CHAPTER VI.

THE days that ensued were very anxious days, but with a stoicism inconsistent enough with the impulsiveness of both father and daughter, they sedulously repressed all manifestation of this anxiety, and life in the maimed old house had to its guests as cheerful an aspect as usual. The excitement occasioned by the fire gradually smouldered away with its smouldering embers, but there were other incidents of the evening that Marcia wondered should slip by so lightly.

She constantly expected her aunt to canvass, with all the fervor of feminine curiosity, Captain Estwicke’s pointed requisition that she should always think kindly of him now. As time wore on, and Mrs. Kirby said nothing, Marcia was angry with herself for experiencing so vivid a sensation of relief. In extenuation, she declared that if she were asked she would not hesitate to--to--explain--and then she realized suddenly how difficult it would be to unravel for a dispassionate examination this tangle of thought and feeling--or rather this subtle and sympathetic divination of feeling--in which she and a “strange man”--for thus she called him--had contrived to involve themselves in two short interviews.

She dwelt so much upon this episode, and the “strange man’s” part in it, that the idea of him became familiar, and might have earned him the right to be accounted an old acquaintance.

Oddly enough, Mrs. Kirby had forgotten it; but perhaps this was not so odd after all, for the day after the fire she dined by appointment with Mrs. Ridgeway, the gossip of the county, and there was greatly entertained. When she came back, even before she got her shawl off, she was absorbed in rehearsing to the family circle all she had heard. The news was dramatized by the expressive play of her blue eyes and her wrinkles, her airily waving curls, the explanatory gestures of her plump, jewelled hands, and the animation of the swinging, swaying veil that clung to the crown of her old black bonnet. Before these excitements had fairly palled, a new interest occupied her.

“Antoinette,” she said, one afternoon, breaking a long silence, as the two sat in the flicker of the library fire, and the ever-reddening bars of sunlight that struck aslant through the dusky room, and set all the motes to dancing, “Antoinette, you are reflective, I see; you garner up your thoughts; I hope you make good use of them, my dear. Now, with me,” she declared, with her gurgling laughter, “every trivial subject cries, ‘_Largess!_’ and I am generous; yes, I fling away my choicest ideas in words. Anybody may have them for the asking. So, when solitude and silence pounce upon me unaware, I can’t think; I haven’t an idea to solace me; I have talked them all away; yes, I’ve nothing to fall back on, you see. And I’m destitute now, my dear; so say something, do. Tell me what you were thinking about.”

Antoinette had raised a flushed, perplexed face. She seemed a little confused, perhaps because the thread of her meditations had been so suddenly broken, perhaps because she was conscious of her conversational deficiencies.

“I was only thinking of a letter which I received yesterday--a letter from Austin Travis, my step-brother, you know.”

Mrs. Kirby stared. She felt that girls were not so naïve in her day! So he had written to her, had he? And he had come so far to see her--yes, indeed! And he had brought her their sister’s diamond cross, so interesting from its associations, and so beautiful! A long vista of romantic possibilities was opening before Mrs. Kirby’s contemplation. For this old lady was given over to reading novels, and had a cultivated imagination. Despite her sixty odd years, all that is delicate, and true, and tender in sentiment appealed to her as vividly now as when this dull old world was freshly a-bloom and she stood in her eighteenth summer. Thus she was exceedingly susceptible--vicariously. Under normal circumstances she would have regarded Mr. Travis only as a drawling dandy, and felt for him that robust contempt with which the substantial provincial magnate favors the superficial syllabub circles of fashionable life. The moment he loomed above her mental horizon in the interesting guise of lover, he had acquired all the dignity appertaining to the passion. Mrs. Kirby was suddenly impressed with the conviction that he was a very handsome man, well educated, of good style, according to the modern standard, of excellent social position, and well endowed with this world’s goods. He had known Antoinette all her life; doubtless this was an attachment of long standing, and it would be a charming match. To be sure, people said he was wild; yes, (regretfully) a _little_ wild. But then, people said so many things. They talked; yes, they talked too much. (Thus the crony of Mrs. Ridgeway.) She had an idea now to solace her, and she experienced a little wistful curiosity, good soul, about the contents of that letter. She sat silent, meditatively gazing down the rich crimson and orange vistas of the fire, where the chips had burned away between the logs, giving glimpses of the white heat beyond; here and there a purple flame, completely detached in the air, quivered with so lucent a gleam that it might seem the vivified spirit of an amethyst; the red coals close to the hearth pulsated visibly, as if the heart of the fire beat there. With these stimulants to her imagination, she wrought out and shaped a letter, such as she wished it might be--so eloquent, so tender, so delicately fervid, that Travis could not have written its like were he to hang for it.

