the foundeh o' Suez an' his cousin, the grantee of Widewood, fum the folly o' Ian' greed. For I tell you they may not 'a' managed either tract as well as some otheh men think they might 'a' done it, but they were saved the folly whereof I speak. They's been some talk an' laugh here this mawnin' about John March a-partin' with so much o' his lan'. Well, if that makes him a fool, he's a fool by my advice! Faw when he come to me with his plans all in the bud, so to speak, I said to him there an' then, an' he'll remembeh: Johnnie, s'I, I've set on the knees of both Ezra Jaspehs, an' I'm tellin' you what I know of the one that was yo' fatheh's grand-fatheh, as you say you know it of yo' own sainted fatheh: that if the time had eveh come in his life when paht'n' with Widewood tract would of seemed any ways likely to turn it into sco'es an' hund'eds o' p'osp'ous an' pious homes he would 'a' givm ninety-nine hund'edths away faw nothin' rather than not see that change; yes, an' had mo' joy oveh the one-hund'edth left to him than oveh the ninety an' nine to 'a' kep' 'em as the lan's of on'y one owneh an' one home.

"Gentlemen, I'm free to allow, as I heah the explanations o' all the gue-ards an' counteh-gue-ards o' this beautiful scheme--schools faw the well-to-do an' the ill-to-do, imperatively provided as fast as toil is provided faw the toiler and investments faw the investor--I have cause to rejoice an' be glad. An' yet! It oughtn't to seem strange to you-all if an' ole man, a man o' the quiet ole ploughin' an' plantin', fodder-pullin', song-singin', cotton-pickin', Christmas-keepin' days, the days o' wide room an' easy goin', should feel right smaht o' solicitude an' tripidation when he sees the red an' threatenin' dawn of anotheh time, a time o' mines an' mills an' fact'ries an' swarmin' artisans' an' operatives an' all the concomitants o' crowded an' complicated conditions, an' that he should fall to prayin' aloud in the very highways an' hotels, like some po' benighted believer in printed prayehs an' litanies, the petition: Fum all Ole Worl' sins an' New Worl' fanaticisms, fum all new-comers, whetheh immigrants aw capitalists, with delete'ious politics at va'iance fum ow own, which, heavm knows, ah delete'ious enough, an' most of all fum the greed o' money, good Lawd deliv' us!

"An' I have faith that he will. Uphel' by that faith, I've taken fifteen shares myself. But O, if faith could right here an' now be changed into sight, then would this day be as golden in my hopes faw Suez an' her three counties as it already is faw my private self in memory o' past joys."

The speaker was sinking into his chair when Garnet asked with a smile that everyone but the pastor understood, "Why, how's that Brother Tombs; is this day something more than usual to you?"

"Brother Garnet, if I've hinted that it is, it's mo' than I started out to do, but I'm tempted, seein' so many friends in one bunch so, to jest ask yo'-all's congratulations on"--the eyes glistened with moisture--"the golden anniversary o' my weddin' day."

The walls rang with applause, men crowded laughingly around the Parson to shake his hand, and in ten minutes the room was silent and the company gone, "every man to his tent," as the happy Parson said, each one as ready for his noontide meal as it was for him.

L.

THE JAMBOREE

The social event of that midday was not the large family dinner where Mother Tombs sat between Hamlet and Lazarus, and Father Tombs between their wives; where Sister March was in the prettiest good humor conceivable and the puns were of the sort that need to be italicized, and the anecdotes were family heirlooms, and the mirth was as spontaneous as the wit was scarce, and not one bad conscience was hidden beneath it all. The true social event of that hour was the repast given by John March to Mr. Fair in Swanee Hotel, at which General Halliday, Captain Champion, and Dr. Coffin were on John's left, Ravenel sat at the foot of the board, and at John's right were Fair, in the place of honor, then Garnet, and then Shotwell in the seat appointed for Gamble, who had suddenly found he couldn't possibly stay.

Here were no mothers' quotations of their children's accidental wit, nor husbands' and wives' betrayals of silly sweetnesses of long-gone courtships and honeymoons. Passing from encomiums upon Parson Tombs's powers to the subject of eloquence in general, the allusions were mainly to Edmund Burke, John C. Calhoun, Sargent S. Prentiss, and Lorenzo Dow. The examples of epigram were drawn from the times of Addison, those of poetic wisdom from Pope, of witty jest from Douglas Jerrold and Sidney Smith, of satire from Randolph of Roanoke. John March told, very successfully, how a certain great poet of the eighteenth century retorted impromptu upon a certain great lord in a double-rhymed and triple-punned repartee. Champion and Shotwell, in happy alternation, recited two or three incredible nonsense speeches attributed to early local celebrities, and Garnet and Halliday gave the unpublished inside histories of three or four hitherto inexplicable facts, or seeming facts, in the personal or political relations of Marshall, Jackson, Webster, and Clay. Burns and Byron were there in spirit, and John could have recited one of his mother's poems if anyone had asked for it.

