Part 76 (1/2)
”My dea' madam, what _can_ she do? She th'ows up--excuse the figgeh--she th'ows up, I say, her foot to kick him out; he tearfully ketches it in his ha-and an' retains it with the remahk, 'I repent!' What _can_ his church do? She can do jest one thing!”
”What's that?” asked the lady, gathering his dishes without rising.
”Why she can make him marry Miz Proudfit!”
The lady got very red. ”Captain Shotwell, I'll thaynk you not to allude to that person to me again, seh!” She jerked one knee over the other and folded her arms.
”My dea' madam! I was thoughtless! Fawgive me!” The Captain stood up.
”I'm not myself to-day. Not but what I'm sobeh; but I--oh, I'm in trouble! But what's that to you?” He pulled his soft hat picturesquely over his eyes, and starting out, discovered March and Fair. He looked sadly mortified as he saluted them, but quickly lighted up again and called March aside.
”John, do you know what Charlie Champion's been doin'? He's been tryin'
to get up a sort o' syndicate to buy Rosemont and make you its pres--O now, now, ca'm yo'self, he's give it up; we all wish it, but you know, John, how ow young men always ah; dead broke, you know. An' besides, anyhow, Garnet may ruin Rosemont, but, as Jeff-Jack says, he'll neveh sell it. It's his tail-holt. Eh--eh--one moment, John, I want to tell you anotheh thing. You've always been sich a good friend--John, I've p'posed to Miss Mahtha-r again, an' she's rejected me, as usual. I knew you'd be glad to hear it.” He smiled through his starting tears. ”But she cried, John, she did!--said she'd neveh ma' anybody else!”
”Ah, Shot, you're making a pretty bad flummux of it!”
”Yes, John, I know I am--p'posin' by da-aylight! It don't work! But, you know, when I wait until evenin' I ain't in any condition. Still, I'll neveh p'pose to her by da-aylight again! I don't believe Eve would 'a'
ma'd Adam if he'd p'posed by da-aylight.”
The kind Captain pa.s.sed out. He spent the night in his room with our friend, the commercial traveler, who, at one in the morning, was saying to him for the tenth time,
”I came isstantly! For whareverss Garness's troubl'ss my trouble! I can't tell you why; tha.s.s my secret; I say tha.s.s my secret! Fill up again; this shocksh too much for me! Capm--want to ask you one thing: _Muss_ I be carried to the skies on flow'ry bedge of ease while Garnet _fighss_ to win the prise 'n' sails through b.l.o.o.d.y seas? Sing that, Capm! I'll line it! You sing it!” Shotwell sang; his companion wept. So they closed their sad festivities; not going to bed, but sleeping on their arms, like the stern heroes they were.
”Why, look at the droves of ow own people!” laughed Captain Champion at the laying of the corner-stone. And after it, ”Yes, Mr. Fair's address was fi-ine! But faw me, Miz Ravenel, do you know I liked just those few words of John March evm betteh?”
”They wa'n't so few,” drawled Lazarus Graves, ”but what they put John on the shelf.”
The hot Captain flashed. ”Politically, yes, seh! On the _top_ shelf, where we saave up ow best men faw ow worst needs, seh!”
Fair asked March to take a walk. They went without a word until they sat down on the edge of a wood. Then Fair said,
”March, I have a question to ask you. Why don't you try?”
”Fair, she won't ever let me! She's as good as told me, up and down, I mustn't. And _now_ I can't! I'm penniless, and part of her inheritance will be my lost lands. I can't ignore that; I haven't got the moral courage! Besides, Fair, I know that if she takes you, there's an end of all her troubles and a future worthy of her--as far as any future can be. What sort of a fellow would I be--Oh, mind you! if I had the faintest reason to think she'd rather have me than you, I George!
sir----” He sprang up and began to spurn the bark off a stump with a strength of leg that made it fly. ”Fair, tell me! Are you going to offer yourself, notwithstanding all?”
”Yes. Yes; if the letter I expect from home to-morrow, and which I telegraphed them to write, is what I make no doubt it will be; yes.”
March gazed at his companion and slowly and soberly smiled. ”Fair,” he softly exclaimed, ”I wish I had your head! Lord! Fair, I wish I had your chance!”
”Ah! no,” was the gentle reply, ”I wish one or the other were far better.”
A third sun had set before Barbara walked again at the edge of the grove. Two or three hours earlier her father had at last come home, and as she saw the awful change in his face and the vindictive gleam with which he met her recognition of it, she knew they were no longer father and daughter. The knowledge pierced like a slow knife, and yet brought a sense of relief--of release--that shamed her until she finally fled into the open air as if from suffocation. There she watched the west grow dark and the stars fill the sky while thoughts shone, vanished, and shone again in soft confusion like the fireflies in the grove. Only one continued--that now she might choose her future. Her father had said so with an icy venom which flashed fire as he added, ”But if you quit Rosemont now, so help me G.o.d, you shall never own it, if I have to put it to the torch on my dying bed!”
She heard something and stepped into hiding. What rider could be coming at this hour? John March? Henry Fair? It was neither. As he pa.s.sed in at the gate she shrank, gasped, and presently followed. Warily she rose up the front steps, stole to the parlor blinds, and, peering in, saw her father pay five crisp thousand dollar bills to Cornelius Leggett.
In her bed Barbara thought out the truth: that Cornelius still held some secret of her father's; that in smaller degree he had been drawing hush money for years; and that he had concluded that any more he could hope to plunder from the blazing ruin of his living treasury must be got quickly, and in one levy, ere it fell. But what that secret might be she strove in vain to divine. One lurking memory, that would neither show its shape nor withdraw its shadow, haunted her ringing brain. The clock struck twelve; then one; then two; and then she slept.
And then, naturally and easily, without a jar between true cause and effect, the romantic happened! The memory took form in a dream and the dream became a key to revelation. When Johanna brought her mistress's coffee she found her sitting up in bed. On her white lap lay the old reticule of fawn-skin. She had broken the clasp of its inner pocket and held in her hand a rudely scrawled paper whose blue ink and strutting signature the unlettered maid knew at a glance was from her old-time persecutor, Cornelius. It was the letter her father had dropped under the chair when she was a child. Across its face were still the bold figures of his own pencil, and from its blue lines stared out the _secret_.
Garnet breakfasted alone and rode off to town. The moment he was fairly gone Johanna was in the saddle, charged by her mistress with the delivery of a letter which she was ”on no account to show or mention to anyone but----”
”Ya.s.s'm,” meekly said Johanna, and rode straight to the office of John March.