This aerial epistle was a great waste--and there was a great waste, too, of her sweet sympathy. She looked with a motherly yearning at the girl, who had always been lonely enough. An unwonted depth was in the old lady’s blue eyes--a little moisture, too, perhaps. She was so happy in her foolish fancy that others were happy. She refrained from speaking, however. She said only to herself that the Balance of Life swings at that delicately adjusted and perfect poise but once. No word nor glance should jeopardize its equilibrium. Curiosity might consume her first! And so she gazed once more at the fire and fell to retouching her letter.

It was very different from Travis’s actual letter. He had inclosed with it an abstract of the record which bore him out in all that he had said concerning Fortescue’s claim to Antoinette’s property. To the inexperienced girl the document had great impressiveness--her title seemed far more shaky than before. Her appreciation of the value of money, of a solid competence, of a provision for her future, had been greatly sharpened in that short interval after her grandmother’s death when she stood penniless face to face with the world. She was ill-adapted alike by training and by her constitutional timidity for its conflicts. She had no wild enthusiasms to serve merely in underrating them. Inquiry and effort only proved how overcrowded was the profession of teaching--that favorite recourse of reduced gentlewomen, and for which alone she was well fitted--and dependence or semi-dependence, the greatest dread of poverty and pride, was not altogether below the horizon. The unexpected remembrance of her in her half-sister’s will, after so many years of neglect, had changed the aspect of the world for a time. But the knowledge that her title was not indefeasible had reopened all these anxieties and possibilities. Therefore she had concluded it would be best to risk nothing, to exchange with Travis while his financial condition rendered this desirable for him as well as for her. The plantations, it was true, were cumbrous of management, of uncertain value, and impossible of sale. But they gave a good income, and were not liable to be spirited out of her possession by some technicality. As she reflected on this she said to herself that it was high time she made her decision known to Travis--that it would be well to have a lawyer at once examine the state of the titles, both of the town property and the plantations, and confer with her step-brother as to relative values and final arrangements.

By a strange chance, however, which presently befell, her resolution was suddenly reversed, and this came about in the simple routine of life here, where the battle was fought.

On this same day these grave cogitations were still uppermost in her mind when she and Marcia, according to their custom, started for an afternoon walk along the quiet plantation road. The air was crisp and cold, and as they descended the broad stone steps to the pavement, rent here and there with its historic fissures, they heard, distinct in the distance, the ringing thud of a horse’s hoofs. A moment more and a swift equestrian figure appeared galloping along the serpentine drive, and Marcia was first to recognize the “strange man.” As he rapidly approached them, he was smiling and lifting his hat. Seen in the crude light of the day, which was full upon the unique tints of his dark red hair and beard, his bold, quickly-glancing, brown eyes, his tanned complexion, and his clear-cut but irregular features, his face could less than ever be called handsome, although it was notably striking. There was a suggestion of great vitality and alertness in the pose of his fine figure, but that air of dash and mettle owed something of its effectiveness to the high-couraged animal he rode, for he was gallantly mounted. Her father’s daughter could not look upon such a horse save with emotion.

He threw himself from the saddle and walked up the bomb-riven pavement to meet them.

“Adopt Bishop Berkeley’s theory, I beg,” he cried, gayly, “I’m no matter--and therefore can’t interfere with your excursion--or perhaps”--he added with a laugh, “you might allow such an impalpable essence to join you.”

“I have an idea,” said Marcia, as the three began to walk on slowly together, “that there is just enough reality about you to keep off the cows. Antoinette is dreadfully afraid of cows.”

“I perceive a purpose in my creation!” Estwicke exclaimed.

“Oh--I’m afraid of everything,” Antoinette admitted, with the shamelessness of the feminine coward.

“And you?” asked Estwicke, glancing at Marcia.

“It is all the other way,” she boasted. “Everything is afraid of me.”

“I can appreciate that,” he declared.