As for Ravenel and Fair, they had their parts and performed them harmoniously with the rest, so that John could see that he himself and everyone else were genuinely interesting to those two and that they were growingly interesting to each other. Both possessed the art of provoking the others to talk; they furnished the seed of conversation and were its gardeners, while the rest of the company bore its fruits and flowers. Ravenel seemed always to keep others talking for his diversion, Fair for his information.

John pointed this out to Miss Garnet that evening, at the Parson's golden wedding, and noticed that she listened to him with a perfectly beautiful eagerness.

"It's because I talked about Fair," he said to himself as he left her--"Aha! there they go off together, now."

The scene of this movement was that large house and grounds, the "Usher home place," just beyond the ruined bridge where Cornelius had once seen ghosts. A pretty sight it was to come out on the veranda, as John did, and see the double line of parti-colored transparencies meandering through the dark grove to the gate and the lane beyond. Shotwell met him.

"Hello, March, looking for Fair? He's just passed through that inside door with Miss Garnet."

"I know it--I'm not looking for anyone--in particular."

Out here on the veranda it was too cool for ladies; John heard only male voices and saw only the red ends of cigars; so, although he was not--of course he wasn't!--looking for anyone--in particular--he went back into the crowded house and buzzing rooms.

"Hunt'n' faw yo' maw, John?" asked Deacon Sexton as he leaned on his old friend Mattox; "she's----"

"Why, I'm not hunting for anybody," laughed March; "do I look like I was?"

He turned away toward a group that stood and sat about Parson Tombs.

"I never suspicioned a thing," the elated pastor was saying for the third or fourth time. "I never suspicioned the first thing till Motheh Tombs and I got into ow gate comin' home fum the Graveses! All of a sudden there we _ware_ under a perfec' demonstration o' pine an' ceda' boughs an' wreaths an' arborvitae faschoons! Evm then I never suspicioned but what that was all until Miss Fannie an' Miss Barb come in an' begin banterin' not only Motheh Tombs but _me_, if you'll believe it, to lie down an' rest a while befo' we came roun' here to suppeh! Still I 'llowed to myself, s'I, it's jest a few old frien's they've gotten togetheh. But when I see the grove all lightened up with those Chinee lanterns, I laughed, an' s'I to motheh, s'I, 'I don't know what it is, but whatev' it is, it's the biggest thing of its kind we've eveh treed in the fifty years that's brought us to this golden hour!' An' with that po' motheh, she just had to let go all ho-holts; heh--heh cup run oveh.

"You wouldn't think so now, to see heh sett'n' oveh there smilin' like a basket o' chips, an' that little baag o' gold dollahs asleep in heh lap, would you? But that smile ain't change' the least iota these fifty years. What a sweet an' happy thought it was o' John March, tellin' the girls to put the amount in fifty pieces, one for each year. But he's always been that original. Worthy son of a worthy motheh! Why, here he is! Howdy, John? I'm so proud to see Sisteh March here to-night; she told me at dinneh that she 'llowed to go back to Widewood this evenin'."

"I see in the papeh she 'llowed to go this mawnin'," said Clay Mattox.

John showed apologetic amusement. "That's my fault, I reckon, I understood mother to say she couldn't stay this evening."

A finger was laid on his shoulder. It was Shotwell again. "John, Miss Fannie Halliday wants Jeff-Jack. Do you know where he is?"

"No! Where is Miss Fannie?"

Shotwell lifted his hand again, with a soothing smile. "Don't remove yo' shirt; Ellen is saafe, fo' that thaynk Heavm, an' hopes ah faw the Douglas givm."

March flung himself away, but Shotwell turned him again by a supplicating call and manly, repentant air. "Law, John, don't mind my plaay, old man; I'm just about as sick as you ah. Here! I'll tell you where she is, an' then I'll tell you what let's do! You go hunt Jeff-Jack an' I'll staay with heh till you fetch him!"

"That would be nice," cheerfully laughed John.

In the next room he came upon Fannie standing in a group of Rosemont and Montrose youths and damsels. They promptly drew away.

"John," she said, "I want to ask a favor of you, may I?"

"You can ask any favor in the world of me, Miss Fannie, except one."

"Why, what's that?" risked Fannie.

"The one you've just sent Shotwell to do." He smiled with playful gallantry, yet felt at once that he had said too much.

