CHAPTER XIII.
THERE was a golden moon in the purple dusk, and the world was sweet one night. Delicate odors drifted along the imperceptible current of the air from the lilies that grew in the fissures of the bomb-riven stones which had once upheld the sunken terraces. A mocking-bird, perched somewhere on the shattered cupola, was singing as if he were a conscientious contractor, pledged to supply the earth with music. The creamy, gold-centered roses that clambered up the pillars of the portico caught the dew and glistened. One could look out at the cruel old battle-field only through their charmed vistas. There was no wind, and the shadows that thronged the haunted thickets, and lined the redoubts, and lurked in the rifle-pits, were motionless.
When Brennett and Percy reached the house this evening, a week, perhaps, after the fishing party, they found the family seated upon the long, broad portico for the enjoyment of the fresh air. It was not Brennett’s first visit. Since the day of the excursion he had been here once by invitation, and had called once. Except for the most unmeaning conventionalities, he had not spoken to Antoinette, and she was genuinely astonished that he had made no overture to recur to the subject of conversation which he had seemed persistently anxious to pursue on the occasion of their first meeting. This evening, immediately after the greetings, he took a chair near her and a little apart from the others. It might have been accident; she thought it design.
And yet, when he turned and spoke to her, nothing could be more commonplace than his words and manner; more in accord with this world’s ways; more antagonistic to the suspicion of plots and such fantastic vagaries with which she had lately been prone to invest all prosaic events.
“There is the recompense for the loss of the trees; you can’t get an adequate idea of the moonlight anywhere else,” he said, looking out at it, as it lay in a splendid vastness upon the vast plain. “In towns you have it cut into parallelograms and triangles. You may demonstrate a theorem at every street corner. In the woods, the shadows are paramount. At sea, the water asserts itself; it has its reflections, and its motion, and its suggestions of glancing color. Here, the still earth takes the moonlight like a benediction. And you can be still, too, and perhaps blessed. How is that, Miss St. Pierre? Do you feel its influence? Does the world fall away? Are you ready to renounce the artificialities?”
A fit rejoinder did not present itself. Her belief that Brennett was involved in some plot against her interests, and her eager scrutiny to detect a purpose in all he said, preoccupied her faculties, and she was conscious of seeming flatly unresponsive, as she replied, with a little laugh, “No-o, I hardly think I am ready to renounce the artificialities.”
“That is an essentially feminine conclusion,” he returned lightly. “Women are all for--not the artificialities, no, I will say, for--progress. They have no sympathy with that yearning for the more primitive modes of life, which sends a man to the woods, to ‘rough it’ with his dog and gun. When a woman sighs for nature, the beautiful and true, she wants it _en fête champêtre_. She predicates upon nature a parasol. And there must be cavaliers and claret cup.”
Evidently the man had no purpose in his speech. Her interest in the subject suddenly became more genuine.
“But for our influence, then,” she said, “our civilizing influence, man might still be in the wilderness. Is that your theory?”
“Perhaps.”
“It is well that somebody is progressive.”
“But am I right? Are women progressive? Are _you_ progressive?”
“Oh, yes; very.”
“So I should judge. And that is why it seems to me strange that you have not replied to the letter written by Mr. Fortescue’s lawyers.”
He was looking hard at her. His eyes gleamed, two brilliant points of light, in the dusky shade of the vines which hung above him. At a little distance were the other members of the party in the full moonlight, their black shadows impishly foreshortened, but sharply defined upon the great blocks of limestone that floored the portico. With their every gesture these silhouettes moved in a silently exaggerated excitement, and there were many gestures, for the group was merry and animated. Edgar was standing between his sister and aunt, and Percy was drawing from him a naïvely enthusiastic account of the wonders he had seen at the circus yesterday. The little boy’s shrill treble rang loud above the other laughing voices, and all together overpowered the low tones of the two who sat apart. Antoinette glanced absently at this vivacious quartette, then at the silent, bobbing, elfish caricature behind it, convulsed with noiseless merriment, and once more at Brennett. He was still gazing at her. She caught her breath with a quick start, and the blood rushed to her face. For there was a sarcastic expression in his eyes, a peculiar intonation in his voice, as he laughed a little, significantly. What was the import of the tone and look she could not divine; she did not pause to analyze them, nor to consider her reply. She was angered suddenly and beyond endurance, and she spoke upon the impulse of the moment.
“And it seems to me _not_ a little strange, Mr. Brennett, that you should, uninvited, persistently question me about my own affairs. If ever I should want your advice, I shall venture to ask for it. Until then may I beg that you do not interfere in matters with which you have no concern.”
