Part 3

“That you will not have,” said Susan, quietly. “I am so glad that you concluded to be married in church.”

“He wanted it, and I really did not care.”

“But you will some day, dear. You cannot live with that man year after year and fail to feel the value of the influences which guide and guard his life—and, dear, it was not your fault. I think it was cruel, wicked.”

Constance looked up. “Do you think he is really—I mean because of that—better than I am? Oh, I mean—you know what I mean.”

“I think you know, dear,” said Susan, “or ought to know. He has had a life of trial, you one of ease. Both of you are what nature and the chances of life have made you. I think you were unfairly dealt with. Before I came, and ever since, uncle has had his way.”

“Yes, I know; but, truly, Susan, I am neither religious nor non-religious; I am open-minded.”

“Are you, my dear sister? Has not your open-mindedness left you with the door of the mind very hard to open wide? Time will show. You have never yet found yourself; you have simply the conventional morals and opinions of our own social world. How they will serve you in days of strain and trouble God alone knows.”

“I think you are severe, Susan. I suppose I shall laugh or cry, and grieve or be merry, like others.”

“You are not like others. You are very unlike others.”

“Am I not?”

“No; you are too natural.”

“Too natural. Upon my word, Susan, you are quite too enigmatical for my powers of comprehension.”

“Well, dear, we won’t talk any more. I did not want to trouble you. And how am I to do without you?”

“Oh, you must come to see us after a while, when we are settled.”

“Oh, shall I not? Now to bed, to bed, dear, for a beauty sleep.”

She kissed her, and Constance went away. The elder woman remained long in thought by the fire, reflecting upon her own imprudent frankness. The younger lay awake for a time, wondering a little what Susan meant by calling her too natural. She awoke early to hear the surf and the constant rain, and the wail of the wind among the pines.

* * * * *

Trescot had never been his former vigorous self since he was wounded, and now, a resolute doctor insisting upon a long holiday, five happy weeks went by, much to the betterment of his health and looks. As they got out of the train at St. Ann early in April, on a Saturday afternoon, a gentleman approached them, and in the soft Southern tongue said:

“Mrs. Trescot, I believe. I am General Averill. Allow me to make you welcome to St. Ann.”

As Trescot gave him his left hand he added in a cordial way:

“Have you met with an accident? Nothing very bad, I hope.” He seemed really distressed. “And in your honeymoon, too.”

“You are very kind,” said Trescot. “I am afraid that you are in a way responsible; it was a Confederate bullet.”

“Oh, indeed? It is too late for apologies, but not for regret. So you were a soldier. Well, I am glad of that. It is not the men who fought who are making mischief now. My carriage is here. This way, madam. Here, boy,” to an aged black, and he gave some directions concerning their baggage.

“But we are going to the hotel,” said Trescot. “I wrote and arranged for rooms.”

The general laughed. “You are going to your own house, sir. My wife has been busy there, or she would have met Mrs. Trescot.”

“But we have no house,” said Constance.

“A little surprise, madam—as I understand, a wedding-gift from Mr. Hood. Mrs. Averill wrote and wished to be allowed to put it in order. Then Miss Hood came to St. Ann. Your uncle and I are old friends, as you know; and now that I see you, Mrs. Trescot, it is more than a pleasure—it is a privilege—to have been thus allowed to be of use. Ah! here is the carriage. Permit me.”

Trescot could only express formal thanks, and they chatted as they drove through the old Creole settlement, with its ill-kept gardens and new wooden houses.

Trescot was much amazed by the uncle’s sudden and secret liberality. They had been five weeks away from home, and except that Susan had written, soon after they left, that St. Ann would surprise them, they had been unprepared for what now they heard.

Unable, for the time, to discuss matters, they drove on for a half-mile through the dust of the main street; and when a little way out of the fast-growing southwestern town the general said, “This is what we call Raeburn’s addition.” Where the road began to slope to the broad river a too sanguine speculator had put up a half-dozen scattered cottages.

“This is your home, Mrs. Trescot. No, I shall leave you to enjoy it alone. Mrs. Averill has gone away, and hopes you will be pleased. You will find supper ready in an hour.”

They stood a moment on the roadside. A neat old black woman in a gay bandana head-kerchief stood at the open door; the general, hat in hand, kind, genial, courteous, a little profuse in talk. The two young people thanked him, and they were left alone.