She flushed, and looked away and laughed.

“I hope your burned hand is better,” said Antoinette, mellifluously.

“Oh, no!” Estwicke insisted. “It is _not_ better--much.”

He looked from one to the other--but this, after such a lapse of time, was so empty a bid for sympathy that even they triumphantly withheld it.

Antoinette had paused to pluck a spray of cedar from a little tree by the roadside. She showed the berries to Estwicke. “They are pretty--don’t you think so?”

“You won’t find many now,” he remarked, glancing at the great charred expanse of field and thicket, whence that fiery besom had swept the withered grass and leaves. “Is that the object of this expedition?”

“Oh, no,” she explained, “we are only going up on the parapet of Fort Despair to see the sun set.”

“We have a glimpse of something like scenery from that elevation,” said Marcia.

Estwicke made no rejoinder, and somehow after this there was an indefinable change; perhaps only the wind, blowing from the red west, chilled them--for they were facing the wind now and rapidly approaching the heavy earthwork which loomed, silent and grim, against the gold-flecked splendors of the crimson sky. A scanty fringe of peach and plum trees had sprung up along the slopes, where the soldiers had tossed away the stones of the fruit they ate, and the red clay showed through the bare branches. On the opposite side of the road was a blackened, leafless thicket of young dogwood, hackberry, and aspen trees. The wind was surging through it. The shadows here were deep. In skirting the dense copse it seemed close upon nightfall.

And now the besieging force made its way into Fort Despair, which offered no resistance, and walked slowly around on the parapet and watched the sun go down. All the clouds assembled to do him honor, and color and rejoicing filled the sky. Then the dull, sad shadow fell upon the landscape, and the wintry twilight came on apace.

Antoinette stood watching the fading west, the wind stirring the waves of fair hair which her bonnet permitted to be visible on her brow, and fluttering the semi-opaque veil of black crape that floated backward from it.

“Such melancholy suggestions in that sky!” she exclaimed, with a gentle inflection.

“The day is dead,” said Estwicke, mechanically striking with his light riding-whip at the charred bushes about him. “It’s gone forever. There’s no resurrection for a dead day. It is the type of the irrevocable. And what is done--is done.”

Marcia glanced from one to the other, her eyes brightening beneath the gray mists of her tissue veil.

“I only see that the sun has gone down,” she declared, with her blithe laughter. “To-day has left its mark on the world--a vast deal of useful work has been done everywhere. And ‘To-morrow’ is already sailing on the high seas, and bright and early in the morning she will be here.”

Estwicke looked hard at her as he offered his hand to assist her down the steep exterior slope of the parapet. The shattered old house was visible in the distance, its upper windows still aflame with the sunset, as with some great inward conflagration. He thought of its maimed and ruined owner. What a support her sturdy optimism must be to a man like this!

With a sudden acute discernment he saw her life--she was all heart and hands. Instead of bewailing the ruin of the war, she busied herself in picking up the pieces. Her courage--the virtue of all others which appealed most strongly to him--roused a quick sympathetic throb, which was half pity that so young and gentle a thing should know this desperate struggle, and half admiration of her pluck--such as he might feel for some stripling soldier’s fine deeds of valiance. It was nothing more tender. As they paused on the berme to rest, and stood there motionless for an instant, he was all unaware that he held the helpful little hand in a close clasp--as he might have pressed with friendly fervor the hand of that brave young comrade. He did not notice how deeply she blushed beneath the shimmer of her silky gray veil; that she shrank away shyly from him after they had crossed the ditch, and climbed the counterscarp and were once more on level ground; that she was confused, agitated; that she did not speak. He sighed--he was only reminded of the faith and affection which bound together that little home-circle in perfect peace, here where the battle was fought--such simple virtues--so widely possessed--and yet he sighed. So he walked on, silent and absorbed, thinking--not of her--only of what she suggested.

He had forgotten Miss St. Pierre. She hardly needed his assistance. She only missed it because it was becoming that he should offer it. To cover the slight embarrassment thus induced, she busied herself once more with the cedar, for, as she followed them over the glacis, she caught the gleam of the berries against the dark green of a funereal little tree on the verge of the haunted thicket. She paused to gather the spray while the others walked on unheeding. And so it happened that the moment of their pre-occupation came to be an era in her life.