There was a flash of astonishment in his eyes, and a grave constraint in the change of his face. She knew, the moment after she had spoken, that she had been guilty, not only of bad manners, but of great folly, in permitting herself to fly into a passion without a sufficient provocation. What so intangible as a tone, what ground of offence so untenable! And had the man no “concern” in the matter? And yet, for all her confusion and regret, she felt that his surprise was cleverly simulated, and that he had wished to produce the result he had so effectually done,--to make her angry, provoke her to an outbreak, and put her in the wrong.
“I cannot sufficiently reprobate my rudeness,” he said. “Let me assure you it was unintentional. It did not occur to me that the mention of the subject was amiss. I did not suppose that you would consider me an officious intermeddler, as I have a pecuniary interest involved, being Mr. Fortescue’s creditor. I took the liberty, you may remember, of writing to you to that effect some time ago. I thought I might perhaps talk the matter over with you and learn your intention in regard to the proposed adjustment. Naturally, I am anxious that it should be speedily effected, so that I can collect a very bad debt. I don’t say all this to justify myself--only in some small degree as an excuse. I can find no words to ask your pardon.”
He was leaning forward with an extreme earnestness of manner. One hand lay on the balustrade; the other, holding his hat, was upon his knee. His eager, deprecatory face was plainly shown in the moonlight. She dropped her eyes, a deep flush burned on her cheeks; the shadow of a belated humming-bird, still fluttering high among the roses, wavered now across her fair hair and now across the long black folds of her dress.
She was fully aware that this was a solemn sham, but with a curious doubleness she saw the hardship of the position in which he had adroitly placed himself as if it were real. With her stern ideas of right she could not let matters thus remain. For what proof--what proof had she with which to assail his statement. He must have the benefit of the doubt.
“Mr. Brennett,” she began, “I can’t accept your apology--for I must offer mine. I was not warranted in what I said--I”--
“Oh, I beg of you”--he interrupted, with a gesture of insistence.
“If you please, I should like to ask you a question about this claim of Mr. Fortescue’s,” she resumed, thinking this less awkward than a forced transition to other topics, and besides shrewdly wishing to secure some advantage since the subject had been broached.
“If I can give you any information I shall be very happy.”
“I should like to know why Mr. Fortescue failed to press his claim against my half-sister, Mrs. Perrier. He has permitted it to lie idle a long time.”
She paused for an instant, endeavoring to find fit and intelligible expressions for her ideas. Then, with a recollection of one of Temple Meredith’s phrasings, she went on.
“The length of time that has elapsed since the determination of the estate _per autre vie_ is more than sufficient to bar his claim. I can’t understand upon what pretext he intends to attack the property now.”
“It is easily enough explained,” said Brennett. “He was abroad at the time of the determination of the estate _per autre vie_. He was not aware of it himself until just before his return last March. The fact of this absence makes it possible for him to recover now, for, as you may perhaps know, the statute expressly excepts persons who are ‘without the limits of the United States.’ So, you see, he has three years from last March to institute proceedings for the recovery of the property. The law allows three years next after the removal of the disability.”
Antoinette was silent, and for a moment he was silent too. She was canvassing what he had said--reasonable, credible enough, but for one discrepancy--a fatal discrepancy. For how could it be, if Fortescue remained abroad since ’57, that that locket, a woman’s gift, with his name and hers engraved in it, was lost on the battle-field; that it was found in an empty grave from which a soldier, killed in the great struggle, had been afterward removed. This was some strange imposture. She was sure of it.
His voice recalled her attention. He had returned to the subject of the statute of limitations. At first it seemed to her that he was disposed to talk discursively. “In Tennessee,” he said, “for rather more than five years and a half--during the war and some time afterward--the operation of the statute of limitations was intermitted. Well, pending this intermission, when, by reason of the suspension of the courts, he could by no possibility have instituted suit, Mr. Fortescue returned to this country, entered the army, was badly wounded at this battle out here, and”--
She started so violently that he suddenly stopped speaking and looked at her in surprise. He gave her no time to recover. He asked a curt question which necessitated an instant reply. “Did you never hear that he was wounded at this battle?”
“Yes--no”--she faltered. “I know little about him,” she went on, striving to muster her composure. “He is a very distant relative. I have never seen him, and have rarely heard him mentioned.”
“You seemed surprised. What did I say to surprise you?” asked Brennett quickly.
She answered precipitately, still startled and confused.
“I was surprised that you should say he was wounded here--so near to us now. I was--I was--a little nervous,” she concluded, inconsequently.
Brennett laughed carelessly, as if the matter involved only a young lady’s morbidly delicate sensibilities.
“You must be very nervous, indeed, to shudder at the idea that a man was wounded near this place so many years ago. Reassure yourself, Miss St. Pierre, by remembering how many were killed.”