Constance had misgivings as to what she might expect in this new home. She said nothing of the feeling she had that she should have been consulted as to the furniture. But much of what was needed had been chosen by Susan, and some simple but refined taste had presided over the rest. As she looked about her, she cried: “Oh, George, when I heard I was afraid; but it is really so very pretty and so simple; and was it not considerate to leave us alone? And wasn’t it like Susan just to go away and leave us to ourselves, and Mrs. Averill too?”

“You do not yet know the best of these Southern people, Constance. It will be both pleasant and desirable that you and I learn to like them. I am sure you will. Imagine the kindness of it, and the trouble!”

They went from room to room in the little house, looking out on the roses already in bloom, the grass slopes, and the river beyond. At last they found their way into the dining-room, and then into an apartment where were shelves and a businesslike table; but here the cases sent on by Trescot and Constance had been left unopened. Again husband and wife recognized the feeling which had left their personal belongings untouched.

One of the servants, an old woman once a slave of the Averills, conducted Constance over the kitchen, and up-stairs and down again, and was delighted when, after supper, the cooking was praised.

Then, as the shadows came, and they sat on the back porch among clustering Cherokee roses, she brought him a match, and as his pipe glowed or darkened they talked of the new life before them; she recognizing with fresh happiness the man’s gain in health and vigor; he, at moments, in thought with certain reasonable fears. Would this distinguished-looking woman, with her music, her social ties, her unchecked expenditures, her familiar Boston circle—would she be contented here in this simpler life? Would every one be as kind as Mrs. Averill? He became more and more silent as they sat in the twilight. She, too, had her less distinct doubts, but heretofore they had said little of the life which lay before them. Now she spoke, touching his brown hair as he sat on the step below her. She was strangely intuitive as concerned George Trescot.

“I know what you are thinking of, my dear, dear George.”

“Oh! What, love?”

“You are wondering whether I shall be satisfied here in this new life amid the people you fought and I hated.”

“I was; but you will not hate them. I never did.”

“And I shall not if they are good to you.”

“Oh, whether or not; and you won’t miss the ease of home, the varied life, your carriage and riding-horse?”

“I—I have you.”

“But you will not have me always as you have had for these happy weeks.”

“But you will be always thinking of me.”

“Even that may not be possible. I sometimes fancy it would have been better—”

“No, no; we did wisely, and love is my only answer.”

“Then, once and for all let us put away the past, and accept our new life with thankfulness.”

“Yes. Ah, letters! Thank you,” she said to the maid. “Let us go in, George, and read them.” As they sat down, she cried: “Gracious! oh, do listen to this, George. It is from uncle.”

“MY DEAR CONSTANCE:

“Major-General Averill will give you the title-deeds of the house. It will, I hope, make you less discontented, for you will have to economize as you never did here. I trust also that my generosity will be an inducement to that obstinate young man to give the fullest attention to my affairs.

“Susan will, no doubt, tell you that she made me give you the house; but her religion is too vague a thing to have taught her accuracy. What she calls faith, I am happy to say I am without; it is too vague for intellectual assimilation.

“Yours affectionately, “RUFUS HOOD.”

“Of which has he none—faith or intellectual assimilation?” laughed Trescot. “Upon my word, Constance, what about the blind belief we call love? No one knows everything of any one. The rest we call trust, faith; and without the mystery of the unknowable in man, woman, and God, the half of the charm of life and love were gone.”

She did not answer him directly, but said: “Uncle Rufus is plain enough, and I know you, and you me.”

“No, not altogether; what you would do or be in certain contingencies of this changeful life, I do not know.”

“Am I not simple?”

“You? No, no,” he laughed. “But what does Susan say?”

She read:

“DEAR CONNY:

“As soon as you were engaged I set to work to make Uncle Rufus behave decently. He is not mean or ungenerous, but you were to be punished for preferring George to him, and to have a narrow income as a reminder of your iniquity. We had it about and about. He enjoyed the row and, as usual, backed down. I made him groan when the bills came in; but he had to pay, and now he tells every one about the pleasure he had in surprising you with the house. I send a few books of reference for George—the cyclopedia he wanted, and a few other books.”

She said nothing of what further she had done.

Constance looked up. “But I meant to give you that cyclopedia myself. I told her so.”

She had a childlike disappointment because of having been thus anticipated. He saw and understood.

“But I want far more—the new biographical dictionary, and how many other books I dare not tell you. To-morrow we shall see when we unpack the boxes. What else is there in your sister’s letter?”

“Nothing of moment. She wishes to know if the house, _our_ house—isn’t that delightful—needs any other furniture.”

