The summer following Colonel French's return to Clarendon was unusually cool, so cool that the colonel, pleasantly occupied with his various plans and projects, scarcely found the heat less bearable than that of New York at the same season. During a brief torrid spell he took Phil to a Southern mountain resort for a couple of weeks, and upon another occasion ran up to New York for a day or two on business in reference to the machinery for the cotton mill, which was to be ready for installation some time during the fall. But these were brief interludes, and did not interrupt the current of his life, which was flowing very smoothly and pleasantly in its new channel, if not very swiftly, for even the colonel was not able to make things move swiftly in Clarendon during the summer time, and he was well enough pleased to see them move at all.
Kirby was out of town when the colonel was in New York, and therefore he did not see him. His mail was being sent from his club to Denver, where he was presumably looking into some mining proposition. Mrs. Jerviss, the colonel supposed, was at the seaside, but he had almost come face to face with her one day on Broadway. She had run down to the city on business of some sort. Moved by the instinct of defense, the colonel, by a quick movement, avoided the meeting, and felt safer when the lady was well out of sight. He did not wish, at this time, to be diverted from his Southern interests, and the image of another woman was uppermost in his mind.
One moonlight evening, a day or two after his return from this brief Northern trip, the colonel called at Mrs. Treadwells'. Caroline opened the door. Mrs. Treadwell, she said, was lying down. Miss Graciella had gone over to a neighbour's, but would soon return. Miss Laura was paying a call, but would not be long. Would the colonel wait? No, he said, he would take a walk, and come back later.
The streets were shady, and the moonlight bathed with a silvery glow that part of the town which the shadows did not cover. Strolling aimlessly along the quiet, unpaved streets, the colonel, upon turning a corner, saw a lady walking a short distance ahead of him. He thought he recognised the figure, and hurried forward; but ere he caught up with her, she turned and went into one of a row of small houses which he knew belonged to Nichols, the coloured barber, and were occupied by coloured people. Thinking he had been mistaken in the woman's identity, he slackened his pace, and ere he had passed out of hearing, caught the tones of a piano, accompanying the words,
"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,
With vassals and serfs at my s-i-i-de."
It was doubtless the barber's daughter. The barber's was the only coloured family in town that owned a piano. In the moonlight, and at a distance of some rods, the song sounded well enough, and the colonel lingered until it ceased, and the player began to practise scales, when he continued his walk. He had smoked a couple of cigars, and was returning toward Mrs. Treadwells', when he met, face to face, Miss Laura Treadwell coming out of the barber's house. He lifted his hat and put out his hand.
"I called at the house a while ago, and you were all out. I was just going back. I'll walk along with you."
Miss Laura was visibly embarrassed at the meeting. The colonel gave no sign that he noticed her emotion, but went on talking.
"It is a delightful evening," he said.
"Yes," she replied, and then went on, "you must wonder what I was doing there."
"I suppose," he said, "that you were looking for a servant, or on some mission of kindness and good will."
Miss Laura was silent for a moment and he could feel her hand tremble on the arm he offered her.
"No, Henry," she said, "why should I deceive you? I did not go to find a servant, but to serve. I have told you we were poor, but not how poor. I can tell you what I could not say to others, for you have lived away from here, and I know how differently from most of us you look at things. I went to the barber's house to give the barber's daughter music lessons--for money."
The colonel laughed contagiously.
"You taught her to sing--
'I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls?'"
"Yes, but you must not judge my work too soon," she replied. "It is not finished yet."
"You shall let me know when it is done," he said, "and I will walk by and hear the finished product. Your pupil has improved wonderfully. I heard her singing the song the day I came back--the first time I walked by the old house. She sings it much better now. You are a good teacher, as well as a good woman."
Miss Laura laughed somewhat excitedly, but was bent upon her explanation.
"The girl used to come to the house," she said. "Her mother belonged to us before the war, and we have been such friends as white and black can be. And she wanted to learn to play, and offered to pay me well for lessons, and I gave them to her. We never speak about the money at the house; mother knows it, but feigns that I do it out of mere kindness, and tells me that I am spoiling the coloured people. Our friends are not supposed to know it, and if any of them do, they are kind and never speak of it. Since you have been coming to the house, it has not been convenient to teach her there, and I have been going to her home in the evening."
"My dear Laura," said the colonel, remorsefully, "I have driven you away from your own home, and all unwittingly. I applaud your enterprise and your public spirit. It is a long way from the banjo to the piano--it marks the progress of a family and foreshadows the evolution of a race. And what higher work than to elevate humanity?"
They had reached the house. Mrs. Treadwell had not come down, nor had Graciella returned. They went into the parlour. Miss Laura turned up the lamp.
