Part 4

“Yes, and forgive, as they, too, will in time. I lost a brother and many friends in the war, but, dear, I learn that our old general lost his two sons,—his only children, Constance,—his all. They are childless.”

“Oh, George! That mother! She was here to-day, and such kindness I never could have hoped for. Now I understand her

“‘sad eyes Wherein no expectation lies.’

“Who said that, George? I forget. I wondered what gave her that look; I noticed it when I first saw her. I think Susan quoted it once. And, my dear George, she heard me singing in that absurd way in church, and would I join the choir, and they would expect us to use their pew, and there are sewing-circles, and what not. I had to say several noes; I did it sweetly, and said I must think about it. Imagine me in a sewing-circle!”

“I am sure you said just the right thing. As for the general, he, too, was more than kind. He begged me to be careful about war talk. People were still sensitive. And I ought to be made aware that your uncle, whom no one here has seen, is detested, and supposed to hinder the growth of the town by refusals to sell or improve. He wants me to see people socially, and it seems there is a little club which he thinks I had better join. I said it would be as well to wait. I do not want any needless expenses—even the smallest.”

“Oh, I shall manage, George. I have talked to Mrs. Averill. We shall have enough. It might be better to join the club.”

“I shall think of it,” he said. “But my best club is elsewhere.”

“Yes; but you would see these people there. Only, I shall be jealous of the hours I do not own.”

“You own all my hours, Constance. And, by the way, talking of jealousy, the dark gentleman you admired yesterday has some Indian and some Creole blood. I guessed well. But his name, I take it, is English—Greyhurst. He is the lawyer who has been engaged in the suit to dispossess your uncle of the water-front. I hear, also, that he is pretty deeply and personally interested in lands along the water.”

She determined to know more of this man when she saw the general. She had some vague feeling that here was a man who would be hostile; and she had not liked the smiling face with the dark, attentive eyes.

The next day being Tuesday, while Trescot was again busy with the old general, Constance dressed with care and set out to visit his wife. The sun was warm, and as she walked along the road to the town she was full of plans for a social campaign which should be of use to the man she loved. There was enough to interest in the negro huts and children, the wayside flowers, the straggling town, its blooming gardens, and the houses which war and its attendant poverty had left long uncared for. As she gained the main street, she began to see that she was the object of notice; but to this she was not unaccustomed, and did not find it unpleasing. Her looks and her power to be agreeable were a part of George’s capital. She noted the men on horseback—now and then a man in a battle-worn suit of Confederate gray; twice she observed the “C. S.” branded on the flanks of mules—and felt the nearness of that vast struggle which had left the South wrecked and impoverished.

A question or two brought her to the general’s house. It stood on a rise to the eastward and above the town—an ample brick dwelling of more pretension than those near by. The garden around it on all sides was admirably cared for, but the fence was broken and the gate lay on the ground. The hall door was open, but she looked in vain for a bell, and used the brass knocker without effect. At last she entered, and saw through the back door of the hall the gray head of Mrs. Averill in the garden, moving between tall rows of Osage orange. For a moment some inbred regard for conventional usages stayed the visitor’s steps, and then, seeing no other way, she walked through the house and down the garden path.

Mrs. Averill turned, setting down a basket of roses, and with both hands welcomed her visitor.

“Come in,” she said; “come in out of the sun.”

Her looks approved the proudly carried head, the rich red of the cheeks, the large blue eyes, and that indescribable air of caste and good-breeding which the day before, as they came out of church, had been at once and easily recognized.

Constance, too, saw that here was an older woman of her own world—a woman, as she wrote to Susan, who seemed suited to the old-fashioned garden and its familiar flowers—a delicately provincial dame, with an assured way of saying gently very positive things, and with hands and feet thin, delicate, and marvelously small.

The Southland tongue as Mrs. Averill used it, with its half-lost _r_’s and a certain precision in her choice of words, delighted the critical taste of Constance.

As they entered the large parlor, Mrs. Averill said: “Sit down, my dear; it is very warm. I must find my servants—nowadays they are never to be found. You shall have a glass of lemonade.”

Constance said she should be glad to have it, and was left alone. She looked after her hostess with increasing satisfaction. Mrs. Averill was exquisitely neat, from the little cap, over abundant gray hair, and wide white kerchief to the white gown and the long garden gloves. The room offered an unpleasing contrast. The wall-paper was worn and spotted, the seats of the chairs showed signs of wear. Some of them were of Colonial respectability, some with the black hair-cloth covers of a day of worse taste. The matting was much mended, and a thin-legged piano, not too free from dust, suggested indifference, or, more probably, the housekeeping troubles of which as yet Constance was happily ignorant.

