Part 28 (1/2)
Some moments pa.s.sed, and while he knelt, his crucifix pressed against his breast, he felt a cold hand laid on his bowed head and a faint effort to pat it. In the wonderful blue eyes a new light had dawned.
”My darling Nona, will you forgive me? You cannot speak, but, oh, try--try to press my hand! Have pity on me!”
He had risen, and her hand was clasped in his, as he stooped over her.
Feebly the icy fingers contracted in his palm.
”Vernon, I have forgiven everything. I could have spoken after the second day, but I was not ready. I wanted to be sure this was the end.
So much to count over. Vernon, I was too--too--hard--on you--but----”
Breath failed her, and she gasped painfully.
”My wife, my darling wife! Tell me you are not afraid now.”
She looked steadily into his eyes, and after a little while there came, brokenly, an echo as of a voice drifting away into immeasurable wastes.
”I go to my long sleep--no bad dreams. Too tired--to be afraid----”
A moment pa.s.sed, while she struggled for breath, and over her face stole a smile.
”If it--is--something--else--better, my baby will be--there--my--baby----”
He felt a tremor in her fingers, as with a long, low sigh the frozen lips closed, but the calm, brave gaze did not waver.
At last, after long years, it was his privilege to hold her to his heart and kiss down the stiffening lids that veiled forever the smiling pansy eyes.
CHAPTER XVII
For political rancor time is not an emollient panacea. Sectional hatred bites hard on memory, as acid into copper, and the perspective of years of absence failed to alter in any degree the rough angles, ugly scars, and deep shadows that characterized the people's portrait of Judge Kent.
Impotence to correct intensifies public sense of wrong, and compulsory submission to injury borne silently garners bitterness which in actual strife would effervesce. Only those who lived in the Southern seaboard and Gulf States during the long, stinging years that followed the surrender at Appomattox can understand why the names of Grant and Sherman stirred little enmity, when compared with the unfathomable execration and contempt aroused by the civil Federal vultures that settled like a cloud over State, county, and munic.i.p.al treasuries. The battening of this horde soon reduced Southern finances and credit to a grewsome skeleton. In that stifling Ragnarok, family estates feudal in extent were seized as ”abandoned lands” and parcelled out to freedman, who had been enticed to abandon them in order to succeed their masters in owners.h.i.+p. ”Patriots are paupers now,” was the grim proverb current among Confederates, and the very few who showed conditions bordering on comfort were, in public estimation, required to ”stand and deliver” an explanation of the fortuitous circ.u.mstances that saved them from the general ruin.
Judge Kent's judicial career had been disastrous to the interests of many throughout the State, and among the legions who improved their fortunes by coming south to ”reconstruct and to dispense justice,” he was especially detested by the citizens of Y----. To Eglah, his insistence upon returning to Nutwood was explicable solely on the hypothesis that speculative reverses had demanded the sale of his own property and swallowed the result; hence his resources were exhausted.
Recollection of slights, insinuations, invectives, and jeers that had imbittered her childhood did not lend beckoning glamour to the home-coming; and without the powerful protection of Mrs. Maurice's presence she suspected she was making a social plunge with no net spread to succor. Deliberately and systematically she planned the gradual renovation and, to a limited degree, the refurnis.h.i.+ng of the beautiful old house where it now seemed her future must be spent. A new close carriage and stylish trap were s.h.i.+pped in advance, and Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l went down to superintend preparations for occupancy of Nutwood, leaving Judge Kent and his daughter to follow a week later.
Old Aaron was stooping badly and stiff with rheumatism, but refused to relax his grasp on the butler's reins; Celie maintained her iron sway in the kitchen; her two daughters were eager to discharge the duties of housemaids, and Oliver, hopelessly bed-ridden, claimed that his son had the best right to succeed him as coachman.
When, on the morning after her arrival, Eglah entered the cedar-panelled dining-room, and seated herself at the head of the table, where glittered the tall, silver coffee urn with Dirce and her beast in bold relief, she almost expected to see her grandmother's face reflected there as in days gone by, and involuntarily looked over her shoulder with a telepathic impression that behind her chair stood the stately, old, crepe-coifed dame disputing usurpation. Judge Kent drained his second cup of creamless tea, held up the thin, fluted china to examine the twisted signature of the manufacturer, listened to its protest as he carefully thumped it, and pushed it aside.
”Eglah, I do not like the room where I slept last night, and I wish a change made to-day.”
”Why, father? I selected the handsomest room in the house for you. That has always been considered the best--set apart as the guest-chamber.”
”Well, as I am not a guest, I have no desire to appropriate the perquisites. I prefer the room opening into the library.”
”Not my grandfather's room--not where grandmother h.o.a.rded sacred--” She paused, and the silver fruit knife, with which she peeled a peach, clanged sharply as it fell.