The fire had been very fierce just here, and the charred tangle of vines and the prickly stubble of the burned bushes and weeds showed how thickly matted was the growth thus cleared away. As she moved forward into the midst of the thicket, she said to herself that no other foot had pressed this sod since the days when the battle was fought.

The next moment a cold horror clutched at her heart. There--almost at her feet--was a ghastly row of excavations of a shape and size that told their own story. These were the empty graves of the soldiers whose ghosts walked here, and would not follow their transplanted bodies. She stood motionless, looking down in terrified fascination. They were shallow; the rains had washed the earth into them; the wind had helped to fill them with leaves. And as she looked, a sudden fitful gleam caught her eyes. It flashed up from the bottom of the nearest grave. Perhaps it was the fading light on a drop of water; perhaps on a bit of tin;--but it was like the burnished glimmer of precious metal. She did not understand her courage afterward. She was suddenly impelled to step swiftly forward, she knelt down on the brink of the excavation, and picked up a small fragment of a watch chain. At one extremity it had been cut smoothly off--perhaps by the bullet that had carried death to the heart of the man who had worn it here. From the other end depended, encrusted with clay, stained, too, she fancied, with some dark current, a gold locket--the memento of a romance it might be, a love token. The dead soldier had left it in his grave, and here it had lain all these years, overlooked and unmolested. And here his story ended.

No--not ended yet! She had mechanically touched the spring and the locket was open. She had only a glimpse of a tress of dark hair beneath the shattered crystal--and then with the shock of an extreme surprise, her pulses seemed suddenly stilled. For within the lid were engraved these words:--

JOHN DOANE FORTESCUE _from_ “ADELAIDE.”

Her blood came back with a rush. The pathetic interest of the bauble, found here and now, was merged in its prosaic significance. John Fortescue was dead. This discovery proved the fact. Did it prove something more--that Travis was working on her fear of litigation to weaken her hold upon the property he coveted? To be sure he might not know that the man was dead, but he doubtless had reason to believe it. She remembered that he had alluded to the fact that Fortescue had been singularly alone in the world--he was probably aware, too, that the dead man had no relative nearer than herself to urge their rights as his heirs. Thus, in exchanging undesirable for desirable property, Travis would acquire also her indefeasible title.

She recollected where she was with a shudder, for as she stood with the trinket in her hand, the earth was suddenly a-throb with mysterious vibrations. Loud voices rang on the wind in its wild, unimpeded rush across the plain. The shadows in the haunted thicket were swaying back and forth with a convulsive motion--the fantastic shapes began to assume a dimly realized resemblance to human forms. She hastily thrust the bit of chain and the locket into her muff, and as she turned, it was a great relief to see her friends strolling leisurely along the road close at hand.

They were still silent, and she was silent too when she joined them. Already her caution was warning her that the discovery she had made had so serious a connection with the title of her property that it was not well to provoke an indiscriminate curiosity in the matter until she could have the advice of a lawyer, and take the proper measures to restore the little trinket--valueless except, possibly, from association--to its rightful owner, if, indeed, the dead Fortescue had a closer relative than herself still surviving. But was he dead--was this sufficient to prove it?

Her strong sense of justice, too, combated the impulse to canvass with her companions the wonderment of this episode, that was so strange in that it should aptly fall into her experience, and so natural in that it had happened here, where the battle was fought. But it involved the honor and honesty of a _quasi_ member of the family, and this touched her pride. She knew that its recital could not fail to suggest to them the identical suspicions which she entertained of her step-brother’s motives in the proposed exchange of property, and had she sufficient proof to warrant her, for the mere love of sensation, in exposing him to this grave discredit?

Thus it was that she said nothing.

Night was falling. The evening star shivered in the wind. The mists were crouching in the rifle-pits of the old picket-line, and had silently entered the works. Now and then she glanced back at the desolate stretch of country, its heavy redoubts so grim, so gaunt, so doubly drear, projected against an infinitely clear sky. The scene, in its vast loneliness, was burnt into her brain--she saw it years afterward as vividly as she saw it now--as all must forever see it who once look upon it. Even the house, standing stark and silent in the distance, gave no sense of life, of a future, of the domestic world, of humanity. One might sigh to see the pallid, wintry moon peering curiously through the big rifts of the bomb-shattered cupola.