CHAPTER VIII.

IN the darkness of the night the snow slipped down, and the morning broke on an unfamiliar world. Chattalla was idealized like a town in a dream. Pavements, smooth and unblemished as marble, had replaced the wretched sidewalks. “Jerusalem” was a picturesque row of low, white-roofed buildings, softly defined against the sad, gray sky; here and there delicate tendrils of blue smoke were beginning to timidly ascend. The dome of the court-house was begirt with icicles; its gilded weather-vane seemed to touch the low-hanging clouds; the leafless sycamore in the yard was blanched to a yet more pallid effect by the snowy lines traced on every branch and twig. A great black crow was cawing from its top.

The first faces that appeared were of the unmistakable Israelitish type, and soon all Jewry was alive. Then groups of freedmen, silhouettes against the snowy background, slowly slouched along, grumbling because of the weather. Last of the three classes came the soldierly clerks, and lawyers, and doctors, their morning greetings complicated with comments on the unprecedented depth of the snow, and disputes as to the relative depth of the “big snow” of 1843.

There were no carts in from the country, but the streets were soon enlivened with every manner of fantastic expedient--from a goods-box to a wagon-bed--that could serve as a sleigh. Some of them were of such grotesque contrivance that the very dogs barked at them in frenzied surprise. After the one o’clock dinner these vehicles became more numerous, and Captain Estwicke met upon the turnpike nearly all Chattalla, on pleasure and pleurisy bent.

But it was lonely enough when he had turned off from the high road and reached the great, ghastly battlefield, that after all its woe was laid at last in its motionless, white shroud. The stillness was something dreadful. The vast snowy expanse stretched out indefinitely beneath a livid sky; only the sombre tints of the haunted thickets broke the monotony, until the great dilapidated house rose up before him, and he caught through the library windows the flicker of fire-light and the glow of crimson curtains.

“De Gen’al’s done gone ter town, sah,” said a small major-domo, with an air of importance disproportionate to his inches, and an expression of affable regret on his black face, as he opened the door in answer to Captain Estwicke’s ring. “Mrs. Kirby went yestiddy to spen’ de night at Mrs. Ridgeway’s, an’ de snow, so unexpected, kep’ her f’om comin’ back. Miss Anternette went up ter Mrs. Percy’s place las’ Wednesday ter stay a few weeks wid her”--

Estwicke’s heart lightened as he listened, and he received the next item with a sense of elation.

“--but Miss Marshy--she’s at home. Won’t yer walk in, sah.”

It was the first time that Estwicke had found the library unoccupied, and he was conscious of a certain alert expectation as he waited; not, he stipulated, because he was in love with Miss Vayne,--he often told himself that he was not a susceptible man,--but she possessed a unique charm and interest, and he had more than once felt that he could, with an admirable degree of fortitude, dispense with the less congenial presence of the others.

“You have disappointed me,” he cried, gayly, as she entered the room, and he rose to meet her. “You told me that spring was coming.”

“And so it is.”

“And so is the millennium--after a while.”

“Well,” said Marcia, with an air which seemed to dispose of her delinquency in the matter, “life is a mosaic of disappointments--the art of life is to adjust their jagged edges together so nicely that they form an harmonious whole.”

“Do I understand this?” said Estwicke, knitting his brows in mock gravity. “Are you trying to inculcate the moral lesson of contentment?”

“Oh, no,” cried Marcia, with a blithe laugh, “I am only admiring your patience.”

Somehow he greatly relished these strictly personal themes, and sought to conserve them. He was silent for a moment, then said, ponderingly, as if reaching a weighty conclusion, “I thought so--I thought so from the first. You are very satiric.”

He was hardly prepared for the degree of pleasure expressed in her face. She was delighted that her little ill-feathered shafts of wit should be dignified as satire, for she was possessed by that youthful admiration of cynicism which is so marked a phase of intellectual adolescence.

