Part 76 (2/2)
A kind greeting met her as she entered, but it was from Henry Fair, and he was alone. He, too, had been reading a letter, a long one in a lady's writing, and seemed full of a busy satisfaction. Mr. March, he said, had ridden out across the river, but would be back very shortly. ”Johanna, I may have to go North to-night. I wonder if it's too early in the day for me to call on Miss Garnet?”
”No-o, seh,” drawled the conscientious maid, longing to say it was.
”H-it's early, but I don't reckon it's too early,” and was presently waiting for Mr. March, alone.
Hours pa.s.sed. He did not come. She got starving hungry, yet waited on.
Men would open the door, look in, see or not see her sitting in the nearest corner, and close it again. About two o'clock she slipped out to the Hotel Swanee, thinking she might find him at dinner. They said he had just dined and gone to his office. She hurried back, found it empty, and sat down again to wait. Another hour pa.s.sed, and suddenly the door swung in and to again, and John March halted before his desk. He did not see her. His att.i.tude was as if he might wheel and retrace his steps.
Mrs. March had broken off her engagement promptly. But when Garnet, by mail, still flattered and begged, the poetess, with no notion of relenting, but in her love of dramatic values and the gentle joy of perpetuating a harrowing suspense, had parleyed; and only just now had her tyrannical son forced a conclusion unfavorable to the unfortunate suitor. So here in his office March smote his brow and exclaimed,
”O my dear mother! that what is best for you should be so bad for me!
Ahem! Why--why, howdy, Johanna? Hmm!”
With silent prayers and tremors the girl watched him read the letter. At the first line he sank into his chair, amazed and pale. ”My Lord!” he murmured, and read on. ”O my Lord! it can't be! Why, how?--why--O it shan't be!--O--hem! Johanna, you can go'long home, there's no answer; I'll be there before you.”
At the post-office March reined in his horse while Deacon Usher brought out a drop letter from Henry Fair. But he galloped as he read it, and did not again slacken speed till he turned into the campus--except once.
At the far edge of the battle-field, on that ridge where in childhood he had first met Garnet, he overtook and pa.s.sed him now. As he went by he slowed to a trot, but would not have spoken had Garnet not glared on him like a captured hawk. The young man's blood boiled. He stood up in his stirrups.
”Don't look at me that way, sir; I've just learned your whole miserable little secret and expect to keep it for you.” He galloped on. When, presently, he looked behind, Garnet had turned back--to find Leggett.
That search was vain. Cornelius and his ”Delijah,” kissing their hands to their creditors, were already well on their way into that most exhilarating of all conundrums, the wide, wide world.
From Pulaski City Garnet returned on the early morning train to Suez, intending to ride out to Rosemont without a moment's delay. But on the station platform he came face to face with John March. They went to the young man's office and sat there, locked in, for an hour. Another they used up in the court-house and in Ravenel's private office with him between them in the capacity of an attorney. Yet when the three men parted Ravenel had neither asked nor been told what the matter was which had occasioned the surprising legal transaction that they had just completed.
”Now,” said Garnet, briskly, ”I must hurry home, for I want to leave on the evening train.”
He rode out alone upon the old turnpike and over the knoll where Suez still hopes some day to build the reservoir, and reached the spot where he and his young adjutant picked blackberries that first day we ever saw them. There he stopped, and looking across the land to the roofs of distant Rosemont, straightened up in the saddle with a great pride, and then, all at once, let go a long groan of anguish and, covering his face, heaved with sobs that seemed as though each tore a separate way up from his heart. Then, as suddenly, he turned his horse's head and rode slowly back. Twice, as he went, he handled something in the pocket of his coat's skirt, and the third time drew it out--a small repeater. He did not raise the weapon; he only looked down at it in his trembling hand, the old thimbles still in the three discharged chambers, the lead peeping from the other two, and, thinking of the woman who shared his ruin, said in his mind, ”One for each of us.”
But it never happened so. He often wishes, yet, that it had, although he is, and has been for years, a ”platform star;” ”the eloquent Southern orator, moralist and humorist”--yes, that's the self-same man. He's booked for the Y. M. C. A. lecture course in your own town this season.
His lecture, ent.i.tled ”Temptation and How to Conquer It,” is said to be ”a wonderful alternation of humorous and pathetic anecdotes, ill.u.s.trative, instructive and pat.” I have his circular. His wife travels with him. They generally put up at hotels; tried private hospitality the first season, but it didn't work, somehow.
They have never revisited Dixie; and only once in all these years have they seen a group of Suez faces. But a season or two ago--I think it was ninety-three--in Fourteenth Street, New York, wife and I came square upon Captain Charlie Champion, whom I had not seen for years, indeed, not since his marriage, and whom my wife, never having been in Suez, did not know. Still he would have us up to dinner at his hotel with Mrs.
Champion. He promised me I should find her ”just as good and sweet and saane as of old, and evm prettieh!” Plainly the hearty Captain was more a man than ever, and she had made him so! He told us we should meet Colonel Ravenel and also--by pure good luck!--Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fair.
You may be sure we were glad to go.
Ravenel had to send us word from the rotunda begging us to go in to dinner without him and let him join us at table. Champion neglected his soup, telling us of two or three Suez people. ”Pettigrew?--O he left Suez the year Rosemont chaanged haynds. Po' Shot!--he's ow jail-keepeh, now, you know--he says one day, s'e, 'Old Pettie may be in heavm by now, but I don't believe he's happy; he'll neveh get oveh the loss of his sla-aves!'”
Fair spoke of John March, saying his influence in that region was not only very strong but very fine. Whereto Champion responded,
”--Result is we've got a betteh town and a long sight betteh risin'
generation than we eveh had befo'. I don't reckon Mr. Fair thinks we do the dahkeys justice. John says we don't and I don't believe we do. When it comes to that, seh, where on earth does the under man get all his rights? But we come neareh toe it in the three counties than anywheres else in Dixie, and that I _know_.”
I dropped an interrogative hint as to how March stood with Ravenel.
The Captain smiled. ”They neveh cla-ash. Ravenel's the same mystery he always was, but not the same poweh; his losin' Garnet the way he did, and then John bein' so totally diffe'nt, you know--John don't ofm ask Jeff-Jack to do anything, but he neveh aasks in vaain.--John's motheh?
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