“I should think not,” said Trescot, faintly jealous of the liberality which had provided what in time he had hoped to give. He said, however: “I confess, dear, to being very glad that you are to be so pleasantly nested. I feared a little the long stay at an inn or in lodgings, where you would have all manner of unavoidable contacts.”

“Yes,” she said, “that would have been dreadful. To have been able all one’s life to choose or avoid, to say ‘At home’ or not, and then to be obliged to meet, all the time, the chance acquaintances of a boarding-house! I did not expect to have a house for a year at least.”

George Trescot reflected anew upon the sacrifices she had made, and on how less than little she knew of what she was saved by Susan’s persistency and self-sacrifice.

“We owe Susan a great debt,” he said; “and I am as grateful as a man ought to be; but I wish I had been able to do all this for you myself. I have been so anxious that you should be satisfied.”

Constance slipped down on to the step beside him, cast an arm around him, and laid her head on his shoulder. “You need not have been afraid, George. Life can ask nothing of me, large or small, which I would not give or be or do for you.” The voice became low and measured as she went on. “I could beg, or do anything. You will see how I shall help you. I shall make all these St. Ann people our friends—oh, whether I like them or not; but, George, I am scared sometimes when I think of how all other love has shrunk to nothing, as if it had all gone to make up one great love for you. If any one—man or woman—loves you, I shall be jealous; if any one does not, I shall hate him. Oh, I am a fine fool of love! I am half jealous of the company you find in your pipe.”

He said, “Are you, indeed?”

“Yes, I am, really. Oh, you may laugh, but I am.”

The stress of passion in her words was broken by this half-humorous reflection, and a little to the man’s relief, even if he hardly knew it. The quality of his affection was governed by temperament, and, never reaching the instinctive freedom of her passion, was nobler, in that it looked forward to being always the true lover, and also the friend who guides and counsels; for already he saw that both guidance and counsel might be needed. He smiled as he kissed her.

“Well, shall I give up my friend of many campfires, of sad days, of long night-rides?”

“What a pretty defense! No, indeed; I like it because it can comfort and cannot love.”

She rose as she spoke, and standing before him, threw up her hands with a gesture of emphatic abandonment and cried: “Oh, George, I am so happy! Come, let us walk in the garden. Isn’t it little?—but do look at the roses.”

He went with her, and they talked more quietly of the kindness of the general and his wife; of their own plans, and of his work. To his surprise, she said no word of Susan. At last he said, “It is early, but you must be tired.”

“Oh, I am never tired; but I have to unpack, and what the colored women can do I have yet to learn.”

“To-morrow will be Sunday, Constance.”

“I am going to church with you. You will have to find the places for me in your prayer-book; but I am going because—because you are going.”

“Thank you! You are very good to me, my love! Good night.”

She left him, and he lighted his pipe, and for an hour moved about in thought.

IV

As they went up the slight ascent of West Street toward the Episcopal church, Constance said to her husband: “Since we left home you have gone to church alone. I mean that you shall never do that again. But, George, do you know that this will be the first time I have ever been present at a church service?”

“It will interest you,” he said, realizing with regret how complete had been the denial of the highest opportunities to the woman he loved. Careful to show no surprise, he went on to speak of the service, and of how it had been formed and molded, until, arriving at the church, they sat down near to the door. After church they slipped away, unnoticed, except casually by General Averill. On the way homeward, Constance was silent for a time, and seeming to her husband thus inclined, he made no effort to disturb her mood.

Presently, however, she began to speak of the impression this amazing novelty of a great ritual had left with her. The congregation had been large and very devoted. She confessed to interest and something like awe—a certain wonder at it, a trained disbelief in its verities. She spoke with care, and he, on his side, listened without criticism. Certainly to her it was so strange that he found it hard to put himself in her attitude of mind, and preferred, with the patience which was part of his character, to do no more than wait for such better chances as time might bring.

The music she found good and simple. Caught by its charm, her full soprano rose in the hymns he knew so well, and added to the satisfaction he felt when she expressed her surprise at the refined faces she saw about her. He explained that the older settlers had been Virginians, and many of them gentlefolk. She was sure she would like them; and the elderly woman she saw as they came out must be Mrs. Averill. She smiled at them as the general raised his hat—a handsome couple. There was even a kind of distinction in the old-fashioned gowns and bonnets.

“I think they were all curious about us,” she added.

“There may be other reasons,” he laughed, “for looking at you, my dear. I sometimes enjoy that privilege myself.”