On the walls were two or three portraits in the thin manner of the elder Peale, and an admirable Copley of a husband and wife. Over the fireplace hung a pair of crossed swords suspended by broad black ribbons. Below were ill-colored photographs of two young officers in Confederate uniform. “Poor mother!” said Constance. Over all, caught up in folds, hung a torn battle-flag of the rebel States, and below it the flag of a Maine regiment, also tattered and battle-scarred, evidently a captured trophy.

For a moment the young faces of the dead sons troubled her, and then the two flags sent a rush of angry blood to her face—a return of the passionate feelings the great war had so often caused her. Here before her was the record of battle and of death, of the pathos and the courage and endurance of a struggle which should have left, and did leave for the best of those who fought and won, only admiration, pity, and magnanimity. Constance had little of that greatness of soul which is the noblest factor in the large gospel of forgiveness. The personal feeling which entered so largely into her life during the war was supported by an unusually intelligent knowledge of our history, and kept angrily alive by her uncle’s attitude when, rejoicing over Confederate victories, he thus kept her irritated and on edge throughout the years of that sad struggle—ever glorious for those who won and those who lost.

Hearing Mrs. Averill’s step at the doorway, she turned quickly from the mantel to meet her, composing her face with the habitual ease of a caste accustomed to hide emotion. The little old lady, so gray, so worn, became of a sudden grave.

“Sit down here beside me,” she said. “You were looking at the flags and—the faces of my dead. Of course it troubled you—I saw that—the flags and—the rest. I won’t have you excuse yourself; it was natural. One boy fell dead on the flag he had captured; they sent it home to me. The other, a prisoner, died in the North, after having been cared for as we could not have cared for him in those terrible days. You see, I am explaining to you because we are to be friends; but some day, when you are a mother, you—”

“Please don’t,” said Constance, taking her thin hand. Both women’s eyes were full of tears.

For a moment they were silent. Then Constance said, “How did you live through it?”

“God helped me, as some day he may need to help you. It is less hard to forgive a nation than if it had been a man, and John Averill was spared to sorrow with me. Some day I shall see my boys. There, my dear, we must not talk of it any more; but we are very sore in the South, and the state of things in the Carolinas makes it impossible to forget defeat in the face of continual humiliation.”

“I know,” said Constance. “It is shameful, and no one—not even you—can feel it more than my husband. He tries to put aside the war. He never speaks of it, although his crippled arm is a sad reminder. He will not let me hang his sword where it can be seen in—” She paused, feeling that she had made one of those social slips which even the best-trained do not altogether escape. She went on quickly: “We want to make friends with the people here. You will tell us how. You know it is to be our home.”

“My dear, you will easily make friends; but sometimes you will have to be forbearing and keep silent. It may be hard, but for those who won it should not be.” Constance thought of George, and assented. “Mr. Trescot will find it less easy; but his having been in your army will help him with all but the women; we are unreasonably venomous—a few of us, not all.”

“Well, that will save me some jealousies,” said Constance, smiling.

“Ah, here is the lemonade,” said her hostess. “I was picking these flowers for you; will you care to carry the basket, or shall I send them? I was about to call again this afternoon. I thought I might help you. It must all be so strange to you.”

Constance, thanking her, rose, saying: “You will let me come again?”

“Oh, often, I hope,—often.”

She walked away through the sun and down the dusty street, carrying the roses. The men looked after her erect figure, the women made comments on gown and bonnet.

She was lost to her surroundings, thinking of the flags and the dead boys, and wondering at the peace of soul which had come to the childless mother. She could not comprehend it, and thought that such a calamity falling on herself would have left her with an undying hatred. Presently, feeling the heat, she was reminded that she had promised not to tempt its consequences through the summer months. The idea of leaving George troubled her, and she quickened her pace in order the sooner to see him.

V

The Trescots by degrees settled into a routine of life which, while it left Constance alone in the mornings, usually permitted of their being together the rest of the day, and in the evening.

A few friends or relatives of the Averills called upon them; but these visits were evidently formal or made to oblige the general’s wife, and they were left much alone.