Fannie put on a gayety intended for their furtive observers, as she murmured, "Don't look so! A dozen people are watching you with their ears in their eyes." Then, in a fuller voice--"I want you to get Parson Tombs away from that crowd in yonder. He's excited and overtaxing his strength."

"Then may I come back and spend a few minutes--no more--with you--alone? This is the last chance I'll ever have, Miss Fannie--I--I simply must!"

"John, if you simply must, why, then, you simply--mustn't. You'll have the whole room trying to guess what you're saying."

"They've no right to guess!"

"We've no right to set them guessing, John." She saw the truth strike and felt that unlucky impulse of compassion which so often makes a woman's mercy so unmercifully ill-timed. "Oh!" she called as he was leaving.

He came back with a foolish hope in his face. She spoke softly.

"Everybody says there's a new John March. Tell me it's so; won't you?"

"I"--his countenance fell--"I thought there was, but--I--I don't know." He went on his errand. Champion met him and fixed him with a broad grin.

"I know what's the matter with you, March."

"O pooh! you think so, eh? Well, you never made a greater mistake! I'm simply tired. I'm fairly aching with fatigue, and I suppose my face shows it."

"Yes. Well, that's all I meant. Anybody can see by your face you're in a perfect agony of fatigue. You don't conceal it as well as Shotwell does."

"Shotwell!" laughed John. "He's got about as much agony to conceal as a wash-bench with a broken leg. O, I'll conceal mine if anybody'll tell me how."

Champion closed his lips but laughed audibly, in his stomach. "Well, then, get that face off of you. You look like a boy that'd lost all his money at a bogus snake-show."

* * * * *

When Fair came up to Barbara, she was almost as glad to see him as John supposed, and brought her every wit and grace to bear for his retention, with a promptness that satisfied even her father, viewing them from a distance.

"Miss Garnet, I heard a man, just now, call this very pleasant affair a jamboree. What constitutes a jamboree?"

"Why, Mr. Fair," said Barbara, in her most captivating drawl, "that's slang!"

"Yes, I didn't doubt. I hope you're not guilty of never using slang, are you?"

"O no, sir, but I never use it where I can't wear a shawl over my head. Still, I say a great many things that are much worse than slang."

"Miss Garnet, you say things that are as good as the best slang I ever heard."

"Ah!--that's encouraging. Did you ever hear the Misses Kinsington's rule: Never let your slang show a lack of wit or poverty of words! They say it's a sure cure for the slang habit. But if you really need to know, Mr. Fair, what constitutes a jamboree, I can go and ask Uncle Leviticus for you; that is, if you'll take me to him. He's our butler to-night, and he's one of the old slave house-servants that you said you'd like to talk with."

"But I want to talk with you, just now; definitions can wait."

"O you shall; there's every facility for talking there, and it's not so crowded."

The consumption of refreshments had been early and swift, and they found the room appropriated to it almost empty. Two or three snug nooks in it were occupied by one couple each. Leviticus was majestically superintending the coming and going of three or four maid-servants. Just as he gathered himself up to define a jamboree, Virginia happened in and stood with a coffee-cup half wiped, eying him with quizzical approbation.

"A jamboree? You want to know what constitutes a jamboree? Well--What you want, Fudjinia?"

"Go on, seh, go on. Don't let me amba'as you. I wants jess on'y my civil rights. Go on, seh." She set her arms akimbo.

"A jamboree!" repeated Leviticus, giving himself a yet more benevolent dignity. "Well, you know, Miss Barb, to ev'ything they is a season, an' a time to ev'y puppose. A wedd'n' is a wedd'n', a infare is a infare, a Chris'mus dinneh is a Chris'mus dinneh! But now, when you come to a jamboree--a jam--Fudjinia"--he smiled an affectionate persuasion--"we ain't been appi'nted the chiefs o' this evenin's transactions to stan' idlin' round, is we?"

"Go on, seh, go on."

"Well, you know, Mr. Fair, when we South'enehs speak of a jamboree, a jamboree is any getherin' wherein the objec' o' the getherin' is the puppose fo' which they come togetheh, an' the joy and the jumble ah equal if not superiah to each otheh."

Virginia brought up a grunt from very far down, which might have been either admiration or amusement. "Umph! dat is a jamboree, faw a fac'! I wond' ef he git dat fum de books aw ef he pick it out'n his own lahnin'?"

"Miss Garnet," said Fair, "there are wheels within wheels. I am having a jamboree of my own."

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."

LV.

HOME-SICKNESS ALLEVIATED

On the second morning after the wedding and next trip of this train, the sleeping-car was nearly half filled with passengers by the time it was a night's run from Pulaski City. To let the porter put their two sections in order, a party of three, the last except one to come out of the berths, had to look around twice for a good place in which to sit together. They were regarded with interest.