Still his eyes were intent upon the shifting expressions on her face. There was no imposture, she was thinking now. The finding of that trinket was accounted for so readily--so naturally. Her secret was rendered of no avail when this man knew and mentioned the fact that Fortescue had borne a part in the great conflict. What was more probable than that he had lost the locket when he was wounded? She had always fancied that the bit of watch-chain by which it was suspended had been cut smoothly off by a bullet, but the wound was not of necessity mortal. Now she realized how simple and likely a thing it was that the locket had fallen unnoticed, and that afterward, as the earth was shovelled away, it slipped into a soldier’s grave, where, among the clods and withered leaves, it had since lain undisturbed. She said to herself that she must discard the idea that Brennett had deftly constructed an ingenious plot, and that this locket was the clue to its weak point. She had a sense of loss, for she had relied upon it as a masked battery, certain in some way to demolish the imposture she had so strongly suspected.
As her wandering glance came back from the west, where Fort Despair and the haunted thickets rose starkly up, silent and lonely in the white moonlight, she became conscious that he was still watching her, and she detected in his face a certain speculation. She wondered at his surprise as he had wondered at hers.
“Why does he find it so strange?” she thought.
“There are depths here still unsounded,” Brennett argued within himself. “The lead-line has not reached the bottom.”
“As I was saying,” he continued, “Fortescue was wounded and captured. He remained in prison until the surrender, when he went immediately to France, and did not come back to this country until March, 1871. Under ordinary circumstances, even a temporary return would operate as a removal of the disability, but the suspension was prescribed in view of an abnormal state of affairs, and he has three years from the time he landed last March in which to bring suit.”
Fortescue certainly seemed to command the situation. Her recollections of Meredith’s exposition in regard to the state of the title only confirmed her in this conclusion. It was with some vague idea of appearing undismayed by these formidable representations that she said,--
“But suppose the court should decide that the return during the suspension did operate as a removal of the disability?”
“Such a decision would be contrary both to the spirit and letter of the enactment. How could the man bring an action at law when no courts were held, and the whole country was filled with contending armies? Such a decision would be very unjust, and law, you know, is not only ‘the perfection of reason,’ but justice besides. Then there is precedent in his favor. His counsel think his case very strong. You see, I have posted myself, having an interest involved, and hearing from him that a proposal to adjust the matter amicably was under consideration. His lawyers were averse to making the proposition. They endeavored to dissuade him. No one else with such a case would think of a compromise. But you know with a man like Fortescue argument is futile and common sense thrown away.”
“I don’t know, for I don’t know Mr. Fortescue at all.”
“I remember now that you told me that before. _I_ know him, though. But _I_ made no effort to dissuade him. If I could I wouldn’t.”
He laughed after a moment’s reflection; then turned his head and glanced about him.
“It is a lapse, certainly, from the eternal fitness of things, that in the presence of this moonlight and these roses a man should find nothing better to talk to you about than his paltry three thousand dollars, and your property, and Mr. Fortescue’s claim.”
Perhaps she had no realizing sense of this incongruity. She pursued the subject with grave intentness.
“Why wouldn’t you advise him against a settlement if you and his lawyers think it impolitic.”
“Because I am not a disinterested man, Miss St. Pierre. He owes me money. I shall get it sooner if you and he can come to terms, than at the end of a lawsuit.”
She said nothing, and after a little he resumed,--
“Honestly, it is the best solution for all concerned. He prefers ready money now to the property after long litigation. I want his debt paid. And you have a large estate in jeopardy--as good as lost if you go into court. And then you have, besides the financial interests, a matter of feeling involved.”
“A matter of feeling!” she exclaimed.
He turned his eyes upon her with a vague doubt in his face.
“Well,” he said, “one person cannot judge for another, but it seems to me it would be more--more--politic, it would be wiser--to give Fortescue what he will take and get him out of the country, for the sake of the past--you know--of your family. There’s no way of--of--muzzling _him_, you know.”
“What--what--do you mean?” she asked, her heart beating fast, her color fluctuating.
“I hope--I hope--I haven’t offended you,” he said with great eagerness. “The allusion escaped me in viewing the question from all its standpoints.”
“What do you mean?” she asked again.
“I only meant a caution. Fortescue is a drunkard. He has no remorse, nor pity, nor shame. And drunken men tell secrets. They got him out of the country once to hush him up. And this affair has brought him back. He ought to be induced to go again, and to go forever. But now there is no one who cares--except you.”
“I! why should I care?”
He looked at her with an expression of sudden comprehension.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “you don’t know?”
“No,” she faltered, shaken with a wild terror.
“Well, then, let it go! I thought you surely knew. But it is better as it is, perhaps.”
She was trembling in every fibre, her lips were parted, and her breath came fast. There was a cruel dismay and horror in her blanching face.