If Trescot soon felt the social atmosphere to be cold, he excused it, and trusted to time and chance for better things. Except that Constance saw in their reception difficulties for her husband, she had small regret on account of the conditions which relieved her from being constantly on guard, and made her secure of a larger share of the society she preferred to all other.

The women she met and tried to find pleasant were chiefly interested in their households, in the difficulties caused by the emancipation of the slaves, and in the awkward subject of the misgovernment of the South. There were but few subjects which were free from peril, and such intellectual sympathies as Constance possessed awakened little interest among overburdened women whom many forms of disaster had left with too constant thought of the morrow.

What help and advice Constance required she found in the Averill house, where now and then they ate a meal and were at all times welcome guests. The older woman discovered, to her husband’s joy, a novel pleasure in Constance Trescot’s music; and it became common for the old general and his wife to appear of an evening, and while the men smoked their pipes on the porch the piano, Susan’s wedding-gift, was opened, and song after song, or the tones of the greater music, soothed and pleased the pale little lady who sat a silent listener, or pleaded for “just one more, my dear.”

Then, too, Susan sent the new books and the magazines, and these were passed on to the Averills, who formed, by degrees, an increasing attachment to the young man and his wife, and became thoughtfully busy in the difficult task of bringing them into cordial relations with what was best in the town. As far as was possible to a woman like Constance, the regard was returned. She had all her life had a singular incapacity for generous division or sharing of her affection. Once it had been wholly Susan’s. It was now George Trescot’s, and this predisposition was reinforced by a passion deep, jealous, and exacting. The man so long lonely sunned himself in the warmth of all that an intelligent and beautiful woman brought to help and glorify his life, with no mind to criticize the quality of the woman’s love.

And so the latter days of April passed, and the warmth of May and June came, while, with the all-sufficient company of books, music, and talk, time moved onward. In the evening he read to her or told her of his work, and she of what she had seen and done. Of the keen sense he had of hostility in the very air of the place he said but little. She was but too anxiously aware of it, and said as little.

On an evening early in June the general came in, and leaving Constance alone with her open piano, the two men went out on to the porch.

“I came in, Mr. Trescot, because I want to talk of the squatters. I heard to-day that there may be trouble. I wish my friend Mr. Hood were more reasonable.”

“He is not, and never will be, and there is nothing to do but to serve the usual notices on them.”

“It has already excited a good deal of feeling. The squatters will resist, or at least two of them will. The fact is that I have been unable to make up my mind in the past to turn out three old soldiers of my own regiment. One of these is a lame man, crippled in the war. Cannot you wait until the suit for the water-front has been tried?”

“It is low down on the docket, and it will be October before it can come up. But what would be gained by that—by waiting?”

The general was unprepared to reply. He was merely inclined, like most old men, to put off the disagreeable, having that faith in the helpfulness of time which is a part of the business creed of the aged.

He said at last that he was of opinion that Greyhurst was stirring them up. The eviction of a lot of old soldiers, one of them eighteen years on the ground, father and son, would further prejudice an already hostile public opinion, and make it the harder to secure a just verdict in regard to the question of title to the lands beyond them on the river.

“What I disliked to do about these men, Mr. Trescot,” he said, “will be dangerous for you to attempt. I think it right to tell you that. Their land is not valuable for steamboat landings, and for any other purpose it is useless, because the squatters never can sell it; but they won’t give up, and are utterly indifferent to law, and quite well aware that the community is on their side. Best let them alone just now. Wait a little.”

“No, I must go on.”

“It will be at the risk of your life.”

He could have said nothing better fitted to add vigor to Trescot’s resolute intention. He replied, laughing: “I presume that we have both been shot at pretty often.”

“But this is different, Trescot.”

“Yes, I know that. But am I to believe, general, that an opponent lawyer deliberately advises an assassination?”

“Oh, no, I beg you not to misunderstand me; I spoke rather too positively. Greyhurst would never do that; and, upon my word, he never did anything deliberate in his life. The man is impulsive and quick to resent, and very imprudent in talk. He is in debt, and if he can win this suit he will probably receive a large contingent fee. These men, especially that fellow named Coffin, have been to see him,—I pointed the man out to you on the street yesterday. Mr. Greyhurst has told them that you surely mean to evict them. I do not think he can have gone further.”

“If he said only that I mean to evict, that is true. I would tell them that myself. Was there anything else?”