"High-steppers," remarked a very large-eared commercial traveler to another.

"The girl's beautiful," replied the other, remembering that he was freshly shaved and was not bad-looking himself.

"Yes," said the first, "but the other two are better than that; they're comfortable. They're done raising children and ain't had any bad luck with 'em, and they've got lots of tin. If that ain't earthly bliss I'll bet you!"

"They're gett'n' lots of entertainment out of that daughter, seems like."

"Reason why, she's not their daughter."

"How d'you know she's not?"

"I mustn't tell--breach o' confidence. Guess."

"O I guess you're guessing. George! she's--what makes you think she's not their daughter?"

"O nothin', only I'm a man of discernment, and besides I just now heard 'em call her Miss Garnet."

Their attention was diverted by the porter saying at the only section still curtained, "Breakfus' at next stop, seh. No, seh, it's yo' on'y chaynce till dinneh, seh. Seh? No, seh, not till one o'clock dis afternoon, seh."

"Is that gentleman sick?" asked the younger commercial man, wishing Miss Garnet to know what a high-bred voice and tender heart he had.

"Who? numb' elevm? Humph! he ain't too sick to be cross. Say he ain't sleep none fo' two nights. But he's gitt'n' up now."

The solicitous traveler secured a seat at table opposite Miss Garnet and put more majestic gentility into his breakfasting than he had ever done before. Once he pushed the sugar most courteously to the lady she was with, and once, with polished deference, he was asking the gentleman if he could reach the butter, when a tardy comer was shown in and given the chair next him. As this person, a young man as stalwart as he was handsome, was about to sit down, he started with surprise and exclaimed to Miss Garnet,

"Why! You've begun----Why, are we on the same train?"

And she grew visibly prettier as she replied smilingly,

"You must be Number Eleven, are you not?"

Coming out of the place the young lady's admirer heard her introduce Number Eleven to "Mr. and Mrs. Fair," and Mr. Fair, looking highly pleased, say,

"I don't think I ever should have recognized you!"

Something kept the train, and as he was joined by his large-eared friend--who had breakfasted at the sandwich counter--he said,

"See that young fellow talking to Mr. Fair? That's the famous John Marsh, owner of the Widewood lands. He's one of the richest young men in Dixie. Whenever he wants cash all he's got to do is to go out and cut a few more telegraph-poles--O laugh if you feel like it, but I heard Miss Garnet tell her friends so just now, and I'll bet my head on anything that girl says." The firm believer relighted his cigar, adding digressively, "I've just discovered she's a sister-in-law"--puff, puff--"of my old friend, General Halliday"--puff, puff--"president of Rosemont College. Well, away we go."

The train swept on, the smoking-room filled. The drummer with the large ears let his companion introduce "Mr. Marsh" to him, and was presently so pleased with the easy, open, and thoroughly informed way in which this wealthy young man discussed cigars and horses that he put aside his own reserve, told a risky story, and manfully complimented the cleanness of the one with which Mr. March followed suit.

A traveling man's life, he further said, was a rough one and got a fellow into bad ways. There wasn't a blank bit of real good excuse for it, but it was so.

No, there wasn't! responded his fellow-craftsman. For his part he liked to go to church once in a while and wasn't ashamed to say so. His mother was a good Baptist. Some men objected to the renting of pews, but, in church or out of it, he didn't see why a rich man shouldn't have what he was willing to pay for, as well as a poor man. Whereupon a smoker, hitherto silent, said, with an oratorical gesture,

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, the rich and the poor meet together, yet the Lord is the maker of them all!"

March left them deep in theology. He found Mr. and Mrs. Fair half hid in newspapers, and Miss Garnet with a volume of poems.

"How beautiful the country is," she said as she made room for him at her side. "I can neither write my diary nor read my book."

"Do you notice," replied he, "that the spring here is away behind ours?"

"Yes, sir. By night, I suppose, we'll be where it's hardly spring at all yet."

"We'll be out of Dixie," said John, looking far away.

"Now, Mr. March," responded Barbara, with a smile of sweetest resentment, "you're ag-grav-a-ting my nos-tal-gia!"

To the younger commercial traveler her accents sounded like the wavelets on a beach!

"Why, I declare, Miss Garnet, I don't want to do that. If you'll help me cure mine I'll do all you'll let me do to cure yours."

Barbara was pensive. "I think mine must be worse than yours; I don't want it cu-ured."

"Well, I didn't mean cured, either; I only meant solaced."

"But, Mr. March, I--why, my home-sickness is for all Dixie. I always knew I loved it, but I never knew how much till now."