“Take care,” he said hastily. “Those people will observe your agitation. You don’t want everybody speculating, you know. Suppose we walk to the end of the portico for a moment. It will give you an opportunity to recover your self-control.”
She rose in silence. As he removed to one side the chair which stood in her way, he turned his head toward the others of the party. “We are going to get some of the Cloth-of-gold roses, Mrs. Kirby,” he said. Then the two walked together down to the end of the portico. The sentimental old lady looked rather wistfully at Antoinette standing silent and motionless in the moonlight, her black skirt trailing in sombre contrast upon the white floor, and observed Mr. Brennett’s deferential care in trimming the thorns from the stems of the flowers before handing them to her. The tableau addressed itself strongly to Mrs. Kirby’s imagination, and the hypothetical romance she sought to foster had her best wishes.
“It is singularly unfortunate,” Brennett was saying in low tones, “that I should have chanced to broach that subject, so calculated to disturb your peace of mind. But let it be as it was before I spoke. Remain in ignorance. You will be happier.” He still had the flowers and his penknife in his hand. He raised his head slightly, and she caught his swift glance. Somehow she fancied he looked to see how she was taking it.
“You are very right,” she said, still in a tremor. “I have no desire to know. Pray don’t mention it again.”
His face was half averted, but she detected in it a suggestion of disappointment. And as she turned her fast-filling eyes to the moonlit vastness of the battle-field, all blurred and swaying before her, she began to understand the situation.
This was what the newspapers called “blackmail.”
She had read of such dastardly things, but they had hardly seemed possible. This man and his coadjutor, Fortescue, had concocted together some frightful lie that would force money from her. She had given up at last the theory of an imposture. She now believed their purpose grew out of the fact that Fortescue’s case was in some way fatally defective and could not stand in court. Should she defy them, they might find an appropriate sequel to their scheme in breaking rock in the State Prison. For she remembered having heard once an incident bearing upon a certain fierce Tennessee statute, by which an effort to extort money by threatening to impute to another an offence or crime is made a felony, and is punished by five years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary. This man was playing a desperate game,--more desperate, perhaps, than he knew. For one moment she felt that she could not forego this revenge. To compass it she could pursue them to the ends of the earth. Then her characteristic caution returned, with its complex elements of pusillanimity and a just regard of consequences. This lie involved some one near and dear to her,--her father, her mother, or how could it be efficacious with her? And how could she combat it? They had died in her early infancy. She had never known them. But Fortescue had known them. Would his word be more credible as to them in public estimation, or hers? That anything disgraceful to them was true, she did not believe for an instant. But if a specious lie were promulgated and not disproved, it would be true to the world. A heavy sense of responsibility had descended upon her. It was not for herself alone that she must act; it was for those who were dead, and who could not speak.
If only she had some advice! She began to cast about in her mind as to whom she might apply. There was only General Vayne. On his good faith and his friendship she knew she could rely. But he was a man without policy or prudence; his life throughout had given evidence of this fact, and the mere recollection of that fantastically rash episode at the court-house so short a time ago was enough to deter her. The story would be elicited, and if General Vayne should look upon it only as an iniquitous attempt to extort money from her,--a helpless woman, and his daughter’s guest,--proved or unproved, Maurice Brennett would never get out of the town alive. Then there would be a great commotion, and the wicked fabrication would come out.
She determined that never, if it could be prevented, should that lie be divulged. Never should it be put into words. Money was no object, and it could not be again, except as it might be used to keep down that black calumny which could not be refuted now. She would compromise,--she would give up anything, everything, when Temple Meredith should come to carry out her wishes. He had said that he would be here on the 28th of June, and it was not so far away. She was aware that her position, weak as it was, had its strong point. That cruel lie would not be made public so long as they hoped to effect a compromise through its agency, held _in terrorem_ over her. Thus she could safely postpone taking action.
Brennett’s finesse was a weapon of which every edge cut, but he could form no idea of the depth of the wounds left by its keen strokes this time. She had been startled, agitated at first. That was only natural, and of no special import. Now she had recovered her composure; and her calmly inexpressive face, as they walked down the portico to rejoin the others, gave him no indication of the effect of what he had said, and no augury as to how it would influence the future. He could not pursue the subject. Her reply had effectually closed it. He could only wait, and wait in doubt.
After the visitors were gone, the home-circle sat some time longer in the moonlight. Mrs. Kirby noticed that Antoinette was silent and abstracted, and when they had at last risen to go within, she still listlessly lingered outside. The old lady, chancing to turn at the door, saw her at a moment when she thought herself unobserved; it was with a gesture of disdainful rejection that she was throwing her flowers away, the fresh and beautiful roses which Maurice Brennett had cut for her.
They fell upon the bomb-riven pavement, and there the next day, when the sun was hot, they withered.