“Oh, you are altogether wrong,” she returned, with the air of waiving a compliment. “On the contrary, I am very”--she paused, at a loss, then meeting his intent, expectant gaze as he leaned slightly forward, his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his hat held motionless in his hand, she laughed and blushed, and turned her eyes away.

There were wonderful depths in those happy eyes, shaded to softness by their long, black lashes. They held some spell that touched his imagination. They suggested to him deep, enchanted waters, overhung by the mystery of some wild, romantic legend. And was there ever a line like that which gave a gentle curve to her under lip, and defined her chin, and swept away with its long, lithe grace to be lost in the knot of black lace at her throat! He was struck anew by the charm of sudden contrast between her dark eyebrows and the shade of her light brown hair, with its flashes of gold all a-sparkle. As it waved back from her forehead, he could see, from the opposite side of the fireplace, the blue veins in her temples.

But why was he on the opposite side of the fireplace? There suddenly seemed a needlessly immense distance between them. He rose and stood by the table, taking up one of those frightful Japanese fans which lay there, and affecting to be interested in its grotesque design. He idly opened and shut it, and when he again seated himself, he selected a chair nearer her.

“You remarked just now that you are ‘very,’” he said gravely; “I beg to agree with that. I have found you ‘very’ indeed. Especially on the subject of the weather. Why, I could have drummed up more sympathy at the barracks.”

“About the weather?--why, _they_ must be in their element this morning!” she cried. “I can imagine that at every blast _they_ exclaim--‘How nippingly this reminds me of home!’”

Estwicke laughed. “_They_ ought to hear you say that. _They_ stand up manfully for ‘home.’”

She looked down meditatively at the fire. “They are a long way off,” she said presently, in a sort of speculative commiseration. “I wonder if they never mind it. Do you?”

“I have no home,” he said, harshly. “I have never had a home.”

His tone startled her. It was like a passionate reiteration of some long-cherished grievance. His sudden frown was upon his face. He passed his hand hastily across his brow, as if conscious that a fierce intentness had gathered there, which he sought to obliterate. Then with a short, angry sigh, that yet was not all angry, he slightly shifted his position in the crimson glow of the fire, and turned his eyes upon the shrouded battlefield, lying stark and cold beneath the sombre sky. He looked out with moody reflectiveness, so long that she wondered when he would speak. Some inward monition swayed her, and held her mute.

“How still it is here,” he said at last. “An impressive silence broods over this landscape.”

“All strangers say that. Antoinette declares it makes her melancholy.”

“Sometimes,” pursued Estwicke slowly and thoughtfully, “it does not seem like silence. It is as if there were a great sermon or solemn oration in the air. I know it is being pronounced. I am thrilled by the electric eloquence. But somehow my nerves won’t respond. I don’t hear it. I am too gross, too sordid, too coarse. Now and then I think I have caught a whisper, but when I come to analyze it--nothing!”

He had forgotten her for the moment. His eyes were still fastened upon the scene without, and her surprised eyes were fastened upon his face. She did not know how it was--all that he was saying seemed wild and strange--but her heart was beating in painful sympathy, and her tears were rising fast. She made an effort to regain her self-control. He would think her silly--he would not know what to think. For an instant she fought her emotion, and then said, in her ordinary tone of voice, “It is a lonely place.”

Her words roused him from his absorption. “Yes,” he rejoined, detaching his attention with obvious effort. “And are you never lonely here--so far from any other house?”

“Oh, no,” she replied. “Whenever I go away I almost _die_ with homesickness. I think I couldn’t live anywhere else. It is so peaceful here--so still and peaceful.”

Estwicke looked at her without speaking. So peaceful _here_--where the battle was fought!

“Life seems a long struggle everywhere else. Why, when I go to Marston I am oppressed with a sense of all the movement, and strife, and hurly-burly in the world. And yet at the same time everything is so narrow--so contracted.”

“I can well understand that--after these large skies,” said Estwicke. But he was thinking what a narrow, contracted life hers would seem to those of her age in a wider sphere--with her educational cares, and the succession of dull old guests of faded gentility. He regarded her speculatively. How unconscious of her beauty she seemed. Had no one ever told her? Was he the first to discover it?

