Part 30 (2/2)

And Barbara answered, audibly. ”No.”

She rose, adding, ”Let me go and bring him.” Conscience rose also and went with her. Just outside the closed door she covered her face in her hands and sank to the floor, moaning under her breath,

”What have I done? What shall I do? Oh G.o.d! why couldn't--why _didn't_ I lie to _him_?” She ran down-stairs on tiptoe.

Her father, with Pettigrew at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a Geometry cla.s.s. ”Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me--to any uncorrupted mind--as perfect music to a perfect ear.”

But hearing that his daughter was seeking him, he withdrew.

The two had half mounted the stairs, when a hurried step sounded in the upper hall, and Johanna leaned wildly over the rail, her eyes streaming.

”Miss Barb! Miss Barb! run here! run! come quick, fo' de love of G.o.d!

Oh, de chariots of Israel! de chariots of Israel! De gates o' glory lif'n up dey head!”

Barbara flew up the stairs and into her mother's room. Mr. Pettigrew stood silent among the crystalline beauties of mathematical truth, and a dozen students leaped to their feet as the daughter's long wail came ringing through the house mingled with the cry of Johanna.

”Too late! Too late! De daughteh o' Zion done gone in unbeseen!”

Through two days more Fair lingered, quartered at the Swanee Hotel, and conferred twice more with John March. In the procession that moved up the cedar avenue of the old Suez burying-ground, he stepped beside General Halliday, near its end. Among the headstones of the Montgomeries the long line stopped and sang,

”For oh! we stand on Jordan's strand, Our friends are pa.s.sing over.”

In the midst of the refrain, each time, there trembled up in tearful ecstasy, above the common wave of song, the voices of Leviticus Wisdom and his wife. But only once, after the last stanza, Johanna's yet clearer tone answered them from close beside black-veiled Barbara, singing in vibrant triumph,

”An' jess befo', de s.h.i.+ny sho'

We may almos' discoveh.”

x.x.xIII.

THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT

Coming from the grave Fair walked with March.

”Yes, I go to-night; I shall see my father within three days. He may think better of your ideas than I do. Don't you suppose really--” etc.

”You think you'll push it anyhow?”

”Yes, sir. In fact, I've got to.”

After all others were gone one man still loitered furtively in the cemetery. He came, now, from an alley of arborvitaes with that fantastic elasticity of step which skilled drunkards learn. He had in hand a bunch of limp flowers of an unusual kind, which he had that day ridden all the way to Pulaski City to buy. He stood at the new grave's foot, sank to one knee, wiped true tears from his eyes, pressed apart the evergreens and chrysanthemums piled there, and laid in the midst his own bruised and wilted offering of lilies.

As he reached the graveyard gate in departing his mood lightened.

”An' now gen'le_men_,” he said to himself, ”is come to pa-a.s.s the ve-y nick an' keno o' time faw a fresh staht. Frien' Gyarnit, we may be happy yit.”

He came up behind Fair and March. Fair was speaking of Fannie.

”But where was she? I didn't see her.”

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