* * * * * * *
Graciella had run over to a neighbour's to meet a young lady who was visiting a young lady who was a friend of Graciella's. She had remained a little longer than she had meant to, for among those who had called to see her friend's friend was young Mr. Fetters, the son of the magnate, lately returned home from college. Barclay Fetters was handsome, well-dressed and well-mannered. He had started at one college, and had already changed to two others. Stories of his dissipated habits and reckless extravagance had been bruited about. Graciella knew his family history, and had imbibed the old-fashioned notions of her grandmother's household, so that her acknowledgment of the introduction was somewhat cold, not to say distant. But as she felt the charm of his manner, and saw that the other girls were vieing with one another for his notice, she felt a certain triumph that he exhibited a marked preference for her conversation. Her reserve gradually broke down, and she was talking with animation and listening with pleasure, when she suddenly recollected that Colonel French would probably call, and that she ought to be there to entertain him, for which purpose she had dressed herself very carefully. He had not spoken yet, but might be expected to speak at any time; such marked attentions as his could have but one meaning; and for several days she had had a premonition that before the week was out he would seek to know his fate; and Graciella meant to be kind.
Anticipating this event, she had politely but pointedly discouraged Ben Dudley's attentions, until Ben's pride, of which he had plenty in reserve, had awaked to activity. At their last meeting he had demanded a definite answer to his oft-repeated question.
"Graciella," he had said, "are you going to marry me? Yes or no. I'll not be played with any longer. You must marry me for myself, or not at all. Yes or no."
"Then no, Mr. Dudley," she had replied with spirit, and without a moment's hesitation, "I will not marry you. I will never marry you, not if I should die an old maid."
She was sorry they had not parted friends, but she was not to blame. After her marriage, she would avoid the embarrassment of meeting him, by making the colonel take her away. Sometime she might, through her husband, be of service to Ben, and thus make up, in part at least, for his disappointment.
As she ran up through the garden and stepped upon the porch--her slippers were thin and made no sound--she heard Colonel French's voice in the darkened parlour. Some unusual intonation struck her, and she moved lightly and almost mechanically forward, in the shadow, toward a point where she could see through the window and remain screened from observation. So intense was her interest in what she heard, that she stood with her hand on her heart, not even conscious that she was doing a shameful thing.
* * * * * * *
Her aunt was seated and Colonel French was standing near her. An open Bible lay upon the table. The colonel had taken it up and was reading:
"'Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.'
"Laura," he said, "the proverb maker was a prophet as well. In these words, written four thousand years ago, he has described you, line for line."
The glow which warmed her cheek, still smooth, the light which came into her clear eyes, the joy that filled her heart at these kind words, put the years to flight, and for the moment Laura was young again.
"You have been good to Phil," the colonel went on, "and I should like him to be always near you and have your care. And you have been kind to me, and made me welcome and at home in what might otherwise have seemed, after so long an absence, a strange land. You bring back to me the best of my youth, and in you I find the inspiration for good deeds. Be my wife, dear Laura, and a mother to my boy, and we will try to make you happy."
"Oh, Henry," she cried with fluttering heart, "I am not worthy to be your wife. I know nothing of the world where you have lived, nor whether I would fit into it."
"You are worthy of any place," he declared, "and if one please you more than another, I shall make your wishes mine."
"But, Henry, how could I leave my mother? And Graciella needs my care."
"You need not leave your mother--she shall be mine as well as yours. Graciella is a dear, bright child; she has in her the making of a noble woman; she should be sent away to a good school, and I will see to it. No, dear Laura, there are no difficulties, no giants in the pathway that will not fly or fall when we confront them."
He had put his arm around her and lifted her face to his. He read his answer in her swimming eyes, and when he had reached down and kissed her cheek, she buried her head on his shoulder and shed some tears of happiness. For this was her secret: she was sweet and good; she would have made any man happy, who had been worthy of her, but no man had ever before asked her to be his wife. She had lived upon a plane so simple, yet so high, that men not equally high-minded had never ventured to address her, and there were few such men, and chance had not led them her way. As to the others--perhaps there were women more beautiful, and certainly more enterprising. She had not repined; she had been busy and contented. Now this great happiness was vouchsafed her, to find in the love of the man whom she admired above all others a woman's true career.
"Henry," she said, when they had sat down on the old hair-cloth sofa, side by side, "you have made me very happy; so happy that I wish to keep my happiness all to myself--for a little while. Will you let me keep our engagement secret until I--am accustomed to it? It may be silly or childish, but it seems like a happy dream, and I wish to assure myself of its reality before I tell it to anyone else."
"To me," said the colonel, smiling tenderly into her eyes, "it is the realisation of an ideal. Since we met that day in the cemetery you have seemed to me the embodiment of all that is best of my memories of the old South; and your gentleness, your kindness, your tender grace, your self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, mark you a queen among women, and my heart shall be your throne. As to the announcement, have it as you will--it is the lady's privilege."