She became a little restive under his gaze. Her color rose; again she glanced out at the snowy landscape. There she caught an inspiration. “You are fond of peculiar scenic effects,” she said. “If _you_ should look out of the window, your artistic eye would perceive that that horse, with the grayish slope of the snow below him and the sky--just the same shade--above, seems as if he were miraculously poised in the air.”

“And what do _you_ see?”

“Well, I--with my practical eye--looking out of the window, see only a horse that belongs to me, that is named Hotspur, and that ought to be in the stable this minute. But you would be in an artistic ecstacy if you could see him from where you are sitting.”

“Come with me to the window so that I can go off in an artistic ecstacy,” said Estwicke.

They walked together across the room, and he held back the heavy crimson curtain with one hand that she might stand in the recess. The peculiar reflection of the snow was upon her face, which was all the fairer for it, and yet the delicate flush on her cheek was fresher and purer. He silently watched her while she looked out smilingly, and talked of the “scenic effects.”

“And there is the line,” he said presently, fixing his eyes upon the horizon where the sombre woods, miles away, met the sky, “that you told me once is the boundary of your world.”

“Oh, did you remember that?” she exclaimed naïvely.

He looked at her quickly. “Remember what you say? I forget everything else,” he protested with a sudden mental illumination.

A moment of surprise, the color intensified in her cheeks, and her eyelashes quivered and dropped. His heart was beating tumultuously; there had broken in upon him a realization of those subtle processes which had of late changed his own world. It had crystallized within closer limits than hers. This curtain and this window were the boundaries of his world.

He never knew what he was about to say in that first ardent, full-pulsed rush of emotion--but all at once there sounded a great clatter of feet in the hall, and here were Mrs. Kirby and General Vayne, bringing a cold blast of air to the fire with them, and bringing also Mrs. Kirby’s chosen intimate, Mrs. Ridgeway.

“Oh, Marcia, my dear!” cried Mrs. Ridgeway, shortly after the salutations, “the sleighing! We went all the way to Mrs. Percy’s. You could never imagine it!”

Mrs. Ridgeway was a short, rubicund, stout old lady, and in all her sixty odd years she had never before been in a sleigh.

“And that reminds me,” she continued in so animated a tone, that it riveted general attention upon her. “Mrs. Percy told us to-day that her son is coming home in a few weeks.”

“Won’t that be rather early for him to leave New Orleans?” asked Mrs. Kirby, blandly.

“Well, yes. I should think so if I were in his place. But I suppose he is soon tired of town. There seems to be some powerful magnet in this dull country neighborhood for Horace Percy. He is always coming back.”

She glanced at Marcia with an archness which seemed to Estwicke odiously knowing. He turned his eyes instantly upon the young girl. She was blushing and embarrassed.

The mere mention of this man, of whose existence he had hitherto been unaware, sent a hot thrill through his blood. The man’s name was Percy. And she called her horse--Hotspur.

In the few moments that he remained after this, there was an alteration in his manner. He was pre-occupied, and an accession of formality was noticeable in his voice, his phrasings, even his bow, as he took leave. And presently he was gliding over the snow in the crisp cutting air, remembering only how she had blushed and faltered when she was told that man was coming. That man’s name was Percy. And she called her horse--Hotspur!

It was dark before he arrived at Chattalla, and intensely cold. He had taken out a cigar, but found, in great annoyance, that he had no match. He made the last mile in very quick time, and when he reached town he pulled up at the book-store. A tattered black urchin was lounging about the sidewalk, and to him Estwicke tossed the lines as he alighted.

“Hi, boss!” shouted the little darkey after his employer, shrewdly desirous of settling the amount of his emolument beforehand. “Yer’ve got ter gimme a quarter for holdin’ disher hoss in disher kind o’wedder. You heah me!”

“I’ll give you a quarter and confound you!” exclaimed Estwicke, irritably, as he disappeared within.