“No; but there are ways of saying things. It was none of his business. They did not consult him as a lawyer, and he was merely making mischief. These mountain-men who are now squatted on the flats come to me like children. They were, some of them, in my company when I first went out, and they look to me for protection. It is a damned disagreeable business, sir; and none the easier for John Greyhurst’s interference and Mr. Hood’s stupid obstinacy.”

“I presume, general, that you really could not make up your mind to act on Mr. Hood’s determination to evict.”

“I must confess, Mr. Trescot, that I would not. I think I said as much. The legal right no one can dispute; but I could not come down on these poor devils with the law without being looked upon as an oppressor, and, what is worse just now, as the instrument of a Northern man. Even for me, my dear Trescot, to evict mercilessly men who have lived there five, ten, even eighteen years unmolested—even for me, sir, there might be risk.”

“And for me,” queried Trescot, smiling, “much more risk?”

“That is my belief, sir. I do not think Mr. Hood has ever taken in the situation.”

“No; it is his land. The men must go. For him it is simple,—but for me and you there are the human ties to land men have cleared and plowed, the sense of the home, and all manner of associations. Mr. Hood prides himself on being exact in business. Out of it he is generous, even lavish. He has not imagination enough to be largely charitable. I never saw a man like him.”

“Then, sir,” said the old general, grimly humorous, “he had better lavish on you a good revolver or a first-class rifle. What I could not or would not do, you will surely risk your life if you try to do. I may as well say to you that my chief reason for giving up Hood’s agency was his infernal obstinacy about these squatters. Did he tell you that I had said so, and that no reputable gentleman in St. Ann would accept the position?”

“No, he did not,” returned Trescot, somewhat surprised at this revelation of Mr. Hood’s methods.

“Well, no one here would take it on his terms, and, as I see it, he has placed you in what is a position of real danger. Even now, before you have moved legally, these men are sure they will be turned out. They are not men to wait, and the whole town is on their side. Think it over. A very little money would settle the business.”

“You are no doubt right; but what can I do? I must give up the agency or act on Mr. Hood’s orders. I came here to do so, and I mean to move in the matter. How can I hope to convince him if you failed?”

The general laid a hand on Trescot’s knee, and said very earnestly:

“Wait until I write to him again. I have known lives lost in this country for far less things, and if you are set on taking legal action I beg that you will go about armed.”

Trescot laughed. “Why, my dear general, I am half crippled, and it would be simply useless. Do you all carry revolvers?”

“I do not; but if I were bent on following out Mr. Hood’s orders I most assuredly should do so, and, too, I should be rather careful how I went out at night.”

Trescot thanked him and said: “You will do nothing with Hood; but could not we do something with these men if you and I saw them together?”

“It is worth trying. I shall go with you with pleasure. Before I leave let me say a word more about that land suit. It was first brought the year after the big flood in sixty-three. Who suggested to the Baptiste people to dispute Hood’s title I do not know. Two lawyers have had it; one died and one threw up the case. Then it came into Greyhurst’s hands, and has hung on. I had too slight evidence in Mr. Hood’s favor to want to try it, and Greyhurst evidently took it with the hope of forcing a compromise. I can’t think he believes their claim just.”

“Well, I shall urge it, and we can make him come to time. It is very much like a sort of legally disguised blackmail. What kind of man is he? I ought to know. You said he was impulsive.”

“Yes, it is as well that you should. A rather unusual person. He has had a wild life, but is not uncultivated. He certainly has a high opinion of John Greyhurst, and the most damned insecure temper I ever met with. Halloa! Talk of him another time. Listen to that!”

There was a low, mellow roll of murmurous thunder. The general rose. “We are in for one of our big thunder-storms. It will cool the air. Say good-by to Mrs. Trescot. I must hurry.” He went away around the house in haste.

As Trescot stood looking at the darkening sky a blinding splendor of violet light made bright the distant river and the march of dark masses of cloud across the star-lighted sky. “Come out,” he called to his wife. “The general has gone, Constance; come out on the porch.”

She rejoiced in a great storm, as she did in any display of the might of nature, such as the wild sea drama of a gale on her own rock-bound coast. She came out at once and they walked into the garden. The herald wind of the coming storm shook the house and brought a cool breath of freshness.

“How delicious the air is, George, and how magnificent, how glorious!”

Swift javelins of light flashed incessant, with crashes of thunder, and soon the sudden downfall of rain drove them to the shelter of the porch.