Sunday passed quietly in their new home, and they fully recognized the thoughtful kindness which left them thus undisturbed. In the afternoon they decided to see the little city and their neighborhood. They were about a half-mile from the court-house green, beyond which, on an upper rise, were a dozen houses, not very well cared for, but set pleasantly among trees and well-tended gardens. On the level land above the river bluff were the straggling houses and shops which, in their fresh shingles and paint, gave evidence here and there of the new material growth which had begun since the war. Below the bluff, on the shore of the great curve of the turbid river, were warehouses, cotton-presses, and rudely built piers where steamers lay. Much of the nearer water-front was occupied, and as they stood Trescot pointed out where, at the bend of the river, lay the long stretch of frontage which was in litigation, and was claimed by Mr. Hood. Descending to the water’s edge, they found a rough road which passed through low growths and the rude clearings of the squatters who had refused to vacate their lands. Beyond, the road wound along the river bank, and over the land which Trescot had pointed out as valuable on account of the deep water in front of it.

When on their homeward way they came near to their own house, the path so narrowed in front of an ill-kept garden that Trescot fell behind. A gentleman in gray clothes, and wearing an undress army-cap with Confederate buttons, moved aside into the road to make room for Mrs. Trescot to pass. He lifted his cap and showed some attentive surprise as Trescot touched his straw hat and they passed on.

“By George!” he murmured, “who can that be? What a beautiful woman!” He stared after her well-clad figure, noting the ease and grace of her walk, and then the slighter form of the man. Seeing them turn in at their own gate, he said aloud: “That must be old Hood’s new agent. He is very young.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Trescot said: “George, did you notice that gentleman?”

“Yes.”

“He looks like an Indian chief, and very unlike the people I saw to-day. He is handsome, but how dark he is!”

“Oh, there is some old Creole blood here—of French descent, very likely—a fine, big man, probably a Confederate soldier.”

* * * * *

The Monday morning of their first week at St. Ann found them after breakfast on the back porch of their new home. The man was gravely happy; the young wife a little excited as they began to consider what they were to do on this the first morning of their new life. Past the little garden, the grassy slopes and green maize-fields were bounded below by a fringe of oaks, beyond which the brown current of the mighty river swept onward in its march to the gulf. The Cherokee rose was all about them in red clusters, the humming-birds were busy on quivering wing, and the warmth and moisture of the Southland—April already—invited to repose and idleness.

“It is very pleasant here,” said Trescot, “but there will be many things to do, and I suppose one must begin.” As he spoke he rose. The temptations to linger were very great. But at last he compromised with sense of duty by resolving, as many a man has done, to go as soon as his pipe had gone out. Nevertheless he economically nursed the failing pipe. As he lingered Constance asked:

“What have you to do, George? I mean at once.”

“Oh, many things. I must see the general and learn all I can of your uncle’s affairs. There are unpaid rents, mortgages in arrears, taxes, and what not,—a sad tangle, I fear. Then, if I am to appear in the courts I must qualify by an examination to practise in this State.”

She was at once eager to know why.

“I could appear,” he returned, “in a United States court, but not before local tribunals. But that is all simple.” And, in fact, after a fortnight he was enabled thus to qualify for practice at St. Ann.

When at last the pipe refused to furnish excuses for delay, he left his wife to her new household duties. She found herself amply occupied, and while her husband spent a busy morning with Averill, she went about the house with the two black servants, arranging her husband’s books, and giving to the rooms that look of having been lived in, which is one of the mysterious accomplishments of certain women. Trescot heard snatches of song as he came in at midday, to meet her eager questions, and to note with satisfaction what she had done to change the house into a home.

“How hard you must have worked!” he said, seeing all of his many books in order.

“I did not unpack your law books, George.”

“No, you were right; I must have them with me. I am to have a bit of an office next to the general’s. I find that he has come into some property of late, and wants to give up part of his work—I mean chiefly your uncle’s affairs. There are, I fancy, other reasons. He was somewhat reticent. From what I gathered I fear that your uncle’s business is going to be difficult; and he has been so hard to deal with that people here say it is impossible to settle anything. However, we shall see. I suspect that the general has been indisposed to push matters, and that your uncle has been unyieldingly opposed to any compromises.”

“Very likely,” said Constance; “but if the general had been firm uncle would have given way. He always does. But for that he should be here. He is always most obstinate in his letters.”

“That is hardly consoling,” said Trescot. “And oh, Constance, I would not hang my sword here. Put it in your room.”

“I should like that,” she said, at once understanding him. “I see that you do not wear your Loyal Legion button—I suppose we are to forget?”