The book-store served Chattalla in the stead of a clubhouse, but it was almost deserted now, the coteries that were wont to assemble here having gone home to tea. The clerk behind the counter, and a solitary figure sitting by the stove at the further end of the store, were of a lonesome aspect. Estwicke recognized in the latter Mr. Ridgeway, and after a momentary hesitation he strode back into this dim perspective. There was to be a political meeting and speaking this evening at the court-house, and Mr. Ridgeway had come to town to attend; he was now awaiting the time appointed for the political potentate to give his fellow-citizens the benefit of his newly discovered method of saving the country. He took his cigar from his mouth and greeted Estwicke with--

“Come in, Captain, come in. Almost frozen, hey? I should think you would be more accustomed to the cold.”

“Don’t know why,” said Estwicke shortly.

“That’s a fact. I always forget that you are a Southerner.”

Estwicke sat down, placing his feet companionably beside Mr. Ridgeway’s on the fender of the stove.

“Can’t say, Captain, that I think this Arctic weather improves Chattalla.”

“Chattalla seems on the down grade,” returned Estwicke. “No business, I should think--except in the line of the Jews. They seem to have a pretty soft thing.”

“Taking the town,” assented Mr. Ridgeway.

“Raise cotton?” asked Estwicke, jerkily, pulling at his cigar.

“Jews don’t,” replied Mr. Ridgeway, also jerkily. “They raise greenbacks. Don’t plant at all; show their sense; planting these days will break any man. Speak from experience.”

“I mean the people generally,” said Estwicke.

“Oh, yes; _they_ raise cotton; all the old set do. It’s their ruin--prices down to nothing, and still they keep planting--straight along. But, Lord,” continued the old gentleman, sweepingly, “everybody is broke--flat as a flounder, sir. It really makes no difference what they do now, I suppose--impossible to aggravate that fact. There’s not a man in this county who is not wofully reduced--_wofully_ reduced, sir, except, of course, Horace Percy, and he is richer than he ever was.”

There came a sudden change into Estwicke’s face. His eyes were lighted with interest, and his color rose. Still he would not ask a question. But after a long, retrospective pause, Mr. Ridgeway--waving aside the wreaths of smoke that floated about his head--continued of his own accord.

“Horace’s good luck is all owing to his uncle, old Colonel Percy--Colonel by courtesy, you know. Between you and me and the gate-post, old Walter Percy is a fool about everything in this world except money. But he is the longest-headed old sinner about money that ever was seen. When the war began this young fellow had a fine estate by his father’s will, and his uncle was his guardian. By the time the first guns were fired old Walter Percy had sold plantations, negroes, stock, _everything_. He knew their day was over. He foresaw how it was all going to end. What do you suppose that old fox did with the money? Bought United States bonds. People thought he was crazy! The lower bonds went the more old Walter Percy bought. Well, the event justified him. His finesse has made Horace a rich fellow.”

Estwicke smoked in silence, and after another long pause Mr. Ridgeway continued,--

“People are so fond of exaggerating--liars, you know. They say Horace Percy is worth a million--and that’s bosh. I am in a position to know. Five hundred thousand would amply cover all he’s got. _Half_ a million, sir--scant.”

“Is _that_ all?” said Estwicke, satirically.

The old gentleman misapprehended him.

“Of course I know there are vastly richer men elsewhere, and were here before the war. General Vayne, for instance, could have pocketed all the Percys, scot and lot. But here, and now, a man as rich as Horace Percy is a rare bird. If anybody deserves good fortune Horace does. You have never met him? Well, you will, probably, as you come down here once in a while. Yes, Horace Percy is a fine fellow; good as gold, and generous to a fault--a little too reckless and headstrong, perhaps. But that is the natural effervescence of youth and animal spirits, you know. Horace is a whole-souled, high-mettled, ardent”--

--“A sort of a Harry Percy of a fellow--Hotspur,” suggested Estwicke.

“Tha--that’s it,” spluttered Mr. Ridgeway, in cordial approbation of this apt translation of his idea. “That’s Horace, exactly. Hotspur!”