"You are very good," she said tremulously. "This hour repays me for all I have ever tried to do for others."
* * * * * * *
Graciella felt very young indeed--somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten, she put it afterward, when she reviewed the situation in a calmer frame of mind--as she crept softly away from the window and around the house to the back door, and up the stairs and into her own chamber, where, all oblivious of danger to her clothes or her complexion, she threw herself down upon her own bed and burst into a passion of tears. She had been cruelly humiliated. Colonel French, whom she had imagined in love with her, had regarded her merely as a child, who ought to be sent to school--to acquire what, she asked herself, good sense or deportment? Perhaps she might acquire more good sense--she had certainly made a fool of herself in this case--but she had prided herself upon her manners. Colonel French had been merely playing with her, like one would with a pet monkey; and he had been in love, all the time, with her Aunt Laura, whom the girls had referred to compassionately, only that same evening, as a hopeless old maid.
It is fortunate that youth and hope go generally hand in hand. Graciella possessed a buoyant spirit to breast the waves of disappointment. She had her cry out, a good, long cry; and when much weeping had dulled the edge of her discomfiture she began to reflect that all was not yet lost. The colonel would not marry her, but he would still marry in the family. When her Aunt Laura became Mrs. French, she would doubtless go often to New York, if she would not live there always. She would invite Graciella to go with her, perhaps to live with her there. As for going to school, that was a matter which her own views should control; at present she had no wish to return to school. She might take lessons in music, or art; her aunt would hardly care for her to learn stenography now, or go into magazine work. Her aunt would surely not go to Europe without inviting her, and Colonel French was very liberal with his money, and would deny his wife nothing, though Graciella could hardly imagine that any man would be infatuated with her Aunt Laura.
But this was not the end of Graciella's troubles. Graciella had a heart, although she had suppressed its promptings, under the influence of a selfish ambition. She had thrown Ben Dudley over for the colonel; the colonel did not want her, and now she would have neither. Ben had been very angry, unreasonably angry, she had thought at the time, and objectionably rude in his manner. He had sworn never to speak to her again. If he should keep his word, she might be very unhappy. These reflections brought on another rush of tears, and a very penitent, contrite, humble-minded young woman cried herself to sleep before Miss Laura, with a heart bursting with happiness, bade the colonel good-night at the gate, and went upstairs to lie awake in her bed in a turmoil of pleasant emotions.
Miss Laura's happiness lay not alone in the prospect that Colonel French would marry her, nor in any sordid thought of what she would gain by becoming the wife of a rich man. It rested in the fact that this man, whom she admired, and who had come back from the outer world to bring fresh ideas, new and larger ideals to lift and broaden and revivify the town, had passed by youth and beauty and vivacity, and had chosen her to share this task, to form the heart and mind and manners of his child, and to be the tie which would bind him most strongly to her dear South. For she was a true child of the soil; the people about her, white and black, were her people, and this marriage, with its larger opportunities for usefulness, would help her to do that for which hitherto she had only been able to pray and to hope. To the boy she would be a mother indeed; to lead him in the paths of truth and loyalty and manliness and the fear of God--it was a priceless privilege, and already her mother-heart yearned to begin the task.
And then after the flow came the ebb. Why had he chosen her? Was it _merely_ as an abstraction--the embodiment of an ideal, a survival from a host of pleasant memories, and as a mother for his child, who needed care which no one else could give, and as a helpmate in carrying out his schemes of benevolence? Were these his only motives; and, if so, were they sufficient to ensure her happiness? Was he marrying her through a mere sentimental impulse, or for calculated convenience, or from both? She must be certain; for his views might change. He was yet in the full flow of philanthropic enthusiasm. She shared his faith in human nature and the triumph of right ideas; but once or twice she had feared he was underrating the power of conservative forces; that he had been away from Clarendon so long as to lose the perspective of actual conditions, and that he was cherishing expectations which might be disappointed. Should this ever prove true, his disillusion might be as far-reaching and as sudden as his enthusiasm. Then, if he had not loved her for herself, she might be very unhappy. She would have rejoiced to bring him youth and beauty, and the things for which other women were preferred; she would have loved to be the perfect mate, one in heart, mind, soul and body, with the man with whom she was to share the journey of life.
But this was a passing thought, born of weakness and self-distrust, and she brushed it away with the tear that had come with it, and smiled at its absurdity. Her youth was past; with nothing to expect but an old age filled with the small expedients of genteel poverty, there had opened up to her, suddenly and unexpectedly, a great avenue for happiness and usefulness. It was foolish, with so much to be grateful for, to sigh for the unattainable. His love must be all the stronger since it took no thought of things which others would have found of controlling importance. In choosing her to share his intellectual life he had paid her a higher compliment than had he praised the glow of her cheek or the contour of her throat. In confiding Phil to her care he had given her a sacred trust and confidence, for she knew how much he loved the child.